but finding players shouldn't be the hardest step.
Here is a bit of perspective/context for you.
Your basic complaint or whatever you want to call it is that you failed to find people when you wanted to do the quest, but did you ever consider WHY you didn't find people?
Lets start with the quest itself. Time works against you in every aspect of Destiny and games of the like. Many people have done the quest, so your pool of people is obviously smaller. Yesterday was also Friday, which means a couple of things.
This is also the weekend before Halloween, meaning people who want to do or participate in Halloween parties are likely to do them over the next three days than the weekend AFTER the event. So this further decreases your pool of potential people.
From there, Festival of the Lost added a fancy new Trials emblem, along with different modifiers. This means more people will be doing Trials for the emblem, logically speaking anyway, and people who find no radar/revives easier will be trying harder to finally go flawless.
So what you're left with should answer your question. Are you surprised the weekend before Halloween and first day of Trials with special modifiers and a unique emblem has less people looking to do a quest many people did weeks ago?