Karma has done all I want, ta. It's heartening to see that Bungie/Acti weren't rewarded for the half baked, cynical shit they pulled with the first game. As someone who has been a Bungie fan from the Mac days, I hope they can now learn from their recent mistakes.
Have you read about the development of D1? The game was heavily rebooted about a year prior to release and existing missions and cut scenes got hacked around. At all times I think Bungie were trying to make the best game they could, they just needed more time to experiment.
As an example they were still trying to figure out internally how the main "mission select" should work... Should it be a list of missions like a traditional campaign game, or based on a map, a bit more like an mmo.
What happened with D1 was a common tale of bad dev tools, lots of experimentation needed, and finite budgets meaning *somwthing* had to be shipped.
I don't think you can describe it as cynical, and it certainly wasn't recent. The issues were happening through 2012 and 2013, 4 to 5 years ago.
D2 making less money won't give Bungie more time, or more freedom, rather Activision will be breathing down their necks even more.
Be careful what you wish for!