Yup... I knew this would happen, that's what happens when you make overhauls that fundamentally changes the core of the game for something different and arguably more "niche" in nature.

\***[[Long-ass read below, if you don't want to bother go at the bottom]]***\**

But honestly... what else PHX could've possibly done with the old system really ? I loved it too but... it felt very linear and borderline restrictive, which is almost contrary to the genre's very design... The updates after 1.0 were all great imo, but they didn't last long... most people were done only after a mere week following the update's release, because once you earn all the new weapon and armor set along with the smaller rewards... you were pretty much done, there was nothing to keep people occupied past that and people were back to the waiting room until the next content patch drops.

And it's not like the devs didn't try to improve the old system either... they tried tons of stuff, but none of them were able to "fix" the issues people had with the game, because all of these problems were caused by the very foundations of the game itself, hence why they made Reforged a thing, so they could "renovate" this said foundation and ensure the game would grow properly in the future without being held back by its old design.

But yeah, this update has definitely been divisive... But I think this was a necessary evil in a way... people love to bring up Paragon when talking about this mess, but Paragon didn't die because of an overhaul, no all that did was accelerating the already engaged dying process, what killed it was Epic's negligence and disinterest in it... It never truly took off and the game just kept losing players, the overhauls it got was meant to bring more people in, but it ended doing the contrary since all it did was dumbing things down further... which is usually what KILLS "Live Service Games" most of the time... Star Wars Galaxy and Paladin's Card Unbound update being two prime example of that... fortunately Hi-rez ended up reversing that update but if it had stayed, the game would be dead for months if not years by now.

Meanwhile... Reforged didn't dumb down the game, it did the contrary actually, it gave players more reason to play and grind, it made hunts far less tedious to get into and made environement far more enjoyable to hunt in with islands now being full of events, fauna, chests, and some interesting geography, it gave players actual long-term goal to achieve other than Trials skins and goodies, it brought the slayer path which gives actual choice to players on how they want both their account and their slayer to progress, it also gave Rams an actual proper and important use (even though the cost in the slayer path do need to be toned down a bit)

[TL;DR] In the end, The update neither good or bad, it is different, the game took a different direction and people need to accept that, whether you agree with it or not... the old game is not coming back... not after all the time and money PHX have poured into this massive update. All we can do now is give them feedback and actual suggestion to they can make this new version better for everybody who choose to stick around