Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios has a new CEO: Paradox veteran Shams Jorjani is replacing Johan Pilestedt. As Pilestedt becomes fully immersed in his continued position as Helldivers 2's creative director, he agrees that the game is in need of a shakeup, especially when it comes to armor, weapons, and general variety.
Pilestedt said he'd be more active in the Helldivers 2 community after this change of hats, and he wasn't kidding. The former CEO has been tweeting a mile a minute, and several comments stand out as he becomes fully focused on game design again.
Echoing much of the player base, one Helldiver reckoned Pilestedt could start by "making armors have actual interesting stats," improving on the "meh or bad" guns in the latest Warbond, and having "bots or bugs attack other planets instead of moving in a straight line." The latest Warbond was overwhelmingly unpopular in a player poll, and with the Galactic War – sorry, the Second Galactic War – spinning its wheels across a small pool of familiar planets, similar complaints have been piling up recently.
- Despite shifting gear to Arrowhead's next game after a sabbatical, studio CEO clarifies that Helldivers 2 creative lead Johan Pilestedt will "absolutely still be involved"
- After an eventful year, Helldivers 2 devs hope "it will be less of a bumpy road when it comes to release accuracy" - but Arrowhead is still "prepared to take risks"
"Agree on all points," Pilestedt replied.
Another player helpfully advised that "you need to ensure more content to retain [the] player base." Pilestedt agreed here as well, and zeroed in on "longer lasting content as well."
More generally, Pilestedt says the "first thing we got to do is ensure we get more dev time playing the game. It's hard to make the right decisions if the eyes aren't on the road.
"Secondly, I want to ensure we actively look at the sentiment and create a holistic view of why feedback is given," he continues. "And my working theory is that TTK is too high." If the TTK (time to kill) is too high, then either guns are too weak or enemies are too tanky – but practically speaking, both problems mean that guns feel too weak, which certainly reflects the nerf-battered community's sentiments. This also lines up with Pilestedt's previous comment about underwhelming weapons, and reinforces his belief that recent balance patches have gone too far and hit a point where "every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed."
To hammer it home, Pilestedt separately confirmed that the plan is for weapon rebalancing to get more attention going forward.
Just this week, Arrowhead confirmed that it's slowing down the release of new patches "to maintain the quality standard we want and you deserve," so while changes are coming, the biggest ones may take a little while longer.
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