tl;dr: I want to be able to choose whether i am doing casual or sweaty stuff, I want to be able to carry my casual friends through hard content, and I want my casual friends and clan mates not to stop playing the game. Currently, the game is exceptionally tedious. While legendary may not seem GM hard to sweaty players like you and me, for a lot of casuals it does, and when you look at the percentage of the player base who choose to do GMs and master raids, why, oh why, would Bungie choose to make everything feel like a GM to these players? In principle, I think fixed difficulty is an idea worth exploring. I am one of those players who usually don't play strikes until GMs drop; I like the challenge, and the overpowered grind is getting old after 6+ years. GMs are (almost) always a fun challenge. I am not everyone, though. I play with a lot of people who would qualify as casuals. They are adults with lives, they like to play to wind down and have fun, and they can't commit hours daily, like I can. Currently the game is not fun. Not for those players. And let's be honest. These are the majority. We need those players to keep playing the game, and they are already disappearing from my "friends online"-list, at least a couple every day. When I bring one of them into node.ovrd.avalon legendary, and they realize this will take hours, usually they say, "well, we can try again in a few weeks, when i am higher level", and I tell them this is it. It will always be this hard, they leave. They are never playing that mission again. I realize that this is supposed to be a challenge, but it is currently impossible to do for the majority of the player base. If this is by design, it is a bad design. It should at least be possible to help them through it. The current changes are gatekeeping people from playing the game, and it is ruining the commitment of people who carry friends and clan mates. It used to be possible for people with real life responsibilities to do the hard stuff, with some help, and after grinding some levels. Now they can't. I randomly match made with a rank 2 in heist battleground that had been at the boss fight for over 2 hours, how do you think they like the game they spent 100$ on. Honestly, if I was a casual player, I would consider asking my money back for this DLC. I would for sure not buy the next one. Even my more hard core friends are bored. Bored of doing ridiculously hard carries. Bored of spending hours on mundane tasks that used to be able to be done in rather quick fashion. And I'm not talking about new stuff, I'm talking about having to commit an 15 minutes to do a legendary sector you have done 100 times before, because you run out of ammo on the champions and have to primary the boss for 12 minutes straight, and then do it 4 more times. Sure, i could rebuild my char, but casuals don't do that (Dad builds are a thing for a reason.) A lot of my friends lets us more experienced players build their chars, and then they stick with that, they want to play, not build. And honestly, I don't want to either. I don't want to have to sweat it up to do mundane tasks. As has happened before (shout out to D2 year 1, time gated content, and speed run catering), Bungie confuses "challenging" with "tedious". It used to be a choice to do hard stuff. And I usually chose it. I think hard is fun, I have more seals and raid carries than most, but I'm not everyone. While hard used to be a choice, it is now forced. And it is tedious. Tedious is not fun. Tedious is boring. As I don't like to complain without suggesting specifics, here we go: * Making things a bit harder than they used to be is fine. The level of some stuff, like playlist strikes and the like is all good. Its not hard, but it is less boring. Good change, but: * Having basically everything level locked takes away the feeling of mastery and fun for some of the low level stuff. When it is harder to survive patrol than dungeons, something is off, and when players have to hard stuff, to get to the level to do raids and dungeons, and the dungeons and raids are easier than the missions you did to get there, that's just weird. Endgame is turned upside down. This needs some looking into. When you have reached the hard cap, patrolling should not be a true danger to you any more. You are supposed to be a guardian, we are supposed to be badass. * My main peeve: Master and Legendary are way to close to each other. Legendary should be mid tier. A way to make casuals ease into hard (master, GM) stuff. Now it just feels like a slightly lower tier master, and with time limits not adjusted for the difficulty, it is honestly easier (if you are sweaty) to do master NFs than Legendary, if you care for the score. Locking in legendary at -10 when master is -15 is just pointless. Seriously, they are pretty much the same, we now just have to do it twice, once on legendary when we are leveling up, and once again on master later. We are just doing what feels like master twice. And for no real return, either. In other words, legendary is way too close to master, and honestly, should be easier. Legendary should be the optional fun challenge for casuals, not a gatekeeper from doing harder stuff. * Beefin up the ads with the size of the fireteam is broken. When it takes 2 fusion rifle bursts to kill a redbar goblin because you are a level locked fireteam of 3, and people end up doing the missions solo or with 2 people because that is easier than doing a fireteam, something is wrong. It also stops people from doing carries and helping each other. Making tings a bit harder with a team is a good idea, but it is tuned wrong. It should be easier to do missions when you team up with friends. Not harder. Again, gatekeeping regular players from playing the fun content. The avalon mission is ridicolous on this, what could, and should be an epic adventure mission is just insanely boring and frustrating. We can't even carry people through it because of the level and limited revives. Which brings me to * Fix node.ovrd.avalon: Last seasons exotic mission was a good enough balance. It was challenging, but not impossible. Casual players loved it when they got helped through it, and they could usually do it on their own if they teamed up with some friends. Doing it solo, it was more fun to do legendary than normal, for the more experienced players. I would have been fine with a master tier version as well. Avalon is just completely broken. It is harder than most GMs, it is way harder than RoN contest was, and there is nothing the people who never would choose to play GMs can do about mediating it. They are locked out. And what makes it worse is that it ruins the promise of "well, the campaign was a bit short, but there is more cool content later in the season". * Realize that tuning everything for hardcore PC playing streamers is a huge mistake. I know engagement is important, but there is something called "throwing the baby out with the bath water". If you make the game too hard to play for casuals and dads who got the family a PS5 for christmas, they will stop playing the game, and then no one will be watching the streamers either. Make the regular game fun for players, not an intellectual exercise for streamers and sweats. Thats what master and GM is for. Fixed difficulty levels are in general a fine idea for end game content, like GMs always had. But as usual, Bungie took it too far. It needs IMMEDIATE tuning, before I lose half my clan to other games, for them never to come back. I have already lost people who have been playing for years, and a lot of the people who still play do it because they love the game and they desperately want it to work, hoping it will get better. And to anyone trying to respond with "git good", congratulations, you missed the point, and you just sound elitist. Respect that most people play games to have fun, and that the developers need to cater to them as much as anyone. Also, you make it painfully obvious that you are not communicating with casuals, nor are you one of the people who care about helping less experienced players getting things done, or you would know how off putting the current difficulty is to these players.