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(Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)
Helldivers 2’s systems aren’t perfect—and while I’ve not had this problem often myself, enough players have complained about receiving unjust boots from their games that there might be room for improvement.
In case you’re unaware, the game’s current system for dealing with problem players is to give the host unilateral control over who stays and who gets sent to their nearest democratic officer for re-education. Which has its ups and downs.
When it comes to positives, this system lets folks quickly and efficiently deal with troublemakers—the slow process of a vote kick can take a while, during which ateam-killing menacecould set your whole crew on the backfoot, or lock in an extraction before your squad’s ready to depart.
On the negative side, this system lets draconic dictators punt folks who don’t deserve it, moments before extraction. It also lets the host play judge, jury, and executioner, kicking their fellow helldivers based on arbitrary nonsense likemeta stratagems and weapons. CEO Johan Pilestedt says as much, retweeting a pettily-kicked victim late last week (thanks,GamesRadar).
(Image credit: @Pilestedt on Twitter/X.)
All in all, a lot of very tasty spaghetti is being thrown at the wall, here.
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Still, Pilestedt does acknowledge that the current system has its perks. When speaking to aplayer voicing their concernover teams of trolling players, who would be naturally immune to a vote kick system with a two-person majority, Pilested notes: “that’s why we have the system we have. The host is the owner of the game. It’s their operation and they decide. Kinda like coming over to someone’s house.”
I personally don’t see much of a problem with the system as-is, but I think plenty of these suggestions could be layered on top of it. In particular, highlighting a player who recently kicked you and partial rewards could be added to the current system, augmenting the “my house, my rules” approach.
Matchmaking filters, meanwhile, are a great idea on paper, but they tend to split the player pool in ways that can ramp up queue times—not something Helldivers 2 needs to worry about right now, of course, but it’s good to keep an eye on the future.
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