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Helldivers 2 is a game that appeared out of nowhere and went from being on the radar of very few people to becoming one of the standout titles of 2024, becoming Sony’s biggest-ever launch. At one point it seemed like Arrowhead Game Studios could do no wrong, but this past month has proved otherwise. Players have begun to be driven away from the game due to controversial weapon nerfing decisions.
U/mullymaster took to Reddit to discuss balancing in Helldivers 2 and that Arrowhead Game Studios could learn from Blizzard’s Diablo 2 Resurrected when it comes to balancing and buffing weapons rather than nerfing everything into the ground.
In the post, they discuss how before the release of the Resurrected version of Diablo 2, the game only had a handful of meta builds. But rather than nerfing them to bring them in line with the lesser used builds, Blizzard instead buffed the lesser builds to give players more viable options, saying,
“Diablo 2 had a handful of S and A tier builds, a good number of mid-tier builds, and a bunch of absolute trash tier builds that could not be run on the highest difficulties. Enter Diablo 2: Resurrected. People were terrified that all the best and favorite builds were going to be nerfed, but instead, the first patch dropped and all of the never-used/underused skills were buffed.”
They then go on to explain how this led to the community being happy with these changes and that it was the best choice for the game overall saying,
“Players rejoiced, being able to play classes they never could before, and being able to try new unique builds and items that were never possible before. The game improved dramatically, which is astounding.”
The Reddit user then touched on Arrowhead Game Studios’ current outlook of making the game harder via nerfing rather than accepting that some players are simply good at the game and shouldn’t be punished for it,
“If devs are upset that people are clearing difficulty 9 too easily, don’t nerf the best options. Either accept that players are having fun and move on, or make a harder difficulty. A PVE game is supposed to be players with fun and powerful gear against hard and plentiful enemies. Take a page out of D2R’s book. Leave the meta options where they are. Improve the meta by bringing more options in, not by changing around the options and overall lowering the player’s power ceiling.”
With Johan Pilestedt recently stepping down as CEO to become CCO of Arrowhead Game Studios and focus solely on the development of Helldivers 2, many are hoping that we will begin to see the balancing issues corrected because the current direction of the game has turned many players away, with it now reaching an all-time low in terms of concurrent players. This could all change though as it looks like The Illuminate is finally set to make an appearance after being mentioned in-game for the first time. To prepare for the futuristic faction, we highly recommend checking out our Helldivers 2 best weapons guide and best armor guide.
