Helldivers 2 has calmed down considerably after the stratospheric success of its launch, which started with an all-time peak of over 450,000 players and has since reached a cozy 24-hour peak of around 40,000 at the time of writing.
Those are still pretty healthy numbers for a live service game (and I don't think anyone expected Helldivers 2 to stay at 400,000 concurrents forever; those kinds of numbers are usually reserved for big MMORPGs, MOBAs, and the most popular shooters), but there have been some PSN, balanceand related to errors dramas that have undoubtedly contributed to a drop in player numbers. All this has led to a longer term strategy—Because yes, Arrowhead Games probably needs to do it. slow down a little.
As part of these changes, former CEO Johan Pilestedt chose to become the Game CCO in place to direct '100% of my attention (to) the game and the community'. He is replaced by Shams Jorjani, who took to Twitter yesterday To share some snapshots of the studio's new workshops that confirm yes, the team is reading their Reddit threads.
“I asked Pilestedt to host the first in a series of (workshops) at the (Arrowhead Games) office on the topic 'Us and Them: Building Healthy Relationships with Our Players and Partners,'” explains Jorjani, in which the team tries to “analyze what has been learned since launch.”
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“A great conclusion”, Jorjani writes“is that we, as developers and players, have a kind of doctor/patient relationship. A patient comes in with knee pain thinking it is due to a particular 'thing'. We, as doctors, know that it is not that 'thing' 'The patient is sick, but they STILL feel pain.'
I understand what Jorjani is saying. When it comes to a small, dedicated group of R&D specialists looking for something, the Helldivers 2 community has identified issues with laser accuracy, such as solo mission patrol spawn times being arrested. But they have also been completely wrong when the word-of-mouth machine detects the wrong signals, as is the case with certain rebound changes.
In other words, small groups of people who play games can occasionally do a really good job of QA, but collectively, gaming communities are better at identifying that problem. exists, rather than identifying why it exists or what reasonable solutions are. Borrowing a phrase from Men in black 1997: “A person is intelligent, people are stupid, they are panicked, they are a dangerous animal and you know it.”
The two slides in question show Pilestedt in front of appropriately named “diagnosis” explainers, featuring a mix of tweets, Youtube videos and yes, Reddit threads like This posted a day ago. The slide in question highlights “TL:DR: Shooting a titan's mouth should be considered critical damage” as a pertinent conclusion. Now, considering Jorjani's words (and the lack of access to the full presentation), it's unclear if Arrowhead actually agrees with this assessment, but at least he's using community sentiment to inform his opinions.
jorjani add that, in the past, “our initial reaction might be to defend our decisions,” while the team might be “strong” in inspiring future work. In case you're not familiar with the equipment, strong handling (or steel handling) is a rhetorical device by which you create the strongest form of an opponent's argument instead of trying to pick it apart and then addressing your opponent's claims. said argument. The idea is that you yourself will come out of that exchange with stronger arguments.
It's definitely a delicate balance to walk. Yes, community feedback can absolutely be useful in a developer's toolkit, but I don't know if I've ever believed that the client is always true, especially when said customer is a non-Euclidean swarm of anonymous, opinionated Internet strangers who are often disproportionately loud (after all, people who enjoy a game don't frequent forums). Along that route lies madness.
On the other hand, having obvious and reasonable complaints and being greeted with a Stone wall It's also annoying. It's just rocks and difficult places no matter where you look, although it will be interesting to see how Arrowhead Games approaches the challenge.
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