Hellraiser 2 has been a bit quiet lately, relatively speaking. With Arrowhead mostly busy fixing bugs and releasing content at a slower cadence, some players have grown a bit tired of the same old routine, and the game’s unfortunate milestone success with the PC player base has sparked some debate as to whether things have become a bit too dull.
While Arrowhead’s shift in approach to fixing issues and deploying new content to the game was met with a lot of initial support, actual results have been mixed, especially with some gear and upgrades – the spear being a prime example – continuing to have issues crop up even after they’ve been fixed. Arrowhead continues to work on fixing the issues as they arise, but you can understand the frustration.
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Meanwhile, according to SteamDB (thanks, Forbes), the game’s 24-hour player count on Steam peaked at 45,315, which is only around 10% of the initial peak of 458,709 recorded in February. Now, to be specific, this drop didn’t happen overnight, and it’s certainly not abnormal – the game has been gradually declining in player counts on the platform since then, and last hit the 200,000 mark in late April.
This doesn’t necessarily mean Arrowhead did anything wrong, even if the whole controversy Sony sparked over account linking probably didn’t help. Chances are, a lot of this is just down to people’s gaming habits – sure, some people will stick with a game for the long haul no matter what, but most people, at least to some degree, will jump from one game to another fairly frequently, whether it’s a newly released game, an old game they want to replay, or an existing game that’s just been updated.
Still, while Arrowhead is still busy fixing things (it just corrected an issue with the “Excellent Packaging Method” ship module), major changes have been relatively quiet since the last round of balance tweaks and the Viper Commandos War Bonds, which has some players questioning whether it’s worth the studio changing things up a bit to try and get them more involved.
Looking in the replies to this thread on the game’s subreddit, you’ll find that about half of people think that sticking with fixes to help build a more stable foundation for future additions is still key, while the other half think that content needs to be pumped in as soon as possible. Of course, if big additions like factions aren’t going to happen, there’s no consensus on what the new content should be, as everything from new enemies and mission types to planets with new biomes have been on the list.
What are you most excited to see Arrowhead do for Hellraiser 2 right now? If you’ve been taking a break from working on the game over the past few months, what would you like to see done before getting back into it? Let us know below!