Highlights

  • Killing players in Helldivers 2 after they board the extraction shuttle is possible for some reason.
  • Friendly fire is inevitable, but deliberately killing players after they've boarded is malicious.
  • Arrowhead still needs to address this issue to prevent toxicity and ensure a more positive game experience.

There’s an argument to be made about kicking and killing due to friendly fire being a moot point all around, but there’s one means of salty play in Helldivers 2 that seems exceptionally abominable and worthy of evaluation. Missions last a varying amount of time depending on what type of objectives are available when players dive in and being kicked can sting if players have spent quite a while aiding others in the meantime. Players may have any number of reasons why they’ve kicked somebody, yet being able to kill players after they’ve taken a seat in the extraction shuttle seems like foul play on an unprecedented level and it’s a wonder why that’s even possible in Helldivers 2.

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Helldivers 2’s Extraction Shuttle Needs a Bit of a Safety Net

Players can evidently kill others in not-so-friendly fire after they’ve boarded the extraction shuttle and cannot defend themselves or fight back, let alone control their Helldiver. PvP is not an intended mode in Helldivers 2 and therefore, unless players have communicated about cutting each other down in a hail of amicable gunfire, any purposeful friendly fire is perceived as malicious intent.

This is certainly true of players who are still somehow unable to accept that inadvertent friendly fire is one of Helldivers2’s most humorous and inevitable features. Some will take their frustrations out on a player who accidentally killed them by shoving or killing them in return, much less kicking them from the game entirely, which can be greatly disappointing in certain circumstances. But the fact that a sour player can then wait for someone to enter the Pelican before killing them, essentially ensuring they will not board and extract successfully, is undoubtedly egregious.

The Difference Between Kicking and Killing Others in Helldivers 2 is Clear as Day

If players are being rude on chat comms or disrupting others in-game that’s another matter entirely. More often than not, though, players are being kicked from games or intentionally killed when they’re simply using stratagems and tools the game has given them and someone happens to be caught in the way—either that or players don’t abide by what a host wishes and are met with the same unfair fate as if the ‘wronged’ player is seeking revenge.

It’s even more ironic when a host ungratefully kicks or kills a Helldiver who joined to help them as part of their SOS call. There probably won’t be any simple solution for how to evade these kicks, which is a pill players can swallow since queuing into another mission is fortunately instantaneous now, but being killed while in the shuttle should be wholly avoidable.

It doesn’t help anyone to kill someone like this, especially since it means a loss of XP and resources that players’ successful extractions could’ve reaped anyhow, meaning someone must be particularly perturbed by another player if they’re provoked as such. This hopefully won’t be an occurrence many players must endure as a lengthy mission concludes, though if Arrowhead was to get out from under it and protect shuttled players that would negate such needless toxicity at the root.

Players who are grouped with their friends may have a wholesome and hysterical time killing one another in or out of the shuttle, potentially in a friendly competition to see who a lone survivor may be among them. That said, it’s more difficult to express that with strangers online who may only communicate through chat text, and killing someone in the final seconds of a mission can be highly disgraceful and unsatisfying whether players meant any spite or not on either end.