It’s been a while since Hellraiser 2 players heard from former Arrowhead CEO and Chief Creative Officer Johan Pilestedt, with the developer seemingly enjoying some well-deserved time off. Now, however, he’s returned in rather grand fashion, answering questions from everyone and their mother on Discord.
Naturally, the studio has faced criticism from players after deploying the latest batch of weapon balance changes – Arrowhead announced the much-discussed 60-day plan for changes and has already started taking action to address this – as mentioned in 99% of developer chats about the game over the past period of time.
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“It’s hard. It’s a tricky situation. Criticism is valid, but it leads to low morale, and low morale leads to slow development. It’s a really negative cycle,” Pilestedt said in response to a player asking how the game’s developers are feeling right now. “I think we have to reiterate to the team that criticism comes because people care,” he said in another reply, adding, “The worst case scenario is that we screw up and no one cares.”
He also weighed in on a range of other topics. For example, everyone hated the change to the flames because they thought it made the flamethrower boring – Pilestedt “saw it on Facebook at a family dinner on holiday” and explained: “I understand what its purpose was, but it didn’t get enough iterations and the VFX looked like [Team Fortress 1]””.
Regarding the long-requested test servers, the developer said in multiple comments: “We will be setting up an experimental server at some point. It’s a work in progress. It will be a restricted group of active users and come with some kind of NDA – we don’t want to let people who aren’t testing know the story.”
He also revealed that Arrowhead “used to have a backpack that was a mechanical arm that would prod anyone nearby,” adding: “I think we need to have more support strategies for people who want to play the game to help the team.” Additionally, Pilestedt said the studio was waiting for more clarification regarding an issue with the game being locked in certain regions due to PSN login requirements before deploying that comment bomb cape.
Oh, and you’ll no doubt be wondering, Pilerstedt’s preferred name for the Termind larva you have to bring with you on these babysitting missions is “Larvis”, which I’m guessing is a bugged version of the name Mavis. A lot of other stuff was discussed in the Q&A session, so if you’re curious, it’s worth heading over to the Helldivers 2 Discord server and searching for the name Pilestedt.
What do you think of all the information CCO has revealed here about Hellraiser 2? Let us know below!
