There are several weapon quests that require PvP - sword, Chaperone, etc. You have to do PvP to get max legendary marks. No PvP and you get 50% the marks. I got six PvP quests across three characters this week alone. I can't tell whether Bungie believes Destiny has good PvP so they want to show it off, or whether so few people play PvP that they are desperate to push more into it. But the OP is right. When your PvP is this big a disaster, if you can't or won't fix it, and you don't want to shut it down, you should just let it run for anybody who wants to goof around in it. Not bribe or armtwist players into having to sit through that mess to get weapons or whatever.

As far as I know the quests still require you to excel at PvP to complete them. The bounties are what changed to completion only.