Helldivers 2 director agrees that balancing has ‘gone too far’

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Johan Pilestedt, Helldivers 2‘s creative director and Arrowhead Game Studios CEO, thinks that the development team may have “gone too far” with balance updates.

Following the release of the third-person multiplayer shooter in February, Arrowhead has been consistent with rolling out almost weekly patches and frequent content updates, some of which have make significant adjustments to the game.

Although consistent balance patches can be a good thing, it seems that some players aren’t too happy with the way changes are being implemented – often at the cost of “fun” – and the game’s director Johan Pilestedt agrees (via Eurogamer).

One player in particular took to X / Twitter to tell Pilestedt that the game has become “un-fun” for them even after spending hours in the game. They went on to explain that the balance changes over the past few months have made the game “unplayable” and that it’s “sad to see balance changes come over the priority of fun”.

In his response, the game director agreed with the player that Arrowhead may have focused too much on balancing in certain aspects.

“Hey, yeah I think we’ve gone too far in some areas,” Pilestedt. “Will talk to the team about the approach to balance. It feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed.”

Elsewhere, another user said they felt every weapon in the game has been nerfed at some point at the cost of fun, which Pilestedt acknowledged saying “that’s not a great feeling”.

Arrowhead’s CEO also said in the thread that he’s been seeing “a bit too much balancing using damage instead of other measures such as recoil, reload speeds, accuracy, projectile speeds and equip speeds” and that “just tweaking damage numbers is a blunt tool”.

Helldivers 2 just received yet a massive balance update that saw a bug nerf to burn damage, as well as other tweaks to weapons, stratagems, and enemies.