Stop me if you’ve heard anything like this before. Hellraiser 2 developer Arrowhead released a number of weapon balance tweaks alongside the Freedom Upgrade update, and at least one of them is a nerf that some players are very unhappy about.
Yes, forget about the new content and other tweaks included in the update, for better or worse, and we’re back to the discussion of whether the studio that brought us Super Earth’s galactic struggle should tone down the so-called meta weapons or listen more to the opinions of players who don’t want to see their favorite weapons become less fun to use.
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The changes that have received the most flak have to do with firepower weapons, which is ironic since there’s an entire set of firepower-themed War Bonds coming tomorrow (August 8). So what did Arrowhead do? Well, it “adjusted the fire effects to make them more realistic,” and changed the Incendiary Breaker shotgun, reducing the number of magazines it can hold while increasing its recoil.
As the roughly 20 million posts currently on the game’s subreddit’s front page convey, these adjustments have not been well received, with some players feeling betrayed by Arrowhead, which goes against Arrowhead’s previous statements about taking player feedback into account when making such changes, and as a result, they h ave left a large number of new negative Steam reviews.
In the past day or so, it seems that over 1,000 reviews have poured in, though the game’s overall reception remains “mostly positive.” “The developers seem to think nerfing everything is the right thing to do, even though this is a PvE co-op game, not a competitive multiplayer PvP shooter,” reads one review. “If players are having fun, let them have it.”
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Arrowhead has responded to the controversy, with CEO Shams Jorjani tweeting: “We’ve had a ton of players return and try the game. We’re tracking bugs/issues and planning fixes ahead of time. I’ve received a lot of feedback on different parts of the update. Different groups of players like/dislike different things – depending on play style.”
“At some point, incidental breakers were about 30% of all Terminid sessions,” he said of this particular change in a Discord comment, adding, “Very much like metaguns. Is that a problem? Yes. Is it a big problem? I don’t know. We’ll talk about that.”
After completing the Discord feedback collection, he thanked players for their feedback in another tweet and said: “We will listen more and will roll out more improvements/adjustments.”
What do you think of these changes to firepower weapons? Do they dampen your enthusiasm for Free Upgrades or Free Fire War Bonds? Let us know below!