TL;DR: Stop tying power/damage bonuses to featured gear it’s too restrictive. Let good gear stand on merit. Also needing to infuse equipped gear is unintuitive and Bungie’s overall direction feels unclear despite the solid armor rework. That’s not even getting into the damage bonus/damage resistance you get just for using new gear. With armor that kind of happened naturally. Most older armor is just objectively inefficient at this point. But why do I have to equip featured or new weapons and gear in my build just to maximize rewards? Tying this to power gain is double frustrating. Think about it: featured gear is supposed to encourage players to get into buildcrafting (at least that’s what the devs hinted at). But optimizing power leveling isn’t something a player just starting out with buildcrafting is going to focus on. Most newer or casual players are just going to hit Play. Even setting my opinion aside the system feels more restrictive than rewarding when it comes to buildcrafting. A example of how you are gonna get people to use new gear: The new rocket pulse rifle. I don’t need to be told to use it. It’s good on its own merit. And that’s the core issue: [b]I don’t want to be further funneled into using specific gear[/b] (the seasonal artifact already pushes that enough without feeling overly restrictive). If something is good or interesting, I’ll use it. A lot of the new systems still need A LOT of refinement, and many of them are hard to understand. For instance, I didn’t even know you have to infuse your equipped gear to maximize power gains from new drops and honestly, that’s just frustrating and feels like a step backward. I know these systems will evolve over time, and I really do appreciate that Bungie took a leap of faith with the armor rework. That was a much needed step in the right direction and if it’s expanded on, it could be great overall. But some of the current design choices just feel really odd.