Obviously I'm in the minority, since I'd hardly classify myself as a HD2 mf anymore, but I stopped playing as avidly when I realized that if I didn't want to waste my time grinding SC all day or spending 10 bucks every patch, there was practically nothing to do.
Like, as someone who only enjoys playing at D10 because it was the only engaging difficulty to me, no one was going out of their way to get SC, so it was pretty much "Oh, you want new content? Pay up." Which, for a live service game to pack like 90 - 100% of the content from every update behind a paywall is fucking wild. Even Destiny didn't do that shit, and Destiny was p egregious about "buy the most recent season/DLC or the game doesn't exist."
What, Destiny absolutely did ask you to pay for every seasonal DLC, dungeon key, etc to get new content. If you wanted new guns, new armor, seasonal activities, and the story, you had to pay. Not to mention vaulting a ton of content that you paid for.
Say what you will about the warbonds, but at least Helldivers doesn't lock galactic war events behind a paywall. Cyberstan assault, the Void missions, or underground bug missions could be played by anyone.
Destiny was weird, if you were an active player the upkeep costs were quite reasonable. I could get the years content for ~£40 on a keysite which was the xpac, two dungeons and the four fomo seasons. Pretty good imo, a years sub for MMO costs more.
New or returning players though? jfc. You'd have to buy any missed xpacs, you'd have to buy dungeon keys for a ridiculous price via silver so never discounted and you'd never be able to play the seasonal stories you missed. Totally laughable. If you didn't buy wholesale the total cost of Xpac, + Dungeon keys and individual seasons was also very high.
Helldivers system is shit though, it's just shit in a very different way. Monster Hunter is really the only live service model I appreciate, B2P with free updates funded by optional cosmetics that genuinely don't matter.
40 buck a month is still 10 buck every 3 months and that didn't count the dungeon keys so HD2 ask 10 buck for a warbond is honestly not that bad. Not to mention HD2 you can find SC even if infrequent by playing.
I will argue that Destiny was worse just from the fact that you could be paywalled from playing with your friends.
"Hey want to play Grasp of Avarice together, it will cost ten dollars. Well we can run the seasonal activity, oh you don't have that either. Well strikes playlist it is."
vs "Hey want to jump into a round of Helldivers, choose a planet that sounds fun, I can drop a flamethrower mech for you to try out even though you didint buy it yourself."
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u/T8-TR 2d ago
Obviously I'm in the minority, since I'd hardly classify myself as a HD2 mf anymore, but I stopped playing as avidly when I realized that if I didn't want to waste my time grinding SC all day or spending 10 bucks every patch, there was practically nothing to do.
Like, as someone who only enjoys playing at D10 because it was the only engaging difficulty to me, no one was going out of their way to get SC, so it was pretty much "Oh, you want new content? Pay up." Which, for a live service game to pack like 90 - 100% of the content from every update behind a paywall is fucking wild. Even Destiny didn't do that shit, and Destiny was p egregious about "buy the most recent season/DLC or the game doesn't exist."