The series still suffers from an identity crisis. And somehow it has become even more and more rigid over the years. It does two counterintuitive things: 1. It tries to be too many different things at once. Which COULD work, but doesn’t because of the second thing. 2. A SEVERE lack of player options/control of how and when they can acquire loot. This current game model, where the vast majority of worthwhile loot is activity specific and is spread out across the entirety of the experience, this game that encompasses very different activities, so much so that it could be called multiple different genres, is impractical and it has to prevent their ability to accurately gauge likability. It has to severely hinder Bungie’s best source for determining what players like and play the most. They can’t possibly have an accurate gauge of that when they don’t let players pursue loot by playing what they like the most. Instead they have double and triple downed on this rigid activity specific loot system where many players have to begrudgingly spend way more time than they want to on activities that don’t like nearly as much as others, if at all, or they have to miss out on loot. On weapons or entire armor sets, or cosmetics. People like options, and this model they use basically goes against human nature. They could balance time to acquisition and amount of rewards against challenge and time investment, but they don’t. It’s do this in exactly this way, or miss out. People would complain FAR less if they could avoid the activities that they find kind of boring or arduous. They’d have more to do and go for if they could do it more on their own terms. As it is now, people just straight up pass on certain things because they derive no real fun from going for it. Remember when they talked about having stories for how you acquired your prized loot? I do. I remember following this series prior to release. Well, there are no stories. There is only one story, and it’s the same story for everyone.