In a word? No. 1. Strike Specific Loot became Nightfall weapons. 2. We do have vendor refreshes. The issue is that the game has DOZENS of vendors, and Bungie wants us getting our loot as drops. Not BUYING it in the Tower. 3. The Factions served no purpose in the game. They were just three useless vendors. They played an important role in D1 because the game had so little content that Bungie had to use them as a means to get us loot. 4. Faction loot was just reskinned versions of the gear from the previous DLC. Ornaments now serve that function. 5. Class-specific weapons were abandoned because of PVP....Tlaloc. It was the only decent class-specific weapon and it gave a bit of an advantage to Warlocks who used in Crucible....and PVP players complained up a STORM about how unfair it was. So it put Bungie in the position of having to spend limited development resources on weapons that either weren't very good....so the balance of PVP was protected...... ....or that were good, but would have to be nerfed soon after their release because of inevitable complaints from PVP. It was an unwinnable game from their point of view....so they stopped trying to win at it. [quote]Like what’s causing the difference between D1 and D2 as far as those things?[/quote] The game has gotten better, and Bungie has a better idea of how to design loot games. People in this community tend to look back at D1 with a lot of nostalgia...and try to make a VIRTUE out of the necessities of POOR design. Destiny 1 was a fun action-game...but it was a REALLY poorly-designed RPG and loot game. But I think many people who played it didn't have a lot of experience with loot games, and didn't realize this. ...and Destiny 2 over the last three years has evolved in ways that a lot of shooter gamers don't like. So they look back on D1---remember only what it was at the end of Y3----and tell themselves that it was a better game than it really was. I was here back then...and I remember how vicious the criticism was at the time.

[quote]Strike exclusive loot[/quote] In D2 this was mainly the domain of specific Nightfall strikes up through Forsaken, prior to the addition of F2P. These were greatly deemphasized with the introduction of both the Sunsetting of weapons and the Vaulting of older content. Some of these weapons are beginning to be updated and added to Nightfalls. [quote]factions, faction loot[/quote] In the first year or two of Destiny 2 there were a series of Faction Rally events that allowed players to pledge themselves to one of the factions to unlock various armor sets and earn faction specific Exotic weapon catalysts. The devs announced they were postponing future Faction Rallies to reevaluate their presence in the game, with Luke Smith officially declaring them dead in 2020 stating, "the reward gear hasn't been used that much, our character cast is growing too large, and crucially, they didn’t drive a bunch of engagement with the game." To the best of my knowledge nobody on the dev team suggested this was in any fashion influenced by the move to F2P. [quote]class specific weapons[/quote] In the first Destiny there were a total of six class specific weapons, one legendary and one exotic for each class. At the launch of D2 each class was awarded a class specific sword upon completing the Red War campaign. These swords have since been reissued on two occasions (once during Season of Opulence and again during Season of the Splicer, to account for changes to the weapon systems and sunsetting respectively). With the launch of the Witch Queen each class now has an exclusive Exotic Glaive, meaning there are currently as many class specific weapons in D2 as there were in D1. The main difference here between the two games is that in D2 each class gets an exclusive Legendary or Exotic weapon of the same type, whereas in D1 there was more variation with a Ranger Hand Cannon, Warlock Scout Rifle and Titan Auto Rifle for exotics and a similar degree of variety among the exclusive Legendary weapons. [quote]The feeling of inspecting a guardian in D1, seeing some unknown weapon and wondering where the got it was exciting.[/quote] While I imagine this is largely nostalgia it can also be chalked up, [i]at least in part[/i], to the release of Destiny 2 on PC and the subsequent data mining that ensued. The original Destiny was a console exclusive release: without data mining players largely didn’t know what items existed or how to get them until someone was kind enough to post the relevant information somewhere that others would find it and spread the word. With data mining we now see a deluge of articles and youtube videos with an hour of the release of a new expansion or season detailing where to obtain X weapon and how to find any tchotchkes hidden about. (΄◉◞౪◟◉｀)

Omg, I decided to grind for Hopscotch after finding out what a beast it was (weeks after I got my first one in literally my first PoE chest). I ran strikes endlessly for weeks… hundreds of them! My friends would joke with me every night knowing they could hop online and find me grinding away non-stop. I still remember the strike I ran when it dropped… haha good times. There has never been a weapon like that (when it first came out). I loved the game back then! Sorry, no good info to add… just good memories while reading and agreeing with your post.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

I love how you cited a weapon that was sunset & resold to us in D1 lol f2p has nothing to do with it. Game devs often reuse assets, & with D2 releasing content basically every three months, it's harder for them to do the same things that they only had to do once or twice a year in the D1 days.

[quote]Strike exclusive loot, vendor refreshes, factions, faction loot, class specific weapons. The feeling of inspecting a guardian in D1, seeing some unknown weapon and wondering where the got it was exciting. I remember first running into someone with hopscotch pilgrim in the crucible and became so determined to grind for it and it was fun. Like what’s causing the difference between D1 and D2 as far as those things?[/quote] What a reach. None of those things were in vanilla d2( except for factions and they did not last very long), and vanilla d2 did not have the free to try portion of the game. Very faulty logic there guy

The problem you’re speaking of is mostly caused by how optimized the community has made this game by now. In destiny 1, when a new expansion released, people would be scrambling to find all of its secrets months after it’s released and showing off the new exotics to all their friends, and showing them how to get it etc. A new expansion releases in destiny 2, and most people have completed everything new in the game by the second day after release, all exotics have been found and optimal methods have been created, youtubers post videos titled “Most OVERPOWERED build in Destiny 2 USE THIS NOW” and everything powerful has been abused and nerfed by the one month mark. It’s not the fault of Bungie or the players, it can simply never be the same again

But what's free to play? It's not any recent content that's free, it's old -blam!-. All they did was turn old content into a free trial. Free to play would be if the witch queen and these last two seasons were accessible without paying. I keep hearing free to play but it's not. Its just an extended demo. FFXIV has a free trial for the base game and the first expansion, not once have I heard someone call that free to play.

No, the reason is people are willing to pay$10 to make their guardians eat a hot dog.

Maybe not F2P. Maybe, like dungeons now, they figure they could charge more for them