TL;DR: [i]Bungie has a major weapons issue and they can't really resolve it without an honest-to-god sit down with the community.[/i] [b]Beginning[/b] When this game started they had nice little MMO progression curve for all their gear. They even had a clear goal for end of game. They knew they were going to put out expansions every three months, and each expansion would add a few levels and continue the curve. They fell into a few traps with materials and progression, but most of those where pretty standard growing pains that every persistent game runs into and learns from. [b]Design[/b] But they also had an 800 pound gorilla in the room, and it was the progression curve itself. In most persistent worlds, the items are simply a few numbers that determine how well you do. Class or job or race determines your actual play style. Special items end up changing your style a little, but generally that style is pretty static. Destiny armor lines up nice and simply with this formula. Add a few levels to the monsters, and a few numbers to new armor. Progression perfection. Destiny weapons, unfortunately, break this model badly. Weapons alter the way you play an FPS drastically. Thus even minor changes in weapon variety and behavior have a large effect on your feel for the game. And if you start running multipliers based on specific stats, all hell breaks loose. A large variety of weapons actually compounds the problem, because it means you are more likely to have outliers that the Internet community then jumps on. [b]History[/b] So, let’s get back to the history of the game, and look at their design goals. They were going to put out content every three months (ambitious)! Any legendary weapon would be good for a while, but fade away as you achieved the next tier of legendary. In fact you could design end tier weapons that were too powerful, knowing that your dedicated players would get them late in the three month cycle and want to use them through much of the next one. They clearly did this in the initial game. They adjusted a few material and progression issues over the first three months. And they made some decisions about The Dark Below. Primaries with elemental damage were already powerful enough because of burns, so they didn’t need to make the other stats overpowered as well. Certain exotics were simply overpowered, but they were highly used and it became obvious they would need to somehow persist. So new exotics were designed a step lower, and a random aspect was added to the just created “upgrade” option. TDB came with the typical first expansion issues. They admitted a lot of them publically and worked hard to ensure the next expansion wouldn’t have them. The three month timeframe was also abandoned because they finally realized whoever thought that up was crazy. They also made a decision, probably about a month and a half in, that weapon progression simply wasn’t going to work. People were not switching, they didn’t want to. So they adjusted again. Make primary burns hard to find. Adjust the random nature of weapons to be more consistent by expanding the reroll feature. Allow people to upgrade old stuff, gated by tying it to and end game feature. Introduce non-burn categories that allow you to use whatever weapon you prefer for a slot. Adjust the exotics to be more unique while still limiting their power, concentrating on making [i]good but situational[/i] items. [b]Problem[/b] And then HOW came out, and they watched the guardian choices. First Etheric Light upgrades, VOG weapons. Exotic Shard upgrades: Gally, IB. Then they watched Skolas burn become the [b]required[/b] LFG strategy. Most guardians’ choices were made by pure power; upgrading weapons that the developers did not design with the intention of begin upgradeable. It makes perfect sense and breaks the game. Bungie cannot adjust those weapons. They can't take the uniqueness out of existing exotics. They can't go back and nerf old primaries that only their most dedicated players have. [u]But they also cannot design content that achieves the same level of difficulty between two distinctly different player groups, those that have and those that do not.[/u] They need to have a conversation where they admit that a fundamental design aspect of their weapon system, a progression curve, is required. It is required by them; to remove the mistakes of the past. The mistakes that make you love that weapon the most. It is also required for other design goals. You need to look forward to new drops; you can’t do that if your old weapons are always better. You need to clear out your vault and character slots; they did not anticipate or design the backend for gota-collect-them-all. They need to add really cool unique effects that they don't have to design around for the next three expansions. Sure, they could go through a herculean effort, buff everything and alter the backend. Make monsters work out by simply dialing up to 11 and altering the fundamental design of year two. But redoing underlying systems and stats for everything takes away from adding new stuff. And new is far more important. Destiny 2 is in the works, fundamental redesigns go there. They don’t go in the next expansion, even if it’s a big one. The fact that they are not having a conversation about the weapon curve... That frankly they are not good at having any conversation about development, is a problem. Hopefully they figure it out.

TL;DR: This post is so full of entitlement and degradation you'll want to gag. This isn't sending anyone feedback. It's a list of grievances and ransom demands with nothing to ransom. You're calling the upcoming DLC nothing more than window dressing for $20 when you clearly know from ViDocs and promotions there are missions strikes and at the very least a raid.

You are wasting your time. Bungie is currently so full of themselves that they probably think every small crap they push out is pure gold and as long as we keep paying for it they will be right. Do you really believe the bu//shi+ they keep pushing on us that they are players too and that they listen to us in a meaningful way? They don't care one flipping bit! As long as the money keeps rolling in, the only reason they have to "listen to us" is when sales start to slow down. At that moment only, it becomes handy to have a passionate (and unpaid) group of players on the forums giving their design and feature ideas for free.

I feel Activision poisoned their once beloved souls

I hear what your saying and I agree, my big gripe is that the expansion is $40 and in UK its £40 now even I know that math doesn't work that's some greedy exploit on the UK guardians