As it turns out, Helldivers 2's self-killing spike has been due to shrapnel, not ricochets - don't worry, a fix is coming

Following Helldivers 2's latest patch, players have suddenly found themselves being insta-killed by their own ordinance on a regular basis, something that they'd no doubt find quite funny if they weren't, you know, trying to score victories for Super Earth.

While a change to ricochets that came as part of this latest patch - which also featured a pretty extensive array of balancing changes to weapons - was originally thought by many players to be behind this spike in self-shootings, Arrowhead's now revealed the actual cause.

In a post on the game's official Discord server, community manager Spitz outlined that the studio has found the issue to actually stem from rogue shrapnel being kicked out by shots from the Eruptor - something a few investigative players had theorised might be the case.

"In response to a previous post on reddit, we looked into the possibility of rockets and other explosives being affected by ricochets," the community manager wrote, "This has since been debunked by the community, but nonetheless, our Ministry of Defense team also ran a number of tests today and confirmed that rockets and explosives are not ricocheting."

"However, we have noticed another issue through these posts and community feedback that has identified the possibility for shots from the R-36 Eruptor to explode and rebound shrapnel at the shooter, which has a high enough damage value to instantly kill the player," they continued. So, what's Arrowhead planning to do to make the gun less effective in terms of killing its wielder? The answer looks like it'll be getting rid of the Erutor's shrapnel effect, while boosting its hit damage in order to try and maintain its viablility as a weapon that, you know, can kill things that aren't you.

"It should maintain its destructive power, and as it is still classed as explosive, it will not lose the ability to break objects, close holes, destroy fabricators, etc," Spitz wrote, "This will, overall, be a buff to the weapon as the random shrapnel played an almost negligible part in the damage and power it dealt. It will still deal both impact and AOE damage, and both of these damage values will be increased to make it just as powerful, and more consistent."

If you're curious what the overall situation in terms of ricochets should be in the game, so you can look out for and report anything that's out of the ordinary, the community manager also provided some infor on that. Basically, as of writing, "only small arms should be able to ricochet on armour". "If you see an explosive VFX at the point of impact, the projectile is not causing a ricochet, as explosion effects are not triggered when a ricochet occurs," Spitz explained, "Shrapnel, however, can still explode outwards from the point of impact and kill the player."

So, there you go. No blaming ricochets next time you accidentally blow yourself up with your new rocket launcher.