Arrowhead release Helldivers 2 roadmap following Escalation of Freedom backlash

The recent Helldivers 2 Escalation of Freedom update has been met with a lot of criticism by the community, particularly surrounding nerfs and balancing issues. Weapons such as the Breaker Incendiary Shotgun have seen nerfs along with many other popular choices. Although shaking up the meta from time to time isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Arrowhead has come under fire in the past for trying to balance every weapon equally to ensure nothing is overpowered. For a PVE game that is designed for players to cause maximum carnage as they take out the Automatons and Terminids, making every weapon weak isn’t a strategy that players want to see.

In response to this, the developers have released a statement and roadmap on how they plan to rectify the issues, as well as their plans for the future of Helldivers 2 to prevent this from happening again.

The Arrowhead Game Studios Game Director Mikael E took to Reddit to address the recent backlash following the Helldivers 2 Escalation of Freedom update. The patch was met with a lot of criticism from the community, largely due to fire mechanics being altered and many weapons being nerfed, something that has been received negatively in the past.

Mikael opened the post by saying “I want to directly address the feedback you’ve raised about the Escalation of Freedom update. We’ve spent the last week listening to feedback, reflecting on the path ahead for Helldivers 2 and how we want to continue developing the game. In short, we didn’t hit our target with the latest update. Some things we just didn’t get right – and other more fundamental inconsistencies in our approach to game balance and game direction.” While also noting that “As many of you have pointed out, and we agree, what matters most now is action. Not talk.”

Over the next 60 days, Arrowhead Game Studios plans to fix the issues from the Helldivers 2 Escalation of Freedom update, laying out their plans by saying that they will,

• Continue to re-examine our approach to balance. Our intention is that balance should be fun, not “balanced” for the sake of balance.
• Update how the fire damage mechanic works to tweak how the flamethrower serves as a close range support weapon. (A quick straight revert won’t work, as it would break other things)
• Rework gameplay to prevent excessive ragdolling
• Re-think our design approach to primary weapons and create a plan for making combat more engaging 
• Re-prioritize bug fixes so that the more immediate gameplay-impacting bugs are prioritized.
• Improve game performance (frame rate is a focus)
• Rework Chargers 

The developers have also revealed some long-term plans to ensure that future updates are met more positively by,

• Exploring creation of an opt-in beta-test environment to improve our testing processes and we consider this a high-priority.
• Post regular player surveys to gather more insights and feedback from the community.
• Improve our process for patch/release notes – providing more context and reasoning behind changes.
• More blog posts and streams where we expand on these topics for those interested.

It is great to see Arrowhead address these issues in a timely manner and lay out a roadmap that players can hold them accountable to. Despite popular weapons not being as viable as they once were, there are plenty of opportunities to switch things up, especially with the Freedom’s Flame Warbond recently being released. To help with that, I highly recommend checking out our Helldivers 2 best weapons guide and best armor guide.