Nice post, I completely agree with you. I'm excited for the Taken King. I'm ready for new weapons that I'll actually want and use. I'll still use my Fatebringer, VoC, and other raid weapons. I don't care that they'll probably do about 10% less damage than the new max attack level. I'm assuming the new attack level will be 400, but it could be higher since we know the new level cap will be at least 40.
The Fatebringer will still be great for arc burn which boosts damage by 300%. It will still do roughly 2.75x more damage than a new non arc weapon with 400 attack in that situation. People had no trouble using weapons with 300 attack when The Dark Below was released. Allowing us to ascend our weapons with etheric light was a double edged sword. They knew they didn't have worthy replacements for our weapons in the HoW so etheric light was kind of a band-aid solution. The problem is now people will expect to be able to do this again. I'm pretty sure etheric light wasn't part of their original plan. It feels like they just threw that together to appease us until The Taken King is released.
My takeaway from year one and what people need to realize is the last year has just been a trial run. Destiny is supposed to last for 10 years. There will be some growing pains, but I think 2.0 will be great. Bungie has always been great at capturing and analyzing gameplay data. They now have nearly 11 months of data to work with. The weapon rebalancing in 2.0 was developed using this data. Year two is their chance to learn from what worked and what didn't. Let's all forget about year one and move forward. I'm very optimistic about year two. We need to stop holding onto the past. A change could do us all some good.
Glad you liked the post. What you said were my exact thoughts. It seems people have forgotten that you will still have your weapons. They may have a bit reduced damage, but by no means will they be worthless.
I wonder what the new max attack will be. It started at 300 when 30 was the max. Then at 32 it was 331. At 34 it is 365. When dividing 31 by 300, I get 10.3 (repeating) percent. That is the percent increase from 300 to 331. When I multiply 331 by that same factor, I get 34.2. Round that down to 34 and add it to 331 and we get 365. So that appears to be the pattern with the limited data we have. Roughly a 10.3% increase for every 2 levels. If this pattern continued we would get the following pairs of level and max attack value. (36, 402), (38, 443), (40, 488).
If they round up instead of just dropping the remainder the values could be (36, 403), (38, 445), (40, 491). But who knows. They could change up the leveling formula completely. The level only increased by 2 in each of the expansions, but the Taken King will be a bigger update. It sounds like the weapon situation from 20 to 40 will be similar to 0 to 20. We will once again be using common and rare weapons and will need to meet the level requirement to equip them.
I also wonder how they will handle the transition from light to no light. Maybe armor with light can still be equipped to reach up to level 34, but you won't reach 35 until your base level hits 35. I doubt they will just disable light reducing everyone over level 20 down to level 20. I also can't see them having us level up from 20 to 35 using the same armor we're using now the entire way. I guess we'll find out soon.
Indeed we will find out soon. I predict this next dlc will form the future for destiny as a game franchise. If it fails, destiny as a game will do the same.