I like that we’re getting more freedom in terms of how difficult we can make the game on ourselves. If people get their jollies from making it so difficult that their character is deleted from existence if a Dreg sneezes on them, go for it. I just hate the tiering system as it’s been designed. I am not asking for handouts; I will gladly grind my butt off for a tier 5, just let me do it in the difficulty I want, even if it takes me 5x as long.

Well said !!!! Bungie has no clue, or tend to ignore the so called "casual player base" . I would assume them to be a big percentage of players,

I have stopped playing D2 for some reasons. 1 It's too difficult for me, and difficulty doesn't make it fun. 2. It's now too darned complicated! We now have five elements! Five! We started with Three. From the player, not so bad, but now there are five different "types" of enemy. 3. Build! Everyone wanted to Build, and I originally thought it a reasonable idea. But to Build now, requires encyclopedial knowledge of all sorts of perks, some interacting. 4. The never ending realization that "normals" can't play the game without spending more time on YouTube than they are playing. 5. A gazillion guns! Guns are just numbers in a program. There is nothing magical about them. Bungie pedals the false idea that this gun or that gun is better or worse, and that's true, but it's designed that way. The OP has given stats on how few players do the hard stuff. The opposite of that is, how may players don't play, because there is no easy stuff? I'd solo a Dungeon if it was child's play! I'd love to! It would be fun and hilarious! But Bungie would never be able to design it, because they have no concept of "Easy." It's "Normal" or "Hard." Timers! I hate Timers. They're just a fool's difficulty. D2 has lost players! Thousands and thousands of players, and Bungie, and others, think the solution is to make it more difficult, more complicated, more finicky, and less enjoying. They're wrong!

[quote]I was going to post this to another persons thread. Then I got distracted and forgot whose it was, yada yada yada. Anyway the person was talking about the lack of fun and the increased difficulty in the game especially in raids. I wrote this long winded reply using the data from warmind.io to crunch some numbers. Now I know that warmind’s numbers aren’t 100% accurate but I think they will serve the purpose for indicating how many people engage with the higher difficulty in the current endgame and why what Bungie are doing is a huge waste of time for the 95+ percentage of active players in the game. Enjoy or not. “Fun isn’t allowed in Destiny, thanks to those clamouring for harder difficulties, most of which will never, ever engage with it. EVER. Look at Crota’s End contest completion and engagement, 1.189% completion in 48hours. Then they have 10,000 completions (out of 350,000 players) of normal mode which is about 3.189% So if you assume (which is a fair assumption in my eyes) that those that completed it on normal tried to do contest and failed, less than 5% of the active playerbase tried to do the hardest level raid (contest) I know that number is contrived, and probably vastly inflated in terms of the general active population, but let’s just use it as an example of Bungie’s idiocy and persistence in chasing niche markets. Salvation’s Edge Contest only had 689 teams completing it. Can’t find other data about numbers completing it on normal in 48 hours. Out of the 6 raids that can be completed currently on Master difficulty I’ve calculated the percentage clears on master against the normal versions of that raid. SE 4.35% CE 20.8% RoN 2.54% KF. 2.57% VoD 4.00% VoG 3.57% Even with the anomalous high percentage of CE’s the average percentage works out at 6.31%. That’s [b][u]6.31%[/u][/b] of the [b][u]raiding population[/u][/b] has completed master difficulty raids. Without the anomalous high percentage of CE it’s 3.41%. 🤣. [b]Of the raiding population. [/b] Let’s look at dungeons. SD 3.62% VH 2.66% WR 4.96% GotD 20.57% SotW 6.68% Duality 20.04% GoA 26.74%. We have no anomalous results here but maybe they’ve been skewed by the chase for artifice armour , but god knows why GotD should be so high. 🤣 Anyway the average of the [b]dungeoneer population [/b]that does master dungeons is 12.81%. What is that compared to the general active population, you ask? Well let’s see. Like all the stats here they been taken and calculated from warmind.io. It is said that only 11.38% of active players have ever completed a raid. So approximately 6.31% of 11.38% is 0.718%. That a whopping 0.718% of the general population have ever completed a master raid. Wow!!! It is quoted that between 11-18% have completed a dungeon. Let’s take the highest percentage of that range, 18%. 12.81% of 18% is 2.306%. 2.306% of the general population have ever completed a master dungeon. 2.306 + 0.718 =3.024% [b][u]Tl:dr Approximately 3.024% of active players have done a Master version of either a raid or a dungeon. [/u][/b] The calculation methods have their own flaws, but they prove the point that engagement in the current endgame Master difficulty is so low that further increases in difficulty are not wanted or needed by the vast majority of players. However I feel that about the figure for both is lower as there will be a lot of crossover between master raids and master dungeons. But around 3-4% is probably a fair assessment. My point is this, who exactly wants more difficulty in the game currently? It’s is a very small percentage. Very few people engage with the Master difficulty now. Why put even more difficulty in the game? As usual I’ll get the typical whining few answering this post, either :- 1. Proving the point that they are one of the 3–4% or 2. Proving that they should be quiet as they have no skin in the game, having less Master completions than I do (60, 25 of which were Prestige raids in Year 1 🤣) 3. State they would do Master Raids and Dungeons if there was loot to chase. To the last group, I will say just this. There will be (apparent) loot to chase in EoF, but I sincerely doubt that many of you will have any tier 5 gear at all. If you’re tired of this 💩 , where Bungie constantly cater to less than 5% of the active playerbase then just pass on EoF, just don’t buy it. What are you missing out on? A raid most of you (~90%) will never play? Raid difficulty that most of you (~95%) who raid will never engage with? A lacklustre campaign that has difficulty levels most of you (~93%) will never engage with either? Play FTP. If you’re a causal player then it makes little sense to buy EoF. Hell I’m no casual, and I just can’t see a reason to purchase EoF either. Those that get EoF, I genuinely hope that it is awesome and that you enjoy it. Even more so, I hope that it’s that good that I eat crow and buy it a couple of weeks after launch. Stranger things have happened, that horse becoming a Roman senator for one. 😂.”[/quote] As someone who has done "master" content, i hate it. I play "normal" difficulty on games. I don't need to "test my skillz". I want fun entertainment. Being a paper thin guardian in activities isn't all that fun. There's always been less participation in raids because no one [i]wants[/i] to hunt for people, teach a routine/watch a spoiler "guide", and sit there for hours for a slight "chance" at a "reward"/raid exotic. I did it just because i had a good team to hang out with, and luckily didn't have to do any of them 90 times. I agree, it doesn't need more difficulty. We can't overpower anything. If it were more "normal" maybe 97% of the "casuals" wouldn't have left and might have tried those activities. The "go play something else if you don't like it" crowd dog piles on anyone who provides feedback they don't agree with, not realizing for every one person who voices an opinion there's ten reading the replies and don't say anything, they just quit. I don't blame them.

I would venture an educated guess that Master CE is such an outlier because players can do the "finisher cheese" on Crota. But as a player that falls into that "top 3-4%", I want raids to be easier for everyone. I've done Master/Prestige raids...and Master dungeons...and honestly I want raids to be more approachable to all. I don't mind difficulty, but I really just want something cosmetic that when someone sees me in the Tower they're like, "Holy cow this dude did [insert some challenging thing here]"

Bungie: "We build worlds that inspire friendship" They proceed to make activities that have 'friends' screaming at each other over symbols and plates.

Your statics are just too far off. 84,854 Players have completed every encounter of master crota. 352,766 Players have completed Illuminated Peril Emblem (Normal Crota) 15,419 Players have collected A broken throne (contest Crota) So of the players that raided Crota, 24% of the players did every single encounter on master - this this negates anyone tagging along for Crota Yeet. I'm not going to guess or do reserach about how many players there are in game at the time those emblems were all obtained, but lets say there are 1million active players during Crota release going out 1 year. That's 1/3 of the playerbase engaging in endgame activity and 8% doing the hardest content available. A live service game without aspirational content really bad due to Players run out of goals Engagement drops off Community fragmentation Less social cohesion Less player-driven storytelling Risk of becoming a “theme park with no rides” ie The game might be reduced to repeating daily chores or limited content.

There was a cheese for GotD that let you damage the boss before the encounter started. So people were farming artifice that way from the master checkpoint, which explains some things. The "god knows" with the laughing emoji made me believe you knew, but i thought i would let the cat out of the bag lol.

I love hard content, personally. But I don’t understand why difficulty is a thing. Everyone should have a setting they are comfortable with. I’m not saying to make GMs even easier, but just let everyone choose the difficulty they are comfortable playing, that’s it. Like most games.

This post is one that I wish I had the time, knowledge and strength to make. Thank you. On behalf of the real D2 community we owe you praise for the best articulation of how chasing Tiers and world difficulty isn't the lifeboat this game needs nor what we want. This is for the content creators.

Master CE should be considered up until the boss cheese was found. Which is probably close to master KF numbers. There are accounts just pushing the boss off for $$. So that average is skewed.

Great thread. Can you also do one for solo players?

Well put together post my guy. I’m going read it again and the comments later today . You took time to track numbers, write out your thoughts and did it in concise way. The forums need more posts like this to be debated instead of the typical trash posts. Well done man.

None of your numbers are correct… For example… You can’t measure number of completions for master and compare those to number of completions for normal to determine the number of players that have completed an activity. Those numbers are clears, not players.