Hazard 5 vs Helldive, a breakdown on why Helldivers fails to preserve it's core gameplay

As a longtime Deep rock galactic player (a game that has a lot of similar themes and gameplay to Helldivers and one I would highly recommend) I've found that the way Helldivers 2 goes about their difficulty is frankly, fucking awful

So let me give everybody a short rundown, on how Helldivers miserably fails to make difficulty 8-9 fun

Preserving core gameplay

I think the primary (and basically only) reason why Hazards feel rewarding and fun while Helldive diffs fall flat is as I stated before, the fact gameplay does not differ between hazards and is instead refined and enhanced

Having mastered Haz 5 to the point of now playing Haz 6x2 (a modded version that has double spawn rates and an extra hazard level) I've found that due to the nature of the game and it's mechanics, no matter how hard things got, I was still playing DRG at it's best

I always shoot hordes of bugs, mine minerals and help my team. The higher difficulty demands I polish those skills and punishes me for mistakes but I am still doing the same thing I did on Hazard 3, just better and on a bigger scale

This also brought out the best out of the 4 classes (Driller, Gunner, Engi and Scout) making me feel like the role I played (as a Scout) was invaluable and reserved for me. I was a specialist filling one out of 4 spots (this will come up later and is a big pet peeve of mine) and it felt great. With some exceptions, having a team with all 4 classes is the optimal strategy

TL;DR: Playing DRG at a higher difficulty means simply playing at higher stakes and having to properly fill your role without restructuring the entire game into something else

Restructuring the game into something else

The greatest flaw of Diff 8-9 is failing to preserve what makes Helldivers fun, so I made a small list of things that seem like an issue to me:

• Team play - does not matter (as much), since the strategy is stealth and running. Plentiful helldiver pods also means abandoning someone is more beneficial than fighting an infinite horde of super heavies just to get them out, except if they are carrying all the samples

• Shooting things is fun - but you don't get to shoot things nearly as much, because the scaling of spawns is unbelievably skewered against you, unlike DRG you are expected to never win a fight. Whether it's the insane spawnrate or the patrols that will detect you and swarm you (which of course, can just spawn out of thin air)

• Using stratagems is fun - but you don't get to use them. Stratagem modifiers suck ass blah blah blah, you know the drill, this shit has no right being in the game the way it is right now

• Using different weapons is fun - but (you guessed it) you don't get to use most of them. It's the most asinine aspect of Diff 8-9 for me but the absurd heavy spawns make most weapons god damn pointless and all 4 divers should just run one of the 2-3 "universal armor piercing thing to deal with heavy spam" (remember how I said you fill a single role in DRG? That isn't possible here, everyone runs AP because specializing hurts)

• Stealth is not a decision, it's the entire game - this is not Splinter cell, the stealth is not fun or deep, being able to make a risky choice to do something stealthy can be a lot of fun but sadly stealth is an overused joke that isn't funny anymore. Helldivers scream, can't do objectives quitely or take out targets without enemies wallhacking to spot you instantly and yet it is mandatory to even have a chance at high difficulties. Real fun

I don't even think there's much more for me to say here, the scaling and spawns of Suicide - Helldive are absurd and unfun, kill variety and remove gameplay. If we want the game to stay fresh and fun, there needs to be some form of rework to the way we handle difficulty. Because a lot of people (myself included) enjoy improving at all things the game has to offer when moving up a difficulty, instead of being stripped of gameplay

I know this doesn't impact all of the hundreds of thousand of players, and there's plenty of wholesome chungus casuals who do not care about anything but new toys, but the true longevity of a game is in how it scales to accomodate growing player skill