1) The current meta strongly favours Auto Rifles, which makes life more difficult for SMGs and Sidearms. However, the changes to the special ammo economy mean that having two primary weapons for different engagement types can often be worthwhile. 2) Abilities being stronger and more prevalent leads to one class being used more than the others, or one being left in the dust. It's not that using abilities is bad, but that it isn't right for the game that a player losing could mostly be attributed to their choice of class. For special, the old system could lead to players never running out of ammo and make primary weapons not a player's primary weapon. 3) That's who will benefit from it most, but ultimately, anyone can get the Adept with - as the name suggests - persistence. You could theoretically take the whole weekend to get the 7 wins on the card and still get the Adept. However, I think this will also make people realise that Adepts aren't really that good; they're more trophies than anything else, the stat increases are very rarely a difference maker. 4) I don't really think you do. Trials isn't meant for new players and the positive experience only comes from winning. If you can't win and even the Perseverance card is severely out of reach, then Trials isn't suitable without individual improvement. 5) Raids and Dungeons are endgame PvE but there aren't any entry barriers for them. Not even GMs have a high light-level requirement anymore, so I don't see why Trials should have any such system. It's one thing to not want to play because it's a miserable experience, it's another to not even be allowed to play at all. 6) That's going to be anecdotal and down to the player - what pool you're in, the server you play on, the time of day you play at, the quality of your own connection etc. Trials doesn't employ card-based MM, so that won't be a factor.

I think a solution could be something more along the lines of rewarding xp for playing, not only on rounds won. That is a potentially long grind to get xp if you can't win rounds/matches. The new card helps because you don't "need" to reset it every loss but still slow. I'm fine with the drop rate of Trials armour and weapons for playing but progressing in rank can get a bit touch for people. I think rank progression for playing could at least help people want to come back into Trials a little more, not fun to make almost zero progress.

Not to mention yes skilled based match making is good but how come you go against average to below average your first game, you win and then next game go against top players basically. That's my experience with it like ig I won one game against average players I'm someone who can go flawless multiple times in a single week. Also my experience with the persistence card is it's an okay decision, it does help those who can't go flawless experience adept weapons but for the average player or just someone with terrible MM rng like me it goes back to the top part of this post, you win three matches and then go against skilled players so basically gatekeepers and then you go all the way back to 0 wins. Honestly and I'm sorry for being this way as ik it's poor sportsmanship but I just gave up a long time ago, never went flawless and honestly never will because of all the bs in pvp these days. Plus if you're still allowed to get trials gear just for participating then might as well just go with the flow. I only wnat the armor anyway and honestly yes adept mods are good but not necessarily needed unless you're doing top tier content and even then you see no difference if you just have the same roll but on non-adept weapons or you're most likely not using the mods anyway.

SBMM should be the way

Bungie: We only cater to a small group of Streamers and Content Creators because they give us free advertising. Average players mean nothing to us.