I was really looking forward to taking a break from . I figured new enemies would be coming to the game soon, given the alleged ‘eradication’ of the Automatons, but I thought I’d at least have a couple of days to immerse myself fully into other games that I’ve been playing. The best laid plans of mice and men, I suppose. After barely more than a day, th🌄e Automatons are back, and I’ve jumped back into the war effort in what feels like a potentially fruitless attempt to hold the big bad bots at bay.

This is not something I, or any player, has to do. Helldivers 2 is very forgiving for a live-service game. You&🃏rsquo;re never actually missing out on something if you choose not to log in for a bit. If you don’t pour hours into a Major Order and instead just do one mission, you’ll still get medals if the community successfully completes it. Warbonds, the game’s version of battle passes, last forever, so you never have to go in and grind to complete it before it expires. Weapons don’t go out of circulation, meaning you also never have to grind to buy one before time’s up. Nothing in Helldivers 2 is time-limited.

This is a departure from the path that live-service games have been going down for a while now. A lot of games capitalise on FOMO to drive monetisation – they do all the things that Helldivers 2 doesn’t, so people come back to the game and spend money. Regular players often get burnt out from logging in every day to play for hours, with many people saying that the live-service game they love so much and ostensibly play for leisure 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:can sometimes feel like a second job.

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Hey New Helldivers, Please Stop Playing On Difficulties You Can't Handle

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Helldivers 2 doesn’t do this, and yet, I keep going back anyway. I have FOMO, even though there’s nothing material I’m missing out on. I’m not losing my chance to unlock new weapons, or to finish a battle pass, or to unlock some skin that everybody else is grinding for. The only thing I’m missing out on is the opport🦹unity to be part of the story. I want to be able to say that yes, I fought on Malevelon Creek, I shot down Automaton Gunships, and I helped set up those weird pumps on those Terminid planets.

Because the story takes several turns a week, and because it’s so heavily impacted by the actions of players themselves, I want to be there to turn the tide. I’m not tuning in to a campaign that’s already been written for me, I’m actively helping write it. What’s more compelling than that? The desire to come back every day is entirely narratively induced, and fuelled by the consistent participation of a loyal fan base that exists because of the lack of predatory practices.

FOMO is a dirty word when it comes to live-service games, but Helldivers 2 has never made me feel like I’ll actually be losing out if I don’t play every single day. I want to come back to watch things unfold, not because I’m scared I’ll lose the chance to get some ridiculously OP weapon that&🅰rsquo;s only available for a week and then gone forever. There’s no artificial scarcity here, just good gaming. That&rsq💞uo;s rare nowadays.

Helldivers 2 is the sequel to the third-person shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios. This time out, the Helldivers are deep in the Galactic War, and it's up to you to bring Managed Democracy to the masses.