The furor over adjustments made in Helldivers 2 has arguably reached a boiling point. Earlier this week, Arrowhead Game Studios put out a balance patch that bonked highly popular weapons with a nerf bat, ticking off a firestorm among gamers who argued that nerfs didn’t account for the reality of playing the co-op shooter at higher difficulties – and it would seem that certain devs were fanning those flames to fever levels.
Several comments collected on Reddit – some of which are arguably provided out of context – show a number of the shooter’s devs prodding at the rage, remarking that those who are complaining need to “git gud” or are just upset that the studio made “two of the most brainless playstyles less viable.”
The rising temperature of the playerbase ultimately reached the notice of Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt, who first acknowledged that devs are encouraged to interact with players while appreciating that “risks of miscommunication or heated arguments” can occur, followed by additional remarks that agreed some dev responses were disappointing and inexcusable.
“We are aware of this and have taken action internally to educate our developers on how to represent the organization,” reads one of his replies. “This is not a message that the studio stands behind. We are always working to make as an enjoyable experience and community that we can. We are taking your feedback and improving based on it.”
That feedback appears to have been absorbed by the studio, which promised to address concerns surrounding heavily armored enemies and their spawn rates. “I can confirm that we’re currently looking at changes to the spawn rates and health pools of heavy enemies, and will be attempting to spread them out more to prevent large spikes of tougher mobs appearing at the same time, as well as making them a bit easier to bring down,” reads a post from a CM. “This change should go out in a future hotfix – no date as of yet.”
In the meantime, players have rushed to the defense of Tien Kwan, the planet that’s responsible for creating the game’s mechs, in order to free it from automatons and presumably get the new strategem released soon. These mechs do appear to be feature complete, as some players are actually finding pilotable mechs on the planet’s surface mid-mission.
Finally, the shooter has also unveiled its next warbond battle pass arriving on March 14th. The pass, subtitled Cutting Edge, introduces some high-tech new armor sets, new weapons like a laser assault rifle and lightning shotgun, and some new cosmetics like capes.
