Following the significant Railgun nerf from the other day, a Helldivers 2 dev has taken to Reddit to respond to players unhappy with the change. After a few seemingly insensitive comments and what appears to be a general lack of internet etiquette from the dev, Arrowhead’s CEO Johan Pilestedt took to the subreddit himself to apologize on behalf of the dev’s responses and assure action was being taken.
Following the posting of the latest patch notes on the r/Helldivers subreddit, players were quick to voice their frustration with the Railgun’s nerf. Some of them even had some pretty harsh things to say about the dev team (as is common with Reddit), and all of this prompted Senior Animator Fredrik Eriksson to respond to some comments on his own:
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byu/cryptic-fox from discussion
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byu/cryptic-fox from discussion
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Responding to frustrated players by calling what they’re upset about a “skill issue” or a “brainless playstyle” obviously won’t go over very well. These are just two of a handful of replies that Eriksson left on player comments, and most of them have a significant number of downvotes and a slew of angry replies.
Following Eriksson’s comments, one user created a post titled “I’m all for balance changes but why are devs antagonising the player base?” This post quickly got thousands of upvotes, and it prompted Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt to respond to the issue himself:
“Hey!
Thank you for bringing this up, this is not the intention from the studio perspective. But since I am a heavy subscriber of a communicative studio it means that I encourage developers to engage with the community. However this also exposes us to risks of miscommunication or heated arguments and it’s something that we actively discuss internally at the studio to improve on. While I understand that it reflects on the studio as a whole, it is not our intention that this should be the behavior from us. We want to ensure that you all have the best time possible in this game and in this community.
As for the balance patch and the opinions surrounding it, we actively read as much as we possibly can and take what is said into consideration when we discuss things internally. Right now, the hot topic is your guys’ feedback and response to the balance adjustments and the feeling of the game experience at large.”
Pilestedt also made it clear that he was “extremely disappointed” by Eriksson’s behavior and that the studio is taking efforts to teach the team how to properly interact with the community in the future. Pilestedt’s built himself a positive reputation very quickly for how actively and kindly he responds to the community online, so this was a reassuring message to see from him.
At the end of the day, devs are just humans too. While it was unprofessional to talk down to players when they were voicing legitimate concerns, it also sucks to see people say rude and hurtful things about your work and actively criticize it when they might not have any idea what goes into making it. It’s a double-edged sword.
If you’re also upset about the recent Railgun nerf, don’t worry! We wrote a guide to some useful Railgun alternatives for your next deployment into the frontlines. Not only that, but the EXO-45 Mech is also live in the game too.
Source: Reddit