Helldivers 2 Eruptor Changes Detailed by Devs: Updates to Shrapnel Mechanics Outlined
Following some community feedback on the official Helldivers subreddit, the Helldivers 2 Eruptor will be seeing some changes. The devs have released a statement responding to claims that rockets and explosives now ricochet off of enemy shields. The team also touched on the game’s shrapnel mechanics and outlined some upcoming changes to how they function.
In a recent post that gained traction a few days ago, user Nuri489 shared footage of a rocket appearing to ricochet off of an Automaton shield. The post was later debunked, showing that the explosion that killed the player came from behind them, but it was circulated enough that the development team felt the need to respond with an official message both on Reddit and the official Helldivers Discord server:
“Hey, everyone! The teams have been hard at work testing a number of community issues today, mainly focused on the changes to ricochets and shrapnel. In response to a previous post on reddit, we looked into the possibility of rockets and other explosives being affected by ricochets. This has since been debunked by the community, but nonetheless, our Ministry of Defense team also ran a number of tests today and confirmed that rockets and explosives are not ricocheting.
However, we have noticed another issue through these posts and community feedback that has identified the possibility for shots from the R-36 Eruptor to explode and rebound shrapnel at the shooter, which has a high enough damage value to instantly kill the player. To prevent this, we’re looking to completely remove the shrapnel effect from the Eruptor but will be increasing its hit damage as a result. This should make it less lethal to the user but just as powerful against enemies.
It should maintain its destructive power, and as it is still classed as explosive, it will not lose the ability to break objects, close holes, destroy fabricators, etc. This will, overall, be a buff to the weapon as the random shrapnel played an almost negligible part in the damage and power it dealt. It will still deal both impact and AOE damage, and both of these damage values will be increased to make it just as powerful, and more consistent.
Currently, with the systems in place, only small arms should be able to ricochet on armor. If you see an explosive VFX at the point of impact, the projectile is not causing a ricochet, as explosion effects are not triggered when a ricochet occurs. Shrapnel, however, can still explode outwards from the point of impact and kill the player.
We apologize for this misunderstanding and thank you all for investigating these new changes so diligently, and for passing on your feedback to us. Hopefully this makes sense and these changes should help everyone survive better!”
In summary, it looks as though the Helldivers 2 devs are looking to rework the shrapnel system to make it less deadly towards players. Consistency is important in games with intense difficulty late-game like this one, so it’s nice to see them planning changes that benefit the player and good decision-making in the heat of the moment.
Be sure to stay tuned in to us here at MP1st to keep on top of all Helldivers 2 updates.
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