To preface: I have nearly 6000 hours in d2, after having played nearly 3000 in d1, I'm also a game design major in college. So I know what I'm talking about and these aren't the ramblings of an upset whiny free to play player who wants everything in the game to be easy to get. I've been taking an objective look at most destiny youtubers and streamers, and there's a common thread I've been noticing throughout all of them. You're all speaking like PvP is the only thing in the game, acting like PvP players are the only players playing the game. I'm a dedicated PvE player, I main warlock, and I play mostly solo, except that sometimes my boyfriend gets on with me, though he quit after last season until they give us more content that doesn't feel like the same old stuff. We used to run raids with a group of friends, but they've all quit because they can't pick a game to play for more than a month, and we had no reason to keep raiding with nothing to go for. As for PvP: I despise crucible, I always have. That being said, its not for a lack of *trying* to enjoy it. By solo queuing back during season 7 I got to heroic rank in comp. That was a huge accomplishment for me. I was finally able to use recluse and mountaintop, the guns that were god tier in PvE, yet were basically a big middle finger to a majority of PvE players because they were basically inaccessible to us. The lack of PvE content is what's *really* killing this game (along with connection errors). Trials was specifically designed for the top tier of PvP players. So not only is the pool of players who even consider playing it already limited, its even more limited by the fact that do have any sort of success you have to be the best of the best. And the icing on the cake: you have to have a solid team. If you don't already have friends who play who are also top tier, and you don't like going onto LFG forums like me (i have crippling social anxiety), which is usually a 3rd party app or even the official bungie app, then trials is not happening for you. I never wanted trials to come back. I knew long before it was announced, or even dataminers discovering hints at it, that it was going to be an inherently flawed mode. Even back in D1, trials was inaccessible. At the start of it, the matchmaking was not based on how many wins were on your card, it was literally random, connection based. That meant someone like me, trying it out for the first time with 2 friends, who were actually pretty good at crucible, would get pubstomped by someone with a 6 win card while we were on game 1. The mode itself is by nature, regardless of whether or not its "worth" going flawless past the pinnacle reward, inaccessible to a majority of the playerbase. Bungie has been more and more catering to streamers and top tier players who like to be loud and whiny, and think that every player thinks like them. For example, this past week's TWAB: they want the grandmaster ordeal nightfalls to be *watchable*. Its already basically impossible for someone like me to do *Legend* nightfalls. GM? Not a chance. They have been putting more and more focus on PvP content, disregarding the fact that, whether the people who only play PvP like it or not, a large majority of the game is PvE. Its an MMO for Pete's sake. They only recently started getting the hint that PvP and PvE need to be balanced separately. I agree with them when they say they want you to be able to go get an awesome gun in PvE, and then run into PvP with it. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is having a super that is overpowered in pvp (*cough cough* nova warp), then nerfing it so hard across the board that its literally unusable in PvE. One of the many examples of them putting the priorities of the loud pvp base over the priorities of making the *entire* game good. The connection issues however are a massive massive problem. To the streamers and top tier PvP players who quit after experiencing hardship through connection errors I say: good riddance. I want as many people to play the game as possible. It makes it healthier for everyone playing overall. But these same people are the ones who begged and whined for trials, and the moment they experience any bit of hardship they bail. Bungie devoting resources to developing trials, whether they state it or not, does indeed cause them to take resources away from the development of the rest of the game. I'm not saying there should be nothing new for PvP players, far from it. PvP players got the "pinnacle PvP content" they'd been hoping for this season. What did PvE players get? *A NEW PUBLIC EVENT*. The connection issues are not only affecting people playing trials. Every other time I log into the game (and I've timed this to be sure) I load into the tower, no players or NPCs spawn in, then I get kicked to orbit with a Beaver error for a good 30 minutes before I quit the game and relaunch. Then playing the new public event, it usually takes me a good 40 minutes to get a completion, not because of difficulty, but because about 4 times per run, I get to 40-70%, then get error code beaver, where it doesn't even kick me to orbit, it just sends me into a loading screen, then puts me back into an instance of the world where the public event is not running, wiping all my progress. Another example that Bungie just caters to the loud whiners: the easily distinguishable level of balancing difference between the 3 classes. This is all having looked at statistics of player numbers using each class and subclass, as well as win rates using each. Warlocks very often get hit the hardest by nerfs, yet its the least played class by a not insignificant margin. And hunters are the most played class, likely due to the fact its all about solo play (look no further than the class ability, hunter dodge is the only one that only helps the player and not allies). Until last season when top tree dawnblade was reworked, warlocks didn't make the top 5 for any of their subclasses when it comes to usage in PvP. THEY HAD TO GIVE WARLOCKS THE HUNTER DODGE TO MAKE IT COMPETITIVE FOR THE AVERAGE PLAYER. Sure, a high tier player/streamer can make use of any weapon or ability etc and make it look competitive, but that doesn't mean its good. If it takes a top tier player to make something valid, then its under-powered by nature. Those players have the ability to play to the strengths of whatever they're using. It took over a year of one-eyed mask dominating the crucible for bungie to finally nerf it to the point that it was no longer over-powered and could legitimately be called balanced, meanwhile nova warp was nerfed into the ground within a month of it being out. PvP players love to whine about the 1 thing warlocks get each season that gives them any sort of viability, but complain far less about anything on any other class. Another example? Artifact mods. Season of the undying (the season shadowkeep launched) hunters could abuse the living hell out of arc battery, while it helped the other classes little to none. Thundercoil benefited hunters in PvE and Titans in both PvE and PvP. The only thing warlocks could make use of was letting off a slightly stronger nova bomb at critical health with the "From the Depths" mod. Big whoop. Each season Hunters and Titans get to make use of multiple artifact mods that benefit them greatly in both PvE and PvP. Warlocks? Nope. This season is the first season Warlocks get anything good from the artifact (Tyrant's Surge), and we got our best PvE exotic disabled instantly, meanwhile its all useless for us in PvP. That good build we want to use that uses seasonal mods? Can't even use it anymore, but even if we wanted to, there's nothing for us to use it in because all we got was a new public event that's identical on all 3 planets it appears on. One hit kill abilities in PvP: should have never entered the game. PvP is about gunplay. People should not be able to run around in PvP and having an easier time aping with a shotgun and one hit kill melee that instantly recharges. What happened after Titans whined for 4 months that they didn't get to utilize the most unskilled playstyle in existence? Bungie gave them made all 3 shoulder charges be one hit kills. The moment warlocks get a single one hit kill ability, that isn't even guaranteed a full recharge on kill, on only one of its subclasses? Everyone's up in arms that its overpowered and needs to be nerfed and shouldn't exist. Warlocks consistently have very little going for them. And before someone tries to say "oh but dawnblade is good now," let me say this: dawnblade is the *only* viable subclass for warlocks now, and it takes a good bit of skill to utilize the flying and air dodges well. The difference is so bad, that when i hit heroic that one time I gave it a solid attempt, IT WAS ON A HUNTER. Every time I used to play PvP, I would switch to my hunter or titan because it suddenly became so much easier to do well. There is so much more that Hunters and Titans have in their arsenal that is easy to make use of. I could go into so much more detail about the massive disparity between the balancing between classes but that's a different rant I'll save for another time. ---continued in comment---