Balancing has been one of the hottest topics during Helldivers 2‘s rollercoaster lifespan to this point – an endless source of debate and controversy among players, especially whenever Arrowhead’s been seen to deliver more nerfs than buffs. However, the game’s director doesn’t reckon trying to strike a perfect balance is something devs should focus too heavily on, because it’s a “myth”.
These words were said by Johan Pilestedt – currently on sabbatical from Arrowhead as he takes a break before getting stuck into work on the studio’s next game – during a panel at GDC (thanks, GamesRadar).
“Balance is a myth. Fun first, balance later,” the developer 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 the method for success, you’re an idiot.”
He added that, in his view: “If you balance out all the chaos, you’ve made an uninteresting game.” So, basically, don’t dogmatically over-polish in pursuit of some kind of ideal state where your big multiplayer thing’s buff and nerf ying and yangs mesh perfectly, because it’ll make the game less interesting to play.
You can certainly see where he’s coming from – it’s those little imperfections, provided they’re not manifesting in a way that can totally break things or ruin everyone’s fun, that often make playing big online shootery things such a blast. Odds are this is a lesson Pilestedt’s learned or had his opinion on strengthened by Helldivers 2’s own path over the past year. I reckon trying to find a good balance has probably taken up much more than 5% of the work the game’s devs have done in that time, especially given at one point they had a whole 60 day plan that saw the team “continue to re-examine our approach to balance”.
The result – as demonstrated again in this week’s HD2 patch – has been a buff-heavy approach Pilestedt’s vocally championed for a while really coming to the fore, with the view to, as he said here, prioritising making guns, strategems and the like fun to use, even if that means the knobs are turned slightly more toward overpowered than underpowered. To keep things diffucult, similar buffs have been enacted on stuff like enemies. So, balancing, but done in a way that the devs reckon should still have plenty of potential for chaos.
Do you think that approach has been working out and keeping Helldivers 2 interesting? Let us know below!
