The grinding in TTK was almost exclusively not tied to the raid, you grind for max level, but can play all endgame activities with relative ease after a few HM play throughs. Grinding Saber for your weapon or armor didn't really affect gameplay, you just wanted the armor. TTK also added shit like the spindal mission on the low to discover, there wasn't anything like that in y1 I agree with nightfalls being better, however the weapons in y1, while looking cool were really broken Ghorn caused huge rifts in the community, thorn dominated pvp, Bungie saying there was more to Vog than there was. Broken weapon combinations that took forever to patch, hunter spam on blade dancer.