The difficulties system fucking sucks and it's part of the reason of the reason why the game isn't hard at the "highest difficulty"
Diffs 1-2-3 are nothing, like you're genuinely not actually playing HELLDIVERS 2® at those difficulties (no elitism btw, just nothing spawns and the main objective is like destroying a propaganda tower), the only people there either just bought the game 4 minutes ago or farming credits
Diffs 8-9-10 feel so similar I can't tell the difference when I go from 8 to 9 and from 9 to 10 besides mega bases appearing
The lower diffs where the game actually happens are so inconsistent too, I've seen people playing at diff 5 getting stupid levels of crusher spawns
Difficulties just need a big rework because as it stands the difficulties (generally) are:
Diffs 1-2-3: "nothing"
Diffs 4-5-6: "easy"
Diff 7: "medium" for average players
Diff 8>: "medium+" for half-decent players
I thought the point of having a TEN whole difficulties is to let people choose the exact level of intensity they want and to me it just fails at that
This is how you get people wanting to "chill" at the highest difficulty available