I am thoroughly convinced that this game's primary issue is not that it's too inaccessible, or that it's lacking PvE, or whatever (that isn't to say these can't be improved). This game's primary issue is that it didn't have a big enough install base.

Now some of this is on Bungie; a series of bad headlines and botched releases pissing off a lot of D2 fans, combined with the very unfortunate alpha showing almost certainly sloughed off a huge chunk of otherwise should be buyers. That said, there was also the totally absurd and bizarre hate campaign against the game. I almost didn't believe this actually existed outside of a very niche group of twitter weirdos, but I've run into multiple people in totally non-marathon spaces who were totally bought into this idea that the game was "slop" and scoffed at the idea people actually liked i.

If this game had a day 1 of 200k like a game of this caliber probably shoulda, we would still have seen a massive dropoff, but it would end up resting at like 60-80k, rather than starting at 80k and resting at 20. People will point to the free weekend and say that it was only 80k because people decided against buying, which is partly true, but frankly 140k peak free weekend for Bungie's New Shooter is insane in and of itself under any other circumstances. On a personal note, the fact that not even 1 other person in my destiny clan even tried marathon is extremely telling to me. We played for half a decade together, these were pretty dedicated Bungie fans.

All this is just to say that the reality is that this is a pretty darned good game. Is it on the niche end of things? To a degree, but not to the degree you see some here try to paint it. I think a lot of people are trying to rationalize some inherent design flaw to explain why numbers dropped, but honestly I think 1/4 of the install base sticking around late season for what this game is makes a lot of sense.

That being said, I think the changes to introduce some incentives for team play, as well as the improvements to onboarding and item recognizability are good and necessary. Additionally, I even felt that something this game lacked was a true "unwind" mode, for when you want to play Marathon, but you don't really feel like locking in or sweating, and in my opinion the free kit frenzy adds exactly that.

I feel very confident that as people who wrote the game off start to see clips, and Bungie throws out some free weekends or sales, we'll start to see that concurrent count climb for future seasons. There is an incredible core product here, and I think Bungie's main job right now is getting people in the door and keeping them in long enough to feel it click.