Never Mind Devastators, Auto-Climb Is My Worst Enemy In Helldivers 2

Summary

• Tweaks to auto-vault may be coming to Helldivers 2, as Arrowhead is considering modifications.
• That's a good thing, because auto-vault has caused me several instances of extreme emotional distress.
• Take it out. Take it out right now.

I love Helldivers 2. I play Helldivers 2 a lot. I have an entire weekly column where I write about Helldivers 2. When I’m not playing Helldivers 2, I am nosing about the official Discord server and the subreddit to see what people are saying. Against all odds, and despite never having been interested in squad shooters or live service games, I think and talk about Helldivers 2 more than I have any other game.

But like any game, it has its issues. Every patch, fixing some bugs inevitably introduces a few more. Most players are fine and cooperative, even kind and funny, but some will boot you out of a game for not following the abstract, ever-changing meta. Sometimes crucial in-game tools break, like when liberation progress stopped updating last week, leaving players in the dark as to what planets were close to liberation and how to strategise effectively. Sometimes the game will crash, and you won’t know why.

Auto-Climb Is One Of My Biggest Gripes With Helldivers 2

These things are par for the course, but there’s been one feature of the game that makes me so upset that when it happens, my heart rate spikes. On paper, it sounds like a minor thing, but it’s the small things that happen often that can really get under your skin. To my great chagrin, every time I approach a supply drop, my character immediately scrambles to climb on top of it. It was funny the first few times – ha ha, my soldier thinks this cylindrical object is a jungle gym to clamber all over – but the hundredth time it happens, you start wanting to tear your hair out.

We've Never Needed A Centralised Helldivers 2 Community More Than Right Now

We're going to fail over and over if we don't find a way to make plans and stick to them

Picture this: you’re running from a Devastator. The Devastator is faster than you. Your stamina bar is blinking, telling you that you’re losing speed. You are at dangerously low health. You’re out of stims. Oh, god, you’re going to die. Then you see a supply drop just a little bit away from you. If you get to it, you can get stims, and you can survive long enough to gun that giant bot down. You dash for it. You get to it. You climb on top of it. Before you can climb down, the Devastator catches up. You die.

How about another scenario? You’re defending some hapless citizens from incoming bugs. You just need to hold them back long enough for this last batch to get to safety before you can extract to your ship. You see a wave coming in fast from the east, with a big Charger barrelling towards you at what seems like, frankly, an unrealistic speed. You run towards cover to try and find a safe place to charge up a Quasar shot, but your idiot soldier vaults right over the cover. You try to backtrack. The Charger catches up and crushes you under its feet. Say goodbye to Liberty!

Arrowhead Is ‘Looking Into’ It

In the Discord server, Helldivers 2 community manager Twinbeard said that tweaks to auto-vault may be on the way. The studio behind the breakout shooter has been fairly non-committal about potential modifications, saying that it hasn’t decided what changes will be made if any, but there will be “likely some”.

Arrowhead is known for being very involved with the Helldivers 2 community and taking player feedback pretty seriously, so it brings me a lot of joy to hear that there’s a real chance auto-vault could be made less insufferable in the future. There’s nothing that kicks me unceremoniously out of a flow state like rushing to position myself perfectly to snipe big enemies just to accidentally throw myself off a building because my character jumped over a makeshift balcony. My soldier needs to learn that a battlefield is not a playground and should be taken seriously, no matter how many times I laugh at my friends getting blown up.

Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 is the sequel to the third-person shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios. This time out, the Helldivers are deep in the Galactic War, and it's up to you to bring Managed Democracy to the masses.