Helldivers 2 developers announced a 60-day plan to address long-standing issues with the player base, which has been in an uproar over recent changes in its latest big patch.
In a statement posted to the subreddit on Tuesday, Arrowhead Game Studios game director Mikael Eriksson admits that the team “didn’t hit our target” with the Escalation of Freedom update. The community has responded negatively to many of its changes, including a nerf to fire weapons like the Breaker Incendiary and the FLAM-40 flamethrower. These used to be great against charger terminids, but were patched to no longer penetrate their hides (and before a fire-based premium warbond no less).
Many players see their complaints as endemic of a larger problem with Arrowhead’s development strategy, which they feel prioritizes weapon balance to prop up less-popular weapons and leads to less-engaging gameplay.
“Some things we just didn’t get right – and other more fundamental inconsistencies in our approach to game balance and game direction,” Eriksson wrote. “All of that is on us and we are going to own that. As many of you have pointed out, and we agree, what matters most now is action. Not talk.”
Eriksson then laid out a 60-day plan to get the game back on track in accordance with the player feedback. It ranges from confronting broader concerns like how Arrowhead approaches weapon balance and how it designs primary weapons, to specific Escalation of Freedom adjustments like fire damage, frame rate performance, and unspecified charger fixes. Arrowhead also wants to “re-prioritize bug fixes” to put issues that are impacting gameplay first on the pile.
A lot of this is in the name of “fun,” a term that’s popped up a bunch in posts from the Helldivers 2 community. “Our intention is that balance should be fun, not ‘balanced’ for the sake of balance,” Eriksson wrote, also noting that they want to make the “combat more engaging.”
As for long-term plans, the developers first want to create an opt-in beta testing environment, and follow that up with more transparent and frequent communication with the player base like blog posts and better reasoning for patches. They also plan to release more player surveys like the one that went up on the Discord last week.
Multiple Arrowhead developers have been on the defensive over the past week in response to the outcry around Escalation of Freedom. CEO Shams Jorjani wrote in the game’s official Discord on Friday that one specific change that nerfed the effectiveness of incendiary weapons was on him. “I’ll own this screwup. I should have provided more context behind that stat instead of just dropping it on you,” he wrote.
However, this response has been a long time coming. The community has complained before about confusing changes that they didn’t think were fun; Helldivers 2 game director Johan Pilestedt wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that “it feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed.”
