Helldivers 2 patch fixes PS5 hosts accidentally giving damage boosts to their fellow patriots, continues to tackle crashes

The patriots at Arrowhead Games R&D have been busy working on Helldivers 2 fixes—the latest batch of which just dropped this morning. A bizarre quirk of the game engine that was giving PS5 players (and their squadmates) an unfair advantage has been nixed, restoring weapons-grade equality between the platforms.

In case you weren't aware, here's the run-down: For some time, damage in Helldivers 2 has been inconsistent. PS5 players, for example, have been able to two-to-three tap bile titans with the railgun. Fascinatingly, this bug was based on the game's host rather than the platform it was being played on—PS5 players under a PC host would get the intended PC damage values, and vice-versa.

As you might imagine, this causes some problems. PS5 players by-and-large have been forming habits and an entire meta based around their own skewed damage numbers—particularly if they've been hosting their own games—while both PC and PS5 players have been baffled by tanky enemies changing flimsiness between deployments.

That should be sorted now, as the patch notes read: "Fixed an issue that resulted in different damage being dealt to enemies between PC and console players." It'll be interesting to see if this shifts the game's weapon balance any, since the Railgun was still pretty strong on PlayStation-hosted games.

Other than that, Arrowhead seems understandably focused on nixing crashes, which plagued the community a while back. While the list of known issues (such as misaligned scopes) grows, it makes sense to address problems that are stopping players enjoying the game at all first and foremost. 

You should now crash less on the loadout screen and during extractions—also when throwing grenades, migrating hosts, escorting civilians, and deploying to missions. There have been more general crash fixes and stability upgrades behind the scenes, as well. 

Lastly, fixes to the game's armour passives are live, though the notes don't mention specifically which sets were fixed beyond the CE-27 Ground Breaker now having "the Engineer kit passive as previously advertised."

You can read a full list of the game's current known issues, courtesy of Arrowhead, below:
 

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed. This list is not exhaustive, and we are continuing to identify issues and create fixes. These are organized by feedback, reports, severity, etc.

• Superior Packing Methodology ship module does not work properly.
• Players may be unable to navigate to the search results in the Social Menu.
• Various issues involving friend invites and cross play:
• > Player name may show up blank on the other player's friend list.
• > Friend Request cannot be accepted when the requesting player changed their username before the request was accepted.
• > Cross-platform friend invites might not show up in the Friend Requests tab.
• > Players cannot unfriend players befriended via friend code.
• > Players cannot unblock players that were not in their friends list beforehand.
• Damage-over-time effects may only apply when dealt by the host.
• Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
• Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
• Certain weapons like Sickle cannot shoot through foliage.
• Scopes on some weapons such as the Anti-Materiel Rifle are slightly misaligned.
• Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
• Spear’s targeting is inconsistent, making it hard to lock-on to larger enemies.
• Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
• Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).
• Area around Automaton Detector Tower makes blue stratagems such as the hellbomb bounce and be repelled when trying to call them down close to the tower.
• Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.