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Helldivers 2 - Escalation of Freedom Update Announced

Draugoth

Gold Member


Coming August 6th 2024. Escalation of Freedom is the first major update for HELLDIVERS 2. Get ready to take on the new "Super-Helldive" CR10 difficulty, deadly new enemies, new mission types and much more. The Galactic War rages on and Super Earth needs you to take arms and dive back into the fight for liberty and managed democracy!HELLDIVERS 2 is Out Now for PS5 and PC


Welcome to the Escalation of Freedom, Helldivers. We’ve taken the time to gather feedback from our players on the front lines, and we’re bringing greater variety to our content. From missions and objectives to enemies and planets, we’re delivering lots of new content for both our veteran players and brand-new Helldivers on the battlefield. Get ready for our biggest update yet!


Our community continues to show us how strong we all are when united against the mindless Automatons and the scourge of the Terminid. As we stand here, on the eve of the Escalation of Freedom, we reflect on the 6 months since launch. We could never have predicted how far this game would go and how many Citizens would answer Super Earth’s call to arms!


We’ve watched our forces expertly handle every conflict and challenge we’ve thrown their way, from flying enemies to the Terminid Control System, to saving the children of Super Citizen Anne’s Hospital. Now for this major update, it’s time for us to give back something big to the community and welcome in even more players to the Helldivers universe.


Helldivers, this is escalating quickly.


Go on a Super Helldive​


Go up against the new supersized bot fortresses.


Something that continues to amaze us is our players’ insatiable desire for more bugs, more bots, more liberation, and more destruction. We thought nine levels of Helldiving difficulties would be enough, but in the Escalation of Freedom we’re turning it up to 10… Combat Rating 10 that is.


CR 10: Super Helldive is our most challenging, most relentless dive difficulty level yet, and we hope that this is going to give players the intensity they’re looking for on the battlefield. And with a great challenge comes greater rewards.


The larva retrieval mission has the Helldivers babysitting a bug.


But a new difficulty level isn’t the only thing the community wanted. We’ve also heard your desire for mission variation, which is why we’re bringing you new mission objectives and bigger enemy outposts for both bots and bugs that offer brand new Super Sample rewards. These outposts will be heavily fortified, and require players to coordinate and strategize in order to take them out.


And if you’re new to Helldivers 2, you don’t have to worry about missing out on all the fun until you unlock Super Helldive, because many of our new mission objectives will be playable on other difficulty levels.


New Enemies & Dangerous Swamps​


The Impaler returns!


Escalation of Freedom is unleashing some new threats to our liberty that will take some serious strategizing from the Helldivers to take down.


Back by popular demand: the Impaler! This big guy from the original Helldivers creates some new challenges. No longer can you run from the bugs when the Impaler is around–big, imposing, and destructive, it demands to be dealt with.


Also new among the Terminid ranks is the Spore Charger. As if the regular old Charger wasn’t scary enough, the Spore Charger is shrouded in fog to obscure its location until it’s right up on you, Helldiver.


The new Spore Charger in the fog.


Lastly, the Terminid Alpha Commander, which is a supercharged Brood Commander that’s bigger, meaner, and doesn’t hesitate to call in other bugs for backup.


You thought the regular old Brood Commander was bad? Think again.


Don’t think we forgot about the Automatons. Their ranks are growing, too, with the addition of the formidable Rocket Tank, as well as some other bot surprises we’ll be throwing your way.


The Automaton uprising continues.


Explore the swamps but not as you know them, with rolling fog and the untamed flora, the blackened trees obscure the light and the air itself feels haunted. Keep your flashlight handy, as visibility is limited and light is key. The enemy could be hiding anywhere amongst the undergrowth.


Get spooked, Helldivers.


Under the Hood​

The last addition I want to highlight about the Escalation of Freedom update is that we’re making changes to mitigate the problem of grief kicking in Helldivers 2. While it’s our hope that players engage with the game in good faith and sportsmanship, we do recognize that some players are using the team kicking to grief others.


To help improve this we have implemented a system where if a player is kicked, they will spawn into a new session as the host with all of the team’s loot from their previous session. All items can now be picked up by the player before extraction. The squad doing the kicking will see a message in the chat widget that a player has been kicked, yet their loot remains unchanged.


With these changes, all players have the opportunity to leave with all loot collected on mission, with no one Helldiver losing out. We’re committed to making changes that will improve the player experience and encourage healthy, cooperative gameplay.


Along with this, we’re also releasing other quality of life upgrades with Escalation of Freedom, including major fixes to the social menu to make diving with your friends easier.


Overall, we think this escalation is going to be packed full of awesome additions, long-awaited improvements, and a ton of surprises to discover! Helldivers 2: Escalation of Freedom is launching on August 6!
 
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Player count soon

Stock Market Stocks GIF by MOODMAN
 

tommib

Banned
Cool solution for being kicked out. And cool to see the swamps bringing a light horror element to the mayhem.

Will check the update. After I check GT7’s.
 
mmmh, a few new enemy/enemy variants, a new biome (visually at least) and a new difficulty.
I doubt that`s gonna change much about the minute by minute gameflow which I enjoyed tremendously but now am kinda done with after 80 sth hours.

I´ll check back once the Illuminates attack I guess.
 

yurinka

Member
mmmh, a few new enemy/enemy variants, a new biome (visually at least) and a new difficulty.
I doubt that`s gonna change much about the minute by minute gameflow which I enjoyed tremendously but now am kinda done with after 80 sth hours.

I´ll check back once the Illuminates attack I guess.
Recap of what they announced in the blog post or the trailer for this major update, to be released half a year after launch:
  • New game modes
  • New difficulty 10 level
  • New mission objectives (many not limited to level 10)
    • Retrieve larva mission
  • New enemy types
    • Impaler: the monster with tentacles
    • A beefier (and armored) biped tall automaton
    • Spore charger
    • Rocket Tank: New bigger tank that shoots rockets, even to the air for increased range
    • Alpha Commandoer: bigger, heavier variant of Brood Commanders
  • Massive, larger bot and bugs outposts featuring Super Sample rewards
  • New version of the swamp biome
  • Acid storm weather effect (reduces armor for botrh players and enemies)
  • Modification of the player kick system to mitigate the grief kicking (the kicked player still will get the loot collected by the team)
  • Major fixes to the social menu
  • "Many surprises more"
 
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[Sigma]

Member
Can't wait!! Was spraying some Terminids this morning working on the last ship module upgrade I need.

EDIT: And it's time to add new trophies to the game Arrowhead. Don't be slacking on that, we got them in the first game.
 
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tommib

Banned
I hope it's around the time of the PS5 Pro announcement. Would be cool to showcase that with the PS5 Pro.
If they could unlock the quality mode and have it running above the VRR range, I would say that would be cool for the Pro.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
They have to fix/improve on the pace of the game. It's way too one note.

Then they have to fix/improve on the progression.

Two solvable problems.
 

tommib

Banned
They have to fix/improve on the pace of the game. It's way too one note.

Then they have to fix/improve on the progression.

Two solvable problems.
Yes on the progression. I’m level 38 and I’m still using my breaker shotgun and barely feel the xp on anything. The ship improvements are just not very impactful. Or maybe I’m just not tactical with them.

I still think it’s one of the most fun 30 minutes experience you can have these days. I do go back to it almost as regularly as GT7. It’s just that I don’t always subscribe to +. Wish there was an online only tier for PS+. I don’t care anymore about building a backlog of Essential titles.
 

Varteras

Member
Gonna jump back in with a few friends. I don't think this is the update that really changes my current feeling of the game but I'm sure it's a good step in getting there.
 

Holammer

Member
I wish they would implement a fair visual range system for the automatons. Sick and tired of getting shot at from a distance while there is low visibility, which is most of the time IMO. If I can't see them, they shouldn't be able to see me either.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Over 800k trailer views in 6 hours.

Game is not dead, people are just thirsty for content. I expect to see a big spike in player count when this drops before leveling off again.

Helldivers 3 should be a PvE extraction shooter where you can lose resources and have to build them back up again on low difficulty planets. Make the stakes higher. This is war.
 
Recap of what they announced in the blog post or the trailer for this major update, to be released half a year after launch:
  • New game modes
  • New difficulty 10 level
  • New mission objectives (many not limited to level 10)
    • Retrieve larva mission
  • New enemy types
    • Impaler: the monster with tentacles
    • A beefier (and armored) biped tall automaton
    • Spore charger
    • Rocket Tank: New bigger tank that shoots rockets, even to the air for increased range
    • Alpha Commandoer: bigger, heavier variant of Brood Commanders
  • Massive, larger bot and bugs outposts featuring Super Sample rewards
  • New version of the swamp biome
  • Acid storm weather effect (reduces armor for botrh players and enemies)
  • Modification of the player kick system to mitigate the grief kicking (the kicked player still will get the loot collected by the team)
  • Major fixes to the social menu
  • "Many surprises more"

Boy I'm not sure about having a difficulty 10 when the game is in a bit of a weird state. I loved the game, but the amount of "interesting" things they did with spawn rates, and patrols, I'm hoping they make the game more fair and rebalance the thing with the update. Also they need to figure out their optimization fast, and maybe drop the kernel level anti cheat.
 
They'll literally work on anything except fixing the massive amount of bugs they introduce with every new patch. At least on PS5, the game is a complete mess.
 

Matt_Fox

Member
I've got Helldivers 'on the list' (along with Robocop, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, etc) to play when the PS5 Pro comes out.

Enough backlog to keep me going till November...
 
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