It's a shame, because there really is a fun game here. From a holistic perspective, all of the systems in play fit together nicely and work beautifully. A four player co-op horde shooter with wide open maps with beautiful aesthetics and atmospheric lighting, a fair selection of weapons and weapon types, interesting stratagems (items called in by players in the form of air support, fire support, heavy weapons, turrets, etc), and lots of different types of Tyranid/Arachnid-esque alien bugs and robotic bad guys with various tanks and walkers to kill while completing various objectives on the battlefield sounds fun. A semi-player driven narrative aspect influenced by the successes and failures of tens of thousands of players upon the balance of power in the galaxy is an incredibly interesting concept and is greatly expanded upon from what was featured in the first game.

So what went wrong? Why the negative review?


For starters, balance patches, buffs and nerfs to weapons, are done via spreadsheet. Usage stats. Not play testing. In fact, you are the play tester. The problem though is how your feedback, or rather your impact on the spreadsheet is interpreted. A new warbond comes out? (Warbonds are non-expiring battle passes. Purchasable for 1000 Super Credits. This can be purchased for $9.99 or earned by finding small amounts of Super Credits (~10-20) during missions. Well, obviously, players are going to gravitate towards the new weapons released in that Warbond. After all, this is a live service title and a large part of the appeal of live service games is a constant stream of new content. Players who have access to that content want to engage with that content. The issue arises when the developers see the spike people using the new weapons, and rather than understanding that players are using them because they're new, they assume they're using them because they're "meta" or "broken." And some of them are very much broken, but not in a good way, as the newest Warbond, Polar Patriots, demonstrates. So, those new toys that you hopefully didn't pay actual money for? Nerfed. Hard. That's assuming however that they weren't broken to begin with via changes made to the game in patches prior to the release of the Warbond having an unintended trickle down or butterfly effect upon the newly released weapons. Because, again, there is zero play testing. Arrowhead makes product. Arrowhead wants to sell product. Arrowhead pushes product. Taking the time to actually evaluate the product does not factor into that equation.


A quick look at the game's official Discord, or the game's subreddit which frequently has at least one post highlighting someone from the company acting like a petulant child towards their customers, will provide you with countless sterling examples of what atrocious community engagement looks like. Creative Assembly and Fat Shark AB have nothing on Arrowhead in this department.

We haven't approached Blizzard-tier Breast Milk Bandit levels of corporate dysfunction, but Arrowhead's problems are directed outward as opposed to inward.

I mean hell, one of their community managers was recently let go for his behavior. Shockingly he wasn't even the worst one. He was juvenile and combative sure, and it's a good thing he no longer has a job, but he was hardly the worst of the bunch. To make matters worse, it's not just the community managers. Developers themselves frequently chime in as well, and just as frequently demonstrate why most successful companies keep them as far away from their customers as humanly possible.

Seriously. If you've ever worked in a customer or client facing position, 10 to 15 minutes browsing the game's discord or subreddit will have you questioning how any of these people are still employed, if PR is their specifically their job, or why they aren't being kept on an infinitely tighter leash (and inside of a soundproof concrete box with their workstation) if they're not directly employed to do PR.

Compounding matters is contradictory messaging from the CEO and the development team. The CEO says balance is great. The community says that that's not the case. The development team says balance is great. The community gets upset. The CEO says that the balance actually isn't all that great. The development team says that the balance is beyond great. The company lacks direction in a pretty severe way. It's like a hydra where each individual head has no idea what the other heads are doing. And the body of that hydra is the game, which suffers because of it.


In fact, he may very well be the only person in the company with somewhat of a level head on his shoulders. And it's commendable to see someone in his position take the risk of directly engaging with the community via Discord, Reddit, and Twitter. That's rare. But ultimately he's at the helm of the ship that is Arrowhead Game Studios. He's the boss. Top of the totem pole. And if action isn't taken and the boss doesn't lay down the law in regards to how the development team and the community team engages with customers, then logically one has to assume that the statements made and opinions expressed by those employees is the official stance of Arrowhead Game Studios towards its customers.

And if that's the case, then it's hard to justify giving money to people who actively hold you in contempt.


As I said. Keep an eye on the conversations surrounding the game. Because the core concept is great, and the first few weeks of release were such a breath of fresh air compared to many recent titles with significantly higher budgets. However, the game has progressively gotten less and less fun over time.

• Balance is all over the place. Some weapons or environmental effects (fire being the worst offender) alternate being over or undertuned seemingly at random. A complete and utter lack of playtesting and a hamfisted approach to nerfing or buffing weapons and damage types results in unintended consequences that border on, and I hate to say something like this, incompetence.
  
• The development team and the community managers are actively antagonistic towards the playerbase.
  
• Communication that doesn't involve temper tantrums, snark, and just about any other unprofessional behavior you can think of, is frequently mired in contradiction. The community managers will tell you "123," the CEO will tell you "ABC," and the development team will just shout at you in Wingdings.

If these issues are fixed, then you've got a hell of a game on your hands that's destined for a long and happy life as a phenomenal example of what a live service game should be. If things continue as they are? Well, then you can look forward continuing to pay $9.99 to get a gun that has missing textures and is retroactively broken by patches that preceded it. Which just happened with the release of Polar Patriots. And, as has been the case with every other Warbond, you can enjoy having that weapon broken further in the weeks leading up to the release of whatever Warbond comes next.

You'd almost think trashing all the stuff you paid to unlock in the previous Warbond was a subtle way of incentivizing you to buy the new Warbond, but I honestly think that's beyond them.

[h1]As much as I hate to say it, right now my recommendation would be to hold off and keep your eye on discussions surrounding game balance and communication from Arrowhead before giving this game a shot.[/h1] It's a shame, because there really is a fun game here. From a holistic perspective, all of the systems in play fit together nicely and work beautifully. A four player co-op horde shooter with wide open maps with beautiful aesthetics and atmospheric lighting, a fair selection of weapons and weapon types, interesting stratagems (items called in by players in the form of air support, fire support, heavy weapons, turrets, etc), and lots of different types of Tyranid/Arachnid-esque alien bugs and robotic bad guys with various tanks and walkers to kill while completing various objectives on the battlefield sounds fun. A semi-player driven narrative aspect influenced by the successes and failures of tens of thousands of players upon the balance of power in the galaxy is an incredibly interesting concept and is greatly expanded upon from what was featured in the first game. So what went wrong? Why the negative review? [h2]Two things primarily. Game balance, or lack thereof.... kind of. We'll get to that. And to put it politely, very mixed signals from Arrowhead Game Studios in terms of both the game's direction and how they feel about their customers.[/h2] For starters, balance patches, buffs and nerfs to weapons, are done via spreadsheet. Usage stats. Not play testing. In fact, [i]you[/i] are the play tester. The problem though is how your feedback, or rather your impact on the spreadsheet is interpreted. A new warbond comes out? (Warbonds are non-expiring battle passes. Purchasable for 1000 Super Credits. This can be purchased for $9.99 or earned by finding small amounts of Super Credits (~10-20) during missions. Well, obviously, players are going to gravitate towards the new weapons released in that Warbond. After all, this is a live service title and a large part of the appeal of live service games is a constant stream of new content. Players who have access to that content want to engage with that content. The issue arises when the developers see the spike people using the new weapons, and rather than understanding that players are using them because they're new, they assume they're using them because they're "meta" or "broken." And some of them are very much broken, but not in a good way, as the newest Warbond, Polar Patriots, demonstrates. So, those new toys that you hopefully didn't pay actual money for? Nerfed. Hard. That's assuming however that they weren't broken to begin with via changes made to the game in patches prior to the release of the Warbond having an unintended trickle down or butterfly effect upon the newly released weapons. Because, again, there is zero play testing. Arrowhead makes product. Arrowhead wants to sell product. Arrowhead pushes product. Taking the time to actually evaluate the product does not factor into that equation. [h2]This is compounded by the horrendous approach to communication taken by Arrowhead Game Studios.[/h2] A quick look at the game's official Discord, or the game's subreddit which frequently has at least one post highlighting someone from the company acting like a petulant child towards their customers, will provide you with countless sterling examples of what atrocious community engagement looks like. Creative Assembly and Fat Shark AB have nothing on Arrowhead in this department. We haven't approached Blizzard-tier Breast Milk Bandit levels of corporate dysfunction, but Arrowhead's problems are directed outward as opposed to inward. I mean hell, one of their community managers was recently let go for his behavior. Shockingly he wasn't even the worst one. He was juvenile and combative sure, and it's a good thing he no longer has a job, but he was hardly the worst of the bunch. To make matters worse, it's not just the community managers. Developers themselves frequently chime in as well, and just as frequently demonstrate why most successful companies keep them as far away from their customers as humanly possible. Seriously. If you've ever worked in a customer or client facing position, 10 to 15 minutes browsing the game's discord or subreddit will have you questioning how any of these people are still employed, if PR is their specifically their job, or why they aren't being kept on an infinitely tighter leash (and inside of a soundproof concrete box with their workstation) if they're not directly employed to do PR. Compounding matters is contradictory messaging from the CEO and the development team. The CEO says balance is great. The community says that that's not the case. The development team says balance is great. The community gets upset. The CEO says that the balance actually isn't all that great. The development team says that the balance is beyond great. The company lacks direction in a pretty severe way. It's like a hydra where each individual head has no idea what the other heads are doing. And the body of that hydra is the game, which suffers because of it. [h2]Now look, Johan Pilestedt, the CEO of Arrowhead Game Studios, doesn't seem like a bad guy.[/h2] In fact, he may very well be the only person in the company with somewhat of a level head on his shoulders. And it's commendable to see someone in his position take the risk of directly engaging with the community via Discord, Reddit, and Twitter. That's rare. But ultimately he's at the helm of the ship that is Arrowhead Game Studios. He's the boss. Top of the totem pole. And if action isn't taken and the boss doesn't lay down the law in regards to how the development team and the community team engages with customers, then logically one has to assume that the statements made and opinions expressed by those employees is the official stance of Arrowhead Game Studios towards its customers. And if that's the case, then it's hard to justify giving money to people who actively hold you in contempt. [h1] With all that being said... [/h1] As I said. Keep an eye on the conversations surrounding the game. Because the core concept is great, and the first few weeks of release were such a breath of fresh air compared to many recent titles with significantly higher budgets. However, the game has progressively gotten less and less fun over time. [list] [*]Balance is all over the place. Some weapons or environmental effects (fire being the worst offender) alternate being over or undertuned seemingly at random. A complete and utter lack of playtesting and a hamfisted approach to nerfing or buffing weapons and damage types results in unintended consequences that border on, and I hate to say something like this, incompetence. [*]The development team and the community managers are actively antagonistic towards the playerbase. [*]Communication that doesn't involve temper tantrums, snark, and just about any other unprofessional behavior you can think of, is frequently mired in contradiction. The community managers will tell you "123," the CEO will tell you "ABC," and the development team will just shout at you in Wingdings. [/list] If these issues are fixed, then you've got a hell of a game on your hands that's destined for a long and happy life as a phenomenal example of what a live service game should be. If things continue as they are? Well, then you can look forward continuing to pay $9.99 to get a gun that has missing textures and is retroactively broken by patches that preceded it. Which just happened with the release of Polar Patriots. And, as has been the case with every other Warbond, you can enjoy having that weapon broken further in the weeks leading up to the release of whatever Warbond comes next. You'd almost think trashing all the stuff you paid to unlock in the previous Warbond was a subtle way of incentivizing you to buy the [i] new [/i] Warbond, but I honestly think that's beyond them.