Helldivers 2

1. Yes, both. You can private lobby just the three of you or public lobby and it is open to other joining but you do not have to wait, you can start with just 1 diver even.
2. No. Progression doesn't lock you out from one another. You'll just have more tools to pick from.
3. Active. I play solo queue all the time and never wait more than a minute to get into a round. The community is refreshingly nontoxic. The co-op nature makes the game naturally foster teamwork.
4. Progression is based on completing missions for samples, requisition slips, medals, and super credits. You can play any available missions to progress.

• Samples and Req Slips: purchase new weapons, stratagems, and upgrades
• Medals: purchase skins, weapons, stratagems, emotes, etc. from War Bonds
• super Credits: purchase War Bonds. Super creds can be bought with real money but are affordable through regular gameplay.

5. Build diversity is personal choice. You can make a lot of things work together depending on enemy type, mission, and terrain. You can coordinate builds with friends or squadmates but it is most definitely not needed. It's pretty rare for loadouts to even be discussed during mission prep.

The progression in this game is really just accumulating resources and currency to unlock new call ins, armor, weapons and tools. The missions are not tied to anything other than may be some current story line events that change pretty frequently. You can always play together and never be too far ahead or behind someone. You'll just have better weapons, drops, etc.

1. Yes, you can all play together and just be a squad of 3.
2. If you bring in your under leveled friend on the higher difficulties it's funny as Hell and a right of passage. Lower geared Helldivers can absolutely contribute to victory in higher difficulties, if they know exactly what they're doing.
3. Jump in whenever. Fight what you want.
4. You get a number of missions in a campaign depending on difficulty. The missions are objective based which repeat and cycle in and out. The maps are randomly generated and never feel the same.
5. Build diversity is actually a thing. You can't take only pistols. You must take a primary weapon, secondary (side) weapon, and a throwable (usually grenade). You get stratagems to call down and they give access to heavier weapons.

Are y’all quitting Destiny 2 in light of the recent updates?

Welcome helldiver thank you for enlisting for the battle for managed democracy.

1. yep game has 1-4 players. The only thing you miss out on solo is bunkers aka friendship doors which have some resources inside

2. I would say there’s two types of progression, what stratagems you have unlocked, and what ship upgrades you have unlocked. You start unlocking stratagems pretty quickly and ship upgrades are definitely nice to have but won’t overhaul the game, more on what I’m talking about in point 4

3. game is live service done right, the only FOMO is events where at most you get a cape you’ll rarely wear. The FOMO is being able to say I was there, the most recent example being super earth. I can say I was there defending our capital, fighting off alien invaders. When they drop new warbonds (similar to a battle pass) they stay forever (more on that in 4). But back to the original point, the games story is constantly on going, feels like we’re fighting a war that’s unfolding.

Sometimes the main mission are fun, sometimes impossible or filler (like now since the dev team is on vacation but you’ll still get the rewards if you don’t participate and we win

4. the game has 4 main currencies. Requisition Slips (yellow R), super credits (Blue S), Medals (A medal), and samples (green circle and an orange box and pink box).

Req slips are monies. So abundant I don’t think I was ever actually short any. They’re used in ship upgrades and unlocking weapon attachments but like I said, super abundant.

Super Credits are the premium currency used to unlock stuff in the store (do not do this individual items are expensive) or warbonds (much cheaper to buy in bulk). Lucky for you helldiver you can find super credits or buy them. I personally recommend grinding for a few hours and you’ll enough for a warbond (1k sc

Medals are the currency for warbonds, unlocking new guns and armors. You get them after completing the objective, even if you don’t extract as long as you complete the objective and the mission is over. Theres something called operations and that’s like a mission group and you get more medals for each mission in the op you complete. I think on level ten you get 9 medals for the first mission, 12 for the second, and 15 for the third. So it’s kinda like a win streak

Now side note. Like I said before warbonds are time limited battle passes that never expire. The default free one, Helldivers Mobilize, has 10 pages and has some pretty good stuff. Warbonds range from amazing to there’s one good thing in here. But the premium warbond Id personally recommend you get first is Democratic Detonation it has a machine gun (Ajudicator), Explosive crossbow (one handed so it can hold objective or a shield), erupter (a shrapnel explosive bolt action, the embodiment of stealth is optional) and a grenade pistol (a great utility gun for closing bug holes) and the thermite grenade which sticks to an enemy and can one shot every mob except for the biggest of the big ones (so then add 2 on their weakspot). The armor on the third page has explosive resistance which is great for fighting the robots on high levels, I forgot what the other two armors do)

There’s also weapon customization you can use with req slips to negate the weaknesses of a gun or make it strengths stronger. Some guns only have scope attachments some have grip and mag and all this stuff. Some examples, the reprimand SMG has bad recoil but with some grips and barrel attachments you can tone it down. Or the eruptor, it has horrible ergonomics, moving that gun feels like aiming a truck. You can unlock more attachments by leveling up guns which is just playing the game with that gun

5. Oh yes. There’s definitely some meta builds, but generally I like to have my builds for stratagems be: support weapon, backpack or orbital strike, destructive like an air strike/strafing run/orbital, and a turret. Allows for a generalist build where I can pull my weight

There’s also something called boosters that are passive effects applied to the whole team, such as better sprint, better healing, less damage, fully equipped on ammo

A fun one you won’t do for a while since it require multiple warbond, look up double edge sickle build, it’s basically just accuracy via volume

Now some general tips

The recoiless rifle (rocket launcher) is a very popular pick, like the thermite it can one shot all except the biggest enemies but can be one shot if you know where to shoot. Basically this support weapon is 1) aim at something you don’t like, 2) pull the trigger to make it stop existing

The eagle strafing run is my go to stratagem for bots since it goes out in a line of bullets infront of you, it can be used VERY close to you. I like the bring it to destroy bot bases so I don’t have to waste my rocket launcher ammo

With Eagle airstrikes the bombs will fall perpendicular to where you are at the time of throwing it. So watch out for team mates

Eagles can be sent back to base early. For example if you used all your strafing runs but none of your cluster bombs, those strafing runs won’t recharge until you send it back which also puts the cluster bombs on cooldown

The gas strike is a personal favorite of mine, it has a minute cooldown when upgraded, confuses enemies in its range (can only kill the small guys) and because the gas lingers that minute cooldown feels way shorter. It can even destroy enemy structures in one hit if you get a direct hit. It will do nothing if you don’t

On that note if you want something to destroy enemies rather than confuse them, the default orbital precision strike is good

1. You can even play solo. You can play just you, or allow a random fourth to come and go whenever. Matchmaking is good, and people will come and go from lobbies, helping out while they are there. It works the same as DRG, if that game is familiar.
2. Yes, you can also go down to his difficulty level. Progression is more about unlocking variety, rather than getting bigger better guns (though that too). The player that is behind can still use the weapons and equipment called in by higher level players, so keeping up is more a matter skill, rather than character level.
3. I come and go as I please. The war is a constant community effort, and while following the story is fun, there isn't a "bad time" to start or stop playing.
4. You can do one mission at a time. Higher difficulties provide faster progression, and more complex missions, as well was "sets" of mission you can do in any order to get bigger rewards for each one. You can jump around the galaxy, come and go from every front, even join and leave missions while they are in progress.
5. There are more and less effective things. At the highest level you have to be highly efficient and plan out your equipment to precisely counter what you'll be facing on the ground. No one build is the best, and almost everything is effective enough to be viable. The difficulty is HIGHLY configurable. Don't feel locked into playing the highest one, just find the balance between fun and min-maxing and only stray from it for variety.

The game is playable with 1-4 players at any time.

In game progress just unlocks weapons and strategems (1-30/150) after that everything is unlocked with in game currency that you can earn (free) or pay for so theres not really any way to 'fall behind' The game is in a great state, gameplay is good and the bugs that are in game just add to the humor. Build diversity is def a thing, if you bring the wrong weapons it can make the game much harder but that is also what can make the gameplay fun.

And progression is unlocked upgrades, like 10% faster reloads, strategem cooldown so its nothing too massive that it would ruin the game to play with people lower level. The biggest part of the game is learning weak points and weapon characteristics

Would most def recommend getting the game and the super citizen upgrade gives you the only paid weapon and is very good now

Agree with all the other answers, just adding a bit more.

I've been playing at least 4+ hours a week with friends since launch. Since progression includes unlocking warbonds/buying skins from the super store with super credits you can find in game or buy with cash, don't buy them and you will get years of progression as they have had a continually stream of content since release. To the best of my knowledge there is no FOMO either, the warbonds are always available and the superstore rotation means anything you didn't pick up earlier will come around again eventually!

They added additional upgrades over time, weapon upgrades to spend stuff on, and the space station takes donations too! While everything other than super credits has a cap, that is there to encourage spending!

Everything you start with is completely viable in all difficulties. Things you pick up later tend to be more situational, but everything is useful in different ways. The real progression is learning how to counter all the different enemies!

1. The game can be played by 1-4 players. There is a little scaling with slightly fewer enemy patrols with less than 4 players. If anything, clearing objectives will just be slower with fewer players, but nothing is walled off, apart from an occasional resource bunker that usually needs two players to unlock, but you can get those resources on other places.
2. The devs try hard to give every weapon and support it's niche. The early weapons are great for low-armor enemies which appear at all difficulty levels, but they unlock anti-tank weapons early on. The later unlocks are just add variety to your play styles, and the premium packs, again, just add variety.
3. There's a lot of variety in mission types. The devs typically fix balancing issues based off community feedback.
4. The maps and missions are procedurally generated, but done very well. Apart from the mission areas, the maps never feel the same. Missions can range from running around a large map to get the nuke codes and launch a nuke, to defeat enemies in a small area. Most missions have optional objectives and enemy bases that will give more experience and resources if you clear them. Clearing a map feels great.
5. For high difficulty missions, you need some variety in light crowd-clearing weaponry and low-medium density anti-tank weaponry, and some in-between. A single skilled person can solo it, with sneaking and a lot of time. Opt for lower difficulty missions (5-6) if you just want to kill things without having to worry about packing for heavy armor enemies every few minutes.

Progression is all adding variety to your play style. Weapons don't often become obsolete, although you may favor play styles that favor certain weapons.

This is a game that'll be great fun and a unique experience for a few weeks. Then you'll be satisfied and done playing. The devs will be releasing updates while you play other games and when you come back, there'll be more content to explore. It is not something you will be grinding for 6+ months, but it offers a unique co-op experience that is refreshingly different from other shooters.