With one of Luke Smiths SoTG posts he talked about how legendaries have a "forever" problem, and he tried to use powercreep as an excuse as to why they will be capping the power on older items. Here is why it is bad at least in my eyes, and possibly solutions that could reach a middle ground without disrespecting player time investment. Why its bad.... Firstly, if they intend on retiring all older gear this will heavily impact the overall replay-ability of content, for example if they took Midnight Coup and power capped it then Leviathan has now lost replay-ability because the gear is power capped and will penalise you for using it in newer activities. Why would I go for a particular weapon in a raid only to use it in patrols and strikes? Following the general things that happened with Worthy I also will be lower in power for the newer content just for using it, not even just for raids, Trials and Iron Banner. Secondly, if this will effect raid loot or any loot then you make the investment into getting a weapon redundant as you will farm for a particular weapon only for it be power capped after a year. Why would I spend time going after a particular gun just for it to be power capped after 12-15 months? This also ties into RNG, what if I wanted a god roll weapon and somehow got unlucky enough not to get one before that time is up? What if someone doesn't have enough time to put in to get enough drops of a particular loot drop to get that god roll? Again, it will waste the time investment of players for grinding for particular loot. What if someone joins later into a year and goes for an older gun just to realise they only got a couple of weeks left before it gets capped? Thirdly, for the argument that you can use it in older content still most of that older content is redundant and will be made even more redundant with their loot also being retired. So, the only main places the gear will matter after retirement is Strikes, Patrol, Crucible and Gambit. Forges, Menagerie and Reckoning will be made redundant to play as their loot is capped and I doubt many people will want to farm for a god roll spare rations or Austringer just to use it in 4 places in the game that are pretty unrewarding as they stand at the moment. Finally, the real kicker is when it comes near to the end of a weapons "lifespan" is that the activities associated with it will be a ghost town, as no-one will really be spending time on a weapon that is about to be power capped and the only people that might do that are those that really want the weapon for some reason. For those that try to use the "MMO" mechanic argument I'll explain why its a bad argument, for an MMO when new content is released along with new gear these new items are usually higher in their stats and damage output than older items. This naturally makes older gear less useful in newer content as they aren't as strong as the newer items, with Destiny the newer gear isn't stronger than the older gear its only that the older gear has been artificially capped so that newer gear is forced into usage. Now, for where there could be some ideas to reach a middle ground with weapon retirement. I personally don't mind very specific weapons being retired if they are very powerful or way too versatile, Recluse comes to mind as a weapons that is way too versatile of a weapon and a bit too strong that I think that it would be a reasonable venture to retire Recluse specifically. However, there is a counter argument I would like to make in the case of why Recluse shouldn't be retired... just to play devils advocate here. The main question that comes to mind is why is Recluse way too versatile? I think that the reason why Recluse is very strong in the majority of content is because after D1 it seems Bungie has decided to do away with encounter balancing... take a minute to look and realise in almost all content enemies will spawn within relatively close range allowing Recluse to really shine, then you can tack on that since we a quite tanky in Destiny 2 if the enemies spawn within a range a little out of Recluses effective range then you can easily close the distance without much of a sweat. For Destiny 1, raids in particular took advantage of using geometry and enemy placement and range along with raid mechanics to get you to switch up your loadout for specific encounters. Let's take a look at Kings Fall and primaries specifically for example. For Totems and Warpriest you would notice that most people would be using a hand cannon as their primary this is because in these encounters enemies are in a bit closer range to the player allowing for handcannons to be really useful within these encounters. Then with Golgoroth and the rest of the raid there is a fundamental shift in how the encounters are balanced, with Golgoroth specifically you will tend to see people use things like scout rifles as the enemies that spawn in Golgoroth will be at range and you will have to remain in some form of cover otherwise Golgoroth will quickly melt you with his beam. This changes how you engaged combat for just a singular encounter by implementing different elements that could make this effect work. Now off the Recluse tangent and back to how there could be a middle ground for weapon retirement. As I covered earlier I am personally fine with weapons that are way too versatile to be retired. But retiring weapons that are just viable but not exceptionally strong is stupid because when you try to retire that loot the argument of "power creep" it just doesn't make any sense or hold up. For weapons like Midnight Coup for example this weapon is viable but not exceptionally strong and it would be pointless to retire it because its a viable weapon not a way too versatile weapon. I think another way you can get around the issue of older loot is by making the newer gear give particular bonuses within the new activities, sort of like activity specific gear if you will. For example, lets do something D1 did with raid weapons where they had an intrinsic perk that would benefit within the raid and perhaps a little outside of it. For example the VoG weapons came with the Oracle Destroyer intrinsic perk that allowed the raid weapons to do more damage to oracles in the raid which could incentivise the use of that loot for that particular activity. Now, you would get around the issue of having to keep this loot around in your vault forever by the activity eventually getting lower in power level compared to players current level and this would phase out those weapons bonuses naturally and will make the current weapons be much better in that activity. But lets put this into a thing in Destiny 2 like Sundial for instance, lets say the difficulty of legend sundial is jacked up a bit and the boss becomes an actual threat with its special attacks. Would you grind for a sundial weapon that has the intrinsic perk or an actual extra rollable perk that would allow you to disrupt the Psion and prevent his powerful attacks? In this sense you can have new items that are very good to use in the new content because they directly benefit within that content, this could also be expanded upon with a Gambit Prime like set bonus and allow for different benefits for equipping multiple pieces of the activity gear. Then you can get into the actual weapons themselves, make the weapons have unique little effects or new perks that would make the weapon a nice little thing to mess around with for "funsies" and that is a way that you can get people to try out new weapons and they might particularly like that weapon and how it functions and they can still use it in the new content without any drawbacks to that actual weapon but they will possibly want to go for the new loot since it will directly benefit within the newer content. TL;DR There really isn't a TL;DR for all this info besides the simple line of... There is other solutions that don't disrespect player investment into weapons and still incentivise usage of newer gear.