It was a bad week Hell Divers 2and whether it is due to recent irritations or general fatigue, Morale was at a really low point Arrowhead Studios, which has been on a roll since launch in February, is trying to move forward after the massive backlash against the changes recently made to Freedom's Flame by promising fans a new approach to how it will update the game in the future.
A pre-Warbond patch on August 6th destroyed much of the goodwill in the game. Hell Divers 2 community as players realized that their old flamethrowers, the once glorious Magazine roasters, weren't performing so well anymore. A simple change to the flame effects and damage mechanics made it much harder for the weapon to melt through the tough outer armor of alien bugs. While frustrating in and of itself, the nerf ultimately sparked a much larger discussion about how to balance a PVE-only game, and why development teams often feel like the fun police.
While the studio now says it can't roll back last week's flamethrower changes without breaking other things in the game, it says it listened to feedback and is charting a different course of action, including a 60-day patch to fix some core glitches and performance issues on PC. “In short, we didn't hit our target with the last update,” game director Mikael Eriksson said. he wrote in a recent Reddit post,“We just didn't get some things right – and other more fundamental inconsistencies in our approach to game balance and game management.”
He listed the studio's goals for the next two months as follows:
Our goal in the next 60 days is:
- Continue to reexamine our approach to balance. Our goal is for balance to be fun, not “balanced” for balance’s sake.
- Update how the flamethrower works with fire damage mechanics to adjust how it functions as a close-range support weapon. (A quick and direct return won't work, as it will break other things)
- Rework gameplay to prevent excessive ragdolling
- Rethink our design approach to primary weapons and create a plan to make combat more engaging
- Re-prioritize bug fixes so that you prioritize bugs that impact gameplay more.
- Improve game performance (frame rate is the focus)
- Reprocessing Chargers
Also, from a broader perspective:
- We are exploring creating an optional beta testing environment to improve our testing processes and see this as a high priority.
- Regularly publish player surveys to gather more information and feedback from the community.
- Improve our process for patch/release notes – better explain the context and reasoning behind changes.
- Here are more blog posts and posts where we cover these topics in more detail for those interested.
The big takeaway here is that Arrowhead will prioritize “fun” over “balance” from now on. It’s harder than it sounds, because a big part of the fun is Hell Divers 2 feeling like you're barely getting by in an impossible situation, or sometimes feeling completely screwed and inspired by it. That doesn't mean some situations can't feel frustrating or cheap, but the solution isn't just a matter of making players stronger and leaning into more OP power fantasy. Maybe that's why Arrowhead isn't the first time struggled with this tightrope walk after the launch.
But after six months in the wildernessIt also seems like a smart time for this. Hell Divers 2 To slow down the pace of changes while the developers evaluate where the game is at and how to grow it with the remaining community once the initial player boom has calmed down a bit. And some of those players are unhappy with Eriksson's mea culpa and are waiting for more lasting evidence of a new direction Hell Divers 2.
“Fine words but this is the second, maybe even third, 'oops, we made a mistake and we'll talk it over and change it' community address,” wrote one player named ExcelsAtMediocrity. “If you have a vision and want to keep the core 5,000 players, that's fine and your prerogative, but you need to decide where it's going and communicate that clearly and then do it consistently.”