There's a lot of ways I want to describe this season, but the best word I could use to describe this season is disappointing. However, I'll try to make this criticism as constructive as possible. For Bungie, please take this criticism as something to consider for future seasons. There were so many mistakes done this season that I believe it's in your best interests to not repeat them again. For the community, you can share your own thoughts on this too. Try not to kill each other in the comments though; that's the Architects' job. Ok, with introduction finished, here is my two cents with this season. Everything is in spoilers to hopefully make it easier to read. [b]Seraph Towers:[/b] [spoiler]This was easily one of the biggest disappointments with this season. Not only did you not learn from Escalation Protocol's lack of matchmaking, but the rewards for actually completing this were a joke. There was nothing exclusive to this that I couldn't get from bounties, legendary lost sectors, clearing the bunker, or through the season pass. I only ever needed to complete this twice, or even just once if I had waited until later in the season: once for the seasonal quest, and another for the seal. I ultimately didn't participate in the community event for the first step of Felwinter's because there was almost no incentive for me to bother. What little incentive I did had shrunk when it was made more difficult upon releasing the final triumph needed for Almighty (a flawless Seraph Towers run). Wasn't too difficult overall with the right loadout, and it was easiest on the Moon when it was Hive, but I felt like I went back in time to Season 3 when EP required 6+ Guardians on average to complete. Even after the difficultly got nerfed a bit for Felwinter's event I still couldn't bring myself to play this event again even once. So there was no matchmaking, the difficulty didn't match the rewards, the loot wasn't exclusive to this particular event, and said loot was easier to obtain elsewhere.[/spoiler] [b]Legendary Lost Sectors:[/b] [spoiler]This was better in concept than in practice. This probably varies between players, but I didn't personally like the idea of shoving multiple champions into lost sectors especially with the crappy set of champion mods this season. Valkyries were also pretty pointless since Champions would just eat them, but at least the heavy frames were decent (even if they were just reskinned Ogres). Requiring 1000 Light right off the bat was annoying too, but not unbeatable with the right set up. Just like Seraph Towers though, the rewards were lackluster because there were easier ways to obtain them, so even if the activity itself was or wasn't challenging. The only real reward for doing this was for Fourth Horseman, which was tied to just the Quarry LS, and potentially its catalyst. This probably would've been worth grinding if there were actual exclusive rewards to these activities.[/spoiler] [b]Seasonal Artifact:[/b] [spoiler]The fourth and columns were the only columns with decent mods to choose from. The champion mods this season were loathsome. Both anti-barrier mods were trash for being stuck on close range weapons when AB champions are still too dangerous to get close to with pea shooting primaries. I almost entirely relied on Erianna's Vow for AB champions because it was the only AB weapon with good range and damage. Unstoppable rounds were only available on handcannons again. I wish it was a different weapon this season instead of a repeat, but at least it did its job. The solar stagger mod was nice though since every class had access to ranged melee at this point. Overload rounds continued to be a joke, especially with the new champions this season. If it was on an automatic weapon, barring Divinity, then overload rounds were a pain to proc because they the champions would often teleport in the very short moment disruption kicked in. Handcannon and sidearms were somewhat better since it was a bit more forgiving getting disruption to proc. Swords weren't too bad either, though Overload Captains still had a habit of playing tag if you didn't stun them before the teleported out of your range. The Overload arc grenades were by far the best mod to combat these champions since there was no wind up BS that overload champions could exploit and the disruption lasted the entire duration of the grenade instead of a fraction of a weapon's mag. [b]Seriously, just buff overload rounds to last the whole mag when continuously firing and they'd actually be good.[/b] These mods wouldn't have been so bad had they finally been available on special weapons (3 seasons in and only one champion mod was available for a heavy with the shortest range) or stayed on more medium ranged weapons. This double primary system for endgame content has long outlived its stay if you ask me, especially when it [i]still[/i] renders most exotics pointless.[/spoiler] [b]Champions:[/b] [spoiler]You managed to make Champions even more obnoxious. Overload Captains became the enemy to surpass Taken Captains for sheer teleportation spam, and AB Servitors could shield other ads near indefinitely while also being able to shield and heal themselves for [b]MAXIMUM STALLING[/b]. I can't recall if AB Servitors can shield each other, but considering normal Servitors can then this wouldn't surprise me if they did. I suppose an AB Servitor is less annoying on its own than say a Hobgoblin or Colossus, but the continuous shielding of other ads needs to have some kind of cooldown going forward. Doesn't have to be a long cooldown, but it shouldn't be able to last minutes on end. Overload Captains wouldn't problematic if Overload rounds got the buff I proposed in the previous section[/spoiler] [b]Seasonal Gear/Mods:[/b] [spoiler]The armor wasn't too bad looking admittedly, or at least the ornaments were good looking for the most part. I was mixed on the weapons though. >The auto rifle isn't half bad tbh. Decent perks and pretty consistent even though it lacks in pvp. SMG and LMG aren't half bad either because of their perk pools. >The handcannon is a 180 so a mag increase perk/mod is pretty much mandatory; haven't used it enough to give a good opinion of its perks though. >The sidearm has some fun perks but nothing special. Same goes for the shotgun, though it feels like the shotgun has a smaller range than others. The Warmind cells were one of the very few upsides season if you ask me. A lot of fun and creative builds are possible and I hope to experiment with them more. Shame they're mostly restricted to the seasonal weapons though.[/spoiler] [b]Bounties:[/b] [spoiler]There was [b][i]way too much[/i][/b] reliance on them this season. To upgrade the bunkers I had to grind bounties until I eventually stored up enough bits from playlist activities to substitute them. The weapon bounties required a currency best obtainable from doing even more bounties. Then we had Guardian Games which was, you guessed it, a bounty grind event! I was completely burnt out on doing these damn things after the first 3 weeks, and I'm sure more people got burnt out faster than I.[/spoiler] [b]Guardian Games:[/b] [spoiler]This is probably the worst thing that came out of this season. A class competition to see who can spam bounties and kill quests better than anyone. [b][i]Seriously?[/i][/b] Aside from the exotic machine gun, the only other incentive to participate was for bragging rights which didn't mean much when most people weren't having fun with the event as a whole. >We didn't get an event activity of any kind; even reused content like the Infinite Forest would've been better than nothing. >Medal potency/count was heavily skewed not just because of how the medals were weighted, but because medals were per character rather than per account too. Ironically, the former tried to keep balance when it instead created imbalance, and the latter created potential balance where imbalance is [i]actually[/i] meant to occur. Both of these working together ruined any sense of competition which led to the landslide we witnessed over those three weeks. On the bright side, at least medals being character based made it easier to get the weapon. >Doubling down on bounties when people were burning out on them pretty much ruined any reason to play beyond getting the exotic. Top it all off with bounties and/or medals either requiring laurels, which required ability kills, or kill enemies using certain subclass trees or in certain activities. Hmmm, that doesn't sound repetitive [i]at all[/i], does it? >Why are we wasting time competing against each other while a planet sized tuning fork is on a direct course for our planet? Oh, right, it's all filler. The very least you could've done was make it relevant to the season by making us do tow- [i]on second thought, maybe I'll give this a pass.[/i] Ultimately Titans were given a double whammy since they were the most proficient with ability kills and the medal potency was in their favor. They still earned first fair and square, though it feels like a hollow victory in the grand scheme of things. To end my cynicism here before it consumes me, I highly encourage Bungie to [i][b]never[/b][/i] make an event made similar to Guardian Games ever again. [/spoiler]I may have been a bit harsh here but I feel it was mostly deserved. Anyways, that sums up my criticism of this season. There was a lot of negativity to discuss but I hope this is taken as constructive criticism even if it seems harsh. This season was more than Curse of Osiris levels of disappointing in terms of content, and perhaps overall too. I want to say this means it can only go up from here, but it's not something I believe is worth saying, at least for now. Edit: [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/256229185?sort=0&page=0&path=1]Added addendum.[/url]