I'm sorry, but I think you're the only one that wants FFXI levels of grind in Destiny. I know that I don't. Based off of the Beta, Legendaries aren't very hard to get, they just require some grinding- for example, the Legendary Vanguard weapons require about 175 Vanguard Marks. Nothing is challenging about obtaining Marks, it just takes a while to accumulate that many. Exotics however will be very rare and will probably have extremely low drop chances (possibly getting in to the less-than-one-percent level of rarity). Or you could grind for Strange Coins (and Strange Trinkets, which weren't in the Beta) to buy Exotics. It seems to me that there are two major paths to end-game gear- the RNG path where you can grind extremely low drop chances (e.g. Strike loot, valuable Engram farming), and the token-system path (e.g. Strange Coins, Crucible/Vanguard Marks) in which you can make definite, but small, steps of progress towards your ultimate goal. Having both of these paths will hopefully make Destiny's end-game accommodating to hardcore and infrequent players alike. EDIT: Leveling was dramatically sped up for Beta, up to 3 times faster than the real game according to some reports. It will probably take you the better part of Day 1 to hit Level 8 again. I doubt that anyone will hit 20 within the first two days.