Agree and Disagree. In general I'd have to say that the crucible is much more balanced today than it was in Y1, or Y2. No matter how much we all loved zapping people with Thorn from cross map, that era didn't see any real variety and I personally find myself able to compete reliably with a much wider variety of weapon types and archetypes than was the case in Y1. Additionally, the community needs to accept some of the blame for the current state of PvP since most (not all) of the nerfs instituted were called for by the community and quite loudly in many cases. I understand your point that Bungie is catering to a very small portion of the population (Trials/Streamers), but I think you're only making this assumption because they're the most vocal and in most cases are just echoing the sentiments of the community. Ultimately I see three main points which need fixing which are a combination of fault of both Bunge and the community. [u][b]1. Execution[/b][/u] - Assuming for a moment that Bungie is executing upon requested adjustments from the community, I think we all have to agree that their solutions to proposed problems often miss the mark, and are often a bit of an over-correction causing imbalance in the other direction. Firebolts could have done with corrections to one of the stats, not damage, range, and DOT. High RoF Pulses would have been fine with a slight nerf to HCR/Flinch. Special Ammo could have been solved simply by decreasing carried special capacity and increasing duration between special crates causing players to be a bit more selective in their use cases for special weapons. In all of these cases the "corrections" made were a bit overboard causing more severe issues than the ones they were attempting to fix or rendering certain abilities and weapons useless. Bungie needs to be floating more solutions to the community before testing in order to ensure they haven't missed the mark. [u][b]2. Testing[/b][/u] - Bungie needs to first reacquaint themselves with the scientific method which allows for only one variable to be changed at a time so you can measure the impact of that change. Making multiple changes at once creates more variables than are measurable and so cause of the results cannot be easily measured. The result in any wide sweeping set of changes such as the ones we just saw are completely unpredictable based on the limited "testing" Bungie does internally. To correct this one or two things need to occur. First Bungie should adjust the way changes are implemented and rather than working for months on a bunch of adjustments to be rolled out all at once, they should instead make only one or two small adjustments weekly, working big to small in terms of the weapons and abilities which appear to be out of balance. This will give them the ability to implement changes and measure the impact of those changes on the overall Meta without having to factor in the noise caused by the other 25 items they just changed. Second, they need to implement a Test Server and tap the player base to provide feedback prior to rolling changes out to the wider community. Make it application/invite only if they want, but there clearly needs to be more testing before most of these updates are rolled live. Listening to the community doesn't just mean listening to us complain about what's wrong, it means listening to our feedback on the fix, and also feedback on fixes that no one said were broken. Truth and Hungering Blade seemed to come out of nowhere. [u][b]3. Player Diversity[/b][/u] - This one's on us. Players need to incorporate more variety into their daily play and not become reliant on one weapon type, class, or play style. In other words forget the Meta if you're not playing Trials or Tournaments. Yes, everyone will always have their favorites and there will always be a most dominant combination of weapons and skills no matter how much balancing is done. I've yet to find a perfectly balanced game. What I'm saying is that players need to make more of an effort to diversify their own play a bit more so they have an informed perspective and can participate intelligently in discussions about balance beyond, "Nerf (insert skill/class/weapon), but don't touch my (insert skill/class/weapon)." Haven't used hand cannons? Then force yourself to use them for a day. Haven't created a Titan? Maybe it's about time to. Only use Arcblade? Try out Nightstalker. The point is that diversity will help to give you a better perspective, and has the added benefit of giving you options when the next inevitable round of changes come our way.

stickies have always been a sore subject nobody talks about them because as you say anyone can use them.

Wow this post is cancerous...... Let me explain a few things...... you either dont communicate with a lot of people and tend to watch streamers. Majority of the nerfs that streamers asked for, a vast amount of the community asked for as well. At a competitive level,(TRIALS) which that is the competitive level of destiny, some things were being abused by good players that require little to no skill. For example, firebolts, but just like every other Nerf how we wanted the nerf is not the way bungie went about. Lets go and take a look at firebolt for an example, In its prime days the damage tick and damage output was insane. Not only did it do a lot of damage but you were out of the battle for long time after being hit with that. What did we ask, for either of those two things to get fixed. Whether it was the damage output and keep the ticking long or keep damage output but make the ticking go faster. What did bungie do? Nerf the thing into the ground. Bungie is trying really hard to get this right. A lot of the nerfs they do come out of the blue and no one knows why and a lot of the nerfs we expect to get they go overboard. Streamers did not want firebotls to get nerfed into the ground because a lot of them did use sunsingers so that makes no sense. They just wanted them FIXED. Out of the blue nerfs: Blink, Blade dancer regen perk, Gunslinger nerfs, Special ammo economy, etc. Fixes that we wanted. Firebolts, HCR doing it a bit too much recoil (not the fire rate), Bloom, Skorri camping, jug shield taking too much damage (not the fact that it was being used in the air) This is the major reason why the community is mad because bungie listens to the nerfs or fixes that we as a community want but they dont listen to they WHY.

I think we're actually seeing Destiny implode. If destiny tracker is correct crucible has dropped from like 468,000 a couple days ago to like 370,000 yesterday.

Answer me this sols. If the game had any relevant content at this current time would bungie need to be dictated by the only crowd that are continually making content for the players? At this stage this is where the game is at. Paid/raffle carries, twitch and YouTube vidoes. Thousands of views are keeping people invested from outside of their play time. The games magic is waring off. A beautiful game it once was.