Helldivers 2

I agree. I don't mind new warbonds and super store items (though I do take issue with weapons ending up there) as they need to make money somehow, but what's the point of making money when the rest of the game seems to get bare minimum attention. I've taken an extended break from the game and on return the "end game" progression was exactly the same as I left. I get it that you can't really throw more and more end game progression at the game because it already takes something like 200+ (if you're very efficient with collecting samples) hours to unlock all the ship modules.

But like I'd expect 2 years into the game Arrowhead would have figured out how to make the galactic conquest more engaging and rewarding for players because that effectively is the end game progression. And it's actually gotten worse since launch because we used to get stratagem unlocks based on completed objectives and now we don't even get those and the entire conversation about "the story is rigged and our contributions don't matter" is still circulating in the community. It feels more like flavor of the week depending on which front the Major order is at. Helldivers 1 Galactic war was way better than this because there the community had some agency over the war. The community chose which battles to fight and depending on those decisions wars were either won or lost. I wish the Helldivers 2 galactic war shifted more towards the sandbox that the Helldivers 1 galactic war was with story beats happening when Arrowhead has a story to give (like the Cyberstan invasion or the new illuminate subfaction thing) instead of just giving us busywork MO-s (almost everything between Cyberstan and Illuminate thing).