You know what kind of skill-enforced gate I'd like to see in Destiny?

A random chance for player death (or perhaps team wipe in certain activities) to result in loss of gear. Give those sunsingers a bit of pause before rushing on ahead without thinking.

I'm detecting some exasperation with my playstyle.

[Deus Ex] cannot be min maxed.

Mathematically impossible.

You know what kind of skill-enforced gate I'd like to see in Destiny?

A random chance for player death (or perhaps team wipe in certain activities) to result in loss of gear. Give those sunsingers a bit of pause before rushing on ahead without thinking.

That's dumb. Penalizing death is penalizing fucking around, which is one of the most beautiful things to do in this, or any game, and it's penalizing being bad.

Death is cheap. There's nothing wrong with that. One might contend, in response, that fucking around in certain competitive scenarios, that should be penalized. But my best fucking around was the whole party of Shoulder Chargers loading up into Skyshock and deciding to just weaponize Sparrows, and the runnerups would all be in Raids.

If you lose shit when you die a lot, then the people who suck aren't only going to have a harder time progressing than others (because they can't do things underleveled for earlier rewards, which allow faster leveling), they're actively going to be sliding backwards sometimes!

When you start getting punished for failure in a manner that's worse than the benefit you get from succeeding, then you have a fucking evil game. In Destiny, it's hard to get your stuff back, especially when most of its random, or downright unattainable anymore, and really fucking easy to die. The only way to mitigate that problem is to make everything have a consistent way to be attained, which you've come out against, or a way to reattain it, which just introduces a grind punishing people for bad performance, and punishing people for being bad is stupid. The more you're punished for sucking, the harder it is to git gud, and the more you're just punished, and the more the good people lord their idiotically high benefits over your head. It's just unfun. It works when that punishment is the point of the game but Destiny is not that kind of game.

If you must, reward people for doing well, and punish people for fucking around (and thus hurting their teammates) in an out of game context, like player review, to allow party wide Shoulder Charge fests and one random newbie joining a fleet of monsters to continue on unmolested.

I wouldn't normally make a post like this, because I'm sure you knew just how bad of an idea you were suggesting, and weren't entirely serious, but, well, juxtaposed with your response to my thing, I can't not write this up. Not that I'm upset with you, of course, I just can't allow the sucky guy to go unchampioned, in matters where they might be unfairly and unintentionally punished, mainly because I used to be that guy and feel like I still kinda am.

This is the same drum Cody's been banging,

Well, it was kind of supposed to be.

and I really hope Bungie does not cave to this because it's pretty antithetical to what I think they want for the Destiny experience.

Fair. I'm not sure it's antithetical to what they want; it'd just mean that all the Crucible/Vanguard weapons/armor would be at the Vendors, like they used to be, and all Exotics would have bounties or be available from Xur in a reliable manner. Like, perhaps, turning in Strange Coins with him for the week's selection, but a token that comes from [Insert whatever here] can be redeemed for any Exotic. These might not be trivial, and could be in addition to random drops (which is how I'd prefer). Really just an expansion of how the Vendors work to include everything. And, hell, you can do away with the provision against endgame content; I'm angling at what I figured Cody was advocating and ways to achieve it to try and offer context to the discussion, mostly for myself. It's different from the game's philosophy at present, and might not really hit what they want, but I don't think it's antithetical to it. My point here is not that this would be better. I would be the first to say that quality of a game is all subjective, and the closest thing to an objective measure is a consensus judgement, which is still subjective. I was tossing some stuff out to gauge how well I was reading Cody. I'm certainly not seriously expecting Bungie to listen to me, or even humorously doing so.

The problem is that balancing weapons and gear is exceedingly difficult, and even more difficult than that is creating a perception of balance. Player bases tend to get polarized; the idea that this weapon or that helmet is something that everybody needs to have spreads like wildfire. When all the gear has a concrete path, things get reductionist. Everybody needs to have this gun and the others are crap; people do the thing to get that gun. Everybody has that gun. The gun everybody wanted is now passe because everybody has it. It's so good it makes the game boring, but everything else is worse and not worth playing for.

Look at the loot cave. The loot cave was actually NOT a better way of getting loot than just about any activity in the game. A lot of the glorious screenshots of loot on the ground consisted mostly of ammo drops-- drops you needed to collect in order to keep shooting the loot cave. Bungie's problem was not so much that it had inadvertently created a mechanic that allowed players to shortcircuit the game's reward system as much as it created a situation that allowed players to believe that they had shortcircuited it-- and that was enough.

I like Saharas, and use them, even though they're basically the opposite of what everyone thinks are great. I am sure under the situation where everyone could have a Gjallarhorn, than everyone would have a Gjallarhorn; if it really was overpowered, it would be nerfed, because everyone would have one, I'd imagine. If it just felt like it was, then people would be bored because the best gun isn't really fun, but I don't see why they just wouldn't be bored anyways. Ideally, they'd try a less boring gun and have fun with it. People who can't put efficacy aside in the name of fun when it's actively in their best interest to do so, are not people whose philosophy I quite understand. There'd have to be some manner of addressing that problem, which I'm sure could be done, because plenty of games just leave all the guns available all the time, or reasonably attainable; I'm certain the system could be hammered into something very workable, but it would gradually depart from what Destiny is as one does so, which is why I wanted to know how Cody intended for his ideal vision to be arrived at smoothly from now, because, you know, you're right, there is a problem in what I postulated that needs fixing, even just from the simple description given, even if it's just an exaggerated version of one that already exists. Nice perspective, that.

I mean, I'm not a game designer; all I can say is that I, personally, would prefer the hypothetical scenarios I was imagining in bullet point one, and bullet point two, even though I'm pretty sure the second would be worse for the game overall than what we have now, and the first is hardly flawless, and neither are the kind of change that's going to happen, at least not soon. (Which is why I was not really advocating anything, I guess.)

I honestly don't think you can blame this on Bungie. You seem to be suggesting that if Bungie just added coins or points to Halo (which they actually did) everyone would stop playing Halo the way they used to, and just maximize their collection of coins. That might be so, but that's on them.

At any rate, it was not my point whether the loot cave was or was not actually more efficient at generating engrams per hour. I saw some exhaustive posts (unfortunately I cannot find them again) that suggested that if there was any such advantage, it was very slight. The point was that the perceived advantage was enough to skew the play of a not insignificant portion of the population in that direction.

Those who were looking for Bungie's response to be the removal of loot or the removal of RNG I think are really barking up the wrong tree, because I think that is just too integral to the game's central concept.

Why do you think RNG specifically is not only important but vitally important?

That doesn't support your contention in the least. So tricking to maximize loot is proof of bad design, and tricking for its own sake is proof of good design?

Yes, exactly.

I honestly don't think you can blame this on Bungie. You seem to be suggesting that if Bungie just added coins or points to Halo (which they actually did) everyone would stop playing Halo the way they used to, and just maximize their collection of coins. That might be so, but that's on them.

They did. Credits in Reach. And immediately all the credit farming videos that popped up came to mind, such as getting a checkpoint, calling an airstrike, and reloading. Thankfully I completely ignored credits since they were only for cosmetics. You can't ignore Destiny's system.

If players feel the need to use tricks to bypass parts of your game, you've failed. People didn't seek ways to bypass levels in Halo.

That's bull and you know it, especially as a speedrunner. There are LOADS of tricks in Halo to skip levels or portions of levels and players use them all the time.

By this measure, nearly every game is a failure. That you would think so is hardly surprising.

Name me one person who skipped any part of the level the first time they played the game. Nobody. You resort to that when you've exhausted the normal possibilities the game offers and want to push it further.

What the heck has "first time" got to do with it? The first time you don't even know those avenues are available. It takes exploration to find them.

The point Cody is making is that speed running in Halo was not about bypassing "content". It was another challenge in and of itself. As you point out, it required loads of exploration and practice. In a wholistic sense, the goal of speed running is not to shave time off your gameplay experience (since it actually requires more time in the form of practice). It is about finding new challenges once the main content has been exhausted.

Really, I don't think Speed running fits into this conversation at all. It isn't remotely related to the idea of bypassing an investment system.

People also tricked Halo for the sake of tricking. There were no rewards.

That doesn't support your contention in the least. So tricking to maximize loot is proof of bad design, and tricking for its own sake is proof of good design?

I'm not sure you even know what your proposition is anymore, you're just gainsaying me.

The difference to me is that if someone is tricking for the sake of tricking, it is because they enjoy it. They're having fun with the game. But what happened with Destiny year 1 is some people were playing the game in ways they didn't enjoy just to get loot. Ironically, this is true of people who played the game "legit" just as much as it is true of people who spent days in front of the loot cave.

Bungie clearly sees the problem as well, since they're making drastic improvements to the way we find gear in TTK.

Now, any time this topic comes up, there are always responses like "that's the players fault", "why do you need all the weapons?", or "just play the game in a way that's fun for you and don't chase loot". All fair points. I can't speak for others, but I'd like to explain why I personally feel the need to chase gear in Destiny even if it means doing activities I don't enjoy.

For me, new gear is a huge part of Destiny's replay value. Something as simple as using a different primary weapon can breath new life into a mission I've run dozens of times. So I want as many new and different weapons as possible, because they allow me to experience the same content in different ways.

In Destiny year 1, this sometimes meant playing specific activities over and over just to get new gear. It meant doing an activity I don't enjoy now in order to have more fun later. It was either that or stop playing Destiny all together, and I didn't want to stop because I do love the game overall and it is how I spend time with my friends.

Again, it appears to me that Bungie sees this as a problem as well, since they're changing the way acquiring gear works in TTK. It looks promising to me :)

If players feel the need to use tricks to bypass parts of your game, you've failed. People didn't seek ways to bypass levels in Halo.

That's bull and you know it, especially as a speedrunner. There are LOADS of tricks in Halo to skip levels or portions of levels and players use them all the time.

By this measure, nearly every game is a failure. That you would think so is hardly surprising.

Name me one person who skipped any part of the level the first time they played the game. Nobody. You resort to that when you've exhausted the normal possibilities the game offers and want to push it further.

What the heck has "first time" got to do with it? The first time you don't even know those avenues are available. It takes exploration to find them.

People also tricked Halo for the sake of tricking. There were no rewards.

That doesn't support your contention in the least. So tricking to maximize loot is proof of bad design, and tricking for its own sake is proof of good design?

I'm not sure you even know what your proposition is anymore, you're just gainsaying me.

Look at the loot cave. The loot cave was actually NOT a better way of getting loot than just about any activity in the game. A lot of the glorious screenshots of loot on the ground consisted mostly of ammo drops-- drops you needed to collect in order to keep shooting the loot cave. Bungie's problem was not so much that it had inadvertently created a mechanic that allowed players to shortcircuit the game's reward system as much as it created a situation that allowed players to believe that they had shortcircuited it-- and that was enough.

Actually, it was technically better, for two reasons:

A) Bungie capped the number of marks/drops you could receive from doing activities per week, meaning you could only buy so many pieces of gear per week (if it was a helmet or weapon, just 1). There is no such cap on engrams, thus once you were capped on marks, you were relying on engrams for advancement.

B) The loot cave provided a constant stream of enemies, each of which had the same chance of dropping engrams as every other enemy in the game. Bungie knew this, and that's why they started adding additional rewards to activities like dragon strikes and the daily heroic mission. As opposed to the loot cave, these activities featured intermittent sections where you weren't killing anything, thus decreasing your engram drop efficiency.

And that's why the loot cave was so much more attractive: when you make your end-game about the accumulation of gear, people will work out and gravitate towards the most efficient means possible of achieving that goal.

I honestly don't think you can blame this on Bungie. You seem to be suggesting that if Bungie just added coins or points to Halo (which they actually did) everyone would stop playing Halo the way they used to, and just maximize their collection of coins. That might be so, but that's on them.

At any rate, it was not my point whether the loot cave was or was not actually more efficient at generating engrams per hour. I saw some exhaustive posts (unfortunately I cannot find them again) that suggested that if there was any such advantage, it was very slight. The point was that the perceived advantage was enough to skew the play of a not insignificant portion of the population in that direction.

Those who were looking for Bungie's response to be the removal of loot or the removal of RNG I think are really barking up the wrong tree, because I think that is just too integral to the game's central concept.

If players feel the need to use tricks to bypass parts of your game, you've failed. People didn't seek ways to bypass levels in Halo.

That's bull and you know it, especially as a speedrunner. There are LOADS of tricks in Halo to skip levels or portions of levels and players use them all the time.

By this measure, nearly every game is a failure. That you would think so is hardly surprising.

Name me one person who skipped any part of the level the first time they played the game. Nobody. You resort to that when you've exhausted the normal possibilities the game offers and want to push it further.

People also tricked Halo for the sake of tricking. There were no rewards.

If players feel the need to use tricks to bypass parts of your game, you've failed. People didn't seek ways to bypass levels in Halo.

That's bull and you know it, especially as a speedrunner. There are LOADS of tricks in Halo to skip levels or portions of levels and players use them all the time.

By this measure, nearly every game is a failure. That you would think so is hardly surprising.

You really have to make it clearer what you mean, though, I think. Boy do I have that problem...

But, well, there's some broad categories that might work to the end I think you want, or something similar(-ish), and I'll take the liberty of listing some that seem a little more obvious to me:

• Adding a concrete path to any gear in the game, either supplanting or in addition to random drops, that is reasonably feasible for any player; either endgame content does not drop anything noncosmetic, or it does have drops, but nothing is endgame-exclusive (like, say, Praedyth's Revenge) or mostly/functionally endgame exclusive (such as Etheric Light). Some things are difficult to attain (like, say, Thorn is now) but you can't be entirely screwed out of an item just by bad luck, and it's easier to get to the level you want to be to do any given activity than it is now. The carrot to drive player investment is much as it is now, but rather more savory, and I'd imagine less prone to trap people in an addictive game they don't really like.

This is the same drum Cody's been banging, and I really hope Bungie does not cave to this because it's pretty antithetical to what I think they want for the Destiny experience.

The problem is that balancing weapons and gear is exceedingly difficult, and even more difficult than that is creating a perception of balance. Player bases tend to get polarized; the idea that this weapon or that helmet is something that everybody needs to have spreads like wildfire. When all the gear has a concrete path, things get reductionist. Everybody needs to have this gun and the others are crap; people do the thing to get that gun. Everybody has that gun. The gun everybody wanted is now passe because everybody has it. It's so good it makes the game boring, but everything else is worse and not worth playing for.

Not having guns that are that much better than everything else would be a start, but I know people might perceive them that way anyway, and if you make everything too similar it gets bland. Still, I think it would help for them to focus more on things that are subjectively better and downplay things that are objectively better. I would even go so far as to say they should leave things alone that are seen as overpowered if they aren't actually overpowered.

That brings me to the other issue, which is that people don't necessarily chase something because it's seen as the best. How many people have gone through dozens of ranks with Dead Orbit to get a shader? How many of those people like the fact it worked that way? I'm guessing not many.

As for reductionism and min/maxing, it happens. Trying to prevent it in a stat-based game (unless it's designed against that from the beginning) is futile. Putting up barriers to it prevents some casual players from doing it but I think it mostly just makes the people that want to do it more frustrated. (I think they should go further and expose all the workings so everyone can see how to do it if they choose, rather than have people picking apart the game and getting a questionable amount of benefit out of it and then starting over with the next update.)

The bottom line is I don't think having a path to any given piece of gear would be bad-- it could still be a long one, and then could amend the path or the gear (or both) if and when something ends up overpowered.

Look at the loot cave. The loot cave was actually NOT a better way of getting loot than just about any activity in the game. A lot of the glorious screenshots of loot on the ground consisted mostly of ammo drops-- drops you needed to collect in order to keep shooting the loot cave. Bungie's problem was not so much that it had inadvertently created a mechanic that allowed players to shortcircuit the game's reward system as much as it created a situation that allowed players to believe that they had shortcircuited it-- and that was enough.

Don't you think it's telling that so many players wanted to short-circuit the reward system and were mad when the apparent way to do that was taken away? Part of the problem was the difficulty and lack of options in getting good gear in vanilla Destiny (and the lack of interest in running the same 5 or 6 strikes and the same raid over and over), but it also went to a deeper element of this type of game. It connects to another issue that keeps coming up, people that keep playing even though they're not happy.

The people that keep playing when they're not having fun are largely playing to get something. Almost all of them do get some enjoyment out of the game, and most of them are aware on some level that whatever their goal is it won't feel worth the grind in the end, but they're driven by the desire (a pretty basic human desire I might add) to have something for themselves.

That's where the path to get gear you want comes in. It might reduce the number of people playing or the amount of time they play, but overall they'd resent the game less. I think that's a worthwhile trade.
I realize a path to every single piece of gear isn't feasible, and even a path to every piece of legendary gear or even all of the current crop of them might not be feasible, but they could do better than what they have. I think they should at least have a path for a lot more exotics than they do, including armor.

(As for me, I play because it's fun, but I recognize what makes the game frustrating for other people, and made the game frustrating for me when I was at a low level.)

If players feel the need to use tricks to bypass parts of your game, you've failed. People didn't seek ways to bypass levels in Halo. There's no point. You're playing the game exactly because you want to play through the levels! The end game in Destiny has always been about one thing: gear.

Further, I think people and developers completely over emphasize avatar differences as something desirable in their games. Was Halo less fun because your partner was also the MC? Instead about being a virtual dick measuring contest through progression, it should be about teaming up with your friends to tackle the game.

You keep saying that this isn't the game Bungie made. I know that dude. That's why I am saying things would be better if changed for Destiny 2. It's doubtful, but there are tons of things they can do to mitigate the problem of MMOs without abandoning their overall format. I see tons of decisions that they are making that help them move that way.

If it weren't for people expressing dissatisfaction with the shitty MMO elements, you'd still have to circle Mars gathering relic iron to level up your guns.

Look at the loot cave. The loot cave was actually NOT a better way of getting loot than just about any activity in the game. A lot of the glorious screenshots of loot on the ground consisted mostly of ammo drops-- drops you needed to collect in order to keep shooting the loot cave. Bungie's problem was not so much that it had inadvertently created a mechanic that allowed players to shortcircuit the game's reward system as much as it created a situation that allowed players to believe that they had shortcircuited it-- and that was enough.

Actually, it was technically better, for two reasons:

A) Bungie capped the number of marks/drops you could receive from doing activities per week, meaning you could only buy so many pieces of gear per week (if it was a helmet or weapon, just 1). There is no such cap on engrams, thus once you were capped on marks, you were relying on engrams for advancement.

B) The loot cave provided a constant stream of enemies, each of which had the same chance of dropping engrams as every other enemy in the game. Bungie knew this, and that's why they started adding additional rewards to activities like dragon strikes and the daily heroic mission. As opposed to the loot cave, these activities featured intermittent sections where you weren't killing anything, thus decreasing your engram drop efficiency.

And that's why the loot cave was so much more attractive: when you make your end-game about the accumulation of gear, people will work out and gravitate towards the most efficient means possible of achieving that goal.

You really have to make it clearer what you mean, though, I think. Boy do I have that problem...

But, well, there's some broad categories that might work to the end I think you want, or something similar(-ish), and I'll take the liberty of listing some that seem a little more obvious to me:

• Adding a concrete path to any gear in the game, either supplanting or in addition to random drops, that is reasonably feasible for any player; either endgame content does not drop anything noncosmetic, or it does have drops, but nothing is endgame-exclusive (like, say, Praedyth's Revenge) or mostly/functionally endgame exclusive (such as Etheric Light). Some things are difficult to attain (like, say, Thorn is now) but you can't be entirely screwed out of an item just by bad luck, and it's easier to get to the level you want to be to do any given activity than it is now. The carrot to drive player investment is much as it is now, but rather more savory, and I'd imagine less prone to trap people in an addictive game they don't really like.

This is the same drum Cody's been banging, and I really hope Bungie does not cave to this because it's pretty antithetical to what I think they want for the Destiny experience.

The problem is that balancing weapons and gear is exceedingly difficult, and even more difficult than that is creating a perception of balance. Player bases tend to get polarized; the idea that this weapon or that helmet is something that everybody needs to have spreads like wildfire. When all the gear has a concrete path, things get reductionist. Everybody needs to have this gun and the others are crap; people do the thing to get that gun. Everybody has that gun. The gun everybody wanted is now passe because everybody has it. It's so good it makes the game boring, but everything else is worse and not worth playing for.

Look at the loot cave. The loot cave was actually NOT a better way of getting loot than just about any activity in the game. A lot of the glorious screenshots of loot on the ground consisted mostly of ammo drops-- drops you needed to collect in order to keep shooting the loot cave. Bungie's problem was not so much that it had inadvertently created a mechanic that allowed players to shortcircuit the game's reward system as much as it created a situation that allowed players to believe that they had shortcircuited it-- and that was enough.

I completely stand by my interpretation of your statements:

I don't think you are getting what I am saying. Otherwise, you would not have enjoyed pretty much any game ever. You liked Halo. Every level in Halo operated the way I am describing. No progression, just the experience of the challenge. It worked, and it didn't lock anybody out, because the game had multiple difficulty levels. If you simply didn't have a lot of skill at the game, you played on easy.

Sigh.

Because EVERY level in Halo operated that way. Halo was not an RPG. It had no RPG elements whatsoever. It has no advancement whatsoever.

Destiny DOES have RPG elements. Loot drops and XP are part of its central mechanics, part of the essential experience of playing it, and that experience is accessed in part by the exercise of skill (as in the pure action game, Halo) but partly just through participation, which is easily shown in how you can have two players in Destiny at the same level but with wildly varying levels of skill at different activities.

[snip the bit where you preemptively stipulate to what I just wrote, recognizing that what you wrote was redundant and beside the point]

Unless you can make an argument as to why grinding, replaying the same stuff over and over is enjoyable of course.

RNG in RPGs functions the way time does in the universe-- it prevents everything from happening at once. Grind is basically just the negative way of describing the sensation of not getting everything you want at the precise moment you want it.

Part of Destiny's experience in growing and building your character is having your character be different from others. Network effects make this exceedingly difficult. Over and over modern games get solved by brute force, exploited, and min-maxed to within an inch of their lives. People figure out what the best way of doing something is (or, as is just as likely, what they mistakenly THINK is the best way of doing something-- remember the loot cave?-- and the game becomes a mad rush for every player to do that thing to the exclusion of all else, and then complain about how that game is only that one single repetitive thing and is no fun.

Most of the gates, RNG included, are there to preserve that variance. I didn't have a gyllenhaal, for instance, until Xur sold it the second time. In a lot of activities I had to admit I didn't have one, and find a substitute. At first I heard about how great the gun was, then how overpowered it was, and then how it made things boring because they were too easy. The repetition itself may not bring enjoyability to the game, but it preserves one of the qualities that makes the game experience enjoyable by keeping every player and their gear from collapsing to an identical set. (One is, of course, free to avoid the repetition mostly by giving up the goal of collecting every damn thing in the game in an attempt to make every player's inventory identical to every other player's. This is why I'm not a fan of Bungie caving in to demands for more Vault space, and the blueprint system seems even worse. No exotic is special now, nothing can be lost, it's just a collection of bobbleheads.)

What if there had been a single skill-gated way to force it to drop? What if that method had then been exploited, as it surely would have been? How much louder would the complaints have been if the entire past year had been like the last couple of weeks-- burning things with G-horn and finishing in five minutes things that used to take half an hour?

The replaying the same stuff over argument is BS and always has been. Halo offered nothing else. The difference between Halo and Destiny is that because of the advancement, the investment, and yes, the RNG loot, there IS an incentive to keep playing the same things over if you want. Halo offered no incentive for replay at that kind of frequency. You played the game up to its highest difficulty, searched for some collectibles, and then you were done. If you kept playing you were essentially grinding without incentive-- "replaying the same stuff over and over" as you said.

You can stop playing. The game won't mind. We won't mind. You keep whining and crying and threatening and reconciling and it's like an unfunny parody of a battered spouse in bad taste. Destiny is not heroin. You can stop if you want to. I can stop if I want to. I don't want to. You are constantly threatening to quit if the game doesn't do what you consider to be obvious, and the game keeps on not doing what you want. At this point, you replaying the same stuff over and over again isn't the definition of boredom, its the definition of insanity-- you keep doing the same thing and hoping for a different result.

You know what kind of skill-enforced gate I'd like to see in Destiny?

A random chance for player death (or perhaps team wipe in certain activities) to result in loss of gear. Give those sunsingers a bit of pause before rushing on ahead without thinking.

Got it. Levels are practically irrelevant.

I am really afraid this is going to be a step back. If anything, our progression needs to be completely decoupled from gear, and paradoxically this new system seems to be even more gear focused than the current system.

I was listening to Claude's point on the most recent podcast, and his argument was this: Currently, there is no difference between a 33, and a 33 and three quarters, even though one has more light than the other. This results in gains that aren't really gains, since they don't end up mattering until you hit the light tier to bump up a level. Therefore, he thought, that the new system, where an increase in even one light actually makes you stronger, is an improvement.

Right now, if you are 4 levels below an enemy, you do no damage. In Taken King, if you are 40 light below an enemy, you do no damage. Everything is just stretched out, and is not fundamentally different.

At least with the current system, you have a variety of ways to reach level 34 and then not really have to worry about progression. You can mix and match exotics, ascended legendaries, PoE gear, Trials Gear, Iron Banner gear, etc. I think it's safe to say that nearly everyone had an easier time to 34 in HoW than to 30 at launch.

The thing that worries me, is that the new light system will create the need to perpetually improve and progress your character to do the content. In HoW, hitting 34 was much easier, and when you did, you were done and were free to do what the game offered. Because everything is spread out now, there could very well be end game content that requires more and more work to get extra light. I imagine, that the higher and higher you go, the harder it will be to obtain those light levels. Especially with the infusion system, it appears that the grind for gear will only be worse, more pervasive, and more necessary.

I ultimately think that character progression systems just do not work for games that are open ended. If you look at the campaign missions when Destiny came out, the progression actually works and is very fun. The reason it works, is that the experience from 1-20 is crafted out in a series of missions, which are built to adjust in difficulty as your power up your character. But that only works if your game has an end, and Destiny does not.

Paradoxically, your gear is more important in Taken King than it is now! If you are 34, you can still get by with weapons that aren't leveled up all the way, but in Taken King, since your light level factors your weapons in as well, you are simply going to have to grind for two types of gear, not just one. You will have to grind for guns to feed your gear via infusion.

I can't really form an opinion since I haven;t played it, but as info comes out, it appears a step in the wrong direction.

Claude is right about there needing to be multiple 'gates'. The highest tier gate though, should offer you nothing, and once you reach that tier, you should not have to worry about progression at all; just your skill and the skill of your fireteam. Further, the highest tier gate should not progress you at all; you should already be the max upon entering. In short, it should be completely about the experience and offer no gear at all, as well as have the most content.

If I understand correctly, the majority of your concerns hinge on a couple of assumptions which may or may not prove to be true.

First: the climb to 40.

From the look of things, much like year 1, the hunt for gear will be a major part of what drives the end game in TTK (note that I use the word "hunt" instead of "grind"... more on that later). I imagine the climb to 40 will be much like the climb to 20: we'll jump in and play the new story content and side quests, and by the time we're done we'll be at or close to 40. In my opinion, that's great. We're playing a bunch of new content that most of us will probably want to play, and leveling up in the process.

Next: the Hunt for Gear

This seems to be the part you are more concerned about. Now if TTK plays out like year 1, I'd say your concerns are justified. More specifically, if getting the gear you want is a matter of playing the same activities over and over, hoping for RNG to swing in our favor. However, based on everything Bungie has said, I don't think this will be the case (at least not to the same extent). First of all, it looks like we will have more determined, deliberate paths towards specific pieces of gear, which is awesome. Second, the new weekly bounty system looks like a nice way to reward top-level players without forcing them into repeating the same content over and over. Bungie has talked about adding more bounties that are not activity specific so that players can play the game however they want and still complete bounties.

So by the looks of things, acquiring new gear will not be the grind that it is now: I think the word "hunt" is more fitting. To me, it all sounds like a major improvement.

But, well, there's some broad categories that might work to the end I think you want, or something similar(-ish), and I'll take the liberty of listing some that seem a little more obvious to me:

• Adding a concrete path to any gear in the game, either supplanting or in addition to random drops, that is reasonably feasible for any player; either endgame content does not drop anything noncosmetic, or it does have drops, but nothing is endgame-exclusive (like, say, Praedyth's Revenge) or mostly/functionally endgame exclusive (such as Etheric Light). Some things are difficult to attain (like, say, Thorn is now) but you can't be entirely screwed out of an item just by bad luck, and it's easier to get to the level you want to be to do any given activity than it is now. The carrot to drive player investment is much as it is now, but rather more savory, and I'd imagine less prone to trap people in an addictive game they don't really like.
  
  
• Unlocking all the gear at level twenty; Things turn into a sandbox, although unlocking abilities and upgrading the gear you choose might still be a thing. Technical limitations would probably mean they'd all be available from vendors, but for little or negligible cost, instead of all of them always being directly in your inventory. The carrot to keep player engagement high for the good of the game still exists, but screwing around with all your options has supplanted working towards gaining those options, and, of course, there's still the simple carrot of fun. The gate to any activity is now only skill and time, which is strictly lesser than the current gate of skill, gear, and time.
  
  
• Entirely reworking Destiny to be a more normal FPS with minimal or simply token advancement, albeit with a wide variety of options.

I think there's probably people who would like any of those, or some other scenario I haven't described (I'm sure there's plenty), but none of them would satisfy everyone; though that is, of course, obvious. Personally, I'd prefer the first alternative option I set out to what we have now, and maybe even option two, but the first would probably take quite a lot of work, and the second is clearly majorly counter to Bungie's intentions; obviously not to even touch the third.

So, by all means, continue to critique it and make your points as normal, but I'd be curious to know just what your ideal version of Destiny is, and what your ideal feasible goal for Bungie to move towards as they continue the franchise would be? Such as, say, what you think Destiny 2 or even 3 should be, and how Bungie could smoothly move there without a massive upheaval of what's already been laid down?