{"id":832741,"date":"2025-12-11T09:11:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T09:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/n2bRL8pBKWEC7HEpqoroUU"},"modified":"2025-12-11T09:11:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T09:11:41","slug":"solo-players-its-not-just-you-1-player-missions-in-helldivers-2-currently-have-4-player-patrol-spawn-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/solo-players-its-not-just-you-1-player-missions-in-helldivers-2-currently-have-4-player-patrol-spawn-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Solo players, it’s not just you: 1-player missions in Helldivers 2 currently have 4-player patrol spawn times"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Helldivers 2, despite being a co-op shooter, does have a respectable contingent of lone wolves. That's for a variety of reasons\u2014including (but not limited to) just liking the unique experience of it more<\/a>. As of patch 1.000.300<\/a>, however, solo missions have become a whole lot harder<\/a>, just likely not in the way its devs intended them to be.<\/p>\n

After the changes, players reported a sharp uptick in patrols that made solo play nigh-on impossible, to which Arrowhead Games responded that “the intention [of the patch] is that one player has 1\/4th of the patrols compared to four players, but it used to be that they had 1\/6th”.<\/p>\n

This makes sense on paper. However, in testing, Helldivers 2 players have found this design statement doesn't track at all. Solo players have roughly the same amount of patrol spawns as a full team, unless that team's operating in very specific circumstances\u2014in other words, it's not just you: something's borked.<\/p>\n

As discovered by sleuth and all-around patrol expert Luchs<\/a>, part of a team who built out an excellent Reddit thread on the subject a couple of months ago<\/a>, solo players are getting unduly shafted.<\/p>\n

Prior to the patch, your squad's size determined how frequently <\/em>patrols would spawn. In a difficulty 4 bot match, one player would receive a patrol around every four minutes. Two players would receive patrols every three and a half minutes, and so on. For a squad of four, this timer was whittled down to two minutes, forty five seconds. \u00a0<\/p>\n

As discovered by Luchs and his Super Earth R&D team, this new 2:45 number is now the same across the board.<\/p>\n

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\"An<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Luchs on YouTube.)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are two options Luchs puts forward as to why this is the case. First off\u2014it's just bugged. Busted. Broken. I love Helldivers 2 to death, but this wouldn't exactly be the first time Arrowhead Games has enacted a change with major issues out the gate.<\/p>\n

The second option is far more concerning\u2014as Luchs & Co. previously discovered, Helldivers 2's patrol-spawning code operates on what they call a “player group” system. Players who are a good distance away from each other create their own patrol spawns: “if 4 players were all over 75 metres away from any other player, you have essentially quadrupled the spawn rate because every Player Group is spawning their own separate Patrol.”<\/p>\n

The concern, as Luchs outlines, is that Arrowhead Games is working under the assumption that because it's possible <\/em>to have four separate player groups in a game, that's the baseline for a full team's patrol rate. A solo player technically has 1\/4th of the patrol spawns, but only compared to a four-player group that's completely split off from each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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