1. Difficulty. You go trying to make the game more challenging/ engaging not necessarily by making the game harder, but by removing progress. Our levels, and play time by extension, DO NOT matter if we don't benefit from them. On top of capping us at or up to 25 below the enemy, you like to apply some of the worst modifiers like Oscillation. "Play the way you want", proceeds to force loadouts on us constantly while not letting us reap the benefits of our time. You make the game harder by actually making it harder, not by capping the player, then nerfing them 5 times over, forcing a load out down their throat, then buffing the enemy just as much. Just because it's the same result, that doesn't mean that's how it's supposed to be done. If I shouldn't be allowed to benefit from my time, then I should have full say on the difficulty. Let me start a GM with surges that benefit me, threats that benefit the wrong enemies, champions that faction doesn't have, let me turn on heavyweight, and every other modifier that doesn't benefit that faction in the slightest. Guaranteed rewards for an easier an endgame activity. Same goes for raids and dungeons too, let me decide the difficulty completely. It's only logical. If I shouldn't benefit from my time, then you shouldn't decide the difficulty anymore than easy/ normal/ heroic/ legendary and maybe the ranks or quantities of enemies. Let me decide me decide the modifiers like in Halo. 2. Crafting. You decided to forgo it this season to "bring back the chase, the satisfaction of obtaining your God roll", but when you account for perk weighting (that somehow went unnoticed by them for years) on top of players no longer seeing the "end goal" of their grind, that killed it some more. Especially when we can't even focus the weapons or armor for this season, but instead have to rely on tonics (RNG to get the materials, some are exclusive to certain activities, on top of RNG to get the item while on a timer that's active even when not in an activity, which players HATE), and not all those tonics even work last I remember. 3. How short this episode/ season was. We could complete all the field work, which was probably going to be split up over several weeks, within THE DAY of that act starting. There goes weekly story progression. So now it's just weekly drops that are ultimately pointless due to our levels not making a difference even after they brought back the pinnacle grind against the better judgement of the players, Pathfinder (which forces us to play how we DON'T want to for bright dust, no one likes that this replaced weekly bounties even if we get more ultimately), and rotators that become less relevant once you get what you came for. I don't care for getting Divinity for example, I just want the hand cannon and pulse from Garden, and maybe the bow. Low player count is a result of players growing tired of the artificial difficulty, burnout, disrespecting our time, removing the aforementioned end goals, and removing weekly incentives to log back in even through burnout. Now add in how buggy the game has been since Final Shape and how poorly done events have been recently and that this is a time where other big games are getting updates or announcements: * Warframe 1999 and Xaku Prime. * Dynasty Warriors Origins in a short time. * Lost Soul Aside FINALLY getting a release window this year year (think Final fantasy meets devil may cry). * Rumors that Elder scrolls 4 is getting a remaster or remake that will supposedly be showcased this month. * And that list from the Game Awards such as Witcher 4, Borderlands, or GTA. So, aforementioned problems topped off with increasing competition from developers that screw over their players significantly less as far as I know at least. Edit: Back to that part about difficulty, as I've said before, if we don't benefit from our levels, there's no reason to have them. And if we're going to be boosted to 5 below the highest player in our group, there's no reason to level up when the vast majority of players who aren't above the caps are either infrequent players or they just pulled an item out of collections. If we actually should be playing on the Destiny equivalent of Halo's Legendary difficulty in endgame activities despite being way over levelled, skulls shouldn't be added into the mix. If we're already forced to fight at a huge disadvantage, we shouldn't have to worry about essentially having every scoring skull active at once with a few swaps every now and then. Iron, Mythic, Tilt, Thunderstorm, Catch, Black Eye, Famine, Fog, Assassin, Anger, or whatever else. At least I can level the playing field in Halo.