The robots are winning: Helldivers 2 players are convinced those new planet defense missions are so difficult they must be bugged

Following yesterday's surprise assault on the Xzar system by the Automaton menace, the helldivers are in shambles. Squads are failing Planet Defense campaigns in droves as players complain that the new civilian rescue missions are way too difficult. Helldivers 2's galactic war is changing at a pace we don't usually see in a multiplayer game: As players complete one conquest, developer Arrowhead then triggers new planetary conflicts as lightly narrativized events.

24 hours into the war's new front, a red progress bar that's longer than a blue progress bar suggests the robots are winning. With just four hours remaining on the countdown above the planet Draupnir, Super Earth might suffer its first major loss.

Is a (non-Terminid) bug to blame? Possibly. Just hours after yesterday's robot invasion began, players reported that Extraction missions to safely escort civilians across a battlefield were unusually difficult. They argue that these specific missions, which are required to progress the Major Order objective, are more intense and dense with enemies than the same mission type on other planets. 

«It's harder than all the other levels. Even 9 was easy in comparison,» said streamer Gothalion on Twitter.

«I have not completed one extraction mission,» wrote Pepinis on Reddit. 

«Recoilless is way too slow, autocannons are too weak, rifles are laughable, orbitals kill the civilians. Huge waste of time,» wrote Reddit user Samsquanch-01, who gave up on attempting extraction missions with random teammates.

I can echo that. Our group has been playing at difficulty levels 4-6 and we immediately noticed a difficulty spike on the Extraction mission type. Bot drops flew in at an alarming rate that outpaced our cooldowns on armor-piercing weapons and stratagems. I've personally never seen more bots on screen than I did last night trying to get just a handful of civilians across the killzone safely. We were eventually able to win one, but only barely, and not before cranking the