u/pinglyadya

tl;dr. Arrowhead isn't crunching anymore, because the game has multiple support studios and they are working on fixing crap tons of issues from Year 1 and bigger updates over a longer period of time.

I'll split this into two segments Hype Train and Technical Debt.

Hype-Train: When the game first, released Arrowhead had one very simple goal.

Don't die like Concord. Release as much content as possible to keep people playing. They did this through two methods, cannibalizing existing content into bi-monthly war-bonds and rushing pretty much everything. Yet, every single update was rushed to hit a schedule REGARDLESS if it had bugs. That's how we got weapons randomly changing pallets, Polar Patriots without a passive and tons of very broken mechanics (sound, ragdolls, hosting). To them, not dying was significantly more important than bugs getting introduced. They needed new enemies, new events and as much stuff as possible because Arrowhead was trying to steer the Titanic away from the Iceberg.

Concord. Sony's money sink that threw every single dollar on. Imagine a scenario where we received an update every six months for Helldivers and then the PSN debacle happened. Sony would have basically left this game to die because they wouldn't want to risk more money into a low population. Hell, For two whole years the merchandise for Helldivers 2 was virtually non-existent. So, what did all that crunching and all that speedily made content get us?

Technical Debt: Defined by bugs, QoL issues and other unintended problems that gather up when bug-fixing isn't a priority. Each update created more issues and that's why everyone is currently pissed about the state of the game.

This isn't incompetence or laziness. Trust me these are some extremely talented people putting all of their effort into this but simply failing to fix everything because their priority is a deadline rather than a perfect product. Now, has that changed?

Yes.

If you have the right tools you can get a pretty good sense of what Arrowhead has been working on. The last update had a massive swath of fixes to particle systems. Before that they made massive changes to the way audio worked to address sound effects not playing. Before that was the compression update. Before that was an entire rewrite of how the game's assets are called for efficiency.

You can see it in the way interviews have been going. Arrowhead is getting confident, because they've been actively addressing the issues making it hard to fix the game. That AMA wasn't out of the blue, that was director of the game excited and thinking that the game was getting into a good spot. They've blantantly said they are feeling comfortable with development. Think about it, They now have multiple support studios producing content and managing parity between PS5, PC and Xbox. So, that means all Arrowhead is doing is trying to get Helldivers 2 in a spot where things like vehicle customization, additional attachments and massive swaths of new enemies and events can be made without inducing technical debt.

All of that tells me Arrowhead is now taking breathers and moving to STABLE releases over longer periods of time. More vehicles, special enemy brigades rather than single enemies, new repeatable objectives rather than stuff just being trashed. Each is building without crumbling the foundation.

Was on a drive. Saw cool orange box thrown off of a highway bridge into a public park. Thought that it might be a food-delivery box which would have been useful for groceries. I didn't look inside to long. Contents of which was bottles of liquid and bags of matter.

Currently now in dumpster because there is a elementary school beside the park.