Awww I really enjoyed the smuggler storyline, I loved hunting Skavak and getting Flashy back haha D:
To me the hardmode felt more like a cop-out "Hey, we can't think of other content for you guys to tackle right now, so just try this same thing just at a harder difficulty (yay!)"
Your opinion is a nice take on it too, honestly I'd not thought of it from that perspective♪