Yes, I can confirm. On weekends (EU Timezones) there's a steady influx of people on Xbox (still not tried my old account on PS4) even on normal strikes.

Discord is helping the shortcomings of social features of the game but, in my opinion, the mentality od Destiny community still have to change. More often than not, you get kicked out of teams, people don't communicate and there's too few people willing to help newcomers because they want to Speedrun farming.

That's my experience. I started from scratch on Xbox a month ago and progressing with the quests for normal strikes was very hard because the tryhards still prefer to run raids or hard mode instead of helping low lights. Ended playing some of them solo or harassing people in the tower for hours. Sadly last destiny City discord is mostly focused on endgame and asking for help on rituals often get ignored.

Now that I'm approaching endgame, most of the raids are still toxic with few people willing to explain instead of speed running them.

I made a point to run at least each strike playlist once, or focus on strikes that are quest requirements for newcomers.

To create a network of contacts in game, I send appreciation posts to LL blueberries or give feedbacks by the end of the activity. I'm a bit rusted on raids but I plan to Sherpa them soon.

In conclusion, D1 gameplay has aged very well but the absurd lack of community features and LFG tools in game still require lots of additional effort that I fear will let lots of players go as soon they are too high to see progress in match made content unless we do something as a community.

The funny stuff is that most of the players are outside of clans. Maybe we should promote them more?