if raids go, I go. that's the biggest thing keeping me in the game.

[quote]if raids go, I go. that's the biggest thing keeping me in the game.[/quote] That's completely understandable, and an ok way to feel, but you are in the minority. With the way raids are currently set up, they cater to a small fraction of the player base and take up an unproportionate amount of development time/money. Again, I understand your point of view and I'm not trying to change your mind, but bungie could do the community a service by changing things up to make the raids more accessible. Especially if they are going to keep allocating these types of resources towards them. I don't think raids are going anywhere, so maybe we shift the community discussion over to how we get more players into them?

I think raids are very important for a reason that might not be immediately evident. In games like this, with an unfolding story that needs to keep players active, there must be some type of pinnacle activity. Whether most people clear, or even participate in it isn't particularly important, but what is, is that it exists, and that you must play a certain amount before you are capable of doing it. This keeps the playerbase active. Another point I would like to raise, is that raiders are not as much of a minority as you think. Sure, only about 15% of the entire population has ever completed a raid. But what about the active population? around 70-80% have done raids. But even more important, 30% or more of the active playerbase [b][i]actively[/i][/b] raid. Continuous player activity is extremely important in a game like this. As an example, the season of the drifter was the only time a dlc launched in destiny that I didn't play. I took a very long break and only got on to do raids with some clanmates, and that was it. But like you said, making raids more accessible is definitely something that needs attention. I think there is a lot that they could potentially do with older raids. I think adding optional matchmaking to them might actually be somewhat effective. I think they were on to something with guided games, but they failed to incentivize it properly, which caused them to fail in the long run.

I’m very curious where you get your quantitative metrics from. Pinning down exactly whom the “active player base” is seems to be something of a chore. Much less assigning any numerical analysis of it. That being said, I used to raid a lot, in D1, don’t care to anymore, it just isn’t fun. I loved the D1 raids where one or two ppl could clutch it, and keep the activity alive without wiping. Now, everything is just too measured and bland. But, to each their own. Nothing wrong with having that activity incorporated into the game world though. Even if it already is a dead activity to ppl like me, before it was created it was a non entity to a large population of former raiders.

Simple solution, look at king's fall. People said it was mechanic heavy, but the way raiding was built beforehand made it fun and let people learn it easier. Even had a hardmode for people to go to.