My feelings on the update so far can be described in bursts of "oh this car is awesome" and "are you kidding me the Illuminate are incredible," but there was one surprise waiting for me in Helldivers 2 this morning that I wasn't happy to see: Arrowhead isn't just selling armor in its store tab anymore, but weapons too.
Well, one weapon for now. The stun baton, one of two melee options new to the shooter, can only be unlocked by purchasing it directly from the Superstore for 200 Super Credits. Unless I've been living under a rock, this is the first time Arrowhead has sold a non-armor item outside of a warbond—Helldivers 2's battle pass-like progression system. I'm uneasy about the precedent that sets for the future of the game.
In these first 10 months, the relationship between the Superstore, warbonds, and normal level-based progression in Helldivers 2 has been clear [[link]] and consistent: You can unlock strategems and most weapons just by leveling up, warbonds offer optional expansions to your arsenal, and the Superstore is an even less crucial cosmetic shop with more armor sets. I really liked that setup—I even called it one of the —because Arrowhead's warbonds are generally a good value, they don't expire, and even the premium armor sets have the same perks as warbond armors and are only a few dollars.
But Arrowhead has slowly expanded its boundaries around what and how it charges for non-cosmetics. The stun baton being a Superstore exclusive is the latest example, but I first noticed a shift in the Chemical Agents warbond in September, which included the first premium-only stratagem in the "Dog Breath" drone backpack. I felt my foot slipping on a possible slope at the time, and it's happening again in Omens of Tyranny.
It could be worse, but...
The stun baton isn't worth raising any alarms over on its own. It only costs 200 Super Credits ($2 worth of credits) and Helldivers 2 still doles out a decent amount of free Super Credits by looting points of interest on missions. There's an argument that selling weapons a la carte is actually more convenient than having to buy a whole warbond if you only care about one thing (especially if the a la carte prices are this small), but then there's the fact [[link]] that the Superstore stock changes every week. Presumably the stun baton will leave the store in a week or month's time and then be completely unavailable for weeks or months after.
It's a bad setup that isn't unique to Helldivers—we really haven't given live service games enough grief for treating every microtransaction like the McRib—but is uniquely upsetting when it starts to involve the most coveted items in Helldivers 2 that [[link]] players are used to getting for free or in never-expiring warbonds. Right now it's a stun baton, but it'd really suck if Arrowhead surprise-dropped a new vehicle that you could only buy for a week.
And that stun baton is pretty useful, by the way. It deals almost no damage, but it stuns the hell out of whatever you hit with it. In a pinch, a few rapid swipes can get a small crowd of Voteless off your back long enough to disengage, and it can even stunlock larger Illuminate soldiers forever if you keep whacking.
Is it better than having a gun as your backup? Not in most cases. A pistol can kill your attackers before they get in melee range, but the baton has unlimited ammo, and if you tend to ignore your sidearm until the crap has already exited the fan like I do, it makes more sense.
Also relevant: The other new melee weapon, the stun lance, is on the new Urban Legends warbond. It's very similar to the baton, except it has a longer reach and its stabbing motion means you can only hit one target at a time. The upside is the lance deals more damage and can even chop off the legs or heads of the Voteless with a single strike—a solid "oh crap" tactic if you need to create some distance. If I had to pick one, I'd probably take the lance right now.