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Arrowhead Game Studios’ CEO Johan Pilestedt recently revealed that stats in Helldivers 2 are a lot more complicated than the interface would lead players to believe. Early versions of the game provided players with much more detailed information on each weapon’s performance. However, developers thought it was too complex 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 Fire Rate. However, Pilestedt described these as “guidelines” that don’t give a full picture of the weapon’s performance. He revealed on Twitter that there are actually 50 stats in all. Many of these reflect characteristics of the weapon’s ammunition rather than the gun itself.
In addition to the visible stats, each weapon in Helldivers 2 has a hidden Ergonomics score, which initially appeared alongside the other four. This number represents how unwieldy the gun is and governs things like how long it takes to aim down 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 weapon’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. “Armor pen is a value between 0 and 10,” he clarified. “If the AP is equal to the enemies [sic] armor value the damage is 50% if the AP beats the armor you do 100%. If AP is less than the AV the bullet ricochets.” However, even he doesn’t remember what everything does, saying, “I don’t know what the light AP condition is. I think it might be if AP is 2 or less. But honestly I don’t know either.”
He described how Arrowhead attempted to strike a balance between providing information and overwhelming Helldivers 2 players with too much of it. However, Pilestedt acknowledges they may have gone too far in the other direction. “Yeah,” he wrote, “in retrospect it might have been a bad call.”