Hello, former dedicated player here, and long time poster, as some folks will recognize the name. After a few months into the DLC, I barely play the game anymore. I log in for the occasional raid or private PvP match sure, but compared to prior seasons and years, my play time is at an all time low. Here's why, at least for me. There is no longer a feeling of progression in D2 outside of the fact that missions and other content becomes unavailable as I complete them. Like, yes, I do the seasonal story and then the seasonal story is complete and therefore I "progressed". However, it does not [b][i]feel[/i][/b] like I progressed. In Beyond Light, you started out on Europa and you got [b][i]wrecked[/i][/b] by most things. Remember the Brig high value target? Couldn't even hurt it. Then, as you progressed through the story, your light level went up and you got more powerful. Sure the Brig still stomped you early on, but you eventually started seeing damage numbers. Then, by the end of the story, you could run around the patrol zone and sure that Brig was still tough, but it was defeatable. Then later, when more dlc came out and we got even stronger, the Brig became a nuisance, easily dispatched with barely any effort. This feeling of progression was super important as that was the primary reason we all (yes even you) grinded for light levels. With Lightfall and more so in Pale Heart, the light level grind has had an increasingly minimal impact on our actual "power level" and has acted more as a "unlock the activity" function. Our light level doesn't matter in the slightest because everything in the game now operates on a fixed difficulty. This was a terrible decision for three reasons. 1. Robbing players of progression removes the reason to do more than half the stuff in the game. Light leveling is pointless, so it can be done at one's leisure, so there isn't a push to do activities that would generally grant pinnacles as players can just take their time and do the ones they want every week. Who cares if it takes 8 weeks to get to cap? Getting to the cap doesn't mean anything and 99% of the game is unlocked by soft cap (plus a few artifact levels) anyway. 2. The process of going from underpowered, to adequately powered, to overpowered was a pivotal part of the game's progression system. It helped players feel better about spending more time doing activities they may not normally do because the reward was being able to do those activities easier in the future. Now, every activity feels the same every time you do it, no matter what you do. Never progressing out of the default power level scale wrecks the motivation to continue doing it. I already did everything in the Pale Heart at its day 1 difficulty. Why would I go back and do it all again and again? I'm not progressing, I'm not getting more powerful, and I'll never have that feeling of "ah, yes, now I'm over leveled and flying through everything, this feels good." 3. The game now revolves solely around the meta grind, which is a giant waste since most activities don't have meta in the loot pools. Before, we could justify running an otherwise pointless activity because we wanted to have fun, chill out, or help a friend. However, since every run feels like the first run, there is a lack of "chill" in how the activities are run now, which makes them less appealing to repeat over and over again unless you absolutely have to. While there are many reasons why the population is cratering like Europe's population during the black plague, I feel like the lack of progression and lack of chill is a significant reason for it. Whether it manifests as burn out because every acticity requires more attention than it did previously or as boredom because dragging two guardian rank 2 blueberries through vanguard ops in its current state isn't actually fun, the game acts like it doesn't even want us to play it anymore. Please consider reverting back to witch queen and beyond light era light scaling again. If people want harder content, then raise the skill ceiling, but by raising the "skill floor" you have inadvertently removed progression and an element of "chill gaming" from your game, which makes it really hard to justify getting online and playing more often. Thanks for listening.