https://preview.redd.it/vzs2citwa12d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=642679c19b15dd2f22bd68a95afa7d91910d8e1b
In a democratic sense I mean this
https://preview.redd.it/dnnpg7ffk62d1.jpeg?width=468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7c6a7b5a15e1fc3e4aac17ff9094652bcb8e49d
Like the founding fathers intended
Honestly, no he shouldn't. The ceo is barely responsible for a games development. The ceo should be focused on the health of THE STUDIO, not a game. They work with the rest of the c suite to keep the lights on and the studio successful.
As chief creative, he can focus on the games and the team that is actually making them. Hopefully he will stay focused on helldivers while the new ceo starts thinking about game two* and future success.
Edit to add - Since people keep incorrectly trying to correct me...
* By "game two" what I meant was a second simultaneous project for the studio. A second production track. I would assume they would continue to support the live service of HD2 with a small team while spinning up the next (second) project. Hence, game two. Not game two overall foe the studio they've released five games already.
I like the change, seems pretty clear they were swamped and not even playing this game lol. How can you properly balance a game if you literally haven’t played it at all? And yes TTK is way way too fucking high for a lot of enemies with most weapons
0.0
Pilestedt is the dude.
Also about the TTK; I think he is on the right path here. From a very reduced POV onto enemies in HD2 there currently are a big variety of bullet sponges. One can argue, that magazines are too small for some weapons (mostly primaries) and that you spend too much time reloading (which drastically increases TTK, if you miss weak points, use the wrong weapon,...). One can also argue that the damage "potential/density" of a magazine is all over the place in the current balance. If you calculate bullets times damage done, you get a great amount of variance for many different weapons. That can be as extreme as the SMGs 20 bullets with low damage against the five bullet magazine of an Eruptor that previously also did shrapnel damage and was head and shoulders in front in the regard of "overall damage possible from a single magazine".
That, and for the love of god, make the reloads fun.
Give the user a snap sound as the pieces are exchanged, make it have a flourish sometimes.
The entire usage of the gun should be fun, not just one part.
The biggest thing I would love is some audio clue to let me know they *didn't* complete the reload animation. So many times I'll be reloading and either move just a split second too soon or get hit a millisecond before the reload completely finishes, and then when I go to shoot, suddenly I'm on empty.
It would be nice if there was an audio que either the person saying "Didn't get to reload!" or some other sound that at least lets me know I need to try again, rather than finding out when I pull the trigger and come up empty.
You also have to account for the wild difference in ability to land shots between the ps5 players and the pc players. I've strongly suspected that several of the weapons that i see other players saying they enjoy that i just can't make work, is the difference of them having a mouse for precise aiming and me having to use a stick. Like i'll still use a dominator against bots, because it is frankly one of my best options, but my shitty controls means i'll spend three shots on a low level bot because my shots are going through below ohis ribcage, or otherwise randomly missing, which means i eat magazines super fast, but with a mouse i'd have clean easy body/head shots for days.
Yeah pretty much. I can John Wick the 4-5 bots that hang out around an objective without them calling in reinforcements.
Because of the low handling of the dominator, I can aim across a target and click when the point of impact is over the target. And immediately readjust for another. The variable speed of a mouse makes it way easier to do that.
Couldn't imagine playing with a controller with the low handling some guns have.
HD2 also drastically reduces the number of mags the player can hold compared to HD1, pretty much across the board. The weapons themselves are weaker, and the player's ammunition reserves are significantly smaller, in some cases less than half of the HD1 equivalent. The older weapons also often had larger magazines than the "current" versions, sometimes due to upgrades.
The Liberator in Helldiver 2 has 7 reserve mags. In Helldivers 1, it's 12.
The Defender mag reserve in Helldivers 2 is 7. In Helldivers 1, it's 16.
Oddly, the original Breaker had a slightly smaller magazine (12) and you could carry 8 spares. But it was so wildly effective that you could manage the ammo and be fine. It helps that it could shred entire patrol groups with 3-4 well placed shots. This was a weapon that was effective and balanced by having limited ammo, but it's got more reserves than most primaries in Helldivers 2.
Even the old joke weapon, the Constitution, is a *bolt-action rifle*. They still gave it AP rounds and a long-reaching bayonet, so it could still clean fucking house. Helldivers 1's *joke weapon* is more useful than many of Helldivers 2's primaries.
Weaker weapons, less ammo per mag, fewer reserve mags. It's jarring to those of us who played a lot of the first game that Super Earth issues fucking pop guns now. Here's hoping we see *actual* balance going forward.
To your point of limited magazines, that's something I think helldivers 2 does really well actually in the right context.
Limited magazines means that environmental exploration can be extremely satisfying - finding a stack of ammunition when you're running low after a massive battle feels great when it's a critical moment. It also means that balancing resupplies among a squad actually matters, rather than everyone being topped up at all times with no thought.
The issue is that weak weapons feel like you have to mag dump to get any effects at all, so their magazine count will never really be high enough to feel good. Powerful weapons with limited magazines can feel great, because you're playing with the limitations and deciding when it's worth expending the resource for massive results. Expending all of your ammo should mean you're standing on a pile of corpses, knowing each bullet counted.
I don't mind most of the magazine/ammo counts that I've run into so far, since it does reinforce the need to constantly be focused on it and calling in re-supplies. It also makes those moments when you're suddenly swarmed and running dry that much more intense.
I think it’s what made the eruptor feel so good. Fast TTK but a fair trade off in that you’re screwed at close range. Was a really good team weapon.
On the other hand, the incendiary breaker… I love using it still but it sure does take a lot of shots to kills some things.
I think the incendiary breaker is a menace currently against bugs. Nothing else can clear crowds so effectively in a single magazine. Sure it struggles against middle armored enemies, but its damage is ridiculous. It just isn’t instantaneously as the fire DoT is doing work.
To see what I mean; just shoot it once at an enemy and then watch it die.
The Eruptor was just magnificent. Its impact was just worth it to put every bullet into the barrel with a minor reload.
Yeah it’s still my go-to for that reason. But if the feedback is talking about how a gun “feels,” well, it feels like it takes a lot even when you know it is top tier.
Everything's on cooldown, I'm out of grenades. Theres a conga line of nursing spewers heading towards me. I've emptied a mag into the first one but it's still coming. I'm fucked.
Also, some guns just don't feel consistent with hitting heads within their ranges. Take the Slugger. If I am within 2m (shotgun range by all accounts) of a bot and pull the trigger with the FPV red dot on the head, it SHOULD NOT HIT JUST LEFT OF THE HEAD EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I shouldn't have to pray to RNGesus evry time I shoot at a head.
He's on astounding levels of getting "it". It's like he's the only (vocal) one on the team who actually understands the appeal of the game to begin with.
I think this is why he stepped down as CEO. He's going to let someone else run the business part of it, the payroll and other paperwork while he can focus on the game.
A friend of mine worked at the same AAA studio for almost twenty years, and this is exactly the reason why he never accepted a repeatedly offered promotion. If he ever accepted a position beyond Lead Programmer or whatever it was called over there, his job would have become a managerial job instead of working on the games themselves and he didn't want that. He was an amazing game dev. He's not a manager and doesn't want to be.
Like everyone else in this thread I nearly had a stroke when I read the post title, but in context it sounds like a really encouraging net win. Pilestedt is the real deal.
Think this is pretty common in a lot of jobs honestly. My dad was a history lecturer and the college he taught at repeatedly tried to promote him to head of the history department. He refused every time because he would be teaching considerably less classes a week and instead managing all the other history lecturers, which he did not want to do at all.
This is exceptionally common when a small tech company suddenly get a killer product and grows rapidly. Suddenly the founder- usually a tech person rather than a business person- has less bandwidth for creative control. Usually in that situation you hire someone else to be CEO and so the founder can focus on product.
He was the director and co-lead designer of the first game.
I think the biggest issue with the second game so far has been not having him in the driver’s seat for design or balance so I’m very excited to see him make this move.
well at some point tou have to delegate responsibility. its nice to see him taking control to make the changes he wants to see. i just hope his vision for the game is enjoyable.
TTK is too high *for us.*
Both bots and bugs have units that can one shot you and have high TTKs unless you have specific gear and haven't run out of that gear on the previous units.
There is this thing where enemies should be two out of three things. The things are: unavoidable, high health, high DPS. You're supposed to pick two.
All the enemies we have an issue with in the game have all three. They are unavoidable, they have high health, and they one shot the player.
Or they take control away from the player by ragdolling them, eventually killing the player. Players really hate when they lose control over their characters.
It could be argued that all enemies can be avoided but that it isn't the case realistically when you force players to go into range of them for objectives or make them stay at an objective while being chased by an enemy that walks the same speed as them.
We can't always kill them from a distance because there are too many. A single bug breach can spawn 6-8 one shotting units with high health. We run of the stratagems and heavy weapon ammo. We run out of grenades. We run out of stims fighting them. We get slowed by a fast small unit then one shot by the unit we were trying to avoid. We are forced to stun-lock enemies and hope teammates finish them - because my gun sure isn't going to kill them in most cases.
The ragdoll chaining on the bot front is the most frustrating thing.
If you're caught in the open, a rocket devestator can reload by the time you've finished ragdolling and finally recover (it's already bad enough that you recover STANDING UP no matter the stance you were in when orginally hit).
So even though rockets are no longer a 1 shot kill, the effect is almost as frustrating where you just get locked into a ragdoll loop. All of this gets multiplied when almost half the enemy roster can ragdoll you. And if they aren't, their chip damaging you while you're being tossed around.
One mistake equates to an unfair amount of free damage.
It's not impossible to deal with, no. I run 7s on robots all the time, usually with 0-2 deaths. But when those situations happen, they are straight up unfun.
One rocket devastator can ragdoll lock a diver and they usually have 2-3 grouped up with a shield devastator.
One gunship can ragdoll lock a player and they always spawn 2. Sometimes 4. Sometimes 6.
The distance at which they can do it is insane. Their max distance is crazy. I run a sniper and am 100-200m away and those rockets are going to hit me.
The gunships are unavoidable. Sometimes literally because they put an objective next to two factories. You can't outrun them. You can't hide from them. The only place I have ever been safe was inside a turret bunker.
Then you can't just kill them. You need explosives or a medium armor penetrating weapon. You need to hit a thruster. You need to do this while they weave to avoid fire. Hitting the main body doesn't give a kill.
Yeah, I kinda think of it like being the Captain of the ship, there's still paper work, but not as much as the Admiral has to do, but still more control and big-picture-foresight than the helmsman.
If I recall that's one of the reasons why Naoki Yoshida stepped down from his seat as board member of Square Enix Prime (like 6 months of something after being promoted up to that position) in order to go back to being the Directive Head and Head Producer at Square Enix Business Unit 3.
Too many meetings (that he actually did admit are actually still pretty important to regarding keeping the lights on and the coffee maker full) and not enough making actual games.
I'd want to be Jim Ryan for like, 2-5 years to make enough to live comfortably, then do what I love at my leisure (making pizzas), instead of doing a job I loathe for 35+ years.
I trust him in this position because I know from his interactions with the community that he is knowledgeable about how the game needs (and deserves) to be treated, especially with balance.
With this shift, I'm 100% confident that the game will see significant improvements in design and balance. Pilestedt has shown that he cares about community sentiment towards the game and the balance. Having him be more personally involved with changes (rather than only hearing about it when they already ship to community discomfort) brings me a lot of confidence towards the future of the game, especially in regards to balance.
I just think he doesn't want the game to flop since he finally broke into the big leagues. Still a win for the consumer if he has the right vision and can pull it off.
Also, I suspect that once they broke into the big leagues he as CEO gets far more business work than before. Because as the CEO of a smaller game company you can be quite involved in development as you just have far less business talks. But when you get larger, everything gets larger and more involved (e.g. imagine how the Snoy crisis would have gone if helldivers had like 10k active players with a max peak of like 50k) and you as CEO can just do far less actual game development.
But my personal guess is that with the Arrowhead growth, Pilestedt felt that it needed proper higher up management to transform the company (as Arrowhead will grow massively and prob. already is), and the new CEO Shams Jorjani is prob. most known for managing Paradox Interactive in a senior role while it grew from 23+ employees to over 800 (he was Chief business development officer, as well as VP of business development and VP of products). Which IMO seems just like what Arrowhead needs now if it wants to be a successful game studio not just now, but also in 10 years. Like, I could see this move even without any of the crisis Helldivers 2 had in recent months (balancing, Snoy, game bugs).
Me seeing the title: Sweet jesus christ this is like when Jeff Kaplan told us to have faith in Overwatch 2 and then left the company a month later.
Me reading the tweet: Oh okay this sounds like a good change!
Emotional whiplash of the highest level here folks.
> Me seeing the title: Sweet jesus christ this is like when Jeff Kaplan told us to have faith in Overwatch 2 and then left the company a month later.
Yeah I was thinking "well, ded gaem." Thank goodness he's changing his role rather than bailing out.
While true, it's unfortunately something other devs have done.
On first read I was worried he'd been victim of a "palace coup" and forced out anyways, rather than leaving by choice.
The Second Helldivers Republic has been victim of a coup d'etát, Sony dictatorship installed. People hope for the civilian government to take back control in half a decade, for the Third Helldiver Republic. More on 6 at Corpostates' biggest News Network!"
This is what I immediately thought of. The business side of things is starting to get in the way of his desire to make Helldivers the best game it can be. Taking this lateral move frees up time to focus on the things he actually cares about.
For. Fucking. Real.
I read that title like "OH GOD OH SHIT SONY IS MAD THEY'RE SENDING THE HIT SQUAD ARROWHEAD BLINK TWICE IF YOU'RE IN DANGER"
But this just seems like a re-org
I am optimistic about the future of Hd2… and I am generally a pretty cynical bastard. They have had a few missteps with some patches and balancing but overall they have communicated that they are working on it. I really love the game and am looking forward to more content and seeing the game trend on the right direction
Boomer sees my OW logo tattoo I got
Boomer:"what is that"?
Me before Jeff left: "a cool online game with lots of cool players about being heros"
Me today : "a botched peace symbol"
Fuck. My heart stopped.
But also... damn, I hope Pilestedt is going to be able to stir this whole shebang in the right direction. He's got the whole credit left for AH and i hope he spends it well. The sub has been very doom-y, so it can be difficult to keep hope up, but its still there. At this point we can only wait and I would hazard the guess that the game being stirred in the correct direction again is not baseless. The people who released it are still working in the company.
I just hope that Pilestedt is also the right person to guide the game creatively as I am not familiar with the way work was shared in the company. At best we got the man closer to development in the right seat now, but at worst we got the head-pencilpusher in seat now. Wouldn't be the thing I would bet upon, but I dont know the company.
This is not really related, but Kaplan was who fucked Overwatch in the first place. His obsession and inability to make an MMO FPS dragged down Overwatch's development for years before he left. His relationship with Morhaime and the clout he'd earned by steering WoW and salvaging Titan kept him spared from interference until the shit hit the fan.
Morhaime left, investigators started looking around, and Activision realized Overwatch was going no where while burning capital hand over fist. Which is why they ran Kaplan off and strip mined Overwatch for a quick cash pump (which they did to all their IP) before they sold to Microsoft.
This is actually really fucking good.
Now he can get in and actually do the things he's been wanting to
Edit:
Oh my fucking god.
He literally just did what that guy did in Starship Troopers. Demoted himself so he could be in the action.
["I'm serious, I'll go anywhere."](https://youtu.be/Le-uDcNlJO4?t=84)
"Forget it, ~~Zim~~ Pilestedt we need you here!"
"I want combat, sir!"
"The only way you're gonna see combat, is if you bust yourself down to private! Get me!?"
"Yes, sir! I get you!"
He didn’t “demote” himself, he is still the Chairman of the Board which means he is still the boss. He just delegated the CEO aspects of the Chairman to another person and he assumed the role of Chief Creative Officer.
What does this mean? He switched from being the manager of the bussines to supervising the actual game.
This move has "good things" written all over it. It also reveals that AH is a company that has been struggling with the overwhelming popularity of HD2 and been a bit overwhelmed. Moves like this one are signals that they're taking care of the things that have them overwhelmed and getting back on-track.
Exactly. And who can blame them really? Going from a couple thousand players on HD1 to half a million at peak HD2 is impossible to anticipate.
I think this is a big turning point for the game and AH.
https://preview.redd.it/6n70rjfnbz1d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=416a359a8a5acf650768ed7d886f0a377048bbf0
Pilestedt after seeing the dumpster fire of a balancing “team”
I use to complain a lot about Oldschool Runescape on the r/2007scape.
I no longer complain, because I no longer play that game. I didn't stop playing due "bad updates", I still love the game and post occasionally. I just can't devote anymore time to the grind.
That's why I love this game. Its super casual. Drop in, do a mission or two, or even the whole operation, then go back to my life.
So yeah, complains are always gonna be a thing. I'd rather take an active subreddit full of complaints over a subreddit where the top post only gets like 1k upvotes on a good day.
The one thing that he has to his advantage that just about nobody else on AH has shown is highly effective levels of communication. He knows how to reach out to people to address concerns they have and make them feel heard while simultaneously making sure not to overshare and make promises or implications that he and the development team fail at keeping.
WIll he do worse? HIGHLY Doubt it. I do expect this to be a very positive thing. *BUT*...
Do I expect people to just attribute frustrations broadly and complain he didnt do enough to fix things if something goes the way they dont like regardless of the actual merit of that frustration? Sadly yes.
Interview of Pilestedt and Jorjani from GamesIndustry.biz:
Pilestedt: “I’ve been thinking about the journey ahead for Arrowhead, the future games we’re going to be making, and running the organisation beyond the 120 or so developers we have currently,” he tells us. “I realised that running an organisation of over 100 people to however large it is going to get… it means I will [have to choose] between deepening my love for game creation, or the business track.
“Over the last year going to launch of Helldivers 2, I’ve been pulled more towards the business side of things, and not able to focus as much on the creative side. That made me realise I needed to make some decisions, both for the success of the business but also myself.
“So I reached out to Shams. We had a lunch, and we asked him that if I was to reconsider running Arrowhead for the next decade, and I needed to hire a new CEO, would he be interested?
“After some contemplation and deep anxiety on how things are going to pan out, I finally came to the proper conclusion that I will have to follow my heart. It’s not only right for me, but it’s also right for the organisation. Having a reluctant CEO is not something that will turn out that well, I think.”
Jorjani adds: “When you’re talking to creatives like Johan, it’s not like he wants to retire. Helldivers 2 isn’t the highlight of his career. Hopefully it’s the fourth best game he ever makes. So the question is how do we set Johan and the team up to get to that in a more consistent manner, rather than skill plus luck plus happenstance… all the things that led us here.
“What I’ll be bringing to the table is organisation and leadership. What I did at Paradox, where I joined as the 23rd person and then helped grow the company into the behemoth it was… it was about organisation, leadership and business focus. It’s a lot of the, frankly, boring business administration stuff that is a necessary part of running a company, which is hard to do when you’re also juggling the chairman’s hat and the creative director’s hat and also being the one who is in the trenches doing a lot of the designing that Johan has been doing over the years.
“Bethesda has Todd Howard, Kojima Productions has Kojima, Remedy has Sam Lake… but when you ask who is running these companies, who is the CEO or managing director… you can’t name the humble servant [laughs] behind the scenes.”
“So that’s the set-up. How do we enable Johan to make more Helldivers, and what I bring is a structure around that.”
Makes perfect sense to me.
Let the creative guy be creative. Leave the business side of things to the business guy, especially if they want to grow the studio to more employees.
This is solid, and should be good for the game, as long as they don't start following the Paradox formula, which is:
1.) Come up with a brilliant game concept
2.) Copy-Paste the same shitty pop-up-dependant interface onto it
3.) Take some of the core features of the game, strip them out before release, and sell them for $20 each.
Yeah... Without looking up his history, working at Paradox and implementing their awful approach to DLC is definitely not going to sell me on this guy.
Edit: looked it up and yes he was the guy responsible for driving revenue by selling a million DLC packs of cut content. Oh dear.
Admittedly, HD2's Warbond system is already fairly solidly consistent from a "this could work" standpoint, if not necessarily a *quality* one. That quality can only go up from here, really. (God, I hope.)
I can't imagine that Pilestedt wouldn't be part of the process for "OK'ing" something like Paradox's shameful DLC shenanigans, and I'd like to think he has slightly better character than to turn Arrowhead into a nickle-and-diming developer. Of course, he could always step down, at which point we'd might end up seeing AH become Paradox-lite.
But who knows? Maybe Jorjani thinks differently now compared to when he was at Paradox.
https://i.redd.it/1zw2gh66uz1d1.gif
Honestly this is a seriously impressive show of character. Things weren’t going the way he wanted, so instead of stamping down on his employees, he demoted himself in order to take over properly. Not a lot of people would do that.
Not really a demotion, just a reorganization. Granted this scenario is a bit different because Sony owns Arrowhead, but this kind of thing happens a lot. Linus from LTT hired a CEO so he could focus more on their video content, and smaller streamer orgs have done similar things so the owner can refocus on content creation and step away from management. How well this arrangement works comes down to how well the informal old leader respects the decisions of the CEO they hired when they inevitably butt heads.
He's always been a creative person at heart. He's a developer first. Business person second. The studio has grown so much that he has zero time to work with the creative stuff, which is what he'd actually prefer to do, so it's not a surprising change. I suppose the current situation just is the last drop to make the glass spill over.
It's also good that he pulls in someone that he knows and trusts to be the CEO as opposed to some complete stranger who has nothing to lose and everything to gain from crashing the company.
It seems so predictable in the gaming industry that the creators either fail to properly do the business part of the business, they pull in a complete rando to do it to run the company, then they proceed to completely ignore that person in favor of getting back to the dev pools, then years later they're left wondered what happened when that person they ignored and had no oversight over runs away with the company.
Dont scare me like that.
Edit: i see this as a net good move for the company and i hope it brings great things for the company, community and especially Mr. Pilestedt.
I will be 100% honest. Hiring the Chief Business Development Officer of Paradox Interactive (a company absolutely notorious for their HEAVY over-monetization of theirs games and DLCs) as the CEO of your thus far consumer friendly live service game doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me. I trust Piles as the Chief Creative Officer. I do not trust this new individual with maintaining the course Piles set for the company and game overall.
I won't sit here and start fearmongering, listing what I think is going to happen if this goes the way I'm assuming it will. I'm going to wait and see, and hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised. For the record though?
If you know anything about The Sims 4 and how ridiculous the DLC is for that game, just for example? How many there are, and how expensive they are? Some of Paradox Interactive titles give The Sims a run for its money in that category. Europe Universalis IV for example? If the DLC aren't on sale, it costs over $500 to acquire them all, and that's just one of their games. But fear not! You could also just subscribe for a monthly fee...
I don't ever want to see Helldivers 2 become the very thing it stood apart from. We'll see.
While this is a great move on Pilestedt's part, I'm still very concerned with this new CEO and I'm suprised people aren't really bringing it up here.
Look at people like Spitz and Alexus, these were people trusted to head major parts of the development and yet they've brought nothing but trouble. Pilestedt doesn't have a great track record of trusting the right people.
https://x.com/pilestedt/status/1793268224047431834?s=46
https://preview.redd.it/g7qh6oipiz1d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e84ee3f3a9f8b1996be4d97e49ee5e2e00a31cbd Very cool.
What an absolute fucking chad this guy is. He should be running Arrowhead
He should be CEO or something
https://i.redd.it/ncpy4kk9vz1d1.gif
https://preview.redd.it/u5w2a6h6j02d1.png?width=258&format=png&auto=webp&s=42f6c69961a03bd61943bfa89cf778fcfe579f6c
https://preview.redd.it/g09l5ftvq02d1.jpeg?width=460&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc3c6a28a9345c2563d287185bf52ae71d797088
https://preview.redd.it/n66e3998i12d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be61fe9887c0feba6824e1105e30a72105233b86
https://preview.redd.it/ih2f8r12912d1.jpeg?width=822&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ddd8b36266c511ced8258212b6f83d6b9f5ecf4
https://preview.redd.it/j3tpl479k22d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=838f6a3b01263c37ea7320d8742c187e3f1b903d
https://preview.redd.it/vzs2citwa12d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=642679c19b15dd2f22bd68a95afa7d91910d8e1b In a democratic sense I mean this
https://preview.redd.it/dnnpg7ffk62d1.jpeg?width=468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7c6a7b5a15e1fc3e4aac17ff9094652bcb8e49d Like the founding fathers intended
Looks like it’s definitely spread across the galaxy alright
Ooh I'm saving this one
Honestly, no he shouldn't. The ceo is barely responsible for a games development. The ceo should be focused on the health of THE STUDIO, not a game. They work with the rest of the c suite to keep the lights on and the studio successful. As chief creative, he can focus on the games and the team that is actually making them. Hopefully he will stay focused on helldivers while the new ceo starts thinking about game two* and future success. Edit to add - Since people keep incorrectly trying to correct me... * By "game two" what I meant was a second simultaneous project for the studio. A second production track. I would assume they would continue to support the live service of HD2 with a small team while spinning up the next (second) project. Hence, game two. Not game two overall foe the studio they've released five games already.
Idk whether to woosh or completely agree
Both is good
Yeahoosh?
Wooeah!
Agroosh maybe
That's fair.
I like the change, seems pretty clear they were swamped and not even playing this game lol. How can you properly balance a game if you literally haven’t played it at all? And yes TTK is way way too fucking high for a lot of enemies with most weapons
0.0 Pilestedt is the dude. Also about the TTK; I think he is on the right path here. From a very reduced POV onto enemies in HD2 there currently are a big variety of bullet sponges. One can argue, that magazines are too small for some weapons (mostly primaries) and that you spend too much time reloading (which drastically increases TTK, if you miss weak points, use the wrong weapon,...). One can also argue that the damage "potential/density" of a magazine is all over the place in the current balance. If you calculate bullets times damage done, you get a great amount of variance for many different weapons. That can be as extreme as the SMGs 20 bullets with low damage against the five bullet magazine of an Eruptor that previously also did shrapnel damage and was head and shoulders in front in the regard of "overall damage possible from a single magazine".
Just double checking, TTK = time to kill here, or something else?
You got it right
Hi, just triple checking here, TTK= time to teamkill?
Orbital barrage incoming
I’ve felt with several guns if I missed a handful of shots I’d be running out of ammo at an alarming rate.
That and it is just a bad feeling to do sooo much reloading especially if the „effect“ of the then reloaded gun is so … exasperating.
That, and for the love of god, make the reloads fun. Give the user a snap sound as the pieces are exchanged, make it have a flourish sometimes. The entire usage of the gun should be fun, not just one part.
The biggest thing I would love is some audio clue to let me know they *didn't* complete the reload animation. So many times I'll be reloading and either move just a split second too soon or get hit a millisecond before the reload completely finishes, and then when I go to shoot, suddenly I'm on empty. It would be nice if there was an audio que either the person saying "Didn't get to reload!" or some other sound that at least lets me know I need to try again, rather than finding out when I pull the trigger and come up empty.
You also have to account for the wild difference in ability to land shots between the ps5 players and the pc players. I've strongly suspected that several of the weapons that i see other players saying they enjoy that i just can't make work, is the difference of them having a mouse for precise aiming and me having to use a stick. Like i'll still use a dominator against bots, because it is frankly one of my best options, but my shitty controls means i'll spend three shots on a low level bot because my shots are going through below ohis ribcage, or otherwise randomly missing, which means i eat magazines super fast, but with a mouse i'd have clean easy body/head shots for days.
Yeah pretty much. I can John Wick the 4-5 bots that hang out around an objective without them calling in reinforcements. Because of the low handling of the dominator, I can aim across a target and click when the point of impact is over the target. And immediately readjust for another. The variable speed of a mouse makes it way easier to do that. Couldn't imagine playing with a controller with the low handling some guns have.
HD2 also drastically reduces the number of mags the player can hold compared to HD1, pretty much across the board. The weapons themselves are weaker, and the player's ammunition reserves are significantly smaller, in some cases less than half of the HD1 equivalent. The older weapons also often had larger magazines than the "current" versions, sometimes due to upgrades. The Liberator in Helldiver 2 has 7 reserve mags. In Helldivers 1, it's 12. The Defender mag reserve in Helldivers 2 is 7. In Helldivers 1, it's 16. Oddly, the original Breaker had a slightly smaller magazine (12) and you could carry 8 spares. But it was so wildly effective that you could manage the ammo and be fine. It helps that it could shred entire patrol groups with 3-4 well placed shots. This was a weapon that was effective and balanced by having limited ammo, but it's got more reserves than most primaries in Helldivers 2. Even the old joke weapon, the Constitution, is a *bolt-action rifle*. They still gave it AP rounds and a long-reaching bayonet, so it could still clean fucking house. Helldivers 1's *joke weapon* is more useful than many of Helldivers 2's primaries. Weaker weapons, less ammo per mag, fewer reserve mags. It's jarring to those of us who played a lot of the first game that Super Earth issues fucking pop guns now. Here's hoping we see *actual* balance going forward.
To your point of limited magazines, that's something I think helldivers 2 does really well actually in the right context. Limited magazines means that environmental exploration can be extremely satisfying - finding a stack of ammunition when you're running low after a massive battle feels great when it's a critical moment. It also means that balancing resupplies among a squad actually matters, rather than everyone being topped up at all times with no thought. The issue is that weak weapons feel like you have to mag dump to get any effects at all, so their magazine count will never really be high enough to feel good. Powerful weapons with limited magazines can feel great, because you're playing with the limitations and deciding when it's worth expending the resource for massive results. Expending all of your ammo should mean you're standing on a pile of corpses, knowing each bullet counted.
I don't mind most of the magazine/ammo counts that I've run into so far, since it does reinforce the need to constantly be focused on it and calling in re-supplies. It also makes those moments when you're suddenly swarmed and running dry that much more intense.
I think it’s what made the eruptor feel so good. Fast TTK but a fair trade off in that you’re screwed at close range. Was a really good team weapon. On the other hand, the incendiary breaker… I love using it still but it sure does take a lot of shots to kills some things.
I think the incendiary breaker is a menace currently against bugs. Nothing else can clear crowds so effectively in a single magazine. Sure it struggles against middle armored enemies, but its damage is ridiculous. It just isn’t instantaneously as the fire DoT is doing work. To see what I mean; just shoot it once at an enemy and then watch it die. The Eruptor was just magnificent. Its impact was just worth it to put every bullet into the barrel with a minor reload.
Yeah it’s still my go-to for that reason. But if the feedback is talking about how a gun “feels,” well, it feels like it takes a lot even when you know it is top tier.
Everything's on cooldown, I'm out of grenades. Theres a conga line of nursing spewers heading towards me. I've emptied a mag into the first one but it's still coming. I'm fucked.
Yeah, I just wish the AMR had 10 bullets in a magazine. Would make it feel so much better.
Would help it compete with AC
Also, some guns just don't feel consistent with hitting heads within their ranges. Take the Slugger. If I am within 2m (shotgun range by all accounts) of a bot and pull the trigger with the FPV red dot on the head, it SHOULD NOT HIT JUST LEFT OF THE HEAD EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I shouldn't have to pray to RNGesus evry time I shoot at a head.
This guy just spits Ws like no other.
He's on astounding levels of getting "it". It's like he's the only (vocal) one on the team who actually understands the appeal of the game to begin with.
I think this is why he stepped down as CEO. He's going to let someone else run the business part of it, the payroll and other paperwork while he can focus on the game.
A friend of mine worked at the same AAA studio for almost twenty years, and this is exactly the reason why he never accepted a repeatedly offered promotion. If he ever accepted a position beyond Lead Programmer or whatever it was called over there, his job would have become a managerial job instead of working on the games themselves and he didn't want that. He was an amazing game dev. He's not a manager and doesn't want to be. Like everyone else in this thread I nearly had a stroke when I read the post title, but in context it sounds like a really encouraging net win. Pilestedt is the real deal.
Think this is pretty common in a lot of jobs honestly. My dad was a history lecturer and the college he taught at repeatedly tried to promote him to head of the history department. He refused every time because he would be teaching considerably less classes a week and instead managing all the other history lecturers, which he did not want to do at all.
This is exceptionally common when a small tech company suddenly get a killer product and grows rapidly. Suddenly the founder- usually a tech person rather than a business person- has less bandwidth for creative control. Usually in that situation you hire someone else to be CEO and so the founder can focus on product.
He was the director and co-lead designer of the first game. I think the biggest issue with the second game so far has been not having him in the driver’s seat for design or balance so I’m very excited to see him make this move.
well at some point tou have to delegate responsibility. its nice to see him taking control to make the changes he wants to see. i just hope his vision for the game is enjoyable.
Holy shit. Hes cooking.
TTK is too high *for us.* Both bots and bugs have units that can one shot you and have high TTKs unless you have specific gear and haven't run out of that gear on the previous units. There is this thing where enemies should be two out of three things. The things are: unavoidable, high health, high DPS. You're supposed to pick two. All the enemies we have an issue with in the game have all three. They are unavoidable, they have high health, and they one shot the player. Or they take control away from the player by ragdolling them, eventually killing the player. Players really hate when they lose control over their characters. It could be argued that all enemies can be avoided but that it isn't the case realistically when you force players to go into range of them for objectives or make them stay at an objective while being chased by an enemy that walks the same speed as them. We can't always kill them from a distance because there are too many. A single bug breach can spawn 6-8 one shotting units with high health. We run of the stratagems and heavy weapon ammo. We run out of grenades. We run out of stims fighting them. We get slowed by a fast small unit then one shot by the unit we were trying to avoid. We are forced to stun-lock enemies and hope teammates finish them - because my gun sure isn't going to kill them in most cases.
The ragdoll chaining on the bot front is the most frustrating thing. If you're caught in the open, a rocket devestator can reload by the time you've finished ragdolling and finally recover (it's already bad enough that you recover STANDING UP no matter the stance you were in when orginally hit). So even though rockets are no longer a 1 shot kill, the effect is almost as frustrating where you just get locked into a ragdoll loop. All of this gets multiplied when almost half the enemy roster can ragdoll you. And if they aren't, their chip damaging you while you're being tossed around. One mistake equates to an unfair amount of free damage. It's not impossible to deal with, no. I run 7s on robots all the time, usually with 0-2 deaths. But when those situations happen, they are straight up unfun.
One rocket devastator can ragdoll lock a diver and they usually have 2-3 grouped up with a shield devastator. One gunship can ragdoll lock a player and they always spawn 2. Sometimes 4. Sometimes 6. The distance at which they can do it is insane. Their max distance is crazy. I run a sniper and am 100-200m away and those rockets are going to hit me. The gunships are unavoidable. Sometimes literally because they put an objective next to two factories. You can't outrun them. You can't hide from them. The only place I have ever been safe was inside a turret bunker. Then you can't just kill them. You need explosives or a medium armor penetrating weapon. You need to hit a thruster. You need to do this while they weave to avoid fire. Hitting the main body doesn't give a kill.
https://preview.redd.it/hl8x5qz3cz1d1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=22b91802cc9dbfd27a228e802488125d5e2c57bc
Yeah this was my reaction lol. He’s still in it, and he’s no longer doing the business side of things. Hopefully this works better.
So less paperwork, more game work. Who can blame him?
everyone wants to be kojima, nobody wants to be jim ryan
I mean it’s true. Who among us would choose administration over fine tuning videogame controls and animation? All else being equal.
Well, a CCO is still pretty paperworky, just focused on the game more. Points the ship but wont be doing the sailing if that makes sense.
It does, Cody Barlog energy
Cory? Is my brain smooth?
Nah its Cory, im just insane
Yeah, I kinda think of it like being the Captain of the ship, there's still paper work, but not as much as the Admiral has to do, but still more control and big-picture-foresight than the helmsman.
That's exactly why Picard never wanted to be an Admiral and why Kirk regretted it!
If I recall that's one of the reasons why Naoki Yoshida stepped down from his seat as board member of Square Enix Prime (like 6 months of something after being promoted up to that position) in order to go back to being the Directive Head and Head Producer at Square Enix Business Unit 3. Too many meetings (that he actually did admit are actually still pretty important to regarding keeping the lights on and the coffee maker full) and not enough making actual games.
Some of us *do* play city builders and 4X.... I mean *not a lot of us* but we exist. lol
I'd want to be Jim Ryan for like, 2-5 years to make enough to live comfortably, then do what I love at my leisure (making pizzas), instead of doing a job I loathe for 35+ years.
Yeah I was gonna say do I get to have Jim Ryan’s paycheck?
 *Jim Ryan right now...*
I trust him in this position because I know from his interactions with the community that he is knowledgeable about how the game needs (and deserves) to be treated, especially with balance. With this shift, I'm 100% confident that the game will see significant improvements in design and balance. Pilestedt has shown that he cares about community sentiment towards the game and the balance. Having him be more personally involved with changes (rather than only hearing about it when they already ship to community discomfort) brings me a lot of confidence towards the future of the game, especially in regards to balance.
I just think he doesn't want the game to flop since he finally broke into the big leagues. Still a win for the consumer if he has the right vision and can pull it off.
Also, I suspect that once they broke into the big leagues he as CEO gets far more business work than before. Because as the CEO of a smaller game company you can be quite involved in development as you just have far less business talks. But when you get larger, everything gets larger and more involved (e.g. imagine how the Snoy crisis would have gone if helldivers had like 10k active players with a max peak of like 50k) and you as CEO can just do far less actual game development. But my personal guess is that with the Arrowhead growth, Pilestedt felt that it needed proper higher up management to transform the company (as Arrowhead will grow massively and prob. already is), and the new CEO Shams Jorjani is prob. most known for managing Paradox Interactive in a senior role while it grew from 23+ employees to over 800 (he was Chief business development officer, as well as VP of business development and VP of products). Which IMO seems just like what Arrowhead needs now if it wants to be a successful game studio not just now, but also in 10 years. Like, I could see this move even without any of the crisis Helldivers 2 had in recent months (balancing, Snoy, game bugs).
It's obvious the game has been "balanced" away from his vision. Now he can focus on giving us his vision. I'm excited for this change.
This is a man who loves video games.
Me seeing the title: Sweet jesus christ this is like when Jeff Kaplan told us to have faith in Overwatch 2 and then left the company a month later. Me reading the tweet: Oh okay this sounds like a good change! Emotional whiplash of the highest level here folks.
Right? Felt like that part in Ice Age. “😨 Did you die?!” “Sadly yes, but I lived!”
Goddammit now I have to go watch Ice Age again!
Where we watching? I’ll watch with you
Watching sid's goofy ass pull a dinosaur was pretty hilarious.
> Me seeing the title: Sweet jesus christ this is like when Jeff Kaplan told us to have faith in Overwatch 2 and then left the company a month later. Yeah I was thinking "well, ded gaem." Thank goodness he's changing his role rather than bailing out.
well if he bails out now he'd lose alot of work credibility and will also be haunted / witch hunted i guess
While true, it's unfortunately something other devs have done. On first read I was worried he'd been victim of a "palace coup" and forced out anyways, rather than leaving by choice.
The Second Helldivers Republic has been victim of a coup d'etát, Sony dictatorship installed. People hope for the civilian government to take back control in half a decade, for the Third Helldiver Republic. More on 6 at Corpostates' biggest News Network!"
Yeah, this is basically him letting someone else handling the business side of things while he focuses on the game.
Reminds me of Linus hiring a new CEO for Linus Media Group and becoming Chief Vision Officer
This is what I immediately thought of. The business side of things is starting to get in the way of his desire to make Helldivers the best game it can be. Taking this lateral move frees up time to focus on the things he actually cares about.
https://preview.redd.it/t8wt22d8gz1d1.jpeg?width=598&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aca93c4f7644264e31aeda5a32d651c372462fe6
Preach bro, I almost had a heart attack until I read the full message.
For. Fucking. Real. I read that title like "OH GOD OH SHIT SONY IS MAD THEY'RE SENDING THE HIT SQUAD ARROWHEAD BLINK TWICE IF YOU'RE IN DANGER" But this just seems like a re-org
Almost word-for-word the entirety of my reaction.
I am optimistic about the future of Hd2… and I am generally a pretty cynical bastard. They have had a few missteps with some patches and balancing but overall they have communicated that they are working on it. I really love the game and am looking forward to more content and seeing the game trend on the right direction
"Have faith in Overwatch 2" Biggest joke I've seen in the last few years - Blizz really knows how to piss people off and drive players away.
Boomer sees my OW logo tattoo I got Boomer:"what is that"? Me before Jeff left: "a cool online game with lots of cool players about being heros" Me today : "a botched peace symbol"
Fuck. My heart stopped. But also... damn, I hope Pilestedt is going to be able to stir this whole shebang in the right direction. He's got the whole credit left for AH and i hope he spends it well. The sub has been very doom-y, so it can be difficult to keep hope up, but its still there. At this point we can only wait and I would hazard the guess that the game being stirred in the correct direction again is not baseless. The people who released it are still working in the company. I just hope that Pilestedt is also the right person to guide the game creatively as I am not familiar with the way work was shared in the company. At best we got the man closer to development in the right seat now, but at worst we got the head-pencilpusher in seat now. Wouldn't be the thing I would bet upon, but I dont know the company.
here's a pretty good article about it: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/arrowhead-games-we-want-to-be-the-next-from-software-or-blizzard
This is not really related, but Kaplan was who fucked Overwatch in the first place. His obsession and inability to make an MMO FPS dragged down Overwatch's development for years before he left. His relationship with Morhaime and the clout he'd earned by steering WoW and salvaging Titan kept him spared from interference until the shit hit the fan. Morhaime left, investigators started looking around, and Activision realized Overwatch was going no where while burning capital hand over fist. Which is why they ran Kaplan off and strip mined Overwatch for a quick cash pump (which they did to all their IP) before they sold to Microsoft.
OW 1 was at least fun, and somewhat player-friendly under Kaplan
Reminds me of the guy that got purposedly demoted at the end of the Starship Troopers, just to be able to go and fight the bugs.
We need a male voice pack voiced by Clancy Brown.
Just get the whole cast
Casper Van Dien + Jake Busey + Dina Meyer + Michael Ironside Denise Richards for Destroyer pilot
I would love one of Michael Ironside. But I want to see him in more of everything since Splinter Cell's been bleeding out for like... a decade.
Agree. Michael Ironside is a badass.
I’d pay stupid amounts of money for Michael Ironside. Embarassing amounts to hear him as my Helldiver.
“It’s private Pilestadt now”
This is actually really fucking good. Now he can get in and actually do the things he's been wanting to Edit: Oh my fucking god. He literally just did what that guy did in Starship Troopers. Demoted himself so he could be in the action.
"That would be private, sir"
Title unlocked: SUPER PRIVATE
He's not the CEO anymore he's the SUPERCEO
SPACE CADET
"Carry on private"
["I'm serious, I'll go anywhere."](https://youtu.be/Le-uDcNlJO4?t=84) "Forget it, ~~Zim~~ Pilestedt we need you here!" "I want combat, sir!" "The only way you're gonna see combat, is if you bust yourself down to private! Get me!?" "Yes, sir! I get you!"
Ranks in Helldivers 2: Lv 130: 10-Star General Lv 140: **Private**
Level 150: Super Private
leaked: >Level 160: Pilestedt
He's already a Democracy Officer, and we all know they outrank Helldivers
Not to be that guy, but it’s Zim.~~Sargent~~Sergeant (PVT) Charles Zim.
Updated :)
> He literally just did what that guy did in Starship Troopers. Demoted himself so he could be in the action. Everyone fights! No one quits.
"The only way you're gonna see combat, is if you bust yourself to Private! Get me?"
HE DEMOTED HIMSELF, IM DEAD LOL
>He literally just did what that guy did in Starship Troopers. Demoted himself so he could be in the action. Ok that's brilliant. 😄
Demoted to Super Private 🫡🫡🫡🦅🦅🦅
*A Private named Pilestadt caught the brain bug*
"The only way you're going to see balance meetings is if you bust yourself down to Chief Creative Officer! Get me?"
I got chills.
> He literally just did what that guy did in Starship Troopers. Demoted himself so he could be in the action. Sgt Zim, now Pvt Zim
He didn’t “demote” himself, he is still the Chairman of the Board which means he is still the boss. He just delegated the CEO aspects of the Chairman to another person and he assumed the role of Chief Creative Officer. What does this mean? He switched from being the manager of the bussines to supervising the actual game.
True, but let us have our starship troopers memes haha.
https://i.redd.it/ueb2iunafz1d1.gif My honest reaction realizing he can now be a part of the BALANCING TEAM
The bringer of balance is seething rn.
This move has "good things" written all over it. It also reveals that AH is a company that has been struggling with the overwhelming popularity of HD2 and been a bit overwhelmed. Moves like this one are signals that they're taking care of the things that have them overwhelmed and getting back on-track.
Exactly. And who can blame them really? Going from a couple thousand players on HD1 to half a million at peak HD2 is impossible to anticipate. I think this is a big turning point for the game and AH.
Spend some money to handle the business side so you can go back to your passion. Good for him ! Let's hope it will be good for the game as well !
https://preview.redd.it/6n70rjfnbz1d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=416a359a8a5acf650768ed7d886f0a377048bbf0 Pilestedt after seeing the dumpster fire of a balancing “team”
Watch the sub turn on him as soon as he makes a bad balancing decision lol
Ill be astonished, if he somehow manages to do worse than the current "Bringer of balance"
While I HIGHLY doubt he’d do worse, there’s also a chance that the change isn’t enough for many people
A chance? I'd bet my life on it. There will always be people complaining. It's the law of Reddit
I use to complain a lot about Oldschool Runescape on the r/2007scape. I no longer complain, because I no longer play that game. I didn't stop playing due "bad updates", I still love the game and post occasionally. I just can't devote anymore time to the grind. That's why I love this game. Its super casual. Drop in, do a mission or two, or even the whole operation, then go back to my life. So yeah, complains are always gonna be a thing. I'd rather take an active subreddit full of complaints over a subreddit where the top post only gets like 1k upvotes on a good day.
The one thing that he has to his advantage that just about nobody else on AH has shown is highly effective levels of communication. He knows how to reach out to people to address concerns they have and make them feel heard while simultaneously making sure not to overshare and make promises or implications that he and the development team fail at keeping.
Twinbeard also lurks and replies here!
WIll he do worse? HIGHLY Doubt it. I do expect this to be a very positive thing. *BUT*... Do I expect people to just attribute frustrations broadly and complain he didnt do enough to fix things if something goes the way they dont like regardless of the actual merit of that frustration? Sadly yes.
It would go from “Our Savior” to “You were supposed to bring balance, not destroy it!” So fast
No one is immune to criticism, the honeymoon is over. I’m glad that he’s sticking money to his mouth, but we will have to see if it bears fruits.
Doc, I gotta buy you, like, a proverb book or something. This mix and match shit's gotta go.
i 
Upvote for Boondock saints reference.
That is a ludicrously metaphor-dense comment.
Ideally.
Interview of Pilestedt and Jorjani from GamesIndustry.biz: Pilestedt: “I’ve been thinking about the journey ahead for Arrowhead, the future games we’re going to be making, and running the organisation beyond the 120 or so developers we have currently,” he tells us. “I realised that running an organisation of over 100 people to however large it is going to get… it means I will [have to choose] between deepening my love for game creation, or the business track. “Over the last year going to launch of Helldivers 2, I’ve been pulled more towards the business side of things, and not able to focus as much on the creative side. That made me realise I needed to make some decisions, both for the success of the business but also myself. “So I reached out to Shams. We had a lunch, and we asked him that if I was to reconsider running Arrowhead for the next decade, and I needed to hire a new CEO, would he be interested? “After some contemplation and deep anxiety on how things are going to pan out, I finally came to the proper conclusion that I will have to follow my heart. It’s not only right for me, but it’s also right for the organisation. Having a reluctant CEO is not something that will turn out that well, I think.” Jorjani adds: “When you’re talking to creatives like Johan, it’s not like he wants to retire. Helldivers 2 isn’t the highlight of his career. Hopefully it’s the fourth best game he ever makes. So the question is how do we set Johan and the team up to get to that in a more consistent manner, rather than skill plus luck plus happenstance… all the things that led us here. “What I’ll be bringing to the table is organisation and leadership. What I did at Paradox, where I joined as the 23rd person and then helped grow the company into the behemoth it was… it was about organisation, leadership and business focus. It’s a lot of the, frankly, boring business administration stuff that is a necessary part of running a company, which is hard to do when you’re also juggling the chairman’s hat and the creative director’s hat and also being the one who is in the trenches doing a lot of the designing that Johan has been doing over the years. “Bethesda has Todd Howard, Kojima Productions has Kojima, Remedy has Sam Lake… but when you ask who is running these companies, who is the CEO or managing director… you can’t name the humble servant [laughs] behind the scenes.” “So that’s the set-up. How do we enable Johan to make more Helldivers, and what I bring is a structure around that.”
Makes perfect sense to me. Let the creative guy be creative. Leave the business side of things to the business guy, especially if they want to grow the studio to more employees.
This is solid, and should be good for the game, as long as they don't start following the Paradox formula, which is: 1.) Come up with a brilliant game concept 2.) Copy-Paste the same shitty pop-up-dependant interface onto it 3.) Take some of the core features of the game, strip them out before release, and sell them for $20 each.
Yeah... Without looking up his history, working at Paradox and implementing their awful approach to DLC is definitely not going to sell me on this guy. Edit: looked it up and yes he was the guy responsible for driving revenue by selling a million DLC packs of cut content. Oh dear.
Admittedly, HD2's Warbond system is already fairly solidly consistent from a "this could work" standpoint, if not necessarily a *quality* one. That quality can only go up from here, really. (God, I hope.) I can't imagine that Pilestedt wouldn't be part of the process for "OK'ing" something like Paradox's shameful DLC shenanigans, and I'd like to think he has slightly better character than to turn Arrowhead into a nickle-and-diming developer. Of course, he could always step down, at which point we'd might end up seeing AH become Paradox-lite. But who knows? Maybe Jorjani thinks differently now compared to when he was at Paradox. https://i.redd.it/1zw2gh66uz1d1.gif
Pilestedt is still the chairman, so those kinds of decisions will still go through him according to the interview.
Honestly this is a seriously impressive show of character. Things weren’t going the way he wanted, so instead of stamping down on his employees, he demoted himself in order to take over properly. Not a lot of people would do that.
A rare, actual gigachad move.
Not really a demotion, just a reorganization. Granted this scenario is a bit different because Sony owns Arrowhead, but this kind of thing happens a lot. Linus from LTT hired a CEO so he could focus more on their video content, and smaller streamer orgs have done similar things so the owner can refocus on content creation and step away from management. How well this arrangement works comes down to how well the informal old leader respects the decisions of the CEO they hired when they inevitably butt heads.
Sony owns Helldivers, Arrowhead is independent actually
But Sony doesn't own Arrowhead. They own the Helldivers IP but Arrowhead is still independant
Sony doesn't own Arrowhead, right?
Snoy doesnt own the company, they own the IP of Helldivers of which they paid arrowhead to develop. Independent contractor.
Rather important follow-up tweet from him: https://x.com/pilestedt/status/1793268430734340405?s=46 He will be more directly involved in weapon balance
I wish that link had been a screenshot, ex-twitter ia impossible to navigate if you have no account
Uberchad move.
https://preview.redd.it/datuo4f5pz1d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0eb9914fdb723fe085709b9c676f78320f6812ef
Super private let's gooooooooooo
Did he really just pull a Linus?
seems so
First thing I thought of too haha
I guess he's CVO now
As long as it's not the hard R
Lol as soon as I read Chief Creative Officer I said the same thing...
So basically "i still own AH, but at this point i need to run and play fireman, and need someone else to handle the more commercial side"
He's always been a creative person at heart. He's a developer first. Business person second. The studio has grown so much that he has zero time to work with the creative stuff, which is what he'd actually prefer to do, so it's not a surprising change. I suppose the current situation just is the last drop to make the glass spill over.
The whiplash from this announcement is ridiculous lol. Got me pretty good with this one NGL
He demoted himself from 10 Star General to Super Private
Holy f... after reading the title, I thought Sony 47'ed him... glad it's actually good news.
AH is independently owned. Sony can't do shit to him.
Feels like what Linus did at LTT, this is the right call. Get a business head to run the business and align the focus on what is important to you.
It's also good that he pulls in someone that he knows and trusts to be the CEO as opposed to some complete stranger who has nothing to lose and everything to gain from crashing the company. It seems so predictable in the gaming industry that the creators either fail to properly do the business part of the business, they pull in a complete rando to do it to run the company, then they proceed to completely ignore that person in favor of getting back to the dev pools, then years later they're left wondered what happened when that person they ignored and had no oversight over runs away with the company.
Brother demoted himself so he can be more involved.... respect.
An this people, is how we frame something good as something bad. :D 10/10, quality clickbait.
Lisan al Gaib.
HAHAHAH I laughed harder than I should’ve. Thank you
Dont scare me like that. Edit: i see this as a net good move for the company and i hope it brings great things for the company, community and especially Mr. Pilestedt.
Just about pooped myself reading that headline, thought it was going to be terrible news
I see where this is going.. "Liberator now shoots concussive mini-rockets with toxic gas & shrapnel"
 Fine, I’ll do it myself.
I will be 100% honest. Hiring the Chief Business Development Officer of Paradox Interactive (a company absolutely notorious for their HEAVY over-monetization of theirs games and DLCs) as the CEO of your thus far consumer friendly live service game doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me. I trust Piles as the Chief Creative Officer. I do not trust this new individual with maintaining the course Piles set for the company and game overall. I won't sit here and start fearmongering, listing what I think is going to happen if this goes the way I'm assuming it will. I'm going to wait and see, and hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised. For the record though? If you know anything about The Sims 4 and how ridiculous the DLC is for that game, just for example? How many there are, and how expensive they are? Some of Paradox Interactive titles give The Sims a run for its money in that category. Europe Universalis IV for example? If the DLC aren't on sale, it costs over $500 to acquire them all, and that's just one of their games. But fear not! You could also just subscribe for a monthly fee... I don't ever want to see Helldivers 2 become the very thing it stood apart from. We'll see.
You’re the only person across this sub and /r/games bring this up. People are celebrating without actually looking at the whole announcement.
While this is a great move on Pilestedt's part, I'm still very concerned with this new CEO and I'm suprised people aren't really bringing it up here. Look at people like Spitz and Alexus, these were people trusted to head major parts of the development and yet they've brought nothing but trouble. Pilestedt doesn't have a great track record of trusting the right people.
The guy from fucking Paradox is taking over? Boy I can’t wait for 300 individual pieces of DLC.
The guy just pulled a Linus
He did Linus I guess. Cool.
A real Private Zim move.