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Former Arrowhead CEO and longtime Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt spent a good chunk of the afternoon chatting to the game's still somewhat disgruntled Discord community about weapon balance, future update ideas, and other game design bugbears. In particular, he reiterated that "weapons should feel powerful" and dug into the recent unpopular changes made to flamethrower-type weapons, bluntly saying the updated fire visual effect "looks like [Team Fortress 1]."
Pilestedt had been inactive on Discord since May, seemingly partly due to some vacation time – he now jokes he's still got around 50 unused days of vacation – but was evidently feeling talkative while killing time at an airport post-Gamescom. "It was great talking to you all again," he said as he rushed to board a plane after a few hours of Q&A.
Across dozens of replies, Pilestedt waded into discourse over specific weapons, fundamental design decisions, Arrowhead's testing process, the long-awaited review bomb cape, cut content trivia, and a whole lot more. Let's start with the flamethrower and fire changes that torched conversations around the Escalation of Freedom update.
One user asked if Pilestedt was in the loop on the fire changes which were billed as a bug fix enabling more realistic behavior. "I read about it on Facebook when at a family dinner during vacation," he replied. "I understand what it aimed to do, but it was not iterated upon enough and the VFX looks like TF1."
Similarly, one user, who reckons Helldivers 2 remains a "very great game," said they'd "love to see stronger weapons but with that more enemies to balance out our new, stronger weapons." Pilestedt replied: "Yeah, agree - weapons should feel powerful - as it says on the box."
The very first thing Pilestedt said was a comment on potential collaborations with other games (Deep Rock Galactic comes to mind). While Arrowhead is "looking to do collabs," they're lower on the priority list as it's "important that we improve the state of the game and the quality of our updates."
The most important response may have been Pilestedt's take on the criticism that Helldivers 2 has seen recently, which in some ways mirrored the growing pains that followed the game's launch. Helldivers 2 is still trying to get on top of multiple new and lingering technical issues, but balance controversy also frequently and visibly dampens the mood in the Helldivers 2 community. The rhythm will feel familiar to fans of live service games – I get Destiny deja vu all the time – that seem to inevitably settle into cycles no matter how rich and plentiful good will is at launch, with a vocal contingent bristling at nerfs perceived to be heavy-handed. Naturally, this leads to criticism.
Asked about staff morale in the wake of such criticism, Pilestedt said: "It's hard. It's a tricky situation. The criticism is valid, but it causes low morale, and low morale causes slow development speed. Talk about a negative spiral."
In a separate response, he added: "I think it's important for us to reiterate to the team that criticism happens because people care. The worst thing would have been if we fucked up and no one cared."
These specific points aside, Pilestedt had a lot to say about Helldivers 2, including many up-in-the-air ideas. I've pulled out the standouts below, noting the type of question Pilestedt was responding to.
- "We once had a backpack that was a robot arm that stimmed anyone nearby. I think we need more support Stratagems in general for those that want to play to help the team."
- "An engineer once did a prototype of a UGV bomb stratagem as a test, was pretty cool but not as usable as other stuff."
- Any enemy encounter changes coming? "Probably, but we have to tread carefully."
- Where is the review bomb cape? "We don't want to release it until we get more clarity on the country issue."
- Will we get the LAS-13 Trident from Helldivers 1? "I think it is in the list of upcoming weapons.... but not 100% sure on this."
- Will we get a way to resupply our mechs? "We think some sort of resupply base with infinite ammo would be the way to go... we will have to see. We have a design workshop sometime in the future to connect the dots."
- Some missions, even on tier 6 or 7, feel too Charger-heavy. "Agree. It's fine if one mission is Charger-heavy and another is hordes of chaff. But it does devolve into Chargers galore."
- Will we see more SEAF buddies at some point? "This is also in the works. So much being worked on, the stability and balance controversies get in the way of us giving you amazing new stuff."
- What about saved loadouts? "Yes, that's in the works somewhere." Additionally, "I think we need weapon upgrades and customization to be able to tailor playstyke for advanced divers."
- How will the test server work? "It will be a restricted group of active users, and some sort of NDA attached - we don't want spoilers for those that aren't testing."
- Could we get a weapon lab where we use samples to improve guns? "You are so close to what we are working on."
- Will we get flying vehicles? "I promised the tech lead we would never. A lot of assumptions have been made on that."
Right at the end, Pilestedt asked a question of his own: "What do you guys think of team wipe redeploying squad at last completed objective or insertion point (whichever is most recent)?" He reckons a "team wipe should be a bigger deal than it is" and opened the floor to any ideas, much like how Arrowhead's new CEO has turned to the power of democracy for ideas on progression.
Helldivers 2 game director Mikael E promised "action, not talk" with a 60-day plan to address key issues.
