Helldivers 2 devs apologise for trolly responses to player complaints about gun balancing

rockpapershotgun.com:

Arrowhead's CEO Johan Pilestedt has apologised for some spicy developer responses to players complaining about Helldivers 2's first major balancing patch, which made certain Helldivers 2 guns and equipment pieces significantly less powerful alongside other adjustments to the new shooter's armor system, maps and missions.

Much of the player anger has to do with the softening of three particular favourites - the railgun, "Breaker" shotgun and portable shield generator. Arrowhead have commented and blogged at great length about the reasoning behind the tweaks. One designer commented yesterday that "we strongly believe that the changes won't ruin this build, but rather help the affected items find their place among the other options and stay effective in capable hands."

Some Helldivers 2 players agree with this justification and some do not, to put it mildly. Senior animator Fredrik Eriksson has been responding to the latter on Reddit, perhaps not in the most constructive fashion. "I'm feeding the rage a little for my own entertainment here, just so you know," he wrote in one thread. "We haven't nerfed anything into the ground, I just think it's a little too early to pretend like the game is figured out. We made two of the most brainless playstyles less viable, and brought the guns that are under/overperforming more into line with the rest.

"The game is only a couple of weeks old, so before we start making sweeping changes we want everything roughly where we intended from the start," Eriksson went on. "That doesn't mean we won't bring things up when we know more about how people play the game."

As is the way of fandoms scorned, Helldiver redditors have screencapped the "feeding the rage" and "brainless" quotes and shared them around. Now, Pilestedt has stepped in, apologising for Eriksson's cheeky remarks and commenting that Arrowhead are still learning how to communicate with the unexpectedly gigantic Helldivers 2 community.

"[S}ince I am a heavy subscriber of a