Who's telling you you HAVE to grind things over and over again? Unless you're wanting to do grandmasters, trials, or master vog, power level really doesn't matter, and for trials the artifact doesn't even matter. The power leveling system isn't great, but it's pretty similar to d1. And for the story you have to do one astral alignment and one shattered realm a week? That's like less than 30 minutes of play time per week. And astral alignment has different encounters each time while shattered realm rotates weekly, so they're not even the same every time. You don't have to grind, so if you don't want to, then don't, and just play what you want. But if you're not willing to grind, you're not the type of player who can be playing endgame content like gms and master vog.

again i’d prefer to do all the content in the game without it taking me obscene amounts of time to be the correct level. you have to no life this game to be high level. and i’d like to be able to play other games. i can balance progression in all my other games but if i start trying to grind destiny i find myself spending hours for 1 weapon or 1 power level. and i am stuck doing specific activities to get those. if i wanna play a story mission and get some rewards i can’t. in d1 i could play a story mission throw some music on and when i was done i’d have enough legendary marks to by a weapon roll of my choice from any vendor i chose at high power. i don’t see why that’s such a difficult thing to make reward progression streamlined through different game modes while simultaneously not making it feel like a chore. They did it well in destiny 1 and to this day i prefer the overall game design over d2. obviously d1 had its issues. but it always felt fun and never like a task.

You could never go up in power/light by buying vendor gear, so I don't know what you're talking about

by year 3 you could get 385 light gear from every vendor. you can go and check that to this very day if you want .