It’s not just hardcore folks that are feeling these nerfs

I helldive often, but I have a group of casual friends who play a couple times a week. Sometimes they’ll take a month or two break from the game and come back when there’s a new warbond or something, they don’t really keep track.

Unprompted from me, in our last sessions they have straight up asked to play a different game after some frustrating sessions. They complained that weapons they pick just were so ineffective, they were tired of getting ragdollled with no counter play to the impaler. We used to run difficulty 9, we dropped down to 7 for a shoot bugs and chill vibe and even that was just not fun.

This was without knowing about the patch nerfs (I told them about the impaler and the bug larva backpack which they were hype to see).

They are at least happy to see a lot of disconnect / crash fixes though.

I think once a community loses a lot of these casual players, it can be really tough to win them back. I don’t think it’s a lost cause because helldivers is so unique in the fun it can give that they will come back. I hope these stupid nerfs are reversed and we can get back to a fun game sooner rather than later.