I'm really enjoying the difficulty and less influx of items.

I decided to play trade league this league start (normally I do SSF then swap to HC SSF a month or so into the league) and I'm really enjoying the grind. I absolutely love that the game is hard enough to get items to where builds haven't been discovered, and that makes people want to keep playing to uncover more.
The campaign being so difficult also makes people want to keep their character and keep pushing with it rather then spam making new builds. It feels like once I get geared, nobody can see my build and just catch up in a few hours due to the friction of making a new character.