For bugs especially you need to bump the difficulty up to AT LEAST Impossible now for things to even feel threatening with a moderately high leveled team. A group of four of us around level 80 went through hard and Suicide with almost 0 deaths on our first attempts after these “patches.” We did a run through one set for bots too and it definitely feels different.
I’m not sure this is a good thing.
I feel the game is a bit easier, but not massively so. I have enjoyed being able to test old and new loadouts on difficulties 9 and 10. The choices feel way more open now.
Playing a squishy meatbag, facing overwhelming odds with a powerful arsenal is the best Helldivers has to offer.
“A group of four of us around level 80”
Level 50 was the original maximum. You’ve completed the game. Presumably by now you’ve unlocked everything, of course it’s easier. Try starting from level 1 again and see how you feel.
In general I think it’s a good thing. There’s still higher levels and if those are reached too easily, they could churn out even higher levels. I believe the point is not “make it easy” but make more builds viable and fun. You don’t need the absolute perfect load out to barely make it out of a mission, you can try new (wild) things and still make the run worth it at difficulty 6-7.
Around April I was doing difficulty 7 in a two squad regularly but then after each patch it was harder and harder and we could sometimes barely pass 6 and always running with the same S tier weapons. I think undoing the nerfs all at once made it very noticeable.
I feel the game resonates better with “we’re an unfairly powerful squad” rather than “this is space dark souls”.
In my view, the community wants the game to be viable for solo dives up to the highest levels, so that’s what we’ve been given (I first felt that way after they reverted the spawn scaling changes). Some of the buffs were well needed, though, as many guns just couldn’t keep up with their counterparts in gameplay.
Well, it’s what the community wanted. If you buff everything without adjusting the difficulty, it will get easier.