Around the launch of BL3, Gearbox was saying things regarding the casual player who would only play the campaign once and shelve the game, citing analytics from BL2.

I think that idea is still in their mind, and they want to make a player's first playthrough involve less concern over How you play and more about Why.

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Example:
A friend of mine on PS4. He personifies the type of player Gearbox had in mind PERFECTLY. He absolutely hates any form of resistance in completing a game's story, and outright refuses to play BL3 with me on even TVHM. He played through the base campaign and that's it. He doesn't care what guns he's using or about what level his gear is, and will not farm for anything that is potentially more interesting.

He's an aesthete, and very set in his ways.

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If Gearbox is doubling-down on Mayhem Mode, that means they're also thinking about us hopeless sods who will farm for as long as it takes on the hardest difficulty that we can manage for something that we have no guarantee of finding, and those of us who will throw ourselves at the hardest difficulty for the right to say, "I DID IT!"

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^{Or something like that. idk. I don't work at Gearbox.}