There's a psychological phenomenon known as "Decision fatigue;" in the shortest possible terms, decision making requires mental energy, the more decisions you're asked to make the more energy is required, and like all forms of thinking, eventually you exhaust the mental resources needed to keep making decisions. [quote]From the moment we wake up, we are seemingly bombarded with choices—what to wear, what to eat, which emails to answer first. By the time we’ve navigated our morning routine, our mental energy has already taken a hit. And as the day wears on, the sheer weight of decision-making can start to take its toll, often without us even realizing it. Making decisions day in and day out can be exhausting and cause people to feel overwhelmed, anxious or stressed. This is known as decision fatigue, which is a state of mental overload that can impede a person’s ability to continue making decisions.[/quote] [url=https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/behavioral-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-decision-fatigue]What doctors wish patients knew about decision fatigue.[/url] Here's how that relates to Destiny 2: We're being asked to make more decisions now than ever before; we're being asked to make decisions about our artifact, decisions about our builds, decisions about what content to play, decisions about what modifiers to use, decisions about what gear to keep, favorite, and dismantle, decisions about how to upgrade our gear, all of these decisions are ancillary but necessary to the actual gameplay. What I'm getting at in no uncertain terms is that the current game can be, in a very literal sense, mentally exhausting. We aren't just being asked to play the game, we're being asked to make dozens of choices every time we play, choices that add up; I think we see this fatigue reflected in the community, in their frustrations with featured gear, with modifiers, with vault space constraints, it might be part of the reason so many people are focusing on optimal builds and optimal runs, it just requires that much less thought. Does anyone not feel a little exhausted when it comes time to clean out your vault? Bungie meant well when they tried to give us more choices, and I don't want to diminish that, but those choices take a toll on players. One of the nice things about Pathfinder and Bounties were that the choices were baked in "Okay, if I want Loot X, I need to equip Weapon Y," that's a lot simpler and easier than picking half a dozen modifiers every time you want to run an Op or checking if your gear is on the featured list. Decision fatigue doesn't explain all the current frustrations with the game, but I do think it's a huge contributing factor. Modifiers at best feel like busy work, and at worst they're an active frustration, that frustration adds up. The frustration from cleaning your vault every two days adds up. The frustration of choosing what gear to upgrade adds up. Add enough friction, and eventually movement stops altogether. Destiny 2 induces a lot of decision fatigue, even more now that we're all living in the portal, reducing that fatigue might get more players to stay in the game.