There is no other game I've had a better time playing than Helldivers 2 this year, but it's weird to think about just how different it was just a few months ago.
Back then, picking a loadout was always this exercise in compromise: There were only a handful of guns and stratagems powerful enough to take on the largest Terminid and Automaton bullies, and the gap between my «favorite» guns and the «best» ones couldn't have been wider.
I'm glad to say that's not the case anymore. While I do miss when Helldivers 2 had proper boss fights, its meta, which used to revolve around a small club of nukes, railguns, and rocket launchers that could punch through the thickest armor, has never been more inclusive.
Two months removed from Arrowhead's transformative «buff everything» patch, I've stopped asking myself «What will work here?» before dropping into a mission and instead wonder «What wouldn't work here?» The community is on board with Arrowhead's new balancing direction, too.
There were a rough few months there where seemingly every numbers tweak Arrowhead made went over like a lead balloon with its loudest fans on Reddit and social media, with demands to stop the nerfs often elevating to bullying.