New Helldivers 2 patch takes care of all those AFK queue dodgers, but one of its worst bugs still remains

Idlers will now get the boot when AFKing, but Helldivers 2’s armor sets still aren’t working like they’re supposed to.

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What you need to know

After developer Arrowhead Game Studiosreleased an update for Helldivers 2 earlier this weekthat improved the game’s backend server performance and squashed several of its most significant bugs, it’s now followed it up with a second patch that continues to shore up the co-op shooter’s stability while also addressing AFK players idling on their ship to avoid queues.

Helldivers 2has beenplagued with severe server capacity issues for the past week, owing to the game’s surprising rapid player count growth taking Arrowhead by surprise. Though the studio has been working around the clock to resolve the problem by expanding its servers, the number of cadets dropping into the game to defend Super Earth during peak hours also grows daily. On Tuesday night, the game reached a record-high concurrent player count of 457,649 on Steam alone according toSteamDB, which makes it the 20th most-played Steam game of all time.

In an effort to get around the resulting login queue, many players have been leaving Helldivers 2 open and going AFK so that they don’t have to wait again later — and taking up space an online player could be using, as a consequence.Arrowhead said it was readying the bootto take care of this problem on Monday, and after today’s update, AFK players will now get a kick back to the title screen after 15 minutes of idling.

It’s great to see Arrowhead finally take care of this —there’s a better way to skip the Helldivers 2 queue, anyway— and it’s good that lots of crashes and glitches were fixed with the update, too (check the full patch notes in the section below for more details). It is, however, disappointing to see that one of the game’s worst bugs is still unresolved.

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That bug is an issue with the armor rating on Helldivers 2’s armor sets that causes it to not function properly, resulting in players taking the same amount of damage from hits regardless of which type of armor they’re wearing. This effectively makes medium and heavy armor useless unless they have a particularly strong passive perk on them, as light armor currently offers superior movement speed and stamina regen while also giving you equivalent protection.

This has been a problem since the game’s February 8 launch and makes unlocking new armor feel pretty pointless outside of expanding your fashion wardrobe (whichisimportant; can’t spread democracy if you don’t have the drip), so I really hope Arrowhead is able to fix it soon. Thankfully, the studio is aware of it and it’s “being worked on.”

Helldivers 2 Update 1.000.11: Patch notes

Here are the full patch notes for Helldivers 2’s latest update, taken word-for-word from Arrowhead’sofficial news poston Steam.

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Helldivers 2 is available now for $39.99 on both PS5 and PC, and so far, it’s one of thebest PC gamesof the year. Notably, the game also supports cross-platform play between PS5 and PC.

Helldivers 2 —$39.99 at GMG (Steam)Battle aliens, robots, and other beasts in humanity’s quest to spread democracy through an unforgiving galaxy. It’s 4-player co-op at its absolute best, and its most refined.

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Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he’s been an avid fan since childhood. He’s been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you’ll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he’s not writing or gaming, there’s a good chance he’s either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once.Follow him on X(Twitter).