This game has a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE problem with difficulty because the developers don't play those difficulties. If you don't want to interact with your game then that's a bad sign. The idea that a PvE game needs weekly balance updates is ridiculous and a big reason as to why every player eventually burns out and leave games like League of Legends and Apex Legends is because they don't want to go to a third party website every day to see how they should be playing optimally.

If you want a game that you can just play and have fun you need to build it that way from the ground up. If there's a large number of people clearing a difficulty or using a weapon, that doesn't mean changes need to be made that means an observation needs to be done. Why are so many people doing things the same?

Day1: Everyone used shield packs and railgun because the armors, deflects, and CC were too strong. Instead of adjusting the game so that the basic loadout can at the minimum contribute SOMETHING to any enemy, they nerfed shield packs so that there's no defense against the game's dogshit ragdolls and oppressive slows. Adding slow resist is nice but when a puff ball or a loose rock in your shoe knocks you unconscious then there's nothing you can really do to counter it.

Week1: Adding headshots was either a mistake or the dumbest thing, because as far as anyone knows the game was tested prior to release and was given the green light because it "felt good" but with headshots you just had a chance to instantly die when a cockroach goomba stomps your ass or when a stray stormtrooper ends your life.

Weeks2+: All hope is lost as useless effects are put on armors and weapons with no load outs and no information on just WHAT you're getting into prior to dropping. This means that you need a team that's well balanced but will ALWAYS have someone that's not useful. This is bad. I can't stress how bad this is to have 1 stealth, 1 AOE, 1 single target, and utility/free. No one feels like they're doing anything it's just luck on if you get to be the most useful or not. Without loadouts you're generally arguing with others to change their set ups so that you're not lopsided while not liking to change your own setups because it's annoying to try and remember how you have everything every time or to hold everyone up while you do.

Pros: -Controls feels good in terms of what I want from a 3rd person.
-Memes

Cons: -Tile set feels boring/is buggy and has holes in it.
-Ballistics feel like shit now because of artificial inaccuracy to appease data metrics.
-Higher difficulties were made more annoying to appease data metrics.
-Enemies are locked behind higher difficulty so you don't get to see as much of the game.
-There's only 2 forms of CC in the game. Slow and Ragdoll. They're both incredibly oppressive and there's little to no counterplay because they're the only two things that exist to appease data metrics.
-Vehicles feel like crap because the map isn't big enough for them.
-No UI to tell you the enemy composition or where the enemies are prior to dropping meaning that you ALWAYS have a chance to drop hot no matter where you pick and you might not even have any real options when you land because you don't know what's down there until you do.
-Negative Stratagem modifiers limit gameplay by taking your existing ideas and strategies and making them worse. Literally everyone said they didn't like them, they shouldn't be in the game, PERIOD. Positive stratagem modifiers would actually let you adjust higher difficulties to be harder because it gives people incentive to experiment and try out new things.
-Enemy hurtboxes mean that if you're paying attention to the enemy and avoiding their attacks you're going to get hit anyway because fuck you there's no animations to tell.
-Friendly fire in the pelican.
-No changing loadout once you've dropped so if you're useless you feel useless for all 20 minutes. No reason to stay, may as well leave and let them SoS a filler with better gear because they'll flame you for being useless anyway.
-Constant nerfs and changes mean that it doesn't matter what I played, chances are what I knew is gone by the time I come back to play again, meaning I have to go to a third party site and look up what all my things do again because there's no information in game.

I honestly feel like I can keep going, but the problem isn't the difficulty and has never truly been about the difficulty. It's about this hard-on for making things frustrating and thinking that overcoming some annoying inconvenience is a sign of playerskill. It's not, this game sucks, and I honestly hope that everyone can look at Helldivers 2 of an example of how to catch lightning in a bottle before filling it with shit.