Helldivers 2 is adding new war campaigns and full ship customization, to offer "more valuable upgrades for every kind of player"

Helldivers 2 still has every right to be considered among the best co-op games, but there’s been discontent in the ranks of Super Earth lately. Head over to Steam and you’ll find a ‘mixed’ recent review rating, with a growing desire for more regular updates and new methods of persistent progression. Developer Arrowhead Game Studios has answered the call. In a new message to the community, Game Director Mikael Ariksson walks through incoming upgrades to both community-wide and personal progression, along with the exciting promise of full ship customization.

“There’s a lot to talk about, but let’s start by talking about progression, and why it’s not progressing faster,” the Helldivers 2 boss writes. He explains that Arrowhead considers this as two distinct elements: the ‘community progression’ across the evolving Galactic War, and the individual ‘player progression’ each Helldiver experiences. The studio has “consistently received feedback around our endgame progression plans, with players asking about level cap increases and additional ship modules,” he continues.

“Simply put: we feel like previously seen progression elements, like raising the level cap in silo, aren’t enough and wouldn’t address your feedback on a foundational level.” Ariksson says these sorts of improvements will come, but he wants there “to be more valuable upgrades for every kind of player, not just our players who have unlocked 100% of all the offerings.” On the community side, Arrowhead is introducing ‘Galactic War Campaigns’ this month, which will be followed down the line by ‘Planet Warfronts.’

Galactic War Campaigns “are the next evolution of Major Orders.” Expect them to run for one to three weeks. “We heard that players like to earn more rewards, so the introduction of Campaigns means there will always be at least one Campaign reward if the conditions are met.” Arrowhead wants these payouts to feel “special,” and plans to experiment with everything “from gameplay-altering effects to cool items.” The first of these will be a new FRV (that’s a Fast Recon Vehicle, if you’re not up on your lingo).

Looking ahead, the team will be introducing Planet Warfronts. These dynamic battles for key strategic locations were something Arrowhead experimented with early on, but decided it didn’t have the content needed to do it justice. Now, it feels ready: “When you’ve seen Johan talk about experimenting with roguelite systems, he was referring to this,” Ariksson explains.

During a Planet Warfront, players will be fighting to push into important locations like cities. This will be spread across defensive missions in already-liberated territory, frontline conflicts, and expeditions behind enemy lines to push into rival regions. Ultimately, the developer wants to include “different active enemy variants in different areas of the planet,” along with “gameplay-altering effects and consequences for achieving goals, like reaching and liberating a city within X time or disabling enemy artillery in one location to unlock crucial Operations.”

What about personal progression? For me, the most exciting news is that Arrowhead is introducing Super Destroyer customization to make every ship unique. “Right now, players have the same progression path, with very little agency or ability to adapt to different playstyles,” Ariksson notes. “Even if you’ve unlocked all the ship modules, your ships don’t really look that different or feel personalized in any way.”

Arrowhead’s incoming overhaul will change ship modules to add more player agency and “significantly increase” the offerings for players to progress. Beyond that, a “dedicated ship team” has been working on the first alternative ship. “Our intention is that each new ship will have its own unique progression paths, specializations, and customizations,” he explains, “and if you like the ships, we want to keep adding them.” No date on that for now, but more details will be coming “later this year.”

Ariksson adds that Personal Orders often feel at odds with the goals of either your squad or the current community ambitions. The system is therefore being transformed into a “Personal Campaign Progression,” which will be a specific track that arrives alongside each Galactic War Campaign (it won’t be here in time for this month’s launch, however). “That way, even if the community fails to reach a larger goal, players can still do their part towards their personal goals and get rewarded with cool things.”

Beyond that, Ariksson lists a few more upoming changes, and a few that are slightly further out. In the short term, emote slots are being upgraded from four to eight, the ‘dead input’ on stimming is being reduced, and assisted reloads will be available “as long as either the carrier or the reloader of the weapon have the corresponding backpack.”

In the longer-term, Arrowhead is working on fixes for Stratagem bouncing, improvements to Hellpod steering, more reliable enemy and player traversal, and an increase in level cap to 300. It’s also looking into economy and resource improvements, changes to make the Warbond and Superstore easier to navigate, and a closed beta test focused on stability and balancing. “While this is not an exhaustive list,” Ariksson concludes, “I hope it gives you some insight into what’s coming up next.”