Arrowhead Game Studios has acknowledged Helldivers 2‘s recent Escalation of Freedom update “didn’t hit [its] target” following significant criticism from the community, and it’s detailed the steps its taking to address core areas of complaint over the next 60 days.
Helldivers 2’s latest round of community unrest followed the launch of last week’s major Escalation of Freedom update, which featured headline additions including new mission objectives and enemies. However, it’s some under-the-hood balance tinkering that’s proven particularly controversial, with nerfs to the popular FLAM-40 flamethrower – which has significantly reduced its effectiveness against Chargers – drawing considerable ire.
Various senior team members have already acknowledged player feedback – Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani drew parallels with a similarly unpopular balance update released in April (thanks PC Gamer), confirming the studio was already discussing “what we can do to avoid this situation again” – but now the developer is ready to offer a more formalised plan of attack.
In a post shared on Reddit, Helldivers 2 game director Mikael Eriksson wrote, “We’ve spent the last week listening to feedback, reflecting about the path ahead for Helldivers 2 and how we want to continue developing the game. In short, we didn’t hit our target with the latest update.” Eriksson added the studio sees two sorts of issues it wants to address: “some things we just didn’t get right” and “other more fundamental inconsistencies in our approach to game balance and game direction.”
“All of that is on us and we are going to own that,” he continued. “As many of you have pointed out, and we agree, what matters most now is action. Not talk.”
To that end, Eriksson shared the studio’s plan for the next 60 days, which will begin with an examination of its approach to balance. “Our intention is that balance should be fun,” he explained, “not ‘balanced’ for the sake of balance.” Arrowhead will also update the flamethrower’s “fire damage mechanic” to tweak how it works as a close-range support weapon, but Eriksson stressed, “A quick straight revert won’t work, as it would break other things”.
Then, moving onto other complaints stemming from last week’s Escalation of Freedom update, Arrowhead will rework gameplay to prevent excessive rag dolling, rethink its approach to primary weapons and “create a plan for making combat more engaging”, reprioritise bug fixes so those impacting gameplay are addressed first, improve game performance, and rework Chargers.
The studio is also looking to establish an opt-in beta test environment as a “high priority” to improve its testing processes, and it’ll be posting regular player surveys to gather more insight and feedback. Additionally, it wants to improve communication with players – providing more context for changes in its patch notes, and sharing more blog posts and streams to expand on those topics. “We also want to thank you for your patience,” Eriksson added. “We’re grateful that so many of you provided constructive feedback and suggestions on the latest update.
Arrowhead’s decision to rethink its approach to balancing follows comments made by Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt back in May. “I think we’ve gone too far in some areas,” he told players. “It feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed.” Hopefully, the studio’s new commitment to balancing will help it avoid falling into a similarly unpopular trap a third time around.