Summary
Last year, the repeated nerfs to various weapons and stratagems inHelldivers 2sparked a long debate about game balance within and outside the game’s community. People questioned why nerfing ‘overpowered’ weapons was necessary in a player-versus-environment (PvE) game. After all, the only victims of overpowered strategies in Helldivers 2 are the Terminids, Automatons, and Illuminate.
Arrowhead Studios heeded this feedback, setting out a 60-day update plan in which nerfs were reverted and fun was prioritized in Helldivers 2. The player base responded enthusiastically, and Helldivers 2 has had a relatively smooth time ever since. The live-service title maintains an average of 50,000concurrent playersdaily, an impressive feat a year from launch.
Fun Over Balance
Johan Pilestedt, director of Helldivers 2 and Arrowhead’s former CEO, seems to have fully embraced this new approach to game design. In a talk given by Pilestedt at the ongoing Game Developers Conference (covered byGamesRadar+), the director spoke about the danger of concerning oneself too heavily with game balance.
“Balance is a myth. Fun first, balance later,” Pilestedt said. “Game designers nowadays are obsessed with balance. Balance is 5% of the work that you should be doing. It’s the polishing state of game design. If you start thinking about balance and using that as a method of success, you’re an idiot.”
“Balancing is not game design,” he continued. “Game design is about experience. If you balance out all the chaos, you’ve made an uninteresting game. Balance is the polishing of the object, and if you smooth that out too much, it will just be a non-experience.”
Pilestedt is certainly correct concerning his game’s specific genre, but not considering game balance in player-versus-player experiences would be irresponsible because overpowered strategies often mean one person is having fun while their opponent is frustrated.
You also need multiple viable strategies in a PvE game to prevent everyone from running the same equipment, causing stagnation in the meta. This is probably the 5% required balance that Pilestedt is speaking about.
After surviving a tumultuous first year, Helldivers 2 is set to become a live-service staple in the years to come.
