I actually kind of see where you are going with this and it’s an interesting argument but it does kind of ignore the fact that power creep -is- a thing regardless of how you feel about it; it’s sort of the consequence to “Games as a service” even WoW is finally reigning their numbers in with their next expansion after 20 years xD reducing all their logistical numbers by half. Your point about Spare Rations is spot on, there are many HC that roll the same way and behave the same way and that was kind of my point as well about the “God Rolls” and pretty much everything wanting the exact same thing. If you remove, or change how, or what, that -thing- is, you create a healthier meta. Now of course this only works if Bungie releases some cool new perks in Beyond Light to compensate....but that remains to be seen. If this is executed well, the game will be much healthier, if they bung it up, it’s going to be the nail in the coffin for many people.

Here is my main issue with the idea of power creep in Destiny, Power Level is arbitrary. That is why I think power creep is non existent in Destiny. All items have fixed stats based on a variety of attributes, but power level doesn't actually affect them in any way. Our level only serves to add a +/- modifier in regards to the enemies we face. That means that something being OP is a balance issue and replacing it with something similar, doesn't actually fix any issues. So the idea that we need sun-setting to keep the game fresh doesn't make any sense. If gear had stats based on level, then yes, the only way to keep new gear in check would be to remove the old gear, but in Destiny, that actually doesn't change anything. We scale with our enemies and vice versa, so the stats on a gun are used as a baseline for that scaling. One spare rations is no more powerful than another at its core. So capping the infusion level doesn't mean you get rid of an issue with a good weapon of a certain archetype, that has a specific set of perks. It just means you have forced players to go and get another weapon with the same traits and a longer timer. Essentially, it's fools gold. And that makes investment in gear pointless. Why? Because anything you get in the next season, the very next season, that is close to what you got this season, is going to ultimately be "better". Not because of a stat change, but rather because it will be useful longer. So the only way to make sun-setting worthwhile(make the "new" weapons unique and worth switching to), defeats the whole point in the first place, as anything "new" that is even perceived as better, will naturally replace existing gear.

I actually stumbled across this epiphany in a segway to traditional “Service Gaming” when I realized the only way to actually kill their own problem was to revert to D1 Y1 where the item level mattered for each individual piece of loot and that Light was just an average of attack and defence. Maybe numbers need to be more influential and infusion was what committed the crime.