I came back to Destiny 2 recently to try out this expansion. I had played D1 for quite awhile, and had played D2 up until the launch of Forsaken. Here are my thoughts after playing all prior campaigns (haven't done EoF yet). The storyline is completely disjointed for a returning player. Major events that happen between expansions are not explained well, if at all, nor are new characters that are introduced. The narrative becomes such a mess that I felt either I was too stupid to understand what was going on, or the story itself was too stupid to understand. I feel like it is probably the latter. I imagine that with the context of seasonal events things made more sense, but again from the perspective of a returning player it was not a great experience. The narrative tone was all over the place. Beyond Light had these dark undertones and a seriousness about it. Witch Queen then comes in and introduces a lot of questions and ultimately gives few satisfying answers. Landing on Neptune and exploring Neomuna in Lightfall, the story becomes an 80s action/revenge story that introduces some interesting backstory but does little (within the campaign) to connect it to the larger picture. And lastly Final Shape attempts to stich all these stories together into a meaningful, heartfelt narrative but comes across a bit forced in the process. Concerning progression; starting at level 10 and working through the campaigns felt like a nice pace of progression. I hit the soft power cap of 200 somewhere during Lightfall and this made gearing feel less relevant than ever before. I have since been grinding solo ops primary for power level increase and have reached what is probably my quitting point at 371. Today alone I ran probably close to forty or so solo ops missions and my feeling afterward is mostly regret. Why do this? What is the game going to offer or unlock for me that makes it worth the tedious grind? Getting better gear with more tiers, sure, but to what end I'm not really certain. I have some ambition to finish EoF campaign and try out the raid, but I will say the difficulty tuning on fireteam ops content is a bit of a bummer. I do enjoy that content, but can't bring myself to spend 15 to 20 minutes in a grandmaster quickplay fireteam ops match when I could get more rewards with braindead effort doing solo ops on repeat. Shame too because my primary reason for playing was to have a new game to play with friends. My advice would be to check your telemetry on how long some of the fireteam ops strikes/missions take to run. Many are listed at 10 to 15 minutes, but very few will have average clear times close to the 10 minute range. I think there are some that simply cannot be run that fast. Adjust the rewards accordingly and also drop the difficulty a smidge. Even if solo ops is going to be a more effective method of grinding power level, they could at least share the same difficulty. I would also argue that having a timer for faster completions is not a great idea for quickplay missions. The timer as a customization option for solo or pre-formed fireteam content is great, because it allows people who know and coordinate well with one another to get better rewards. In quickplay, there is an inherent difficulty in not knowing who you're playing with, what they're bringing to the encounters, and having a greater likelihood of a skill difference as a deficit. Oh great, I died and now I not only hurt myself but these two people who are unfortunate enough to be match-made with me on this strike. Now we will maybe get a +2 engram instead of a +3. I would also suggest having the +3 engrams always drop on an slot that is currently at least 1 if not 2 power below your power level, particularly for portal ops rewards. This isn't going to dramatically speed up the process of getting to 450, but it will make the incremental dopamine hit of getting rewards at the end of a strike/mission/solo ops feel better. My last feedback is to consider the words expressed when Bungie released a hotfix nearly ten years ago, in September 2015, that addressed the infamous loot cave. [quote]The social experience of a cave farming run is amazing: the herding to get a team of Guardians all behind the line and firing in the right direction, the rush to grab the loot, the scramble when the panic wave starts, the beckoning glow from inside the cave. The speed at which the community organized around this activity was inspiring and humbling to us. But shooting at a black hole for hours on end isn't our dream for how Destiny is played. Our hope is that social engagement in public spaces is only one part of the Destiny experience. Expect changes soon which decrease the efficiency of cave farming and correspondingly increase engram drops from completing activities.[/quote] I would challenge the development team to ask if the strong drive towards solo ops as the (by a long shot) most efficient way to grind power level is in line with this vision of a better social engagement experience. I am not advocating that a solo experience not be efficient in getting power level, but would want to see more parity in fireteam ops. If you made it this far in this wall of text rant thanks for reading.