My 2 cents on PVP related things: I'm 53 now, and I've always had bad eyes, but back in my teens, when we had LAN weekends, I used to wipe the floor with everyone at Descent 1, low res and clear levels AND me knowing them back to front was key. Another player used to wipe us out in Quake 1, and we had a Supreme Commander player that could take multiple people on by himself. Because of my eyes, I find it next to IMPOSSIBLE to spot targets before they spot me back. It's basically "is that someone over th*BANG*" and that's how I know there WAS someone over there. I also used to play Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 against other players, and win a LOT only because I just stayed in Thermal Vision THE WHOLE GAME, anyway you get the idea. You will never, EVER win against people that play so much they can fly backwards, shoot, and still land exactly where they wanted to because they literally did that move 10000 times in the last month. If Weapons or Armour is tied to a Special Activity, you didn't ACTUALLY pay for it when you bought the Season, you bough ACCESS to try to get it. It was never for you, it's a "reward" for people that can pull off bullshit, basically. The weapons/armour we can get in "normal content" will always be 80%-90% as good as the "weird stuff", and just requires "grind" to get. And anyway, the only place the "weird stuff" help you a bit more is things like Raids, where you need SIX people that watched a multi hour video on what to do first anyway, and if you are a "sub optimal D2 player" you ain't going there anyway. I sure as hell ain't. This is just the way things are.

Participating is good but just because you participated you're not entitled to the grand prize. ToO is a competition (not very well structured) but it is and think of it as a tournament. The greatest thing about all this, is you're not walking out empty handed for your participation. If you build a 7w card you're able to roll in the rewards track with a substantial amount of rep (especially during double rep weeks) which rain engrams. I'd get your post if you got absolutely nothing for your time spent but I think thats why Bungie shifted the rewards track to a rep gain track instead of 3/5/7 flawless track. PS: Stop trying to go in solo against full teams it rarely pans out unless you can hard carry 2 people consistently. Maybe try messaging some of the people in your many posts that feel the same as you and squad up, get good together, learn how to play with each other and practice till you get there.

As a person who completely sucks at pvp myself, I disagree with you. Trials is accessible to you, right? You payed for that access. You payed to participate. Not to win. Real life doesn’t work that way either. You don’t get a degree by just owning the books. And like it or not, the fact that you’re not winning probably does have something to do with skill. If you can’t learn to accept that some things are out of your league until you dedicate yourself to becoming better; then every complaint you issue has very little ground to stand on. Changes that have already been made thus far have made it so that casual Trials players can experience more. There’s a solo node (which should be a standard feature i.m.o.) Plus you can get loot easier. Nearly everything is obtainable to you, except the adept trials weapons. So Bungie HAS catered to the casual player and given people more incentive to play. (To be fair, they should invest more in the Crucible reward system. Because it’s trash)

I don’t know how many times I have to say it, don’t play trials. Players that are solo or average is used to get carries, and help others go flawless. We are thrown in so others can enjoy the adepts. Don’t participate and you’ll see bungie release a update to the mode

Nice try but you’re not going to get any constructive criticism in this cesspool of toxic contrarians. You’ve made a good point, though I don’t fully agree for nuanced reasons. But, sadly, most people simply don’t have the maturity or intellectual capacity to see the merits of your fundamental argument.

So you DO want a participation trophy..

“It matters that you participate” ? What? I disagree. You paid for the game and it’s expansions with the understanding that you’re paying to have the OPPORTUNITY to play and achieve what this game has to offer. Your participation does not mean you get to automatically achieve whatever you want. I don’t understand where this mentality in online gaming has suddenly arisen from in the past couple of years, but it’s ridiculous. If you aren’t good enough to do something in the game, you’re supposed to improve at the game in order to achieve whatever that thing is. And if you think I’m wrong, fine, let’s change the whole game to reflect your vision. I don’t want to play, say, GMs. But I do and I complete them efficiently now because I got better and made better builds for that type of content, and the whole point of doing so was to be able to, say, farm adept palindromes. Instead, just give me a godroll adept palindrome straight to my post master, no GM farming needed, just one GM attempt (not even completion). Fair, right?

I'm so confused.. Are you saying, for example, that just because I've purchased D2, they should give me 1K voices, or Anarchy, even though I've never completed either of those raids?

Does everyone who buys god of war have the skill to defeat Sigrun? Can everyone who buys bloodborne beat the orphan of kos? If you pick up celeste, are you guaranteed to get through every single c-side, regardless of how much effort you put in? All of these alluding to the real question. Are you entitled to everything within a game simply because you buy it? I say no. Some games, or at least some things inside of those games, are meant to be challenging. Many people find that challenge fun. If you are guaranteed success, then it isn't a [i]challenge[/i]. What's the point of a challenge if the conclusion is foregone? You didn't purchase everything within the game, you purchased the ability to access it. Also... customer first, players last? What kind of philosophy is that? Games are meant to be played. If you are a customer, your intent should be to play the game, meaning that both those things are one and the same.

while i agree with your sentiment i dont think it applies to trials. correct me if im wrong but isnt trials part of the base game and if so isnt the base game free to play.

Item stores, pay to win, non flawless pool, ghost lobby cheese and absolutely destroying skill ceilings has made people like this legitimately think they have an argument for why they deserve participation trophies and the best endgame loot. I remember when trials was dead on a low pop server going flawless was very difficult due to versing the same 1k+ flawless teams 3 and 4 games in a row whilst being what I consider myself to be a decent PvP player, now people that wouldn’t get a single win in the old system now demand flawless loot just for turning their console on over the weekend. Free rewards for unskilled players is worse for the population than the high skilled players gatekeeping rewards, would you continue playing trials all weekend if you had just been given the adept weapon every Saturday morning, or ‘complete’ trials like its 3 games of gambit and not touch it again?

Customer & gamer are not exclusive to the other because we all pay for what we play. Sometimes i don't want to play parts of a game that i paid for & sometimes i can't play for what i paid for because i'm a solo player or i'm just not skilled enough or patient enough to compete/complete but these are choices we all make before we buy,you knew what you were buying (it's not like D2 is new) before you bought it & probably keep buying the seasons & expansions but you still made a choice that you decided upon. Aside from genuine complaints about D2,It is not the games fault that people don't want to play bits of it or can't play bits of it if you as a player don't meet the basic requirements needed i.e. have a group or to be skilled enough. Your reward for participating is to be able to participate,that is all you have paid for. If that is not enough for you once again as a customer/gamer you have the ability of choice! 🤔

I wouldn't say this if you were a casual player but you've obviously put a lot of hours in pvp. Are you playing with the intent of improving or do you aimlessly run around game after game without knowing why you died and what you could have done to prevent it? Also, are you perhaps on last gen? That can be a limitation in how far you can go.