CEO Shams Jorjani: "The player is wrong"

[pseudo]

Before you rush to the comments to say I'm clickbaiting, I admit I'm paraphrasing. Forum titles can't be too long. Now that I have your attention, here's the full context. Shams Jorjani has shared a couple photos of a recent meeting lead by Johan Pilestedt, now CCO, discussing criticisms of their game.

https://x.com/ShamsJorjani/status/1798301402382627214
https://x.com/ShamsJorjani/status/1798301946153181407
https://x.com/ShamsJorjani/status/1798302848889102636
https://x.com/ShamsJorjani/status/1798303460045279684
https://x.com/ShamsJorjani/status/1798304037366112647

Originally posted by @ShamsJorjani:

I asked @Pilestedt to hos the first of a series of Lunch & lunch workshop at the @ArrowheadGS office on the topic of "Us and Them: building healthy relationship with our players and partners" we try to unpack learnings since launch.

Originally posted by @ShamsJorjani:

Johan shares a few examples and we discuss the nuances.

Originally posted by @ShamsJorjani:

A big takeaways is that we as developers and players have a bit of a doctor/patient relationship. A patient comes in with knee pain thinking it's due to a particular "thing". We as doctors know it's not that "thing". The patient is wrong, but they are Also STILL in pain.

Originally posted by @ShamsJorjani:

We are talking about that our initial reaction might be to strawman/defend our decisions. Where we could be "strongmanning" and be inspired in future work.

Originally posted by @ShamsJorjani:

We have challenge in that we want to keep things secret so we can surprise and delight. But people want clarity on the road map. When we aren't clear about a road map people extrapolate on our previous track record.

Discuss.

[Mikail]

Just let them destroy themself, they are working at it pretty good at this point, just look at their updates and balance.

Just take popcorn and watch how good game was destroyed by their ego.

[The Dess 2023 GOTY Edition]

The dude's name is actually "Shams?" 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Mikail]

Originally posted by The Dess 2023 GOTY Edition:

The dude's name is actually "Shams?" 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Real name is Scamas

[Moodyman90]

The loudest voices aren't always right. Don't get me wrong, when the crowd is shouting at you then it's smart to listen, but when 90 out of 100 people are going "Game sucks! Fix it!" and that's it, it's better to just filter that out and listen to the other 10 going "So while I agree with them, here's what I think should be done."

Tenderizer sucks because the Liberator got buffed right beforehand and it's a problem with the assault rifles in general. But there's more to fixing them then just "Give buff now."

[Dukey Nukey]

Uh, yea that's not exactly wrong per say. THe community has a problem with guns feeling weak. The problem might not be gun balance but enemy balance for example. They know the code we know how it feels

[fungus]

I think it's pretty understandable coming from their perspective. They are game designers professionally, most of helldivers playerbase are not, therefore it makes sense that most of the time they think they know best when it comes to game design, and hell they're the ones with one of the most successful coop launches in a very long time so you can't really say they're wrong lol.

That's not to say they're perfect, AH themelves have admitted some amount of wrongdoing for certain things like launch, the balance of certain weapons and the altering of how/when content is being delivered, they ARE listening, it's that the community is very... lively, to put it nicely, and criticises the game much more than I've ever seen any other coop community do, even for games that are much more inherintly flawed than Helldivers, like GTFO for example.

I can't remember who or where it was said, but a while back there was this quote (I'm paraphrasing because I can't remember it fully) "players are great at realising a problem with the game but horrible at giving solutions" and that's kinda what this reads like. AH listen to the feedback of the community but doesn't want to blindly follow what the most popular solution is, because they're experienced game designers and can poke holes in things players suggest that would be detrimental to the health of the game.

This one is probably gonna get me flamed a bit, but for instance the "only buff never nerf" mentality that you see around sometimes. Players realised the problem that yes, spawns are a little rough and sometimes you can just get unlucky and die without any possible counterplay saving you, but the solution they give is also riddled with game design flaws and following such a mentality would greatly impact the health and development of the game negatively in the long term.

I know hating AH is super popular in the community which is odd (and disheartening since I see AH as one of the better developers out there), but honestly it makes perfect sense they'd feel like this. Besides, they're very clearly still working out the kinks with some things, and I feel it's a little unfair to write off the new CEO before we've even gotten any major patch or update since he joined, just chill out for a bit.

[Khanwolf]

Why is it so extremely hard to be silent and productive? When i was reading that doctor patient quote i broke out in laughter.

The Release felt great, then the first Patch brought all these artificial Changes, as if you want to build a house on top of an unfinished house!

They should learn to leak IMPORTANT AND CONSTRUCTIVE Things only please. This is such a bad PR and such a super unfinished product. We are a bit more than one single week away from the Patch and they talk like this?

Quality is impressive and needed now. Empty Talk with bad Timing and even worse Pictures with absolutely zero Message we can take from those is simply not needed. Thats is Cringe to be precise.

Thank you for collecting all this and posting it, you always got the Info and the Sources!

[Frosty™]

O.K.

One could try not taking everything they do as personal attacks. I notice this studio gets a lot of flak for any move they make at this point. It's gotten old. I highly recommend not being irritated about things you wouldn't even notice or search for in other games. It has got to be exhausting.

I mean damn. If it were up to Arrowhead, it's possible this game *still* would not be released. As usual, the publisher wanted to start seeing returns, and pushed it to the public. Just let it pan out. You might actually have the game that AH wanted in another year.

Then again, maybe not.

[Blackstorm]

Originally posted by @ShamsJorjani:
A big takeaways is that we as developers and players have a bit of a doctor/patient relationship. A patient comes in with knee pain thinking it's due to a particular "thing". We as doctors know it's not that "thing". The patient is wrong, but they are Also STILL in pain.

god this a bad take on so many levels, you have the tools to go into the game and see what people mean! twiddling your thumbs and saying well how does that make you feel doesn't solve the problem. An yet from patch one people been telling them they should open a test sever so they could get a better understanding of if something not ready for release.

[pseudo]

Originally posted by Khanwolf:

Why is it so extremely hard to be silent and productive? When i was reading that doctor patient quote i broke out in laughter.

The Release felt great, then the first Patch brought all these artificial Changes, as if you want to build a house on top of an unfinished house!

They should learn to leak IMPORTANT AND CONSTRUCTIVE Things only please. This is such a bad PR and such a super unfinished product. We are a bit more than one single week away from the Patch and they talk like this?

Quality is impressive and needed now. Empty Talk with bad Timing and even worse Pictures with absolutely zero Message we can take from those is simply not needed. Thats is Cringe to be precise.

Thank you for collecting all this and posting it, you always got the Info and the Sources!

Thanks, I'm happy to help get things in front of people where it's more visible. X/Twitter is a bit of a gated community so a lot of people don't notice some important stuff that gets posted there.

And to the others, I appreciate all the responses being civil and well written.

[TunaHematoma]

As long as they fix the knee instead of idk, amputating your leg to make the pain go away, then sure.

[Mike]

Originally posted by Dukey Nukey:

Uh, yea that's not exactly wrong per say. THe community has a problem with guns feeling weak. The problem might not be gun balance but enemy balance for example. They know the code we know how it feels

Yeah, it feels like a chicken and egg situation. What to fix first, enemies/ enemies mechanics etc or the weapons + strats?

[New To This]

Quite a lot of us "The guns are extremely weak"
Them "You're wrong, but you're in pain!"

"No .....the guns are REALLY weak"

"We hear you, but we KNOW it isn't that"

"FFS this with ANOTHER modern game?"

"Yes, you don't know any better! You're just the CONSUMER, not the PLAYER."

[New To This]

"When we don't tell people what we're doing, people extrapolate off what we HAVE done!"

.....Yeah.....no kidding, and what they've done is TANK the games reputation, good will, and grace period, while telling the player they dunno wtf they want.

XD

[Blackstorm]

Originally posted by New To This:

Quite a lot of us "The guns are extremely weak"
Them "You're wrong, but you're in pain!"

"No .....the guns are REALLY weak"

"We hear you, but we KNOW it isn't that"

"FFS this with ANOTHER modern game?"

"Yes, you don't know any better! You're just the CONSUMER, not the PLAYER."

Them "we finally hear you that weapons are weak here +5 and +10 damage"

ok but that didn't help......

them "oh? the charts say oh that right we forgot to gut your favorite gun so other feel stronger!"

WAIT WAIT NO NO NO NO NO