To me it's not the difficulty increase per se that has driven me towards other games. It's that the difficulty increase didn't come with any increase in rewards. Feels like it takes more time to get the same rewards as before. More difficulty would be ok if the rewards were also improved to compensate, at least IMO.

Preluding w/ Hardcore Top 2%-er for most endgame content so save your "git gud" insults, but I agree with OP, and let me explain why in a simple manner (Long post warning). TL;DR: The difficulty adjustments made are a one-way street, personal challenge was completely optional (IE: Solo runs, lowering your own gear level, etc), where-as the changes made are not optional, many casual players who once took on some of the higher tier content can no longer lean on the power system as a cushion, which I feel was a terrible mistake that Bungie has made in response to building player power since Year 2. The long story is that this problem has been building since Forsaken. D2Y1 sucked because most of what we were used to in D1 was gone (Random rolls, high-complexity building, etc), and then over time this was brought back, but at the same time controlling high-powered things (Read: Recluse, Mountaintop, etc) became more and more difficult for Bungie without just completely nuking it, which they eventually did in BL with Sunsetting. Hell, there have been things in the game that I have been saying needed to be nerfed for a long time that are still on the level of power that they have in the game today (IE: Trinity Ghoul), and this in turn led to a consistent feedback loop where we just kept wanting things to reach that same level or above. Just look at how perk combos on seasonal weapons and dungeons have evolved over time, high powered perks now existing side by side to fulfill the power fantasy of weapons because players wouldn't use the new gear with objectively "worse" perk combos. So Bungie tried a few things to get around this problem, they added Champions which had shield and health restoration mechanics to slow players down, and most people obviously saw how that went, they were hated for it, then came GMs which fixed power levels, and finally Master raids and dungeons which at first had an impressive -30 base delta before it was dropped to -20 due to player complaints. What really irked me though was the original blog which detailed power deltas as being "wanted" by the players, when there were a number of posts here and on reddit that were firmly against them (Read Bungie: High activity engagement numbers were not from players liking them, but more-so it was the current season's new content, of course people were playing it). In truth, the only problem with power levels that needed to be addressed was pinnacle RNG and timegating, but they've partially hit that this year by not raising it every season. Artifact levels is a hit/miss topic that goes into the numbers of what denotes a fair rate of levels earned / time, but a quick tuning pass could fix any problem there too. And now we reach the current day, with a majority of the content in the game now featuring some kind of a fixed level delta which completely invalidates any time commitment to the game's XP system and completely removes the element of power progression from the game as well. This "experiment" has clearly failed as indicated by the massive influx of topics here, and on reddit complaining about the changes. Then came the first "update" blog where Bungie mentioned no changes would be made, and what happened? Player counts tanked and have been on a free-fall since. Sure, there are a multitude of other problems the game is facing right now, but this has been one of the larger ones to impact the game this year. The big problem boils down to what denotes "fun" for players, a few of you out there seem to want this game to go down the Elden Ring/Dark Souls esque route of throwing the wall at you, and that's fine, but the fact of the manner is that so many players play much more casually and the level deltas strapped on pretty much every activity in the game has sucked what was "fun" to them (mowing down crowds of enemies or nuking bosses) from the game. So much to the point where many of them have just quit after Season of Defiance. You need to remember that while you as a hardcore player might have your perfect 5/5 god roll weapons that simplify a lot of the game, [b]MOST OTHER PLAYERS DO NOT[/b]. I watched this chain of events unfold last season in my clan, which has a mix of a few hardcore players and many more casuals. We were no longer being asked to help getting a GM run, or a raid in. It was things like "Help me with this legend mission / dares", content that I have little to no interest in playing. I also called out here how the Master raid/dungeon capping changes would be detrimental to the LFG scene as well, after Week 6 of RoN master, it was effectively dead, people got their adept weapons / title and then stopped playing it, the endgame was effectively turned into a giant checklist. About the only "endgame" thing that the few remaining players in my clan did this season was GMs, but even those are starting to outlive their "fun factor". Truthfully, I think the game was in a much better place last year even if we were stupidly powerful. Because as I mentioned at the beginning, if you really wanted to challenge yourself, there was nothing stopping you from underlevelling, underequipping, etc. and throwing yourself at the game's hardest content, at least most of my friends/clanmates were still playing the game even in down periods and that added the fun factor to help them with true endgame content while I would go run off and do solo dungeons for the "challenging" fun on my own time. IMHO, full revert everything done this year, leave GMs and Legendary Campaign as is, then go focus on reducing the potency of things that have been stupidly powerful for quite some time and slow-burn power back to a more reasonable level, but leave player power progression alone, it was a staple of this game since D1 and needs to remain in place for the casual audience to have more fun w/ the game and to bring many of these players back to the game.

for me it has reduced my pve game enjoyment considerably the grinds take longer, most engagements take longer, often pushing something from 'barely tolerable' into 'why bother' making something harder and taking more time definitely does not increase my own personal engagement, quite the opposite

Blame the streamers for that change... you know... the streamers that now play other games as destiny is too stale for them.

Ooh you can't say that on these forums! Some no life bungie bum kissing edgelord will tell you to "git gud" or some such personalityless response!

Bungie made Neptune "harder" by increasing the health of of everything there making it nothing less than a tedious experience IN A PATROL ZONE. Needless to say, I never go there unless absolutely necessary. Bungo played themselves.

Fact is streamer/content creators ruined the game when it comes to difficulty. They were all of their channels and streams, already as top tier players, getting support from other top tier players and steam rolling all of the seasonal, dungeons, and raid content. Instead of looking at themselves and seeing they are just too good for the game, they complained on their channels, and with the loudest voices bungie listened. Now level doesn't make, its only checking a box allowing you into content as everything is systematically stronger than you no matter what content you are doing. I just find it interesting that before this change I could solo legend lost sectors well, and now I don't stand a chance. I can barely reach the power level to do a legend lost sector, let alone complete it.

It's still hilarious how they made patrol zone Neomuna like hard mode tier but as soon as you load up a campaign mission and roam around enemies are easy, you can do your bounties, lost sectors etc, even encounter blueberries sometimes Making neomuna enemies master mode difficulty hard bullet sponges when they weren't in the normal campaign is funny lol

outside neomuna patrol zone nothing to adress

If you want to kill everything and take no damage, then maybe altars of sacrifice might be your style. Otherwise if you find something too hard, and no bad intentions here; change your strategy. The whole point of Destiny is when your shields break, you are about to die, RUN, find cover, play smart. There are 50 year olds soloing GMs, how? By taking it slow, finding optimal cover, and staying away from enemies. I don’t like playing slow, but sometimes I have to. You have to find a way. If what you are doing doesn’t work, then change what you are doing, don’t ask the game to be easier. It’s like asking everyone to drive safe because you have no brakes. You drive safe.

are you mad because of the legend story mission ? Which is optional and made for those that wanted more difficulty?

You guys need to stop using double trash primary weapons and actually get a normal build together and you will notice a significant difference in how difficult content is. Neomuna patrol has tanky enemies. So what? Use Witherhoard and throw a -blam!- grenade at them it’s not hard.

The only thing I don't understand is why they made everything harder but gms and master raids. Everyone was fine with the difficulty under gms and master raids, but the hard-core players wanted those things to be more difficult and yet those were the only things that weren't touched by difficulty changes.

Skill issue.