Arrowhead Game Studios has made a major gameplay change to Helldivers 2 with a revised system for the game’s Major Orders.
Prior to today, Major Orders—the title’s frequent in-game campaigns—always saw rewards given to any player who booted up Helldivers 2. If you were absent for the entirety of a campaign, you would still earn Warbond medals and cosmetics, even if you never logged in during that period.
This meant that coming back from an extended absence of the game would reward you with a host of goodies without ever participating. That will no longer be the case as Arrowhead has changed the “eligibility criteria” for all Major Order rewards going forward.
In an announcement to fans, Arrowhead confirmed that rewards from Major Orders will only be granted to players “who logged in during the active Major Order period”. This means that players who have been gone for months at a time will no longer be able to grab cosmetics they never earned, which the studio hopes will encourage further participation from the plaayer bse.
“This change is intended to better align reward distribution with active participation in each operation,” the developer announced. “Thank you for your continued service to Super Earth and your contributions to the Galactic War.”
On one hand, this change makes a lot of sense as players who participated in the Major Orders were not receiving any additional benefit over players who jumped in months after. On the other hand, it did always feel good to jump back into Helldivers 2 after a month-or-so away and be greeted with a cape, a title, and/or a bunch of medals to get you back into the flow of the game.
While Helldivers 2 hasn’t suffered from decimated player counts like other live-service games, such as Destiny or Arc Raiders, the game does have significant peaks and troughs depending on when an event is live. With this new change, Arrowhead hopes that participation in events will be slightly larger as players will now be required to at least launch the game to grab the basic rewards.
Alongside this change, Arrowhead has also confirmed that Helldivers 2 will be receiving a new Warbond at the end of this month: Exo Experts. With the Exo Experts release date quickly approaching, fans will be able to pilot two new Exosuit Mechs and pick up a slew of new weapons and armour.
