Helldivers 2 appears to be finding its stride after a launch that I hesitate to describe as a rocky one, only because it was more of a rollercoaster—incredible popularity in its opening months that tanked servers for weeks, a huge, stonking controversy that saw it glassed with a review bombing, and what overall seems like a wild scramble to meet the demands of its sudden spotlight.
The solution, sensibly, involves slower but more comprehensive updates, such as The Escalation of Freedom, which is coming next week. It seems like Arrowhead's strung its bow on making sure the next few updates add to the game's core systems, too, as outright stated by the company's fairly-fresh CEO asking Reddit for help.
Help brainstorm ideas for resource use for progression from r/Helldivers
Shams Jorjani, who stepped into the role back in May, promises that he's received blessings from the game's designers and that he's not "on a wild business suit venture here." He then goes on to admit that, once you've bought all of the game's upgrades, there's really not much to spend anything on—leading to most dedicated patriots sitting on mountains of slips like Scrooge McDuck with a rocket launcher.
"We have our own designs and ideas but we'd love to hear yours. In due course we'll probably be formalising how we solicit feedback like this into proper surveys, but I'm just a humble nerd asking for your help for now."
Jorjani does, however, caution readers to not "interpret this as a promise or indication that things might or will change or that your ideas will ever be used" which is, well, wise, considering that the Helldivers 2 community is pretty impassioned, for good or for ill.
Honestly, I'd consider this crowdsourcing attempt a pretty decent success, as there are a few very solid ideas in here. The cream of the crop—as best summarised by user SiccSemperTyrannis—is the idea of being able to donate your resources to community-wide modifiers that aid in the Galactic War or provide universal benefits to players. Or, alternatively, cash in on single-mission boosts for endgame divers with too many space rocks.
There are some other suggestions which are neat—for example, weapon attachments—but they are, in my opinion, just kicking the can further down the road. What Helldivers 2 really needs is a persistent money sink, and to that you need to look at how MMOs tend to handle that—namely, repair costs, consumables, and vanity items.
The above suggestions would slot nicely into the "consumables" part of that equation. Most MMORPGs ask players to gather stacks of food, weapon whetstones, and potions not because it adds more complexity to the game (though that is an added bonus) but because doing so gives players a reason to continue to spend money once they've got everything they already want (it also helps to reduce digital inflation, though Helldivers 2 doesn't have that issue).
As for what Jorjani brings to the public forum: "My suggestion (which was shot down) was to just copy the Goldeneye64 modifiers as a fun thing to unlock for missions. That or we suspend [creative director Johan] Pilestedt over one of those water tanks, and once we hit XXXX whatever spent we dump him in it." Poor Pilestedt. I wonder if they'll feed him to Joel.
