[quote]the dark below as we have been told will raise the light level to 32 , but what will this mean for our gear and how we reach it , I have come to only three possible ways it will happen : 1, they do nothing to all current items , and only the new raid gear from crota's end will see you to 32 , it seems likely , although this would be bad and cause them to receive ill will from the player base , as VoG raid gear and or the iron banner gear will be second class then , and vanguard'/faction /queens wrath gear next to worth less , and I mean what would that say for the future ? if we follow this way then when the reef raid from the house of wolves dlc that comes after crota's end in the TDB it will do the same to it , and then every raid added will trump the last and make them unnecessary to do or play . 2 , leave all gear at current levels unbuffed but allow the use of more than one exotic but likely no more than 2 3 buff the current non raid gear to allow you to reach 30 . and buff VoG / iron banner , allowing it to get you to 32 regardless of which raid you choose to do. [b]Edit[/b] for who message after , yes im aware this is an mmo despite bungie's adamant refutes of this being what destiny is , and I have played mmo's before , I and the clan I started hailed from Final fantasy 14 a realm reborn . it is the fact that I have played them that led to me doing this post , as mmo's as a rule allow much customized appearances by the player. I have laid out those three paths and hoped for one of the latter to happen because since I do not harbor hopes of them allowing FFXIV levels of character personalization that I came that , cause you can enjoy your look and make progession in these ways. want to keep your character using faction gear that makes them look like guardians from a nascar team , want your vanguard gear with rugged looks ranging from space marine to space Clint Eastwood ? option 3 would do that . 2 is I know unlikely but still , I wanted this to happen long before any concerns on the futures of light levels were raised by TDB , I still want the ability to have more than one exotic armor , to have the mask of the third man AND crest of alpha lupi on my hunter , the light beyond nemesis AND sunbreakers and so forth , same goes for weapons but that's something that needs a whole thread on its own. I want aesthetics AND the ability to further my characters , and I think most want that too[/quote] Or 4 demote all gear

I thought I saw somewhere they were going to add in upgrade materials for current gear, but I can't recall in all honesty. Really if they are going to make it so that only the raid gets you into the 30s then its BS. I would imagine it would be like now where non-raiders can get to level 31 1/4, but only those who raid can get to 32. While I think that is still a stupid system, if they still have everyone stuck at 29 and the only way you can get to 30-31 is by raiding, its complete crap. I can't imagine any other MMO style game gating the max level from the playerbase just because they don't play one component of end game content. I'm trying to imagine WOW saying, oh you didn't run these special dungeons, you can only be level 88 out of 90, lol. Such a broken system. Allow every one to be max level, but give those who do the raid some extra special perks on their gear so that a level 30 who did the raid will have higher health/defense and some extra perks that will still have them "better" than a normal level 30. This is how most of these games work, everyone can achieve the same end game level, but those who choose to play the hardmode endgame content like raids and dungeons get some extra perks and bells and whistles to separate them from the other max level players. Having this whole 30/29 disconnect just encourages elitism and is in all honesty a stupid system.

You're not the only one frustrated with updates. There have been several to annoy me: 1 - Drastically changing public event times, making it hard to get the daily public event shard bonus 2 - Once public event timers are fixed, daily ascendant shards/energy rewards go away 3 - Using ascendant energy/shards to fully upgrade many exotics right before they were no longer required (introduction of exotic shards) 4 - Introduction of exotic shards to upgrade gear. I sharded exotics to fully upgrade gear, then learned that the upgrades would be reset (deleting the shards) the next time xur comes around. Exotic shards should seriously have been postponed until the DLC came out and the new upgrade procedure with xur became available. 5 - Xur no longer selling engrams for motes of light. Vanguard quartermaster no longer doing material exchange. I have 300+ relic iron and piles of motes of light that I don't know what to do with now. 6 - Fully leveling up all of my gear for the dark below (albeit level 29, not 30) on three separate character classes...using tons of shards. Just to find out that that gear is now worth exactly 2 shards when I have to dismantle them It seriously is to the point that I dread updates now. I like the way things are done now with regards to upgrades, however a lot of unnecessary grinding could be prevented if bungie would either communicate better to the community or not rollout half baked upgrade plans. I now get to look forward to paying 2 exotic shards per exotic item that I currently have and countless hours of grinding, plus buy/grind for new armors. I honestly don't mind upgrading my existing gear, but I have a huge problem with the fact I get to start over on my exotics that I've already fully upgraded. I love the new content (and have no problem paying for it), but I'm starting to feel like I'm a beta tester again.

Hi im paul

LvL 32 cap loloool

The real problem is the cheapness of squeezing every bit of a waste of time. Lvl 30 s prior to update didn't need to farm the ascendant 2 times over just to reach 32. Another big big problem is you can only be a lvl 32 by playing against the computer thus making lvl 31 and 30 being the crucible bad ass. That returns us to the fake boosted lvl 50 s Era of "how much did your 50 cost" after lvl 32 nobody will play queens wrath or iron I mean why? So by only offering it in this raid the other raid is good for vex and fate bringer. How we screw the pooch with tunnel vision in a world to explore we resort to the guy in the office s ideas who made this no more adventurous then a side scroller and the arrow keeps blinking to go forward and we're on a 99 sec timer.

I means that doing the Vault of Glass for raid gear was a waste of time, since getting regular faction gear is enough to get you to 28 where you can start doing the hive gear.

Each subsequent DLC won't make the predecessor unnecessary to play. Here's why. Current max Raid is level 26 normal & 30 hard & allows you to earn gear that gets you to level 30. Crota Raid can be level 28 normal & 32 hard & allows you to earn gear that gets you to level 32, which means a level 29 like myself with 0 VoG gear would find the level 32 Raid far too difficult. Let's say that the Wolves Raid can be level 30 normal & 34 hard & allows you to earn gear that gets you to level 34. Let's use me for an example. Let's say I don't buy the Crota DLC & I never earn a single piece of VoG Gear or at least not enough to get me to level 30. So I'm a 29. I buy the Wolves DLC. I try to play normal (level 30). I will find it somewhat difficult, just like a level 29 currently feels while playing VOG hard. However, the game will rank the level 34 Raid as impossible & will not permit me to play it as there's a 5 level difference. That would motivate me to try to get to level 30 with VoG gear or be carried through the Wolves Raid normal to try to get gear to level up. But even with a 4 level difference, it would be very difficult. Thus not forcing me to buy the Crota DLC, while at the same time somewhat motivating me to do so. That keeps it relevant but technically doesn't force you to buy it. Edit: To add that the system I'm referring to doesn't allow you to skip more than 2 DLC purchases. In other words, for every 2 DLC that Bungie releases, you'd be in effect forced to buy one to be admitted into the 3rd DLC's Raid, if they even do more than 2. For this to work, they only need to actually raise the light level by 2 for each DLC.

I believe that even for future DLC's the raid gear will only give 1 light level above the other gear. Considering that Bungie said the raid is not supposed to be easy they know that with upcoming DLC's more and more players will not be able to keep up and will fall behind. That's not even mentioning any new players that might want to try Destiny down the road. All of those are potentially lost customers. Anyhow you should be able to play Crota's End normal mode without VOG gear and possibly get 3 pieces of level 32 gear. That should allow players to move to the hard mode and so on for all the following raids. They know that while recognizing the hardcore with 1 light level gear above everyone else at the same time they cannot afford everyone else giving up. Chances are if the trend continues with every DLC's there always be legendary gear available through regular gameplay at 1 light level below the raid gear which will enable all players to play the respective raid on normal. I don't think Bungie will force new players to go back and play the previous content in order to move forward. They will never get any new customers that way and more and more of the old customers will be left behind.

Yeah. No other mmo has ever made old gear obsolete. Nerf bungie!