Hey Bungie, I wanted to take a moment to provide feedback on how your current design philosophy in regards to weapons, abilities, class balance, and what winning means in Comp has mishaped the Crucible and is cultivating a culture that is detrimental to fun, skill, and long term engagement. Pain points: 1. Ability uptime and damage potency are both too high. This has caused players to play back (this point made by someone I can't remember), and stay back. Players are too afraid to lose the safety of their lane because they know the opposing team is doing the exact same thing (staying back, waiting to shoot). Furthermore, the mid ground is non-existent without being completely overwhelmed by angles of gunfire from set-up players (playing back) and abilities too potent to push through (out of balance damage/zone denial area of effect). A few of the most problematic abilities are the Warlock electric slide melee, Titan Behemoth Melee, and Hunter Clone. All have strong upsides with little to no proper counterplay. Currently, the Warlock slide melee has too much damage and an effect radius that is too large. Also, the Warlock ability currently allows players to travel across terrain dips (from up high to ground below) which causes immense targeting/tracking issues for counterplay. It is critically important to note how the Hunter Arc Strider melee, Tempest Strike, was changed to not allow the melee to be activated when sliding off terrain, so, that same philosophy should apply to the Warlock melee as well. For the Behemoth Melee, the speed of travel and amount of ability energy re-gained upon a "whiff" feels unfair. Players use the melee as a means to get out of engagements in which they would otherwise lose. This is not fairly comparable to Hunter dodging or Warlock Dashing because of the travel distance and speed of travel warranted by the Behemoth Melee being faster and going further than both. The Behemoth Melee not only regains 80% energy back upon "whiff" but also can be stacked with the Thruster ability of Prismatic Titan which allows for a chain of movement unprecedented in Destiny. It may be fun, but it feels very unfair to play against. For the Hunter Clone, I know it's been recalibrated already, but please also consider having the function of appearing on radar changed or maybe length of time reduced. Solutions: Please reduce the damage, area of effect, and shared damage of chained players from the Warlock electric slide melee. Additionally, please apply the same terrain philosophy of the Hunter ability Tempest Strike to it. For Behemoth, please reduce the speed of travel, distance of travel, and significantly reduce the ability energy re-gain effect upon "whiff". A suggestion: you could add a charging multiplier to the ability ala Thunder Clap that enables further travel. 2. Weapon damage Your most recent buff to Aggressive Burst Pulse Rifles have made the archetype too strong and only exacerbates the aforementioned staying back playstyle. Graviton Lance is the perfect example of clearly being out of bounds here with its stat package coalescing with both the damage increase and rpm buff to the archetype. The SMG family of archetypes vary in their intended roles, but since they're all used seemingly the same way in the Crucible, I want to speak to the one issue I feel applies to most: Effective range. Spinning off my first point of players playing back most of the time, the second playstyle I see most is rushing. SMG's are strong in this role, and good for them, but I feel their effective range is too much. For the times the mid zone of gunfights is occupied, SMG's are too commonly winning fights due to out of balance range/ease of use. Solutions: Reduce damage for pulse rifles while adjusting stats for existing options (Graviton Lance/Crafted Revision Zero). Reduce effective range and ease of use for SMG's to push players into committing to CQC and critical damage ttk. 3. Resilience Players having more health than others has never felt good (Destiny 1 Ram Helmet). Resilience not only functions to raise health (which affects ttk values) and reduce flinch, but it also allows for Titans to benefit from both while building into their class ability. Altogether, this feels unbalanced. Solutions: Make all players have the same health value that cannot be increased or decreased from player stats. Only utilize resilience as Titan ability cooldown while in the Crucible. Make flinch resistance its own stat, similar to AE, for the best balance. 4. Comp scoring A win is a win is a win. No win should ever result in a player on the winning team receiving less points than their teammates. It is not necessary at all for player reflection and it feels completely wrong. A player could participate to the best of their capabilities, have a bad game, but still help win a tough game only to be rewarded less than their teammates. Having a bad game is not exclusive to bad players. Even the sweaty players have bad games in which they still win. Reverting back to the performance based system was a mistake. Examples of why you shouldn't have performance based scoring: The NBA, NFL, NHL, ect. [i]"It doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winnings winning." -Dominic Toretto[/i] Solutions: Make it to where all players on the winning team gain the same amount of points for winning when winning. 5. Supers Straight to the point: Titan Twilight Arsenal has too much damage resistance. Hunter Storms Edge has too far reaching off a radius and, to the point of others, travels oddly. Hunter Arc Staff and Thread Runner damage resistance feels a bit low. Solutions: Reduce and increase damage resistance for aforementioned supers. Tune Hunter Storms Edge to function less sporadically. 6. Matchmaking and Connections/loading Casual playlists do not require SBMM. It is forcing players to engage with the game with the mentally of, "I must use this to do well/win." When you are fighting a mirror of your skill level all the time, it is tiring, boring, predictable and not fun over time. SBMM being in casual playlists is the main culprit as to why I feel the negative sentiment I do towards the Crucible. When there is no incentive for playing against your skill (unlike in comp), there is no fulfillment for doing it. This has created a feeling of disdain for me when queuing Control instead of a feeling of excitement. Connections have been quite bad lately in the Crucible. More than usual. As mentioned in a previous post I wrote, player animations are laggy. Also, there's currently an audio glitch where the sound of weapons and abilities do not que on time or at all. Loading times for games are taking longer than usual and are presenting black screens that can last a significant amount of time. I play on an Xbox Series S, but the loading time has noticeably gone up since Revenant launched. Solutions: Please remove SBMM from all casual playlists. Please improve connection quality and load times. Overall, the issues I've listed out are what total into the experience of the Crucible being a bad one more than a fun one in which you want to return to. From players adopting the mentality of wait wait wait, to ability spam and out of band weapon archetype damage, the Crucible has devolved into a mirror match of meta options with counterplay being very limited. I know I don't have all the data or know how when it comes to balance but my hope is that you at least are made aware of the pain points. I appreciate you if you read this, Bungie. I understand making things is difficult. I do. I just wanted to let you know and make you aware that your current choices are not adding up to a good experience. It's actually a pretty upsetting one to be blunt (with respect). You've done a lot of good things with the game. No doubt. I'm sure you can do better.