I wasn't going to play Helldivers 2, and I didn't until well after the hype cycle had died down. That might be part of the problem. Ultimately what pulled me in was a friend who rarely gets into games saying he loved it and wanted to play with me. I don't trust his taste in games at all, and he tends to be fickle, but I do like playing online with him just because I so rarely play with friends these days (I'm OLD) so I took the plunge.

He and I have played together all of once since then but I've put in a significant amount of time on my own, about 12 hours total. There are things I really like about the game. I think the shooting feels good. I think the "strategems" (essentially special equipment or attacks you can call in from orbit like a heavy weapon, airstrike, or sentry gun) are a very fun idea and feel great to use. I think the levels are atmospheric, the objectives generally varied and interesting, and the enemies are well designed both aesthetically and from a gameplay perspective. I think the world building is grimly amusing.

I also really like how the game is harsh, with lots of things that can kill you quickly, but gives you enough tools and respawns to survive. Friendly fire is essential for maintaining the feeling of danger and chaos that envelops the battlefield and so while I normally don't like it I think it's pretty core to the Helldivers 2 experience (though I wouldn't be against it being turned off at the lowest difficulties.) The feeling of vulnerability also encourages randos to play pretty well together. People do go off and do their own things sometimes but most of the players I've been grouped with are pretty focused on objectives and naturally tend to work together in order to survive. This is a sign of good game design that channels players into the desired playstyle without forcing them. Helldivers 2 has a lot of impressive small decisions that get people to play together and play the objectives. Other developers should take notes.

But as well made as the game is I find myself starting to suffer the same live service burnout that I always do.

• Helldivers 2 encourages you to play every day, with one personal objective every day and community wide objectives every few days that reward you with points for the battlepasses, which are not just cosmetic in this game but feature basic loadout components.
• The battlepasses themselves are structured in a way where you HAVE to buy cosmetics in order to advance to the next "page" of the pass and get equipment. And the cosmetics in this game are very boring. So in terms of progression you're often grinding for stuff you may not care about in order to get that piece of crucial equipment you need for your loadout.
• Paid battlepasses in a $40 game still bother me, especially when they contain real equipment and not just cosmetics. You can get at least some premium currency through play, but each battlepass costs 1000 of this currency and you find the currency in units of 10 (distributed to everyone in the group so at least you don't have to worry about competing for it) so you'd need to find 100 such units to get a battlepass and on average you probably find some every 2-3 missions. You can do the math there. You get more on higher difficulties, and the battlepasses themselves do contain some currency, but you're clearly being channeled towards spending.
• There are too many currencies. Yes, only one is paid, but you have XP (for levels, which unlock access to being able to buy more advanced strategems), requisition points (which you use to purchase strategem unlocks), war medals (used to unlock portions of the battlepass), the paid currency used to buy battlepasses or cosmetics independent of the battlepass, and at least 3 to 4 types of "samples," which are used to unlock permanent buffs that improve your strategems or reduce their reload times. It's not unmanageable but it's a lot, and it feels restrictive as you can't really control how you develop your loadouts. Also some of the sample types are restricted to higher difficulties, which skill caps your access to certain things and means people just play an easier experience if they want to advance, which is an accessibility issue.
• There's just the general sense of doing the same thing over and over with no story advancement or progression. I get how this is just what these games are, but for me I like some kind of narrative progression in games like this. You can call it a commentary on the nature of war and all that, and there's validity there, but after awhile you're still just running the same maps doing the same things. This is probably my biggest issue.

I'll probably keep playing Helldivers 2 off and on for a while and come back when they add new interesting things, but I'm already feeling the grind setting in when playing on my own. If my friend wants to play I'll join him, and I can definitely see why it'd be a good hangout game if you have a consistent squad, but I just can't vibe with the live service model. Even in a really good game like Helldivers 2 where a lot of the "game" stuff is extremely my vibe it just starts to feel like a tedious grind after a while. I had the same experience with Diablo 4 after finishing the main story. You're just playing to progress and to...play. Philosophically I'm fine with that (it's not like you actually accomplish anything real in story-based games) but it just doesn't work for me psychologically. The seams are too obvious.

I can see how if you have a regular friend group it would work better, but you can also play through a lot of games with more story progression and variety in co-op. I had a ton of fun playing the Halo and Gears campaigns in co-op, and I played It Takes Two a few years ago online with a friend and that was really great. Even something like EDF has a campaign and set pieces that increase variety and a sense of progression and accomplishment.

I'm glad I played Helldivers 2, I enjoyed it, and I have played enough that it doesn't really feel like a waste of money because there are plenty of campaign based games I've gotten less time out of (especially since I'm not done and will probably be at 20 hours or so before I am.) But it's shown me pretty definitively that live service games just aren't for me. I may play another if a friend wants to or if one comes out that seems REALLY up my alley in other ways, but in some ways it's good to find a game that fires on a lot of cylinders and where I can say "they made this kind of thing about as well as it could be made for my tastes" and still not fully jive with it. At least now I know, it's not really the game, it's me.

ETA:

And....now Steam players are suddenly required to link PlayStation accounts if they want to keep playing. A requirement added well after launch. This may get repealed eventually (don't know yet) but what a completely player unfriendly decision. Again, this is software people already paid for and now they have to do something new (it's free but it's something a lot of people don't want to do) to use it. LIVE SERVICES!

I also resisted Helldivers until just about 2 weeks ago. My first impression was quite good! The guns felt good, I got matched up with some good squads, I was gaining samples and metals left and right. It was a great first day.

Then the second day happened. I got a constant stream of rando dipshits that just wandered around getting killed for no reason, the missions revealed themselves to be extremely repetitive, and the progression curve slowed tremendously.

And that’s pretty much continued since then. The vast majority of my friends don’t play video games at all, and the ones that do are not multiplayer people (and normally I’m not either), so playing with anyone with the mics on is out because I’m not allowing randos to invade my ears. And playing with this randos is not good enough. I tried playing solo but it’s either too boring in low difficulty missions or too overwhelming on higher difficulties. So I think I’m done.

Helldivers 2 was glorious…for one day.

@tartyron: I'm sorry you had a bad experience. Maybe I've just been lucky in my squads, though maybe you're playing at a higher difficulty level where things are a little less forgiving? I certainly have experienced some of the rando dipshit stuff where someone continuously calls in strikes while people are fighting or, conversely, just wanders into the range of a strike in an obvious situation.

The progression curve definitely slows down pretty quickly, though I think it's still functional enough (I tend to get between 2-3000 req points an hour, sometimes more, which means a new strategem every hour or two depending on how expensive the one I want is, though samples are much slower) but the battlepass system really slogs it down. Getting new guns in the game takes a long time.

Repetitive objectives are a real issue in all games of this type and I'm not sure any game has ever solved them. Helldivers II at least tries to do some interesting stuff but ultimately there's only so many ways you can set up repeatable missions. That's why campaigns with bespoke stuff to do and set pieces are so important to video game experiences. Something like It Takes Two might only take 10 hours to beat but there's so much variety in those 10 hours there's probably more to do in that game than Helldivers by a factor of 5 to 10.

I would love if they made a single player campaign in this engine and world. Or just a campaign that could be played co-op. Something with narrative and bespoke levels.

Randos with mics is a real issue. I do kind of wish I was a PC player because I do think that typing things into a written chat works better, but yeah, I'm not micing up with people I don't know, especially since a lot of them that I've encountered have been speaking different languages, making it just intrusive and not useful.

I'd like to add that while several single player games and a personal desire to fully chill out in my after hours have led me to playing very little of Helldivers after putting about 50 hours into its first two months, you point out that the game has a bit of a FOMO element and in design I suppose that's true. It must be said, however, that you don't even need to have played the game during a successful Major Order to earn the reward for it. Coupled with the perpetuity of the battle passes, that feels extremely generous. I haven't played in nearly a month, but I logged in and earned enough rewards from the Major Orders I'd missed to purchase most of the first two pages of the most recent pass.

Yes, I gave them some money to unlock it, but I'd unlocked the first and second purely through gameplay, so I envisioned it as a tip.

While, again, I haven't played the game in weeks, I think they have the right idea. And they do need incentive to keep playing, because the game itself is definitely quite repetitive.

If any resource restriction(s) actually concern me, it's that the very last upgrades require materials you can only farm on the highest difficulties, and the few things they've added since launch ask for even more of said resources. I like(d) to linger on the 5th tier with an occasional dabble into the 6th, which effectively means I'm done upgrading. That sucks.

Just a few things of note:

Super credits can be found in bundles larger than 10, up to 100 per bundle. The larger ones are quite rare, and you'll still need to find quite a few to get a free battle pass on field credits alone but then on top of that the free battle pass has 1000 credits in it and the paid passes have a few hundred (I want to say 500 but it might be less, can't recall for sure) I have 50 hours in the game (which I really don't think is crazy for a game as service) and I still haven't completed the free battle pass, but I have unlocked 2/3 of the paid battle passes with earned currency. I did not buy the special edition or invest a dime. There is no real reason for me to buy the other pass, I still have stuff to unlock in the passes I do have and by the time I am out of meaningful unlocks I'll probably have enough for another one.

Not to say you have to like it but its not nearly as bad as the needing 100 pickups to earn one you implied.

@dareitus:The Super Earth defense force has signed on to spread managed democracy to the Giant Bomb forums. I said in my original post that you can get some credits in the battlepasses. The first battlepass has 1000 credits in it (allowing you to buy a new one) but the purchasable ones only have 300 in them, so you still need to find quite a few on the battlefield. I have not seen the larger hero credits pickups but I trust you that they exist even if they're rare. Regardless, given how much you have played and that you still don't have enough for every pass, the exact number of pickups is not the point. The point is that you need to grind A LOT if you want to buy every pass, and since the first optional pass is unlockable just from the original pass it looks like at least a few dozen hours of play for each additional pass.

I also don't find the "I don't need more passes because I still have stuff to unlock" argument compelling because the later tiers in the base pass are VERY expensive in terms of medals, and there's non-cosmetic stuff in the subsequent passes that people may want or feel they need. This is a form of pay to win, and the fact that there are so many passes so soon after launch is pretty aggressive. Is this the worst form of pay to win I've ever seen? No, and it's a PVE game by design (though you can PVP if you want I guess) so whatever, but in a $40 game with not a TON of content it definitely isn't innocuous.

@nodima I agree that locking the samples behind higher difficulty levels is annoying. I didn't know that major orders still pay out even if you don't play. That's...nice I guess?

I find the idea of "tipping" on a $40 game put out by Sony a little...odd. I'm not inclined to voluntarily just hand a megacorporation money. This was not a cheap game and it's not that content rich. Yes they are doing a good job of live support and yes live support games do need to monetize, but they're being pretty aggressive even compared to other games in the genre and they're getting a pass on it because people like the game and like the "Super Earth" "Managed Democracy" jokes.

ETA:

Actually I was wrong. The later pages of the main free battlepass actually offer FEWER credits than the early ones, despite the credits costing many more medals, meaning that you can't buy any other passes from the credits in that pass alone. Now granted you will almost certainly have enough credits for at least one more pass by the time you finish the first from in mission pickups, but costing more and getting less is a hallmark of the psychological manipulation of scummy battlepass tactics. Make it feel rewarding at first and then reduce the reward over time to get people to spend money. I really don't like this shit.

@bigsocrates: I know it was a hot button issue pretty recently because of that one former executive who said he wished he had a post purchase tip-button for some major games...

But I've worked in bars and restaurants my entire adult life, as well as half my adolescent one, so "tipping" is just part of my parlance. I'm also the odd consumer that buys maybe ten new games a year yet listens to five gaming podcasts every week, yet also doesn't find $70 an incredible ask for an entertainment product I'll possibly get just as many hours out of. In this case, I initially, honestly hesitantly, just got the base $40 game. After a wonderful first week with the game, I bought the upgrade. Then, despite not playing much the past few weeks, I reaped all the rewards as though I had, so throwing another $10 at the game to goof off with some new toys balanced me out at about $1 per hour of fun. Whether it's right to call that a "tip" or not, I feel I've got incredible value out of the game.

(Here's what feels like the right spot to double back and say TOO LONG;DR - I agree too many games are forced by their dads to become door-to-door vacuum salesmen, but at worst Helldivers is just a kid with a lemonade stand.)

All that being said, and also thinking it's worth emphasizing that unlike any other game I can think of with a battle pass progression model these passes do not expire...I fundamentally agree with the issue you're raising. Whether it's MLB The Show, Apex Legends, Street Fighter VI, NBA 2K, Mortal Kombat 1, Diablo III/Immortal or Marvel Snap, too many games I've played over the past year and change tuck shiny things behind significant time investments that can be mitigated by cash.

Personally, the last time I "tipped" for a good time with a game it was a pair of free ones; one battle pass shortly after the launch of Apex in 2019 and just the same for Genshin Impact in 2020. I'm happy to say that was that for both. But then...I guess I should admit I do sometimes, probably foolishly, make a "thank you" purchase from time to time. I played the Yakuza series, from 0 to 7, for a grand total of about $40 over the years following Beast in the East, so I got the $80 Infinite Wealth package. Ask me anything about what that extra $10 got me. Even worse, I was damn certain I hadn't spent a dime on Mortal Kombats 9 through 11 so I talked myself into the $110 early access, full first season of new characters package Being the Giant Bomb forum, I don't think I need to detail how silly that was.

To loop back to the game at hand, though, I don't think it's designed to corral and slaughter like most of those other games are. The few upgrades that require materials from the highest difficulty levels are undoubtedly enticing, but for someone like me who prefers (preferred? I really should get back to this fun ass game) the middle tier I/we aren't even seeing some of the game's most threatening enemies. What we are getting is dealt with by what we've got. That's no reason to dismiss out of hand anyone who might struggle harder to rationalize that, but even then, if a fractional credit is owed Helldivers, you absolutely cannot buy those upgrades. Which to me further emphasizes that they're meant to reward high level play rather than sucker whales. Alongside battle passes that, again, definitely signify all the shiny and new bells and whistles the model fundamentally stands for...yet, for once, are perpetual.

So when I bought the credits to unlock the latest Warbond (if I may indulge their marketing just once) no part of me felt like I was doing so to avoid missing out on it. In fact and again, all I did was log in to the game, receive roughly 250 medals from various major orders, buy the bond, unlock some random stuff, then go back to the single player games I was invested in...while constantly cocking my head 45 degrees to refresh the Helldivers subreddit and indulge in the ever expanding community role play that catapulted this game into the catbird seat it holds in the first place.

Second Edit: For what it's worth, after doubling back to check if I didn't address everything I wanted to, I do agree that the game is "content poor", in that it's the same activity ad nauseam, but I also disagree that the Pass content has a "pay to win" feel. The only way to "win" is to participate, and none of the new guns or grenades trivialize that. From what I remember of my 60-70 hours, everything essentially does the same damage, just at different rates. New kit is just new kit, and until you navigate its nuances likely a reminder how easy it is to kill your teammates when you meant to spread democracy. If anything, all of the new weapons have been more notable for how little they've changed the game, which one could easily argue isn't great.

@nodima: The thing about tipping in a bar or restaurant, or similar situation, is that it goes to a generally underpaid worker. I tip in these situations, of course, and I'm not against tipping. Money spent on Helldivers II mostly goes to Sony or maybe some studio executive depending on how revenue is parceled out. That's why I don't do it. I do sometimes buy stuff in games as a "signifier" more than a tip, because your purchases do tell studios and publishers what to do more of and make more of, but it's not the same thing, and it's always something I want on some level and not just a way to give them money.

You can do whatever you want with your money of course. It's not like you're donating it to the Harvey Weinstein legal defense fund.

I don't think Helldivers II has THE MOST predatory model, but I don't give them a lot of credit for that. I think it would be fine if it were purely cosmetic, but I think hiding some equipment behind these paywalls is pretty crappy. And the eternal battlepasses are good (they're not new; I think Halo Infinite was one of the first games to do that but more have since) but also mean they've stacked up $30 worth of battlepasses in a $40 game in short time. That's a lot.

The upgrade stuff that's not monetized is different and it's a choice that a lot of games like this make, and doesn't bother me too much right now, but keep in mind that a lot of games start with limited monetization and boil the frog. I wouldn't be too surprised to see upgrade materials being sold for cash 6 months from now, and even more expensive upgrade stuff being added as the playerbase dwindles and the impetus to extract more cash increases.

Remember what has happened with Destiny over time.

I'm not calling the game out for being indefensible at this point, but there's a lot of manipulative stuff happening in its monetization that can become more manipulative over time. Add a new battlepass with some weapons that make the game much easier to play and there will be pressure from friends and randos to spend the cash and get the new hotness so you can keep up and pull your weight (that has already happened to some degree but the new stuff isn't so imbalanced that it's a big problem.) Make it so that those upgrade materials are purchasable and get people on the progression treadmill then dangle shortcuts in front of them. All the psychological manipulation that games have learned over the years.

I prefer my game transactions to be simple and up front. Pay $40 and you get the game same as everyone else. Maybe add another $20 for a special cosmetic pass or whatever. Then charge for expansions if they're significant. You can say that's sort of what they have here, where your maximum spend is pretty limited outside of the cursory cosmetics shop independent of the Warbonds, but the structure is in place to make it much worse.

@bigsocrates:

Super Earth Defense Force or not, I can't help but push back again.

You say it doesn't matter that I don't need the other passes but that just doesn't make sense. They all use the same currency. I only have so much. Opening a second pass so I have two places to spend one currency does not help me. I'll open it when I'm done earning things of value from the other passes (by complete I mean I have all the guns not the capes and helmets)

Also your assertion that you gotta by cosmetics is a bit over the top too. Armors have passives and stats that change gameplay. Only helmets and capes are cosmetic and if you are buying the Guns, Credits, Armors and Boosters (all the things that effect gameplay) you won't need to buy more than a couple of cosmetic only items if that.

You also earn currency from Major Orders (community events) wether you are online or not. Log in after a month off and you'll have 200+ medals from all the objectives we completed.

Finally, pay to win is definitely an inexperienced player talking. NOTHING in any of the battle passes beyond the starter free one is better than the starting weapons. Most of them are straight up bad. They're alternate options not better weapons, almost always niche to the point of not being ideal. The best weapon in the game is arguably the one you start of if not the one off the second page of the free pass.

@dareitus: All the passes use the same currency but the higher tiers of the main pass are MUCH more expensive than the supplemental passes. You only have so much currency but you can get more things with supplemental passes (because they are cheaper) than just going through the main pass.

I said you need to buy cosmetics to advance tiers. You say "you don't need to buy that many cosmetics but you need to buy some." So we agree. Also armors are cosmetic after a point because while armor does have different stats there are a lot of stat duplicates. And to get to the highest tier you do need to buy quite a few pure cosmetics.

The currency you get from major orders is not the paid currency. It's the non-paid battlepass fulfillment currency. Different issue.

"Better" is subjective but there are certainly some very useful things in the paid battlepasses. For example there's a booster that reduces extraction time, which can be quite helpful at the end of a mission, and there are explosive weapons that you can use to free up other slots. I have seen builds that use the grenade pistol, for example, to offload some of the need for explosives from other areas. Nothing is super overpowered, sure, I'd agree with that, but having more options and builds available is a significant advantage, and I can almost guarantee that power creep will set in over the next couple years. It happens with every game structured like this.

bigsocrates: oh I didn't realize you were a dev and could guarantee how things are going to go in the future. My bad, it's clearly pay to win /s

@bigsocrates: I didn't want to simply not reply to you, both because it's rude and because someone has to keep these forums going...but again, as someone who's barely played the game for over a month now, I hate to say I can't follow your logic. Not in the grand schema, because I do agree, but regarding this specific game...new toys simply don't simplify gameplay. Unfortunately, almost every new weapon debuts so broken that players can't understand they were released.

On that point, I would concede, the game has found a different way to be bad about the pass structure. If I were playing on the higher difficulties...or, again, playing at all...it'd be annoying as hell that the buggy launch of the mech suit didn't lead to a thorough examination of the new cluster rocket launcher. So, empathetically, it is annoying.

But it's also not the case that the basic guns the game launched with, or the strategems available to everyone of sufficient rank, can't get the job done. Again, having not played in a while I'm willing to be wrong, but on the latter point I think they've been pretty emphatic that they'll only be earned playing the game.

I've been as on the front lines as I can be slamming microtransactions thanks to how thoroughly they ruined NBA 2K (especially as a Franchise/MyGM player) and how constantly under duress MLB The Show has become now that it's multi-platform. They're sick, ugly and predatory for sure.

Maybe one day Helldivers will show its devil hand, and maybe our unspoken disagreement is that even Fortnite's cosmetics are succubi, but for now I think they're being both demonstrably and admirably chill.

@nodima: It's not about the "default" things not being adequate to get the job done. Even in most games that are deemed pay to win or pay for advantage you CAN get things done with free stuff. It's about the paid stuff opening up more options or advantages and being useful (and for the record the mech isn't paid; you can only get it through leveling and req points that can't be bought.)

The grenade pistol gives you more options for how to handle your explosive loadout. The newly buffed revolver can give you more armor penetration. There are, of course, other ways to get those functions but being able to offload them to your sidearm frees up precious slots. And none of the free sidearms can do those things.

Those are just examples. So yes, there's no job you have to pay to do, but paying can get you the ability to do jobs in different ways and optimize your loadout differently. And again we are only a few months in. Over time power creep is inevitable. It always happens.

I just think non-cosmetic items in paid content almost always goes poorly. I honestly can't think of many examples where it didn't eventually become very problematic. Right now in Helldivers II it is only slightly problematic, but the structure is there for it to get much worse.

NBA 2K and MLB The Show didn't start out as used car salesmen. But once they introduced the structure to become that they started down the road.

Helldivers II is just at the start of the road, which is why I didn't attack it too savagely, but it's a road it should never have started on, and already it has taken several steps down it.

It's also worth noting that NBA 2K and MLB never really stopping being good at replicating their sports. They have that pull that isn't just coming from a slot machine.

I edited the main post to reflect the new PSN account controversy where PC players are going to need PlayStation accounts to play, a requirement added months after launch.

I think this is pretty strong evidence that things are not so innocuous here, even if it's not charging additional money, yet. But there are a lot of people who don't want PSN accounts and are being forced to get them after the fact if they want to keep using the software they already purchased. Bad practice, bad look.

@bigsocrates: I genuinely think this topic warrants its own thread.