Replying to a player on Twitter who said recent patches have made the game “unplayable,” Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt conceded that he’s not satisfied with his studio’s current balancing approach.
“Hey, yeah I think we’ve gone too far in some areas. Will talk to the team about the approach to balance,” he wrote. “It feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed.”
It does seem that whenever a primary gun feels fun to use, it’s nerfed into the ground.
They do that to keep people chasing the new primaries from the war bonds.
The cycle is pretty obvious at this point: warbond comes out, weapon is god, weapon gets nerfed, repeat.
I really have to disagree with this. Can’t think of another weapon besides the eruptor to have god status aside from the release breaker on the free starter warbond.
I wasn’t there at the time but I remember people talking about the railgun being god status.
I remember COD Warzone being notorious for this back when I played it during COVID
Butbthere you had to fight other people using weapons that are just better and you had to grind the game to get it. If a weapon is fun in helldivers, i will use it, even tho there might be a better option. I have a blast with the crossbow and the senator, which I don’t really see people using. I think people would enjoy the game more if they would stop reading patch notes and youtubers who tell them which guns are good or bad and just get out there having fun with whatever they want.
League of Legends did this when they released new champions. New champ is overtuned for about a month, then it gets nerfed back down to baseline. Who knows how much money they got when people bought RP to get the sexy new champ and all their skins.
It’s only a matter of time before Arrowhead starts making thirst trap Pool Party Helldiver armor.
If this is the case why has the scorcher been so damned good forever?
You’re probably right though, I bet they’ll nerf it before too long here.
People mistaken fun and trivializing.
The game is balanced around being difficult, so that you need your team and stratagems (weapons included) to beat it.
When you get a new overpowered weapon, it feels great because the game is so hard/tedious otherwise. But it is actually an overpowered weapon.
I’m pretty sure targeting a shot so splash shrapnel goes somewhere beneficial to you is not an “exploit” so much as “good tactics” in the same way that aiming for a weak spot to do extra damage is…
Agreed, but at the same time if feels wrong intuitively for that to do more damage than a direct hit. Feel like there should be a system to let the round actually penetrate a small bit before the shrapnel goes off if you hit the target in a weak spot.
I sort of like the changes. Who knew I would go from the liberator, to punisher, to spray and pray, to eruptor, and finally to the punisher plasma with the bugs.
I only play lvl 6 to 7.
Every time people are freaked out about a weapon being unusable and trash, i continue using them and i would never know if people weren’t crying about it. The only thing i immediately realised was the senator buff. I only play on helldivers difficulty
The slugger having stun removed killed my main build. That one was immediately noticeable to me.
Luckily I unlocked the dominator which fools the exact same role.
I’d prefer they not attempt to balance things so much as change aspects of interactions with the environment and even enemies that force us to reconsider and utilize weapons and tactics we normally wouldn’t.
Then again I’m only level 17. So honestly, what do I know.
You’re not even wrong tho. It is a co-op game. There’s no need for “balance”. All they need is to have a reason to consider bringing something other than a single standard loadout.
At the end of the day, the type of player who cares will find the single mathematically best loadout and will just use that, even if they nerf everything into the ground.
What they should focus on is making sure all loadouts have their uses. And perhaps work on matchmaking so the kind of person who plays with randoms won’t get kicked from games for not using The Meta; ideally by matching those non-meta-kickers together so the normal people can have fun.
If I’m being honest, and because I’m still grinding for modules and such, I tend towards the Orbital Laser and Grenade Launcher with Supply Pack. It seems to trivialize pretty much everything when used correctly.
I mean, imagine a Bug system where a hidden event is keeping tabs on common weapons used. The numbers show a large amount of explosives. Event triggers and says the Bugs have begun evolving to be faster and are spread out more, though less massive enemies appear, which would force a loadout swap to focus on agility within that sector.
I dunno, things like that.
The game already works like this. Automatons and terminids behave extremely differently, and push for very different weapons. And in each faction some enemies will be more easily dealt with with specific weapons.
Two infamous examples are the berzerker bot and the stalker bug. Control weapons (weapons with high stagger) trivialise them. But most people don’t use these weapons, and thus those enemies are among the most hated ones by the community.
In my head I was thinking more along the line of Mutations for the Bugs and Augmentations for the Bots. It would be cool to face a variant of the Charger that can jump or fly a short distance, or a machine weaker to small arms fire due to some kinetically-based shield that grows stronger the harder the weapons hit. Based on events though. I’m not sure this is a good game for enemies like this to show up randomly, even rarely.
I thought they nerfed guns specifically so there were no “meta” loadouts. They want you to pick a gun based on your playing style, not because it is a known fact that it is the “best” gun
Also, don’t touch my dominator.