Yeah probably what I’ll do, I’ll wait to buy the new expansion till it goes on sale and comes with a booster or something so I can play through the story aspect with my kid and if I find it fun i’ll stick around after. Thanks for the thoughtful reply btw. I am complaining but only because I am hopeful for a bone to be thrown to us who don’t have the time to invest in the game like others do. I played destiny 1 after TTK came out and basically just played through the story and some strikes with friends. I got a bit more involved during Warmind and actually collected and chased some of the faction armor and weapons which was actually kinda fun or me. So when Forsaken dropped and all of a sudden it takes so much longer to do anything it was a complete turn off. Anyway best of luck and thanks again.

It's more about the nature of gameplay loops and how different types of gamers enjoy, or see value in those different loops, imo. Some people would prefer not having any power climb associated with their game experience. They would like to hop in, and only play what and how they want. They want to be able to more or less have access to all their loot rewards, instantaneously and forever from the moment they get their reward to the moment they decide they don't want to play the game anymore. And some games not only provide that for people, but actively promote those characteristics. Take fighting games for instance. You play the game, you unlock the different characters, and once unlocked, regardless of new arenas or new characters being added, the availability of previously unlock characters never changes. You can unlock and use the new characters, but if you feel like it, you can also choose your original bread and butter, characters and just enjoy the gameplay without continued effort to maintain those characters. Those games are fun and can be quite a fulfilling game play experience. But they are not the only games or game designs that people enjoy. There are and have been several games that focus on a constant evolution of the characters. That require constant tweaking, and striving for min/maxing alterations to your original character. WoW is a great example of the min/maxing, constant tweaking and evolution of your characters through added effort. Found in doing daily quest/bounties, as well as, playing new content that ranges in difficulty and overall daily engagement, to maintain your characters' overall effectiveness. With the Destiny universe, it is my belief that Bungie has attempted to combine these two types of gameplay experiences. And I think a lot of community issues addressed here and other forums, are simply the two different types of preferred gameplay systems butting heads. Like I said before, many just want to hop on use the rewards rng has blessed them with and find it, "tedious," to constantly tweak their characters. Others want to be able to constantly tweak their characters. Many of these players don't mind doing daily bounties or running the same strike or raid 100 times to gain what is needed to do that tweaking. And to be fair, the tweaking game was introduced in D1. You had more options to make your guardian more capable of fairly specific things. You could change small things with your supers/abilities. And strike specific loot, provided an opportunity to grind 1 particular strike and eventually get that piece of loot. Seemingly, Activision saw the min/maxing aspect of D1, as a barrier to entry, for a certain percentage of gamers, and directed Bungie, to remove those barriers. And Bungie did. And we got vanilla D2. And I say Activision, because the direction of the game going forward, without Activision involvement, seems to be going back to more of the D1 style of game. And while personally, I'm thrilled and excited for the future of the Destiny universe, I can see why those that joined the game when those barriers or need for constant tweaking, wasn't as prevalent, blaming Bungie for ruining the game they initially enjoyed. By adding cores in Forsaken, I think Bungie new the split from Activision was an eventual reality, and they were laying the groundwork for what was going to come after the split. Sorry for the rather long comment. It isn't necessarily just a direct reply to you, but everyone in this community that might read it. The difference in what people enjoy in gaming, is what drives the two different sides of almost all the posts on this forum. I think Bungie has done a decent job of trying to appeal to both types of gamers. But I also know that Luke Smith and others at Bungie played a lot of WoW back in the day. And many of their gameplay/design decisions reflect the enjoyment of WoW game systems. And being an ex WoW junkie myself, I really enjoy those systems, so in turn enjoy the direction they are taking their game. Again, sorry for length of this. Have a great day, and good hunting to you Guardian! 😎

[quote][quote]Even if they did make the pvp for esports.(which they didn't, becomes obvious they didn't when you realize they left out the biggest essentials for an esport to their biggest market of players)[/quote] You mean dedicated servers as the essential? That's the only thing I can think of. The only reason for static rolls was pvp balance. That's the only way to truly balance the weapons: make them all the same. [/quote] And 60 fps, the bare essentials. And balance can be achieved with random rolls. It's just easier to do with everything being the same. [quote][quote]Even [quote]What about the other 95% of th game?[/quote] Material grind. [quote]You can't base the entirety of your argument over a perceived understanding of a single aspect of the entire game[/quote] That wasn't a "perceived understanding", it was stated by the devs. My initial statement didn't just mention pvp. [quote]I don't quite understand how the raid was designed for esports[/quote] Revive tokens limit chances to clutch encounters. They made synchronicity mechanics a more needed element and removed "hero moments". It's win or wipe. D1 raids were more finishable if someone went down, and you could pick people up more. [/quote] there were 0 revives in hard mode And unlimited in normal mode. What we have now is middle ground. With those changes in revives there's a change in mechanics. [b] D1 raids had to facilitate the fact that if someone died they could not be revived. [/b] Less esporty than D1. [quote][quote] Or the removal of light level advantages was designed in iron banner for esports(realistically those playing esports will be max light and not have issues with rng affecting their leveling)[/quote] Right. They initially did away with light advantages, but that's not what Iron Banner was. It was light advantage, but then they added advantages back, then nerfed the advantage given. You can't have competitive Iron Banner with light advantages because the team with the highest light automatically wins (or more than likely would have before they nerfed it).[/quote] Evening the playing field is and isn't esporty Levels the playing field for more fair competition, and allows the casuals a better chance to compete. [quote][quote] I don't get how being in a clan gave you access to raid gear without having to do the raid.[/quote] That was actually a good thing. I think it was a way to "trade" but since we don't have actual trading the clan could do something and clanmates got the extras. Since everything had static rolls it wasn't a bad thing. I really don't see why people complained about the "raid gear" drop from Hawthorne. If people didn't want clanmates getting gear why are they in a clan?[/quote] Community hated it [quote][quote] I don't get how the changes made to the nightfall was designed to be an esport[/quote] They added scoring. They made a card with modifiers and handicaps to see who can get the highest score. High scores for what? [spoiler]Leaderboards.[/spoiler] [/quote] This was requested by the community. And we'll received in d1. Not an esports/comp change.

Tokens and faction rep are the same thing Tokens just have the ability to be transfered from character to character

[quote] Not for me. [/quote] Endgame for the community as a whole. If thats not your end game, that is fine, but for the majority, it was stuck behind ever verse. [quote] No, it wasn't free. The clan had to beat the raid. How many duplicates do you think people who did the raids have? How many times did people say "I wish we had trading."? I know I would have given weapon duplicates to clanmates no questions asked. The Hawthorne engram allowed that to happen, but it was still RNG so nothing was guaranteed. [/quote] You say its not free, but then you're saying how you would have [b]"given"[/b] weapons away and that Hawthorne made it happen. Soo... Ugh... So did Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, or was it Robin Hood and the poor stole from the rich?. Getting raid drops for not doing a raid. Think about it. [quote] Not at all. "Endgame" gear isn't that valuable. Grinding materials and bounties over and over for nothing was boring, then being forced to do things to "progress" is what made the population plummet, not because Johnny Quickplay got Midnight Coup from his clanmates.[/quote] There was like only 3 legendary weapons worth getting which most of the players just got from Hawthorne for free. What were players being forced to do again? Everything was streamlined so players were not forced to something that they didnt want to. The result of that was that it made the game boring. Players that dont even touch PVP quit the game. Material economy had no purpose. You can literally acquire EVERYTHING by just playing Patrol only and being in a clan. Have you not followed D2 from day one? The community articles, the TWAB?! Im done. Have a nice day.

It would be ok if the armor was worth infusing but D2's armor is blahhh compared to D1's, I would've thought it would be better but not worth the grind in my opinion, I am still rocking and infusing season 6's IB gear lol and I have dismantled each piece of season 7's IB (y1) armor for shards :P

[quote]Masterworking weapons/gear is 'meaningful'. Leveling weapons/gear is not 'meaningful', it is necessary to progress toward the "endgame content".[/quote] 100%.

Why would any bit of hype include a consumable material? Thats kinda dumb