Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Johan Pilestedt recently revealed that the stats Helldivers 2 they are much more complex than the interface would lead players to believe. Early versions of the game provided players with much more detailed information on the performance of each weapon. However, the developers felt that it was too complicated for the average player.
Weapons in Helldivers 2 have 46 hidden stats
Weapons in Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2 have four visible stats: Damage, Capacity, Recoil, and Rate of Fire. However, Pilestedt described them as “guidelines” that do not give a complete picture of the weapon’s performance. He revealed on Twitter that there are actually 50 stats in total. Many of these reflect characteristics of the gun’s ammunition rather than the gun itself.
In addition to the visible stats, each weapon in Helldivers 2 has a hidden Ergonomics rating, which originally appeared along with the other four. This number represents how cumbersome the gun is and governs things like how long it takes to aim the sights.
The stats screen also originally had a second page providing additional information. These include Reload Time, fire modes, magazines and muzzle velocity in meters per second. Helldivers 2 also originally had a graphic showing how the gun’s recoil affects its bullet spread. Even this was a simplification, with Recoil being a combination of 14 hidden values.
In another tweet, the Helldivers 2 developer explained the mechanics behind Armor Penetration. “The armor pen is a value between 0 and 10,” he clarified. “If AP is equal to enemies [sic] armor value damage is 50% if AP beats armor you do 100%. If AP is less than AV, the bullet is fired.’ However, even he doesn’t remember what they all do, saying, “I don’t know what the state of the AP light is. I think it might be if the AP is 2 or less. But honestly, I don’t know either.”
He described how Arrowhead tried to strike a balance between providing information and overwhelming Helldivers 2 players with too much of it. However, Pilestedt acknowledges that they may have gone too far in the other direction. “Yes,” he wrote, “in hindsight it may have been a bad call.”