Helldivers 2 - Hell is more diverse than ever as PlayStation's demographics continue to grow and change.

[Sneedfully and Peacefully]

Even recently the devs have referred to Helldivers as a milsim or hardcore game which it obviously isn't,

If this was the case they wouldn't have strategems be so easy to deploy. It would require awaiting authorization and constantly updating the target so that it can be delivered effectively. You would be a SEAF grunt, not spec ops (which is just a grunt that bothered to apply) with carte blanch to command your own ship to do whatever you want. It's well known that Arrowhead is seemingly schizophrenic and the head that wants the hardcore grunt fantasy acquiesces to Sony and the head that wants to balance for the sake of fun (and thus player enjoyment) when the players shout loudly enough, only to try something else a month later. People thought the PSN debacle was the biggest hurdle of the game but at this point that's small potatoes. PSN was essentially bureaucratic-type corporate fuckery, this is just developers refusing to fully accept what the players want. And I get that, because when your vision gets tarnished and casualized in chasing popularity it feels hollow, like how DBD went from a sort of grungy actual asymm horror game to basically a party game where the survivors actively taunt and bully the killer (ignore that bhvr today are massive faggots).

The problem is that Helldivers wasn't even its intended vision from Go, and that's why it was so popular. If it was the actual hardcore game they wanted it would've had a nice crop of players who enjoy that and be it, around the numbers it has now. Instead we went from insanely good numbers to what we have now as a matter of poor decisions.