What you need to know
- Helldivers 2 has been afflicted with severe server capacity issues this past week, resulting in players often having to wait in long queues before they can log into the game.
- Many have tried to queue dodge by going AFK on their ship whenever they're not playing, taking up server space an active player could be using.
- A new update for Helldivers 2 has fixed this issue by implementing a system that kicks idle players back to the title screen after 15 minutes.
- The patch also fixes a number of different glitches and crashes, though it doesn't fix the frustrating bug that's causing armor values to not work properly and making medium and heavy armor useless.
After developer Arrowhead Game Studios released an update for Helldivers 2 earlier this week that improved the game's backend server performance and squashed several of its most significant bugs, it's now followed it up with a second patch that continues to shore up the co-op shooter's stability while also addressing AFK players idling on their ship to avoid queues.
Helldivers 2 has been plagued with severe server capacity issues for the past week, owing to the game's surprising rapid player count growth taking Arrowhead by surprise. Though the studio has been working around the clock to resolve the problem by expanding its servers, the number of cadets dropping into the game to defend Super Earth during peak hours also grows daily. On Tuesday night, the game reached a record-high concurrent player count of 457,649 on Steam alone according to SteamDB, which makes it the 20th most-played Steam game of all time.
In an effort to get around the resulting login queue, many players have been leaving Helldivers 2 open and going AFK so that they don't have to wait again later — and taking up space an online player could be using, as a consequence. Arrowhead said it was readying the boot to take care of this problem on Monday, and after today's update, AFK players will now get a kick back to the title screen after 15 minutes of idling.
It's great to see Arrowhead finally take care of this — there's a better way to skip the Helldivers 2 queue, anyway — and it's good that lots of crashes and glitches were fixed with the update, too (check the full patch notes in the section below for more details). It is, however, disappointing to see that one of the game's worst bugs is still unresolved.
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That bug is an issue with the armor rating on Helldivers 2's armor sets that causes it to not function properly, resulting in players taking the same amount of damage from hits regardless of which type of armor they're wearing. This effectively makes medium and heavy armor useless unless they have a particularly strong passive perk on them, as light armor currently offers superior movement speed and stamina regen while also giving you equivalent protection.
This has been a problem since the game's February 8 launch and makes unlocking new armor feel pretty pointless outside of expanding your fashion wardrobe (which is important; can't spread democracy if you don't have the drip), so I really hope Arrowhead is able to fix it soon. Thankfully, the studio is aware of it and it's "being worked on."
Helldivers 2 Update 1.000.11: Patch notes
Here are the full patch notes for Helldivers 2's latest update, taken word-for-word from Arrowhead's official news post on Steam.
Fixes
- Fixed multiple crashes triggered when joining other players’ ships.
- Fixed crash triggered when exiting ADS.
- Fixed crash triggered when players leave a session while bombardments are active.
- Fixed issue where online missions in Galactic War Map were unselectable.
- Fixed issue with GameGuard and Steam’s “verify integrity” step.
- Fixed issue with GameGuard and the Windows firewall.
- Fixed issue preventing access to Ship Management panel.
- Fixed issue causing players to get stuck in the defrosting or in the ship intro cinematic
- Fixed crash triggered when the process of buying Super Credits fails.
- Fixed crash triggered after consecutive quickplay attempts.
- Implemented a functionality that will kick players who remain idle for 15 minutes back to the title screen.
- Continuous improvement on client > backend communications.
Known Issues
- No text is present for the Requisitions and Social Menu on the Player HUD
- Crash may occur when trying to Match Make on Galactic War Map
- PS5 players may encounter error code 10003001 on the login screen.
- Login rate limiting when many are logging in at the same time.
- Players can become disconnected during play.
- Rewards and other progress may be delayed or not attributed.
- Various UI issues may appear when the game interacts with servers.
- Pick-up of certain objects in-game may cause characters to freeze in place for an extended period of time.
- Other unknown behaviors may occur.
- Japanese VO is missing from intro cutscene and Ship TV.
- Armor values for light/medium/heavy armor do not currently function as intended.
Helldivers 2 is available now for $39.99 on both PS5 and PC, and so far, it's one of the best PC games of the year. Notably, the game also supports cross-platform play between PS5 and PC.
