Ideas for a more healthy game

I'd love some feedback for some thoughts I've had about the game lately. So I'll get the more contentious topic out of the way.

Difficulty. I think we need to meet somewhere here in the middle for players who express a desperation for a challenge that makes them feel like the game's earlier days. We also need to consider the majority of players who do not want to go back to the majority of our tools being useless or suboptimal to the point of not even filling a niche. I propose this. Add two levels of difficulty to the game and do NOT increase sample reward. Having more samples will drag players, especially new ones, into a difficulty that results in massive frustration and negative feedback. Give the missions more xp and req slips and leave it at that. Maybe at most a title/achievement. This way the difficulty expressly rewards people who feel desperate for missions with a high failure rate and challenge while not alienating players who don't enjoy that experience.

A less contentious idea on how to increase the communities use and interest in weapon customization. Remove the level aspect for the attachments themselves and make it only req slips. Keep the level for unlocking the different color schemes. I feel as though people would engage with attachments more if it didn't feel so burdensome to get to the attachment you want. Also I'd like to see generally more interesting gameplay altering attachments/mods would help a great deal.

If you took the time to read this I thank you and would love to hear your thoughts, criticisms, and ideas for how to improve these systems.