“Helldivers 2” has been on a decline since the “Escalation of Freedom” debacle in August, however, Arrowhead Game Studios’ 60-day plan to regain community trust is looking better and better every day. 

Announced last month, Arrowhead’s 60-day plan aims to re-examine their balancing approach, improve weapons they had previously changed, tone down ragdolling and improve game stability and performance with bug fixes and less instances of frame drops. 

Players became increasingly frustrated with the state of the game as a week passed after the announcement with little support to help improve the game. 

Persistent issues with the game crashing due to various bugs on both PlayStation 5 and PC are a huge issue and have been the subject of major complaints since the game’s launch in February. 

Players are also having issues connecting with others and spend irritatingly long periods of time waiting to join their friends or random players regularly and using crossplay, a feature that allows players to connect and play with others using different consoles or systems. 

Many in-game weapons are but shells of their former selves. Quite a few of the primary and support weapons received questionable changes in order to balance the gameplay loop that many members of the community deemed odd and unnecessary. 

That being said, the team at Arrowhead have tirelessly deployed patch after patch and hotfix after hotfix to help with some of the issues players are experiencing while they work on some of the bigger changes to weapons and the game’s overall stability. 

A few of the developers and community managers have been far more transparent than before with what some of the upcoming changes will entail and have been gathering community feedback on bugs, specific weapons and what players want to see overall. 

Starting on Sept. 10, short 30 to 60-second videos were posted every day on the “Helldivers 2” official discord and on “X,” formally known as “Twitter,” that provided some insight into a few of the changes coming to the game Tuesday. 

This short, light-hearted mini-series, hosted by CCO Johan Pilestedt and design director Niklas Malmborg, revealed that several fan-favorite weapons would be seeing positive changes many players requested for quite some time that would drastically improve weapon effectiveness. 

The weapons and stratagems featured in these videos so far have been the “FLAM-40 Flamethrower,” the “RS-422 Railgun,” the “SG-225 Breaker,” the “R-36 Eruptor,” the “ARC-3 Arc Thrower” and the “Eagle 500kg Bomb.” 

Two of the Automaton enemy types were also confirmed to be receiving changes. Previously, Automaton Rocket Devastators and Gunships had an infinite number of rockets at their disposal which led to situations where players would be stun-locked and continuously ragdolled until their health reached zero. 

Now, both the Automaton Rocket Devastator and the Automaton Gunship will have a finite number of rockets and a reload animation once they run out. The explosion radius of those rockets, which would knock players off their feet, what they are so famously feared and despised for, will also be significantly reduced. 

Other weapons confirmed to be receiving changes in Tuesday’s update are the “AR-23 Liberator Penatrator,” the “CB-9 Exploding Crossbow,” the “LAS-5 Scythe,” the “Flam-66 Torcher,” the “SMG-37 Defender,” the “R-63 Diligence,” the “R-63CS Diligence Counter Sniper” and the “P2-Peacemaker.” 

Players will have their hands full trying out all of the “new” weapons and regaining the joy they had for them when initially released, however, the new update won’t be the only thing that will keep them occupied. 

Last Thursday, PlayStation released a trailer for the game’s newest warbond, small content updates the game receives every month, called “Chemical Agents.” 

Arriving on Thursday, this small update will center around the use of gas themed weapons, designs and armor. 

Each passing day generates more excitement and positivity for Tuesday’s update as more information is revealed and it seems Arrowhead has taken player criticism and ideas in the right direction. 

Now, the question living rent-free in the community’s mind is: will this be enough for “Helldivers 2” to rise back up to its former glory?