Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has outlined some major changes coming to the game, including roguelite systems called Planet Warfronts.
In a post on Steam outlining the future of community and player progression in Helldivers 2, game director Mikael Eriksson confirmed Planet Warfronts is the roguelite system Arrowhead CCO and Helldivers 2 creative director, Johan Pilestedt, revealed was being worked on back in December.
“Before we launched the game, we experimented with dynamic warfronts on planets, where players needed to make strategic community decisions on a planet level in order to liberate it,” Eriksson explained. “While it was promising, we realized we didn’t have the content needed to do it justice at the time. We feel we’ve now added enough content to realize the vision we had for Planet Warfronts, and it’s going to be the next big thing we’re working towards in the Galactic War. When you’ve seen Johan talk about experimenting with roguelite systems, he was referring to this.”
When Planet Warfronts goes live, missions will be grouped under different categories:
- Defend missions in liberated territory
- Frontline War missions on the frontlines
- Behind Enemy Lines missions in enemy controlled territory
Eriksson said players will fight to reach key strategic locations on planets, like cities, which can have different active enemy variants in different areas of the planet. “Of course, you’ll still have the Game Masters to contend with, too,” Eriksson insisted. In the final version of this feature, there will also be gameplay altering effects and consequences for achieving planet liberation goals, like reaching and liberating a city within X time or disabling enemy artillery in one location to unlock crucial Operations.
“The intention is to make it more fun to liberate planets with your squad and deepen the Galactic War and Community Progression systems,” Eriksson continued. “We want liberating planets to feel unique and epic for everyone. We have some development and design work ahead to make these feel great and provide the best experience, but I wanted to share just one of the ideas we have in active development. More to come on these changes in the next few months!”
When Pilestedt teased the roguelite mode, he said it “changes the game fundamentally!” That was enough to set fans of the explosive co-op action shooter into overdrive imagining how a roguelite mode would work in the game, which revolves around open and shut missions restricted by time limits.
But that’s not all. Helldivers 2 will get Galactic War Campaigns this month. Campaigns are the “next evolution” of Major Orders, and will last 1-3 weeks. “The intention that it will always be clear what the active Campaign is, how it’s going, what the outcomes have been, and what’s at stake,” Eriksson said, admitting this has not always been the case before with how players interact with the Galactic War.
The introduction of Campaigns means there will always be at least one Campaign reward if the conditions are met. “We want to make these rewards special, because we also think players should earn more than just medals,” Eriksson explained. Some will alter gameplay, some will be cool items. “It also means there is more stuff for players to work towards outside of warbonds,” Eriksson teased. “Pray J.O.E.L is feeling generous, the first reward you’ll be working to unlock is a new FRV!”
Meanwhile, Personal Orders are changing into a system called Personal Campaign Progression. The intent here is for every Galactic War Campaign to come with a personal progression reward track. “That way, even if the community fails to reach a larger goal, players can still do their part toward their personal goals and get rewarded with cool things to mark their participation in various Campaigns,” Eriksson said.
“This change won’t happen with the launch of Galactic War Campaigns, but we are planning to deploy it this year.”
And finally, Arrowhead has news on upgrading your ship, with an overhaul of the ship module system that significantly increases the offerings for players to progress. Perhaps more exciting, Arrowhead is also adding more ships.
“The biggest shift we’ve done internally is we now have a dedicated ship team, working on the first new ship,” Eriksson revealed. “Our intention is that each new ship will have their own unique progression paths, specializations and customizations. And if you like the ships, we want to keep adding them; at least the ones we’ve planned so far!
“I can’t share when the new ship can reach your hands… yet, but I’ll be sharing more details later this year for certain.”
Eriksson also outlined upcoming fixes coming to Helldivers 2, below, which I’ve rounded up here:
- Helldivers will be able to use assisted reload, as long as either the carrier or the reloader of the weapon have the corresponding backpack.
- More emotes! Helldivers will have 8 emote slots instead of 4.
- Reducing dead input on stimming.
And, looking futher ahead, Helldivers 2 is getting the following:
- Stratagem bouncing. We’ve assembled a task force to prototype fixes for this issue and we’re hoping to have it solved by the end of the year.
- Hellpod steering. Similar to stratagem bouncing, we’re also tackling this long standing issue.
- Improving enemy and player traversal, which includes environmental collision and reducing movement penalties on grass and vegetation.
- Increasing the level cap to 300
- Economy and resource improvements
- Fixes to the Warbond and Superstore menus that make them easier to navigate.
- Closed beta testing that focuses on stability and balancing, and that includes getting beta test feedback from our Propaganda Commanders.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
