[quote]The only thing I can think of is, given there’s a lot of psychology implanted in this game, that bungie is saying, “Hey, you see all this pain you’re enduring while leveling up? It sucks right? You better start looking into builds.”. As a kind of way to force players to be better? That’s my guess[/quote] Agreed. That’s kind of how it seems to me. They’re trying to raise their base line bar of “difficulty” so they can maybe expand with more intricate mechanics but who knows.

Yep, I remember the days of D1 when I was surprised out how much I could do despite being solo. Easy enough take on pve. But I’ve noticed the player change across the years. Bungie could always walk this stuff back later. It’s a bit early to claim a player demographic but if they wanna use all their cards 🤷🏻‍♂️ I personally don’t play for “fun”. Title and triumph chasing mostly, and that takes energy. By the time I got through master KF, I didn’t wanna touch the raid for the rest of the season. Catch me in vanilla D2 being able to help. But we gotta bring back “ghally or kick” type mentality. Not that it doesn’t exist already with builds (well warlock). To be honest, I’ve dealt with all sorts of changes. It’s what they do to the players that concern me

It has to be an expansion thing. Throughout last year they rolled out the 3.0 subclasses. And they seemed to believe that a new year gets new changes, such as the increased difficulty. Kinda like how the subclasses were watered down in base D2. Now they are brought back down with the armor mod changes. Plus there’s a new subclass element they wanna sell us on, which needs some building for efficiency