Following further uproar in the Helldivers 2 community over an unpopular balance patch, game director Mikael Eriksson said Arrowhead “didn’t achieve our goal with the latest update” and laid out the studio’s plan to do better with future patches.
The problem is the Escalation of Freedom update released earlier this month, which, among many other things, nerfed a fan-favorite flamethrower, making it far less effective against the Chargers than it had been before. Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani quickly jumped into the fray and did his best to put on a brave face to appease the masses. “We need to do better with future updates,” he said after a few days, adding that “just talking about it isn’t enough. Actions count.”
Now we have an idea of what the studio is planning to do. In a message on Reddit, Steam, and the Helldivers Discord, Eriksson laid out Arrowhead’s goals for the next 60 days:
- We continue to review our approach to balance. Our intention is that balance should be fun, not “balanced” for the sake of balance.
- Update the way the fire damage mechanic works to optimize how the flamethrower serves as a melee support weapon. (A quick, direct return won’t work because it would break other things.)
- Rework gameplay to prevent excessive ragdolling
- We’re rethinking our primary weapon design approach and coming up with a plan to make combat more exciting.
- Re-prioritize bug fixes so that the bugs that have a more immediate impact on gameplay are prioritized.
- Improve gaming performance (frame rate is the focus)
- Rework chargers
He also shared a “bigger picture perspective”:
- We are exploring the creation of an opt-in beta testing environment to improve our testing processes and consider this a high priority matter.
- Publish player surveys regularly to gain more insights and feedback from the community.
- Improve our patch/release notes process by providing more context and justification for the changes.
- Further blog posts and streams in which we delve deeper into these topics for those interested.
“We’ve spent the last week listening to feedback and thinking about where we want to go with Helldivers 2 and how we want to evolve the game,” Eriksson wrote. “In short, we didn’t achieve our goal with the last update. There were some things we just didn’t get right – and other, more fundamental inconsistencies in our approach to game balance and direction.”
“All of this is up to us and we will own it. As many of you have stressed and we agree, what matters now is actions. Not words.”
This isn’t the first time the Helldivers 2 community has freaked out over a balance patch, nor is it the first time Arrowhead has tried to calm everyone down: in May, for example, former CEO and current Chief Creative Officer Johan Pilestedt said the studio had “gone too far” in some of its previous efforts to balance the game and promised to “talk to the team about how to approach balance.”
However, I believe this is the first time Arrowhead has laid out its plan in such detail. Will it be enough to satisfy Helldivers 2’s vocal critics? That remains to be seen, but the good news for Arrowhead is that despite the seemingly endless uproar, plenty of people are still happy to dive in and blow away bugs and bots: there are currently more than 36,000 people playing Helldivers 2 on Steam, and while that’s a far cry from the heady days of February when the game first launched, it’s still a respectable number and more than enough to make it one of the most played games on Steam.
