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After openly admitting Helldivers 2's current technical performance simply is "not good enough," Shams Jorjani, CEO of developer Arrowhead, has been making the rounds discussing the studio's plans and thoughts amid a rough patch that's seen an uptick in complaints and issues.
As is often the case, much of the most pertinent and interesting Helldivers 2 developer communication is tucked away in Discord replies. Over in the official Helldivers server, Jorjani has spoken to many disgruntled Discord users over the past day, discussing recent and ingrained development issues that have contributed to the current state of affairs.
One user pondered the cause of these performance problems. "Is it technical debt?" they asked. "I feel the game has been getting worse performance-wise since Omens of Tyranny, can you tell us what's causing that? The engine?"
Jorjani's reply was simple: "Yes - the technical debt is crippling. With the Xbox release behind us we'll be able to take a much better stab at it. Like a double stab. With a bigger knife."
The CEO didn't specify exactly what he's referring to here, but technical debt generally describes issues in development that come up as a result of suboptimal decisions made, or methods used, in the past. Something worked then, and it may have been a pragmatic, quick-and-dirty solution, but as a result of newer changes and demands, it doesn't work as well now. This is sometimes described as accumulating technical interest that needs to be paid back with more polished solutions or rewrites. The longer you let that interest sit, the more it compounds.
One user argued, "this has been going on for half a year and it has been getting worse though, with all due respect, this did not have to get this bad."
Jorjani said, "You're right," and "We've been lax in setting standards for what's fine."
Helldivers 2 now has three platforms to juggle with the PlayStation-published game also on PC and Xbox, which does add more to Arrowhead's plate, but as Jorjani says, now that it's not actively building for a new platform, it may have more agility that lets it focus on optimizing.
"With Xbox behind us we can focus more on stabilizing and we're looking into adding more resources to this specifically," as the CEO put it.
Like many live service gamers, the Helldivers 2 community has repeatedly suggested that Arrowhead just chill out with new content and instead focus on some kind of "health" update that addresses performance and stability. Polish what you have now, worry about adding more later.
Jorjani previously said that there are no plans for a pure performance-focused update, and in a recent response, explained that "the way we want to operate is that every update is also a health update. But we didn't hit the mark with this one."
This is partly because every developer at Arrowhead isn't focused on areas that affect game performance, the same way community managers can't necessarily knuckle down and personally trace or triage bugs during crisis periods.
"If we could put every single soul on just performance/stability and significantly improve those we would," Jorjani said, "but not everyone can make an impact on performance and the issues that need to be fixed are complex and take time to work at."
Similarly, another Discord user wondered "Why don't you guys slow down a little on the updates and actually take your time to fix the issues the content comes with? Is it Sony pressure?"
In his reply, Jorjani clarified that it's "not pressure from them - they are 100% supportive of us working differently to get to a better place. This is us trying to get our shit in order: make fun content and keep tech afloat. Not quite there."
Driving the point in, Jorjani reiterated that "the largest culprit for the issues is the tech debt and most of the Ministry of Defense (our Warbond team) doesn't consist of coders. We could hit pause on all content updates and it wouldn't make code fixes go faster in all aspects."
More than anything, he says, "if we can't release content and keep performance above water it's not ok."
However, while "we'd prefer not to have to do a performance-only update," Jorjani did say that "if that's something that is needed, we'll do it. But no one update will tackle all tech debt."
In a separate response, he added: "One other thing we need to be better at IMO is improving existing systems AND building new ones. The DSS deserves more love."
Another sentiment Jorjani repeatedly stressed is that Arrowhead is also unsatisfied with the state of the game. "Nobody is saying 'this is fine' at AH or PS," he wrote. "We are talking about what to do differently - because we really want to release content AND keep performance in line. With Xbox release behind us more resources will be available."
Separately, he said "people internally are super frustrated" and the state of the game is "not because [of] a lack of effort. It's that the effort isn't giving the result we'd hoped for. We have to do better."
Amidst all the performance talk, one user wondered if Arrowhead has considered "end of life plans" for Helldivers 2 that would allow players to "keep enjoying the game decades from now."
"I know today has been a bit rough - but we haven't started making end of life plans for the game quite yet," Jorjani responded.
Earlier this summer, the CEO expressed hopes that Helldivers 3 is "hopefully many years away" as Helldivers 2 "can run for a long time if people keep playing it."
More and more Helldivers 2 players have been requesting another 60-day plan similar to the one Arrowhead previously enacted to address gameplay and balance issues. One user compared it to last summer's Escalation of Freedom patch cycle, and Jorjani agreed there are "some similarities there."
"Difference is the gameplay was the problem - we had drifted from the core vision AND performance was messy," he continued. "Since then I think it's safe to say we've fixed one thing and kept wobbling on the other. I hope we proved back then that we won't give up till we get it right."
Yesterday, Jorjani said, "A fix for some of the most immediate things is being prepped." Fielding other questions about patching the latest patch, Helldivers 2 community manager Katherine "Baskinator" Baskin offered some hope for the game's current Major Order, which has stumbled amid crashes and bugs: "We're working on a fix for a bunch of crashes at present and I believe it will be ready sooner than that (MO ends in 6 days)."
We can only hope that this hotfix puts out some of the hottest fires, but I can't help but feel it's going to take more than emergency responses and another pile of assurances to get the game out of this hole.
