It all started back in Beyond Light when Bungie removed a bunch of strikes from the game, many of them really good and beloved by the community. And many bad ones stayed, like Exodus Crash and The Corrupted. Since then Bungie has been replacing them with Battlegrounds, aka a more boring and dragged out version of strikes, so it's not even a good replacement. Important to note that, currently, there are more Battlegrounds than strikes in the playlist. Then Lightfall comes out and Bungie adds a bunch of shenanigans to the playlist, like timers and new modifiers to make the whole thing more difficult. On top of that, two strikes got ''reworked'' in an incredibly lazy way, to the point where once beloved strikes now are completely ignored if possible. Now in Final Shape, Bungie took a huge step forward in making strikes insufferable. First they added a -5 power cap to EVERYTHING, making it impossible to out-level enemies in any activity, and now they are much more tanky and deal much more damage. With this episode however, Bungie added some of the most DOG-SH*T modifiers know to man. First they turned ammo bricks into landmines that can very much one-shot you. Then they made you lose health for STANDING STILL, yes, you literally die for standing in one place. Then they made a worse version of Togetherness, except in order to regen you don't simply have to stand close to teammates, you gotta kill powerful combatants. And even then, instead of enabling health regen for a few seconds, you just gain a SLIVER of HP, yes, a f*cking sliver of health for each powerful combatant, making the recovery stat completely pointless, while also making regenerating your health a pain. And now, as if it coundn't get any worse, they added one modifier that sounds awful on paper, and even worse in practice. This new modifier literally makes your weapons (pulses, scouts, grenade launchers/ smgs and shotguns) deal LESS damage as you deal damage with them. And ANY weapon that is not part of said group of weapons, deal SIGNIFICANTLY LESS damage per default. So basically you can only use these 5 weapon types in strikes, and even these 5 are gonna suck after getting only a few shots in. And this direcly conflicts with the active weekly challenge that requires you to get kills with primaries (pulses, scouts and smgs for extra progress). This is low, like straght up rock bottom. The Vanguard Ops playlist has never been this awful in terms of difficulty (not really, just annoyance) compared to rewards (some glimmer and an enhancment core lol). These modifiers are GM levels of bullsh*ttery, and there's absolutely nothing to gain from this pain. I'm genuinely terrified of what other ''''''''''''bright''''''''''''''' ideas Bungie cooked up for this playlist in the future, seen as their ability of running everything into the ground keeps exceeding my expectations.