I have a powerful PC (4070 Ti, 12700k, 32GB RAM) and I’m getting really poor frame rates in Helldivers 2 — sometimes as low as 25fps, whereas a year ago I got 140+ fps. I don’t understand why performance has taken such a hit, especially since the developers admitted they worsened performance to improve AI. Are there any plans to seriously fix this? It’s frustrating that this seems to be ignored while other games highlight performance problems right away. Has anyone else experienced this, or found ways to improve things?
5 Answers
I’m on PS5 and honestly, the game runs pretty smooth there compared to PC. There are occasional drops, especially on gloom planets, but nothing as drastic. That said, I know some folks on PC are having a bad time, and I hope they get patches soon. The bugs like terminals glitching out need attention too.
I’ve seen a lot of people blaming players or skill for the performance issues here, which is just nonsense. The problem is real and noticeable. It’s not just frame drops but also bugs like non-functional terminals, desyncs in shooting, and random reloading glitches. The devs admitted to sacrificing performance for AI improvements, but that trade-off shouldn’t come at the expense of gameplay. It’s frustrating when the community ignores these issues or acts like they’re not serious.
Yeah, the performance drop is definitely real on PC. I’ve got a 2070 Super and used to get a solid 60fps on most missions, but since the updates, gloom missions dip down to 20fps or worse. It’s rough trying to play when the frame rate can drop to 10 in intense moments. So it’s not just you, the game has major issues running smoothly on decent hardware.
One thing that helped me a bit was turning off anti-aliasing. It gave me a noticeable boost, around 15fps, plus the game actually looked sharper. Also, using Steam’s lossless scaling got my average fps back up to around 120 in easy missions. It’s still far from perfect, and bugs like terminals not working are annoying as hell, but if you want to squeeze out some performance, tweaking those settings might help.
Turning off AA definitely helps, but lossless scaling adds input lag that can mess with aiming, so it’s a bit of a trade-off.
From what I understand, a big chunk of the problem comes down to how the CPU handles enemy AI. Even with a beefy GPU like your 4070, the CPU bottleneck, especially with how many enemies and AI routines the game runs, really drags performance down. The devs have acknowledged this and say they’re working on optimizing the AI frames, but honestly, it’s gonna feel sluggish until then. It seems like the game is more optimized for consoles, and PC players are just stuck hoping for improvements.
That makes sense, but it’s frustrating because with this hardware I expect way better. Hopefully future patches improve the AI without tanking the gameplay feel.
Yeah, heard the console version is generally more stable which is a bit disappointing since PC should ideally be the superior experience.