Let me start by saying that I am aware that I am bad at Trials, which is part of the reason why I took a 5 year break from the game mode. I am basically average in 6s/IB (slightly above 1 kd), but struggle in modes like comp. elim, and of course, Trials. Back in D1, I was never able to get close to flawless, and therefore never able to get close to worthwhile rewards, so I stopped playing Trials in 2016, with my last matches being to finish a triumph from the Rise of Iron Record Book (5 completed passages (thanks DIM)). When Trials of the Nine came around in D2, I waited to see the feedback, and decided it hadn’t changed enough to participate. When Trials of Osiris returned with the D1 format, I certainly wasn’t going to participate in a mode I loathed, detested, and viscerally hated from D1. When Bungie allowed for matchmaking and getting rewards from merely grinding out round wins, I decided I should give them the benefit of the doubt and try it out. I was out of town the first Trails week of season 15, so had to wait until this week. I played 100 matches (all solo) and went 40-60. My k/d was an impressive 0.57 (0.90 eff). My best stretch was going 6 of 7 while on a flawed 7-win ticket. The closest I got to flawless was 4 wins during a 5 of 7 stretch to finish the week. The “best” days for me were Friday and Monday (Monday night, I went 10-10, probably due to the shrinking non-flawless pool). Overall, I found my experience thoroughly … tolerable. The reason being that, while I only occasionally had fun in terms of gameplay, I was at least getting fresh loot out of it. My main concern is when the loot runs stale (i.e., I get everything I need), I don’t see myself continuing to play, as during the heart of the weekend, I was struggling to win 1/3 of my matches against stacked teams that often out-skilled me by significant margins. I had one match in which the ELOs of the enemy team were all 1800-2600, with me sitting comfy at around 900, and my teammates were all in the same range as me, which made for an … interesting experience. One issue I had was that playing on a flawed 7-win ticket put me into Lighthouse matches, and I didn’t realize it until I started noticing the message in the lower left that indicated teams that beat me had gone flawless. This didn’t make sense to me. I was simply trying to farm XP with Saint XIV – wins/losses weren’t really important at the time. In a mode advertised as end game, I am surprised that I would be the final boss. I am about as challenging an “end game” PvP boss as a lost sector boss would be in PvE. I am not sure I am worthy of being the final barrier to the Lighthouse - Saint could do better. I also feel sorry for any teammates that needed any of those lost matches for their own flawless tickets. If I just want to farm XP with Saint, why am I in that caliber of match? For now, I will continue to try it, but definitely not at the 100 match/weekend pace. I still want to unlock 2 armor pieces on my titan, as well as better rolls on weapons. I also am going to play until I get the ascendant shard from resetting my rank with Saint X!V. Beyond that, I don’t see myself playing Trials, except when they add to the loot pool. The reason is that it just isn’t fun to enter a game mode that may as well be called “Cannon Fodder”. The excitement from an occasional clutch play to close out a round or match just isn’t enough to overcome the frustration of losing 2/3 of the time. Maybe the freelance weekend will be more fun, and maybe some of the other things they experiment with will be fun (maybe they’ll try SBMM for a week in labs), but being cannon fodder for no rewards isn’t something I will be doing after I run out of loot to chase. In conclusion, I have to give credit to Bungie for giving me a reason to end my 5-year “boycott” of Trials. Despite only going 40-60, I did better than I expected. I didn’t expect to get flawless, so I got what I thought I would – some loot. What Bungie, and the community, has to decide is what Trials is going to look like after the casuals and solos get their loot. Unless they make the experience more palatable, I expect that most of them, like me, will leave the playlist if we are merely being asked to be cannon fodder for the higher-skilled players. Will Trials go back to steadily-declining player numbers, or will they find a formula that makes it work for more people?