"The Raid is never supposed to be easy."

This is a stupid statement as I will explain. Such a thing is highly undesirable. What this essentially means, is that the raid is always supposed to be hard. That's impossible, unless the raid is un-masterable, since once mastered, it will by definition be easy. If the raid is un-masterable, that means building your skill in the activity is pointless, since you cannot progress toward mastery where the activity then becomes easy. No means or reason to improve towards mastery pretty much kills any motivation to engage with the game activates for their own sake. Which means you need rewards. How will that turn out again?

Idiotic design philosophy. If the Crota raid is built to be un-masterable, then you've lost a customer when the next pack comes out.

3 ways to make the raid hard:

1. Obfuscate mechanics / tactics. Won't work in the long term, since when one group figures it out the genie is out of the bottle thanks to the internet.

2. Gear / Level requirements. Doesn't actually make the raid hard, just the preparation hard. And not really hard, just time consuming and stupid. This is a sucky way to go.

3. Execution requirements. Only pass if you have the skills. The only sensible way to go. If you never want it to be easy, then you have to set the skill bar so high that the best player in the world can't master it, leaving everyone else completely outclassed.

The only Bungie can get its way is either if they make the grind take 10,000 hours, or if they up the difficulty so nobody can master it.