It’s been looking grim for Super Earth recently. I mean, not really. Multiplayer shooty Helldivers 2 is still sitting around 35,000 concurrent players, which is perfectly respectable, if only around 10% of its peak back in April.
Still, a clutch of disgruntled ‘divers have recently found a novel way to protest an increasingly unpopular series of nerfs: laying down their guns and letting the bots take the damn planet. “If Super Earth wanted to remain safe, they would stop nerfing our guns," reads one comment on the subreddit, in response to a post titled “Let the bots advance. Let the Super Earth burn.
” It seems to have picked up some steam inside the actual game, too. As of earlier this week, there’s only around a thousand players actively trying to stop the bots advancing perilously close to the home planet, via Gamesradar . Whether this is all massively overblown for the sake of a dramatic yarn or not, Arrowhead themselves have taken note of player concerns over nerfs.
Yesterday, game director Mikael Eriksson unveiled a plan for the next 60 days, directly addressing player feedback over the controversial ‘Escalation of Freedom’ update. “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,” reads the post , as spotted by PushSquare .
“ 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.
” Said action, promises Arrowhead, will take the form of the following bullet-pointed agenda. Is there a gag about the bullets not even being able to make points any more due to nerfs? Probably. That’d be stupid though, so I’m just going to lampshade that I think it’s stupid while still basically making the very same gag.
In the biz, this is known as "having your cake and gagging on it". Here’s Arrowhead’s plan 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 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.
The flamethrower item seems to be the sticking point for the community here - it’s where a lot of the hubbub is centred, particularly since it’s now far less effective against Chargers. I can see the issue here. Chargers are rapidly able to throw a game into chaos if not dealt with quickly, especially in big numbers on higher difficulty levels.
It’s also understandable that both the community and Arrowhead themselves would be feeling a bit of fatigue over balancing woes. Back in May, former CEO-turned-creative-director Johan Pilestedt said he thought Arrowhead has “gone too far” in some areas . "Will talk to the team about the approach to balance.
It feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed." Helldivers 2 can be a glorious time, so I do hope it manages to reach an equilibrium everyone’s happy with..
