To start, this feedback is for Bungie so Know that I have no intention of reading any responses on the forum. If there were a more direct way to offer it, I would forego the forum entirely. As a long time lapsed destiny player, I’ve been asked a lot recently about coming back to destiny from friends who still play. I figure it’s best to give my answer to this question to Bungie as well, since Im fairly confident I’m the exact type of lapsed player that Bungie would love to lure back (played all content, huge hours, raids, pvp, I think I’m even still in the top 30% of players in raid completion despite not playing since shadowkeep). So here is my feedback on why I have no intention of returning and what could (potentially) change my mind in the future. First off, I’ll state that destiny’s raids and dungeons are typically great content and one of the few things I do miss as a lapsed player. In fact destiny appears to be making a ton of good changes from what I can see. The big thing that stands out to me though is that many, if not all of these positive changes are things myself and others were talking about when I played several years ago. That it’s taken this long to add a new enemy faction, align player power to increase engagement, and align power across characters (just to name a few) is, in my mind, a negative not a positive. It shows that Bungie deliberately didn’t do these things previously because they didn’t perceive players would leave because of it or were simply too unaware to notice the need. Secondly, bringing back old weapons and characters does nothing for me as a lapsed player, rather it comes off as a recognition of poor management and storytelling. Nostalgia and familiarity as a weaponized form of maintaining interest is all too prevalent in art these days and reeks of an inability or active decision making to not tell new stories and take new risks to create exciting art. Bungie in many ways comes off as the marvel movies of video games in my opinion, leaning on repetitive themes and recognizable characters to draw interest. As far monetization, destiny has also done a terrible job of making a player friendly model. The absurd amount of dated content that Bungie still sells at fairly high rates blows me away and makes it very difficult for lapsed or new players to even know what they need to purchase to play. Loss leaders is term used in retail for when you sell a product at a loss or significantly low margin to draw in customers and it blows my mind that destiny has not realized you can keep more players active by using this exact principle and lowering the cost of entry. DLC pricing has gotten very high as well, especially considering the amount of content included. There has also been a pretty consistent theme of low quality DLCs preceding and following higher quality DLCs, which shows either an inability to consistently deliver or an active decision to underdeliver when player sentiment is high. I won’t touch on micro transactions as I don’t engage with them but I will state that offering anything outside of cosmetics comes off as predatory and manipulative in my mind. Lastly, the absurd amount of inflated playtime due to unnecessary grinds and artificial difficulty created by throttling loadouts, weapon function (ie champions), etc, seems to be just as prevalent in destiny today as it was when I last played. It’s disappointing to still see Bungie (and game companies in general) not recognize that if you simply make the best game you can make and it is good, players will play. There is no need to drag players through tedious time gates and grinds if you’ve simply made a quality product. Look to fromsoftware to see what simply making the best game you can make does for you. In the entire time Bungie has worked on destiny and destiny 2, fromsoftware has released roughly 9 new IPs, multiple games of the year, and redefined multiple genres. So feedback that would lure a player like me back? Make something new, move on from destiny and use all the wins and losses you’ve had over a mixed 10 years to make an exciting new game. Stop leaning on nostalgia, make new characters and worlds that are exciting and different and price your product in player friendly ways to increase engagement. If you make a quality product, it will make money. Those are my thoughts, best of luck on the final shape and hopefully something new beyond.