by theygamesThe Helldivers 2 Escalation of Freedom update is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s Arrowhead’s biggest content drop to date, with new enemies, objectives, and difficulty options. On the other, fire damage has been nerfed, enemy time to kill is higher than ever, and the hardest difficulty option is proving unbalanced. Arrowhead’s CEO is aware of these concerns, and while they promise fixes are coming, they also express disappointment in how Escalation of Freedom turned out and how players have reacted.
Player reception has been so bad, Helldivers 2 has recently received the most negative Steam reviews since the PSN account linking fiasco. The most common complaint is that the co-op game is going around in circles, as Arrowhead nerfs the current meta into the dirt while making the game much harder for longtime players. Company CEO Shams Jorjani knows this is how players feel, and agrees that it’s frustrating.
“I haven’t spoken to everyone of course, but many of us are disappointed on a few levels,” Jorjani says of Helldivers 2 on Discord. “On the one hand, the update had a bunch of nice stuff that isn’t getting talked about. Maybe deservedly so, as many aren’t happy with the latest balance round. I think more broadly it also has us discussing the path ahead and what we can do to avoid this situation again.
“I think a lot of you, fairly point out ‘WTF. We went through this earlier this year. Why are we here again?’ and I hate sounding like a broken record but a) We have long lead times on development. What you see is the result of weeks and months of development work. Some changes take time before they show. b) Not a whole lot of time has passed between now and the June balance round and most people are still on vacation.”
Jorjani also notes that Arrowhead will keep tweaking the new difficulty after complaints around balancing, with more general fixes on the way as well. Players also raise issues with the revised time to kill [TTK], so Joranji makes it clear that Arrowhead is changing that, too.
“TTK is too high,” Joranji says. “I believe [creative director Johan Pilestedt] agrees as well. I don’t think it’s just a matter of buffing weapons. A philosophy for the game is that the right tool for the job gets it done fast, but not all tools fix all problems.”
As a more dedicated playerbase forms around Helldivers 2, the general player reception to many of Arrowhead’s decisions has leaned negative. That initial casual boom of almost 500,000 Steam users has dropped to peaks of around 50,000 hardcore players, and Arrowhead is wrestling with them to make the game feel right. It’s not a losing battle, but whenever Arrowhead nerfs the current meta or makes the game far too difficult, the team has to do damage control.
That said, Arrowhead is listening to feedback and planning patches, so Helldivers 2 should be back on its feet in no time.
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