They made the changes they did to artificially increase play time. Yes, in doing so they made some things better but it seems the primary focus was to pad the time played number, hence increase revenue. Think about it, no more OP PvE weapons, no guaranteed max light gear, and time-locked quests. All these thing we're put in place to artificially increase time played. The thing you have to understand is that Destiny's selling point is being a cooperative social shooter. Without a community of active players there is no Deatiny, they game is garbage without the community. Bungie knows it and the smarter member of the community know it too. Unfortunately for us it seems more cost effective to artificially inflate time played by making us grind for the same gear we already have but at a higher light just to reach max light. This is also why we have to grind the raid for crappy weapons just to infuse them into weapons we actually use. Bungie knows we are a community of completionist and they are capitalizing on it by making it more time consuming to get the final bit we need to complete our adventure.