The new CEO of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead wasted no time in introducing himself to the gaming community – he took to Reddit to post a short post. Naturally, some players fairly took the opportunity to ask for his opinion on some of the current hot topics in the game – one of which was the issue of transparency of the hard data behind gear.
In case you missed it, Arrowhead has been busy recently brokering a CEO switch from Johan Pilestedt to Shams Jorjani, with the goal of allowing the former to focus more on helping develop Hellraiser 2. Also, as players wait to see if the latest developments in the Galactic War will pave the way for the eventual arrival of the Illuminati, as people speculate, Jorjani decided to say hello to them.
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In a rather lengthy post on the Helldivers subreddit, Jorjani detailed himself and his friendship with Pilestedt, stressing that “despite the change in captain, the ship will remain on its original course,” with the former Jack Sparrow set to take on the role of “the Obi-Wan to many ‘Luke’s’ in our studio.” Basically, Pilestedt will be providing advice and consultation to the developers as they make adjustments or create new content.
Likewise, Jorjani addressed many of the player’s concerns by responding to the thread, one of which concerns the level of “transparency” Arrowhead provides in terms of the raw data of the game’s gear, especially weapons. “Rather than asking about any specific balance changes, I’m asking that players be able to see more of the balance knobs,” wrote user zeddypanda, who manages a page dedicated to Heeldivers 2’s guns. “I think transparency will help quickly spot unbalanced items before or after they’re released, and promote honest discussion among everyone.”
Their argument is that allowing players to see stats like damage and blast radius in-game could help prevent a situation of mistrust between parts of the community and the developers when it comes to nerfs – something zeddypanda believes needs to be communicated better.
“Okay, first of all, thank you very much for your effort. Not every hero wears a cape,” Jorjani responded. “I’m not going to pretend to know the ins and outs of this, but I will say this. I think it’s good for players to have a good understanding of how things work, but some things should be vague in my opinion. Otherwise, the magic is lost a little. While we have a lot of military sim feel to the game, at the end of the day, it’s not Arma.”
He added: “Transparency can solve some problems, but it also brings more scrutiny. I hope Johan and I can discuss this on air someday.”
So it sounds like we might be getting more discussion about how well the Helldivers know about the sausage-making process sometime in the future – hopefully leading to a solution that’s less toxic for Arrowhead to face.
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