Destiny's Sandbox is and has always been an ecosystem, and the thing with ecosystems is, when you make changes to one thing, everything else is affected. For all the complaints about OEM and Recluse last season, the overall balance was the best I'd seen in years in the game and I loved Crucible.
This season I've yet to play a single game of Crucible I've enjoyed. From the outset with nothing but Arbalest spam (which thankfully has died down), to the still constant team spam of Symmetry, it has not been an enjoyable experience.
I don't know if this was a conscious decision by the developers, but it almost feels like with the popularity of momentum Control last season, that the goal this season was to push the actual sandbox closer to that ultra-fast paced, insta-kill style of play. I would say the current sandbox feels like it's midway between last season's base sandbox and the momentum sandbox.
Last season I thought the sandbox was already walking a tightrope on kill times and overall lethality, but this season's evolving meta (scouts/shotguns/hand cannons) combined with the current sandbox being so heavily impacted by stability and targeting mods have really pushed things over the edge
I hope things improve as the season progresses, but with the need for Bungie to make drastic upheavals in play every 3 months, I'm not sure we'll ever have a stable consistent play experience.
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I don't understand how the sandbox has changed when they've done basically nothing since before shadowkeep to weapons in pvp. They only nerfed handcannon and pulse rifle range and buffed the ttk of rapid fire pulses and increased consistency for 340 pulses. No scouts or specials were buffed this or last patch. Linear fusions got an aim assist buff but that's a heavy weapon and arbalest is only being used for komodo. I really don't think much has changed and I'm not sure what is bothering you. I haven't been playing as much, but even in the games I played (higher overall elo and kd btw) nothing has really even changed. I see a couple more scouts and that's basically it. It's pretty much the same exact meta as last season with some scouts being thrown in.