I recommend reading the article. They focus on the loot cave, but the best info comes from the bullet points at the end. Bungie really did not understand how players would react to the game.
Some terrible banter regarding RNG. Even though they put the best gear in RNG drops, they thought players would buy all of their gear. And Bungie is O.K. that some players will be unlucky and never get something like a Gjallarhorn.
Players apparently don't like skill checks. I'm certainly not a fan of clean up after killing Ir Yut.
Look at the slide of player activity. More time is spent in PvP than the raid. Way too much time spent in the tower. And not surprisingly, strikes are the no. 1 activity.
I saw from other sources that Bungie though the average amount played would be 39 minutes a day. You can't even unlock a bubble on a weapon in 39 minutes.
Ir Yut is a gear check, not a skill check. They were checking if your fireteam had the capability to simply do enough damage to clear that part. Important since this raid was designed to force people to be underleveled.
You cant really compare the raid with PvP based on time spent. You are only allowed a limited amount of runs per account where as PvP you can run as many times as u want and gain rewards. Plus the raid is easy as -blam!- to beat now so it takes no time at all. Funny how PvP is so low yet they focus on it SO much.