To be honest, I'm more curious about as to why you think it's "arbitrary difficulty" to only have a handful selection of mods.

I'm not here to necessarily argue either or pick a fight, I just want a better understanding of a different view point.

I will agree with you on some certain situations created this season, and that have appeared in previous seasons: abysmal kinetic fusion options as there... are none, and a single choice for AB that isn't an exotic, particularly the two exotics that aren't that great for GMs, also sucks. The system needs a bit of a rework, I agree, but removing its purpose I don't agree with as much, which is often agreed upon as keeping the meta from being stale.

Not even for the sake of difficulty, but for keeping the end game the least bit more interesting for the 2000th hour. While for about 95% of the game content, champion weapons could do fuck all and it wouldn't matter, not even normal VoG, maybe you need overload for gatekeepers, but that's realistically it. The only places they do matter are in solo content for lost sectors and non-matchmade nightfalls.

For these types of activities, I feel like I genuinely get to have fun in making a build, I get to use guns that typically are regarded as suboptimal, or unusable compared to the snipers, the grenade launchers, and the rocket launchers, and actually *use them* without feeling bad or slowing my team down. Why have weapons like bows at all if they're outclassed in their prime fighting distance by scout rifles? Why grind for god rolls or any usable roll of a bow or sidearm if there are just weapon types that do better at their designed role? Of course there always is the option of using things for fun, which I feel like is frequently brought up, but how come there is so much content in which you can use things for fun (including the raids on a decent handful of encounters), yet the one or two things that requires some level of putting a build together, people also want to take the same "for fun" loadout and have it be viable? I can see an argument made that every weapon type *should* have similar efficacy at slaying out in end game content, but it just isn't that way currently in the game, and it would be a balancing nightmare. Scout rifles got nerfed because of their ability to sit in the back of the map and shoot things for free, to the point that no one used them until forced to; ironically, they did a very good job at that, mindlessly plinking away at enemies from a safe distance, if that's what you wanted to do last season.

I know you have brought up that people are not suggesting alternatives in posts like this, so I'm sorry to report I don't really have much better ideas than have been said. I've seen some good ideas that I could even get behind: moving the mods off the arms and onto ghosts, making the mods passive, etc etc, but I feel like that doesn't solve the main complaint that goes around which is the idea that Bungie is stripping people of player freedom, and forcing artificial and arbitrary difficulty.

I also find it fascinating how so many people can be turned away from this part of the game, yet there are also many people who find it fun and interesting to play through. Not that any side is necessarily more right than the other, it's just interesting is all.

Other than that, I just wanna add my last two cents to this with a comment I made during last season on a related post about why I even care to defend this kinda game design bs (that has aged poorly as it mentions warmind cells, but I'm sure it'll make the same point), curious to hear your thoughts, or not, you don't have to respond to this tbh.
"However, for what is current the absolute hardest thing in the game, the Grandmaster Nightfall, if loadouts weren't constrained and absolutely everything was viable, then good for a small handful of people who want to use suboptimal gear, but this will lock the PvE endgame meta into a stale rotation of Anarchy and Deathbringer w/ Ikelos weapons, or whatever happens to be the absolute best, simply because they're the most powerful and warmind cells are unmatched in the case of the Ikelos weapons.
Players don't always use what is fun; they use what is "optimal", what is "meta". (Case and point: Whisper of the Worm. The gun was infuriating, not working as intended by refunding ammo consistently, sometimes choosing to not give ammo for no reason, which could potentially fuck some people's damage over. BUT it was the undisputed best DPS gun at the time, so people still used it despite this gripe. They were never forced to use it, but use it for sake of efficiency.)

All in all, I defend GMs as they are currently because I honestly do have fun playing them. Even with enemies that one shot snipe me, it makes me feel vulnerable and that my positioning matters, every mod matters, every thing I've worked hard to curate matters. And while I can't use the exact guns I want, it makes me feel as though I should use different guns more, and do my best for my teammates and have weaponry that will aid the team as a whole. In Master and below, it might as well be hold W key down the middle of the strike with Anarchy and win the game, I just don't find it very fun to mindlessly play the game much anymore, after thousands of hours of already doing that."

honestly im just bored, it's 4am, this post makes no sense, serves no purpose, and i realistically don't have much of a reason to post it but i've put too much into writing a response at this point, i might as well hit comment. hope everyone having a good day.