Recently Helldivers 2 has been showing signs of player fatigue in the sense that after the larger advertised story based operation 'Invasion of Cyberstan', the games consistent player count that was over 100k per weekend has now dropped to ranging from 60k to 75k with some weekends seeing a max of 80k players.
The lack of player count can be contributed to several concurring issues that to be honest shows the divided player base even more clearly. With the recent poor handling by the Moderators and Arrowheads staff of the incident with regards to a player being Doxxed for wanting to have Charity style game play for the Devs, talks of nerfing weapons (again), and the overall handling of game developments, updates, lack of communication between the studio and the player base, there is no shortages of why many are ducking low.
The doxxing incident shook the core of the players as it showed a more dark and evil side of the player base, though many realized that it was a very small percentage of players that would have acted in this manner over someone wanting to bring to light the great imbalances of the game when it certain level. The idea that there are in fact people in the player base that seem to gather around the HD2 Reddit and sub Reddit that would go as far as to doxx a player for nothing was an idea that none in the Community wanted. In some communities there was a call to delete the sub reddit, the reddit account, and to purge anyone that was in the sub reddit due to their actions.
But what really hurt was the slow to act, and the lack of action by Arrowhead Studios and Sony Entertainment. When it happened they had no crowd control in place, they had no official notice or stance, they did not push for an investigation, they did not demand accountability, all the did was say, "Now now, don't do that...play nice" which done little but add more fuel to the growing flames of discontent between the players themselves and the players and Arrowhead. Later, they would issue a statement saying they were sorry to hear what happened, they did not condone it, and they were sorry to the person that the doxxing had affected.
This single action divided the player base between those that were loyalist to Arrowhead and the game, and those that were having fun with the game and enjoyed player it...but wasn't exactly fond of how Arrowhead had been doing things and was wanting change in Arrowhead or at the very least more transparency.
Now add the recent double talk that led to even more player distrust towards Arrowhead Studio. Recently in a Dev video they talked about no nerfing the Coyote Rifle which was a huge concern with the player base as it was one of the last remaining rifles that had not been nerfed overtime and it was a player favorite due to its stats and its added incendiary affect. The Devs made a joke out of it but then stated they had decided not to nerf the weapon. However, instead of nerfing the weapon they changed the enemies toughness to the incendiary rounds and increased the flash point of the rounds / enemy count, which as you might of guessed, meant the gun got nerfed without its own stats getting affected.
This led to widespread backlash from the community and many Divers stated that due to the lack of transparency, the direction of the game going from the original vision of a 'humorous slapstick fun space shooter' to a more 'serious, third person, milsim' that one of the major selling points of the game had disappeared and that many were going to stop playing...and it would appear that many have.
The next sticking point of attrition for HD2 is its lack of direction, its lack of updates, and its lack of transparency about updates. Currently the general consensus based on leaked information and information found through Data Mining, is that the next big story plot is shifting from the Automatons and Cyberstan and to the Illuminate and the Void. So there does seem to some direction that has finally been worked on.
However, there is a continued lack of updates from the Dev team or Arrowhead. They have like many gaming companies an X account, Facebook, Discord as well as many other social accounts but they have little to no posts on them and they do not talk about any future plans or updates to the game. They do address bugs on their Discord at times but for the most part they don't seem to post on their social media sites OR even on their own company website. I can only assume they do not have anyone that works exclusively on the Social Media side of things meaning they may need to look at hiring someone or a small dedicated team.
The lack of updates also leads to the lack of transparency. They do not let players know openly when things get nerfed, when new updates are coming, what is being worked on and what new warbonds we may see. They also have reneged on several previously made promises about bringing back certain armors and warbonds from the games initial startup. They have also discussed several new systems such as an in game Clan based system but they have yet to really release any further information on it.
Most information we obtain is from players that Data Mine the game files in order to find what has been changed, moved, added, or removed from the game's batch files. There are small updates that happen overtime that adds some files here and some there and this gives people that data mine something to look into and then post about on Discord or in Youtube videos, but as for an official statement from Arrowhead there is usually no such things.
With all of these issues plus the fact it seems like every time they fix one set of problems the next big update causes more problems or brings old ones back, the player base is starting to fall apart over the lack of trust they have in the developers to keep the gamer current and fun. Moderators are viewed as little more than corporate police that watch to see who they can target next in the Discord, Devs seem less interested in keeping an open line of communication with the player base, Sony Entertainment is attempting to no get a second black eye and has become a silent partner on the outside but probably a real Dictator in the Board Room. Which could be why Arrowhead has went 'dark' so to speak.
Whatever the case, the increased difficulties in the MO's, lack of players logging in to play, and the fact we still have a division between those wanting to do the MO's and the ones that are fighting one set of enemies has strained the HD2 Community to where if something isn't done sooner rather than later, the game itself could see a sudden plummet where there will no longer be enough Divers on to complete any Major Orders and the survival of Super Earth would be placed in jeopardy.
