Agreed. Trials of Osiris is the main reason I still play Destiny. By now, at this time into the new expansion, I usually stop playing until the next one comes out since I have everything/did everything. Right down to the perfect roll of a Solar Jewel of Osiris. I still play because I love Trials. It is the best competitive multiplayer mode I've ever played.
For what it's worth, I actually enjoy Crota's End more than Vault of Glass. I think VoG is too slow and unrewarding. Drop rates in Crota's End are much better. I've run Vault of Glass a lot more than CE and still don't have all the weapons, let alone 3 copies of the ones I really like. I am only missing 2 Black Hammers to have 3 copies of every weapon I like in CE and have at least one of each. VoG also doesn't reward the opening of the Vault, Confluxes, Gorgon Maze and Platforms at all. In addition, I've never, ever, ever, ever gotten anything good from Oracles either, even though that takes for eeeeeeeeeever to do that part.
Everyone says they like VoG better, but in reality everyone jumps into a fresh CE run, while nobody wants to jump in anywhere before the Templar in VoG. It is ridden with unenjoyable sections that don't reward anything. Crota's End only had 2 problems. First, it can be completed without a full fireteam. I solo the Raid on Normal and usually do it with 2 or 3 on Hard. Personally, I don't consider this a problem. Second, it had tons of glitches preventing completion. That sucks. But it seems to have been fixed by now.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Vault of Glass when I first played it. It still remains the best co-op experience I've had playing it blind with friends I met on Giant Bomb. But, after a certain number of completions, it really becomes busy work. Especially since it is unrewarding and sections of it are based on time rather than performance.
When I talk about Vault of Glass being the best thing in the game, that has nothing to do with rewards. I certainly agree that when Vault of Glass was the current end game content, the low drop rate was certainly frustrating, but that's really separate from the design of the raid itself. When I say that Vault of Glass is the best thing in the game, I am talking from a game design standpoint. As @hestilllives19 mentioned, VoG is great because of the way the mechanics and concepts are introduced and expanded upon over the course the raid. It's a great example of not only compelling cooperative gameplay that actually requires cooperation, but also of teaching the player mechanics organically and building upon and combining these mechanics as things progress.
You're free to prefer Crota's End for whatever reasons you choose, but I don't think it holds a candle to Vault of Glass, and whether or not the drop rate for rewards is more forgiving has nothing to do with the fact that from a design standpoint it's a lot weaker in my opinion. I completely disagree that CE has only two problems. A majort issue I have you did mention, the lack of a need for a full fireteam. I understand the appeal of just jumping in solo or with 1 or 2 other people for a quick and easy clear (which I also do with somewhat regularity), but to me defending that because it makes things easier is no different than defending all the various cheeses and exploits.
Even more of an issue than the fact that you don't need a full group to complete CE is the fact that it's actively a lesser experience with a full fireteam. All the encounters are faster (and in some cases easier) when you have fewer people. Even with a full team, the two main encounters (bridge and Crota himself) are designed in such a way as to have most players standing around doing nothing while 1 player is the center of attention. During the bridge it's one player at a time crossing while everyone else waits their turn to be the star. During Crota it's the sword holder that actually fights the boss while everyone else just stands around waiting to fire rockets when the sword holder tells them to. This isn't cooperative gameplay between six players, it's 1 player doing all the work while the other 5 watch.
Compare that to Vault of Glass, which has many instances where players genuinely have to work together. Making sure every oracle spawn is accounted for, coordinating home and away teams for the portals with multiple relic carriers, the teams being forcibly split up during the Atheon fight. All of these encounters give each member of the team a different role to perform, and everyone must be on point for success. The one encounter where you could say 1 player does more than everyone else is the templar fight, but even then the five players without the relic have plenty to do (covering multiple point in the area, dealing with detain shield, and obviously damaging the Templar itself) Of course, highly skilled players can do some of these things with less players, but because the raid is actually designed around cooperation, it is much harder to achieve undermanned and certainly a lot slower.
Then there's the difficulty. The difficulty of Crota's End relies almost entirely on throwing an obscene number of major enemies at players, combined with the original delta scaling of hard mode. Now that the delta scaling is no longer a concern, CE hard mode has become an absolute joke. Vault of Glass, on the other hand, it barely any easier at 34 than it was at 30 because the difficulty of the raid is based on the design of the encounters, not the level of the enemies. There are very few majors in the entirety of VoG, and most of the yellow bar enemies we do encounter are not true majors, with a lesser % damage penalty than normal majors. Despite the lack of delta scaling and the low number of major enemies, Vault of Glass is both more difficult than CE hard mode is now and has always felt like much more of a fair challenge than CE hard mode ever was.
Finally, I personally don't think rewards have any place in a discussion about the quality of an activity. At this point in the life of the game, I almost literally have everything in the game. Aside from Praetorian Foil, I have every raid weapon, ever exotic, every HoW elemental primary (and multiple versions of each); there is nothing in Destiny I want that I don't already have. If I choose to play a certain activity, I play it because I want to play it, not because I want to get stuff. On that note, I don't jump into checkpoints every time I play as you mentioned. If I play something it's because I actually want to play, not to get rewarded. Even before I had everything I never played Destiny for the loot. I play it to have fun with friends, I play it because I like the cooperation of raids and the competition of crucible. When I think about the activities I like and dislike in Destiny, it has everything to do with game design and nothing to do with rewards.
The only benefits Crota's End has over Vault of Glass is that it doesn't take as long to clear, you don't need to find a full team to clear it, and the rewards are more generous. The first two are not positives for me because a raid should be time consuming and a raid should be the ultimate cooperative experience. The last one is certainly a good thing, but it's only relevant when the activity is new. These many months later with loot no longer a concern, I would choose to play Vault of Glass over Crota's End every single time.
(If this comes off as hostile in any way, I apologize. This isn't meant to be an argument, just a detailed explanation of why I feel the way I do about these two raids. I directly addressed some of the points you made, but it's not meant as an attack, just a friendly debate.)
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