I don’t think players should be punished for bungies inability to deal with cheating tbh. For example I played since d1 and took my first hiatus shortly after beyond light dropping (which I owned) because stasis ruined the game for me and it was stale. I came back not too long ago and I don’t like the game enough to funnel even more money into it when I’ve bought every content drop until this point and I can’t play trials now because they changed the dlc requirement to witch queen (and surely keeping it as beyond light would serve the same purpose seeing as that’s expensive and cheaters won’t buy it over and over). I also have friends who play on console and pc who couldn’t play trials on both platforms in past seasons because they didn’t want to buy beyond light twice seeing as the dlcs are platform based also. I was fine with the initial requirement because it was necessary, it’s debatable it still is. But changing it to the new dlc it’s just a marketing move and it’s scummy.

You are not being punished. You pay for a video game, nothing new. Been happening for decades now. If your financial situation precludes you from purchasing the current dlc, there's still plenty of stuff to do for free or if you have purchased previous expansions.

You never used to have to pay for trials (except maybe house of wolves I’m not sure because I owned that). Trials isn’t a dlc activity it’s base game and now the base game is free so technically, you don’t pay for that part of the game