There's a massive fallacy that a lot of people on forums (not just these ones, but all forums) ignore, which is the unhappy are always more vocal than the happy. People come to a forum, see all the negative comments and assume the sky is falling, whilst ignoring basic human nature. -An unhappy individual will seek to remove the cause of the unhappiness; some will just quietly quit and go elsewhere, but others will come to the forums demanding change, ranging from constructive criticism to vitriolic attacks. -A happy individual needs do nothing to maintain that feeling, except maybe putting some money into the game when new paid content comes out. This leads to the vast majority of forum posts being complaints, with relatively little counterbalance (and most of that coming from either people feeling the need to lower the negativity, or people like me who came here to check on the MM server status and then felt compelled to add our voices to the mix).

I haven't played in over a year. I came on to check out the forums and see what kind of state the game is in. And holy -blam!-! People are still complaining about the same crap that they were when I left!!

Looking at the forums to determine the state of the game is possibly the worst way to determine the state of the game

I would go as far as to say it's both the community and Bungie. Community tantrums are the usual near the end of every season. But at the same time, with so much player investment, whales and the individuals who occasionally buy into the monetisation, and the fact that beyond five minute cutscenes and the occasional tweak to the seasonal activities Bungie doesn't put much effort into all the events they try and advertise. How many Festivals of the Lost and community events have we had now, where it seems like playtesting has gone out the window and they're shipped out anyway. How many times have we tried to argue that grind is fine *if* the rewards are worthy of re-running the handful of activities and core playlist we've always had for the past several years. They really expected us to grind millions of coins to earn... A few low effort assets in an area of the game the player only checks up on maybe once or twice a week for story quests. Lack of communication or outright avoiding pivotal issues have been a habit for Bungie too. They've been trying in a few patch notes sure, but why is it that whenever there's an egregious issue to the game regardless of it's the pve or pvp side, or severe bugs, they prefer to clam up until the community boils over? Or fanning the fire when it came to the whole Telesto event--I personally found it funny since the bloody gun gives the devs more trouble than their own servers at seasonal launches though. Every time, the community (constructive or otherwise) gives feedback and there's actually a good amount of unification on certain problem areas, yet Bungie either doubles down or stays silent outright. But to be fair, the community doesn't do itself any favours whenever Bungie does f**k up. I'd be one exhausted and bitter developer if anything, especially since a good number of decisions made wouldn't even be under my control but for the higher ups whether it be a push to Eververse or choosing to be tone deaf because your hands are tied, or it's not your area of jurisdiction. As for vocal minority in pvp--I have gripes for sure, but arguing for "balance" is moot when the skill gap is so large and you have such a massive gameplay system that is D2. I can agree lobby balancing and matchmaking definitely needs to be redone, but AE and weapon tuning will never be to everyone's satisfaction and it's really up to Bungie as to what they want D2 to feel like. If they're truly concerned that these changes are actively killing their game, they'll go and do something about it. Profit is profit and loss is always bad. Otherwise, they'll stick to their guns and the pvp side of their game is so small, they can probably get away with cutting it and putting all focus into pve and succeed. Not saying they should, but pve would be much more sustainable since it's easier for the wider audience. Not only that, players are *still* coming back to pvp even if they hate the changes, so it still must be fun enough to warrant playing, right? It's up to the player if they want to give themselves a break if they don't like it so much. Ultimately, I personally feel like my investment into D2 has been satisfying for all the years the franchise has served to be my entertainment. Got my money's worth in playtime and gear, really, and that's impressive considering my last most played game was 3k hours of Skyrim. At any rate, I'm curious to see what will happen in D2's near future, but I'm certainly not going to be hung up over it. It's been a long ride.

Its the lowest the playerbase has been in history and pretty much unanimously reviewed as the worst season ever released. But hey you do you.

No it’s not. Destiny 1 averaged lower player counts across all plat forms than we’re seeing now…and vanilla D2 also averaged lower counts. I’ve been here long enough and have followed the game’s engagement data routinely enough that I can easily spot a false narrative and figure out why it’s being pushed. …and this is a false narrative being pushed by people looking to bandwagon and put pressure on Bungie to back down on the changes they made to pvp.