As Super Earth beckons, Helldivers 2 dev Arrowhead is making a key Galactic War system change to help out “the casual diver who only has time for a mission a day”

With the latest twist in Helldivers 2’s conflict seeing the Illuminate push players towards battling on Super Earth itself, developer Arrowhead has revealed that it’s making an important change to how the Galactic War – more specifically planet liberation – works.

If you’re out of the loop, the studio deployed a fresh Illuminate push towards Super Earth yesterday, as well as dropping some new features and a patch full of weapon balancing. Leaks have suggested that another big update could be just around the corner, but before we get there, Arrowhead’s decided to make sure everyone feels they can help do their bit in the war.

“We are performing an update to our backend logic that will change the way ‘impact’ is dealt,” Arrowhead social media and communications manager Katherine ‘Baskinator’ Baskin, “Impact is the “liberation” that players deal to enemy planets or defend events. It used to be that Helldivers needed to complete an operation (usually three missions) in order for impact to be distributed.

“Now, each mission will deal impact, and completing an operation will then deal bonus impact. This is primarily done to make sure that everyone performing missions can safely say that they have contributed to keeping the galaxy safe, without the need to have the operation complete.

“Hopefully this will make the system easier to understand, and the casual diver who only has time for a mission a day can still effectively help the war effort.”

This is something Helldivers 2 players – well, at least the ones who have actual real lives that occasionally demand attention – have been complaining about for a good while, so it’s no surprise it’s going down unanimously well over on the game’s subreddit.

“I feel a second s**t my pants coming” one wrote, while another managed to control their bowels a little better, declaring: “This is great to hear! Especially for those of us who don’t have enough time to complete an op, but enjoy/need to play higher difficulties for super samples. Now every diver can have an impact.”

This isn’t the only thing Arrowhead’s done Galactic War-wise today, either. As the conflict rumbles on with renewed ferocity, it’s introduced a new General Brasch-style character to the Super Earth story. They’re going by Major Truth, and so far they’ve managed to have a bit of a rant about the Illuminate via both Helldivers 2’s official Twitter account and its Discord server.

“People of Super Earth!! This is Major Truth,” their first message read, “I haven’t got much time – I’ve been WARNING the great leaders of Super Earth for WEEKS that this was happening – They haven’t responded A SINGLE TIME – IT makes me wonder if the Illuminate mind control has reached all the way to the top!!” They’ve also claimed that “the squids are EVOLVING”.

So, things are afoot, and now your mates who actually have jobs will be in a better position to jump in and help out with the big defense op.