As about everyone knows by now, when The Dark Below DLC was released, the vendor armor light levels were higher than VOG gear, making them obsolete. This was a big mistake on Bungie's part, but I believe this system, if a few rules are added, can make the level progression much smoother and make the game for newer players much better as a whole. This can be accomplished by "unlocking" the next tier of vendor gear. Right now if a new player hits level 20, they can work on leveling vanguard/crucible/faction rep and once they get enough marks and two vanguard/faction commendations they can buy base level 28 and eventually level it up to 31 gear. Because ascendant shards can be found outside the VOG, you can skip this raid entirely, never once setting foot in it. This is obviously not a smooth level progression for new players, and potentially can lower the lifespan of content (yeah kinda funny talking about content) that a new player can have. However, before the DLC was released there was much smoother leveling because you would go from level 20 to Rare armor (22-24), continue to vendor armor (27-29) and end with raid armor (27?-30). What I believe should be done is that after about two VOG completions (or more depending on whatever is most balanced), either an internal vendor reputation is met or (my opinion on what should happen) a story item is dropped (Atheon's Heart or something) which once you go back to a vendor you will notice they have new items for you. This will "unlock" new gear for you to progress from without ruining the raid system. Look at what would happen if there would be only raid-par gear becoming unlocked in the vendor. If you finish running VOG and become level 30 from it, you could not level any higher from new raid gear and would have to progress directly to CE. In my opinion, this would create a bit more of a clunky experience and unlocking new vendor gear would be helpful to the progression. Let's just say this does get implemented into House of Wolves, why would players not get angry like they did when vendor items made their raid gear worth less? Well, first off when they log into the game, a banner will pop up (like the one for The Dark Below, Queen's Wrath, and Iron Banner) in the middle of the screen explaining there is new items, story missions, and new story items are able to drop from the two raids. If they immediately log into the tower and look at the vanguard, the first thing they will see is that the old Dark Below vendor items will be still sold but their vanguard mentor will give them a mini-quest telling them to bring back the item "Shard of the Oversoul" which can be acquired by killing Crota on any difficulty. This drop rate will start at 50% (or possibly less based on how quickly it drops) in the first completion of CE but will scale up from there so after about 2 or 3 runs the player should have the item. For players that already have completed CE multiple times before the new DLC the drop rate would be about 100% by then, so they wouldn't have to grind out a few more CE runs. Once they are awarded this, they return to the tower where they present their mentor with the trophy of war and are allowed access to the new armor/weapons in all vendors. With this system the progression of the game should be smooth and offer all the game has to the consumer, without breaking the game. Leave your thoughts, suggestions, and changes below in the form of a response and let's bump this so Bungie can have all the help they can get!