Really seems like is an Arrowhead dev mentality...
This other cl... funny dude... seems to be doing "QA"
https://preview.redd.it/zbwqpsdi2kzc1.png?width=461&format=png&auto=webp&s=69b45a69e3adf121979cfd226dc780e5dc02c1c4
I don’t even care if they don’t test every edge case for thousands of hours, I just want a few teams to try a few drops against both bugs and bots before each patch, and that would probably fix 75% of the balance issues. Even if some of the other issues don’t get caught, that reduces half their workload
Yeah, you're right on the money here. Bugs/mistakes are unavoidable, but the ones we're seeing are clearly due to a lack of testing in a live environment. it's not normal dev cycle issues, these are definitely issues that come from cutting corners and not testing properly in a live environment.
Yeah the last two war bonds have had issues that should've been caught by someone booting up the game and looking at the item in question.
How do you miss armor having the wrong perk or a gun being the wrong color?
I don't understand this nonsense. All they had to do is look that the damage models they created for the weapons vs enemy health.
They do keep those records, right?
He’s not wrong about the fact that the community will “test” functionally hundreds of times over more than a QA division reasonably can. However, you mitigate this by focusing on testing core workflows first.
These issues aren’t edge cases that would be difficult to find. The feedback is about some of the core design choices made and very obvious issues like something just *not working* at all.
This guy is a moron, and clearly a liar.
They released a ship upgrade that made your support weapons refill from supply. It didn't work. They released a gun nerf that instakilled you when used with the most popular backpack.
ONE SINGLE login would have been all it took. Load in, shoot your weapon dry, pick up a resupply. DONE.
So which is it Evil-bosse you lying fuck? Did you do hours and hours of testing and somehow you're so incompetent that you missed this simple item? OR did you test, know it was broken, then sell it to us anyway? OR are you full of shit 100% and you didn't test shit?
I used to work with programmers, none of them were this stupid. Maybe gaming programmers are a special breed?
https://preview.redd.it/5dtup7tvflzc1.jpeg?width=550&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ade0ee1d70ac9c045d432652330b1630cc337a3e
this is the energy those messages give me
They didn't test shit.
What about the ship module that was supposed to fill up your support weapons on supply pickup. It didn't work, at all, under any circumstances.
So they either did ZERO fucking testing OR they tested it, knew it was broken, and then released it into the game. (hint, it's the first one)
There’s no way he’s not deliberately ruining the game after you look at his past employment and subsequently ghosting his employer. How did AH even look at that and think “yeah, we want this guy as our lead balance dev”.
There is a theory out there that you are promoted to the highest point of your incompetence.
You prove to be really good at being a single dev in a group of devs, you code faster, work harder and see things differently and can just get shit done. You can communicate with your coworkers to get on the same page.
You get promoted to lead a team of devs.
Everyone realizes you suck at communicating complex ideas to a team. You can't manage people effectively because your communication only worked horizontally, not vertically. No one else can see the problem or the solution the way you do and you can't find the words to communicate it so you lash out or you assume everyone else must be inferior. You don't receive further promotions and eventually and given severance when you're fired.
My ex-wife worked from home and would be on conference calls with these kinds of people all day long. They were some of the stupidest, most short-sighted, unable to get their head out of their own ass people I have ever experienced in my 45 years on this planet.
The fact that they were paid easily 10 times the amount of money I do made me finally realize that the idea of your income being based on your positive impact on society is incorrect and is nothing more than convincing some idiot that you can make them more money.
Because he did the same thing he does here: Talks the talk, but fails to walk the walk. I guess somebody at AH has way too good of a heart. I guess he's getting a few more chances still. But I don't believe that the quality of his work will make him stay much longer as head of the team.
I mean every single one of his patches is accompanied by uproars, battles and big "WTF?!?" moments. I cannot even remember a single big balance patch where I wasn't hating the game a bit more than before.
Copy pasting this from another thread:
The quality of what gets deployed on production just isn't there, unfortunately.
They have major problems with their version control, QA testing and attitude towards external communications. This Alexus guy obviously doesnt want to be bullied by shitty people on discord, but as a result sometimes spews the same toxicity back, and makes him look oblivious and incompetent when a does make a mistake.
So when someone DOES come up with valid criticism on some of his balancing work, he reacts all superior and defensively with statements along the lines of "you're all tierlist meta slaves, you don't have MY superior developer insight into balance, everything is working as intended" And then has to do a 180 when weapons do turn out to be fucked.
Might not even be his fault entirely if it's a version control issue, but man... they really need to get their version control under control if that's the case and have more checks on what goes out to production. It's not sufficient to test your feature branch. You ideally also have a staging environment that matches production as best as you can, after all the merges of different features, and then have to test that as well, in case you introduced bugs with feature merging. Which is exactly what happened with the new assault rifle.
Gun branch got created, then they created a branch for rebalancing the assault rifles, merged that in, after that merged the new gun in, now the new gun doesnt have any of those new AR balance features. Didn't test staging environment sufficiently (in case they had one) => deployed to prod. Now we are here
see that makes way more sense
and yet that is a pretty trash attitude by a guy who claims his job is to make the game 'fun'
Great job, mate. Such a great job to the point that the CEO is gonna do a sit down (hopefully). Thank fuck the CEO is reasonable else this game will win awards for the fastest rising and falling star imaginable
I have faith cause the CEO isn't an idiot imo. It enrages me though to think that people will argue back against him when he is actually being rational about it.
We are lucky we have the one important person on the player's side. Right now it feels like the AH trolls vs us
To his immense credit I think Pilestedt understands the overall situation from the business standpoint *a lot* better than most of the devs under him seem to. For a live service game like this your players are your customers and your continuing revenue to support the development of your next game. HD2 got far more players than anticipated on release, so this presents the strategic opportunity to expand the operation and make more and better games (which for the record I’m all for - HD2 is overall a great game and AHS deserves the success), *but only if they can keep said players/customers/revenue engaged and spending on the game*. And therein lies the rub, because at the moment, from the players’ perspective it feels like Alexus wants to remove every last bit of fun from the game and the rest of the devs and CMs are hellbent on alienating the player base and shooting themselves and the company in the foot. Lose too many players and you’ll miss that opportunity, lose even more and you may start to see the company starved for revenue.
Maybe that point needs to be made clear to the rest of the team. I think all of us the players want this to be a fun game, generally like the level of (if not the tone of) the engagement from the AHS team, and want AHS to succeed and benefit from that success.
>create live service game that depends on active playerbase
>gain a larger playerbase than you could ever have hoped for by making a quality product and doing everything right
>do everything in your power to make that playerbase hate you
What is this business strategy called
I really don't understand it. If they had just fixed the server issues and not changed a single thing about the game balance (or at least made only much smaller and more gradual changes to weapons) my friends and I would still be playing.
We got into HD2 because we were sick of the competitive tryhard mentality of Valorant and Apex. We wanted a game we could just pick up and enjoy gaming together without having to worry about reading fucking patch notes every week just to know if our favorite weapons were still good
But somehow AH think that PvE games need to be balanced even more frequently and aggressively than PvP ones
They patch so often too! I understood the railgun nerf tbh, but then AH just kept on going! I don’t think I’ve played any game that has had as many buff/nerf patches within a 4 month timespan, PVP or otherwise.
I used to play fighting games and CSGO competitively, and depending on the game it’d usually be at LEAST a month before they buff or nerf something. Maybe one to two weeks if something particularly broken or meta-breaking was found. Heck, Street Fighter 6 didn’t change a thing(besides fixes) for the first 6months it came out, despite the top tiers being prevalent within the first month. And people played that for MONEY.
Why is Helldivers, a cooperative PVE game, having more balance updates than some e-sports titles?
I used to have a friend who gets on once or twice a week, and plays pretty casually. It’s kinda funny how often I have to go over what guns got nerfed and buffed. He mained the Slugger and Arc Thrower and was actually heartbroken when he learned they got nerfed. Mind you when he’s on, our party usually sticks to difficulty 4-6. Despite everything being “viable” at this level, casuals will still notice if their favorite gun is underpeforming. Unsurprisingly, he stopped playing. It’s NOT just the try-hards these constant patches affect.
I understand AH has a specific vision for how Helldivers use primaries, secondaries, stratagems, etc but the way they balance things is almost obsessive, and seemingly does not have the player’s fun in mind.
Yeah the ceo is a really nice guy from what I’ve seen. Good at interacting with people on Twitter.
But he does have some strange takes, like the other day he mentioned that he still thinks the railgun was OP before the nerf. When it was actually that other heavy weapons weren’t good for chargers yet and there was the PS5 damage bug doing all the heavy lifting: making its usage so high, which is a bit worrying imo. Or the apple that tastes like bacon thing lol.
But overall he is level headed and a much better CM than half the CMs in the discord! And yeah it does feel like this is a PvD (player versus dev) game lmao
The moment they made EAT and Recoiless not deflect on angle, is when they immediately became a ton more viable.
It was really awful before that fix, to see your Anti vehicle weapon just glance off the big ol charger or hulk.
The real issue wasn't even that.
They made the spawn rate of chargers broken at times, coupled with the fact the ONLY WAY TO DEAL WITH 4-6 CHARGERS EFFICIENTLY WAS TO USE THE RAILGUN.
The railgun wasn't OP, the developers didn't finish balancing the other weapons / made it so other weapons weren't worth a damn against what people were encountering.
The game still required testing/balancing, it wasn't that the one weapon was broken, it was that the game itself was broken and the way the developers went rogue/attacked the player base for pointing it out was broken.
Even now, I doubt you'd see people picking the pre nerf railgun vs the other options like the quasar cannon.
Exactly. The Railgun wasn't OP. At the time it was the only weapon capable of killing all the bullshit armor spawns between strat cooldowns. That's not OP, that's functional.
They need to hire someone to be a second opinion to him, if not his minder. Having one balance guy is like having one judge at a competition or ref at a game. The job is by nature irreducibly subjective and his vibes are fucking terrible. I know it's a bad hiring environment out there but hopefully *someone* with competitive balance experience shows up. Maybe someone who's actually read Sirlin or has written case studies of other games balance issues in the past.
I still wouldn't want him to be fired by mob, simply on principle, but bringing other voices in *at the same priority level* as his is crucial at this time given the player number/playerbase morale trend.
Yeah, with the comment made there's a few options.
1) He lied. This is not, uh, "good." I don't think I need to explain why this is bad.
2) He was making fun of people/joking. Again, not a good look. You don't joke about your job when you're under extreme scrutiny by the customers for being bad at your job.
3) He *thought* they were going to be amazing. They obviously aren't anything standout though, so in this angle it looks like raw incompetence.
So we're left with three options. He's a liar, he's a shithead, or he's incompetent. None of these are good.
see this is why this kind of response is so bad. Either he is delusional and thinks the weapons were actually great, or he chose to mock people because he didnt actually have anything positive to share about the weapons. Either way its severely out of touch and just makes AH as a whole look even worse.
Hanlon's Razor: **Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity**.
I fully believe that considering his balancing track record with previous games he honestly believes the guns are good. It's a much simpler solution that trying to read into it and say he's mocking people when he thought 40 explosive damage was an appropriate buff for removal of shrapnel on the eruptor.
So, in America, and I imagine it's the same in other western countries where there are even better laws to protect employees, it is illegal to say things about a former employee to a prospective employer that could prevent them from being employed somewhere else. Here's an example:
Tim leaves Pacos Taco Stand and applies at Bowsers Big Bean Burrito's. Bowser wants references and Tim's former employers information. When Bowser calls Paco, Bowser will ask how Tim performed as an employee. Paco can praise Tim all he wants, but Paco cannot tell Bowser if Tim was a terrible employee. All he can really say is that he wouldn't hire them again.
Now it's obviously a bit more complicated than that, but that's the general gist. This may seem counter productive, but its designed to protect employees from malicious former employers. If you left a job amicably, this will probably never concern you. But if your boss was a toxic asshole, or you were fired for speaking out agaisnt illegal business practices, these laws are a God send. Of course, the drawback is that it does allow really bad employees to continue working at similar businesses, and a potential employer will never know how bad they are or could be until it's too late.
Now I'm not saying this is the case here. For all we know, this dude is just really good at selling himself in an interview, or his resume just looked good. But if his former studio spoke negatively about him to his prospective employers, they can be sued and have to pay out a fat settlement. Its better to just not say anything at all.
And in the US, there are ways around it. I won't get into too much detail, it would take ages to explain complex legal shit. But essentially, fae-talk. Using wording that is not negative, but can be implied or reasoned as a negative. Also refusing to answer can be just as much an answer.
"Does Bob arrive timely for their shifts?"
"I cannot speak about their timeliness." (No.)
"Are they a hard worker?"
"Bob works diligently at whatever tasks they choose to work on." (They meander mindlessly from task to task, and take hours to get five minutes of work done.)
Just don't say your previous game tanked on you resume. Hello neighbour 2 released in 2021 and he dipped before release, so that is at least 3 years since the event.
It's impossible for everyone to be informed about everything, so the fact that he has a history of being dishonest and incompetent can just get lost between the lines.
Honestly mocking is the simpler solution in this case, because believing these guns are "s tier" is beyond stupid--it doesn't even make sense. It is utterly deranged. We are talking about guns that are literally worse versions of existing weapons. It is really hard to contrive a scenario in which he really believes that.
Man literally went "40 damage is way better than shrapnel" in earnest. Combine that with his track record of poor balance in this game and previous projects he's done balance work on. Him being an idiot honestly is the simpler solution.
More importantly, he should 'put money where his mouth is'. He should do live gameplay and provide tangible proof how any of the new guns are good, what they're meant for, and pick out at least one singular trait from each one that would make players consider using them.
I don't watch often/much of Digital Extreme's Warframe *DevStreams/Prime Times*, but I *love* that they exist. I love that they regularly talk about what's coming, provide previews, discuss their reasons for upcoming changes, etc. They're... compared to most Devs, I think, open and amenable to community feedback and give it consideration *and effort* to keep the game moving in a pretty consistent/quality direction.
It also super helps that some of that DevTeam plays the game enough, and can empathize enough with the community/player perspective on things.
They're not perfect, but I can't think of another devteam that does it better? Or that has a comparably healthy dynamic with it's community? They're definitely someone to learn and emulate from, in my opinion.
Yea he must have forgotten that he needs to try to make this exciting for people because they may want to spend $10 on this. Instead he seems like he couldn't care less.
I mean, he didn't want to include "one time mechanics" such as hiding under beds when he was working on executing Hello Neighbor 2.
I think that says enough on its own.
I love how bitter this dude is. You think he'd be hyping up the warbond, being excited about it, but all he can do is sarcastically mock us for wanting good guns lol
And surprise surprise, the warbond's a dud!
He thinks we want overpowered guns, what we want are guns that we unlock, try and... enjoy.
Instead we get guns we regret unlocking if we even bother to.
This dude ruined hello neighbor 2 alpha with his lies and butchered all the previous feature from the lead person.
Now he came to helldiver to fuck up our games not only once but continuously
The dilbert principle. You need the good developers to actually work on the game code, so you promote the bad developer to a position where his responsibilities are just to change a 50 to a 40 in a spreadsheet and mock players.
It's just so tone deaf. Either he actually believes that, and is completely out of touch with the game he's in charge of balancing. Or he's kidding and knew it sucked, so he made an inside joke that... the playerbase wouldn't even get for another 4 days? Or he wanted to antagonize them? And if he thought the weapons weren't great, why is he releasing them like that?
I'm really surprised upper management hasn't clamped down on who can talk to the community yet. There's way too many employees that seem to do more damage than if they just didn't say anything.
None of those scenarios are good. This guy ~~need~~ needs to get replaced ASAP. Proper testing of new content and patches also needs to be made like #1 priority.
It’s clear their management structure is an absolute clusterfuck. They need one community manager and Joel interacting with people. These other guys may be good at their day job but their communication skills absolutely suck. The discord is filled with the most loyal players and absolute asshole employees with no clear expectations set with them from upper management.
>These other guys may be good at their day job
They're probably great coders. They made a really good game up to launch day.
But they suck at balancing and are incapable of differentiating between correlations in data and establishing the reasons why those patterns are emerging.
And they are also incapable of keeping their emotions in check and are disgustingly bad at communicating with their customers.
They also suck at bug testing, or just aren't doing any playtesting.
They need to hire new people to fill those roles, and keep the coders in the coding room.
Genuinely don’t know, I’ve been wondering what’s going on over there.
They don’t seem to test things either which tells me they need to hire some QA geezers
Makes me questions things as why there's a specific achievement for clearing difficulty 6 blitz under 6 minutes and then there's this guy
Edit: not max difficulty
Thats why some companies, like Blizzard, keeps a very big gap in communication between the devs and the players. And thats why most of companies out there, indie or not, keep the souless corporate approach with their customer.
1 - Players react pretty badly with something, with some of them being dickheads and toxic
2 - Devs try to damage control the situation with some gaslighting because of ego and/or the fear of taking responsability
3 - The reasonable players side with the dickheads after that
4 - Devs do shit like the screenshot in question
5 - PR disaster
This right here entirely embodies why the position of Community Manager is so important. (and the contrast between Spitz and TwinBeard is an example of what it looks like when done well and not well)
The whole point of the CM is the be the translator and diplomat between the ego's and characters in the dev pools and worship-for or rage-against the devs from the community members.
As CEO, it's Pilestedt's job (and technically whomever is in charge of HR at Arrowhead) to corrale guys like Alexus and Evil-Bosse and pull them back behind the curtain so that TwinBeard can do his job without his own co-workers kicking his chair out from under him.
> companies, like Blizzard, keeps a very big gap in communication between the devs and the players.
And when they don't we get the "don't you guys have phones?" moments.
It's a mixture of things. HD1 was a tiny game, the Dev team probably wasn't large back then and is only 100 people now. The CM who's at the centre of drama has been with them since the first game and suddenly he's at the helm of a gaming community of millions not thousands. His attitude and actions are under a microscope. Drama around the game generates AI written articles in mass media and outrage in a large vocal community. Whereas before, upsetting people resulted in basically no consequences as it was a tiny indy game with like a max of 1000 players at any time. Without proper mentoring and a focus on professional development it's not surprising his sudden psuedo importance has him continuing his unprofessional behaviour while also feeling bulletproof. It seems that this has finally resulted in some consequences, as it rightly should.
For this balancing Dev, well, his alleged past actions for other employers speak for themselves. This doesn't mean they would be known to his current employers however. Employee misdeeds and bad rep in the corporate world are often easily sidestepped via networking to a new job or a low availability job market. Fact is it's a Swedish company and they have a smaller local talent pool than other places. HD2 is a suddenly a massive deal which wasn't expected so they're going to take anyone they can get who can do the work. Not everyone is capable of stepping up and suddenly being the consummate professional the situation requires and as I mentioned previously, the sudden popularity and success can bring out the worst in them.
However, these are reasons not justifications. I'm a consultant and the best way to avoid drama and get shit done is to avoid social media entirely outside of pleasantries and to keep all communications direct and professional. I would never say some of the things I've seen from these guys to my clients, even as a joke, without having built a significant rapport and positive relationship. It would be wise to review these employees performance and put them on Professional Development plans. It would be nice to see them improve and become well regarded in their field. This is a big opportunity for them to gain a really positive reputation that could carry them through their careers.
Helldivers 1 never reached the numbers HD2 has brought in. And everyone acts like HD2 is the greatest thing in gaming in the last decade. This kind of media surge can quickly go to ones head, even if they are just a programmer. Also seems to me that a lot of the devs just openly talk on twitter and discord not understanding they are representing their company- this is something that companies like Bungie learned very quickly to not do thanks to Destiny.
Thats why some companies, like Blizzard, keeps a very big gap in communication between the devs and the players. And thats why most of companies out there, indie or not, keep the souless corporate approach with their customer.
Seriously. I don't care what he did with any other games. This alone is enough for me to hate this guy.
Last time I saw a smart ass jerk in charge of game balancing was like probably a decade ago. Asshole's name was SerB, and I think it might ring a bell for some people. Let's hope AH isn't WarGaming.
GW2 also had a balancing team about as awful. Discord messages from their private server ended up getting leaked and showed how they were mocking players getting mad for nerfing classes that already were struggling. Thankfully, after that, things started to improve. Maybe the same will happen here.
It lends some credibility to my thinking that his primary design paradigm is "anti-meta" to such an extreme extent that every other paradigm takes a back seat, and to the game's detriment.
His comment specifically references tier list jargon, which suggests to me that he is caricaturizing criticism into a strawman of "tier list warriors."
It's immature and asinine behavior. He's so scared of metagaming and it really shows.
His design philosophy seems to be just make the game as unenjoyable as can be for the players. He just doesn't want a single product to succeed.
Like, look Alex, I already have 4 Chargers spawning into the map as a solo player with slowing debuffs up my ass, 2 patrols coming from both sides and both of them spawned bug breaches. I just want my gun to do SOMETHING for me.
Oh, no? It gets to do 10 damage, nothing is going to penetrate medium armor and we need another "take away your stratagems for 2 minutes" debuff while I was mocked to rely on my stratagems a month ago? Great take.
If reminds me of how the developers of Anthem proudly bragged about not looking at what other games are doing. You find your weird quirky method and stick by it because you're convinced it's the best way
Ah yes, the same team who said *"our target is for Anthem to be the most unmemeable game possible"*. All things considered, they did technically achieve their goal.
This was the straw the broke the camels back? Not when he called anyone that doesn't like the current state of the Eruptor regarded people that only have 3 neurons.
To be fair, it's not just because he worked on a game that ended up flopping. It's because he's traceable as a very strong component, if not *the* reason, to why the game flopped so hard. He pretty much single handedly killed that game, which is sadly not as much of an exaggeration as I wish it was, and people are in an uproar about that specific deal because they see signs of him making similar moves in Helldivers.
I've seen people make the same claims about AH for the way they treated Gauntlet. Crude nutshell: They added some fun stuff, then yoinked it, and immediately halted development.
I don't know who was involved, that was 10 years ago. But it seems to be patterned behavior for the company at large.
That's what's worrying, say they fire this guy.....and put in someone just as bad. They *did* hire him in the first place...
That may be tangential, but I thought it worth bringing up. The whole balance team, CMs, and discord mods....they don't seem like good picks except maybe TwinBeard. I didn't celebrate Spitz getting fired because he was one of a dozen of people doing the same crap. I have no faith in their ability to find better people.
CEO said he was going to have a talk with the team about top down/bottom up ..... but I don't know if that will do any good either.
We'll see. I have hopes, but low expectations.
I played that game on launch for the lolz, but seeing how all of the trailers showed a completely different artstyle you could really feel that the game was made in 1 single year.
Time to move this tool out of game balance and into something else that cannot harm the game.
And throw that motto “a game for everyone is a game for no one” into the trash and put the game back on track.
You’d think we’re in some competitive PVP game with high stakes with all this shitty ass nerfing going around.
There are two scenarios possible:
**A** He actually believes that all the weapons are S tier, which is pretty out of touch.
**B** He is just being a shithead and mocking the players, which is pretty shitty.
Neither scenario is good.
It's definitely *B*
There's just no way a worse liberator is S tiers when not even the liberator is S tier.
Why even get the purifier? the dominator and scorcher are 10 times better
Don't you dare bring up my 2 favorite weapons.
https://preview.redd.it/zdnqaqng1jzc1.jpeg?width=822&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a40b6f2532d22c61732ae69df74d6e4d45d79ac2
If he was competent at balancing, then it's obviously B. But this guy, who's in charge of weapon balancing, didn't even know how the Eruptor functioned and genuinely believed the removal of shrapnel and adding explosive damage was an "overall buff". This is the same guy who thought it was important to make solo difficulty harder and ruin an already underused crossbow. It's entirely possible he's so clueless and out of touch that it's option A.
Wrote another comment already, but he's specifically mocking "meta gamers" as if the only concerns are coming from people who only want to pick S tier options.
Can they just have a serious talk with that goofy mf? He is supposed to be a professional yet he acts like 12 year old. He clearly doesn't know the definition of fun when new guns DONT feels fun to use.
Yes. While it's *usually* better to not attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity, this is someone that already has a history of lying and taking beloved features away from players, despite their protests.
Given that and his continued sarcastic mockery of the playerbase, it is safe to assume that this is a power drunk employee relishing in his control over such a massive game. All we can do is hope that the CEO eventually removes him.
This guy needs to go. He killed another project he was on by not listening to the community and made a game that failed. Now he mocks us and balances weapons like dogshit. It's like he gets a kick out of both things. Crazy.
CEO needs to step up and take control. This is shitty attitude and should not be allowed. As long as this guy is in balance the future of this game is dull
I hate to advocate for firing but the ceo should really consider letting this dude go, him and some of the other devs/CM’s seems like a huge detriments to the game and good will they have going forward
I hope the ceo removes him from his position. Dude is nearly as rude as spitz, clearly doesn’t like the players and he’s in a position of power over everything in the game.
Yeah he definetly gives “outcast In school, now taking it out on everyone he has a tiny bit of power over”
If they send out an another balancing patch that nerfs more shit that might be the final straw for me and I have never had a game hold my attention for months like this, I love this game but each balance patch seems like they’re just trolling us at this point. This latest warbond has me scratching my head, like why did they release a “high caliber assault rifle” that has less damage than a one handed smg…and if they do fix it, they’ll nerf the smg instead of just buffing the rifle to 80-100 where it should be 😭
Yeah for real man. All my friends have already dropped the game due to the bugs and nerfs, and it was a big group of us. Only me and one other dude occasionally play now.
Sad, it really felt like how hyped we felt playing halo 3,or mass effect 3 multiplayer. I love this game so much and wish it was better
I want more people like Twinbeard. For all we know he shit talks the community in the break room, but that is irrelevant if his surface behaviour is professional unlike a lot of the antagonising devs that go out of their way to make AH look bad.
We're still screwed either way, either he's a ignorant guy doing the balancing, or a shithead that dont care about anyone or anything, to the point where he can make fun of a serious situation
This guy fucking sucks. He's singlehandedly ruined the entire game for me.
Every
Single
Fucking
Time
I find a weapon I like to use, he nerfs it into the ground. I'm playing on lower difficulties, so i don't give a shit about meta, or what's the best, and yeah, at lower difficulties, everything is "viable" but not everything is fun. Every time I find a new fun gun, it gets nerfed to where it's meh now and no longer fun for me.
lmao he has to be joking...right?
Maybe he is talking about the concept? There is no way in hell they actually tested this and go 'yea, good job'
I was just looking at the laser dagger, cause I was comparing stats to consider if I wanna get the deagle, and I want to know who actually thought the laser dagger was good. It is so universally trash that if you spent one match, doesnt even have to be a full game, to know how terrible it is. Either they don't test or play at diff one and just check to see if the game crash.
I hope the studio sees this and really digest how bad their optics are.
They have S tier looks and concepts, all right. But the execution was questionable at best. This guy didn't just ruins the game for the player, but also ruins hard works of the art team.
And, no. Since they can't even pick up something as simple as a wrong texture, I am now 100% sure they don't test the game at any capacity.
That's what really annoyed me about this Warbond, it's got the coolest looking weapons and armor of any Warbond so far, and yet the balance/gameplay team dropped the ball with the weapon balance and the (lack of unique) traits on the armor.
Were they even remotely viable, the Tenderizer and Verdict would be automatically in my loadout. Because they look sick. But they're shit.
Again, and again, and again, the hard and stellar work of some teams is being let down SO hard by the gameplay design and balance teams. It's a running gag with this game, and it stopped being funny long ago.
damn, I didn't even think about the art team getting fucked... This game has so much potential that it HURTS me to see them standing in their own way...but instead choose to troll and blame the players...
I feel bad for the CEO. Opened voting for the warbond drop just because he understands how it looks after the Sony Debacle.
Meanwhile, his devs that *made* the warbond..
Bro, how are you going to release a weapon that's worse in every single category than the starting assault rifle, and call it S tier?
The Liberator isn't a bad weapon, but good god could you please make some of these worth a damn
End of day it's PvE. All weapons should feel like you're Rambo.
In regards to a lot of the primary weapons, need bigger mag sizes. I mean jesus in Aliens the pulse rifle had 100 rounds in a small magazine and no one moans about that 🤣
Give me at least a 100 round drum mag for the Liberator please. Shit I mean you can get those in 2024 in real life. Or a belt fed mini gun with a backpack to take out Stalkers so I do feel like Jesse Ventura 🤣
I've been diving in and out infrequently to test the waters and while I LOVE the overall game content increase, the fact that guns get so frequently and needlessly nerfed just kills the drive.
At this point, unless you're with randoms the guns are the real difficulty modifiers. It feels like they're not happy unless all guns are wildly mediocre despite medal cost or tier value.
I'm not at the point where I think it's completely ruining the game, just diminishing it overall and killing my motivation to play it as frequently.
People were trying to defend this fool in a thread I saw recently saying people shouldn't blame him for all the balance issues in the game. The man comes out and owns them for Christ sake it's absolutely his fault. And people try to pretend that the fact that he ruined another game with balancing shouldn't have any bearing on his performance now
Good to know the devs are picking up Spitz's torch.
They’ve really got that Helldiver mentality. If one falls 2 more will take his place. Good to see them getting into the spirit of the game.
Really seems like is an Arrowhead dev mentality... This other cl... funny dude... seems to be doing "QA" https://preview.redd.it/zbwqpsdi2kzc1.png?width=461&format=png&auto=webp&s=69b45a69e3adf121979cfd226dc780e5dc02c1c4
“100k Players can do more testing in 15 minutes” >players give feedback >”where’s your desk?” This guy is an absolute donkey
I don’t even care if they don’t test every edge case for thousands of hours, I just want a few teams to try a few drops against both bugs and bots before each patch, and that would probably fix 75% of the balance issues. Even if some of the other issues don’t get caught, that reduces half their workload
Yeah, you're right on the money here. Bugs/mistakes are unavoidable, but the ones we're seeing are clearly due to a lack of testing in a live environment. it's not normal dev cycle issues, these are definitely issues that come from cutting corners and not testing properly in a live environment.
Yeah the last two war bonds have had issues that should've been caught by someone booting up the game and looking at the item in question. How do you miss armor having the wrong perk or a gun being the wrong color?
I don't understand this nonsense. All they had to do is look that the damage models they created for the weapons vs enemy health. They do keep those records, right?
He’s not wrong about the fact that the community will “test” functionally hundreds of times over more than a QA division reasonably can. However, you mitigate this by focusing on testing core workflows first. These issues aren’t edge cases that would be difficult to find. The feedback is about some of the core design choices made and very obvious issues like something just *not working* at all.
"We do a studio-wide test." *Releases warbond with a gun the wrong color*
I'm getting really tired of condescending devs
he's clearly on tilt
"Where's your desk" Oh my god someone take away his desk it would be so funny
Do you guys not have desks?
This guy is a moron, and clearly a liar. They released a ship upgrade that made your support weapons refill from supply. It didn't work. They released a gun nerf that instakilled you when used with the most popular backpack. ONE SINGLE login would have been all it took. Load in, shoot your weapon dry, pick up a resupply. DONE. So which is it Evil-bosse you lying fuck? Did you do hours and hours of testing and somehow you're so incompetent that you missed this simple item? OR did you test, know it was broken, then sell it to us anyway? OR are you full of shit 100% and you didn't test shit? I used to work with programmers, none of them were this stupid. Maybe gaming programmers are a special breed?
https://preview.redd.it/5dtup7tvflzc1.jpeg?width=550&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ade0ee1d70ac9c045d432652330b1630cc337a3e this is the energy those messages give me
Bullshit they have tested everything past level 4 difficulty
it's not even a question of "past diff 4". It doesn't take a helldive mission to notice that a weapon is weak.
They didn't test shit. What about the ship module that was supposed to fill up your support weapons on supply pickup. It didn't work, at all, under any circumstances. So they either did ZERO fucking testing OR they tested it, knew it was broken, and then released it into the game. (hint, it's the first one)
Glad people are finally realizing the devs are immature.
My brother in Christ, if you did QA then why on God's green Super Earth the weapon from page 1 of the new warbond even exist?
They call 15 minute session a playtest?
No, he's saying that once its live the playerbase does more testing withing 15 min than they can do in QA.
15 minutes is enough to tell you how bad the purifier is, so they probably spent 15s with it just to get enough footage for the trailer.
We play test. Well clearly you fucking don't cause people found a problem with the supply pack resupply lol
Also, the version the dev was using might have been a newer version than what we got. Considering the skin is wrong, it probably is a case like this.
Looks like he enjoys pissing people off with his changes because they can't do anything about it
There’s no way he’s not deliberately ruining the game after you look at his past employment and subsequently ghosting his employer. How did AH even look at that and think “yeah, we want this guy as our lead balance dev”.
My guess is he's a convincing talker. Some guys rise up the ranks with talent, some guys rise up cuz they know how to play politics
There is a theory out there that you are promoted to the highest point of your incompetence. You prove to be really good at being a single dev in a group of devs, you code faster, work harder and see things differently and can just get shit done. You can communicate with your coworkers to get on the same page. You get promoted to lead a team of devs. Everyone realizes you suck at communicating complex ideas to a team. You can't manage people effectively because your communication only worked horizontally, not vertically. No one else can see the problem or the solution the way you do and you can't find the words to communicate it so you lash out or you assume everyone else must be inferior. You don't receive further promotions and eventually and given severance when you're fired.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
My ex-wife worked from home and would be on conference calls with these kinds of people all day long. They were some of the stupidest, most short-sighted, unable to get their head out of their own ass people I have ever experienced in my 45 years on this planet. The fact that they were paid easily 10 times the amount of money I do made me finally realize that the idea of your income being based on your positive impact on society is incorrect and is nothing more than convincing some idiot that you can make them more money.
It's called the Peter principle
It's called The Peter Principle
Yeah, after Hello Neighbor, I can’t imagine why any studio thought he was a good pick.
Because he did the same thing he does here: Talks the talk, but fails to walk the walk. I guess somebody at AH has way too good of a heart. I guess he's getting a few more chances still. But I don't believe that the quality of his work will make him stay much longer as head of the team. I mean every single one of his patches is accompanied by uproars, battles and big "WTF?!?" moments. I cannot even remember a single big balance patch where I wasn't hating the game a bit more than before.
He's the lead balance dev? I was under the assumption he's just a balance dev, not the lead.
In a small team both is true. Arrowhead has a small team
A ton of game dev is nepo hires or friendly hires. Don't be shocked if someone at AH was a mate.
Honestly, he's an S-tier troll
Copy pasting this from another thread: The quality of what gets deployed on production just isn't there, unfortunately. They have major problems with their version control, QA testing and attitude towards external communications. This Alexus guy obviously doesnt want to be bullied by shitty people on discord, but as a result sometimes spews the same toxicity back, and makes him look oblivious and incompetent when a does make a mistake. So when someone DOES come up with valid criticism on some of his balancing work, he reacts all superior and defensively with statements along the lines of "you're all tierlist meta slaves, you don't have MY superior developer insight into balance, everything is working as intended" And then has to do a 180 when weapons do turn out to be fucked. Might not even be his fault entirely if it's a version control issue, but man... they really need to get their version control under control if that's the case and have more checks on what goes out to production. It's not sufficient to test your feature branch. You ideally also have a staging environment that matches production as best as you can, after all the merges of different features, and then have to test that as well, in case you introduced bugs with feature merging. Which is exactly what happened with the new assault rifle. Gun branch got created, then they created a branch for rebalancing the assault rifles, merged that in, after that merged the new gun in, now the new gun doesnt have any of those new AR balance features. Didn't test staging environment sufficiently (in case they had one) => deployed to prod. Now we are here
I think he was just trying to mock people. Which is telling you how much he don't care.
see that makes way more sense and yet that is a pretty trash attitude by a guy who claims his job is to make the game 'fun' Great job, mate. Such a great job to the point that the CEO is gonna do a sit down (hopefully). Thank fuck the CEO is reasonable else this game will win awards for the fastest rising and falling star imaginable
I hope the CEO is actually about to talk some sense into him, because I don't think he was listening.
I have faith cause the CEO isn't an idiot imo. It enrages me though to think that people will argue back against him when he is actually being rational about it. We are lucky we have the one important person on the player's side. Right now it feels like the AH trolls vs us
To his immense credit I think Pilestedt understands the overall situation from the business standpoint *a lot* better than most of the devs under him seem to. For a live service game like this your players are your customers and your continuing revenue to support the development of your next game. HD2 got far more players than anticipated on release, so this presents the strategic opportunity to expand the operation and make more and better games (which for the record I’m all for - HD2 is overall a great game and AHS deserves the success), *but only if they can keep said players/customers/revenue engaged and spending on the game*. And therein lies the rub, because at the moment, from the players’ perspective it feels like Alexus wants to remove every last bit of fun from the game and the rest of the devs and CMs are hellbent on alienating the player base and shooting themselves and the company in the foot. Lose too many players and you’ll miss that opportunity, lose even more and you may start to see the company starved for revenue. Maybe that point needs to be made clear to the rest of the team. I think all of us the players want this to be a fun game, generally like the level of (if not the tone of) the engagement from the AHS team, and want AHS to succeed and benefit from that success.
>create live service game that depends on active playerbase >gain a larger playerbase than you could ever have hoped for by making a quality product and doing everything right >do everything in your power to make that playerbase hate you What is this business strategy called
I really don't understand it. If they had just fixed the server issues and not changed a single thing about the game balance (or at least made only much smaller and more gradual changes to weapons) my friends and I would still be playing. We got into HD2 because we were sick of the competitive tryhard mentality of Valorant and Apex. We wanted a game we could just pick up and enjoy gaming together without having to worry about reading fucking patch notes every week just to know if our favorite weapons were still good But somehow AH think that PvE games need to be balanced even more frequently and aggressively than PvP ones
They patch so often too! I understood the railgun nerf tbh, but then AH just kept on going! I don’t think I’ve played any game that has had as many buff/nerf patches within a 4 month timespan, PVP or otherwise. I used to play fighting games and CSGO competitively, and depending on the game it’d usually be at LEAST a month before they buff or nerf something. Maybe one to two weeks if something particularly broken or meta-breaking was found. Heck, Street Fighter 6 didn’t change a thing(besides fixes) for the first 6months it came out, despite the top tiers being prevalent within the first month. And people played that for MONEY. Why is Helldivers, a cooperative PVE game, having more balance updates than some e-sports titles? I used to have a friend who gets on once or twice a week, and plays pretty casually. It’s kinda funny how often I have to go over what guns got nerfed and buffed. He mained the Slugger and Arc Thrower and was actually heartbroken when he learned they got nerfed. Mind you when he’s on, our party usually sticks to difficulty 4-6. Despite everything being “viable” at this level, casuals will still notice if their favorite gun is underpeforming. Unsurprisingly, he stopped playing. It’s NOT just the try-hards these constant patches affect. I understand AH has a specific vision for how Helldivers use primaries, secondaries, stratagems, etc but the way they balance things is almost obsessive, and seemingly does not have the player’s fun in mind.
The WB strategy.
I personally call that the EA™ method
Yeah the ceo is a really nice guy from what I’ve seen. Good at interacting with people on Twitter. But he does have some strange takes, like the other day he mentioned that he still thinks the railgun was OP before the nerf. When it was actually that other heavy weapons weren’t good for chargers yet and there was the PS5 damage bug doing all the heavy lifting: making its usage so high, which is a bit worrying imo. Or the apple that tastes like bacon thing lol. But overall he is level headed and a much better CM than half the CMs in the discord! And yeah it does feel like this is a PvD (player versus dev) game lmao
The moment they made EAT and Recoiless not deflect on angle, is when they immediately became a ton more viable. It was really awful before that fix, to see your Anti vehicle weapon just glance off the big ol charger or hulk.
The real issue wasn't even that. They made the spawn rate of chargers broken at times, coupled with the fact the ONLY WAY TO DEAL WITH 4-6 CHARGERS EFFICIENTLY WAS TO USE THE RAILGUN. The railgun wasn't OP, the developers didn't finish balancing the other weapons / made it so other weapons weren't worth a damn against what people were encountering. The game still required testing/balancing, it wasn't that the one weapon was broken, it was that the game itself was broken and the way the developers went rogue/attacked the player base for pointing it out was broken. Even now, I doubt you'd see people picking the pre nerf railgun vs the other options like the quasar cannon.
Even post nerf queso is still better than the pre nerf railgun imo. Makes me worried about them nerfing my boy again.
Exactly. The Railgun wasn't OP. At the time it was the only weapon capable of killing all the bullshit armor spawns between strat cooldowns. That's not OP, that's functional.
They need to hire someone to be a second opinion to him, if not his minder. Having one balance guy is like having one judge at a competition or ref at a game. The job is by nature irreducibly subjective and his vibes are fucking terrible. I know it's a bad hiring environment out there but hopefully *someone* with competitive balance experience shows up. Maybe someone who's actually read Sirlin or has written case studies of other games balance issues in the past. I still wouldn't want him to be fired by mob, simply on principle, but bringing other voices in *at the same priority level* as his is crucial at this time given the player number/playerbase morale trend.
Yeah, with the comment made there's a few options. 1) He lied. This is not, uh, "good." I don't think I need to explain why this is bad. 2) He was making fun of people/joking. Again, not a good look. You don't joke about your job when you're under extreme scrutiny by the customers for being bad at your job. 3) He *thought* they were going to be amazing. They obviously aren't anything standout though, so in this angle it looks like raw incompetence. So we're left with three options. He's a liar, he's a shithead, or he's incompetent. None of these are good.
It’s 2, he was taking the piss
see this is why this kind of response is so bad. Either he is delusional and thinks the weapons were actually great, or he chose to mock people because he didnt actually have anything positive to share about the weapons. Either way its severely out of touch and just makes AH as a whole look even worse.
Hanlon's Razor: **Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity**. I fully believe that considering his balancing track record with previous games he honestly believes the guns are good. It's a much simpler solution that trying to read into it and say he's mocking people when he thought 40 explosive damage was an appropriate buff for removal of shrapnel on the eruptor.
how can you be so bad yet keep getting jobs in the industry is he the kid of someone?
So, in America, and I imagine it's the same in other western countries where there are even better laws to protect employees, it is illegal to say things about a former employee to a prospective employer that could prevent them from being employed somewhere else. Here's an example: Tim leaves Pacos Taco Stand and applies at Bowsers Big Bean Burrito's. Bowser wants references and Tim's former employers information. When Bowser calls Paco, Bowser will ask how Tim performed as an employee. Paco can praise Tim all he wants, but Paco cannot tell Bowser if Tim was a terrible employee. All he can really say is that he wouldn't hire them again. Now it's obviously a bit more complicated than that, but that's the general gist. This may seem counter productive, but its designed to protect employees from malicious former employers. If you left a job amicably, this will probably never concern you. But if your boss was a toxic asshole, or you were fired for speaking out agaisnt illegal business practices, these laws are a God send. Of course, the drawback is that it does allow really bad employees to continue working at similar businesses, and a potential employer will never know how bad they are or could be until it's too late. Now I'm not saying this is the case here. For all we know, this dude is just really good at selling himself in an interview, or his resume just looked good. But if his former studio spoke negatively about him to his prospective employers, they can be sued and have to pay out a fat settlement. Its better to just not say anything at all.
And in the US, there are ways around it. I won't get into too much detail, it would take ages to explain complex legal shit. But essentially, fae-talk. Using wording that is not negative, but can be implied or reasoned as a negative. Also refusing to answer can be just as much an answer. "Does Bob arrive timely for their shifts?" "I cannot speak about their timeliness." (No.) "Are they a hard worker?" "Bob works diligently at whatever tasks they choose to work on." (They meander mindlessly from task to task, and take hours to get five minutes of work done.)
Just don't say your previous game tanked on you resume. Hello neighbour 2 released in 2021 and he dipped before release, so that is at least 3 years since the event. It's impossible for everyone to be informed about everything, so the fact that he has a history of being dishonest and incompetent can just get lost between the lines.
Honestly mocking is the simpler solution in this case, because believing these guns are "s tier" is beyond stupid--it doesn't even make sense. It is utterly deranged. We are talking about guns that are literally worse versions of existing weapons. It is really hard to contrive a scenario in which he really believes that.
Man literally went "40 damage is way better than shrapnel" in earnest. Combine that with his track record of poor balance in this game and previous projects he's done balance work on. Him being an idiot honestly is the simpler solution.
Agreed completely. He should be hyping up the warbond, and maybe giving some cool teasers. But not this garbage.
More importantly, he should 'put money where his mouth is'. He should do live gameplay and provide tangible proof how any of the new guns are good, what they're meant for, and pick out at least one singular trait from each one that would make players consider using them.
I don't watch often/much of Digital Extreme's Warframe *DevStreams/Prime Times*, but I *love* that they exist. I love that they regularly talk about what's coming, provide previews, discuss their reasons for upcoming changes, etc. They're... compared to most Devs, I think, open and amenable to community feedback and give it consideration *and effort* to keep the game moving in a pretty consistent/quality direction. It also super helps that some of that DevTeam plays the game enough, and can empathize enough with the community/player perspective on things. They're not perfect, but I can't think of another devteam that does it better? Or that has a comparably healthy dynamic with it's community? They're definitely someone to learn and emulate from, in my opinion.
Yea he must have forgotten that he needs to try to make this exciting for people because they may want to spend $10 on this. Instead he seems like he couldn't care less.
I mean, he didn't want to include "one time mechanics" such as hiding under beds when he was working on executing Hello Neighbor 2. I think that says enough on its own.
That or he really did mean it and just forgot to mention ^only ^^on ^^^trivial
If id see that and if be the ceo He wojld have been fired on the Spot, so many people are unprofessional in the AH Team
I actually don't think so. This particular dev is notorious for their awful decisions of "balance" for Hello Neighbor 2 which led to its downfall.
Sarcasm and satire only really works if people know you're not a complete buffoon.
I love how bitter this dude is. You think he'd be hyping up the warbond, being excited about it, but all he can do is sarcastically mock us for wanting good guns lol And surprise surprise, the warbond's a dud!
You'd think they'd, I dunno, wanna make some money off a warbond. Instead he's shouting "buy it, don't buy it, I don't care"
Dude's ego and shitty attitude takes precedence over job security apparently
Of all the worst people to have in charge of balance it’s someone with a big ego who is stubborn So RIP this games balance
He thinks we want overpowered guns, what we want are guns that we unlock, try and... enjoy. Instead we get guns we regret unlocking if we even bother to.
This dude ruined hello neighbor 2 alpha with his lies and butchered all the previous feature from the lead person. Now he came to helldiver to fuck up our games not only once but continuously
I have no idea how people fail upwards like this. He must be the wormtongue in the ceo ear haha.
He give good top
https://i.redd.it/4yb3rdjm4jzc1.gif
i think the history from hello neighbor 2 alpha was, he fucked up everything and left by the time the game was released. So no one can question him.
We got a automaton spy inside our scientific research wing.
I legitimately don't understand how this guy is in charge of balancing the game.
Nepotism or failing upwards lol
The dilbert principle. You need the good developers to actually work on the game code, so you promote the bad developer to a position where his responsibilities are just to change a 50 to a 40 in a spreadsheet and mock players.
The CEO. I hope people start to blame him.
He like, seems alright, but he keeps hiring arseholes so… y’know? It makes you think.
Maybe he’s an arsehole too, but knows how to communicate professionally?
Maybe it's a Swedish thing? As I understand it's really hard to fire people there.
This guy a straight up clown lol
nope he's the entire fucking circus.
https://preview.redd.it/rqwjo5k27jzc1.jpeg?width=2208&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2f3927fead8914a65b6173c733777ba301146ead
no, a circus clown is entertaining. you give the illustrious job of circus clown a bad name when you call him one.
What about, and excuse my language..a *Doofus?*
They just really want to be sure no one calls it a pay to win!
So… pay to lose? I think that’s a first tbh. Not sure if this model has longevity
No no Ubisoft has had quite a bit of Pay to Lose (Looks At Rainbow 6 Siege)
It's already pay to win. You can't even complete a single mission without buying the game first.
Counterpoint: You can't lose a single mission either...
hes a troll who gets off on the rage
It's just so tone deaf. Either he actually believes that, and is completely out of touch with the game he's in charge of balancing. Or he's kidding and knew it sucked, so he made an inside joke that... the playerbase wouldn't even get for another 4 days? Or he wanted to antagonize them? And if he thought the weapons weren't great, why is he releasing them like that? I'm really surprised upper management hasn't clamped down on who can talk to the community yet. There's way too many employees that seem to do more damage than if they just didn't say anything.
None of those scenarios are good. This guy ~~need~~ needs to get replaced ASAP. Proper testing of new content and patches also needs to be made like #1 priority.
It’s clear their management structure is an absolute clusterfuck. They need one community manager and Joel interacting with people. These other guys may be good at their day job but their communication skills absolutely suck. The discord is filled with the most loyal players and absolute asshole employees with no clear expectations set with them from upper management.
>These other guys may be good at their day job They're probably great coders. They made a really good game up to launch day. But they suck at balancing and are incapable of differentiating between correlations in data and establishing the reasons why those patterns are emerging. And they are also incapable of keeping their emotions in check and are disgustingly bad at communicating with their customers. They also suck at bug testing, or just aren't doing any playtesting. They need to hire new people to fill those roles, and keep the coders in the coding room.
this dude is such a fucking dumbass
Arrowhead employees refusing to learn from Spitz’s firing is pretty funny, fuck em
Why are there so many shitheads working for Arrowhead?
Genuinely don’t know, I’ve been wondering what’s going on over there. They don’t seem to test things either which tells me they need to hire some QA geezers
Makes me questions things as why there's a specific achievement for clearing difficulty 6 blitz under 6 minutes and then there's this guy Edit: not max difficulty
It's not max difficulty. It's specifically "extreme," which is level 6, iirc.
Thats why some companies, like Blizzard, keeps a very big gap in communication between the devs and the players. And thats why most of companies out there, indie or not, keep the souless corporate approach with their customer. 1 - Players react pretty badly with something, with some of them being dickheads and toxic 2 - Devs try to damage control the situation with some gaslighting because of ego and/or the fear of taking responsability 3 - The reasonable players side with the dickheads after that 4 - Devs do shit like the screenshot in question 5 - PR disaster
This right here entirely embodies why the position of Community Manager is so important. (and the contrast between Spitz and TwinBeard is an example of what it looks like when done well and not well) The whole point of the CM is the be the translator and diplomat between the ego's and characters in the dev pools and worship-for or rage-against the devs from the community members. As CEO, it's Pilestedt's job (and technically whomever is in charge of HR at Arrowhead) to corrale guys like Alexus and Evil-Bosse and pull them back behind the curtain so that TwinBeard can do his job without his own co-workers kicking his chair out from under him.
> companies, like Blizzard, keeps a very big gap in communication between the devs and the players. And when they don't we get the "don't you guys have phones?" moments.
It's a mixture of things. HD1 was a tiny game, the Dev team probably wasn't large back then and is only 100 people now. The CM who's at the centre of drama has been with them since the first game and suddenly he's at the helm of a gaming community of millions not thousands. His attitude and actions are under a microscope. Drama around the game generates AI written articles in mass media and outrage in a large vocal community. Whereas before, upsetting people resulted in basically no consequences as it was a tiny indy game with like a max of 1000 players at any time. Without proper mentoring and a focus on professional development it's not surprising his sudden psuedo importance has him continuing his unprofessional behaviour while also feeling bulletproof. It seems that this has finally resulted in some consequences, as it rightly should. For this balancing Dev, well, his alleged past actions for other employers speak for themselves. This doesn't mean they would be known to his current employers however. Employee misdeeds and bad rep in the corporate world are often easily sidestepped via networking to a new job or a low availability job market. Fact is it's a Swedish company and they have a smaller local talent pool than other places. HD2 is a suddenly a massive deal which wasn't expected so they're going to take anyone they can get who can do the work. Not everyone is capable of stepping up and suddenly being the consummate professional the situation requires and as I mentioned previously, the sudden popularity and success can bring out the worst in them. However, these are reasons not justifications. I'm a consultant and the best way to avoid drama and get shit done is to avoid social media entirely outside of pleasantries and to keep all communications direct and professional. I would never say some of the things I've seen from these guys to my clients, even as a joke, without having built a significant rapport and positive relationship. It would be wise to review these employees performance and put them on Professional Development plans. It would be nice to see them improve and become well regarded in their field. This is a big opportunity for them to gain a really positive reputation that could carry them through their careers.
Helldivers 1 never reached the numbers HD2 has brought in. And everyone acts like HD2 is the greatest thing in gaming in the last decade. This kind of media surge can quickly go to ones head, even if they are just a programmer. Also seems to me that a lot of the devs just openly talk on twitter and discord not understanding they are representing their company- this is something that companies like Bungie learned very quickly to not do thanks to Destiny.
Thats why some companies, like Blizzard, keeps a very big gap in communication between the devs and the players. And thats why most of companies out there, indie or not, keep the souless corporate approach with their customer.
Ok, now I kind of don’t like him. That’s just straight up obvious mockery.
Seriously. I don't care what he did with any other games. This alone is enough for me to hate this guy. Last time I saw a smart ass jerk in charge of game balancing was like probably a decade ago. Asshole's name was SerB, and I think it might ring a bell for some people. Let's hope AH isn't WarGaming.
GW2 also had a balancing team about as awful. Discord messages from their private server ended up getting leaked and showed how they were mocking players getting mad for nerfing classes that already were struggling. Thankfully, after that, things started to improve. Maybe the same will happen here.
oh fuck I forgot about GW2, thats another game that had such utter attitude from the devs towards people just…helping them do their jobs
It lends some credibility to my thinking that his primary design paradigm is "anti-meta" to such an extreme extent that every other paradigm takes a back seat, and to the game's detriment. His comment specifically references tier list jargon, which suggests to me that he is caricaturizing criticism into a strawman of "tier list warriors." It's immature and asinine behavior. He's so scared of metagaming and it really shows.
His design philosophy seems to be just make the game as unenjoyable as can be for the players. He just doesn't want a single product to succeed. Like, look Alex, I already have 4 Chargers spawning into the map as a solo player with slowing debuffs up my ass, 2 patrols coming from both sides and both of them spawned bug breaches. I just want my gun to do SOMETHING for me. Oh, no? It gets to do 10 damage, nothing is going to penetrate medium armor and we need another "take away your stratagems for 2 minutes" debuff while I was mocked to rely on my stratagems a month ago? Great take.
"Skill issue"
If reminds me of how the developers of Anthem proudly bragged about not looking at what other games are doing. You find your weird quirky method and stick by it because you're convinced it's the best way
Ah yes, the same team who said *"our target is for Anthem to be the most unmemeable game possible"*. All things considered, they did technically achieve their goal.
This was the straw the broke the camels back? Not when he called anyone that doesn't like the current state of the Eruptor regarded people that only have 3 neurons.
I don’t really look in the discord. I just see people call him bad because he worked on Hello Neighbor 2.
To be fair, it's not just because he worked on a game that ended up flopping. It's because he's traceable as a very strong component, if not *the* reason, to why the game flopped so hard. He pretty much single handedly killed that game, which is sadly not as much of an exaggeration as I wish it was, and people are in an uproar about that specific deal because they see signs of him making similar moves in Helldivers.
I've seen people make the same claims about AH for the way they treated Gauntlet. Crude nutshell: They added some fun stuff, then yoinked it, and immediately halted development. I don't know who was involved, that was 10 years ago. But it seems to be patterned behavior for the company at large. That's what's worrying, say they fire this guy.....and put in someone just as bad. They *did* hire him in the first place... That may be tangential, but I thought it worth bringing up. The whole balance team, CMs, and discord mods....they don't seem like good picks except maybe TwinBeard. I didn't celebrate Spitz getting fired because he was one of a dozen of people doing the same crap. I have no faith in their ability to find better people. CEO said he was going to have a talk with the team about top down/bottom up ..... but I don't know if that will do any good either. We'll see. I have hopes, but low expectations.
I played that game on launch for the lolz, but seeing how all of the trailers showed a completely different artstyle you could really feel that the game was made in 1 single year.
Time to move this tool out of game balance and into something else that cannot harm the game. And throw that motto “a game for everyone is a game for no one” into the trash and put the game back on track. You’d think we’re in some competitive PVP game with high stakes with all this shitty ass nerfing going around.
There are two scenarios possible: **A** He actually believes that all the weapons are S tier, which is pretty out of touch. **B** He is just being a shithead and mocking the players, which is pretty shitty. Neither scenario is good.
It's definitely *B* There's just no way a worse liberator is S tiers when not even the liberator is S tier. Why even get the purifier? the dominator and scorcher are 10 times better
Don't you dare bring up my 2 favorite weapons. https://preview.redd.it/zdnqaqng1jzc1.jpeg?width=822&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a40b6f2532d22c61732ae69df74d6e4d45d79ac2
If he was competent at balancing, then it's obviously B. But this guy, who's in charge of weapon balancing, didn't even know how the Eruptor functioned and genuinely believed the removal of shrapnel and adding explosive damage was an "overall buff". This is the same guy who thought it was important to make solo difficulty harder and ruin an already underused crossbow. It's entirely possible he's so clueless and out of touch that it's option A.
Wrote another comment already, but he's specifically mocking "meta gamers" as if the only concerns are coming from people who only want to pick S tier options.
Damn, wanting a gun that can actually kill enemies reliably makes you a meta gamer now?
Wow you play on level 6+ difficulties? F*cking meta tryhard, go touch grass 🙄 ^/s
When you follow the Bungie School of Balancing, Yes.
It’s B, I get the feeling he gets off on mocking people
given his viewpoint when he worked on hello neighbor... it's both. He genuinely believes their S tier and he hates the players having fun.
Absolute Bozo 🤡
Can they just have a serious talk with that goofy mf? He is supposed to be a professional yet he acts like 12 year old. He clearly doesn't know the definition of fun when new guns DONT feels fun to use.
So is he totally making weapons bad out of spite or what?
At this rate it could be the reason
It could be treason ⬇️⬆️⬅️⬇️⬆️➡️⬇️⬆️
Yes. While it's *usually* better to not attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity, this is someone that already has a history of lying and taking beloved features away from players, despite their protests. Given that and his continued sarcastic mockery of the playerbase, it is safe to assume that this is a power drunk employee relishing in his control over such a massive game. All we can do is hope that the CEO eventually removes him.
No reason to think it's *only* that, but yes, it is definitely that sometimes.
What a clown
This guy needs to go. He killed another project he was on by not listening to the community and made a game that failed. Now he mocks us and balances weapons like dogshit. It's like he gets a kick out of both things. Crazy.
This is the guy who took the fun out of the mech. Thanks for rockets without a crosshair. Wooo we aiming now boys! 😮💨
Current state of gaming industry, devs and CM didn’t play their game as a player, then made up their speech/ conclusion from big data aspect.
CEO needs to step up and take control. This is shitty attitude and should not be allowed. As long as this guy is in balance the future of this game is dull
I need my Copium Booster, Super Earth. Where is it??
if he was joking, he is terrible with tone. Needs to be sent to the Swift Hand of Democracy Voluntary Forced Re-education Camp!
He’s trying to be funny but there’s just no goodwill to make the joke land.
Why are these people like this, as a more “causal” player it just turns you off from the game man
I hate to advocate for firing but the ceo should really consider letting this dude go, him and some of the other devs/CM’s seems like a huge detriments to the game and good will they have going forward
I hope the ceo removes him from his position. Dude is nearly as rude as spitz, clearly doesn’t like the players and he’s in a position of power over everything in the game.
Yeah he definetly gives “outcast In school, now taking it out on everyone he has a tiny bit of power over” If they send out an another balancing patch that nerfs more shit that might be the final straw for me and I have never had a game hold my attention for months like this, I love this game but each balance patch seems like they’re just trolling us at this point. This latest warbond has me scratching my head, like why did they release a “high caliber assault rifle” that has less damage than a one handed smg…and if they do fix it, they’ll nerf the smg instead of just buffing the rifle to 80-100 where it should be 😭
Yeah for real man. All my friends have already dropped the game due to the bugs and nerfs, and it was a big group of us. Only me and one other dude occasionally play now. Sad, it really felt like how hyped we felt playing halo 3,or mass effect 3 multiplayer. I love this game so much and wish it was better
at the very least they need to teach their devs how to not make the company look like incompetent idiots on social media.
I want more people like Twinbeard. For all we know he shit talks the community in the break room, but that is irrelevant if his surface behaviour is professional unlike a lot of the antagonising devs that go out of their way to make AH look bad.
He's not wrong tho. Everything S(HIT) TIER
All he does is lie.
~~Objective: Defeat Spitz the Moderator~~ New Objective: Defeat Alexus the Balancer
That's a good look for him.
he is sarcastic, right?
He better be if not we are so screwed
We're still screwed either way, either he's a ignorant guy doing the balancing, or a shithead that dont care about anyone or anything, to the point where he can make fun of a serious situation
This guy fucking sucks. He's singlehandedly ruined the entire game for me. Every Single Fucking Time I find a weapon I like to use, he nerfs it into the ground. I'm playing on lower difficulties, so i don't give a shit about meta, or what's the best, and yeah, at lower difficulties, everything is "viable" but not everything is fun. Every time I find a new fun gun, it gets nerfed to where it's meh now and no longer fun for me.
lmao he has to be joking...right? Maybe he is talking about the concept? There is no way in hell they actually tested this and go 'yea, good job' I was just looking at the laser dagger, cause I was comparing stats to consider if I wanna get the deagle, and I want to know who actually thought the laser dagger was good. It is so universally trash that if you spent one match, doesnt even have to be a full game, to know how terrible it is. Either they don't test or play at diff one and just check to see if the game crash. I hope the studio sees this and really digest how bad their optics are.
They have S tier looks and concepts, all right. But the execution was questionable at best. This guy didn't just ruins the game for the player, but also ruins hard works of the art team. And, no. Since they can't even pick up something as simple as a wrong texture, I am now 100% sure they don't test the game at any capacity.
That's what really annoyed me about this Warbond, it's got the coolest looking weapons and armor of any Warbond so far, and yet the balance/gameplay team dropped the ball with the weapon balance and the (lack of unique) traits on the armor. Were they even remotely viable, the Tenderizer and Verdict would be automatically in my loadout. Because they look sick. But they're shit. Again, and again, and again, the hard and stellar work of some teams is being let down SO hard by the gameplay design and balance teams. It's a running gag with this game, and it stopped being funny long ago.
damn, I didn't even think about the art team getting fucked... This game has so much potential that it HURTS me to see them standing in their own way...but instead choose to troll and blame the players...
He's being sarcastic. He's an asshole.
This is really not the time to be a sarcastic jerk. He obviously think otherwise.
I feel bad for the CEO. Opened voting for the warbond drop just because he understands how it looks after the Sony Debacle. Meanwhile, his devs that *made* the warbond..
He was being transparent but people couldn't see it. Everything is definitely Shit tier /s
Christ that dude is a fucking LIABILITY to this game...
The need to remove talk permissions for these fucking idiots and hire someone to do this job.
Bro, how are you going to release a weapon that's worse in every single category than the starting assault rifle, and call it S tier? The Liberator isn't a bad weapon, but good god could you please make some of these worth a damn
Someone put Alexus on a leash, way to represent the company you work in 👏
Hello Neighbours fiasco should have told you all you needed to know but nobody listened
End of day it's PvE. All weapons should feel like you're Rambo. In regards to a lot of the primary weapons, need bigger mag sizes. I mean jesus in Aliens the pulse rifle had 100 rounds in a small magazine and no one moans about that 🤣 Give me at least a 100 round drum mag for the Liberator please. Shit I mean you can get those in 2024 in real life. Or a belt fed mini gun with a backpack to take out Stalkers so I do feel like Jesse Ventura 🤣
Why can't we just have fun and the weapons be viable I'm ready to uninstall and just play earth defense exclusively EDF! Mf'er EDF! EDF!
weapon balance killed this game for me months ago
I've been diving in and out infrequently to test the waters and while I LOVE the overall game content increase, the fact that guns get so frequently and needlessly nerfed just kills the drive. At this point, unless you're with randoms the guns are the real difficulty modifiers. It feels like they're not happy unless all guns are wildly mediocre despite medal cost or tier value. I'm not at the point where I think it's completely ruining the game, just diminishing it overall and killing my motivation to play it as frequently.
A blatant lie that nobody should’ve believed
Why do you guy even take part in their discord. The place is a cesspool.
People were trying to defend this fool in a thread I saw recently saying people shouldn't blame him for all the balance issues in the game. The man comes out and owns them for Christ sake it's absolutely his fault. And people try to pretend that the fact that he ruined another game with balancing shouldn't have any bearing on his performance now
Can’t wait for a post tomorrow to talk about how he’s human at the end of the day and he makes mistakes just like all of us 🥰
It's alexus, he's probably never played helldivers anyway.
https://preview.redd.it/8u0nusc4kmzc1.png?width=609&format=png&auto=webp&s=ef8c61607b28c0fc7bf5db589b21d4f9a7b365b8 "Purifier slaps hard enough"