Most of the responses to the OP focus’s on the “customer”. However the real point of this post was in the first paragraph and then some supporting evidence in the next two. (It’s called writing) something the SOTG struggled with. This is a management problem. Like I mentioned “who in management read the draft SOTG and approved it”? No matter what you think of this SOGT, it has been widely revived as negative across multiple platforms. That is a management failure. And yes. They are blaming the customers for not playing game modes because they are not entertaining. Resourcing come first, feed back comes second and then assessment and decision making. If your game sucks because the lack of resources that is not a customer issue.

We shouldn’t conflate “popular” and “profitable”. Bungie is trying to do that, as they have always done to justify poor design decisions. That was a big part of their argument for sunsetting. “These things aren’t very popular, so they won’t be missed” All the while ignoring the fact that there weren’t any updates, or enhancements that might affect “popularity”. Gambit isn’t unpopular JUST because people don’t like it. Lack of meaningful updates should be considered in that evaluation. Same goes for under used gear. WHY are the things that are neglected unpopular? That’s the problem with the SOTG. They are making excuses for ever lessening quality. “It’s too hard and costly to update X, because we think Y is what people want” Um, no, people are asking for X, so the goal should be to make X BOTH profitable AND popular. Chasing “profitable” is how we get here. Continuing decline in quality, so that they can keep dumping things into the game hoping one sticks. Telling the community that they are following the money, while basically pigeon holing players into a very limited path, is beyond insulting to the community. The people who just play to play, the “profitable” group, don’t care about how “hard” it is. So they aren’t the audience for an SOTG. So they basically just flipped off the actual audience for no good reason.

This is deviating away from my comment about blaming the customer. You’re saying they flipped off the customer? Maybe they did. Maybe in a roundabout way they said ‘here’s what we’re making, deal with it’. I agree popular and profitable are not the same thing, but they are closely related. Both play a part in decision making. I also agree Gambit engagement has been affected by lack of updates. I’m sure Bungie’s aware of that. They must have felt that further investment wasn’t worth the risk. Focussing Destiny on PvE, so it doesn’t directly compete with Marathon, is surely a big factor too. Bungie are constantly trying to get maximum return on any investment (in terms of player engagement and profit). Sometimes they’ll get it right, sometimes they’ll get it wrong. To keep the game going this long, I think they’ve got more right than wrong.

[quote]Bungie are constantly trying to get maximum return on any investment (in terms of player engagement and profit). Sometimes they’ll get it right, sometimes they’ll get it wrong. To keep the game going this long, I think they’ve got more right than wrong.[/quote] I think they have gotten by on giving the people they just flipped off, just enough to stay engaged. Now it seems like they believe the "profitable" group is enough to sustain business as usual. Which would be fine, if they weren't addressing the not AS profitable group. It's not that they told people anything they didn't know. It is more about the lack of consideration for the audience who is actually going to care about an SOTG. THAT is the insulting part, not any particular point of design decision. The people on the forums, watching streamers, paying attention to changes, don't need to hear how "hard" it is to make games, again... And I am pretty sure no one who plays the game needs to hear that they can only devote resources to things that are popular while not mentioning the quality difference between the store and what they are able to put in game. Anyway, thank you for the discussion.

"No one uses the half-assed thing we put into the game, so rather than actually make it better, we are going to stop doing anything". Who ARE they blaming there? "No one wears the inferior gear we slap together each season, but people love the cool things we put in the store..." Again, who are they blaming? It's willful and predatory. ONE of the cool sets is available for bright dust, everything else costs silver. But it is a resource thing? No resources for the regular paid game, but there is an ADDITIONAL paid track for items in every seasonal event now? C'mon.

SRL got removed because it wasn’t popular/profitable enough for the amount of resources it ate up. Am I blaming players there, or just explaining what the situation was? Less gear to earn sucks, and yes, like any salesperson, they will try to spin it to come across as reasonable and positive as possible. It’s only predatory for the people who can’t control their spending (and that’s a bigger issue). If people are happy to buy it, that’s up to them.

[quote]SRL got removed because it wasn’t popular/profitable enough for the amount of resources it ate up.[/quote] Absolute rubbish. SRL was never "a thing" to be removed to begin with. I don't care about the rest of your post but you could at least use a better example for your argument.

It's just the type of fav Joe's D2 enjoyer - lacks any brains whatsoever and pays without asking for what. As long as those people exist, D2 will never get better. Facts.