The changes brought by the pvp team aka last patch completely ruined pvp. It was already plagued with lags but now that you have to be even more consistent with hs since body shoot is a joke made the pvp exp ten fold worst Truly i say to you ... the want destiny to fail it can t be other way. It s basically on purpose

Trials has always had a problem with numbers (since D1, hence why it disappeared in between D1 and D2 and then went dark in D2 again). It was always pushed as an 'elitist' activity long before Destiny PvP morphed into its own 'elitist' activity which meant that by design it was always going to have a smaller playerbase that was much more sensitive to the ebb and flow a game has during its lifespan. Nothing has changed there, other than the size of the core playerbase it has to draw from. PvP focussed players always seem to forget one thing - you don't generate any income in D2. You don't buy map packs, or weapon skins or player cosmetics. They just want to play the game for free, have their cake and eat it PvE focussed players buy expansions, season passes and then occasionally the cosmetic stuff. The PvP guys might be keeping the servers populated but it's the PvE folks that pay for them to be powered on in the first place. Which one of those do you honestly think that a business like Bungie, which is apparently burning through cash like a wildfire, is going to focus on? Right now, I think Bungie is just banking on the entire PvP community flocking over to Marathon when (if?) it releases (which I believe is a massive mistake because they're certainly not going to fork out for a full priced game when they've gotten used to getting a game for free).

Who cares about trials

Even as a PvE main, I use to think PvP was at least 30% of this game. But that was when Bungie put effort into the core ritual playlists. The problem with Trial’s player pool is that it’s completely toxic for normie PvE people that also enjoy a little PvP. These people aren’t great at PvP, but in regular casual 6v6 can make some moves. When these people see a reward the trials is offering and jump into the playlist they’re met with nothing but top-tier players that absolutely dominate them and ruthlessly clapping them. There’s no middle tier players in the pool and the matchmaking systems they keep attempting to make work don’t do a good enough job at separating the low tier and top tier or making lobbies that allow an average player a realistic chance at getting to the lighthouse. Regardless of the reward - no one is going to enjoy the experience of just endlessly getting their face ran into the dirt and tea bagged only to endlessly reset their cards attempting for a lighthouse run or not resetting and taking a beating for engrams. And if it’s not an enjoyable experience, the player just becomes apathetic towards to whole experience. Now, usually when you bring this point up it’s met with “Trials is supposed to be a top-tier competitive activity where the best of the best compete for rewards. If you’re not good enough to go flawless- get gud.” Which is fine. But this is why average to low skill players don’t regularly play Trials. It’s why the playlist player population is so low. It’s why the player population gets even lower when the only people playing are top-tier players and you keep getting matched with the same people. I don’t know what the solution is, but the reason Trials is failing is because it’s super toxic and unrewarding for the average player and the remainder upper skill level players that can compete in the activity already have all their loot.

I want you to think about something.. On Destiny Tracker the #1 on power level is 2049. That's in the entirety of the playerbase. That's unheard of since the artifact was introduced that 39 above the hard cap is the highest anyone is. In every other season at this point I would see someone over 100 above the hard cap and would think "wow... What a loser". But now this DLC has so little replayability that this is where we are. What a complete and utter failure of a DLC. It amazes me that some people still can't see that Bungie paid for all those reviews. Even Sony said their spending was out of control.

Wait until Bungie has DT hide the numbers as they did a couple of times already, and DT claiming "they had issues" so that's why they hid the numbers both times the player base called Bungie out on how low the player count was 😄

A year ago it was at 138k I get you probably found this article: https://thegamepost.com/destiny-2-trials-of-osiris-lowest-player-2021/ Then posted whatever big numbers you could to make the game seem worse but....yeah

The PVP base has had the patience of -blam!- saints for years. They’ve been lied to repeatedly about Bungie’s “renewed focus” or claims they “have a dedicated PVP team”. They are the backbone of the game between PVE releases, keeping the numbers up and giving people something to do after their ten minutes of seasonal story per week. It’s a shame they’ve been abandoned, but it happened long ago and Bungie doesn’t see any profit in fixing it.

I'm betting Sony has made the decision not to throw any more good money after bad. It's triage now. They will try to stop the bleeding. They will cater to those players they believe will be the last to leave and try to hang onto those players as long as possible. This includes the occasional info drop that hints at things that will never be implemented. Plenty of weasel words and disclaimers in order to not outright lie. They have no current expectations of improving player count upwards. Just keeping the lights on. If they did, you'd think they would announce it before summer ends.

Player count for Trials has always been lower compared to other activities in the game. If anything, the data just shows that Bungie should drop Trials if so few people are engaging with it.

Flogging a dead horse.

I agree completely. I play both PVP and PVE equally. The problem is that bungie can't see that PVP is the glue that holds this game together. Its what makes Destiny stand out from all other games. Instead of embracing that, bungie neglects it. I believe if it wasn't for PVP, Destiny would have been dead a long time ago. Also, the PVP player base is much more dedicated than the PVE player base. PVP players have stuck around through all the neglect and those who have finally given up would rush back if they saw anything being done to advance the PVP experience. Do you think the PVE players would have stuck around if PVE content was neglected half as much as PVP?....No! Once the newest PVE content is consumed, PVE players leave the game and only log in when new content is dropped or just long enough to catch up on new bright dust items. The PVP community is who will log on daily and play for hours each day. Beliedat!!!