I guess your reaction to this will depend on your perspective. Do you prefer the journey or the destination? Some people just want to be level 30 (or whatever the cap is). They get there as quickly as possible and hate every moment they are not there yet. I'm the opposite. I enjoy the journey involved in loot-based games such as Destiny, Borderlands, Diablo, etc. I actually don't enjoy being at the level cap. That means I have nothing else to strive for. There are no new weapons or armour I can find that will be better than what I already have and I cannot improve the ones I have any further. That's when I lose the urge to keep playing the game. As other people have pointed out, without the option to re-upgrade our exotics they would be dismantled the second you found a new one otherwise be taking up inventory space. As it is now, I can relatively quickly up the stats on my current exotics so that I can keep up with the new higher level baddies until I've fully equipped myself with new legendaries and exotics. I find all this talk about "having to start over from scratch" a bit silly. Starting over from scratch would entail taking all of your exotics away and making you go find new ones. You still have them, you just now have the choice to re-upgrade them to get the stats up to the new max. If you don't want to, then don't. Replace them when you acquire new ones.