It's an archaic system left over from a time when Destiny was attempting to be more like an RPG. Now that we've had it for 10 years, I feel confident in saying that it is wildly outdated and only serves as a time gate for pinnacle content. Since the fact that your power is always brought up to 5 less than the highest in the fireteam, your personal power rarely matters. Power level doesn't even matter in most activities in the game. Raising your power level doesn't even take skill, just patience and luck. It doesn't even increase your power. I guarantee that if it were removed and there was some sort of lore thing that "dampened" your power, and you needed to grind xp to level up your artifact to overcome the dampening effect, it would feel no different than it does now. All the current implementation of power level actually does is time gate the few activities where power level actually matters. It serves no other practical purpose [i]for the player[/i] and is just a waste of time.