It's fairly evident after RoN and the immense negative reaction from the top players in the community that Bungie decided to pull away from those types of experiences in favor of a more "competitive" type one. Unfortunately, the only way to do that was to jack up the difficulty to ridiculous levels, the last three raid launches have historically low clear levels not matched since Last Wish, and I feel like this has only been more fuel on the fire to the problem. I am of the mindset that Bungie really needs to just muffle those top 0.1% when it comes to feedback at this point in the game. The game as a whole needs to really start pushing back towards a more casual audience (I know, a lot of people cringe at the "casualification" language here), we're not earning new players with raid races that are pushing even the top players to the utmost limits of the game. Desert Perpetual needed to be a DSC tier raid, not another SE tier raid as it pertained to contest, while the elite were clamoring over it and calling it "the best raid experience", the ship as a whole was still sinking (Steam capped at 28k yesterday.... on a raid launch day), and things are only going to get worse now. I think Bungie needs to take a long break from this type of content at this point; Ship a dungeon with Renegades that is exciting to all players, even if they need to sacrifice the difficulty. We need to get more players involved in the endgame so they stick around and draw more players into the title. Future contest raids need to be on the RoN-DSC level, I don't care if we get a base raid that is easy, it draws a hell of a lot more players to the game versus a DP style DPS check wall. Especially if now we're going back to a Normal / Hard (Epic) style raid launch, you can make the base raid highly inviting to all players, then dial things up with the Epic mode.

It was always an "open secret" that the Raid Race is a streamer event and source of free advertisement for Bungie. Once they updated the rules to [i]require[/i] streaming with this latest race (it didn't used to), it stopped being an "open secret" and just became blatant. This is Bungie's way of "giving back" to their most loyal of soldiers.

I used to enjoy contest mode raids to try getting the cool emblems but now they’re just to annoying to deal with now so I retired from them. I wish they would bring back crota contest level difficulty instead of the salvations edge level because crota was atleast tuned just right challenging yet fair. Even contest viewing experience is boring because it’s always the same few streamers or blacked screens with no audio so I can’t even enjoy the competitive spirit. Salvations edge I get why it was over tuned because it was the big bad and final raid of a saga. The DP first contest left me like what are their intentions for contest mode going forward because only so many teams cleared it. Do they want to have contest only be for the top 1% or was it mistuned since they did the damage number compression. Either way it left me like ok contest isn’t for me anymore. Even the contest dungeon in renegades doesn’t leave much to hope because I would like to think Bungie would be thinking “okay the top 1% had their fun in the DP contest raid, let’s create a contest dungeon experience more players can complete instead of just the top 1%”. I highly doubt they will do that.

I love how these guys are writing novels about why theyre not competing like it's Muhammad Ali backing out of a championship bout or something.

I use to like raiding. But the mechanics and how quick you die. Plus looking at these ppl streams for 24 plus hours looking miserable, makes me not want to raid. Or even do ultimate content for that matter. I just get my guns and go to pvp.

Also the person who won the race, got banned for having 2 cheaters on his team, from a previous raid, he doesn't even, care about cheaters on his team, he just wants to finish first. I wouldn't of put it past him to have cheated in every raid, he should be banned altogether, once you cheat, that's it, instant ban, i was watching luckyy, i wanted him to win.

Guided modes don't work in raids.

How often do these races happen? I don't watch or participate but from what I understand, the answer is "Not very often." Let people have the damn things, they don't inconvenience you that much.

“SteamChart” says it all. The passed couple of days, the numbers of players dropping Sept. 22 - 11k, Sept. 23 - 16k, Sept. 24 - 12k, Sept. 25 - 12k, Sept. 26 - 13k, Sept. 27 - 15k…guess the only ppl are playing are Twitch & YouTube streamers.

I laughed when Aztecrose said Epic DOP will be his last day1 raid Mind you these are the same dudes who said DOP was insanely hard and complained that they wanted more challenging content previously and was up at arms over the Day1 raid drama Look at who you have been supporting Bungie most of your dedicated streamers are leaving yet a large amount of casuals still here.

You're saying listen to players and not the streamers but in what way are streamers and/or content creators not players themselves? The reason why Bungie most likely values their opinion over those of casual gamers is because these streamers spend a lot of hours in the game and play and test every aspect of the game. They often give detailed feedback or constructive criticism which Bungie values. if you want to know how the ''casual player'' gives feedback just look at the forums. The majority of the posts made have zero feedback in them other then ramblings about dropping numbers and complaining that Bungie should do better. This is why Bungie doesn't listen to us because the majority of us casual gamers can't act normally and only whine and cry about every little thing.

Raid races are basically unofficial early access events for everyone before their official release on the following Tuesday. Your question of who they're for is equivalent to asking who the Olympics (or other tournament) are for.