Helldivers 2 Game Director Mikael Eriksson shared a message to the game’s community in the wake of massive backlash and protest to weapon nerfs.
A screenshot from Helldivers 2 (2024), Arrowhead Studios
Helldivers 2 has seen massive backlash from its player base in the past week. Reddit user Gn0meKr posted about a week ago, “Words cannot express how dissapointed and angry I feel right now. MORE NERFS? REALLY? What is the reason for more f***ing nerfs? TO GUNS THAT WE WERE 100% OKAY WITH AND HAD FUN WITH THEM? WHAT IN THE LIBERTY’S F**K IS GOING ON AT ARROWHEAD?”
He continued, “At this I am starting to believe that entire balancing team wants to silently kill this game and any fun from playing it. It’s a blatant sabotage that needs to be adressed ASAP, it’s g**damn ridiculous. This is absolutely despicable, disgusting behavior from Arrowhead’s balancing team to continue with all those bullshit changes that make no sense whatsoever after so much time and so many outrages from the community. They’ve been informed thousands of times to change their ways and start balancing this game towards being more fun and not punishing.”
“Rant over, post your thoughts below, am I full of shit or onto something, because I refuse to believe that these people can be so incompetent into understanding that WE DO NOT WANT OR NEED MORE NERFS,” he concluded.
Gn0meKr post on the Helldivers subreddit
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Former World of Warcraft Team Lead Mark Kern aka Grummz also noted earlier this week that players were protesting “by allowing the bot faction to INVADE Super Earth.”
Grummz commented, “This is the worst management of a hugely promising game. They have no idea how to manage PvE balance and content updates. Stop the addiction to nerfs, provide real content updates instead of endless balance tweaks, make the war meta mean more. Many potential fixes.”
Helldivers are PROTESTING @ArrowheadGS by allowing the bot faction to INVADE Super Earth.
This is the worst management of a hugely promising game. They have no idea how to manage PvE balance and content updates.
Stop the addiction to nerfs, provide real content updates instead… pic.twitter.com/gcbTaEp6zn
— Grummz (@Grummz) August 11, 2024
Earlier this month, CEO of Arrowhead Studios Shams Jorjani acknowledged the backlash. He wrote on X, “We’ve got a ton of players returning to the game to give it a go. We’re tracking bugs/issues and planning ahead of the hotfix. I’m getting a lot of feedback on different parts of the update. Different player groups are liking/disliking different things – depending on playstyle.”
He continued, “To nobody’s surprise ‘casual dads/moms’ all the way to ‘the milsim players’ are enjoying different things. We’ll keep monitoring and seeing how things are going in a day or so. (I used those terms loosely – not an exact science – don’t quote me)”
Shams Jorjani on X
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Next, he added, “Some are going ‘buff everything!!’ others are saying other things “it’s too easy!”. Most are in-game – just playing. Every new big update requires a bit of playtime before we know which direction to fine tune things. Appreciate the patience!”
Shams Jorjani on X
In response to a user noting players are upset about the weapon nerfs, Jorjani said, “Look. I get it. I main the liberator penetrator and I have been given any juice since forever.”
“What I’m saying is that we are listening and will tweak. As we always do. And we’ll tweak again after that,” he added.
Shams Jorjani on X
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Now, Game Director Mikael Eriksson has issued a statement to Helldivers 2 gamers to the game’s official Steam page. He wrote, “I want to directly address the feedback you’ve raised about the Escalation of Freedom update. 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. Some things we just didn’t get right – and other more fundamental inconsistencies in our approach to game balance and game direction.”
He continued, “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.”
A screenshot from Helldivers 2 (2024), Arrowhead Studios
From there, he issues things that the company plans to accomplish within the next 60 days:
- Continue to re-examine our approach to balance. Our intention is that balance should be fun, not “balanced” for the sake of balance.
- Update how the fire damage mechanic works to tweak how the flamethrower serves as a close range support weapon. (A quick straight revert won’t work, as it would break other things)
- Rework gameplay to prevent excessive ragdolling
- Re-think our design approach to primary weapons and create a plan for making combat more engaging
- Re-prioritize bug fixes so that the more immediate gameplay-impacting bugs are prioritized.
- Improve game performance (frame rate is a focus)
- Rework Chargers
A screenshot from Helldivers 2 (2024), Arrowhead Game Studios
He also added what they plan to be looking at in the long-term:
- Exploring creation of an opt-in beta-test environment to improve our testing processes and we consider this a high-priority.
- Post regular player surveys to gather more insights and feedback from the community.
- Improve our process for patch/release notes – providing more context and reasoning behind changes.
- More blog posts and streams where we expand on these topics for those interested.
- We also want to thank you for your patience. We’re grateful that so many of you provided constructive feedback and suggestions on the latest update.
Mikael Eriksson addresses Helldivers 2 players
Of note, the game’s player base has significantly declined over the last couple of months. According to SteamDB the game only had 37,646 concurrent peak players in the last 24-hours. That’s significantly down from just two months ago when the game had a peak concurrent of 91,692.
Helldivers 2 Steam charts via SteamDB
What do you make of this response?
