It's very likely on purpose, but the purpose is to rubber band the community so that everyone has a chance to experience the content mostly together, which has actually worked pretty well.

It's the only explanation.

Well, it's all that they can do to keep us playing until "Destiny 2: We Tried This Time" comes out.

With each release of Destiny, there is always a stupid time consuming mechanic that makes it really hard to progress. Material farming for gear upgrades, radiant shards, partial credit on infusion, and now the lack of siva offering /skeleton key drops, etc.

These mistakes happen every single time and it seems Bungie learns nothing… but what if it's on purpose? What if Bungie does it full well knowing it will initially slow progress, only to roll it back and get the praise for listening to the fans?

They stretch it out for as long as it will bear, then they look like heroes for fixing it.

It's the only explanation.

0_o

They absolutely do it on purpose to help hide the fact that the expansion is only about 3 hours of new content. The grind makes it more like 20, and then the bonus grind to get perfect gear makes it more like 40-∞.

Rolling it back serves their purposes only when the hardcore players have finished the grind but the casuals feel stagnated by it. So they roll it back knowing it won't help the hardcores but will keep the casuals engaged.

With each release of Destiny, there is always a stupid time consuming mechanic that makes it really hard to progress. Material farming for gear upgrades, radiant shards, partial credit on infusion, and now the lack of siva offering /skeleton key drops, etc.

These mistakes happen every single time and it seems Bungie learns nothing… but what if it's on purpose? What if Bungie does it full well knowing it will initially slow progress, only to roll it back and get the praise for listening to the fans?

They stretch it out for as long as it will bear, then they look like heroes for fixing it.

Just like that time they introduced New Coke knowing that people would hate it, only to reintroduce Classic Coke and retake the market.

Coca-Cola isn't that smart, and neither is Bungie. Nor is it required to believe they are to understand the situation.

Bungie knows that for a social game to thrive, people need to be able to play together. Large disparities in light level discourage that, especially since some activities are gated.

They also know that players will only be friendly to adjustments in parameters in one direction, so you need to be careful with initial values.

You can start out with low drop rates and increase, but players would resist the opposite. You can start out with engram color indicating the highest possible quality drop, but you can't start out with the current system and then downgrade to the earlier one.

You can start out with items not stacking and then make them stack, but you can't go the other way without resistance.

These mechanics are designed to discourage you from making progress be the goal in and of itself, or by identifying a single aspect of the game, focusing solely on that, and then decrying your lack of progress.