No, SRL was not the beginning of their problems. In fact, sparrow racing was something that was asked for by many Y1 players. There were even unofficial organized events for this. The reason why it was not received as well as it was is due to the fact that we were in need of brand new content and not just a new activity. Some people did enjoy it ya know, I see posts saying to bring it back. I would say it's timing wasn't the best, especially since many of the Y1 players who wanted it had moved on. The beginning of Bungie's problems comes back to the story. We were all told we would be getting rich story telling, and then we got the vanilla story. Sure the grimoire was and is rich, and they have since then added new elements to the story which has helped develop it, but we were expecting this to be in the game from the start. TL;DR- SRL wasn't the beginning of the problem, it just wasn't received well because it was added at the wrong time. Bungie's problems go further back