Replying to a player on Twitter who said recent patches have made the game “unplayable,” Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt conceded that he’s not satisfied with his studio’s current balancing approach.
“Hey, yeah I think we’ve gone too far in some areas. Will talk to the team about the approach to balance,” he wrote. “It feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed.”
You do have to play a lot, and the whole system is designed to be addictive and prey on poor impulse control. 20-30 hours per warbond/month is a lot of time to dedicate to one game.
Helldivers 2 has all the bones of a game built to exploit you, it just isn’t that bad compared to some other games.
The entire warbond system was built on the precipice of a very slipery slope but I think they haven’t quite lost their footing yet. Warbonds could have been time limited, but they opted to make them permanent. The grind could have been extraordinarily tedious, but i think SC gain is steady enough that I haven’t felt the pressure to buy into it (for context, i work full time and I have the drive to play maybe 8-10 dif8 missions per week)