Arrowhead Unveils 60-Day Plan to Placate Rebellious Helldivers 2 Fans

Actions speak louder than words, do what you say you will and I will believe you.

I mean they keep making the same mistake over and over. Stop nerfing weapons.

I can sympathize with Arrowhead in that they were unprepared for the meteoric success the game got at launch, and that's created a case where they are not equipped to deal with a hardcore fanbase that wants a version of the game that clashes with Arrowhead's intended design philosophy. But, at the same time, Arrowhead has had six months to take in the lengthy and detailed feedback that's out there, and it seems they're incapable of balancing the game based on more than stats on a spreadsheet. I loved Helldivers II at launch, but the version I loved kind of doesn't exist anymore after all the updates. I wish there were a way for them to revert to the weapon balancing of the launch version because that's when the game was the most fun for me. This "give us 60 days to improve the game" thing doesn't impress me since this is an issue they stupidly stumbled into multiple times, and it's frustrating to watch. Unfortunately, my friend group and I will have moved on well before 60 days from now.

Ah well. Stuff like this is why I rarely bother with live services.

@RBMango To be fair the person stated that there will be updates "within" 60 days not after.

@Nepp67 True, but within 60 days other games are coming out that my circle of friends who played Helldivers II and I would rather play during our short bursts of free time.

I just want them to fix cross-platform friend requests. The weeping over nerfs seems like toxic gamer BS, tbh

I'd say they have less than 60 days to fix anything, W40k Space Marine 2 is releasing next month and its pretty damn close to what HD2 offers.

So it’s like any other mp game that people no life where a patch comes out and makes a minuscule change to a favored weapon so the man children whine and cry like a baby who’s had it’s pacifier taken away. I will say after the why Arrowhead handled the whole psn login “fiasco” I love that they now are stuck in this position where they capitulated to the mob because they tried like some parents do with their kids and tried to be friends with their community when the community doesn’t give a ***** about them

I have been playing the game since launch with my brother and my friends and it has been in great fun. All these people crying after every change Arrowhead makes need to stop being babies. It's truly embarrassing.

They should focus on adding new enemy and challenge for the players, not nerfing players gun in pve games 🤦🏻

@RBMango That's fair, I'm gonna be playing the crap out of Hunt Showdown the day after tomorrow

I love hd2 but I've not played it for a couple of months now. I should start playing it again but I just can't put gt7 and EA sports wrc down (damn that steering wheel but it's just so much fun.) The community really needs to stop crying everytime arrowhead swap things up and if I'm perfectly honest I've never really noticed much whenever a new nerf blah,blah,blah was introduced because I was too busy enjoying myself. The last few weeks I spent playing the game introduced me to the new enemy...the gamers that think they are the absolute hd2 gods and just pour scorn on the lower level players and ultimately kick the newbies after abusing them for 10 minutes..I deliberately nuke those motherf***ers as they are the real problem.

This community is worse then politicians im not getting in such a pity.

Seems to me that the HellDivers 2 community is just toxic as hell, glad I don't play the game anymore.

My only experience of this game is watching my wife play it for a couple of months, so my opinions are pretty uniformed, but, in a general sense, I don’t see that nerfing weapons should ever be necessary in a PvE game. Especially a live service. If the devs think a certain gun takes away all challenge, then add enemies that aren’t as susceptible to that gun. Then later add guns more suited to those new challenges. This keeps a virtuous cycle going of interest/challenge/ fun.

Of course that’s more work, but live service games need this content to keep going anyway. I know the wife stopped playing as she said it was just too repetitive, and I could see that for myself.

So glad I’m not in the H2 community, I’d hate to work on the game also.
But this is what happens when you give in to their demands (which was the dumb reason to review bomb in the first place) give them an inch they take a mile.
Now if you do any little thing they don’t like they know how to get what they want.

Ahhh, the perils of a successful live service game!

It's their game, I respect their right to balance according to their own design philosophy. Their strategy of "nerf anything that gets used a lot" is an interesting choice for a PvE game, but hey it's their call.

For my part, I dropped the game mostly because of the nerfs. No review bombing or any foolishness like that, I'm just not gonna play it anymore. There are so many options competing for my free time, I'm not gonna play something I don't find fun. Pretty much the long and short of it. RIP railgun.

I remember logging in one day to find out they drastically nerfed my entire specific setup. Like, each individual weapon. Then there was a "bug" that simultaneously increased the spawn rate of armored enemies. People were just running around the map, not shooting or playing the objectives. Just running around like chickens with their heads cut off from giant spiders. Because they nerfed the only viable (at the time) anti armor options. Because too many players were using them. I guess that's what they call balance.

Wish them the best of luck in their holy quest for absolute, pure balance in a game against AI opponents.

Nothing but sympathy for the Devs at ArrowHead. Tough situation for them and they're doing their best

Super earth is gonna burn.

@RBMango I would argue things are more buffed than at launch overall. I think people are often dramatic so the the nerfs, it that being even the animation for the flamethrower sucks now. They also did this right when we got the flame warbond, so the timing was incredibly poor and tone deaf.

The flamethrower actually did need a nerf, but it needed to be far less dramatic and and much more minor.
And as for the vision thing, the flamethrower has been the same since it got buffed for the most part and then they let us get a module that increased flame damage for most weapons including the flamethrower by 25% and it was an expensive later game upgrade so this comes across as incredibly poor planning since they’ve buffed something that in theory already too strong.

Nerfhead Game Studios announce their 5 year plan. Everyone clap.
nope, dudes, you had your chance and your action shows you are riddled with people obsessed with control (of things that need no controlling).
Cheerio and farewell, 40K is coming.

Disclaimer: I still love this game so much, but have no intention of investing a millisecond into it until they get their act together. I will follow this space and in case they bring back the fun, sure, I'll be at the practice.

@The_Wailing_Doom do you know what is embarrassing? Not having a functional social system in your multiplayer game, that's what is embarrassing. To this day, friends list, block list, invites it is all broken. But, please go on, tell me how the dev properly used their time nerfing weapons instead of making the basics work.

@TheDudeElDuderino
That stuff works for me, but, anyway, the outcry is not about those things. It's about flame weapons being reigned in. Before that, it was about the quasar cannon getting a longer cooldown, so it would stop being overpowered. The biggest outcry by far was people upset they had to do what they agreed to and create a PSN account. There is too much whining. So, yeah, it's embarrassing.

@Jaz007 There have definitely been some much-appreciated buffs. I won't take that away from Arrowhead. But changing how fire works to be less effective and more "realistic" right before dropping a war bond centered around fire damage baffles me. Things like this make me wonder if the balance team even playtest their own game.

Ever since the first round of balance patches back in March, there seems to be an ever-growing divide between Arrowhead and fans like me as to what the design philosophy should be. And the leads at Arrowhead haven't done themselves any favors by publicly playing both sides of the argument, so it just makes their mission statements and balance explanations all the more confusing and inconsistent.

I also think the online noise has drowned out a lot of legitimate and fair criticism of the game and how Arrowhead have handled it since launch. Rather than go on that cesspool of a subreddit and blast the devs day in and day out, I'd love to chat with Pilestedt over a beer and express how much I love the game and why I have been disappointed with some of their design decisions.

@RBMango Yeah, they know their community can act this way, so hyping flames and then nerfing them just is just makes me want to ask “What did you think was gonna happen?”
It’s not even realistic either, it’s less realistic to a a flamethrower now. If it was realistic they’d buff the range of the flamethrower instead of this rework lol.

But yeah I think that would be a great convo to have.
They recently put up a feedback form and I expressed my feelings, including that the flamethrower needed a nerf, but not a giant one. I also mentioned how the timing was tone deaf.

It seems almost every GaaS it's failing with its player base.

Space Marine 2 is going to make this game look like a joke.

@The_Wailing_Doom let's stick to the facts dude and stay away from virtue signaling. Both you and I have no idea how many people are actually, as you put it, "whining" (a.k.a. being vocal about not liking where a product they invested their money and time is going). What we do know and have documented proof of is that one of the fundamental features of a multiplayer online game has never ever worked properly. Don't be daft and deflect with "works for me" while you have dev's own patch releases since the dawn of this game that clearly state it as a known issue.
You can insist talking about the outcry while I point out to you that this dev has been behaving like a bushman league player since day one regarding one of the more crucial feature of their product.

Actually, many things would have been differently handled if Sony, the publisher of this game, decided to call it what it was. Helldivers2 has been what we usually know as an EA game (Early Access game).
Unfinished, major features barely working, lacking major portions of the game (e.g. armor and weapons customization) and remaining in major development cycle with its core game mechanic being changed/tweaked all the time + the final nail to the coffin: the price.
Repeat after me: Helldivers 2 is an Early Access game.
After that is internalised and accepted, EVERYTHING that has happened with this game, since it's early access availability, becomes clear as day and totally understandable.

Note: shoutout to Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia for that jewel of a definition for "EA game" = Early Access game 😂

The game is great, who cares about the crybaby losers who always complain no matter what. This article is stupid lol

The problem with Helldivers 2 is probably simple. The hardcore players are likely your smaller player base whereas the casual players, you know, those who work, have families, have other priorities other than playing games ALL the time are likely the biggest audience. They probably have around 1 to 3 hours daily to game and if you make progression too hard they'll lose interest and move on. Provide for the many NOT the few. Put a higher difficulty in for hardcore but don't punish your main audience by lowering the XP and progress gains. Plus make the game solo-able with bots.

The needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few.

The games biggest issue is it's engine it's from 2015 and was dropped by the creators of it as AH where in the development of the game half way through.

It's got performance issues but the issue with the nerf isn't really the Flamethrower dropping in damage. It's dropping fire damage 2 days before the fire Warbond came out, then nerfing weapons because of META usage again.

But then to not buff any weapons from the start of the game like assault rifles basically nothing to balance it out and get people to use other weapons. Right now you feel your not how can I put it powered right, your reloading far more than ever as the enemy still is alive, chargers, BTs and the new Impalers need a crap load of Anti tank to kill them in some cases.

Spawns are still broken and they've never fixed them at all I've taken a break from it actually started God of War on PC

Is there a greed aspect to the nerfs, which I gather is mostly the reason for leaving this game?

It seems dumb to ruin your own success without any ulterior motive.