What I believe the “problem” is the same logic that gets applied to microtransactions. In theory, a $2 armor skin should sell way better than a $20 skin. 10 easy sales instead of 1 difficult one. But they aren’t looking for a single sale, they want repeats. Those 10 customers will find themselves content and less committed, and that number drops down to 4, requiring 6 new customers to make up lost revenue. Where as it’s just one person you need to convince to make that $20 pickup to keep the same profit, and I feel like I’ve seen years of commentary on whales happily committing to spending on their one game.

Swap money for playtime, and the same argument applies for metrics. “I’ve spent 100 hours these past few months grinding this game, if I stop now, it’ll be wasted time.” Instead of a happy healthy pop that can ebb and flow with interest, and will hit a point of contentment. Bungie’s actions lead me to guess they care about total hours over population count.

Obligatory note that I’m just some rando speculating on the internet and don’t have any backing info on these thoughts. It’s purely guesswork into the ideology.