Helldivers 2 has major problems with major orders. These complaints were seen a bit earlier this year at the Menkent line.

Then things got better when another order turned the planet into a permanent "black hole". Aside from a few glitches that plagued the early part of the order, it seemed to be a great way to make the player-based hustle feel like it had an impact.

Unfortunately, however, things seem to be getting worse with the most recent major order, "Operation Jin Shi - Falstaff Lockdown," in which players attempt to defend an assigned planet before the major order expires.

Yesterday, players walked out of their cryopods to discover that a key sector of the war effort, Jin Shi, had been infiltrated out of nowhere. This sector contains three key planets of order, and as you can imagine, the players were not too pleased.

What is happening in the game's lore is that the game justifies this zag by pointing out that "an unusually large amount of spores were dispersed after the recent hive eradication action."

Part of players' frustration stems from the feeling that the bugs are not playing fair. A recent update finally added a "supply line" to the game's maps, an existing mechanism that players mostly understood. The idea was to allow players to strategize and occupy key locations to cut off invading armies. However, some of the infested worlds did not care about these lines at all, and with a wave of Game Master Joel's magic wand, the fruits of their blood, sweat, and tears were turned to garbage.

"This is supposed to be rigged, but can we still win?" one player wrote as he shared a trio of planets that had been overtaken in the game's subreddit. One commenter added: "Hey, release Gatoria, set it to 50%, set the attenuation to 3%, and let them attack the fact bay: ...... I could understand the bugs ignoring supply lines during the Meridia MO, but now the bugs are doing the same thing, but even worse."[13

This map (courtesy of Helldivers.io) shows Gartia and the supply lines connected to it. If this line did not lie, the terminoid would not have been accessible.

In another thread, which has over 3,800 upvotes at the time of writing, an irate diver xnrnx is venting his frustration: "If Joel wants more bugs, he'll just modify the planet: ...... It sucks to have a fictional game master ruin our work."

From a story perspective, it is perfectly acceptable in terms of lore legitimacy for Super Earth to get a little too carried away and literally sow the seeds of doom with its anti-bug weapons, only to meet an unexpected end later on. But there is a difference between what makes sense and what feels good to play. As it stands, it takes divers two days to reach Elson Sands via Esker, and they might have gotten there sooner if the Jinxi Sector had not suddenly exploded. But they could have claimed it faster if the Jinxi Sector had not suddenly exploded.

I have been a dungeon master for many TTRPGs, although I have no experience maintaining live service games. However, the players need to feel that they are operating within the rules of the game to some degree. Or, if they do, it is best to keep quiet.

I think there is also a problem with the duration of the galactic wars. In "Helldivers 1," the galactic war was more or less a month-long event, with the player knocking the enemy out of the galaxy in triplicate or losing a super earth, then starting over with a clean slate.

However, "Hell Diver 2" runs on a much longer timescale. For example, players temporarily kicked the automaton out of the galaxy, but it soon returned with a fever pitch. The same malaise is still coming on, as one war-weary commenter wrote, "This is the third time I've had to defend Akamar 4 during this grand decree." If Arrowhead Games can't satisfy Sisyphus, that's a problem. Unlike the legendary boulder-rolling god, the players of Helldivers 2 have other things to do.

However, things haven't gotten much worse yet. Yes, the numbers show that Helldivers 2 has technically lost "most" of its player base since its launch, but it is still at a very healthy 45,000 players per 24-hour peak as of this writing. This is a strong enough heartbeat for any live service/game. But if Arrowhead wants to continue to grab hold of its core players, it will have to figure out how to make the galactic war feel like more than a perpetual back-and-forth, as one good balance patch is not enough.