I personally don't think the (terrible) difficulty changes are even the main issue. It is one of the issues, yes but far from the main downside that made me personally "quit" for the most part recently after almost 8k hours of playtime in destiny + d2. (Yes, for the profile diggers, i played some pvp today after weeks of not playing at all, the pvp session was terrible and unfun and proved my point.) This game is built from the ground up with the whole intention of making customers addicted and to sell them overpriced cosmetics. Bungie has spent more dev time on these gacha systems than they have combined on all the other parts of the game. Quality of the game/content/infrastructure is and has been atrocious forever now. Yet they keep being stingy with loot drops, specifically stated recently that they are being extra careful with not being too generous with for example lost sector exo drop rates etc. They are trying their absolute hardest to keep wasting their loyal players time. If they would start investing into quality and fun content instead of hamster wheel reissued grinds combined with fomo everywhere "forcing" players into engaging with garbage content, players would actually WANT to play the content and would have FUN doing so. All we do is play trash content out of habit and cause we fear to miss out. Terrible company imo. They are way off with their priorities. I personally stopped playing the game almost entirely because i am THAT over it. I hope many more people realize it sooner than later aswell. We are playing out of habit. Not because we have fun.

All I'm saying is good luck getting anyone to play Gm Lake of Shadows nightfall. Yeah that frickin sucked on normal. i think difficulty changes were an effort to cover up how little content is actually in this expansion, by making things take way longer, extending the grind by removing reward paths, reworking existing strikes under this philosophy will, and has made the game suck, for the average player. Only addicts play this game now.

I’ve never been a fan of the “they only listen to the streamers” argument but it seriously is starting to look that way more and more. Nobody asked for this -blam!- blanket increase in difficulty except streamers and their groupies. Should they have upped the difficulty in some GMs? Of course! Should Master raids be a truly difficult challenge? Definitely! Should they add more difficult content like GM Lost Sectors? Would definitely be cool. But making everything annoying (not unbeatable but boring) while maintaining their stingy loot system makes no sense and wanted by nobody!

I saw Joe Blackburn on SkillUp's podcast recently comment on how Bungie has the best playtesters in the world. I sh!t you not, he actually said it in all seriousness. I nearly p!ssed myself laughing.

They botched it when they released D2, then someone else had to come in and fix their mess with Forsaken, and right after Forsaken they took over and the game has been a mess since. When you look at any other top games out today, there isn't 1 single studio that has worked on a project for 16 years as this business has and messed up their own game as badly as this business did with Destiny, especially with a sequel that has been running for years. They constantly break things, constantly causing issues for the game/player base because they are always changing things. [b](There has never been a set goal with this business to get their game to move forward, let alone improve the players experience)[/b] It always change this change that, remove this remove that, no bring that back, Nerf this nerf that, etc.................................................................................................... nah scrap it, just throw in whatever and call it good. We will just tell them will "fix it later". 9 years of this of this BS^ [b](This is the most dysfunctional gaming business there is in the world.)[/b] Their excuse is them constantly saying "We're sorry, will do better next time", and they have many times over the years said them exact words. No, they are not sorry, stop the damn lying 🤦‍♂️ They know their game is broken, not in the sense some of you trolls will try to pass off, but Destiny is literally the most unstable game there is out and they constantly manipulate you guys into buying their DLC.

Almost 10y ago I paid 100euros for - Cosmodrome, Moon, Venus, Mars… - plenty story missions - Several strikes per destination - So many pvp maps - 2 raids + prison of elders - many exotic weapons and gear - 2 subclasses Lightfall deluxe cost 100euros for - 1 destination - 7 half baked campaign missions - 1 strike - 1 raid - disabled or nerfed exotic weapons - 1 subclass Sure the year just began and we’re going to get a raid I already paid for almost 10y ago, a new dungeon and a few “for the sake of it” new exotics/many more nerfs… but hey, however I look at it, it’s a bad deal.

Agreed..the game has become a chore..an anger inducing chore. Sitting there, waiting to revive for the 6th time, wondering just who in the hell thinks this is fun in any way?? Just when I thought Bungie was "getting it", by offering a choice on difficulty levels and alternate paths, say crucible or strikes to advance. Some genius decides to make even the most common of activities an agonising chore, with all the fun of a root canal without anesthetic. Oh I`m gonna keep playing just to get my monies worth with whatever I can find that is still fun for me. But if this is gonna be the new, improved Destiny.. Well, I`ll just have to see what happens next, and if I`ll be there for it.

Legend Avalon was beyond difficult, whoever designed the gambit encounter I hate you. Who thought siting in a digital toilet waiting to be flushed like a guardian shaped turd with no cover while adds and turkeys shoot at you was a good idea. The rest of it wasn't as bad while still very stressful

Did not read the post but going by your title The community has destroyed this game not bungie.

The game is in the best place it’s ever been. Skill issue.

OP here. I wanted to comment on my post in hindsight. Admittedly I was extra salty when I posted because I was frustrated with the game. All my opinions in the post still hold true though. I also read all of the comments and appreciate every one of them. First I want to clarify that I don't mind that the game adds difficulty. My issue is the way they did it. Capping your light for certain activities instead of letting you keep the level you are based on the experience you've earned (grinded for). I know they are doing away with power levels next season, which imo is a mistake. I just believe there was a better way to add difficulty so I felt as powerful as I build my character to be as time goes on. The game is so repetitive nowadays with each season seeming to be a reskin of the last, and the game making you play the same things over and over and over again, I don't want those things to feel like I'm a new light each time I do them. Build crafting is great, I do it, I watch videos and research builds. I inspect every piece of armor I get, looking for the perfect rolls. The issues I have here are they nerfed build crafting as a whole going into Lightfall. They took away some of the more fun things you could do as a part of their artificial difficulty kick. And when a build is too good and gets popular, Bungie will surely nerf it because "it's doing better than intended". I feel limited in a lot of the more difficult content as well. It's either use the one weapon that can one to three tap an enemy, or use any other weapon and one to three clip an enemy. I do like the way they fixed and are continuing (hopefully) to fix pvp matchmaking. It still has flaws though. I think it's good for solo players most of the time, but can really hinder mid to low skill fireteams. The thing I still can't stand is that Bungie will never address m&k players on console. It's cheating plain and simple. You can always tell when you go up against someone using an xim because they are doing things you shouldn't be able to do i.e. jump halfway through a slide, slide backwards, performing multiple actions at once. Those players play m&k on console because they are toxic. But honestly, a lot of time it feels like Bungie likes to keep crucible a toxic environment. That's why elite players can get adept god weapons fast, so they can then turn around and gatekeep with them. Lastly, I don't think Destiny has ever had a smooth launch. I don't remember a launch where something wasn't broken, or the game didn't crash, or they nerfed something out of the gate. I honestly believe they don't do enough game testing for one. It also seems their hardware is severely out of date. Notice they never talk about their servers on the physical side. It could be because they only have one that they bought second hand from a flea market. I work on a dev team that tests every single thing before a release to insure that nothing goes wrong. We have several environments an update has to go through before it's live. The last being a mirrored test environment to our live service. Any issues are caught before going live because we have strict QA. If Bungie had better QA and game testing there would be less issues. Thanks again to everyone that has read my salt and shared their own opinions.

The potential for this game to be a masterpiece was so high. Its a shame the game isnt spearheaded by devs who understand their history and why their predecessors were so successful. Was it really that difficult to model D2 around Halos strongest qualities? D1 succeeded in that regard to some extent. Instead, Bungie went and converted D2 into a Fortnite Marvel game with the art and story consistency of a taco tuesday toilet fiesta... Bungie really fell off....

...at this point I'd rather play Anthem ffs.

And they are doubling down by not admitting it’s a failure only that they won’t make red bars so “tanky”. I have said it befor and I’ll say it again: more or less everything Bungie has touched since Activision stepped out has turned to sh-t.

I agree. I’m relatively new (started last season) but I play daily. Before it was fun for many of the activities but now it’s so difficult. Legend defiant battleground is so difficult I cannot get through. Played for 6 hours (a couple of times) straight with a Titan on strand and cannot get through the first 30 seconds of the boss fight. There are simply too many enemies doing huge damage despite having mods built in to armour to reduce it. I think they overdid the difficulty for legend. To top it off, you cannot proceed through the levels until you “master” the new game mechanics. The difference between normal and legendary difficulty is huge. Normal players cannot do this. Bungie has created unachievable goals for normal players. It would be a massive improvement if the lions share of difficulty was at Master level rather than it’s current configuration at legendary. It’s no longer fun to play the game. I cannot proceed which is part of the fun. I feel like no matter how much I improve I cannot get through. Crucible and Gambit are not a strong enough reason to continue playing.

Some people make an effort with their builds, so it's nice to see people having problems that don't. It kind of makes everything worthwhile.

I once became a voluntary corporate "mystery shopper" for a friend of mine who worked for a large hotel chain. In exchange for a free stay of my choosing, I evaluated the staff based on survey questions that were provided. I found my service to be mostly to my liking - efficient, kind, and thoughtful. However, the staff failed to meet the specific requirements of the survey I was tasked with complete and, therefore, got woefully bad ratings for corporate research. I felt so guilty for turning that survey in. I bet play-testing is a lot like this. They are focused on delivering products that align with goals from much higher up. As to what those goals are, we can only guess but it kinda feels like the whole "if you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers" kind of vibe.