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There is plenty of esoteric math that goes on behind the scenes in the way that Helldivers 2 calculates planetary liberation. It involves not only the arbitrary numbers of enemies on the planet, the number of Helldivers on it, but also the efforts of other divers in the galaxy. The mechanic has been retuned after the game’s launch, but now it seems that it might’ve been overtuned. This is frustrating to many players, who feel that efforts on one side of the galaxy undermine those on the other, deterministically causing failures that shouldn’t happen.
“The current liberation mechanics put us in competition with other divers”
Players have noticed this problem a while ago, but with the recent Major Orders focusing on defence, it has been more relevant than ever. A Redditor who goes by Drinniol has posted a very long thread detailing the issue. And when we say very long, we’re not overexaggerating! However, we strongly encourage you to read through it, it’s very good. In its opening, it states: “For those who don’t know, ever since they changed it, galactic liberation is capped at 10% across the galaxy, and is merely weighted by liberation points towards one planet or another. The tl;dr is that this means you are fighting other divers for every scrap of liberation. For your bot defence to succeed, bug diver’s liberation needs to fail and vice-versa. Their success harms you and vice-versa.”
As the thread states, the liberation clock ticking in the background of the galactic war doesn’t allow for heroism and drama. It feels predetermined not only by the system but by the very number of players playing the game at any one time. For example, even if all divers converged on a planet that is close to ticking out, there would be no chance to stem the tide and rally to save the planet. Our numbers or efforts don’t seem to matter, since the “clock” isn’t bothered with what’s happening on the ground level.
“The system should encourage community effort and player-driven storylines and drama – in other words, cool stuff – instead, the current system actively stifles it and makes it impossible for such to happen. Do you think it would be awesome if, via social media, a sudden flood of new Helldivers made a dramatic and substantial push into bot territory to retake Cyberstan? Wouldn’t it be amazing if getting 100k more players would actually influence the galactic war in any way? Well, guess what – under the current system that is absolutely impossible. If a million new players started diving 10s, we’d still only have 10% liberation for the whole galaxy. No matter what. Because under the current system, we aren’t fighting bots or bugs – those are merely a mechanism we use to fight each other.”
As it stands, having fewer players would make liberations easier – and that sucks
Once again, we encourage you to read the full post – it’s good stuff!! The comments are similarly supportive and there’s a definitive outcry for the current system to change. “It is time to adjust the liberation mechanics again. I remember AH changing it since the user base was much higher than anticipated (200-300k). Playerbase seems to have stabilised around 40-60k, which was their original estimation for active player base.” remarked Warfaucet. The system doesn’t seem to work off of player percentage, but rather uses a predetermined number that reflects the game’s player base around launch.
Megahuts, sadly, only sees doom and gloom when it comes to the current Major Order: “The entire liberation mechanic is hilariously bad. Because of the limit above, we need to have a minimum of 41.7% of players to defend a planet to just win vs the 24 hour countdown. 4.17% liberation per hour. Thus, we are virtually guaranteed to fail the “defend the planet three times” mission. Boring gameplay.” But unfortunately, they are not wrong and that’s what sucks the most. “At the very least, the liberation cap should be split into per front caps, with active MOs on both fronts simultaneously, or at least a significant amount of overlap That would instantly eliminate the bug vs bot front bickering” added Gerreth_Gobulcoque, but we see this solution only as a band-aid to a larger problem.
As it currently stands, this system can only lead to a downward spiral. It clearly needs another pass from Arrowhead and we hope that someone on the dev team sees this thread and takes it seriously. We too have noticed that planetary liberations seem to fail despite the player numbers involved. But now, with so many MOs focusing on defence, it’s a more relevant issue than ever.