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.”
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.
That’d be rad.
It occurred to me that Helldivers has that kind of potential. What if the Bots and Bugs clashed in a previously unknown middle sector and we are sent into the chaos on the pretense of, “This is our chance, Helldiver! While those mechanized tyrants and grotesque arthropods are distracted with one another go down there and give them a lesson in Managed Democracy!”
Different scenarios would balance equipment on their own, with maybe micro changes needing to be made for outliers. Of course this would probably also mean magnitudes more work.
So long as we’re airing our dreams, I would kinda love if eventually the player faction realised the real problem was the Super Earth government all along and we got to fight the rest of SEAF.
No idea how the hell that would work mechanically, though.
That sort of thing is my hope for a future Campaign. With it either ending with the Super Earth’s real leaders activating some form of failsafe alien reset button or if enough players complete the game some form of significant change of power balance in the Universe.
Buuut yeah, dreams probably, unfortunately.