As Helldivers 2 players lose ground to Automatons, attention turns to the XP farmers not helping: "We are handing bots planets like candy on Halloween"

Forget the bugs and bots, Helldivers 2 players have a new enemy: Farmers.

Earlier this month, Helldivers 2 saw a huge offensive from the Automatons, leading to players being quickly dispatched to new frontiers to repel the horrible robots. However, the nature of the campaigns against the Automaton forces has had a lot of players dropping out of a squad before said campaign is fully completed, thus putting a hefty weight on the shoulders of their marooned squadmates.

The Reddit post just below sums up the situation really well. What's happening is some players in a squad will stick around for the shorter missions in a campaign, which tend to be focused on killing, and will exit the squad once the short mission is complete, dropping out before the full squad has a chance to complete the evacuation or extraction-based missions.

Farmers are losing us planets from r/Helldivers

By dropping out early, players are attempting to farm XP for the quickest kill-based missions. However, as the post above points out, they're mistaken because mission payouts for wins or losses are paid out after the entire campaign is complete and not on a mission-by-mission basis. The 'farmers' aren't even farming much at all.

Consequently, squads are dropping out before they can finish a campaign against the Automatons, or even losing a campaign because of their depleted numbers. This lets the Automaton forces recapture more of a planet and thus hinders the entire Galactic War against the bots as they creep steadily closer across the final frontier and toward Super Earth.

No one expects to win every campaign against the Automatons, or even the Terminids for that matter, but one player sabotaging a campaign for other players is pretty infuriating. Here's hoping developer Arrowhead Game Studios is aware of the issue getting on players' nerves.

Make sure to check out our guide to the best Helldivers 2 Stratagems if you're wondering which tools to take into the fight against the Automatons.