Former Arrowhead CEO and longtime Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt spent a good chunk of the afternoon chatting to the game's still somewhat disgruntled Discord community about weapon balance, future update ideas, and other game design bugbears. In particular, he reiterated that "weapons should feel powerful" and dug into the recent unpopular changes made to flamethrower-type weapons, bluntly saying the updated fire visual effect "looks like [Team Fortress 1]."
Pilestedt had been inactive on Discord since May, seemingly partly due to some vacation time – he now jokes he's still got around 50 unused days of vacation – but was evidently feeling talkative while killing time at an airport post-Gamescom. "It was great talking to you all again," he said as he rushed to board a plane after a few hours of Q&A.
