Not disagreeing with you about the combined playlists in Destiny 2 but I'm guessing you don't live in Australia?

Crucible towards the end of D1 and towards the end of each content cycle was awful. So many times I gave up trying to find a game mode that wasn't the daily or weekly featured playlist and I'd always see the same 20-30 people over and over again. It got to a point where we'd acknowledge each other in crucible cos we saw each other so often haha. I can't even begin to count the amount of times I waited for a match only to be kicked back to orbit from waiting too long.

I was basically prevented from hitting max grimoire because I couldn't find games for salvage, rumble or skirmish. If I did ever find a game it was the sweatiest of sweatiness (Not gonna bother beating that dead horse anymore). In hindsight I shouldn't have left them until near the end but it was very frustrating. A combined rotating playlist like we have now in D2 back then would have been perfect for people in my situation. Or just removing SBMM.

I think they have combined them because their SBMM fragments the player base so it's a cheeky way to fix the issue in regions like Australia when the further up the skill brackets you go the less players you have to match with. It's hard to tell if it's more lenient now or that we just have a shit load more players in D2 right now. I'd bet it's the latter and they're still flicking paper clips at leavers.