You will never understanding because you never played in year 1, at least you were not (maybe you were using another account) very involved during that period. Yes there was grind, yes RNG was worse, but that made every drop feel special, now everything is served in a plate to us, 3 of coins removed the excitement you'd get from RNG, now all you really need to do is grind 3oC and you get an exotic, before, exotics were not common, XuR was seeked for every weekend, specially at the beginning, it was all new, all unknown, feeling of getting Fatebringer for the first time, or the Vex, or Ghorn, or the Ice Breaker etc... those things are now gone, everyone has basically everything, raid weapons are not special anymore, exclusivity of Vision of Confluence, Praedyths Timepiece etc, all those things are long gone, now it is all about rewards, not fun, people dont play for fun as they would have before. Sure you get your new shinny Ghorn for the first time and it will take you a couple of days to max it out, grinding for material, shards, xp, etc... but it made it all more special, not like now that all I have to do it put a few motes and my weapon is maxed out. So yes, we use to work much harder before, now everything is easy to obtain, RNG is not as evil as it use to be but still there are no new exciting weapons out there that can create the same y1 feeling, exotics dont really feel exotic anymore and crucible is unplayable for the most part with the lag that's going around... And was it less to do? I mean, in year 1 we had VoG, Crota the "glitchy", strikes, PoE, difficult Nightfalls, 3 heroics per character, etc etc. Sure now we have all that as well but, who is playing it? because very few are, people are going bananas playing WoTM trying to get the ship because honestly, they already have everything else. I remember back in VoG days running it only to get shards, nothing more, someone with Fatebringer was a lucky bastard, now after 1 week running WoTM I already had all the weapon, ALL OF THEM!!! Sure you might thing that's better but it isnt, since it makes you loose the will to do it again, and sooner or later you will get tired. Now I do agree that there has been good additions to y2 and y3 in regards making the game more complete, such as new crucible playlists, private matches, buying materials, bigger vault, etc, but in my opinion they have given us too much, now it is too easy, and there is very little challenge out there. Before getting to level 30 was exclusive to people doing the raid, most people out there were 28, you had to work really hard to get to level 30, it was a real grind, it could take you weeks or months to get there but when you got there the feeling was great... and exhausting. To be honest it is hard to explain unless you were around to see it, I am sorry for those new players who missed it though.