I’m in the process of leaving the game now for all the reasons you just said. Like you I’m a D1 beta vet, and since then I’ve managed to find a good group and we’ve done every single piece of content that’s come out. Every raid, every dungeon, campaigns on legendary, every nightfall and even hit the lighthouse twice for myself (my friends have gone much more often) I’d rate myself as an above average PVE player (I don’t solo dungeons, not quite good enough) and I’m a VERY mid PVP player but I am ok with that. For me the game has become unrewarding. Trying to get a specific roll on a weapon has become frustrating. Add in the weight gate revelation and the fact tonics have been buggy and I don’t feel like my time spent is rewarded at all. I feel like there is too much RNG and it needs to be dialed back. Then there’s this last raid that released. I have enjoyed every single raid that has come out but I find salvations edge was and is an absolutely MISERABLE slog to get through it. I agree with you. It was designed for the hardest of the hardcore and it is representative of the game as a whole, and by that I mean that they’ve abandoned the idea of fun. Add in all the bugs and broken/disabled stuff and the game has become more of a chore than ever. It’s a video game. Games should be fun. They can also be challenging if it’s FUN challenging and I realize that both those terms are subjective for each individual out there. But a grind-fest bashing your head against a wall over and over for days or weeks on end to try to get something you want as a way to increase metrics and “engagement” (whatever the hell that is) does not equal fun. Plus most of us have lives and real world responsibilities and can’t live on this game all day every day. There needs to be way more agency in loot. The double drops in the dungeon to make up for weight gate got me a ton of double armor drops that were instantly deleted. That happened to way more people than just me and that is the exact opposite of rewarding. The difficulty spectrum, I’ll admit, is a tough line for them to walk. Cranking things to 11 across the board isn’t going to get new people or casuals to play because they’ll just drop out. At the same time you do need to have some things that people who are really good at the game enjoy as well, but if you go too far you push people away and Neomuna is a perfect example of that. No one I know goes to that location unless they have to. Everything there is a bullet sponge while we get melted by stuff and guess what? That isn’t FUN so that whole space is mostly abandoned by people. Making things super hard across the board has clearly had the opposite effect as we continue to watch player numbers decline. So many builds that used to be viable have also been nerfed into oblivion. Yes, prismatic has added in a few new things, but as helldivers showed, nerfing everything kills a game because people aren’t enjoying themselves. If people don’t feel rewarded, and/or don’t feel like they can succeed at an activity, AND feel like everything they enjoy gets nerfed and isn’t usable, then odds are they aren’t having fun and aren’t going to continue playing the game. If bungie would focus on making things fun and rewarding we would be in a better place, and they would be making way more money. Instead, we have a bug and micro-transaction riddled grindfest that isn’t fun to play and that doesn’t reward our time. THAT is why people are leaving.