History YMMV / HelldiversII

** Destroying Gunship Fabricators. It doesn't matter what you throw at it, from two 500kg bombs to an orbital laser to half a dozen blasts from a Quasar Cannon, the only thing that's destroying them is a Hellbomb. Gunships are already DemonicSpiders, and they are more than capable of destroying a Hellbomb just by glancing at it. Even better? Sometimes ''two'' fabricators spawn next to each other, and you have to call in ''multiple'' Hellbombs to take them out.

** On the Terminid front, Spore Spewers reduce visibility to mere inches until they're blown up. Good luck avoiding the chargers you can't see. On top of this, they have a similar visual profile to Shrieker Nests, and if you haven't highlighted them on your map, it can be hard to tell if you're in for flying bugs or a fog of spores. Thankfully, they're not well-armored, and a shot from any explosive weapon will easily take them down.

** The preview version of the Airburst Rocket Launcher was met with much derision by the playerbase due to how overly sensitive and unreliable the proximity fuse of its rockets are. You essentially ''cannot'' fire the weapon with your teammates ''anywhere'' in your line of sight because there is a high chance of the airburst rocket fusing on them and blowing up your team (and in many cases, yourself as well) instead of the enemy. [[note]] This was, in part, due to glitch that got patched. When first unveiled the rockets would treat ''other Helldivers and friendly structures'' as valid targets. Despite being fixed the massive area of effect that can cause friendly fire is still there.[[/note]] Even when you have a clear lane of fire, the airburst rocket is prone to simply just exploding spontaneously in the air or triggering on random terrain, destructible objects, or a different enemy instead of your intended target. And this comes with the typical drawbacks of low ammo count, long reload, and the requirement for a backpack that are common among all heavy launchers. Most damning of all, however, is that in addition to all of these drawbacks, the airburst rockets simply don't do any real damage, only being effective against basic mooks while being useless against anything even vaguely armored, even if you manage to hit their weakspots.

** Fire damage as a whole, whether it be from the flamethrower, Napalm stratagems, or the Breaker Incendiary, is considered borderline useless due to the fact that fire damage doesn't apply a DamageOverTime effect to enemies unless one is the host. It works just fine on other Helldivers, but if you thought a bot or bug would actually burn to death when it's ''on fire'', you have another thing coming. Worse, patch 01.000.200 increased fire damage by 50% both ways... meaning the host's incendiary weapons work great, as do any enemy ones -- but if you're not the host, you're ''still'' screwed. People have been pleading for an armor that resists fire damage, to no avail. Toxic damage is likewise bugged and unreliable at the moment.

** C-01 Perms [[labelnote:Explanation]] An in-universe form that Helldivers are required to fill out before engaging in any activities that could result in children. Their very nature has fans coming up with all sorts of ideas on what they entail, and players will often make jokes about how a failed mission (which can delay the approval of said forms) leads to Helldivers complainig about how they can't have sex. Humorously, one of the people mentioning the forms in-game notes their restrictions despite implicitly being lesbian, which implies Super Earth extends to situations that probably shouldn't cause pregnancies in real life.[[/labelnote]]

** Secondary weapons are okay, but basically all of them have severely limited ammo and, as of the Democratic Demolition Warbond, there are only 5 total options. The achievement "Hold My Primary, I'm Going In", which requires the entire team to go without firing a primary or support weapon for an entire mission on Hard or harder is pushing into ThatOneAchievement territory as a result. Probably the two most popular options are the P-4 Senator, a functional but unremarkable revolver, and the Redeemer, a powerful machine pistol that runs out of ammo very fast due to high fire rate and limited spare magazines. The grenade pistol isn't great in combat, but still has a niche since it's the only secondary that can destroy fabricators/bug holes.

** "Hold My Primary, I'm Going In!" specifies that nobody on your squad can use a use primary weapons ''or'' support weapons, only secondaries and stratagems like turrets or airstrikes on Hard (Difficulty 5) or higher. Hard is where heavily-armored enemies such as gunships, factory striders, and bile titans start showing up ''far'' more often, and unfortunately, out of all 5 secondaries currently in the game, 4 only have light armour penetration and the P-4 Senator only has medium armour penetration.

* {{Anvilicious}}: Unlike the first game, ''Helldivers II'' goes out of its way every few seconds to remind you that Super Earth has a terrible, incompetent government running it and would be an ''awful'' place to actually live, so that there can be absolutely no doubt in the player's mind that they're playing as a VillainProtagonist

* AccidentalAesop: ''Helldivers II'' makes a case for how effective ''actual'' propaganda can be. While audiences (rightfully) laugh at the [[PropagandaMachine over-the-top brainwashing Super Earth commits in-universe]], the pride the real life community takes in symbolic Major Orders such as winning Malevelon Creek (which was already mostly liberated and had minimal strategic advantage) and in culling the generally weaker Terminid faction (despite the Automatons presenting a more pressing territorial threat) demonstrate how easily people can be motivated to rally behind victories that serve a sense of identity or establish superiority.

** 500kg Review Bomb/Orbital Dislike[[labelnote:Explanation]] The re-implementation of the previously waived PSN login requirement by Sony was met with overwhelming backlash for the lack of notice, [[NoExportForYou PSN's unavailability in many countries]], and security concerns. This led to a whopping dislike/review bombing campaign of around 200,000 negative reviews on the ''Helldivers II'' Steam page ([and unfortunately other Arrowhead games which had nothing to do with this, including the original ''VideoGame/{{Helldivers}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Magicka}}'') and memes at Sony's expense. Thankfully, the policy implementation's reversal over the weekend led to the following meme.[[/labelnote]]
** '''DEMOCRACY WINS!'''[[labelnote:Explanation]][[invoked]] The reversal of the PSN login requirement was [[SugarWiki/AndTheFandomRejoiced met with far more positivity]], and relief that the login requirement would no longer bar players who could not access the game. Such celebrations included an IronicEcho where Helldivers engaged in ''actual'' democracy by treating the entire debacle as a Major Order.[[/labelnote]]

** 500kg Review Bomb/Orbital Dislike[[labelnote:Explanation]] The re-implementation of the previously waived PSN login requirement by Sony was met with overwhelming backlash for the lack of notice, [[NoExportForYou PSN's unavailability in many countries]], and security concerns. This led to a whopping dislike/review bombing campaign of around 200,000 negative reviews on the ''Helldivers II'' Steam page ([[FanDumb and unfortunately other Arrowhead games which had nothing to do with this]], including the original ''VideoGame/{{Helldivers}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Magicka}}'') and memes at Sony's expense. Thankfully, the policy implementation's reversal over the weekend led to the following meme.[[/labelnote]]

* TookALevelInBadass: While a number of weapons were subsequently nerfed and dethroned from positions of dominance in the meta, it is just as common for other weapons to receive glow-ups as major limiting factors in them are removed with updates. Of particular note is the Diligence Counter Sniper, a weapon that was initially plagued with low damage, only light armor penetration, a small magazine capacity, a poor rate of fire, and poor ergonomics. Virtually every single point of contention with this has been fixed save for the still limiting 15-round magazine, with the grand result being a far more potent weapon with a dedicated niche established for it at last.

** "[[Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook Are we the baddies]]?"[[labelnote:Explanation]]Jokingly mentioning out loud your reservations about [[TheEmpire Super Earth's expansionist practices]], [[{{Dystopia}} totalitarian government]] and [[HappinessIsMandatory propaganda machine]]. Said out-loud burst of realization will immediately be followed by the other members of your squad [[TreacheryIsASpecialKindOfEvil promptly emptying all their ammo on you like you deserve]].[[/labelnote]]

** 500kg Review Bomb/Orbital Dislike[[labelnote:Explanation]] The re-implementation of the previously waived PSN login requirement by Sony was met with overwhelming backlash for the lack of notice, [[NoExportForYou PSN's unavailability in many countries]], and security concerns. This led to a whopping dislike/review bombing campaign of around 200,000 negative reviews on the ''Helldivers II'' Steam page ([[FanDumb and unfortunately other Arrowhead Games]]) and memes at Sony's expense. Thankfully, the policy implementation's reversal over the weekend led to the following meme.[[/labelnote]]
** '''DEMOCRACY WINS!'''[[labelnote:Explanation]] The reversal of the PSN login requirement was [[SugarWiki/AndTheFandomRejoiced met with far more positivity]], and relief that the login requirement would no longer bar players who could not access the game. Such celebrations included an IronicEcho where Helldivers engaged in ''actual'' democracy by treating the entire debacle as a Major Order.[[/labelnote]]

%%* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The announcement that the game would require a Playstation Network account to play even on the PC version, which lacked the requirement beforehand, treating it as optional. This was met with effectively ''open revolt'' by the playerbase with many pointing out Sony's history of being hacked and having personal information on their accounts stolen and were wary about needing to provide that information to them while [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjtvcd/sony_entertainment_are_breaking_eu_law/ effectively violating data protection laws for European players]]. Others simply complained about how ridiculous it was to need a Playstation account even if you weren't playing it on a Playstation. This isn't even for cross-play either, and it was soon discovered after the announcement that Sony [[https://archive.ph/XDd9s had changed the wording]] in their FAQ that previously stated a Playstation account was optional. Making things worse is that out of all the countries where Steam is accessible, roughly 60 of these (eg. The Philippines) are among the over 160 countries that '''do not have access to PSN''', and thus players residing in any of these countries and territories ''can't actually make'' PSN accounts, effectively [[NoExportForYou rendering the game unplayable]], losing their hundreds of hours of playtime with it. When desperate players resorted to using a VPN to create a PSN account in response, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuZncKrViHU&lc most of them were found out and had their account banned]].%%