The Escalation of Freedom was the biggest update for Helldivers 2 yet, but it sparked a lot of backlash from the community. The developer has revealed how the team is addressing the feedback.
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On August 11, Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Shams Jorjani wrote in a Discord post that many developers at the studio are "disappointed on a few levels" with the amount of negative feedback there was for the Escalation of Freedom update for Helldivers 2.
While player feedback on the balance changes overshadowed the update's new content, Jorjani feels it's deserved. "I think it also gets us talking more broadly about the path ahead and what we can do to avoid this situation happening again, i.e. internal learnings, more changes to the process, etc."
Jorjani explained that the developer has "long development lead times" and that most of the team is still on vacation since the June balancing patch. "We still have a lot to improve on in terms of understanding what players want and tying that into the development process. We want every release to be a step in the right direction. Continuous improvement. I don't think we felt this was that. So we need to do better."
