I think it's how they solved the fact that engrams are determined when they drop instead of when they're decrypted. You can delay that drop by saving up tokens and get better gear by turning in tokens instead of decrypting 10 engrams at a time.

Seems like a stupid work around for just not having engrams determine power level upon decryption instead of at drop, though.

I love the new token system. I think it's a big improvement over D1. It adds much more visibility to the process of getting rewards and a transparency to how much my activities are contributing to the next guaranteed legendary reward (the timing of which is not subject to RNG btw).

Obviously, this is a quality of life improvement tied directly to the investment system aspect of Destiny -- and as you hate investment systems at your very core, I can see how you would dislike anything that reminds you that this is an investment system game. But... it is an investment system game and that's never going to change, so I like the transparency and reliability it adds to the process.

They are essentially delayed drops. You get them from activities, and when you get enough, you can redeem them for a legendary engram.

Correct. You can also redeem them with any of your characters, so only the one that you want to get drops can cash it in.

For example, I didn't like any of the armors for either my Warlock or Hunter, so I just kept hoarding all of the tokens at each location, so that my Titan could cash in all of them at once at each place whenever I got around to making him.

Today, I logged on as my Titan, and quasi-accidentally got him to Level 20 using my triple Heroic Event XP drop exploit. I then went to each planet, cashing in hundreds of Tokens, and this is him now after literally doing nothing but cashing in Tokens the minute that he hit level 20:

284 Light. He went from wearing all green armors to being more than Raid ready in under two hours.

Without Tokens, I would have had to put as much time into him as I did my Warlock, but instead, all I had to do was keep playing as my Warlock, and it helped my other class, without having to do anything that I didn't want to do.

Tokens can be used to BUY SPECIFIC guns from the vendors. If you don't have a particular gun from a particular vendor, and haven't had luck via drops, then you should be able to redeem tokens for a specific item.

Yeah, I'd be down for that. Make a specific item cost like 50 Tokens, and everybody wins!

The token system was not really thought through that much.

There are clear benefits to it that you clearly haven't thought through that much.

The biggest issue is just giving the whole experience a chance to slowdown and breathe. D2 has way fewer trips to orbit and way fewer trips to the tower, so having some bits that get you to step back and breath are pretty valuable.

It' also got a lot of clarity in the existing system. In the system you are suggesting you've now got a bunch of additional UI elements, those elements need to be tested, the player needs to be trained what they mean and how to look for them. The existing system uses the same interface as the rest of the game's inventory, so it's easy to understand.

A disgusting amount of design work is put into making systems self explaining, and I'd be *loathe* to add complexity to an already complex game like destiny

Flexibility because Bungie already has tools to tweak things like loot pools and drop rates without changing the core application (though they seem to like to pair api pushes with client pushes for any kind of tweaking of in game values ) either way, if bungie wants to change where and how tokens drop, having them be in a loot table is dramatically safer to modify than loots be wired as it's own unique system.

The cost of all that is occasionally having to trek over to a vendor, which isn't really that high of a cost.