The attempts to force players to do activities is what is pushing players to optimize their strategies and not play the game as it was intended to

With sponsored survival came the complaints by some parts of the community that players are flocking to PvE only to farm loot and this is hurting the game, the problem in my opinion is not the PvE but it's origin lies at Bungie forcing most of the community to optimize their strategies to get any respectable loot at all.

By playing the game as intended, opening keys, doing events and such you inevitably will attract attention because all of them are designed to point to everyone else what exactly what you are doing and where they probably can find you, this forces PvP encounters to happen, witch is fair, but now many activities, including Pinwheel had nerfs to their loot pools, it's simply not worth it to attract attention of literal hunting parties to your location, it's better to either rat around or rush spawns like they do, or to just go PvE instead of doing these activities.

Keeping nerfing progression like the cradle nerf, or reducing prestige and purple gear drops won't make people try to do the mechanics or engage with PvP more, it will have the opposite effect, only by rewarding players with good loot and letting natural selection decide who keeps the good loot of the run or not will make people play the game as intended, artificial attempts at forcing people will only make them try to find a way out.

The economy should be balanced by the skills of each player not trying to force it to be one way of another.