The perpetual chase toward perfect game balance in Helldivers 2 isn't the job of any one person or team, but rather a "team effort" involving the studio, says one of the game's support devs.
"There's no balance team," says Arrowhead staffer B Vitamin on Discord (via Helldivers Now on Twitter). "It's all a team effort between several people and roles because 'balance team' has let to some pretty unfair assumptions to be made."
I can absolutely understand why Arrowhead wouldn't want anyone on the team to bear the massive burden of responsibility when it comes to balancing Helldivers 2. With the game's many balance updates, and in particular weapons nerfs, being as controversial as they so often are, it makes sense for the studio as a whole to be united against the backlash.
"People don't really have any idea how things actually work behind the scenes, and that leads to bad assumptions and making things up turns into misinformation that gets spread around until people think it's fact," adds B Vitamin. "Such as 'the balance team' when this isn't a thing. There isn't a team whose sole responsibility is to do the balancing for the game. We have game designers and directors people who do these sorts of things but there isn't a 'balance team'.
"The actual changing of weapons is done by the people who make the weapons, decisions about what should be changed, when, and in what way is a team effort between designers and directors."
I get the impression that B Vitamin is making these points of clarification in response to backlash toward specific people at Arrowhead, as they specifically call out the misconception that the dev known as Alexus is the "one balance dev."
"He has far less to do with balance decisions than people assume," says B Vitamin, adding, "no dev gets to just change whatever they want without oversight or discussion, and the person who made the thing may not necessarily have the final say in if it should be changed."
Alexus himself has previously reached out to the Helldivers community in an attempt to lower the temperature around balancing, referring to himself as "villain of the month" and saying "the witch hunt has reached a level uncomfortable even for me."
Related: As death threats derail Helldivers 2's wholesome D10 challenge, Sony and Arrowhead address “increasing hostility in the community”: “We do not tolerate threats of violence, harassment, or doxxing”
