Bungie, you really dropped the ball on this. You should’ve educated the community about this feature — shown us that it was meant to keep the sandbox fresh and exciting — instead of silently dropping the restriction just to score engagement points. After playing the PvP playlist and really analyzing this feature, I actually think it’s fun. Now before you grab the pitchforks, listen: Bungie has constantly nerfed and buffed exotics to change the meta. That cycle eats up dev time and progress — a loop Bungie created for itself. The exotic list is massive, but 90% of them never see play. Why? Because the mountain of elitism — aka SBMM or skill creep — quickly decides “this is the best build for X class.” That leads to “X class is the best overall.” (See: Hunter Salvation’s Edge, or Invis Hunter in high-end comp.) Then eventually, Bungie has to nerf that subclass or exotic to shift the meta again. But with this new system, Bungie could’ve (and I think that was the intent) expanded how players experience the sandbox. Example: PvP — you face someone with crazy movement, and your only option is to slap on a movement exotic to keep up. Boom, back to the same old circle of “what’s the meta?” until Bungie nerfs something and the community riots. With this system, you’d see meta shifts every six months — keeping the game fresh and dynamic. The main screw-up by Bungie is their obsession with “player engagement metrics.” Leadership is to blame here. The devs clearly wanted to do more with less to keep the game interesting — but leadership turned it into a system of restrictions instead of opportunities. The Avant-Guard modifier locking players into specific exotics? That’s just dumb. It should’ve been implemented like Crucible — as a free-choice option. Or at least explain the vision behind it instead of rolling it back in silence. Like seriously — who’s making these calls? BTW Personal NOTE HERE YOU GUYS ARE DUMB AF. “Thx” 🫡 You all at Bungie should vote on who supports this “player engagement = good” nonsense — and anyone who says yes gets the “Goodbye, you’re fired” emote. We’re near the end of the studio’s era; might as well do a Hail Mary instead of bleeding out on the battlefield. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. See you in the Crucible.