When Helldivers 2’s latest update launched, familiar balance complaints arose, and Arrowhead’s CEO believes the studio needs to better manage the flood of feedback it receives.
On Twitter, Helldivers 2 boss Shams Jorjani addresses the popular discussion points surrounding the flamethrower changes and the new difficulty option, saying that the team is taking all of this into consideration and thinking about the next steps.
“I’ve had over 200 tweets today with suggestions, opinions and thoughts on what people are thinking,” he says. “We’re also having a lot of discussions internally in the studio as we evaluate this update and plan further.”
When asked by a fan if the team will ever implement an in-game feedback form, Jorjani replies, “We need large-scale polls/sentiment surveys. We’re currently getting a lot of feedback, but no good tools to summarize it all. That’s on the agenda too.”
Elsewhere, Jorjani talks about other ideas, such as a Diablo 4-style PTR server or running developer streams to provide a greater sense of transparency.
Jorjani’s words are already being echoed in Helldivers 2’s Discord, where a community manager says the following:
“We’ve heard your feedback on our change to fire and its impact on flamethrowers, and we appreciate our community’s continued honesty about their thoughts on Helldivers 2. We’re currently having a lot of internal discussions about the best way forward.”
To check sentiment, Arrowhead has also launched a new poll to find out what everyone thinks of Helldivers 2’s Escalation of Freedom update. After 27,500 votes at the time of writing, most are neutral or unsure, the second largest group considers it a miss, and the last group considers it a smash hit, though it’s worth noting that the difference between the latter two groups isn’t huge.
And, who would have thought? A feedback form for players has also arrived.
“We don’t want your thoughts and feelings to get lost in the channels, but it’s difficult to keep up with the many pings and DMs on the server during busy times like these,” says a community representative, adding, “We’re still exploring other methods for people to give us feedback, but for now this is the way we collect it in Discord.”
The new nerfs to firearms in Helldivers 2 are limited to a shotgun, which is used in “30% of all Terminid sessions,” says Arrowhead’s CEO: “Is that a problem? Yes.”
