Helldivers 2 devs explain how new patrol spawn increase works

The recent Helldivers 2 update brought many changes to the game, but not all of them have been a hit. One change players haven’t been a fan of is the increased patrol spawn rate, which has made the game more difficult and making players not have enough time to complete objectives. Despite calls to revert patrol spawns back how they were, it is unlikely to happen. But, the Helldivers 2 developers have explained how the new patrol spawns work and why the change makes sense.

SpitzerFX, an Associate Community Manager for Helldivers 2, took to Reddit to explain how the new changes to the patrol spawn work saying,

“We unintendedly had non-linear scaling of the patrol spawns so they didn’t spawn as often as they should have when less than 4 players. The intention is that 1 player has 1/4th of the patrols compared to 4 players, but it used to be that they had 1/6th. Scaling of patrol spawns was exponential before, and that felt good on 4 player lobbies but a bit too empty when playing with fewer players, especially when playing solo.

This does make sense and also confirms that this is how the game was intended to be, meaning that solo players have been playing Helldivers 2 on easy mode since launch. Spitz would continue explaining how the new spawn system works saying,

So now we made the scaling of patrols to be linear, which means if you play solo you will get 25% of the patrols compared to a 4 player lobby instead of having about 17% of the patrols. There is still a cap of patrols that can spawn at the same time so during situations when we spawn a lot of patrols, such as extractions, even solo players won’t notice the difference. The change is made to make the world feel less empty for 1 and 2 player lobbies, especially on high difficulty missions which was also slightly too easy for solo players compared to our intentions.”

It has been jarring to play Helldivers 2 with the new spawn rate, with it being more difficult that it was previously. This means that some players may need to lower the difficulty slightly to be able to deal with the increased enemy count. Although it has never been publicised by Arrowhead Game Studios, many players have also stated that the game has seemingly ramped up in difficulty, with heavier enemies appearing in difficulties they typically weren’t seen in, and the enemies being able to deal much more damage.

This is something I have noticed too. While playing solo I usually play on difficulty 4 or 5 as it requires effort to complete, but it’s not too difficult that I am out of my depth. Recently I have noticed more armored enemies and all enemies being more accurate and dealing more damage, with me even getting taken out by the grunt Trooper enemies. Now with the increased spawns these missions have become even more difficult.

It will take some time to adjust to these changes, but before long it will just feel normal to play the game as it is now. But, if you’re having difficulty with the increased spawn rates, you may need to rethink your loadout so you can be in the best position to take out more Automatons and Terminids than ever before. To do this, we highly recommend checking out our Helldivers 2 best weapons guide and best armor guide.