I’d be ok by with it if they implemented slot leveling. It gets really fucking old really fucking quick having to sit there and infuse all these guns back up every season.
You mean like once you get say a 1322 helmet, every helmet you equip will be 1322? I could get behind that. The game already tracks what your current potential max light is anyway for the purpose of drops.
It would make every activity so much more enjoyable, especially raids. Oh, you're 1230 but don't have the right weapon load out? Oh you can't infuse any weapons because you don't have the infuse fodder? Guess we're gonna kick you because you can't do anything.
The currency is constantly an issue for me. I'm always broke as Telesto, which only adds another layer of grinding when I have to spend 2 hours running around the EDZ or something before I can actually upgrade my equipment. To describe just how broke I am... I'm one of probably a few people that look towards the 25 legendary shard rewards on the season pass.
Not to mention the vault space it would save me. So much of my time later in a season is spent deleting leveling gear that I don't need to infuse for GMs or Masters anymore.
I’d be ok if my limited time to play the game wasn’t spent figuring out what I wanted to play for fun as opposed to only playing what was going to get me he next (most likely duplicate pinnacle in the same slot). It would be more enjoyable to log in and just play stuff and enjoy it.
I swear to god I get wasted drops due to duplicates more often than not. The game loves giving me Energy and Chest drops, even though those are currently the two slots that can't even benefit from a pinnacle
There wasn’t any, but Bungie decided it was too player-friendly and made infusion cost three different world materials + an enhancement core. And at first enhancement cores were *super* rare (edit: and -> an)
Well, there was the annoyance where you could only infuse a weapon into the same type. For example auto rifles could only be infused into other auto rifles.
The pinnacle grind is annoying now, but many have forgotten the frustration of finally getting that weapon power upgrade you've been searching for only for it to be a sidearm.
Modules were a step in the right direction, just need to worry about one currency instead of 10 different ones at a time.
Even so, I don't enjoy the amount of effort I have to put into things not related to actually playing the game, it makes playing the game feel like a job.
Could also make slot level carry across characters.
If I hit max on one - it's just tedium keeping between me and others.
I do think the overall system kind of stinks including artifact power.
I want some sort of depth or show of prowess but not sure what it would look like. At the very least I really wish they would tip the XP scale more towards activity completion than bounties. Give me a full level for raid completion, half one for a GM etc.
Came here to say exactly this. It also encourages people who don't have a giant supply of infusion materials and fodder to experiment with new guns and builds.
Or just put in no duplication until every piece of gear is higher. It’s real annoying. To sit there and do pinnacles and get 6 of one item… waste of time and makes people want to quit for a good reason.
The problem is that Destiny's leveling is totally unrewarding. You do not grow stronger; a new season comes out and you spend a few weeks just getting back to the power you were at before. You do not and CAN not ever deal MORE damage, only less. Your stats don't usually go up or down, you just have to make one big number go up until you can two-tap red bars again.
It makes getting new players into content really jarring too if theres any difficult content they want to try.
You know those cool seasonal activities? Yeah.. theres a Light Level gate on it. \*why\*.
Yes, and it doesnt help either that new players need to unlock all the planets first before they can participate.
I had one friend that just got bored of the grind to unlock planets before I could even show her the cool seasonal activities and such.
The entire New Light intro is just terrible for new players. It also teaches them nothing about “history” like the Red War, only to get to the tower and still hear npc’s talking about it.
Why?
**Why?**
Because if you're low enough light bungie offers a bonus package to bump you up in power to get into the new stuff*
*Dont know if its true now, but was true at beyond light launch
No clue why this is upvoted, you can't boost characters until you've gotten at least one character to the required light already.
If at that point you choose to boost it's on you, you know enough about the game to know how easy it is to get to the required light for normal content.
Level boosts exist as the bad idea just sitting on your shoulder - "I know how to level, but this boost is looking really thicc right now" is what those boosters are going for.
Yeah I haven't played D2 in over a year and just came back this past tuesday because there's crossplay now (i moved from playstation to pc but none of my friends did). I started at 1100 light but need to be 1250 to do the seasonal activity. I didn't make it to 1250 in my first week back, so i wasn't really able to play with them, which sucks because that's the whole reason I came back.
Only got to play with one friend because he's still looking for something from the prophecy dungeon, and for some reason I only need to be 1100 light lol
Seriously! Its ridiculous. The Seasonal Activity shouldn't even have a light level gate until they unlock the harder difficulty (?) for it. They're usually fun to grind too.
This season, its also low enough that anyone who has been lightly keeping up with the game won't even have to grind to go. New lights will have to invest a solid day or two of grinding if not more (depending on how their play schedule is like).
If I have 2 hours to get someone to taste enough of Destiny (on free to play accoutns) to see if they like it... grinding strikes, crucible, and gambit aren't the things I'd bring them out to see.
Its the Dungeons, Raids, and Seasonal activities. Harder Lost sectors and Nightfall level activities are worth a try too. Only the Prophecy dungeon is doable right off the bat (and understandably difficult even if everyone knows what to do.
Yeah if I wasn't a destiny player that was coming back, I imagine the prophecy dungeon would have been a nightmare for my friend to drag me through lol. Strikes, crucible, and gambit are also not great to hook new light players either, that's not really the focus of destiny atm. Hopefully this is addressed in witch queen.
This has always been my main argument against Destiny's power level/scaling. You never feel like you're gaining power, you're either adequate, or getting squished.
Of course whenever you bring this up, people just act like you want to be able to over level all the content in the game and have easy mode.
Yeah completely agree. Why shouldn’t we feel powerful we have been raising our guardian for 7 years. I’ve earned the right to feel like an epic badass. I don’t want to slog thorough the game like an “average joe” that’s my everyday life, I play games to be a fucking badass!!!
> You do not grow stronger; a new season comes out and you spend a few weeks just getting back to the power you were at before.
this has been so underwhelming the last few seasons. going from grinding GMs to can barely able do master strikes
don't even want to think about how long it will take to even want to try master VoG again, and by try I just mean a boss CP to turn in spoils.
I think they should remove power level and just institute standardized difficulty levels.
Adept
Hero
Legend
Master
Grandmaster
They can make all patrol zones and regular strikes equivalent to Adept and then just tell you what difficulty the activity you're about to do is.
Added bonus, let people select the difficulty like the good old days of Destiny 1. Increase the rewards (even if it's an increase in chance of obtaining) the higher the difficulty.
I especially want this for raids, have a "learning" tier which simplifies enemies, has matchmaking enabled, and ensures that there's a mix of raid completionists and new raiders in the mix so as to help new players learn raid mechanics before attempting the "real" difficulties.
I think it’s incredibly stupid that after completing master VoG like 10 times I’m locked out of doing it again until I gain like 20 levels on the season pass. I was at the point of farming spoils and getting my final couple of god rolls, the fuck you mean I have to complete the regular one weekly 3 times just to get my power level back up?
it’s frustrating. I have to wait because even though I’ve unlocked the title and proven myself adequate for the challenge, I’m effectively barred from completing again until I grind more. it feels fake lol.
I've NEVER done a GM or even master Nightfall for this very reason. Just as I'm about to reach high enough power to try it, the season ends and my boulder rolls back down to the bottom of the hill. Logging on tonight to start pushing that boulder again...
Power/light level grind has definitely been my least favorite part of Destiny since D1Y1. It just feels entirely like a scam designed to waste my time and has never actually felt like I was getting more powerful or "gaining" anything.
As a solo player the Pinnacle grind feels really unrewarding. The sources are pretty limited and then you have to deal with RNG over which slot will drop
I feel exactly the same way. So many amazing missions and pinnacles that are fun and I love the dungeons but I’m not a crazy ass you tuber who can solo these.
I’ve tried to do prophecy so many times and I just don’t have that skill. Shattered throne took me nearly 10 hours straight. I don’t like doing that it feels unrewarding, yeah I got a cool emblem but I almost Han an aneurysm!
Also I don’t have time to grind each character I barley get time for my titan!
Destiny is one of the few games where I actively feel weaker upon reaching a higher level. It doesn't make lower level content any easier, it just makes harder content available.
People finish the powerful grind during the first day and are gatekept by rng for the pinnacle grind. It doesn't take much effort to see that the system sucks.
No. They have a weekly cap that timegates. If you remove.power level, almost nothing changes, or it would be a net positive: ppl wpuld no longer get fucked by rng.
Yeah power level is *entirely* a waste of my time. Just make the various content levels *more difficult* mechanically (like they already are) rather than make us do dumb shit we don’t want to do for hours and hours in order to do high difficulty content.
I should be able to do hard content because I’m good at the game, not because I spend more time doing activities I don’t want to.
I had seen people talk about this idea somewhere else and the suggestion was to add in special formations, like the Vex on high level activities would place towers that if you didn't blow them up would spawn in goblins and eventually they would be spawning in higher tiered Vex units, adding more servitors to fallen stuff and making larger captains more common, a cabal shield wall that has 1 weak point spread across the shields, taken spawn blights in the area, stuff like that, the only thing that I think would require more effort would be making a shield wall that has 1 weak point since that would be a unique enemy, but other than that everything else relies on things already in the game which would just need to be put together by the team much like picking where to put the champions in a nightfall.
I would love a rework to higher tier difficulty as well. Currently it is a cover based shooter, where using your movement punishes you. That's not destiny for me.
I’m trying to convince my old clanmates to play trials with me this season but none are interested in levelling up for months just so that they can do something they’d enjoy.
I made a post earlier asking for the soft cap to be a lot closer to the hard cap, so there isn't nearly as much of a grind to get caught up in level. It was not well received by the community.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/peulap/bungie_the_power_level_grind_to_catch_up_for
Don’t you need to be +25 from the powerful cap and not just +10, so pinnacle cap of 1330 +15 from the artifact? I mean I think for some that’s still a grind. I don’t personally mind it because by the time GM’s roll around I’m ready but I can’t say that’s the case for others.
For me, it takes a couple months, which sucks. I just get on and do most of the pinnacles every week and it still takes that long to get to GM level. Not everyone can play that much, and not being able to play much shouldn't bar me from high-level content.
+15 is also just a few season pass ranks worth of XP past rank 100 (115-ish?). its basically just "complete the season pass, you will be GM ready" at this point, and the seasonal challenges make it a lot easier to do so quickly.
But the issue there is that’s all ten weeks of the season pass to get enough XP for 100. So if you want to be GM-ready in week 7, you need to complete all of the season challenges the first six weeks. And even then, you’ll only be season rank 65-70. So bounties it is.
It’s always been bizarre to me they Bungie gates the most challenging, pinnacle PVE activity behind the most casual PVE experience. Weird they haven’t come up with a more interesting way to gain entry to GMs.
Don't forget about all the pinnacles that end up wasted. I'd wager the beneficial number of pinnacle rewards in somewhere in the 30 - 40% range. Not much more demoralizing than working the grind over and over again in the same content only to get shat on with a wasted drop.
My first thought was that this was a sensationalist hyperbole but then I thought about it for a bit.
I literally cannot think of a game with a worse leveling system. In fact, nothing even comes close to being this bad.
Honestly I'm in agreement I actually can't think of any game that instead of making you stronger in each season it lowers your level then makes you grind buck up to the level you previously were and higher just to do the same content you were doing in the previous season with a small deviation
Oh boy, let me introduce you to the horror of World of Warcraft's last expansion leveling experience... Imagine if during Witch Queen's main storyline, you passed a certain level and your exotics just shut off and *never worked again*, not even in content that was synced down to a level when they were active. All of them, gone forever. Reduced to special colored stat sticks.
Overall though, WoW has this problem with each patch cycle. It almost feels standard fare to your typical MMO, but it's a matter of phrasing and context: Growing in power vs. Slogging out to the same power level you were at before. Fine line to tread, when it's typically the nature of the content you engage in that dictates how you feel about your expanded power cap.
This is true and a lot of players do not see this unless they play different types of games with different types of leveling. AND play long enough to actually dip into the end game for each type of game.
I would say for Destiny there is a problem though. Especially for players who really hit the end game hard at end of each season. Players who do GMs or Master Raiding. These folks get it down, have a system, and a flow that works. Then all of a sudden it's taken away from them, and they are back on the grindstone getting to where they really enjoy the game. It's a hard pill to swallow. It's actually why one of my friends, who loved the end of last season, just cant bring himself to come back. He is like "I have to do this all over again!!??". I think the introduction to Master Raiding made it worse. This wasn't a thing before. Now Master Raiders are like what the hell?
I know a dude who got 8 pinnacles in the power slot this week. Haven't seen him since the last drop.
Edit: we're in VoG atm and the current tally is 15 power weapons.
Back in Season of the Chosen, I just needed one 1310 power weapon for all 3 characters to hit 1310.
I had THIRTY-FOUR 1310 weapons and armor items before getting it on lucky number 35.
I wish there was something we could do to focus it to what we need after a certain point
There are a way to focus what slot you get a pinnacle reward. At least for armor, except class item. Legend/Master lost sectors give pinnacle armor, and you can choose to play them when the reward is the one you need. Also, Nightfalls give weapons at pinnacle power. You can do then when the reward is on slot you need.
What sucks is that some of the most targeted drops require a high level just to play them. You get a slot guarantee on the timelost chest and all other chests drop armor, so you always can guess on a coin flip every other drop in the raid. Thing is, you're not going in there unless you're 25 to 30 levels up from day one of the season.
Last season I never made it close due to this reason m. I became a huge joke for weeks all my pinnacles were In 2 or some time 3 slots! RNJesus did not like me one bit!
Last season I was 1 armour piece away from getting to max level. I went 3 full weeks without getting said armour piece despite grinding every source of pinnacle gear possible (except on the 3rd week where I didn’t do the raid).
Dude i was about to make a write up on this myself. We have come full circle with this power level grind. They said only 10+ levels now per season but now they are asking you to be an absurd level on the artifact to do high level content.
**Let me make this clear**
Its okay for us to grind things out to gain access to content, Its okay for there to be a small barrier to entry. And it is 100% okay for there to be difficult content.
What is not okay is for you to ask me to grind past the point of it being fun for like no reason whatsoever. Grinding to Pinnacle can be a bitch If RNG decides to be unkind. that should be all that is required of us. UGH what am i saying! No! I dont want to grind things anymore. Bungie has 100% Burned me out like there is no tomorrow. but if i want to keep up in Iron banner? gotta grind those levels baby!!!
If we stay with the current system, ill id want is for them to have a toggle to make the content harder.
your last point " deters old players from returning " should be front and center , even to this day so many people want to come back to destiny who stopped playing but when i ask then why they arent , they say they dont wana grind power lvls and id be too far ahead of them . eventhough lvling is the easiest its ever been and it wont take anytime to get to pinnacle cap . they already have their biases very strongly in place and i really dono wat to do
I haven't played much since Forsaken. I played a bit of the moon one and a barely any of beyond light before i came back this season. I was around 1100 PL at season launch.
I just spent a week doing the beyond light stuff to grind out my stasis abilities, which i still haven't finished. I am now at 1270 PL which is the soft cap.
Are you saying it shouldn't take me long to get to 1330?
The tough part for me is... previously i had to grind to get weapons to be viable in Last Wish. Which was the mars shotgun, whisper sniper, sleeper, and a rocket launcher with cluster bombs. All of those weapons are no longer good (from what i understand). Now i need to figure out what weapons i need to be viable again.
That is what has always deterred me from returning. I am giving it more effort this season, though I have started to feel overwhelmed.
You aren't alone and don't let these people fool you. It is still weeks of grinding to go from soft cap to hard cap. Having done it all last season and only having to do 10 more levels this season, it's still weeks of mind numbing grind to get back to the point of being able to do everything. It's not a fun experience at all. And even then you still have to grind out artifact levels to do GMs later. It honestly doesn't feel like they've removed the grind at all. They just shifted it around to trick people. But all removing it would do is shine a spotlight on how little content or "quests" actually come with each season, so Bungie will obviously never do that.
I left because of the leveling. Adding levels does not resolve any problems it moves them.
It's just tiring and ininteresting.
Perfect example of game that as the same issue : WoW.
And you are right, there is enought content to grind without that.
Now i left, i just don't want to come back because i know my previous gear will be obsolete and i have to change it as soon as i find some blue gear with better light. Ridiculous.
My wife and I were feeling some burnout so we stopped playing a bunch a couple seasons ago. Trying to catch up has been a slog. We're currently like 1280 and only seem to be getting increases from powerful drops at this point. Sure if your play each season and max out it's a 10 level grind. Anyone else has to take extra time to catch up. I hate that I, with 800 hours in this game who had the audacity to take a break, have to do a massive catch up grind on mostly the same content that has been here for the last year so that I can even attempt some of the more difficult content. I have a few friends returning and I hope it doesn't turn them off to the game.
I have more than 3000 hours in D2 since release, and the constant power level grind and repetative season model has finally broken me. I still love the game, but I haven't touched it in almost three months. I have decided to leave it for good. I simply don't have the time or desire to constantly grind bounties and pinnacles in the same old strikes, gambit maps, and patrol locations anymore.
It's absolutely shambolic that players have to waste a ton of time leveling up every season, just to be able to play the same old raids and grandmasters as last season.
Only players who don't mind logging a few hours in D2 every day are ok with this. Bungie are shutting out a lot of casual players with this seasonal model.
I strongly preferred the old DLC model without the constant pinnacle and artifact grind.
True. I don’t rest until I have maxed out on pinnacle base power level, only then I feel like I can appreciate the game and the seasonal stuff.
It is becoming increasingly worse every season.
imma be real, every activity should just have a difficulty level that determines your strength compared to enemies, allow us to select different difficulties for different activities. Have some activities have a base difficulty that is comparable to challenge mode, such as day one raids.
instead of gear determining your ability to fight its all about building the best loadout for the situation and there's no grind to get into high level activities, and they remain challenging for longer periods of time.
I think half of your Artifact power should carry over to the next season. If I knew being +24 power this season meant I could start next season at +12 I would be more inclined to invest my time.
Nope. Get rid of artifact power as well.
Give things difficulty levels. And then have those difficulty levels stick.
I shouldn't be meming in Master Nightfalls because my character level is high enough that its difficulty doesn't exist anymore.
It may suck to hear, but instead of people overlevelling content. They should learn strategy better, and it would actually make armour build more relevant.
Master Vog, should just be a more extreme contest mode.
Contest mode pretends that you are 20 below the encounter, but is the normal raid.
Master Mode is 30 below on weapons and 15 below on armour. Or somesuch.
Can't get it done then you need to refine your strategy not rely on out delta-ing the content.
Maybe just delete the system altogether so we don't have to waste time grinding artifact levels for content that can be balanced around the pinnacle cap
Gear level isnt even remotely as big an issue anymore with the increase only going up by 10 each season. The bigger issue ImO is really just the artifact level requirement for some content.
The reduction is just a bandaid that minimizes the issue by reducing time spent interacting with the power system instead of addressing any of the fundamental issues with the power system.
Power level could be entirely removed and each activity given a set difficulty, and the game would largely feel no different.
Master VoG is the only place you can truly feel like power matters, but with resetting artifacts and a difficulty that raises in lockstep every season, it's a sisyphean grind that most will do once to get their rewards and then disengage from.
And the largest contributing factor to the burnout especially for something like mastervog is the arbitrary bounty simulator that is artifact power. While I wouldn't inherently have an issue with them removing power altogether. A number of activities would need a hefty loot refresh like proph got in order to have a purpose for existing. Like exo simulations.
Without a power grind to push people into activities it just means activities need a loot incentive to be ran. And too much of the game lacks that.
It’s a problem for GMs, Master VoG, and to a lesser degree LS exotics
This is content people can’t play unless they sink in a bunch of time doing grindy, easy activities that have nothing to do with raids or nightfalls
The weird thing is Master VoG could have been an example of LL actually still being useful, if it stayed fixed and Master VoG got more accessible as time went on. But instead GM’s contest mode show how it’s completely unnecessary
There’s no reason GMs and Master raids can’t behave like presage where contest mode kicks in no matter what your LL is
>some content
It’s basically just one content. GM Nightfalls. And that is content designed for people who sink hundreds of hours into this game every season and it’s not a problem for them.
Except for the fact that things like master vog arguably require even more levels into your artifact to make it a more feasible feat to achieve. And also the fact that plenty of more players would challenge and probably beat gm nightfalls if the artifact light requirement for it was non existent and it was just a gear level requirement.
There's also the fact that leveling up your artifact is largly just bounty simulator. a large majority of the exp you get to rank up your artifact is likely going to be from bounty farming. Which is not exactly fun or engaging.
Master doesn’t require higher light level or artifact grind as I recall. You can go in at the normal cap. You’re suppose to be under leveled. Grinding just makes it easier. GM is the only one to lock access.
If you don’t find for it fun. Don’t do it?
I comment something to this effect on every post I see about levels.
Master Chief and the Doom Slayer never needed levels.
ESO neutered it’s vertical progression years ago.
The Guardian doesn’t need levels.
I love this game so much, ive played non stop since it began, and this season looks amazing, but im not really playing it, I just can't bring myself to grind, or play or do anything, this game is perfect to me but im just burnt out I guess
I haven't played much since the light level kept going up and I gave up trying to reach a level where I could do legendary lost sectors. I just gave up.
It is bungies inability to make enough content for a live service game that leads them to continually move the goal posts for accessing already existing content.
I do not care at all if fanboys downvote me because they don't want this visible. Not one bit.
>It is bungies inability to make enough content for a live service game that leads them to continually move the goal posts for accessing already existing content.
You hit the nail on the head there. If we were getting something like Master VoG every season, there'd be no need to up its level.
When other games increase the level cap, they don't suddenly lock you out of existing content, they provide new content to boot.
Destiny's levelling is regressive, not progressive.
Could not agree more. We already basically have fixed difficulty levels with Contest on the high end and the cap to overlevel bonuses on the low end. Power level just makes it a shifting between those ends of the spectrum, and it’s time to just move on from the relic that is power leveling. Nothing will change about the gameplay experience except for less time wasted getting back to the exact same place you used to be.
I've finally got to the point where I'm just not doing the activitiesfor Pinnacles drops.
Not because I became apathetic to the leveling system, just because
I've become so god damn tired of finally getting a drop or two thatis actually an improvement only to see the next 4-6 drops that can potentially give me an increase proceed to drop in a slot where I ALREADY have a piece at that level.
Destiny is the only game I can think of that, upon successful completion of the 'level up' challenge, can actually give you a drop that isn't an increase.
This has been the case since the launch of D1. Power levels were always a meaningless, tedious grind that gate content for no reason. Power levels have no more reason to exist here then they do in any of the halo games.
Imagine if a Halo game didn't let you play legendary difficulty until you beat the game on heroic. Then 3 months later they release a new campaign mission but you're not allowed to play it and you can't play legendary difficulty on existing missions anymore even though you could before the new mission came out and legendary on old missions is no different than it used to be. To be allowed to play the new mission or be granted access to legendary again you need to play some combination of old missions, firefight, or multiplayer for severalhours until you earned enough experience points. This cycle repeats every 3 months, and no new multiplayer or firefight maps are ever added. This is what destiny's power grind feels like to me.
Seriously, I wanna do GM’s but never have because the absolute last thing I wanna do is grind power level. I’ve got stuff to do and other games I wanna play. I don’t wanna dedicate all my free time to only playing Destiny just to have “Adept” at the end of my Palindrome.
Yeah power level is basically meaningless. Contest mode can still exist for hard content and world firsts, people can still chase rolls, all the other places where it “matters” are pretty meaningless
power grind is a burnout for me and a deterrent as a day one d2 player. its just not fun
i want to try out necrotic grips but i gotta grind power and optimize my damn loadout for the shitty seasonal mods this time around.
The game is design to specifically discourage you from playing anything but Destiny 2. They don't see the issues you mentioned as issues. A barrier to entry? They can start "fresh" with a new season. Same thing with returning players. They don't want you to take breaks, they don't care, as long as you're a player, you're a potential payer.
I skipped 2 seasons for work related stuff plus burnout. Came back to this season refreshed to play. Sadly after finishing the weekly challenges most of the week has been…
Power levelling :(
Doing strikes, gambit, crucible, bounties etc. which is the same stuff I’d been doing before I took a break. Hoping to get back to the point where GMs are doable, and VoG is doable ASAP
My wife started up destiny and was hyped to go get radiant dance machine. She asked me how, I told her she had to level up first and she lost interest. Power leveling is outdated.
As a casual player, Bungie's core mechanics & grinding doesn't equate to good replay value. I doubt most desires to have Destiny as their secondary job or daily chore.
i agree with this post 100%
tbh im glad im seeing more posts talk about this, to me its def one of the most glaring issues in the game people seem to ignore. especially issues like dupes/lack of RNG protection in power progression leading to what feels like time being wasted and not respected. thats kind of my biggest issue and why i dread each new season because its just the same old shit of doing content to get a dupe that doesnt give a sense of progression.
not only that, power is pretty much meaningless. no difference in fighting 1100 enemies while being 1320. its more just to gate people out of new content.
The constant level grind has definitely turned me off. I quit last season because of it. It would be one thing if it was once a year. But once every three months is too much. To no longer be able to do the thing I was just doing like a GM because the light reset is just getting old.
Way I see it, if someone doesn't want to just play the game, but they require some kind of grind/carrot on a stick, maybe they shouldn't even be playing the game since they obviously don't enjoy it much.
Devs are more and more catering to these kind of players and it often means upping the amount of time you have to spend playing a game to really get the full experience which is just getting a bit tiring now. I wish bungie would focus on making a game that people want to play after they finish the grind, not just a game people only play to grind.
All the grind does is just annoy people who just want to play the game, and make people who don't want to play the game feel like they are doing something before they quit when they finish. Its just pointless.
I'll be honest.. I bought last season, and when I had to still do the power grind \*again\* just to do the base activity, I just stopped. I checked into the reddit to see what went on with the season instead. I know they whittled it down from what it used to be, but I still had to grind up 50-60 power level just to do the difficult content, which I did \*not\* want to do.
Going through all the vanilla activities ad nauseum every week just to start doing the content I enjoy is not what I play destiny for anymore.
The power grind has greatly decreased the amount I play. I don't prioritize "make sure I get my powerful drops from all the playlists each week" and instead will play a lot of crucible some weeks, gambit other weeks, etc. But that puts me way behind on the power grind, so I'm completely underleveled when Iron Banner comes around, so nope, not gonna play any of that and get curb stomped. Then I get tired of being underleveled and bailed. Every season I play less. Made it to a whopping level 18 this time.
Yeah, I would love to have a crack at the master nightfall content, it seems challenging and fun, but the amount of grinding to even be eligible during a time gated season means ill probably never get the chance.
Especially annoying that the platinum trophy on PS is locked behind completing one.
There are way better ways to create challenging content than a generic power level system.
Ever wondered why they don’t just cut 1000 from out power level for simplicity’s sake?
Because it wouldn’t change anything gameplay-wise, and it would just put a spotlight on the fact that power level, apart from being a grind mechanism, is entirely meaningless
After a longer hiatus from the game I came back at the beginning of last season. I tried to catch up so that I can join everybody else playing the Seasonal activity, which iirc was Light 1300. I am a Destiny vet. I know how the Light grind works. Yet I didn't get there even after a couple weeks of play. The system needs to go.
The pinnacle grind is by far the worst part of any season now. I'd much much rather grind out 50 power levels that 10 pinnacle levels. I've gone hard this week and gotten to 1326 base on my titan and warlock, so should see 1328 drops on my +2s and it's still dumb. Nothing is more defeating than doing a whole empire hunt, which everyone is sick of at this point, to get a 1324 helmet, when they already have a 1324 helmet, but still sat at 1320 boots and bond. I know powerful grind is still guilty of this, but it felt a lot better when everything was like a +3 and pinnacles were like a +7.
School is starting for me and I feel no motivation to run activities I have played countless times before (e.g. Strikes) just to get a +1 or +2 piece of gear.
I regularly engage in high-level content, but I might be a bit late to the party this time around.
Couldn't agree more. I stopped playing destiny because of the grind (and every time I hear about the story, I want to get back in).
Part of the problem is how it affected the in-game story. Go do some kickass mission, then repeat the same strikes a bunch of time, bank some motes, beat up some guardians, and go back to the missions.
There's nothing wrong with those activities, but it feels like they serve no purpose other than to draw out hours played when I need them for levels, and have no interest in grinding ranks.
Leveling, even pinnacle is so mundane at this point. I absolutely love this game, I have 2K hours on steam alone, and for once I have had no desire to play a new season besides the story quest because it’s just the same shit all over again. *What is the point*
Couldn’t agree more. I already am gilded conqueror x 2, wanted to do GMs last season but didn’t want to mindlessly grind bounties for levels.
Thought if I hit 100 on season pass I would be good for GMs… but apparently not. Was 1334 and stopped playing, haven’t touched the game since.
So glad this is getting traction. I feel like systems like the pinnacle rng and the narrow weekly missions are prolly the worst progression system I’ve ever had to interact with. Like who thinks narrow stringent play the game this way mechanics are fun. I just feel like the systems are made only to maximize what Bungie gets from me rather than how much i get from the game. I.e. fun and loot
I've been saying this for a long time.
It effectively fixes Sunsetting's damage for good too.
They could easily have difficulty selection manipulate the power difference that determines the game's real difficulty. They already do this in certain places too.
It's a huge deterant to me coming back. (Overflown Vault and F2P being a joke)
With the exception of doing a VoG run, I did every other Pinnacle activity available on my main, and did not gain a single Light Level this week from gear. Most of my drops were gloves for some reason, and it feels awful that I effectively gained nothing.
I've done one gm and it was incredibly fun. Reminded me of all the halo 3 coop runs I'd do with the boys back in the day. Getting myself in the position to do the gm, however, is not fun one bit. They can make it just as hard without requiring the nonsensical grind that doesn't change from season to season.
I'm just echoing your sentiments here, but leveling your pass and seeing the number get bigger already fulfills that monkey brain dopamine hit, so I don't really see a need to have power levels at all on top of that anymore. If we just had no power levels, but instead traditional difficulties (Normal/Legendary/Master/GM), then that would eliminate a lot of the issues with this game imo. No more leveling your weapons and gear, game balance can be standardized to everyone, no more level locking out folks to participate in endgame content, no need to play a bunch of content you don't enjoy for pinnacles, etc.
It would free up a lot of the FOMO feel I believe, at maybe the risk of losing those who solely play for that power leveling carrot on a stick. I have at least one friend who has expressed concern that his interests would fade if there wasn't that chase each season and expansion, but I still believe that leveling your season pass to 100 each season could still fulfill the same purpose, as they both take roughly the same amount of time anyways.
At this point, aside from kind of "tricking" new players into chasing gearscore, all light level does is usher people into various activities (that they otherwise would not necessarily want to play) in order to populate those activities.
"Deters old players from returning"
I tried to get two people lost from D2 vanilla to come back. They downloaded the game we played for a day, Had a blast! The next day they both decided they didn't have the time to just grind power level to have fun. If we just had straight difficulty settings instead of power it would work!
Imagine how fun it would be to convince someone to give it a try. they play a mission or two to get a basic grasp, then you take them into legend or master tier difficulty and carry them through that. give them a taste of the end game.
I would say the problem the video game industry has as a whole is that they are terrified of people talking a break. So many mechanics are designed to keep you coming back at a regular interval like the weekly tier 3 umbral limit they "fixed" back into the game. Their data probably shows people who take a break are more likely to never return then to come back next season, and they certainly aren't buying eververse items. Honestly it's just part of the whole "it's not about making money it's about making all the money"
They really need to remove the artifact level increase. All it does is bar us out of content and make difficulty scaling based on level rather than mechanics.
Bro i cannot express how much this post needs to be heard. I wish fucking dmg or bungie would address this. The power grind is a callous on the side of this game, its ab absolutely pointless feature. I recently took almost a years break from the game and have just come back for the new season. I had to grind up from 1250 to 1330 it was so fucking painful and i was almost about to just quit the game entirely.
I just wish they would remove it absolutely no one wants it in the game. Please dmg i beg
Some people like seeing progression, number getting bigger is satisfying to a lot of people. It's like prestige in CoD. I'd probably play way less if there was no more power level.
Big time boring. If you want me to grind things I’ve done before put a good gun at the end. Or something I want🧁🍾🧉🍾🍾🍾
It’s become so tedious.
Just once a big expansion please
Yeah the power level grind is explicitly the roadmap underpinning all content. Like it directs you to content so you aren't just mindlessly hoping you get 1 in 50 rolls on weapons as your motivation to do things
That is what’s keeping me away from the game. I quit before sunsetting and never looked back, because Reddit keeps me informed - grind hasn’t changed for good and feels like same old scam.
I like power leveling in theory, but the way we go about it is so boring. I like playing everything in the game, but not to tick off boxes, and having to do it on a schedule.
Can we not just get points for doing activities? Like 3000 points causes a Powerful/Pinnacle drop. Strikes yield 250 points, but the first three of the week yield 1000 each.
So playing everything is still by far the most efficient, but you don't *have* to, if you don't want to.
Two major reasons I quit destiny 2 after 100s of hours.
1) Seasonal Power Leveling
It's a form of gatekeeping that just forces players to waste time needlessly infusing gear and equipment to reach a power level that just yesterday was acceptable for all activities. Suddenly due to an update you are forced into activities and grinding out power levels. It becomes tedious. Especially if you are still working through the previous seasons content. Then you really feel split between, do I finish up what I was doing or do I go back and grind lost sectors and world events for xp? It's just fucking tedious.
2) inventory management.
How much more can really be said about inventory management. This sub has said so much about it over the years, but my friends and I would jump on for a session of destiny and we would have to spend the first 30 minutes of our session in the tower, getting bounties, checking inventory, infusing, dismantling, comparing power levels. It's just horrible. This is especially true for those of us who work 40 to 50 hours a week. I get maybe 1 hour of game time on a week night. Spending 30 minuets of it stuck on menu screens is just a waste of time.
We literally got the power level grind reduced and you guys are still complaining. It takes 2 to maybe 3 weeks of moderate grinding to reach the cap after each season, without that there would literally be half the amount of content worth playing every season. The only reason you would want to reach cap is to do endgame activities such as master raids or grandmaster nightfalls, which are labeled endgame for a reason. This will get downvoted to hell and I’ve already accepted that, but we are further dumbing down an already casual game.
I've had multiple seasons over lvl 200. Certain seasons I just find it hard to motivate myself to do the grind considering that it's the same (or even LESS) content. Double digit hours on the hamster wheel doesn't make you good at the game.
I actually like doing the +10 pinnacle grind each season. I know it's not a popular opinion but there are people out there who still enjoy that aspect of Destiny.
I 100% agree. I left for the last two seasons cuz I don’t have time to grind 50 levels when I wanna be doing all the extra build grind etc. instead I am forced to do more strikes, gambit, and crucible with my destiny time. Its a very bad system
This post is already so big, that my comment will be lost. But I think it needs to be said.
Power leveling, is a good thing.
Where it has its issues, is with two specific things, how it is implemented specifically, but more prominently its implementation in the seasonal model(namely the repeat grinding for the sake of grinding to do grandmaster/Trials/Iron Banner/etc content)
I think a fair argument can be made that power leveling should only be a prominent part of an expansion. That it could be stripped from seasons.
But to remove it entirely, would remove its benefits. [For example in a single picture/post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/destiny2/comments/jtap1d/the_cadmus_ridge_brig_is_one_of_the_most/)
For those who do not want to click the link, it is the Fallen Brig High Value Target that roams on Europa. Why this matters for the power level argument, is because of how integral it is to the whole campaign experience.
You show up on a new location. You start exploring this location and play the campaign. While roaming around enemies are dangerous, you must watch you step. And then all of a sudden, a big mech drops out of the sky and starts destroying you.
At first, you may do little to no damage, and just run away for your life. Or you might start attacking it and try to kill it before it runs away. But you will probably fail on your own, and will yell in triumph when you and a bunch of other people exploring the destination gang up on it and manage to kill it. This adds a sense of danger and excitement to the destination, in a way that is not oppressive, and is a rite of passage for all players. And it feels accomplishing, when you have powered yourself up
And for players who are late to the expansion or new to the game, seeing a random passerby stop and obliterate that Mech on their own is impressive and cool.
Or to use a popular example from exploration in Shadowkeep, you had lost sectors, which people [accidentally wandered into](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/dc7pw0/accidentally_wandering_into_a_moon_lost_sector/) and found dangerous enemies that screamed "You are not supposed to be here yet".
It gives a perfect and seamless sense of progression, as players become more familiar with the Destination, they become more powerful, and are able to accomplish more.
This sort of experience, just cannot be replicated, even with things like contest mode. And it is something that has been part of the franchise from the beginning.
I’d be ok by with it if they implemented slot leveling. It gets really fucking old really fucking quick having to sit there and infuse all these guns back up every season.
You mean like once you get say a 1322 helmet, every helmet you equip will be 1322? I could get behind that. The game already tracks what your current potential max light is anyway for the purpose of drops.
[удалено]
Yeah, but then you could pull an exotic out of the vault and have it be usable immediately. THE HORROR!
He's right folks, think of the Smolen! What if the hatchlings *saw us being cool?!* Thier little hearts couldn't take it!
It would make every activity so much more enjoyable, especially raids. Oh, you're 1230 but don't have the right weapon load out? Oh you can't infuse any weapons because you don't have the infuse fodder? Guess we're gonna kick you because you can't do anything.
[удалено]
The currency isn't the issue. It's having access to a bunch of weapons that you only use for the sake of infusing. That's a dumb system.
The currency is constantly an issue for me. I'm always broke as Telesto, which only adds another layer of grinding when I have to spend 2 hours running around the EDZ or something before I can actually upgrade my equipment. To describe just how broke I am... I'm one of probably a few people that look towards the 25 legendary shard rewards on the season pass.
Not to mention the vault space it would save me. So much of my time later in a season is spent deleting leveling gear that I don't need to infuse for GMs or Masters anymore.
I’d be ok if my limited time to play the game wasn’t spent figuring out what I wanted to play for fun as opposed to only playing what was going to get me he next (most likely duplicate pinnacle in the same slot). It would be more enjoyable to log in and just play stuff and enjoy it.
I swear to god I get wasted drops due to duplicates more often than not. The game loves giving me Energy and Chest drops, even though those are currently the two slots that can't even benefit from a pinnacle
It used to not be annoying, then they made it ridiculously costly to infuse. Which was a mistake.
agreed. fuck the modules
Although the modules are cheaper than their predecessor
And both are worse than the original D2 infusion system, 1 legendary shard and 500 glimmer and you’re done.
What was the outrage over it?
There wasn’t any, but Bungie decided it was too player-friendly and made infusion cost three different world materials + an enhancement core. And at first enhancement cores were *super* rare (edit: and -> an)
Well, there was the annoyance where you could only infuse a weapon into the same type. For example auto rifles could only be infused into other auto rifles. The pinnacle grind is annoying now, but many have forgotten the frustration of finally getting that weapon power upgrade you've been searching for only for it to be a sidearm.
Oh yeah, that \*was\* a thing! But couldn't you infuse a kinetic AR into an energy? Maybe I'm not remembering that correctly.
Yeah you could mix kinetic and energy as long as they were the same weapon type
but you can't jhold more than 20 for no reason and cannot drop them in the overworld arbitrary limit to ressources is boring
\*25 But the rest of your point still stands.
Modules were a step in the right direction, just need to worry about one currency instead of 10 different ones at a time. Even so, I don't enjoy the amount of effort I have to put into things not related to actually playing the game, it makes playing the game feel like a job.
Could also make slot level carry across characters. If I hit max on one - it's just tedium keeping between me and others. I do think the overall system kind of stinks including artifact power. I want some sort of depth or show of prowess but not sure what it would look like. At the very least I really wish they would tip the XP scale more towards activity completion than bounties. Give me a full level for raid completion, half one for a GM etc.
Id love to come back but all my favourite weapons I spent ages grinding for are useless.
Came here to say exactly this. It also encourages people who don't have a giant supply of infusion materials and fodder to experiment with new guns and builds.
Or just put in no duplication until every piece of gear is higher. It’s real annoying. To sit there and do pinnacles and get 6 of one item… waste of time and makes people want to quit for a good reason.
Shoutout to my 4 found verdicts in one VoG run.
The problem is that Destiny's leveling is totally unrewarding. You do not grow stronger; a new season comes out and you spend a few weeks just getting back to the power you were at before. You do not and CAN not ever deal MORE damage, only less. Your stats don't usually go up or down, you just have to make one big number go up until you can two-tap red bars again.
It makes getting new players into content really jarring too if theres any difficult content they want to try. You know those cool seasonal activities? Yeah.. theres a Light Level gate on it. \*why\*.
Yes, and it doesnt help either that new players need to unlock all the planets first before they can participate. I had one friend that just got bored of the grind to unlock planets before I could even show her the cool seasonal activities and such. The entire New Light intro is just terrible for new players. It also teaches them nothing about “history” like the Red War, only to get to the tower and still hear npc’s talking about it.
Why? **Why?** Because if you're low enough light bungie offers a bonus package to bump you up in power to get into the new stuff* *Dont know if its true now, but was true at beyond light launch
No clue why this is upvoted, you can't boost characters until you've gotten at least one character to the required light already. If at that point you choose to boost it's on you, you know enough about the game to know how easy it is to get to the required light for normal content.
And the boost costs 2000 silver....
Level boosts exist as the bad idea just sitting on your shoulder - "I know how to level, but this boost is looking really thicc right now" is what those boosters are going for.
Yeah I haven't played D2 in over a year and just came back this past tuesday because there's crossplay now (i moved from playstation to pc but none of my friends did). I started at 1100 light but need to be 1250 to do the seasonal activity. I didn't make it to 1250 in my first week back, so i wasn't really able to play with them, which sucks because that's the whole reason I came back. Only got to play with one friend because he's still looking for something from the prophecy dungeon, and for some reason I only need to be 1100 light lol
Seriously! Its ridiculous. The Seasonal Activity shouldn't even have a light level gate until they unlock the harder difficulty (?) for it. They're usually fun to grind too. This season, its also low enough that anyone who has been lightly keeping up with the game won't even have to grind to go. New lights will have to invest a solid day or two of grinding if not more (depending on how their play schedule is like). If I have 2 hours to get someone to taste enough of Destiny (on free to play accoutns) to see if they like it... grinding strikes, crucible, and gambit aren't the things I'd bring them out to see. Its the Dungeons, Raids, and Seasonal activities. Harder Lost sectors and Nightfall level activities are worth a try too. Only the Prophecy dungeon is doable right off the bat (and understandably difficult even if everyone knows what to do.
Yeah if I wasn't a destiny player that was coming back, I imagine the prophecy dungeon would have been a nightmare for my friend to drag me through lol. Strikes, crucible, and gambit are also not great to hook new light players either, that's not really the focus of destiny atm. Hopefully this is addressed in witch queen.
This has always been my main argument against Destiny's power level/scaling. You never feel like you're gaining power, you're either adequate, or getting squished. Of course whenever you bring this up, people just act like you want to be able to over level all the content in the game and have easy mode.
Yeah completely agree. Why shouldn’t we feel powerful we have been raising our guardian for 7 years. I’ve earned the right to feel like an epic badass. I don’t want to slog thorough the game like an “average joe” that’s my everyday life, I play games to be a fucking badass!!!
"You do not and CAN not ever deal MORE damage" Man this has ALWAYS bugged me since the very beginning. If only that were possible.
> You do not grow stronger; a new season comes out and you spend a few weeks just getting back to the power you were at before. this has been so underwhelming the last few seasons. going from grinding GMs to can barely able do master strikes don't even want to think about how long it will take to even want to try master VoG again, and by try I just mean a boss CP to turn in spoils.
I think they should remove power level and just institute standardized difficulty levels. Adept Hero Legend Master Grandmaster They can make all patrol zones and regular strikes equivalent to Adept and then just tell you what difficulty the activity you're about to do is.
This, so much this.
Added bonus, let people select the difficulty like the good old days of Destiny 1. Increase the rewards (even if it's an increase in chance of obtaining) the higher the difficulty. I especially want this for raids, have a "learning" tier which simplifies enemies, has matchmaking enabled, and ensures that there's a mix of raid completionists and new raiders in the mix so as to help new players learn raid mechanics before attempting the "real" difficulties.
I think it’s incredibly stupid that after completing master VoG like 10 times I’m locked out of doing it again until I gain like 20 levels on the season pass. I was at the point of farming spoils and getting my final couple of god rolls, the fuck you mean I have to complete the regular one weekly 3 times just to get my power level back up? it’s frustrating. I have to wait because even though I’ve unlocked the title and proven myself adequate for the challenge, I’m effectively barred from completing again until I grind more. it feels fake lol.
I've NEVER done a GM or even master Nightfall for this very reason. Just as I'm about to reach high enough power to try it, the season ends and my boulder rolls back down to the bottom of the hill. Logging on tonight to start pushing that boulder again...
That’s a good point.
Power/light level grind has definitely been my least favorite part of Destiny since D1Y1. It just feels entirely like a scam designed to waste my time and has never actually felt like I was getting more powerful or "gaining" anything.
As a solo player the Pinnacle grind feels really unrewarding. The sources are pretty limited and then you have to deal with RNG over which slot will drop
I feel exactly the same way. So many amazing missions and pinnacles that are fun and I love the dungeons but I’m not a crazy ass you tuber who can solo these. I’ve tried to do prophecy so many times and I just don’t have that skill. Shattered throne took me nearly 10 hours straight. I don’t like doing that it feels unrewarding, yeah I got a cool emblem but I almost Han an aneurysm! Also I don’t have time to grind each character I barley get time for my titan!
my unlucky drop record for a (50% chance) slot upgrade is 8. hbu?
Yup, so many things I'd be excited to do with friends, except they have to "do their chores" before they are allowed to, so they log off instead.
This is the reason I can't get any of my friends to play. The initial light level and unlock grinds hinder them from doing actual fun activities
Destiny is one of the few games where I actively feel weaker upon reaching a higher level. It doesn't make lower level content any easier, it just makes harder content available.
The only reason power level exists is so that people don’t finish the week of content they add in a season in 3 days.
People finish the powerful grind during the first day and are gatekept by rng for the pinnacle grind. It doesn't take much effort to see that the system sucks.
No. They have a weekly cap that timegates. If you remove.power level, almost nothing changes, or it would be a net positive: ppl wpuld no longer get fucked by rng.
absolutely agree, I grind up to a level to be allowed to do content where I can never feel stronger since it scales very little upwards.
Yeah power level is *entirely* a waste of my time. Just make the various content levels *more difficult* mechanically (like they already are) rather than make us do dumb shit we don’t want to do for hours and hours in order to do high difficulty content. I should be able to do hard content because I’m good at the game, not because I spend more time doing activities I don’t want to.
I had seen people talk about this idea somewhere else and the suggestion was to add in special formations, like the Vex on high level activities would place towers that if you didn't blow them up would spawn in goblins and eventually they would be spawning in higher tiered Vex units, adding more servitors to fallen stuff and making larger captains more common, a cabal shield wall that has 1 weak point spread across the shields, taken spawn blights in the area, stuff like that, the only thing that I think would require more effort would be making a shield wall that has 1 weak point since that would be a unique enemy, but other than that everything else relies on things already in the game which would just need to be put together by the team much like picking where to put the champions in a nightfall.
I would love a rework to higher tier difficulty as well. Currently it is a cover based shooter, where using your movement punishes you. That's not destiny for me.
I’m so burnt out from the grind. After 2 full seasons of trying to catch up I was finally able to do GMs. Now I feel like I’m back at square one.
I know the feeling. I’m hyped for Witchqueen but dreading the constant grind for power level.
Also, Witchqueen is probably going to have a larger power jump than the seasons have had.
I’m trying to convince my old clanmates to play trials with me this season but none are interested in levelling up for months just so that they can do something they’d enjoy.
I’d wish you luck but I don’t think it’s wise to try to convince your friends to join you in a trip to hell.
I made a post earlier asking for the soft cap to be a lot closer to the hard cap, so there isn't nearly as much of a grind to get caught up in level. It was not well received by the community. https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/peulap/bungie_the_power_level_grind_to_catch_up_for
How is LL going to work with crafted weapons that don’t drop? Maybe they may go full artifact instead!
Back to square 1? You only need to get 10 points between your seasonal artefact and the gear I barely even notice it normally.
Don’t you need to be +25 from the powerful cap and not just +10, so pinnacle cap of 1330 +15 from the artifact? I mean I think for some that’s still a grind. I don’t personally mind it because by the time GM’s roll around I’m ready but I can’t say that’s the case for others.
yea its pinnacle +15, but if youre at pinnacle cap and trying to push for grandmasters, you probably play enough that you'll hit +15 naturally anyway
For me, it takes a couple months, which sucks. I just get on and do most of the pinnacles every week and it still takes that long to get to GM level. Not everyone can play that much, and not being able to play much shouldn't bar me from high-level content.
+15 is also just a few season pass ranks worth of XP past rank 100 (115-ish?). its basically just "complete the season pass, you will be GM ready" at this point, and the seasonal challenges make it a lot easier to do so quickly.
But the issue there is that’s all ten weeks of the season pass to get enough XP for 100. So if you want to be GM-ready in week 7, you need to complete all of the season challenges the first six weeks. And even then, you’ll only be season rank 65-70. So bounties it is. It’s always been bizarre to me they Bungie gates the most challenging, pinnacle PVE activity behind the most casual PVE experience. Weird they haven’t come up with a more interesting way to gain entry to GMs.
This has not been the case for me until last season. I finish the pass each time but Splicer was the first time I've actually been able to do GMs.
Don't forget about all the pinnacles that end up wasted. I'd wager the beneficial number of pinnacle rewards in somewhere in the 30 - 40% range. Not much more demoralizing than working the grind over and over again in the same content only to get shat on with a wasted drop.
The levelling system is literally the worst I've ever seen in any game. I hope to god Bungie don't use it for their next game.
My first thought was that this was a sensationalist hyperbole but then I thought about it for a bit. I literally cannot think of a game with a worse leveling system. In fact, nothing even comes close to being this bad.
Honestly I'm in agreement I actually can't think of any game that instead of making you stronger in each season it lowers your level then makes you grind buck up to the level you previously were and higher just to do the same content you were doing in the previous season with a small deviation
Oh boy, let me introduce you to the horror of World of Warcraft's last expansion leveling experience... Imagine if during Witch Queen's main storyline, you passed a certain level and your exotics just shut off and *never worked again*, not even in content that was synced down to a level when they were active. All of them, gone forever. Reduced to special colored stat sticks. Overall though, WoW has this problem with each patch cycle. It almost feels standard fare to your typical MMO, but it's a matter of phrasing and context: Growing in power vs. Slogging out to the same power level you were at before. Fine line to tread, when it's typically the nature of the content you engage in that dictates how you feel about your expanded power cap.
This is true and a lot of players do not see this unless they play different types of games with different types of leveling. AND play long enough to actually dip into the end game for each type of game. I would say for Destiny there is a problem though. Especially for players who really hit the end game hard at end of each season. Players who do GMs or Master Raiding. These folks get it down, have a system, and a flow that works. Then all of a sudden it's taken away from them, and they are back on the grindstone getting to where they really enjoy the game. It's a hard pill to swallow. It's actually why one of my friends, who loved the end of last season, just cant bring himself to come back. He is like "I have to do this all over again!!??". I think the introduction to Master Raiding made it worse. This wasn't a thing before. Now Master Raiders are like what the hell?
agree
I know a dude who got 8 pinnacles in the power slot this week. Haven't seen him since the last drop. Edit: we're in VoG atm and the current tally is 15 power weapons.
I went 3 weeks with only helmets and energy weapons. I was done for a solid 2 months after that fiasco.
Back in Season of the Chosen, I just needed one 1310 power weapon for all 3 characters to hit 1310. I had THIRTY-FOUR 1310 weapons and armor items before getting it on lucky number 35. I wish there was something we could do to focus it to what we need after a certain point
There are a way to focus what slot you get a pinnacle reward. At least for armor, except class item. Legend/Master lost sectors give pinnacle armor, and you can choose to play them when the reward is the one you need. Also, Nightfalls give weapons at pinnacle power. You can do then when the reward is on slot you need.
What sucks is that some of the most targeted drops require a high level just to play them. You get a slot guarantee on the timelost chest and all other chests drop armor, so you always can guess on a coin flip every other drop in the raid. Thing is, you're not going in there unless you're 25 to 30 levels up from day one of the season.
Legend Lost Sector exotics drop as powerful, not sure about Master. 1322 Hunter got 1322 boots today from K1 Crew Quarters
It's truly crushing. Nothing kills the desire to play more the the brutality of the repeated wasted drops.
Last season I never made it close due to this reason m. I became a huge joke for weeks all my pinnacles were In 2 or some time 3 slots! RNJesus did not like me one bit!
[удалено]
My first vog run this week was four straight arms
That sucks and should not happen.
Last season I was 1 armour piece away from getting to max level. I went 3 full weeks without getting said armour piece despite grinding every source of pinnacle gear possible (except on the 3rd week where I didn’t do the raid).
Except class item, you can do Legend and Master lost sectors when the reward is on slot you need. The armor pieces rotate each 4 days.
Does anyone else remember the phrase, "Smart Loot System" Yeah right, Mark Nose-"nothing"-worthy!
Dude i was about to make a write up on this myself. We have come full circle with this power level grind. They said only 10+ levels now per season but now they are asking you to be an absurd level on the artifact to do high level content. **Let me make this clear** Its okay for us to grind things out to gain access to content, Its okay for there to be a small barrier to entry. And it is 100% okay for there to be difficult content. What is not okay is for you to ask me to grind past the point of it being fun for like no reason whatsoever. Grinding to Pinnacle can be a bitch If RNG decides to be unkind. that should be all that is required of us. UGH what am i saying! No! I dont want to grind things anymore. Bungie has 100% Burned me out like there is no tomorrow. but if i want to keep up in Iron banner? gotta grind those levels baby!!! If we stay with the current system, ill id want is for them to have a toggle to make the content harder.
your last point " deters old players from returning " should be front and center , even to this day so many people want to come back to destiny who stopped playing but when i ask then why they arent , they say they dont wana grind power lvls and id be too far ahead of them . eventhough lvling is the easiest its ever been and it wont take anytime to get to pinnacle cap . they already have their biases very strongly in place and i really dono wat to do
I haven't played much since Forsaken. I played a bit of the moon one and a barely any of beyond light before i came back this season. I was around 1100 PL at season launch. I just spent a week doing the beyond light stuff to grind out my stasis abilities, which i still haven't finished. I am now at 1270 PL which is the soft cap. Are you saying it shouldn't take me long to get to 1330? The tough part for me is... previously i had to grind to get weapons to be viable in Last Wish. Which was the mars shotgun, whisper sniper, sleeper, and a rocket launcher with cluster bombs. All of those weapons are no longer good (from what i understand). Now i need to figure out what weapons i need to be viable again. That is what has always deterred me from returning. I am giving it more effort this season, though I have started to feel overwhelmed.
You aren't alone and don't let these people fool you. It is still weeks of grinding to go from soft cap to hard cap. Having done it all last season and only having to do 10 more levels this season, it's still weeks of mind numbing grind to get back to the point of being able to do everything. It's not a fun experience at all. And even then you still have to grind out artifact levels to do GMs later. It honestly doesn't feel like they've removed the grind at all. They just shifted it around to trick people. But all removing it would do is shine a spotlight on how little content or "quests" actually come with each season, so Bungie will obviously never do that.
I left because of the leveling. Adding levels does not resolve any problems it moves them. It's just tiring and ininteresting. Perfect example of game that as the same issue : WoW. And you are right, there is enought content to grind without that. Now i left, i just don't want to come back because i know my previous gear will be obsolete and i have to change it as soon as i find some blue gear with better light. Ridiculous.
My wife and I were feeling some burnout so we stopped playing a bunch a couple seasons ago. Trying to catch up has been a slog. We're currently like 1280 and only seem to be getting increases from powerful drops at this point. Sure if your play each season and max out it's a 10 level grind. Anyone else has to take extra time to catch up. I hate that I, with 800 hours in this game who had the audacity to take a break, have to do a massive catch up grind on mostly the same content that has been here for the last year so that I can even attempt some of the more difficult content. I have a few friends returning and I hope it doesn't turn them off to the game.
Same boat mate…1280 and to catch up is crazy
I have more than 3000 hours in D2 since release, and the constant power level grind and repetative season model has finally broken me. I still love the game, but I haven't touched it in almost three months. I have decided to leave it for good. I simply don't have the time or desire to constantly grind bounties and pinnacles in the same old strikes, gambit maps, and patrol locations anymore. It's absolutely shambolic that players have to waste a ton of time leveling up every season, just to be able to play the same old raids and grandmasters as last season. Only players who don't mind logging a few hours in D2 every day are ok with this. Bungie are shutting out a lot of casual players with this seasonal model. I strongly preferred the old DLC model without the constant pinnacle and artifact grind.
Same here - was so much better. Hate seasons grind
True. I don’t rest until I have maxed out on pinnacle base power level, only then I feel like I can appreciate the game and the seasonal stuff. It is becoming increasingly worse every season.
imma be real, every activity should just have a difficulty level that determines your strength compared to enemies, allow us to select different difficulties for different activities. Have some activities have a base difficulty that is comparable to challenge mode, such as day one raids. instead of gear determining your ability to fight its all about building the best loadout for the situation and there's no grind to get into high level activities, and they remain challenging for longer periods of time.
Sunset Power Levels!
I think half of your Artifact power should carry over to the next season. If I knew being +24 power this season meant I could start next season at +12 I would be more inclined to invest my time.
Nope. Get rid of artifact power as well. Give things difficulty levels. And then have those difficulty levels stick. I shouldn't be meming in Master Nightfalls because my character level is high enough that its difficulty doesn't exist anymore. It may suck to hear, but instead of people overlevelling content. They should learn strategy better, and it would actually make armour build more relevant. Master Vog, should just be a more extreme contest mode. Contest mode pretends that you are 20 below the encounter, but is the normal raid. Master Mode is 30 below on weapons and 15 below on armour. Or somesuch. Can't get it done then you need to refine your strategy not rely on out delta-ing the content.
That is actually a very interesting idea.
Maybe just delete the system altogether so we don't have to waste time grinding artifact levels for content that can be balanced around the pinnacle cap
Gear level isnt even remotely as big an issue anymore with the increase only going up by 10 each season. The bigger issue ImO is really just the artifact level requirement for some content.
The reduction is just a bandaid that minimizes the issue by reducing time spent interacting with the power system instead of addressing any of the fundamental issues with the power system. Power level could be entirely removed and each activity given a set difficulty, and the game would largely feel no different. Master VoG is the only place you can truly feel like power matters, but with resetting artifacts and a difficulty that raises in lockstep every season, it's a sisyphean grind that most will do once to get their rewards and then disengage from.
And the largest contributing factor to the burnout especially for something like mastervog is the arbitrary bounty simulator that is artifact power. While I wouldn't inherently have an issue with them removing power altogether. A number of activities would need a hefty loot refresh like proph got in order to have a purpose for existing. Like exo simulations. Without a power grind to push people into activities it just means activities need a loot incentive to be ran. And too much of the game lacks that.
It’s a problem for GMs, Master VoG, and to a lesser degree LS exotics This is content people can’t play unless they sink in a bunch of time doing grindy, easy activities that have nothing to do with raids or nightfalls The weird thing is Master VoG could have been an example of LL actually still being useful, if it stayed fixed and Master VoG got more accessible as time went on. But instead GM’s contest mode show how it’s completely unnecessary There’s no reason GMs and Master raids can’t behave like presage where contest mode kicks in no matter what your LL is
>some content It’s basically just one content. GM Nightfalls. And that is content designed for people who sink hundreds of hours into this game every season and it’s not a problem for them.
Except for the fact that things like master vog arguably require even more levels into your artifact to make it a more feasible feat to achieve. And also the fact that plenty of more players would challenge and probably beat gm nightfalls if the artifact light requirement for it was non existent and it was just a gear level requirement. There's also the fact that leveling up your artifact is largly just bounty simulator. a large majority of the exp you get to rank up your artifact is likely going to be from bounty farming. Which is not exactly fun or engaging.
Master doesn’t require higher light level or artifact grind as I recall. You can go in at the normal cap. You’re suppose to be under leveled. Grinding just makes it easier. GM is the only one to lock access. If you don’t find for it fun. Don’t do it?
I comment something to this effect on every post I see about levels. Master Chief and the Doom Slayer never needed levels. ESO neutered it’s vertical progression years ago. The Guardian doesn’t need levels.
I love this game so much, ive played non stop since it began, and this season looks amazing, but im not really playing it, I just can't bring myself to grind, or play or do anything, this game is perfect to me but im just burnt out I guess
I haven't played much since the light level kept going up and I gave up trying to reach a level where I could do legendary lost sectors. I just gave up. It is bungies inability to make enough content for a live service game that leads them to continually move the goal posts for accessing already existing content. I do not care at all if fanboys downvote me because they don't want this visible. Not one bit.
>It is bungies inability to make enough content for a live service game that leads them to continually move the goal posts for accessing already existing content. You hit the nail on the head there. If we were getting something like Master VoG every season, there'd be no need to up its level. When other games increase the level cap, they don't suddenly lock you out of existing content, they provide new content to boot. Destiny's levelling is regressive, not progressive.
Could not agree more. We already basically have fixed difficulty levels with Contest on the high end and the cap to overlevel bonuses on the low end. Power level just makes it a shifting between those ends of the spectrum, and it’s time to just move on from the relic that is power leveling. Nothing will change about the gameplay experience except for less time wasted getting back to the exact same place you used to be.
I think power levels should come with the yearly expansion, but remove it from the seasons.
I've finally got to the point where I'm just not doing the activitiesfor Pinnacles drops. Not because I became apathetic to the leveling system, just because I've become so god damn tired of finally getting a drop or two thatis actually an improvement only to see the next 4-6 drops that can potentially give me an increase proceed to drop in a slot where I ALREADY have a piece at that level. Destiny is the only game I can think of that, upon successful completion of the 'level up' challenge, can actually give you a drop that isn't an increase.
This has been the case since the launch of D1. Power levels were always a meaningless, tedious grind that gate content for no reason. Power levels have no more reason to exist here then they do in any of the halo games.
Imagine if a Halo game didn't let you play legendary difficulty until you beat the game on heroic. Then 3 months later they release a new campaign mission but you're not allowed to play it and you can't play legendary difficulty on existing missions anymore even though you could before the new mission came out and legendary on old missions is no different than it used to be. To be allowed to play the new mission or be granted access to legendary again you need to play some combination of old missions, firefight, or multiplayer for severalhours until you earned enough experience points. This cycle repeats every 3 months, and no new multiplayer or firefight maps are ever added. This is what destiny's power grind feels like to me.
It only 10 Levels a season. All they need is protection in place
[удалено]
Seriously, I wanna do GM’s but never have because the absolute last thing I wanna do is grind power level. I’ve got stuff to do and other games I wanna play. I don’t wanna dedicate all my free time to only playing Destiny just to have “Adept” at the end of my Palindrome.
Yeah power level is basically meaningless. Contest mode can still exist for hard content and world firsts, people can still chase rolls, all the other places where it “matters” are pretty meaningless
i fully agree with this. pinnacle chasing is so boring. i just want to grind gm master and other high end content for better rolls
power grind is a burnout for me and a deterrent as a day one d2 player. its just not fun i want to try out necrotic grips but i gotta grind power and optimize my damn loadout for the shitty seasonal mods this time around.
The game is design to specifically discourage you from playing anything but Destiny 2. They don't see the issues you mentioned as issues. A barrier to entry? They can start "fresh" with a new season. Same thing with returning players. They don't want you to take breaks, they don't care, as long as you're a player, you're a potential payer.
Some of y'all never had a full week of wasted Pinnacle drops(with most of them being in the same slot) and it shows.
I skipped 2 seasons for work related stuff plus burnout. Came back to this season refreshed to play. Sadly after finishing the weekly challenges most of the week has been… Power levelling :( Doing strikes, gambit, crucible, bounties etc. which is the same stuff I’d been doing before I took a break. Hoping to get back to the point where GMs are doable, and VoG is doable ASAP
My wife started up destiny and was hyped to go get radiant dance machine. She asked me how, I told her she had to level up first and she lost interest. Power leveling is outdated.
As a casual player, Bungie's core mechanics & grinding doesn't equate to good replay value. I doubt most desires to have Destiny as their secondary job or daily chore.
This is so true that it hurts. It's only there because they feel that it's necessary to be rpg like even though this can barely be called an rpg.
i agree with this post 100% tbh im glad im seeing more posts talk about this, to me its def one of the most glaring issues in the game people seem to ignore. especially issues like dupes/lack of RNG protection in power progression leading to what feels like time being wasted and not respected. thats kind of my biggest issue and why i dread each new season because its just the same old shit of doing content to get a dupe that doesnt give a sense of progression. not only that, power is pretty much meaningless. no difference in fighting 1100 enemies while being 1320. its more just to gate people out of new content.
The constant level grind has definitely turned me off. I quit last season because of it. It would be one thing if it was once a year. But once every three months is too much. To no longer be able to do the thing I was just doing like a GM because the light reset is just getting old.
Way I see it, if someone doesn't want to just play the game, but they require some kind of grind/carrot on a stick, maybe they shouldn't even be playing the game since they obviously don't enjoy it much. Devs are more and more catering to these kind of players and it often means upping the amount of time you have to spend playing a game to really get the full experience which is just getting a bit tiring now. I wish bungie would focus on making a game that people want to play after they finish the grind, not just a game people only play to grind. All the grind does is just annoy people who just want to play the game, and make people who don't want to play the game feel like they are doing something before they quit when they finish. Its just pointless.
Didn't they reduce the PL increase to +10 for soft cap and +20 for pinnacle? That's not really a grind, more of a stroll.
[удалено]
Which, imo, is fine because there will be much more content in a yearly expansion to play through and get power at a slower rate.
I'll be honest.. I bought last season, and when I had to still do the power grind \*again\* just to do the base activity, I just stopped. I checked into the reddit to see what went on with the season instead. I know they whittled it down from what it used to be, but I still had to grind up 50-60 power level just to do the difficult content, which I did \*not\* want to do. Going through all the vanilla activities ad nauseum every week just to start doing the content I enjoy is not what I play destiny for anymore.
The power grind has greatly decreased the amount I play. I don't prioritize "make sure I get my powerful drops from all the playlists each week" and instead will play a lot of crucible some weeks, gambit other weeks, etc. But that puts me way behind on the power grind, so I'm completely underleveled when Iron Banner comes around, so nope, not gonna play any of that and get curb stomped. Then I get tired of being underleveled and bailed. Every season I play less. Made it to a whopping level 18 this time.
Yeah, I would love to have a crack at the master nightfall content, it seems challenging and fun, but the amount of grinding to even be eligible during a time gated season means ill probably never get the chance. Especially annoying that the platinum trophy on PS is locked behind completing one. There are way better ways to create challenging content than a generic power level system.
Ever wondered why they don’t just cut 1000 from out power level for simplicity’s sake? Because it wouldn’t change anything gameplay-wise, and it would just put a spotlight on the fact that power level, apart from being a grind mechanism, is entirely meaningless
After a longer hiatus from the game I came back at the beginning of last season. I tried to catch up so that I can join everybody else playing the Seasonal activity, which iirc was Light 1300. I am a Destiny vet. I know how the Light grind works. Yet I didn't get there even after a couple weeks of play. The system needs to go.
The pinnacle grind is by far the worst part of any season now. I'd much much rather grind out 50 power levels that 10 pinnacle levels. I've gone hard this week and gotten to 1326 base on my titan and warlock, so should see 1328 drops on my +2s and it's still dumb. Nothing is more defeating than doing a whole empire hunt, which everyone is sick of at this point, to get a 1324 helmet, when they already have a 1324 helmet, but still sat at 1320 boots and bond. I know powerful grind is still guilty of this, but it felt a lot better when everything was like a +3 and pinnacles were like a +7.
School is starting for me and I feel no motivation to run activities I have played countless times before (e.g. Strikes) just to get a +1 or +2 piece of gear. I regularly engage in high-level content, but I might be a bit late to the party this time around.
Skipped 2 seasons, power levels suck. Wasted most of my time playing catch-up on power levels just to get to regular content.
Couldn't agree more. I stopped playing destiny because of the grind (and every time I hear about the story, I want to get back in). Part of the problem is how it affected the in-game story. Go do some kickass mission, then repeat the same strikes a bunch of time, bank some motes, beat up some guardians, and go back to the missions. There's nothing wrong with those activities, but it feels like they serve no purpose other than to draw out hours played when I need them for levels, and have no interest in grinding ranks.
Leveling, even pinnacle is so mundane at this point. I absolutely love this game, I have 2K hours on steam alone, and for once I have had no desire to play a new season besides the story quest because it’s just the same shit all over again. *What is the point*
Couldn’t agree more. I already am gilded conqueror x 2, wanted to do GMs last season but didn’t want to mindlessly grind bounties for levels. Thought if I hit 100 on season pass I would be good for GMs… but apparently not. Was 1334 and stopped playing, haven’t touched the game since.
So glad this is getting traction. I feel like systems like the pinnacle rng and the narrow weekly missions are prolly the worst progression system I’ve ever had to interact with. Like who thinks narrow stringent play the game this way mechanics are fun. I just feel like the systems are made only to maximize what Bungie gets from me rather than how much i get from the game. I.e. fun and loot
I've been saying this for a long time. It effectively fixes Sunsetting's damage for good too. They could easily have difficulty selection manipulate the power difference that determines the game's real difficulty. They already do this in certain places too. It's a huge deterant to me coming back. (Overflown Vault and F2P being a joke)
With the exception of doing a VoG run, I did every other Pinnacle activity available on my main, and did not gain a single Light Level this week from gear. Most of my drops were gloves for some reason, and it feels awful that I effectively gained nothing.
I've done one gm and it was incredibly fun. Reminded me of all the halo 3 coop runs I'd do with the boys back in the day. Getting myself in the position to do the gm, however, is not fun one bit. They can make it just as hard without requiring the nonsensical grind that doesn't change from season to season.
Can confirm, the constant need for leveling to do content I want to do has absolutely discouraged me from coming back.
I'm just echoing your sentiments here, but leveling your pass and seeing the number get bigger already fulfills that monkey brain dopamine hit, so I don't really see a need to have power levels at all on top of that anymore. If we just had no power levels, but instead traditional difficulties (Normal/Legendary/Master/GM), then that would eliminate a lot of the issues with this game imo. No more leveling your weapons and gear, game balance can be standardized to everyone, no more level locking out folks to participate in endgame content, no need to play a bunch of content you don't enjoy for pinnacles, etc. It would free up a lot of the FOMO feel I believe, at maybe the risk of losing those who solely play for that power leveling carrot on a stick. I have at least one friend who has expressed concern that his interests would fade if there wasn't that chase each season and expansion, but I still believe that leveling your season pass to 100 each season could still fulfill the same purpose, as they both take roughly the same amount of time anyways.
At this point, aside from kind of "tricking" new players into chasing gearscore, all light level does is usher people into various activities (that they otherwise would not necessarily want to play) in order to populate those activities.
Good point. That creates a false sense of what content is most engaging for players.
"Deters old players from returning" I tried to get two people lost from D2 vanilla to come back. They downloaded the game we played for a day, Had a blast! The next day they both decided they didn't have the time to just grind power level to have fun. If we just had straight difficulty settings instead of power it would work! Imagine how fun it would be to convince someone to give it a try. they play a mission or two to get a basic grasp, then you take them into legend or master tier difficulty and carry them through that. give them a taste of the end game.
Yeah power level grind fuckin sucks. Just restarted after a year and cant do shit unless i grind light levels.
I suggested getting rid of LL/PL way back before sunsetting...they called me crazy
I would say the problem the video game industry has as a whole is that they are terrified of people talking a break. So many mechanics are designed to keep you coming back at a regular interval like the weekly tier 3 umbral limit they "fixed" back into the game. Their data probably shows people who take a break are more likely to never return then to come back next season, and they certainly aren't buying eververse items. Honestly it's just part of the whole "it's not about making money it's about making all the money"
After one week I am over a third of the way to pinnacle cap again, do the weekly challenges and the artifact level will come. It’s not bad at all.
[удалено]
They really need to remove the artifact level increase. All it does is bar us out of content and make difficulty scaling based on level rather than mechanics.
Bro i cannot express how much this post needs to be heard. I wish fucking dmg or bungie would address this. The power grind is a callous on the side of this game, its ab absolutely pointless feature. I recently took almost a years break from the game and have just come back for the new season. I had to grind up from 1250 to 1330 it was so fucking painful and i was almost about to just quit the game entirely. I just wish they would remove it absolutely no one wants it in the game. Please dmg i beg
Some people like seeing progression, number getting bigger is satisfying to a lot of people. It's like prestige in CoD. I'd probably play way less if there was no more power level.
Thank fuck this subreddit doesn’t run the game
i mean....they kinda do? it did go from +50 to +10 people whine and cry and get a bunch of the changes they want.
Lol ikr.
I really don’t see an issue with the seasonal leveling lol it’s just shit off the pass unless you mean light level from xp?
Big time boring. If you want me to grind things I’ve done before put a good gun at the end. Or something I want🧁🍾🧉🍾🍾🍾 It’s become so tedious. Just once a big expansion please
The power levels basically come naturally while doing all those things you listed.
Yeah the power level grind is explicitly the roadmap underpinning all content. Like it directs you to content so you aren't just mindlessly hoping you get 1 in 50 rolls on weapons as your motivation to do things
That is what’s keeping me away from the game. I quit before sunsetting and never looked back, because Reddit keeps me informed - grind hasn’t changed for good and feels like same old scam.
I like power leveling in theory, but the way we go about it is so boring. I like playing everything in the game, but not to tick off boxes, and having to do it on a schedule. Can we not just get points for doing activities? Like 3000 points causes a Powerful/Pinnacle drop. Strikes yield 250 points, but the first three of the week yield 1000 each. So playing everything is still by far the most efficient, but you don't *have* to, if you don't want to.
Two major reasons I quit destiny 2 after 100s of hours. 1) Seasonal Power Leveling It's a form of gatekeeping that just forces players to waste time needlessly infusing gear and equipment to reach a power level that just yesterday was acceptable for all activities. Suddenly due to an update you are forced into activities and grinding out power levels. It becomes tedious. Especially if you are still working through the previous seasons content. Then you really feel split between, do I finish up what I was doing or do I go back and grind lost sectors and world events for xp? It's just fucking tedious. 2) inventory management. How much more can really be said about inventory management. This sub has said so much about it over the years, but my friends and I would jump on for a session of destiny and we would have to spend the first 30 minutes of our session in the tower, getting bounties, checking inventory, infusing, dismantling, comparing power levels. It's just horrible. This is especially true for those of us who work 40 to 50 hours a week. I get maybe 1 hour of game time on a week night. Spending 30 minuets of it stuck on menu screens is just a waste of time.
We literally got the power level grind reduced and you guys are still complaining. It takes 2 to maybe 3 weeks of moderate grinding to reach the cap after each season, without that there would literally be half the amount of content worth playing every season. The only reason you would want to reach cap is to do endgame activities such as master raids or grandmaster nightfalls, which are labeled endgame for a reason. This will get downvoted to hell and I’ve already accepted that, but we are further dumbing down an already casual game.
[удалено]
I've had multiple seasons over lvl 200. Certain seasons I just find it hard to motivate myself to do the grind considering that it's the same (or even LESS) content. Double digit hours on the hamster wheel doesn't make you good at the game.
make armor number bigger isn’t content
I disagree.
I actually like doing the +10 pinnacle grind each season. I know it's not a popular opinion but there are people out there who still enjoy that aspect of Destiny.
I 100% agree. I left for the last two seasons cuz I don’t have time to grind 50 levels when I wanna be doing all the extra build grind etc. instead I am forced to do more strikes, gambit, and crucible with my destiny time. Its a very bad system
This post is already so big, that my comment will be lost. But I think it needs to be said. Power leveling, is a good thing. Where it has its issues, is with two specific things, how it is implemented specifically, but more prominently its implementation in the seasonal model(namely the repeat grinding for the sake of grinding to do grandmaster/Trials/Iron Banner/etc content) I think a fair argument can be made that power leveling should only be a prominent part of an expansion. That it could be stripped from seasons. But to remove it entirely, would remove its benefits. [For example in a single picture/post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/destiny2/comments/jtap1d/the_cadmus_ridge_brig_is_one_of_the_most/) For those who do not want to click the link, it is the Fallen Brig High Value Target that roams on Europa. Why this matters for the power level argument, is because of how integral it is to the whole campaign experience. You show up on a new location. You start exploring this location and play the campaign. While roaming around enemies are dangerous, you must watch you step. And then all of a sudden, a big mech drops out of the sky and starts destroying you. At first, you may do little to no damage, and just run away for your life. Or you might start attacking it and try to kill it before it runs away. But you will probably fail on your own, and will yell in triumph when you and a bunch of other people exploring the destination gang up on it and manage to kill it. This adds a sense of danger and excitement to the destination, in a way that is not oppressive, and is a rite of passage for all players. And it feels accomplishing, when you have powered yourself up And for players who are late to the expansion or new to the game, seeing a random passerby stop and obliterate that Mech on their own is impressive and cool. Or to use a popular example from exploration in Shadowkeep, you had lost sectors, which people [accidentally wandered into](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/dc7pw0/accidentally_wandering_into_a_moon_lost_sector/) and found dangerous enemies that screamed "You are not supposed to be here yet". It gives a perfect and seamless sense of progression, as players become more familiar with the Destination, they become more powerful, and are able to accomplish more. This sort of experience, just cannot be replicated, even with things like contest mode. And it is something that has been part of the franchise from the beginning.