Here's a breakdown of my thoughts on personal progress in the game and how it relates to the need for an endgame as a day 1 player.

Level 1: Everything is shiny and new. You have a ton of stuff to work towards and a ton of stuff to learn. Your progression options are: the free Helldivers Mobilize warbond, an extra warbond of your choice if you paid for it when you bought the game, strategems, and all ship modules.

Level 25: Congradulations! You've unlocked all of the free strategems and you're a fully equipped helldiver now! You've probably also made decent progress in Helldivers Mobilize or completed the warbond you chose. You've also started completing ship modules and have one or two done.

Level 40: You have completed or are nearly done with Helldivers Mobilize + your first warbond especially if you moved up the difficulty levels in search of more samples per mission for ship modules. You've earned all the easy ship modules and progress towards them has slowed down a bit, but it's good to have a long term goal to work towards. You've also probably earned enough super credits to get your second warbond with the refund from Helldivers Mobilize.


Level 65-75: You're done with all ship modules and have at least tried all difficulties. It's good to have finally completed something that you've spent a long time working towards. Along the way you've accumulated enough super credits for another warbond or two through regular gameplay.

Level 80+: Your personal progression is now solely warbonds or weapon levelling(from warbonds). At this point you're just doing it for the love of the game. Your samples and requisition slips are maxed out and you donate them to the DSS only to cap out again in a few missions. You wish there was more to personally progress towards, but nothing has really been added for you to do personally if you don't want to mindlessly grind super credits to unlock warbonds 

56.6% of players(if helldive.live is accurate) are level 80+ which is not a tiny minority looking for an endgame as Pilestedt stated in the recent AMA. More than half of all players are complete with all free progression. Outside of the rare faction update, all veteran players have to work towards is warbonds for personal progression. That's why I believe the the recent AMA has received so much backlash. Pilestedt pretty much confirmed that there's nothing new is coming any time soon for over HALF of all players. The last thing we got for personal progression was level five ship modules that are coming up on two years old now. AH aren't catering to the majority of their player base and I'm not sure  they realize it.

Player demographics and why we actually need endgame content