Update ~2/3rds of players in this poll believe HoW had the best progression system. I belive it shows player preference for horizontal progression rather than beating our heads against a wall trying to progress vertically. Launch Destiny Pros: Old light system was at least streamlined. Progression was story to get to 20 strikes to get to 26-27 then VoG to 30. Iron Banner and Queens Wrath helped fill that awkward gap between 23ish and 27. Cons: "forever 29" in vault. No armor diversity because light was 100% tied to armor. Not to mention running in circles for mats. Dear god. Dark Below Pros: Drop rate in Crota's End significantly improved compared to vault. So 32 was possible. I believe iron banner rerolling was added during this time so that was nice. Buying mats I believe was added during vanilla but I'll add it here. Cons: Vendor armor immediately made the grind to 30 in VoG irrelevant as it came at 31 light. First replacement of content as VoG pretty much fell to the wayside as the armor didn't do anything to progress you and the weapons were still great but a little bit weaker than DB weapons. Still no armor diversity as 32 was dependant on raid gear. I nearly forgot about that horrible exotic upgrade system dear god. Where you had to rebuy your exotics from xur and then relevel them because screw you. Towards the end iron banner gear did drop at max light which was cool. House of Wolves Pros: Absolute freedom over the gear you want to use. Rerolling gave you real agency over the grasp of rng. As long as you got etheric light every activity was relevant. Progression became more horizontal as 34 was easy to achieve but nailing down the exact perks and stats you wanted was more difficult. PVP became a legitimate way to progress with the addition of Trials and it rewarded great weapons with functionality in both pve and pvp. Cons: Near instant 34 put you in an instant "what now" mindset. Rerolling became a problem when there was only a handful of good perks in a sea of garbage perks. Bad prison weapons meant that prison was only used as an etheric light farm. Also you probably deleted a ton of good stuff in dark below because you thought it wouldn't be coming forward. Suprise! Taken King Pros: honestly I'm biased against TTK so I'm going to need some help here. I honestly like the gunsmith system as an inbetween between rerolling and no rerolling. I just wish it was expanded. Cool strike playlist and crucible playlist gear. Infusion is a nice idea on paper. Cons: Your cape now partially determines your power for some reason. New stat rocks with useless perks added for no reason but to tank your light for a while. "Yo dawg so I heard you liked rng so I put rng light level on your rng drop with rng perks so you can rage while you rage while you rage" Trials really lost that progression aspect. Lower drop rates for crucible playlist/strike gear than in House of Wolves. Which makes no sense because rerolling made drops irrelevant in HoW but now they're nowhere to be seen. Infusion averages your light level just to annoy you and force you to make the decision of "I have all these bad 315+ weapons but if I infuse them into what I want to use then my light will decrease" Oh and every activity from year one except for the strikes that were allowed to come back were made irrelevant to progression. And all weapons/armor from year one can't come forward in any meaningful way so we're currently at a game that is a third of the size that it could be. Which one do you think is better? What would you like to see differently in progression? I'm personally writing up a mashup system between HoW and TTK I would like to see.