I think everyone is still adapting to the changes, myself included. I really did not like most of the changes when I first logged in, specifically, the armor update. I felt like my time grinding, for what felt like years, in master dungeons to get my perfect artifice armor wasn’t respected. The shake up of all the perks (mobility, resilience, intellect, etc.) really threw me off. I absolutely get why they did it, I could understand it was getting stale, but in the same token it’s a staple of the Destiny franchise. It’s been laid out like this for several years. The tier system for armor is just bizarre and foreign to me. Locking it behind guardian ranks is wild nothing short of criminal. Just for the hammer to drop in a few months and you’re going to be doing it again. Portal is being forced fed to the players when I didn’t really see anything wrong with the destinations tab. I get the convenience of it but that is all it really is. However people were so used to going to destinations tab and selecting what they wanted to do no problem so it felt unnecessary in my eyes but what do I know lol. What I see and feel the most is the power grind. Feels unrewarding, I ran trials and went to the lighthouse and was expecting the rain of loot. Felt like maybe 2-3 engrams popped out and I stood there shocked. Doesn’t feel like there’s an incentive to grind to the bone if when you get to the desired power level it’ll be reset due to the next DLC dropping. Sure this is great news for streamers and people who live and breathe Destiny. However the more casual player is gonna feel left behind. Not making excuses, just my opinion. I too liked the way it was before EoF but it’s copium if we think it’s going to get reverted back as much as we or I would like it to. This is the new reality and my mentality now is either folks will sink or swim it in. Or stay or quit. It’s a fine line, I too am just getting burnt out on the game, I love it but I don’t have it in me to regrind all new armor let alone higher tier armor to feel powerful again. I say this now and then I’ll do it lol. Destiny is the chore none of us can actually get away from.

The new armor and weapon systems are much better than what we had before. The Portal is also a really good feature as a quick access menu to the daily and weekly objectives, as well as a great way to choose and pick what we want to do in the game. I don't like the return of the useless power levels and the content access gating that it represents. Also, the handicap values are, IMO, too high, they need tuning. Guardian ranks now really mean something BUT they shouldn't be used to block players from using features of a free event, like Arms Week. Overall, the changes are mostly good, but some need to be better tuned.

The light level grind is definitely a killer its just tedious,should've doubled/tripled the rewards until your at 400 THEN it becomes harder and ALL content should have been updated with the portal system not just portions of the game. (like how are you gonna half -blam!- a foundational change 10 years into your flagship and ONLY franchise that makes you money). Weapons legit haven't changed as far as structure so imo the "new" weapons "overhaul" is legit entirely pointless it unironically only makes most people wish crafting was back to soften the grind, cause its just T2 in terms of weapon capabilities and if you want T4/5 you were gonna go for them anyways. The armor grind is fine makes sense to update it after so long but shouldn't be gated beyond a empty grind.

Eh. I feel like all they need to do is lower the power grind to 300 & people would be happy with it. Of course, people would whine about not having a reason to play once they hit the cap & get all tier 5 loadouts, but they do that every time anyway.

We try to play a nice adventure shooter game just to be forced into borring-time-wasting puzzles every 2 steps... Bungie is Lucky PLaystation won't give refunds because DAMN there would be so many refund requests. Nobody wanted this "candy crush" puzzle nonsense, and the new loot system forces us to receive unimprovable weapons that can't even be turned into useful materials... They brought back the "pro-gamer elitism" on steroids by giving casual players NOTHING wile no-life-play-all-day-gamers are the only ones getting anything worth a damn.

It seems that running portal activities aren't advancing my level in the season pass. If they are, it isn't by much. I haven't even completed the season campaign yet, I've been spending a lot of my time in portal activities and the recent Arms week to increase my power level. At the same time I'm supposed to run bounties in the Cosmodrome and Europa etc. to to get my pass rewards. It's a lot to grind and to keep up with. If you don't start the season sweating you just fall farther and father behind. What that means is, if anything becomes broken or cheeses are found, by the time I get to them it's been nerfed or removed so I rarely get a chance to play the power fantasy that others experience. Combine that with matterspark and puzzles, it becomes unbearable. Not to mention, how many different sets of armor do we have to store in the vault? It seems you'll be constantly accumulating armor sets to cover every new meta that comes down the road. First it was grenades and weapons, now it's supers and grenades, it just goes on and on. The portal is such a redundant grind. Not enough matchmaking in fireteam activities. It seems unfinished.

The biggest issue is there is a lot of potential here between Edge and the Portal, but like everything else, Bungie's execution is awful and just brings the entire experience down. The content in the game is fine, the issues are the sandbox and QOL changes.

I'm at the 3rd week now grinding every day all day lol and I'm only at 331, can't imagine someone hitting +400 before the season ends if you only play on the week-end, this game is not for casual anymore. I'm a returning player from Shadowkeep I've quit around 2018-19, I don't have anything to complain because I'm doing every expac slowly while grinding the power. The game is still fun, I got many tier-4 pieces, the ascendant shards are quite rare, sometimes it drops from last boss of dungeons.

Too much pointless grind…

Exactly what you said.

There was literally nothing to do in pre EOF either. Stop using the dlc as a scapegoat and admit that the only thing that changed was the grind.

They need a massive overhaul to this -blam!- of an expansion they call a DLC

I haven't yet finished the campaign, but so far I think it's better then the latest previous ones. But I'm annoyed over the puzzle spam also, it destroys the pace to have to go into mattercore find a hole, or find a relocator and jump back and forth. But in my opinion, Destiny have gotten worse since at least Lightfall. It was a really low, and it's only gotten worse for every season. More unneccesary stuff have been added, meaningless "puzzles" or timeconsuming gimmicks, longer missions with more sponges that makes people just skip them because people have not the option to sit several hours in a strech, more grind, grind and grind in the hamsterwheel without making the player more powerful as the enemies power always are higher.

A Possible Solution to Reset back to 200? Stop playing when you reach 200. Take a break, a hiatus, come back - if you actually do - refreshed and ready to play straight through to maximum Light. You’ll have lost nothing. On the plus side, Bungie may actually notice if enough “go missing” and you never know, things may be changed for the better to entice you back.

This game is now made for the wrong audience. Maybe its time for us, the actual right audience, to read between the lines and drop the game since its not made for us anymore? Just an idea... Feels like the players who want ice cream keep complaining that their ice cream tastes like beef but they wanted ice cream. Time to go to the ice cream shop then. Bungie will not serve you ice cream anymore.

There are multiple things I like and dislike in the dlc. I am unsure if agree with the notion that the game was flat out better before the dlc launch, though.

I like the solo ops playlist and the new armor stat and archetype system. The world tier system could be interesting is they expand upon it and invest more into it. Imagine making Nessus patrol relevant again with harder tiers and unique destination drops. Not a fan of the gear tier system in its current iteration but that’s probably a side effect of the power grind issues. The portal has a place but it makes the game feel….small.

In every way.

I think the expansion is actually pretty great, it’s just missing a lot of content. They really need to add more content to the game. It doesn’t feel like an expansion more like a big update.