With players feeling underwhelmed at some of the changes made in its massive new Escalation of Freedom update, Helldivers 2’s game director has apologized to the community and acknowledged that there are “fundamental inconsistencies” in its current approach to balancing the shooter. Arrowhead has also now laid out a 60-day plan to improve the game and overhaul some of its practices.
Helldivers 2 has been on quite the rollercoaster ride this year. Its early months were defined by huge sales figures and player counts, and it seemed it couldn’t put a foot wrong. Then the co-op game faced its first big bump in the road after its PSN account linking fiasco. Then it changed its approach to content output and patches, opting for larger, less-regular updates that were of a better standard – something fans agreed was the right decision.
This month’s Escalation of Freedom update was set to be the one that turned things around and pushed Helldivers 2 back towards the successes it experienced fresh out the gate. However, certain aspects of the massive new update are rather underwhelming, and it wasn’t the reversal of fortunes I’d hoped the game would see.
Now, game director Mikael Eriksson has come out to acknowledge that Escalation of Freedom missed the mark, and has outlined how Arrowhead is going to win back its players and fix some of their biggest pain points.
“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,” says Eriksson in a brutally honest message on Reddit. “In short, we didn’t hit our target with the latest update. Some things we just didn’t get right – and [there are] other more fundamental inconsistencies in our approach to game balance and game direction.”
Eriksson then lays out the core gameplay changes that Arrowhead is going to focus on over 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
He also says that Arrowhead is considering launching an “opt-in beta-test environment” to help spot bugs and issues in updates earlier, be more transparent about why changes were made in patch notes, and send out more regular surveys to players.
It’s been really sad (and somewhat confusing) to see how Arrowhead has managed to lose favor with so many players over the last few months, given the game’s early success. Helldivers 2 still boasts an impressive Steam player count that many live service games would kill for, but there’s no escaping that it’s a long way off where it used to be, and the initial spike it did see when Escalation of Freedom dropped has already almost returned to pre-patch levels.
However, Eriksson’s action plan sounds like a good one, and Arrowhead’s honesty and acknowledgement of the situation goes a long way too.
If you’re one of those that have moved on or are taking a break from Helldivers 2, here are some other excellent space games to try. Alternatively, take a look at our upcoming PC games list to see what else is arriving soon.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.