There is a vocal group of players out there. They are essentially allowed to set the difficulty of this game and it needs to stop. Let us not forget that this is supposed to be fun. If let's say 75% of your player-base finds a standard activity to simply not be fun either because of difficulty or broken mechanics, then it god damn well better be changed. I'm fine with having "extreme" challenges which are non-standard activities, but the only rewards for those challenges should be the value of doing them and token badges of honor. RPGs have historically had fights and achievements that were FAR beyond the reach of an average player, the kind of things that appeal exclusively to the players that look at Crota's End normal mode and scoff at the ease with which they casually meander through it. Those players deserve something that entertains them, but it HAS to be the sort of rewardless, optional experience RPGs of all genres have always been known for. I'm not saying core content should be so easy anyone could do it. I'm not even saying it should be so easy that the average player can clear it, even if they have infinite time to invest. I'm a significantly above average player, however, and VoG was the only end-game content so far that I've felt is an appropriate difficulty level where it was an extreme challenge but still fun and possible to complete. It's not a matter of strategy, it's a matter of pure skill and I'm not ashamed to admit I'm not as skilled as the ultimate elite tier of players that make up the vocal majority but in reality incredibly small minority of players in this game. Do you know why exploits and cheese abound in Destiny? It's not because players are lazy or don't enjoy a challenge. It's because the content is so challenging to 95% of players it ISN'T FUN!!! No, I'm not elite-level, and I never will be, but I'm damn good at this game. In every group I play with I'm consistently around the #2 player in any fireteam whether that's in Raids or PvP. If I'm not having fun because I can't complete an activity, and I know that my chances of success are coming down to random variation in the AI sequence, the difficulty absolutely needs to be scaled back in one way or another. I'm not one to complain. When VoG hard mode was full of game-breaking bugs that would randomly get in the way of an otherwise clean run and cause you to wipe, I was the one in my fireteam telling people to calm down and just accept it. During the first release, I never found any content to be overly challenging. I did VoG normal mode and listened to all the people complaining about the difficulty, but frankly I found it to be a bit of a cakewalk once I got the strategies down. On my first run of normal mode, I ended up being the designated relic holder amongst a group with 4 players far more experienced than I was, because I was able to do it better than them even with their experience. I'm definitely not an average-level player. I crave challenges, and I get bored fast if the content isn't difficult enough. Games like Bloodborne wet my palate, but eventually bore me with their low difficulty. I have absolutely no qualms with burning many hours and dozens of attempts just to complete one activity if it's fun or if the rewards are great enough. With that in mind, Crota's end, even in normal mode was too challenging to be fun. Hard mode was a damn slap in the face to the REAL player-base of this game and provided a challenge which even the minority of exceptional of players will never complete, left only to the elite-tier groups that go around the internet lying about how easy it is just to make themselves feel special and to make other players feel worse. Ultimately, I'd say the goal for difficulty of end-game content should be above the capacities of the average player, but MAYBE doable for a fireteam with 1/3 players being very good and 2/3 average. As in, if the average players can do as instructed and do their absolute best, it might take 3-4x as long as a group of all highly skilled players, but it should be possible for superior players to bring their average or above average friends along and have a fun, but extremely challenging time. Challenging to the point that while possible, those players might decide it's not worthwhile to finish. Bungie, learn from this. Just because most of what you see is players saying things are easy or at least doable, doesn't mean it's true. If you want to adjust the difficulty of your various content, unsolicated opinions across the internet is the absolute worst way to estimate what needs to be done. You need to put out a comprehensive survey and send it out to every account of every destiny player, preferably through some in-game form we can fill out, but by email if that's not possible. Ask about every major piece of content available. Ask players about both the difficulty and the level of fun players experience during that content. Finally, for each content section offer the option to give a brief input on what about it is too easy/difficult/not fun. Not everyone is going to respond, but you will hear the opinions of that 99.9999% of players that will NEVER visit the message boards, will never post a video of their play, will never send customer feedback, will never post on reddit. Most players aren't participating in the online community. Adjusting the game according to those that do guarantees you only know the opinions of two groups: Those that are so good and take gaming so seriously that they spend hours every day combing the internet for anything related to their games of choice; and those who are so bad that they complain that EVERYTHING is too hard. I'm here to represent the gamers you SHOULD hear from, but never do, because we love games, but aren't bad enough to look for cheats and aren't good enough to waste our lives constantly studying and talking about this game online. I represent the core player-base for this and any game. I represent those gamers that've been playing since the beginning, those that are good enough to leave the average in our wake, but not good enough to look down on them from Virtual Olympus as video game gods. We are your core demographic by which all core difficulty should be set. Send out the surveys and you'll learn our side of the story. I am fine with content like PoE lvl 35 which I knew from the first sight of it that I would never complete that arena. The reason is simple, there is nothing available there which I can get no where else. It is a faster route available to the exceptional, and an exceptional challenge to do completed both for the enjoyment of the activity and the badge of honor you carry for having done it. That kind of content, while I will never get to enjoy it, I am very happy exists because the top level gamers deserve content they can enjoy, too. The thing that is unacceptable is core content, which players are EXPECTED to complete such as hard-mode raids and PoE 32 being impossible for even high-level players because the mechanics are buggy or simply too difficult.