Arrowhead Game Studios posted a community message from the game directory, Mikael to their official discord and Steam site for Helldivers 2 yesterday afternoon. I can only expect this to be addressing negative feedback concerning the more recent update, “Escalation of Freedom”. I admit, I’m more than a bit out of the loop since our group hasn’t been playing Helldivers 2 lately, and even the gaming sessions we have made into it were fairly short. As far as I can tell the majority of us do enjoy the game, albeit, it mostly boils down to the 4 person limit (at least at that time). The message is short and to the point, with what I would image should carry some hope for current players in HD2. You can take a look at the official patch message on their Steam site, here.
A message to the community from our game director
Fellow Helldivers,
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.
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.
To that end, here’s what we intend to do in the upcoming updates.
Our aim 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
Additionally, from a bigger picture perspective we will be:
- 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 E
Game Director & Arrowhead Game Studios
