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!