I'm not 100% sure if this follows code of conduct #9 "Compromising the player experience by circulating spoilers, hacks, or cheats." even after reading the explanations of the code of conduct. so a bit of warning for those who don't want the above so Recently i've been hearing alot about these rumored/leaked "changes" to powerlevel where people are saying that Bungie just plans to straight remove gear level from the game. I'm really hoping this isn't true as powering up gear is what made destiny... well destiny. if you remove it, it really just becomes another looter shooter. Not only that but removing that powering up gear and power level IMO could damage the game more than it helps it. to quote a comment i made on the video in the link section: "I personally don't like these changes. Not only is increasing your power via gear something they've had since D1 but also essentially removing power level makes alot of content redundant. Gambit will lose alot of players as people wont play it anymore for that pinacle (hell some people don't even play it now even though it gives a pinacle), there would be no point in rerunning dungeons and raids that you've already done and got loot for, vanguard strikes will be pointless as you can just run nightfalls, weekly story missions will be pointless once you've done all of them each week, running the seasonal activities will pretty much be pointless outside of triumphs. not only are those an issue but knowing bungie with fixed difficulty somethings are either going to be really easy or so hard that they feel impossible. while i agree powerlevel needs a rework and could have a lot of improvements (the sharing powerlevel across characters is a nice one) essentially completely removing it is in my opinion a horrible idea that is just going to damage the game in the long run as all future content will feel like the same difficulty and will not show or allow the player to feel any increase in their power at all." bungie, if you read this please don't remove powerlevel and don't make things fixed difficulty. Alot of players play destiny for that increase in power and to feel like they are getting stronger with each new gear piece. While I do agree it could use some improvements, completely removing it is not really a solution as it will just cause alot of content to become redundant or potentially outright impossible, annoying or boring to run. Continue on with the gear power level stuff but make improvements to that system instead of scrapping it all together. if you want people to use other characters more often, let them infuse the armors from different classes into another class, don't make them go through the whole stories again that they've already done on another character just to access classes, gear and content. if you want to add a challenge to destiny introduce new mechanics and game modes, make bosses in certain strikes have champion capabilities (for example boss collosuses can put up barriers and incindior bosses are classed as unstoppable) and make more content on/around the level of master and grandmaster nightfalls. if you want people to be able to use sunsetted weapons in harder content again allow them to infuse weapons into them instead of limiting their power. as mentioned above removing powerlevel could severly damage the game but not only for existing players but for new players as well, a new player just starts the game and starts walking about the world, they see a raid (not knowing what a raid is) and sees they can attempt it, so they go in to try and then get met by enemies worth 6 guardians and mechanics which to them will make no sense. so they leave the raid, a bit annoyed and instead decide to go to one of these dungeons instead, yet again they get met by enemies worth 3 guardians and mechanics they don't understand. so they leave again even more annoyed, so finally they go to do nightfalls, sure they get matched up with other players but they still get absolutely destroyed constantly by the enemies because they don't really know how to play the game. this pushes them over the edge and as such they quit the game. or maybe they do find a fireteam for a raid or a dungeon to help carry them through, being a new player they probably won't be super good at the game, and won't understand whats going on. The average LFG fireteam will get annoyed and boot this unlucky blueberry from the team to find someone who does atleast know the basics of the game, this yet again annoys the blueberry and they quit the game. New players are already quitting destiny because the new light experience is bad and they have no idea what they are doing, (my dad has been struggling with how warlock jump works and i've had multiple friends quit because they just have no idea what to do). so people not knowing how the game works going into this harder content isn't out of the picture. Not only will that be an issue but making things fixed difficulty will make certain things way harder for other players. for example the shattered throne flawless run or pit of heresy flawless run, petras run or even first time raiders. People are going to complain that the content is either too easy or too hard purely dependant on their experience in destiny. people will get bored at playing the same strikes over and over and over again with no difference in difficulty, and with how matchmaking is in crucible (my friend just got matched with a team that he absolutely destroyed) people still get annoyed at it cause they get matched with people they just stand no chance against (or they get matched against people who they absolutely destroy in a fight). people will lose that feeling of growing stronger as time passes and they play the game as everything in the same section (strikes, raids, dungeons) from now till destiny ends will just be static difficulty. and while yes there are benefits to removing powerlevel, i personally don't see them being beneficial enough to warrant the downsides, the benefits i can currently think of are: better accessibility for new players (though mentioned in a point above about new players going into content they aren't ready for, accessibility does not always mean a good thing) honestly thats all i can think of. finally will be the players who will be very annoyed at this change. I know from myself and many others that when bungie started vaulting, sunsetting and boosting players power levels back at the end of forsaken that me and many others quit the game as we felt that our time invested in destiny was just thrown out as if it meant nothing, all our work from increasing our power just gone as if it never existed. now this is happening again but on a wider and way worse scale and honestly if they go through with this I feel like people will quit again as yet again it would feel like their work in increasing their powerlevel would be for nothing and that their time invested in the game wasn't worth anything. in conclusion I believe that this is a horrible idea by bungie as there are other solutions to problems they are facing than just removing one of the core things that makes destiny, destiny and differentiates it from other looter shooters. (again solutions include: allowing infusion of armors from across classes (allow infusion of an 1800 hunter piece into a warlock piece) or find a way to allow the characters to share power and don't make players run through stories again to unlock things they have on other characters, make more content with a variety of difficulty rather than just making all content a fixed difficulty, potentially rework some of the content (example shattered throne) by adding new difficulties and loot to it or maybe changing the mechanics a bit so that new runs of these pieces of content are a new experience for all players and still have benefits to doing these runs in the form of new gear. and thats just a few examples.) if you (bungie) don't plan to remove powerlevel can you please address these leaks so that players stop speculating and arguing about this as i have seen multiple arguments covering this very topic . update: i thought of a way they could help reduce the pinnacle grind. they could make it so that the last 3 dungeons have a high chance to drop a pinnacle in their last encounter, every raid drops pinnacles in their last 2 encounters, legend difficulty+ nightfalls can drop pinnacles, crucible could drop a pinnacle every 3-5 matches, heroic public activities and patrols have a chance to drop pinnacles. Not only could this help reduce the grind but it could also give the players the feeling of "i want to do this" rather than "i need to do this" as it will let them choose what content they want to run, whether its nightfalls, crucible, dungeons, raids. giving players the choice of where they want to get pinnacles from could help with the grind problem (along with increasing the powergain/amount of pinnacles you get from activities)