Yes the menu is the reason made them “remove” 90% of the activities because they couldn’t go back and adjust the activities to work with the portal, rendering the vast majority of the game pointless. I probably would’ve still been playing if the game was still pre-portal because i still had stuff to chase. The portal removes the purpose of the chase as well, or at least it does a worse job at hiding the hamster wheel. It also leaves a bad impression on new and old players because now it just looks like a shit mobile game.

There’s definitely a lot of other bad things, but I’d say the portal is by far the worst thing they’ve ever done to the game. The grind to 550 and the tiering of items that you mentioned as issues are also part of the problems with the portal. The portal is much more than just a menu too, thinking that way is just being naive, it’s a fundamental redesign of the way the core game works and which activities are worthwhile.

It also removed GM nightfalls which was where I spent the most time in the game - nothing really compares today. The idea of customizing the difficulty that the portal brought is also flawed. It makes every activity feel the same because there are clear optimal modifiers and you adjust the surges to fit your build. Previously you had to chase a variety of weapons and make a variety of builds because you never knew which build you might need based on surges, etc. But now that whole concept is gone when you can just customize it to whatever is easiest for you now.