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I'm a little slow :(

I'm not sure I understand what the issue is, aside from the Nightfall, all the other content is the same difficulty, but just happens to drop higher light level gear. This will actually speed up leveling up your character.

True. I'm sure this is the developer coming out in me. There's not a great reason that I can see that LL changed once at RoI release and then again so soon, other than artificially keeping people low for a few weeks so the normal mode raid was "more challenging". They could have changed the caps in different places and allowed a 400 LL system without having to bump it twice like this. To me this is just airing the underpinnings of the system a bit too much, and showing the treadmill. There are better ways to go about it. Bungie is better than that. IMO. No need to change the cap on blues and legendaries like they have been from what I can see.

I guess I feel like LL should progress with the content, and with RoI anything but is happening for me. I'm not one to "grind for gear", yet I feel forced into that with this expansion.

This will also be most likely be the last light increase for at least 3 months, and could possibly be the last light level increase ever for Destiny 1. The most we know about after this is Festival of the Lost (probably next week or the next) and SRL in December, both of which your light level won't matter for. So your level 369 Guardian is fine, should barely notice a change when you turn on the game after Tuesday, he has an abundance of time to get to the right level to play hard mode.

I've felt behind most of this expansion actually. I've gotten in the habit (for avoiding spoilers for RoI) to ignore news, so I had forgotten about Currently on a consistent basis I generally raid, run IB and run trials. All of which my light level matters for. Just to feel "raid ready" probably half my time was -not- enjoying the new content. Rather it was running old strikes looking for light level upgrades, and hoping exotic engrams dropped, again mostly for light level. I've gotten very little gains from a few hours spent in the archon's forge.

On the blind raid, my first, I had just hit 360/361. The raid gave me I think 1.5 LL's (without aksis, we didn't get done that first week). IB + trials took me up to being right on the line at 367/8 and a full raid run Tuesday night took me to 369. I very much felt my LL when running against 380+ players, in both IB and Trials last week. (I've only played Monday/Tuesday this week, including IB/Trials/raid)

So I guess LL is just in my face way more than it is for other people because of the activities I want to be participating in.

I am apparently not hardcore enough for this game anymore. My single character running at 369 is incredibly behind. I haven't even bothered with the nightfall yet, guess I should do that before the changes.

Behind what? You're not behind, you just have a smaller number. I guess that matters for hard mode raiding and trials, but that's the only place I can think of where that would really matter. Even IB is super forgiving of lower light levels. Nothing else in the game really cares about your light, and you shouldn't either.

See my above post. It does matter in some contexts, though to be fair, all content is indeed playable at my current light level.

Don't like the new "time sink"-ness. I'd be less worried, but I feel content is dropping way way too quickly. I'd have to be playing 15-20 hrs a week of destiny to even come close to keeping up with their aggressive schedule.

There's nothing new about Destiny being a time-sink for bigger light level numbers. If anything the new content is the fastest they've had, even though it's still super slow. Enjoy the journey!

As for "new content" you're saying hard mode raid coming 1 month after normal mode raid is too quickly? Because there is no other new content being dropped here. I think you're being distracted by the bigger numbers and forgetting that there's very little of actual substance going on here.

I'd have preferred the raid come out a month after release and the HM raid 6-8 weeks after the normal raid. I don't want the content super fast and then have 3-4 months of whatever. I'd like to enjoy the ride of moving through things rather than rushing to try and raid with my fellow DBOers that play more than me. With HoW I moved to only maintaining one character. I missed out a little due to not having extra etheric light and such and felt behind because I wasn't running 3. TTK largely fixed that, and I felt I could progress very well with only 1 primary character. I really liked that. I feel like things have again regressed, I am "behind" because I'm not running more than one character actively. My other characters could be 365 likely no sweat with what I've amassed with only one, but that doesn't help much -- since drops are now a range based on overall LL's a few low items can keep your drops in a range where most drops are barely upgrades until the key pieces go up. And to be fair, they are acknowledging and fixing that with increased ghost/artifact drops in this patch. Anyhow, point is, previously I had choices in what activities I could play in both PvP and PvE to be "smart" about LL. Now it seems totally time-based -in addition to- playing the right activities. Which is where the grind comes from.

I don't understand why they don't stretch the content out a bit longer. Maybe they have more planned as they go, but TTK kind of went this direction as well, with a few months of very little after challenge modes dropped. Seems like a mistake, but maybe statistics say otherwise and I'm no longer their target market.

Please no. There's so little content in this xpac that stretching it further would be horrible. Was TTK slow as hell with months of nothing? Yes. But making the existing content fill that gap is not nearly the same as making enough content to fill that gap. Either way you slice it, the game lacks content. Front load it or slowly drizzle it out, it's still not enough to cover the ground it needs to.

Destiny is a MMO, as much as people don't want it to be. Too much content too fast leads to burnout. It's designed to be social. Which is great! But gating with LL needs to be carefully done or you risk breaking up one of the huge draws -- playing with your friends. Deliberate pacing will keep a larger playerbase around more consistently. IMO. Bungie obviously doesn't agree, or at least they're not doing that for whatever reason. I kind of touched on this above... I don't think they are losing anything by slowing it down a little. If anything I think some content is getting rushed past depending on what the player wants to do.

They're in this weird middle ground of staging release content, but I guess I think they are doing more harm than good by the current pacing. I suspect they are staging it for development reasons as opposed to being intentional about it -- and their primary goal is to get things out ASAP. I think it's more nuanced than that, but overall that's what it looks like from this side of things.

Leveling up during the early days of RoI sucked. It was purely a time-sink. Between Trials & IB, and now these new updates, it is steadily getting easier. We're in the crappy post-release zone right now, where light level is a constant point of contention. Another month or two down the road, everything will start to even out and none of this will feel like much of a problem anymore :)

Speaking of which who wants to play trials this weekend?

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Anyone that attended the Twitch stream know what this is talking about?

2. Never tease a secret code without alerting the community to the fact that not all amusing Easter Eggs hatch to reveal Exotic Weapons.

I didn't realize that this type of Bungie Bounty event would be archived on their Twitch channel. I tuned into the 10/12/16 archive this afternoon

At around 1:24:00, Derek Carroll mentions the code on Last Exit. He must be referencing this code?
Fun Easter Egg - Part Deux (Last Exit)

"With this increase, many reward sources will also increase their maximum Light. Strike Hoards, Nightfall, Exotic Engrams, Trials of Osiris, Crucible, and Iron Banner will now provide rewards up to 400 Light"

Stuff that no one gets from the chest unlocked with a key no one has I am thinking.

FTFY

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Yes... why would it be otherwise? Most drops you get are 2 per strike (not counting 3 of coins or chest). They aren't promising that you're going to shoot up 10 light levels in an hour, just that you can progress.

True, but only one of them has a snail's gamble. Whenever I go through a Heroic strike, I get the one obligatory Purple(on very rare occasions, I might get another one killing enemies), dozens of useless Greens(as we're all forced to endure through now) and exactly three Blues. No less, and buff after buff after buff, no more. Two of them are always below whatever my highest is. Always. The third one may or may not be higher. By higher, I mean 2 LL. Since the first light increase, Heroic strikes have dropped one single blue that was 3 LL higher, and one single blue that was 4. All others were 2,1, or zero/negative. Combined with the fact that it could be an armor piece or a weapon, that means you have 1/10th of a chance to get something higher for an equip you need. I disagree on that as a viable option to progress.

How are they the only way? You even quoted multiple ways!

What I meant by that statement is that all those methods and options they had flaunted and displayed and showcased have all ended and are now void. I don't think that page even exists any more. All those multiple ways have basically become buried under the one solution: Heroic Strikes.

Since you mentioned Heroic strikes that means you mean to level 365/385 (before and after Tuesday) which has MANY MANY ways to get to. Such as: all legendary engrams (of which you have multiple guaranteed sources every day and week), all exotic engrams, all faction packages, all of Crucible, Trials, IB when it's active, Nightfall, Archon's Forge, Prison of Elders Elder Sigil (at least for 365, not sure if it's being increased to 385).

Legendary engrams are good, but they're a 0-4 LL difference--almost the same as Rare. Thank god they don't go negative.

Exotics are good--if you actually get them. Since RoI dropped, I've gotten two Exotics. One of them I bought from Xur. It was 350 though, so that helped a little bit.

Faction packages, I can agree with you on--I have to admit, I'm always excited to level up there. That is something to look forward to helping me with!

Crucible, single mote of light. Marks, if I'm doing the highlights.

Trials of Osiris.

Iron Banner I also agree with, but the prizes I get from that are--well, I don't remember what light level I was the last time I played that, so I'll have to take your word for it.

I'm not high enough light level for Nightfall. I can barely live through Heroic as it is--not to be rude, but that's really the whole point.

Archon's Forge is great, but so far all I've gotten from them is Class items. They are a higher light level, but if that's the only thing they offer, it's just situational.

All the activities you've suggested are decent ideas, but if they all trickle light like a dead tap, aren't they just all the same then?