Helldivers 2 devs want to make the game more difficult, but “more enemies” just isn’t possible

There are a lot of plans and ideas Arrowhead have for Helldivers 2. However, we shouldn’t see anything new before the game drops onto Xbox consoles as Arrowhead is largely focusing on bug fixes and optimization for the time being. There have been a lot of complaints about the game’s performance, and performance woes is partly why Arrowhead are struggling to make Helldivers 2 more difficult as simply adding “more enemies” onto the battlefield just isn’t possible.

Helldivers 2 devs want to “push difficulty,” but can’t simply add “more enemies

On Discord, Arrowhead CEO, Shams Jorjani, was asked, “Are there any plans to raise the skill ceiling for D10”. The user elaborated, “My mates and I had a TON of fun during the last MO with the increased factory strider spawns and wish that were the norm”.

Jorjani responded, “Idk. We might find other ways to tackle difficulty beyond just higher difficulty”. Elaborating on what he means, Jorjani explained that “More enemies” makes the game “more difficult,” but it is not something Arrowhead can do as “more enemies = rougher performance”. So, instead of simply adding additional enemies to the battlefield and hurting the performance even more, Arrowhead “wanna find other ways to push difficulty”.

The Arrowhead CEO also added that while “some love d10,” the reality is that “Most play at lower difficulty”.

Jorjani has repeatedly said that the more new stuff Arrowhead adds the worse performance becomes. Arrowhead try to improve performance and stability with every patch, but “Every time [they] add more new stuff performance is taxed further”.

It will be interesting to see how Arrowhead go about pushing difficulty without adding more enemies for players to survive against. Arrowhead developer Youssef Khatib has recently discussed plans for new enemies, saying that, “enemies have been becoming more complex and we plan to continue that trend, [but] we will still have to release a good amount of lower tier enemies to make sure there are enough steps of escalation”.

Youssef also said Arrowhead “are always moving stuff around trying [to] find better implementations for enemies we already have, so retooling is not an impossibility… you could also look at the variously themed enemy variants as us retooling the experience in different ways”.

While Arrowhead might not be able to add a slew of “more enemies” to the battleground at once, there are leaks pointing to new threats in the future. These include a “sniper and close-range assassin” for the Illuminate, as well as the returning Illusionist.

For more Helldivers 2, check out our guide to the best warbonds ranked, along with the best stratagems and best throwables. We also have a guide to the best weapons, and, if you’re coming back to HD2 for the first time in a long while, we have a bunch of tips and tricks to help you get reaccustomed to the battlefield.