Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios is releasing a new update for the game on Aug. 6, 2024, that will also aim to address "grief kicking."
In a blog post, PlayStation announced that a new Escalation of Freedom update is coming to Helldivers 2 next month. It is expected to bring with it brand-new enemies, objective variety, and many more new content and features.
Helldivers 2's Escalation of Freedom Update
The new additions will include a CR 10: Super Helldiver which adds another difficulty level with greater challenges but gives out better rewards as well. The developer will be adding "new mission objectives and bigger enemy outposts for both bots and bugs."
These will supposedly offer Super Sample rewards but it was said that many of the new mission objectives will become available in the existing difficulty levels as well.
The new enemies that will be added include the Spore Charger, which can hide in fog, as well as a Terminid Alpha Commander, according to Insider Gaming.
Additionally, the PlayStation blog that talked about the upcoming update also teases "some other bot surprises we'll be throwing your way."
Helldivers 2's environments will also be affected by the update and will get new fog and flora that turn swamps into unpredictable areas that also limit players' visibility.
On top of the new content and features, the Escalation of Freedom update will also include several quality-of-life improvements.
The response to grief kicking will be that kicked players will "spawn into a new session as the host with all of the team's loot from their previous session."
Addressing Grief Kicking
A social media manager and community manager at Arrowhead Game Studios, Katherine Baskin, said that the developer knows "some players are using the team kicking to grief others," said GamesRadar.
She added all items can be picked up by the player before extraction and that the squad that is kicking a player will see a message in the chat widget that a player has been kicked. However, their loot remains unchanged.
Baskin also noted that the changes will give all players the opportunity to leave with all loot collected on a mission so that no one loses out. The situation comes as kicking has been an issue since shortly after the game launched earlier this year.
She talked about some of the quality-of-life upgrades that will be coming with the Escalation of Freedom update, including major fixes to the game's social menu. This would supposedly make it a lot easier for people to dive with their friends, according to the PlayStation Blog.
