I start to get the feeling and worry that this game is sliding into the 'You're not playing it right' Dev Mentality and its going to really hurt the game long run if its not avoided.
The Devs seem quick to make changes, which isn't bad per se, but the changes seem to be directed at nerfing playstyles and tactics that we keep using. The old 'That is not how we intended you to do that.' comment. Instead of embracing the way players find solutions that they didn't anticipate there is a feel of adversarial nature with the devs and not in a good way. Instead of being like, "Cool, you got us let us figure out another challenge" it becomes "You did that wrong lets nerf it."
I had heard they didn't like people stealthing higher level missions, so now we have a lot of random spawns that just 'appear' around us, even in the middle of us. No bug hole or factory nearby. There was a period of time where breaking contact was nigh on impossible. We would be out of sight half across the map and shit would still be following us. That one did get changed slightly to where if you kill all of an aggro'd patrol others won't follow now at least.
There apparently was an environmental effect that randomized your strategems? Who the fuck thought that was a good idea. Fortunately they stopped that one cause 'it was causing more frustration than intended'. No shit really?
There is also a confirmation now that once you finish your objectives and start heading to the extract, the devs have set it to up spawns and turn it into a running gun battle. They want that cinematic, Mogadishu Mile ending, which kinda removes your ability to avoid patrols and be sneaky.
I kinda feel this stems from the 'Joel GM' thing where they talk about somebody monitoring and dynamicaly adjusting the game. There seem to be a lot of adjusting of back end dials and switches in the game that goes on constantly. People here have talked about it how the difficulties seem to bounce all over the place daily and stuff keeps changing. It almost feels like they need to slow down and let things play out a bit instead of changing so much so quickly.
The other is I feel they are trying to make the game a faithful 'experience' that mirrors their idea for Helldivers 1. They want it to play the same way of the huge horde shooter with lots of dying and this fits with the feeling of that 'your not playing it right' vibe I get from dev changes. My friends and I have adjusted. We used to pride ourselves on clears w/o dying, hitting objectives while avoiding all the unnecessary fights etc. Now we embrace the 'life is cheap' mentality. As a friend pointed out, you are rewarded for speed of completion not cleanliness of completion. Suicide runs to blow an objective than death spawn back. Sacrificial lambs to pull patrols away while the rest move on. Turrets are out cause they cause aggro chains that tie to you no matter how far away you are. So now its just all the bombs to kill quickly as possible. We make it work, it just feels like someone has a heavy hand on the scales and it doesn't feel good and is starting to cause frustration in my group. It feels like creative solutions are getting nerfed for a 'fuck it, killem all' being forced on us.
So fair enough, we kill em all. Just feels cheap.