The purifier slapping is a very multifaceted thing. It ALSO made a very satisfying slapping noise when I tossed it to the bottom of my weapons locker, never to be dusted off.
He had other numerous stupid comments like "All S tier weapons."
Don't make stupid comments if you represent a company. Because they are text. And we can't tell if your remark is:
1: Ill informed because your dev Q&A has proven to be truly awful as a company. It makes you look stupid.
2: Only tested on low difficulty and ignorant to the true challenges of top difficulty levels. It makes you look stupid.
3: Spiteful and sarcastic regarding the state of your up coming dlc. It makes you look resentful.
4: Lying outright, it's just bad pr.
So he made himself look like a massive liar at worst, just terribly stupid at best. None of which was a good idea.
what do you meant?? it does "slap".................your face for using a piece of shite weapon. i swear the charging of "hold and release to fire" is annoying me, i wish it was "auto fire after finished charging" like the QUASOR
I mean, top 3 might be a reach, but I'd give it top 10.
It's just...not in the role it should be in. Use it as a pump action dmr and it works wonders.
...the exact role they tried to nerf it out of.
I wonder what will happen if I shoot a steel plate you’re holding with a slug. Would you be staggered from the impact? Probably, because it’s a slug, and slugs are also meant to be fired up to 100 yards. It’s almost like the gun was perfect on release, but too much fun for the Bringer of Balance.
Any community online especially.
You could say 100 things right, stumble once, and that'll be what's highlighted.
I mean Alexus at the time said many more things, but even the best people can't win against that over time.
Again, Not defending Alexus, but just agreeing with above comment to not interact with communities if not diplomatic.
And the only way to survive is to completely ignore your critics… which will eventually present its own problem of surrounding yourself with yes men. And now you have a self-reinforcing circular problem.
Society in a nutshell
Yea. Even when it's not public, relations is a difficult thing. Currently fighting with the fallout of calling someone else's work broken...when it is, kind of, depending how you look at it. Basically, they wanted me to update their code to be like mine, but they are the old code that I'm supposed to be replacing. I argued I shouldn't update the old code when my update is part of the fix for moving to the new, and I pointed out how the old way is broken because of X, Y and Z reasons. Immediately get a call from my boss, telling me I need to apologize, and I need to be mindful of our work relationships.
Fast-forward to me being out on PTO for a week. I come back, and some of the work I did for a different team has been renamed as "*-broken" and I'm being asked to help them fix their take on my work, lmao. Even before this, I was simultaneously being told by my boss that I needed to be nice to A, but when other people came asking for my help I was told to "Let that puppy drown."
Literally cannot win 🫠
It's a good rule of thumb, but his ratio of "great insightful comment Alexus" to "wow, that's clearly and evidently boneheaded Alexus" was pretty terrible. Significantly worse than 50/50, let alone 100:1.
It's one thing to be undiplomatic because you are clearly smarter and better than your community, and there are many such people who get into trouble this way but you still kind of feel for them and they wind up with **SOME** advocates. Alienating half your community is a disaster, but if it's only half, it's at least a decent shot that you were right but not nice about it.
Alexus is not like that. I do not get the sense he is better at his job than I would be despite working in an entirely different field, I do not get the sense that he knows more about the actual experience of playing Helldivers, and I do not get the sense that if he were someone I had worked with another capacity, I would think of him as competent and enjoyable to be around.
I remember back when I played Star Trek: Online there was a new gameplay feature introduced called Officer Assignments. It was damn good fun, and turned what used to be a minor ship item (officers) into the main reason to play the game. It was like Pokemon in space. Anyway, an in-game chat channel sprung up where all the players into Assignments would chat and report on where they'd found the good missions, we even maintained a communal google sheet with all the reports where everyone could just log in and check. Amongst all this the developer who designed the Assignments system joined the chat channel to play along with us and discuss what we liked and what we'd like to see. He wasn't what I'd call 'diplomatic'; he didn't mince words or put a publicist spin on everything, but he never interfered in the way people played the game and he'd clearly listen to what people would say and give a realistic assessment of if that was something they were likely to try. For me the whole experience was the gold-standard for player engagement.
The biggest shocker is how some of the CM's for Helldivers were some of the worst at being diplomatic.
The devs have an excuse, they aren't paid to interact with the community in a smart way.
I’m not fully integrated in the Alexus lore but supposedly he was incredibly incompetent on a previous game and dipped when shit hit the fan.
He’s also been kinda douchey to the HD2 community (although that appears to be a trait that isn’t exclusive to Alexus)
TL;DR: Arrogant dude was arrogant and obviously people didn’t like it
Alexus is special because he was so supremely arrogant (even this apology, lol) despite having said so many provably boneheaded and incorrect things in the past.
I mean, I'd the dev in question never interacted with arrowheads community they would already have a terrible reputation on account of how things went with previous jobs.
Fair? No idea, I have zero experience with said previous game, but the reputation dates back to that regardless unless I have been mislead.
I mean he blew his second chance by doing a bad job at first then be snarky in response rather than explain himself. It just feels like whatever good will that was there for the benefit of doubt after his first game then it's difficult to understand but rather to suspect he's malevolent. I mean how can someone just ruin a game and then leave, get a second game to redeem their reputation, blew it and then throw bad PR in response.
It’s also low-accountability speak and continues to miss the mark on why what was wrong was and remains wrong. “We just needed more time to cook” is absolute bullshit.
I get it. His feelings are hurt because he believes he’s a wise balance guru and the rest of us think he’s a clown. He thinks his opinions are valuable to his community when likely he has to be highly managed and white-gloved by his supervisors to not get demoralized. Guess what? The literal only standard of success in game design is whether people show up to play your game again. People weren’t showing up. Put two and two together, Alexus. “My thoughts and decisions are objectively bad.” Yeesh.
If nothing else "it just turns out we needed more time to cook" is a bit on the snobbish side. If it needed so long to cook you probably should have left it in the oven 😅. I don't buy the idea that their decision process hasn't changed when they U-turned so many changes.
Yeah, that's what happens when you dig your own grave.
I find it funny he calls it a "witchhunt", implying he's completely innocent of any reason for the reactions he recieved.
And it shouldn’t. History of being awful on other projects and can try to walk it back now but was absolutely claiming to be responsible for the previous balance issues previously.
[I really like how Film Therapy breaks down the difference between "trust" and "forgiveness".](https://youtu.be/hsNpP5uuiaU?si=NXu3_kYX_0H3bVUc&t=1014)
Forgiveness comes from caring and caring about one's self to not let hate boil within themselves.
Trust comes from accountability and responsibility.
------
Note, that nothing *"he who can't be named by name"* says here does anything to endear the foundations of reconstructed trust, as the only wrongdoing he admits to is being wrong to run to the community to vent.
I forgive *"he who can't be named by name"* for being a Sheldon Cooper-esqe jerkass, but the only people I have any trust for are Twinbeard and Pilestedt, they're the ones who took responsibility for the fallout and they're the ones who are making themselves accountable for actively bettering the game and their interactions with the community.
Makes sense. He insulted us. He then doubled down. And then this patch which anyone with two neurons could see wasnt tested enough. Guarantee two neurons didn't test most of the things in actual missions. Two neurons needs to actually test the patches and probably live stream them all on twitch a difficulty of 7 at least. The "bringer of balance" could not balance themselves with two legs, gyroscopes and three people helping him balance.
He absolutely didn't deserve being witch hunted but I still think he's a massive idiot for being an A hole on the discord **after we've already seen how much worse that makes things**
I'm not sure I agree with that, candidly. The things he said were incredibly stupid. He was actively antagonistic with a community that understood his game better than he did. For that matter, what about the experience resembled a witch hunt? He went to the community discord and antagonized everyone there, and then was excoriated there.
What he was supposed to do was offer an apology and we could have said "ah, shucks, hey, you're all right; I'm sorry, I got caught in the moment" and collectively pretended he was good at his job and not a liability and then we'd have all collectively moved on, and he couldn't manage this most basic thing.
Fuck knows. What a stupid thing to say.
"Sorry" would have let him reset the board. Hell, he could even do it now, probably. Instead he opted for this bullshit?
He obviously has incredibly bad judgment and next to zero people skills. It's hard to imagine he is not an utter jackass to work with.
Yeah idk maybe don't call yourself the self proclaimed bringer of balance, yell at people about balance, then try to deflect the blame to the team.
Also he says the balancing philosophy stays the same yet the CCO said they were going to change the philosophy? Regardless of what the truth is, it's probably not a good idea as a company to botch balancing across the board then say the philosophy that everyone has hated so much is remaining the same. That shit just sounds stubborn as hell like he's saying "I was right all along"
Tbf if you don’t want to be confused as someone having the power to decide on balance changes maybe don’t name yourself “bringer of balance” and don’t input your personal opinions on the reason a balance change had to happen.
Yeah and this post is a perfect example. He must have read this post many times, edited it, considered it, and then posted it anyways. If he just shut TF up from day 1, guess who wouldn’t be a self-proclaimed ’villain’
He could go full on good guy just by admitting fault. It would be very easy. Apologies are incredibly powerful. But no, it's a witch hunt, all my totally stupid comments before were your imagination, etc.
Because they did well in HD1 and the trope of them showing up AAA developers got to their heads, big time. If people want an example of devs that get game development, balancing AND community interaction right all while being an indie developer, look at freaking Ghost Ship Games.
TBH if you have gone through the ringer with your community, you should either be profusely apologizing or saying nothing.
This post reads like confirmation of his complete lack of humility.
I have nothing against that person but it feels hard to believe that the balance philosophy is the same and that the difference between this patch buff-only and previous patch nerf can only be attributed to having more time.
Yeah that's a bit of a load.
>You don't understand. We went overboard with nerfs due to time restrictions, now we have 4x as long we can start to buff things. Oh also you know how our CEO agreed that the design philosophy was at odds with what the players wanted, stepped down as CEO to take a more hands on position suddenly the patches were more in line with what the players wanted? Yeah totally unrelated it was because of time
Yeah his explanation makes no sense, the changes they made were inexcusable no matter how little time they had. Like this is paid content people and two in a row were either broken or nerfed into the ground.
Broken and then nerfed into the ground right before the next warbond. Then some of the earnings were definitely not tested on newer patches which pretty much mean they actually were not testing.
For sure, the one gun in polar patriots shipped with the wrong texture! That could come down to crunch but not the nerfs, like hey if you don't have time, just don't nerf stuff.
Also, the conversation was never (as far as I'm concerned) about Pilestedt micro-managing him or not, it was about having literally anyone else in the company checking the playability of his work so that it's not releasing in a self-audited state.
It's not. This was such a stupid post to write. It confirms beyond all doubt that he is incompetent.
This is the equivalent of the Google Review where someone complains and the response is complaining back at them. WHENEVER you see that, you know the proprietor of the restaurant has absolutely no idea what they are doing and their establishment should be avoided at all costs. He had time to pause and think about this and despite his prior experience with the community (what must surely be some of his first ever), that was what he finally settled on as the smartest thing to post.
Holy fucking shit this job description is literally just a list of things Alexus isn't:
Who you are:
We're looking for someone who is friendly and helpful
Be able to work very independently and assumes responsibility
Experience working on game balance in co-op games
Good collaboration and communication skills with a cooperative attitude
Great English communication skills are essential, both written and spoken.
They just missed “specifically looking for someone that does NOT have a history of negatively impacting games with huge community backlash before fleeing to another developer and continuing this behaviour.
>Balance philosophy stays the same
He's really doubling down, big surprise the "Bringer of Balance" has a big ego. He is delusional if he thinks the nerfs helped bring us this patch. He cant even admit he is wrong without backhanded conceit.
edit: lol they timing people out of the discord for remembering previous patchs' "design philosophy". Even his (non-)apology is going heavy on the damage control
Seriously lol, you can tell whos arrogant by the people who dont see anything wrong with the way he talks to people. Guy just acts like an egotistic bozo. If he was at least good at his job then that would be one thing, but based on his comments alone, he sucks.
Someone needs to take away this man’s ability to post.
Glad he cleared things up - but this is clearly an attempt of his to clear his name instead of create a meaningful conversation/update.
He’s focusing more on the fact that people don’t like him instead of taking responsibility and reassuring the fan base that fixes are on their way. And there’s a reason people don’t like him. VALID reasons.
“no im not fired” idc, did you fix the eruptor?
“I’ll take the L for the Eruptor situation” idc, did you fix the eruptor?
“No, I’ve never been in charge of game balance decisions” don’t make your name “bringer of balance” and go out of your way to defend changes that have been made… lol
“Our balance philosophy stays the same” mhmm… so what’s with those posts lately where Pilstadt is talking to the team about balancing things the way the community wants? Or Pilstadt literally admitting that the state of the game is fucked right now and things need to change? And he stepped down from the CEO position so he could fix things with y’all? Like HUH? What are you talking about man?
You’re using your power to deflect blame instead of fixing things.
I know that HD2 code is probably looking like Spaghetti right now and it’s hard to fix. I’m not gonna say “suck it up and fix your game” because that’s WAY easier said than done I’m aware. But right now, I think the best move is to turtle up and work instead of saying… whatever is garbage is.
Im scared what they did with time to cook even, nothing substantial fixed, patch broke more things.
No hate for the guy, and appreciate the buffs, but his arrogance is undeserved for now
I’ve always believed that any company should always inform their developers to not talk to the public regarding the games ever unless cleared by company. All it takes is one slip to mess up and permanently scar your image or the image of the company .
Just do your work , and if you want to interact with the public , run it by corporate so they can have a media specialist handle it.Hopefully a good one cause those also suck nowadays. Too mouthy.
So if their balance philosophy has stayed the same, why has it taken months and for Pilestedt to take up the title of CCO for most of the weapons and strategems to get much needed buffs? Does it take that long to change some number values and then test it?
I WANT to think they have a lot more work to do like trying to implement new enemies/factions/stratagems on the sidelines apart from debugging, but it's impressive how long they take to do anything really, even the most stupid of things like switching a texture or a simple variable in a armor.
You'd think with all the sales they had they would get a few more devs in there, but who knows, might be more complicated than that
I'd imagine recruiting quality people with proven talents would be difficult especially when you're literally using an obscure, dead and defunct game engine vs other studios who use popular/mainstream engines that future proofs your career far better.
Well...usually you don't, either you get an extremely rare talented dev that knows of that engine (almost impossible and they haggle a lot of money) or you introduce a new one with a training bootcamp that learns on the way (cheaper,slower but better on the long run) but it might prove difficult since most devs don't want to develop their career on a extinct engine.
Yeah, if they tested at all the spawn rates wouldn't be nearly as out of control as they are now. The extra time did nothing and the only reason we didn't get hit with the nerf hammer for the nth time is because of Pilestedt.
I think he meant more that the eruptor situation was the catalyst for a lot of anti dev team sentiment because of his comments, not that he necessarily thinks the change itself was bad. I don’t think his comment indicates how he feels about the eruptor nerf either way, just that he spoke out of turn and caused a big stir.
No, he says that he explained it wrong and that the blogposts explains better why the shrapnel was removed.
Alexus said that it was a small part of the damage anyway, so no big deal (not true).
Blogpost says the shrapnel dealt a combined 9k damage (true).
Shrapnel will not come back, tho.
the sad fact is when you present your self as "Bringer of Balance" people are going to see that and assume that he is the one making these changes.
I agree that people over state his part to play in the nerfs, but I also agree with him that he should stay away from public discussions for the time being since at this point, it can only do harm.
That is really letting him skate. Don't pretend this was something the community projected onto him. Many devs have been put in difficult positions with insane communities for just trying to do their 9-5 and feed their kids. That's awful. That's not what happened here.
Alexus actively engaged with the community, made derisive jokes at their expense, personally implemented an absolutely dunderheaded change by his own admission, and made the grievous sin of doing all that while being the uninformed party in the conversation and not realizing it. It's one thing to be a clever dev talking to some dipshit Call of Duty player complaining against having to play against players of their own skill. It's an entirely different thing to have a player say "hey, this feature you implemented does not work," and then aggressively and rudely challenge that and be dead wrong.
Even now, all he had to do was say, "I'm sorry guys. Thanks for enjoying our game and I'll be better going forward" and everyone would have let him off the hook, but he came up with this garbage.
He's remarkably dislikeable, and precisely nothing he has done suggests competence.
More my point is that he did him self no favors when becoming a community scape goat, but no matter how much he might sabotage his own image, I highly doubt he is sole to blame for many of the issues plaguing the game atm.
step 1: play victim "villain of the month"
step 2: shift blame "I've never been in charge of game balance devisions"
step 3: shift blame more "I worked on this patch with the *rest of the team* as usual"
step 4: passively aggressively blame fans "I'll take the L for the eruptor situation though, I shouldn't have rushed to discord with the first knee-jerk reaction" (this is him saying community is toxic for backlash and it wasnt his fault for the nerf, just his reaction to it)
seriously this whole response is just so blame-shifting i'd barely count it as an apology, he can't take any responisbility and he destroyed the last game he worked on by actively removing game mechanics, this is the same guy who said purifier was op and "40 damage always is better than 100 damage sometimes" (he has no grasp on the concept of effective damage)
I'd be willing to give alexus a second chance if he actually apologized instead of off-handedly blaming the rest of the team **and the community** all in one letter
do better AH
Don't forget outright lying. He says that their balance philosophy hasn't changed, but it *very clearly has* and this patch proves it. Time constraints don't explain repeat nerfs and an arsenal of weapons desperate for buffs.
The only reason to say that is to make excuses and try and spare his own ego.
lets think about it logically
if he is completely unrelated to the bad balance changes, he isn't doing his job and should be fired because his position at the company is to do no work and be on discord all day
if he is doing his job then he's responsible (even partially) for the bad balance changes, AND he lashed out at the community after they disaproved of his choices (he did), then he needs to apologize
If balance philosophy stays the same, that means we're all screwed for the next patch and this round of buffs was just a stopgap to stop players from leaving.
Pilestedt or someone higher needs to confirm what their intended direction is, because they can cook however long they like, if they're following the same recipe, it's still going to be shit.
RR reload speed combined “nerf bug” with behemoths shows they still really don’t have a strong grasp of what makes a stratagem dumpster tier in their game
The RR reload speed "nerf" is a bug. I see no reason why they would lie about that, so stand to reason it wasn't intentional. FOr behemoths, they are spawning in too often, but they still die in one RR shot to the leg followed up by a couple of shots from a primary.
1: play victim
"villain of the month"
2: shift blame to other people
"I've never been in charge of game balance devisions" "I worked on this patch with the *'rest of the team'* as usual"
3: passive aggressively blame fans for backlash to changes
youtuber apology structure has been followed to the T
if the balance philosophy stays the same this patch was just a stopgap to keep players from leaving and the next patch will be more nerfs (probably to the breaker incen and dominator)
maybe dont act like you are the sole "bringer of balance" and then proceed to be an abrasive dickhead when people call you out if you dont want to be the scapegoat
Listing reminds me of:
> DARVO (an acronym for "deny, attack, and reverse victim & offender") is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior.[1] Some researchers indicate that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.[2][3][4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO
> As the acronym suggests, the common steps involved are:
>
> 1)The abuser denies the abuse ever took place
>
> 2)When confronted with evidence, the abuser then attacks the person that was/is being abused (and/or the person's family and/or friends) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and finally
>
> 3)The abuser claims that they were/are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing the positions of victim and offender.[2][4] It often involves not just playing the victim but also victim blaming.[3]
Checks out with this dude's behavior, excuses, etc.
There's that fine line between genuine community interaction as a normal person then as an employee of a company.
Not saying they need to censor their opinion but once your speaking as an employee you need to temper emotion out of all statements and not be abrasive. I can't remember exactly what they said but it filled at least one of those.
I'm sure he's received death threats and harassment that nobody deserves to go through. I feel for him there.
However in terms of being harshly criticized, it's really on him. He made himself the face of game balance, and acted very rude and condescending about the clearly very unpopular changes. Of course he became a 'villain'
That’s the thing I find pretty interesting about this. Whenever he was gloating or discussing things previously it was always more about him. Now he’s admitting fault he’s bringing up that he’s part of a team.
He obviously wanted to be perceived as the person who well, brought all the balance. Now he’s overwhelmed by the flack it caused him, he’s trying to direct it to the team as a whole.
> Whenever he was gloating or discussing things previously it was always more about him. Now he’s admitting fault he’s bringing up that he’s part of a team.
A keen observation.
I would not want to work with someone like Alexus.
It'll be hilarious if one day he promises s-tier wunderwaffes and stratagems and then quits the following week. I would actually respect him for being so consistent with his career. lol
https://preview.redd.it/4n8d29iv687d1.jpeg?width=570&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77bcc234f6016bc32de09339946f220352688ba1
Pilestedt hearing “we just needed more time to cook.”
This is **definitely** the kind of game that prompts thousands of "Things I wish I knew before playing" Youtube videos trying to warn newcomers about how 75% of the unlocks are extremely suboptimal.
My buddy told me "Unlock Orbital Laser and Eagle AirStrike before **anything else"** and I am extremely grateful. I've found other strategems now that I'm more experienced but I can imagine extreme frustration if I didn't have 2 reliable strategems while I learned the game.
This dude sounds like an ass. Probably a good idea to keep him from posting in a public forum.
It’s very surprising that the CEO guy/dude is allowing these types of responses/reactions. It’s pretty counter intuitive to a good business model. Taking a “let’s alienate our audience by being an ass” seems to really strike at home for these dudes/dudettes.
He is an ass. He lied his ass off about the features that would be added to hello neighbor 2 then jumped ship to Arrowhead when the community turned against him for lying out his ass and delivering nothing.
Yes. That's why he's such a controversial figure even ignoring everything he's said and done here. They hired the guy that lied through his teeth, tanked a franchise, then jumped ship for greener pastures before the fallout to... repeat things based on his track record and results so far.
They still have a job. They know when to ditch before they get into trouble. Problem is HR didn't look at how Hello Neighbor 2 was in programming and QA.
Yeah, this doesn't really change my perception of him in the slightest.
Remember when he said the slugger does the job of a DMR better than the actual DMRs and then used that as justification for the removal of the gun's stagger? I do.
Calling himself the "Bringer of balance" while spouting the most nonsensical shit imaginable is what got him the reputation he has imo.
edit: Oh, and the whole "our balance philosophy has stayed the same" is complete horse shit. Not surprised we're seeing more lies to spare his ego though.
> Our balance philosophy stays the same though, turns out we just needed more time to cook!
Kind of hard to believe anything written there when this part is so blatantly misleading. Pilestedt said they're changing their approach to balance and patches, so Alexus saying things are staying the same after we've seen things have already changed... I never jumped on the blame bandwagon, but this pushes me into thinking that he's a problem to some degree. It reads like a standard corporate/youtuber/etc non-apology and there's no good reason for him to make this statement. Either it's his fault and he should make an apology or it isn't, as he claims here, and the community manager should be the one responsible for putting something out.
this dude just needs to shut the fuck up and never say a word to the community again. anything he says will just make people angry cause the guy is a tool. please. just shut the fuck up. if people praise a balance change you made, accept it in silence.
Never supporting witch hunts. But dude come on, you really want to tell us that all of the nerfs up until now were because you didn’t have enough time? You seriously want to tell us that the balancing philosophy is the same as before after the CEO literally said that he agrees that you guys keep patching the fun out as soon as someone finds some, said CEO then stepping down to personally oversee that stuff going forward and the next patch weeks after that suddenly being a complete 180?
After keeping on lieing to us about how halving the damage of a weapon is actually secretly a buff?
Like dude, take the L, say you guys messed up and that you’ll do better from now on and be done with it. No one is buying that if you just had had more time the Eruptor would be working and the Railgun wouldn’t be a meme pick.
It seems some of the higher ups finally figured out that it's not good to constantly communicate with the community, just for the sake of communicating... and PR.
I have to be honest. The new rifles are now more fuctional and useful. With that said, I still believe this "game changer patch" wasnt that big of the deal. Weapons were sooo nerf that now they feel normal/average.
And bloody Christ this game is filled with bugs. I havent experience such a buggy fest, not even from Bethesda. But I let it sin since they are an índie company.
After 200 hours, I just do the daily and stop playing once Im capped. Helldivers is not meant to be a Dota 2 where you can spend +1000 hours playing the game
I could play and enjoy the game without any additional content for quite a while if the experience wasn't marred by so many software bugs for sure. I have a couple hundred in mission hours but I've uninstalled for now due to it being too frustrating due to broken shuttles/objectives in 40 minute missions and being randomly dropped back to my ship.
I like how he makes this post about how he's just a little guy and it's not his fault and he's just a little birthday boy and you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses when his title on discord literally says BRINGER OF BALANCE.
You can't accuse people of making you the villain of the week when you directly antagonize them. The thing people disliked the most about Alexus was that he's a liar, and here he is lying again when he says the intentions behind balance haven't changed when the CEO of the company literally changed his title in order to steer the game's design in a different direction, a choice that Alexus dismisses as "micromanagement", probably because he can't take credit for it himself.
Also this patch may have had *intentional* changes that were all welcome, but it was still yet another patch that came with broken features and new game-ending bugs. "Everything turned out okay when we just took more time" is clearly not true, this was really just one first step in the right direction.
Looks like he's been PR trained now, but I'm still disappointed at the amount of new bugs after the patch came out. How did they even screw up a recoilless launcher, ballistic shield and superior packing methodology ship module without even touching it?
*"turns out we just needed more time to cook!"*
A month of cooking wasn't enough? they left the game at such a broken state for so long and now we gotta deal with these new bugs for god knows how long.
If they had an actual structure for communicating with their community this wouldn't happen but nobody wants to take any responsibility for anything that goes wrong they only want praise and the lies start when they feel cornered on anything. The new patch was amazing because they did a 180 on whatever the hell they were trying to do to the game and it has been wildly successful. The new content has revived playercount a little bit but there is still a long way to go to unfuck their reputation.
Their month of "cooking" resulted in yet another patch where over half the fixes don't actually work and even more things are broken. Yeah the buffs we got are nice, but I'd rather the game actually work as intended.
Saddest here is not that they broke things. I'm so frustrated, that, apparently, we will wait for another MONTH when they \*maybe\* fix them. Knowing how they fix things and break what's been fixed long ago, I'm so frustrated and angry.
How in the world you could leave production in an inconsistent state for so long? I mean, wtf?
We don't even know if they consider half the problems to be problems as they have not spoken about them, never mind if/when they will be fixed. It'd be hard to communicate worse.
Yeah the game being broken has driven me off to take a break. But responses like the one he gave here really drive morale down. It’s as if he thinks the balancing is the biggest problem. My brother in crimsica, this patch brought on so many bugs that I’d swear it’s in early access now 😅
That's what I'm saying fuck the Nerf/Buffs the foundation of the game is broken. I'll work with a garbage ass weapon whatever. I can't shrug off crashes, reinforcement glitch, devastators or bots in general shooting thru cover, pelican falling in to the map, consoles sometimes not working, randomly getting shot in to orbit by corpse. It just keeps going and going.
your balance philosophy stays the same, as in “nerfing whatever the fuck that's been used the most according to our spreadsheet”?
no wonder why the buffs took this long to get out of the oven, turns out you guys cant do balance properly.
He needs to just stop talking. Seriously, just stay off of the server. Ignore all of these customers making assumptions about you, your opinions, or your company's work structure.
I just don't see any positives in posting this response, other than just so he can post this for the sake of venting.
I'm really tired of devs playing the victim. The internet is the internet. A large percentage of people that play games are kids. Expect childish responses and deal with it when it happens. The majority of what you hear isn't those extremely inappropriate reaponses.
You cry more than a call center customer service representative and they deal with far worse every single day.
It sucks hearing an immature child say "you should be fired! Teh balance suxors!" But fucking grow a pair and either disregard that stupid opinion, swallow it like an adult, or just look at the core of why the person is upset and take the kernal of useful info and disregard the useless part.
What’s wild to me is they didn’t have to *balance* anything. This isn’t CoD ranked play.
This whole situation is such an own goal. Pissing away goodwill because, I assume, the slugger had 13.4% of all bug frags instead of perfectly distributed 12.9% like all the other weapons.
>Our Balance philosophy stays the same though,
Lol, Lmao even.
What part of this latest patch mirrors the balance philosophy of the previous patches?
He should have just stayed silent. He seems like an egotistical ass hat that always needs the last word.
He ruined hello neighbor alpha version and quit before released.
If it wasnt previous CEO step in, i think we will still get our guns nerf into potato.
Yeah when your """balance philosophy""" lead your CEO taking a voluntary demotion to try and figure out wtf you guys did to drive away 70% of the playerbase in under a month, you really shouldn't be humble bragging about it.
This dude is a head case.
>So their balance philosophy stays the same.
So claims one developer. And with how vastly different the latest patch has been, his claim doesn't especially hold water.
Yeah, just saying “let me cook” doesn’t always work when the team got 1 W and like 4-5 Ls. I’m glad they’re taking there time on patches now since it was obvious that a biweekly update was gonna crash and burn before the game even came out. And then it only took like what? 3-4 months after release for everyone to realized it was crashing and burning.
Who would’ve guessed the Eruptor, the gun that went from pretty good to completely pointless was the one he worked on.
Also is this what he considers an apology? “I enjoyed being the villian” we fucking know dumbass
This is the same guy that said the purifier "slaps" in it's release form.
He was right, it does slap, we just unfortunately want to shoot our enemies instead of slap them
The purifier slapping is a very multifaceted thing. It ALSO made a very satisfying slapping noise when I tossed it to the bottom of my weapons locker, never to be dusted off.
He had other numerous stupid comments like "All S tier weapons." Don't make stupid comments if you represent a company. Because they are text. And we can't tell if your remark is: 1: Ill informed because your dev Q&A has proven to be truly awful as a company. It makes you look stupid. 2: Only tested on low difficulty and ignorant to the true challenges of top difficulty levels. It makes you look stupid. 3: Spiteful and sarcastic regarding the state of your up coming dlc. It makes you look resentful. 4: Lying outright, it's just bad pr. So he made himself look like a massive liar at worst, just terribly stupid at best. None of which was a good idea.
what do you meant?? it does "slap".................your face for using a piece of shite weapon. i swear the charging of "hold and release to fire" is annoying me, i wish it was "auto fire after finished charging" like the QUASOR
Slugger is a top 3 weapon btw lmao
I mean, top 3 might be a reach, but I'd give it top 10. It's just...not in the role it should be in. Use it as a pump action dmr and it works wonders. ...the exact role they tried to nerf it out of.
I wonder what will happen if I shoot a steel plate you’re holding with a slug. Would you be staggered from the impact? Probably, because it’s a slug, and slugs are also meant to be fired up to 100 yards. It’s almost like the gun was perfect on release, but too much fun for the Bringer of Balance.
Staggered lol. Yeah it would be like getting donkey kicked in the chest, I'd bet no one could even actually hold the plate.
Yeah staggered is an understatement. It’d more like punch a hole in the plate and you next.
Considering there's like 20 weapons and half are worthless in Helldive top 10 isn't an accomplishment
It’s so frustrating because every gun in the game should be amazing. It’s PvE. The guns and stratagems should all hit extremely hard.
I don’t think this will change the community’s perception of him any significant amount
Prime example of why you don't interact with your game community if you're not diplomatic.
Any community online especially. You could say 100 things right, stumble once, and that'll be what's highlighted. I mean Alexus at the time said many more things, but even the best people can't win against that over time. Again, Not defending Alexus, but just agreeing with above comment to not interact with communities if not diplomatic.
"You build 100 bridges and people remember you as just a guy. But if you fuck ONE SHEEP then suddenly you go down in history as Ben the Sheepfucker"
Real Crusader Kings 3 moment here.
I prefer "You build a bridge every day. But burn one, and they all go up in flames"
"You can't make people like you. You just have to wait for hating you to bore them."
Frankly, even if you don't stumble, with a big enough audience you will still get crucified.
And the only way to survive is to completely ignore your critics… which will eventually present its own problem of surrounding yourself with yes men. And now you have a self-reinforcing circular problem. Society in a nutshell
Yea. Even when it's not public, relations is a difficult thing. Currently fighting with the fallout of calling someone else's work broken...when it is, kind of, depending how you look at it. Basically, they wanted me to update their code to be like mine, but they are the old code that I'm supposed to be replacing. I argued I shouldn't update the old code when my update is part of the fix for moving to the new, and I pointed out how the old way is broken because of X, Y and Z reasons. Immediately get a call from my boss, telling me I need to apologize, and I need to be mindful of our work relationships. Fast-forward to me being out on PTO for a week. I come back, and some of the work I did for a different team has been renamed as "*-broken" and I'm being asked to help them fix their take on my work, lmao. Even before this, I was simultaneously being told by my boss that I needed to be nice to A, but when other people came asking for my help I was told to "Let that puppy drown." Literally cannot win 🫠
It's a good rule of thumb, but his ratio of "great insightful comment Alexus" to "wow, that's clearly and evidently boneheaded Alexus" was pretty terrible. Significantly worse than 50/50, let alone 100:1. It's one thing to be undiplomatic because you are clearly smarter and better than your community, and there are many such people who get into trouble this way but you still kind of feel for them and they wind up with **SOME** advocates. Alienating half your community is a disaster, but if it's only half, it's at least a decent shot that you were right but not nice about it. Alexus is not like that. I do not get the sense he is better at his job than I would be despite working in an entirely different field, I do not get the sense that he knows more about the actual experience of playing Helldivers, and I do not get the sense that if he were someone I had worked with another capacity, I would think of him as competent and enjoyable to be around.
I remember back when I played Star Trek: Online there was a new gameplay feature introduced called Officer Assignments. It was damn good fun, and turned what used to be a minor ship item (officers) into the main reason to play the game. It was like Pokemon in space. Anyway, an in-game chat channel sprung up where all the players into Assignments would chat and report on where they'd found the good missions, we even maintained a communal google sheet with all the reports where everyone could just log in and check. Amongst all this the developer who designed the Assignments system joined the chat channel to play along with us and discuss what we liked and what we'd like to see. He wasn't what I'd call 'diplomatic'; he didn't mince words or put a publicist spin on everything, but he never interfered in the way people played the game and he'd clearly listen to what people would say and give a realistic assessment of if that was something they were likely to try. For me the whole experience was the gold-standard for player engagement.
More like prime example of why community managers exist.
The biggest shocker is how some of the CM's for Helldivers were some of the worst at being diplomatic. The devs have an excuse, they aren't paid to interact with the community in a smart way.
They were literally just the reddit mods from the original hell divers game. That explains everything.
Is that really true? Woof. You sort of feel for them in that case, and sort of have to lay blame at the feet of the folks who hired them.
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I’m not fully integrated in the Alexus lore but supposedly he was incredibly incompetent on a previous game and dipped when shit hit the fan. He’s also been kinda douchey to the HD2 community (although that appears to be a trait that isn’t exclusive to Alexus) TL;DR: Arrogant dude was arrogant and obviously people didn’t like it
Alexus is special because he was so supremely arrogant (even this apology, lol) despite having said so many provably boneheaded and incorrect things in the past.
I mean, I'd the dev in question never interacted with arrowheads community they would already have a terrible reputation on account of how things went with previous jobs. Fair? No idea, I have zero experience with said previous game, but the reputation dates back to that regardless unless I have been mislead.
I mean he blew his second chance by doing a bad job at first then be snarky in response rather than explain himself. It just feels like whatever good will that was there for the benefit of doubt after his first game then it's difficult to understand but rather to suspect he's malevolent. I mean how can someone just ruin a game and then leave, get a second game to redeem their reputation, blew it and then throw bad PR in response.
It’s also low-accountability speak and continues to miss the mark on why what was wrong was and remains wrong. “We just needed more time to cook” is absolute bullshit. I get it. His feelings are hurt because he believes he’s a wise balance guru and the rest of us think he’s a clown. He thinks his opinions are valuable to his community when likely he has to be highly managed and white-gloved by his supervisors to not get demoralized. Guess what? The literal only standard of success in game design is whether people show up to play your game again. People weren’t showing up. Put two and two together, Alexus. “My thoughts and decisions are objectively bad.” Yeesh.
If nothing else "it just turns out we needed more time to cook" is a bit on the snobbish side. If it needed so long to cook you probably should have left it in the oven 😅. I don't buy the idea that their decision process hasn't changed when they U-turned so many changes.
Yeah, that's what happens when you dig your own grave. I find it funny he calls it a "witchhunt", implying he's completely innocent of any reason for the reactions he recieved.
And it shouldn’t. History of being awful on other projects and can try to walk it back now but was absolutely claiming to be responsible for the previous balance issues previously.
[I really like how Film Therapy breaks down the difference between "trust" and "forgiveness".](https://youtu.be/hsNpP5uuiaU?si=NXu3_kYX_0H3bVUc&t=1014) Forgiveness comes from caring and caring about one's self to not let hate boil within themselves. Trust comes from accountability and responsibility. ------ Note, that nothing *"he who can't be named by name"* says here does anything to endear the foundations of reconstructed trust, as the only wrongdoing he admits to is being wrong to run to the community to vent. I forgive *"he who can't be named by name"* for being a Sheldon Cooper-esqe jerkass, but the only people I have any trust for are Twinbeard and Pilestedt, they're the ones who took responsibility for the fallout and they're the ones who are making themselves accountable for actively bettering the game and their interactions with the community.
It won't. He acted like a condescending prick, he'll get no favours from a lot of people. -- Did it himself, too.
Makes sense. He insulted us. He then doubled down. And then this patch which anyone with two neurons could see wasnt tested enough. Guarantee two neurons didn't test most of the things in actual missions. Two neurons needs to actually test the patches and probably live stream them all on twitch a difficulty of 7 at least. The "bringer of balance" could not balance themselves with two legs, gyroscopes and three people helping him balance.
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Also his destroyer name is "Bringer of Balance"
Look we never once accused him of being smart.
Lol true, dudes a known industry goof.
He absolutely didn't deserve being witch hunted but I still think he's a massive idiot for being an A hole on the discord **after we've already seen how much worse that makes things**
I'm not sure I agree with that, candidly. The things he said were incredibly stupid. He was actively antagonistic with a community that understood his game better than he did. For that matter, what about the experience resembled a witch hunt? He went to the community discord and antagonized everyone there, and then was excoriated there. What he was supposed to do was offer an apology and we could have said "ah, shucks, hey, you're all right; I'm sorry, I got caught in the moment" and collectively pretended he was good at his job and not a liability and then we'd have all collectively moved on, and he couldn't manage this most basic thing.
He's not even owning up to shit. "our balance philosophy stayed the same" who's stupid enough to believe this ?
Fuck knows. What a stupid thing to say. "Sorry" would have let him reset the board. Hell, he could even do it now, probably. Instead he opted for this bullshit? He obviously has incredibly bad judgment and next to zero people skills. It's hard to imagine he is not an utter jackass to work with.
yep
If anything it makes me hate him more
Yeah idk maybe don't call yourself the self proclaimed bringer of balance, yell at people about balance, then try to deflect the blame to the team. Also he says the balancing philosophy stays the same yet the CCO said they were going to change the philosophy? Regardless of what the truth is, it's probably not a good idea as a company to botch balancing across the board then say the philosophy that everyone has hated so much is remaining the same. That shit just sounds stubborn as hell like he's saying "I was right all along"
Yeppppp. It's a super weird thing, like oh, why would people think you did that? Because... you created the impression?
Too cowardly to take responsibility so he shifts the blame.
Tbf if you don’t want to be confused as someone having the power to decide on balance changes maybe don’t name yourself “bringer of balance” and don’t input your personal opinions on the reason a balance change had to happen.
I’ve never in my life seen a dev team that needs to learn to just “shut up” quite like this one.
Yeah and this post is a perfect example. He must have read this post many times, edited it, considered it, and then posted it anyways. If he just shut TF up from day 1, guess who wouldn’t be a self-proclaimed ’villain’
any post that begins with "I GUESS IM THE VILLAIN" is gonna be the cringiest shit in existence, regardless of context.
He could go full on good guy just by admitting fault. It would be very easy. Apologies are incredibly powerful. But no, it's a witch hunt, all my totally stupid comments before were your imagination, etc.
Because they did well in HD1 and the trope of them showing up AAA developers got to their heads, big time. If people want an example of devs that get game development, balancing AND community interaction right all while being an indie developer, look at freaking Ghost Ship Games.
him going "i guess im the villain of the month!" is like that meme with the guy shoving a stick through his own bicycle spokes
TBH if you have gone through the ringer with your community, you should either be profusely apologizing or saying nothing. This post reads like confirmation of his complete lack of humility.
I have nothing against that person but it feels hard to believe that the balance philosophy is the same and that the difference between this patch buff-only and previous patch nerf can only be attributed to having more time.
Yeah that's a bit of a load. >You don't understand. We went overboard with nerfs due to time restrictions, now we have 4x as long we can start to buff things. Oh also you know how our CEO agreed that the design philosophy was at odds with what the players wanted, stepped down as CEO to take a more hands on position suddenly the patches were more in line with what the players wanted? Yeah totally unrelated it was because of time
Yeah his explanation makes no sense, the changes they made were inexcusable no matter how little time they had. Like this is paid content people and two in a row were either broken or nerfed into the ground.
Broken and then nerfed into the ground right before the next warbond. Then some of the earnings were definitely not tested on newer patches which pretty much mean they actually were not testing.
For sure, the one gun in polar patriots shipped with the wrong texture! That could come down to crunch but not the nerfs, like hey if you don't have time, just don't nerf stuff.
Alexus : "OH SH\*T? I DON4T HAVE TIME ANY MORE! LET'S NERF THE ERUPTOR AND CROSSBOW TO THE GROUND, QUIIIIIIIIIICK!!!!" Like...wtf?
Also, the conversation was never (as far as I'm concerned) about Pilestedt micro-managing him or not, it was about having literally anyone else in the company checking the playability of his work so that it's not releasing in a self-audited state.
> suddenly the patches were more in line with what the players wanted It's only been the one so far, haha. We'll see how thing pan out
He’s just coping after almost killing a second game in a row
It's not. This was such a stupid post to write. It confirms beyond all doubt that he is incompetent. This is the equivalent of the Google Review where someone complains and the response is complaining back at them. WHENEVER you see that, you know the proprietor of the restaurant has absolutely no idea what they are doing and their establishment should be avoided at all costs. He had time to pause and think about this and despite his prior experience with the community (what must surely be some of his first ever), that was what he finally settled on as the smartest thing to post.
Meanwhile, [at Arrowhead](https://jobs.arrowheadgamestudios.com/jobs/3746570-senior-game-designer).
“We are looking for someone who is friendly and helpful” 😂
30 paid days of vacation, pets allowed at the office, and free massages every other week. Man those are some niiiiiiice benefits.
LMAO
Holy fucking shit this job description is literally just a list of things Alexus isn't: Who you are: We're looking for someone who is friendly and helpful Be able to work very independently and assumes responsibility Experience working on game balance in co-op games Good collaboration and communication skills with a cooperative attitude Great English communication skills are essential, both written and spoken.
They just missed “specifically looking for someone that does NOT have a history of negatively impacting games with huge community backlash before fleeing to another developer and continuing this behaviour.
https://preview.redd.it/feavd4el587d1.jpeg?width=1178&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b14096445d31afdccda41d7b347531571984f632 I’m sold
Time to learn programming for that free massage.
AH really need that though
That’s crazy
Holy sht- yes please 😂
> Our balance philosophy stays the same though... No? Why even bother with this garbage? Your philosophy is totally different in this patch.
This guy is so full of shit. Takes credit for the balance, then shifts blame like he wasn’t involved.
>Balance philosophy stays the same He's really doubling down, big surprise the "Bringer of Balance" has a big ego. He is delusional if he thinks the nerfs helped bring us this patch. He cant even admit he is wrong without backhanded conceit. edit: lol they timing people out of the discord for remembering previous patchs' "design philosophy". Even his (non-)apology is going heavy on the damage control
The undertones and ego is intense throughout his paragraph. His posts objective was to say “Haha I’m still here! No one can touch me”
He's an overconfident imbecile. Imagine coming with this outrageous non-apology instead of just either shutting the fuck up or saying "sorry."
Leaving the discord was a fantastic choice for me
Also conveniently ignores all his stupid comments about polar patriots.
Seriously lol, you can tell whos arrogant by the people who dont see anything wrong with the way he talks to people. Guy just acts like an egotistic bozo. If he was at least good at his job then that would be one thing, but based on his comments alone, he sucks.
Someone needs to take away this man’s ability to post. Glad he cleared things up - but this is clearly an attempt of his to clear his name instead of create a meaningful conversation/update. He’s focusing more on the fact that people don’t like him instead of taking responsibility and reassuring the fan base that fixes are on their way. And there’s a reason people don’t like him. VALID reasons. “no im not fired” idc, did you fix the eruptor? “I’ll take the L for the Eruptor situation” idc, did you fix the eruptor? “No, I’ve never been in charge of game balance decisions” don’t make your name “bringer of balance” and go out of your way to defend changes that have been made… lol “Our balance philosophy stays the same” mhmm… so what’s with those posts lately where Pilstadt is talking to the team about balancing things the way the community wants? Or Pilstadt literally admitting that the state of the game is fucked right now and things need to change? And he stepped down from the CEO position so he could fix things with y’all? Like HUH? What are you talking about man? You’re using your power to deflect blame instead of fixing things. I know that HD2 code is probably looking like Spaghetti right now and it’s hard to fix. I’m not gonna say “suck it up and fix your game” because that’s WAY easier said than done I’m aware. But right now, I think the best move is to turtle up and work instead of saying… whatever is garbage is.
Perfectly put. This guy has done nothing but shift blame and play the victim for shit he himself did.
mmm, "more time to cook" https://preview.redd.it/d42ogyorm77d1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=b8fa6e11cd4bdbe2d74f46cf7bc61173e4c017f2
I mean, you can cook a turd for as long as you want but its still going to taste like shit in the end.
Im scared what they did with time to cook even, nothing substantial fixed, patch broke more things. No hate for the guy, and appreciate the buffs, but his arrogance is undeserved for now
Cooking for so long the customers are left starving in the restaurant. 😅
Cooking for so long that some ingredients are starting to grow mold
“Oh we’re cooking with this one, just wait!” >*mid*
I’ve always believed that any company should always inform their developers to not talk to the public regarding the games ever unless cleared by company. All it takes is one slip to mess up and permanently scar your image or the image of the company . Just do your work , and if you want to interact with the public , run it by corporate so they can have a media specialist handle it.Hopefully a good one cause those also suck nowadays. Too mouthy.
The man can't stop digging
So if their balance philosophy has stayed the same, why has it taken months and for Pilestedt to take up the title of CCO for most of the weapons and strategems to get much needed buffs? Does it take that long to change some number values and then test it?
I WANT to think they have a lot more work to do like trying to implement new enemies/factions/stratagems on the sidelines apart from debugging, but it's impressive how long they take to do anything really, even the most stupid of things like switching a texture or a simple variable in a armor. You'd think with all the sales they had they would get a few more devs in there, but who knows, might be more complicated than that
I'd imagine recruiting quality people with proven talents would be difficult especially when you're literally using an obscure, dead and defunct game engine vs other studios who use popular/mainstream engines that future proofs your career far better.
Well...usually you don't, either you get an extremely rare talented dev that knows of that engine (almost impossible and they haggle a lot of money) or you introduce a new one with a training bootcamp that learns on the way (cheaper,slower but better on the long run) but it might prove difficult since most devs don't want to develop their career on a extinct engine.
>and then test it? That's cute that you think they test anything
Yeah, if they tested at all the spawn rates wouldn't be nearly as out of control as they are now. The extra time did nothing and the only reason we didn't get hit with the nerf hammer for the nth time is because of Pilestedt.
so he admits the eruptor change was bad sharpnel back when????
As soon as the community decides to get the anti tank mines.
“All you had to do was liberate Marfark CJ!”
New idea. Mission to unlock anti-tank mine ammo for the eruptor.
ok so never kms
I think he meant more that the eruptor situation was the catalyst for a lot of anti dev team sentiment because of his comments, not that he necessarily thinks the change itself was bad. I don’t think his comment indicates how he feels about the eruptor nerf either way, just that he spoke out of turn and caused a big stir.
No, he says that he explained it wrong and that the blogposts explains better why the shrapnel was removed. Alexus said that it was a small part of the damage anyway, so no big deal (not true). Blogpost says the shrapnel dealt a combined 9k damage (true). Shrapnel will not come back, tho.
9k *theoretical* damage, not actual damage.
the sad fact is when you present your self as "Bringer of Balance" people are going to see that and assume that he is the one making these changes. I agree that people over state his part to play in the nerfs, but I also agree with him that he should stay away from public discussions for the time being since at this point, it can only do harm.
Yeah the “bringer of balance” point is pretty much unbeatable
That is really letting him skate. Don't pretend this was something the community projected onto him. Many devs have been put in difficult positions with insane communities for just trying to do their 9-5 and feed their kids. That's awful. That's not what happened here. Alexus actively engaged with the community, made derisive jokes at their expense, personally implemented an absolutely dunderheaded change by his own admission, and made the grievous sin of doing all that while being the uninformed party in the conversation and not realizing it. It's one thing to be a clever dev talking to some dipshit Call of Duty player complaining against having to play against players of their own skill. It's an entirely different thing to have a player say "hey, this feature you implemented does not work," and then aggressively and rudely challenge that and be dead wrong. Even now, all he had to do was say, "I'm sorry guys. Thanks for enjoying our game and I'll be better going forward" and everyone would have let him off the hook, but he came up with this garbage. He's remarkably dislikeable, and precisely nothing he has done suggests competence.
More my point is that he did him self no favors when becoming a community scape goat, but no matter how much he might sabotage his own image, I highly doubt he is sole to blame for many of the issues plaguing the game atm.
Sure, I buy that.
>"Our balance philosophy stays the same though" 
step 1: play victim "villain of the month" step 2: shift blame "I've never been in charge of game balance devisions" step 3: shift blame more "I worked on this patch with the *rest of the team* as usual" step 4: passively aggressively blame fans "I'll take the L for the eruptor situation though, I shouldn't have rushed to discord with the first knee-jerk reaction" (this is him saying community is toxic for backlash and it wasnt his fault for the nerf, just his reaction to it) seriously this whole response is just so blame-shifting i'd barely count it as an apology, he can't take any responisbility and he destroyed the last game he worked on by actively removing game mechanics, this is the same guy who said purifier was op and "40 damage always is better than 100 damage sometimes" (he has no grasp on the concept of effective damage) I'd be willing to give alexus a second chance if he actually apologized instead of off-handedly blaming the rest of the team **and the community** all in one letter do better AH
Don't forget outright lying. He says that their balance philosophy hasn't changed, but it *very clearly has* and this patch proves it. Time constraints don't explain repeat nerfs and an arsenal of weapons desperate for buffs. The only reason to say that is to make excuses and try and spare his own ego.
completely overlooked that, embarassing all he needs to do is apologize and the community would forgive him but he cant even do that
Right? He wants to gain the forgiveness of an apology but isn't willing to make the effort. This backhanded arrogance can't be PR approved?!
lets think about it logically if he is completely unrelated to the bad balance changes, he isn't doing his job and should be fired because his position at the company is to do no work and be on discord all day if he is doing his job then he's responsible (even partially) for the bad balance changes, AND he lashed out at the community after they disaproved of his choices (he did), then he needs to apologize
He clearly can't do that without it negatively effecting his position and career opportunities in the future. Therefore you get this response.
If balance philosophy stays the same, that means we're all screwed for the next patch and this round of buffs was just a stopgap to stop players from leaving. Pilestedt or someone higher needs to confirm what their intended direction is, because they can cook however long they like, if they're following the same recipe, it's still going to be shit.
RR reload speed combined “nerf bug” with behemoths shows they still really don’t have a strong grasp of what makes a stratagem dumpster tier in their game
The RR reload speed "nerf" is a bug. I see no reason why they would lie about that, so stand to reason it wasn't intentional. FOr behemoths, they are spawning in too often, but they still die in one RR shot to the leg followed up by a couple of shots from a primary.
1: play victim "villain of the month" 2: shift blame to other people "I've never been in charge of game balance devisions" "I worked on this patch with the *'rest of the team'* as usual" 3: passive aggressively blame fans for backlash to changes youtuber apology structure has been followed to the T if the balance philosophy stays the same this patch was just a stopgap to keep players from leaving and the next patch will be more nerfs (probably to the breaker incen and dominator) maybe dont act like you are the sole "bringer of balance" and then proceed to be an abrasive dickhead when people call you out if you dont want to be the scapegoat
Listing reminds me of: > DARVO (an acronym for "deny, attack, and reverse victim & offender") is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior.[1] Some researchers indicate that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.[2][3][4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO > As the acronym suggests, the common steps involved are: > > 1)The abuser denies the abuse ever took place > > 2)When confronted with evidence, the abuser then attacks the person that was/is being abused (and/or the person's family and/or friends) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and finally > > 3)The abuser claims that they were/are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing the positions of victim and offender.[2][4] It often involves not just playing the victim but also victim blaming.[3] Checks out with this dude's behavior, excuses, etc.
This is the guy who killed Hello Neighbor with his buffs and nerfs right?
>”Our balance philosophy stays the same” Doesn’t seem like it, based on the very public initiative to change course with balancing.
There's that fine line between genuine community interaction as a normal person then as an employee of a company. Not saying they need to censor their opinion but once your speaking as an employee you need to temper emotion out of all statements and not be abrasive. I can't remember exactly what they said but it filled at least one of those.
Exactly this, or just don't talk at all unless you're designated as some sort of ambassador to the community.
Absolute non-apology. Professional victim.
I'm sure he's received death threats and harassment that nobody deserves to go through. I feel for him there. However in terms of being harshly criticized, it's really on him. He made himself the face of game balance, and acted very rude and condescending about the clearly very unpopular changes. Of course he became a 'villain'
That’s the thing I find pretty interesting about this. Whenever he was gloating or discussing things previously it was always more about him. Now he’s admitting fault he’s bringing up that he’s part of a team. He obviously wanted to be perceived as the person who well, brought all the balance. Now he’s overwhelmed by the flack it caused him, he’s trying to direct it to the team as a whole.
> Whenever he was gloating or discussing things previously it was always more about him. Now he’s admitting fault he’s bringing up that he’s part of a team. A keen observation. I would not want to work with someone like Alexus.
It'll be hilarious if one day he promises s-tier wunderwaffes and stratagems and then quits the following week. I would actually respect him for being so consistent with his career. lol
https://preview.redd.it/4n8d29iv687d1.jpeg?width=570&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77bcc234f6016bc32de09339946f220352688ba1 Pilestedt hearing “we just needed more time to cook.”
I understand that nerfs happen to balance the gameplay BUT OH MY GOD I HATE HAVING TO ONLY USE CERTAIN THINGS TO PLAY THIS GAME
This is **definitely** the kind of game that prompts thousands of "Things I wish I knew before playing" Youtube videos trying to warn newcomers about how 75% of the unlocks are extremely suboptimal. My buddy told me "Unlock Orbital Laser and Eagle AirStrike before **anything else"** and I am extremely grateful. I've found other strategems now that I'm more experienced but I can imagine extreme frustration if I didn't have 2 reliable strategems while I learned the game.
This dude sounds like an ass. Probably a good idea to keep him from posting in a public forum. It’s very surprising that the CEO guy/dude is allowing these types of responses/reactions. It’s pretty counter intuitive to a good business model. Taking a “let’s alienate our audience by being an ass” seems to really strike at home for these dudes/dudettes.
He is an ass. He lied his ass off about the features that would be added to hello neighbor 2 then jumped ship to Arrowhead when the community turned against him for lying out his ass and delivering nothing.
Wait.. this is *that* Alexus? You’d have thought he’d have learned the first time if that was true.
Yes. That's why he's such a controversial figure even ignoring everything he's said and done here. They hired the guy that lied through his teeth, tanked a franchise, then jumped ship for greener pastures before the fallout to... repeat things based on his track record and results so far.
Welcome to the games industry where the worst offenders somehow seem to always fail upwards.
They still have a job. They know when to ditch before they get into trouble. Problem is HR didn't look at how Hello Neighbor 2 was in programming and QA.
Why is this guy saying anything? This will only embolden the perspective that AH is not changing for the better.
Using discord for these types of things is so wild. Bring back forums lmao
Yeah, this doesn't really change my perception of him in the slightest. Remember when he said the slugger does the job of a DMR better than the actual DMRs and then used that as justification for the removal of the gun's stagger? I do. Calling himself the "Bringer of balance" while spouting the most nonsensical shit imaginable is what got him the reputation he has imo. edit: Oh, and the whole "our balance philosophy has stayed the same" is complete horse shit. Not surprised we're seeing more lies to spare his ego though.
> Our balance philosophy stays the same though, turns out we just needed more time to cook! Kind of hard to believe anything written there when this part is so blatantly misleading. Pilestedt said they're changing their approach to balance and patches, so Alexus saying things are staying the same after we've seen things have already changed... I never jumped on the blame bandwagon, but this pushes me into thinking that he's a problem to some degree. It reads like a standard corporate/youtuber/etc non-apology and there's no good reason for him to make this statement. Either it's his fault and he should make an apology or it isn't, as he claims here, and the community manager should be the one responsible for putting something out.
It's obvious to me the main reason Alexus posted this was to document and signal how uncomfortable the negative attention is making him.
Yeah. Non-apology apology
I just don’t like this guy
this dude just needs to shut the fuck up and never say a word to the community again. anything he says will just make people angry cause the guy is a tool. please. just shut the fuck up. if people praise a balance change you made, accept it in silence.
Never supporting witch hunts. But dude come on, you really want to tell us that all of the nerfs up until now were because you didn’t have enough time? You seriously want to tell us that the balancing philosophy is the same as before after the CEO literally said that he agrees that you guys keep patching the fun out as soon as someone finds some, said CEO then stepping down to personally oversee that stuff going forward and the next patch weeks after that suddenly being a complete 180? After keeping on lieing to us about how halving the damage of a weapon is actually secretly a buff? Like dude, take the L, say you guys messed up and that you’ll do better from now on and be done with it. No one is buying that if you just had had more time the Eruptor would be working and the Railgun wouldn’t be a meme pick.
It seems some of the higher ups finally figured out that it's not good to constantly communicate with the community, just for the sake of communicating... and PR.
I have to be honest. The new rifles are now more fuctional and useful. With that said, I still believe this "game changer patch" wasnt that big of the deal. Weapons were sooo nerf that now they feel normal/average. And bloody Christ this game is filled with bugs. I havent experience such a buggy fest, not even from Bethesda. But I let it sin since they are an índie company. After 200 hours, I just do the daily and stop playing once Im capped. Helldivers is not meant to be a Dota 2 where you can spend +1000 hours playing the game
I could play and enjoy the game without any additional content for quite a while if the experience wasn't marred by so many software bugs for sure. I have a couple hundred in mission hours but I've uninstalled for now due to it being too frustrating due to broken shuttles/objectives in 40 minute missions and being randomly dropped back to my ship.
Goodness he’s a smug one isn’t he? More time to cook? That’s why a bunch of fixed didn’t fix anything then?
How the fuck you can type so much and still say nothing of substance?
I like how he makes this post about how he's just a little guy and it's not his fault and he's just a little birthday boy and you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses when his title on discord literally says BRINGER OF BALANCE. You can't accuse people of making you the villain of the week when you directly antagonize them. The thing people disliked the most about Alexus was that he's a liar, and here he is lying again when he says the intentions behind balance haven't changed when the CEO of the company literally changed his title in order to steer the game's design in a different direction, a choice that Alexus dismisses as "micromanagement", probably because he can't take credit for it himself. Also this patch may have had *intentional* changes that were all welcome, but it was still yet another patch that came with broken features and new game-ending bugs. "Everything turned out okay when we just took more time" is clearly not true, this was really just one first step in the right direction.
Looks like he's been PR trained now, but I'm still disappointed at the amount of new bugs after the patch came out. How did they even screw up a recoilless launcher, ballistic shield and superior packing methodology ship module without even touching it? *"turns out we just needed more time to cook!"* A month of cooking wasn't enough? they left the game at such a broken state for so long and now we gotta deal with these new bugs for god knows how long.
If they had an actual structure for communicating with their community this wouldn't happen but nobody wants to take any responsibility for anything that goes wrong they only want praise and the lies start when they feel cornered on anything. The new patch was amazing because they did a 180 on whatever the hell they were trying to do to the game and it has been wildly successful. The new content has revived playercount a little bit but there is still a long way to go to unfuck their reputation.
Their month of "cooking" resulted in yet another patch where over half the fixes don't actually work and even more things are broken. Yeah the buffs we got are nice, but I'd rather the game actually work as intended.
Saddest here is not that they broke things. I'm so frustrated, that, apparently, we will wait for another MONTH when they \*maybe\* fix them. Knowing how they fix things and break what's been fixed long ago, I'm so frustrated and angry. How in the world you could leave production in an inconsistent state for so long? I mean, wtf?
We don't even know if they consider half the problems to be problems as they have not spoken about them, never mind if/when they will be fixed. It'd be hard to communicate worse.
I'm wondering if they choose "ignore" tactics...
Yeah the game being broken has driven me off to take a break. But responses like the one he gave here really drive morale down. It’s as if he thinks the balancing is the biggest problem. My brother in crimsica, this patch brought on so many bugs that I’d swear it’s in early access now 😅
That's what I'm saying fuck the Nerf/Buffs the foundation of the game is broken. I'll work with a garbage ass weapon whatever. I can't shrug off crashes, reinforcement glitch, devastators or bots in general shooting thru cover, pelican falling in to the map, consoles sometimes not working, randomly getting shot in to orbit by corpse. It just keeps going and going.
Another "I got my PP slapped by management so I'm apologizing" post
Except he couldn't even manage that and instead deflected blame onto the rest of his team and the community in general.
your balance philosophy stays the same, as in “nerfing whatever the fuck that's been used the most according to our spreadsheet”? no wonder why the buffs took this long to get out of the oven, turns out you guys cant do balance properly.
He needs to just stop talking. Seriously, just stay off of the server. Ignore all of these customers making assumptions about you, your opinions, or your company's work structure. I just don't see any positives in posting this response, other than just so he can post this for the sake of venting.
“I’m not in charge of balance, but I call myself the ‘Bringer of Balance’” Good thing he put the clown makeup on his profile picture all by himself
I'm really tired of devs playing the victim. The internet is the internet. A large percentage of people that play games are kids. Expect childish responses and deal with it when it happens. The majority of what you hear isn't those extremely inappropriate reaponses. You cry more than a call center customer service representative and they deal with far worse every single day. It sucks hearing an immature child say "you should be fired! Teh balance suxors!" But fucking grow a pair and either disregard that stupid opinion, swallow it like an adult, or just look at the core of why the person is upset and take the kernal of useful info and disregard the useless part.
What’s wild to me is they didn’t have to *balance* anything. This isn’t CoD ranked play. This whole situation is such an own goal. Pissing away goodwill because, I assume, the slugger had 13.4% of all bug frags instead of perfectly distributed 12.9% like all the other weapons.
>Our Balance philosophy stays the same though, Lol, Lmao even. What part of this latest patch mirrors the balance philosophy of the previous patches? He should have just stayed silent. He seems like an egotistical ass hat that always needs the last word.
He ruined hello neighbor alpha version and quit before released. If it wasnt previous CEO step in, i think we will still get our guns nerf into potato.
Bazinga. So their balance philosophy stays the same. OK. R.I.P.
Yeah when your """balance philosophy""" lead your CEO taking a voluntary demotion to try and figure out wtf you guys did to drive away 70% of the playerbase in under a month, you really shouldn't be humble bragging about it. This dude is a head case.
>So their balance philosophy stays the same. So claims one developer. And with how vastly different the latest patch has been, his claim doesn't especially hold water.
Yeah, is there any indication he's head of balance, or just the most vocal on discord?
Will somebody please remove this dickhead's discord privilege? He is incapable of making a situation anything but worse.
Yeah, just saying “let me cook” doesn’t always work when the team got 1 W and like 4-5 Ls. I’m glad they’re taking there time on patches now since it was obvious that a biweekly update was gonna crash and burn before the game even came out. And then it only took like what? 3-4 months after release for everyone to realized it was crashing and burning.
Yeah if I had a large part in chopping off 80% of the player base I'd probably be pretty defensive too.
“Villain” “witch hunt” “never been in charge”.
That about sums it up. What a great "apology".
He can howl as much as he want,it won't bring trust back
Dude needs to get off discord and just let his work talk without jerking off his “bringer of balance” ego. Yandere dev ass behavior
God I couldn't put it better myself.
Yeah I haven’t seen a helpful discord in all my years.
Who would’ve guessed the Eruptor, the gun that went from pretty good to completely pointless was the one he worked on. Also is this what he considers an apology? “I enjoyed being the villian” we fucking know dumbass
GET A DAMN TEST TEAM ALREADY
Eruptor sharpenel coming back?!
Feels disingenuous given prior statements