Didn't think the quiet part needed to be said out loud but here we are almost a year after the change that's seen a downward trend into the red. While the portal was a nice thought experiment of what NOT to do, I think it's safe to say having higher difficulty matchmade activities does not work out well with the general population of the community. A great example of this is wiping on Fallen Saber because you're trying to type on controller asking what your 3rd teammate is doing to get them killed repeatedly ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP FAR FROM THE MISSION OBJECTIVE WHERE THE FLASHING THING ON YOUR SCREEN IS POINTING YOU TO. [b]-30[/b] deficet activities just don't seem to be the play in general gameplay loops, it's fine for content that's meant to be harder but not the Fireteam Ops run with Leisure Larrys where you're just trying to get bonus engrams. Granted this is all sentiment coming from someone who never agreed with the people in the woodwork who apparently said "mAKe gAM hUrdER" (I still don't think they ever existed outside of egotistic idiots who cover the game for a living who live in echo chambers). All I'm trying to say is maybe part of the mass extinction event we've seen from player decline is due to the fact most casual players don't like the feel of [b]-30[/b] content when they go to click on an activity because they're in-band (in terms of Power Level but not Skill Level) for the game to default to that. Please just get rid of the Portal or at least just bring it into the general gameplay loop of the previous Director. We don't need access to 50 modifiers, we need people playing the game so not every Fireteam Ops run feels like taking a cheese grater to various body parts while you see your teammate running into the water on the entire other side of the map constantly wondering why they can't swim every time you kill a champion for another rez to be ate.