The guy who helped to create Loot 2.0 for Diablo 3----arguably the Gold Standard for loot system designs in loot games once tweeted this in response to Anthem's problems. [i]"The gamer is often his own worst enemy. If he figures out that he can get loot by standing in one place, and running around in a five foot circle over and over again.....he will do it. [b]Sometimes the developer has to step in and put a stop to this, to keep the gamer from destroying his own experience."[/b] [/i] This is one of those times. Letting people cling to loot and endlessly level it up is destroying the game, and destroying the experience of playing the game. Bungie has actually been VERY transparent in their efforts to explain how this is happening, and why retirement is necessary. The problem is that you have an irrationally angry minority of the community who just refuses to hear the truth. I've tried to explain in detail why it is necessary....and all I'm getting is called every name but the one my mother actually gave me. I'm trying to explain because I said 5 years ago that this would fail....and it failed in the way I said back then it would fail. [quote]A conversation needs to happen, you are taking away things that we had to invest time into, things that we had to grind for.[/quote] Those things need to be taken away...or the game dies. Its just that simple. If they don't you either become so powerful that you break the game. Or the loot has to be made so bland an uninteresting that you lose interest in it. ...and the bland-and-losing interest is where we are right now. The game isn't feeling boring and unrewarding because of bounties. Its because we're basically grinding for the same weapons over and over again because this is the only way Bungie can keep power creep out of the game. But its choking the life out of the game in the process.

You don't want a conversation, you want them to do what you say. If bnet was willing to have a conversation, bungie would offer up a dialogue. But that's not bnet. It's either do what we want or you're wrong

If the community can keep up the posts theyll be forced to acknowledge them eventually. What they're betting on is people will just go away if they ignore them long enough. That's bungies way of dealing with criticism.

They have to add a TON of new gear for this to work well enough.

Nothing is being “taken away”. Whatever is in your vault and your inventory now isn’t going to disappear in Sept. it will still be there. You can still equip it and fire it just like you did before. Most of the community won’t even feel the difference. Every Destiny population site says the same thing: the overwhelming majority of players don’t play anything other than basic Crucible, the strike playlist, and the open world zones. Sunsetting literally changes nothing about their gameplay. They can happily use their weapons and armor until the servers shut down. End game players will feel it most, but I’d argue a significant number of us are bored to tears because Bungie can’t release weapons better than what we already have that we would ever bother using without power creep. No one really gives a crap about new and interesting perks or weapons. We’ve had those: Demolitionist, Osmosis, Martyrs Retribution, Etc. The only one people ever cared about was Vorpal Weapon because it was the only one that directly increased damage. We need a weapon and perk clean slate. Desperately. Right now there’s never any reason not to use Recluse as a primary. There’s never any perk that matters outside of Kill Clip/Rampage/Outlaw.

I’m being nitpicky, but MOST of the community isn’t against sunsetting. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of crap if the forums about sunsetting, but keep in mind that’s only the forums. Other sites where Destiny talk happens have differing opinions on this, and while I’m sure lots don’t like sunsetting, it’s likely not most of the players. I mean look at Twitter and YouTube, many people on those platforms are in favor of sunsetting, but places like the forums and reddit are full of people opposed to sunsetting. I know I’m disregarding other social media sites, but those are the 4 most prevalent. So I’d say it’s almost a 50 50 split, but I guarantee most of the player base is neither in favor of sunsetting nor against.

there has been a conversation, you just weren't listening.

It happened in D1 as wel. And litterally no one cared about it after a month.

They are only saying your current stuff will not be upgradeable. They are not saying you won’t be able to grind for the same stuff again but with higher stats. They just did that to us. History shows they are going to recycle everything and let us grind for it again. You gotta stop caring about Destiny so much because Bungie doesn’t care as much as the players do.

Just change “most of the community” to “most of the same complainers” on the forums.

Don’t let forum posts fool you. I’ve said it before but the active playerbase is about 800k in pve. It’s absurd to say the majority is against it when there hasn’t been a single post to get 8000 likes aka 1% of the active community. The other very clearly telling part is aside from destiny content creators, no one is actually covering the “outrage.” Perfect example: where’s my yongyea video? If bungie is screwing up he is ALWAYS on top of it with a video about Bungie, Destiny, or the community outrage. So far theres been nothing outside of the streamers, youtubers, and couple gaming outlets that actively cover D2. This isn’t a major subject. It’s armor 2.0 all over again. People will whine and complain that bungie don’t know what they’re doing and forget in a month to continue playing the content.

You never HAD to grind for anything. You can keep your curated mindbenders, Or go for the one with Quickdraw. YOU chose to grind, so this is YOUR fault.