Some notes:

-The collectables feel like an afterthought, especially with how little they tie into the Dungeon. At least Duality's helped us get into Calus's inner thoughts on different aspects of his reign. Eramis is by far the least interesting antagonist in Destiny, and the more they try to give her dialogue, the shallower she seems. It's weird. I wish she had been a well-written tragic villain, as opposed to the always-complaining, miserable misanthrope. Ah well. At least there are only a small batch of easily-findable (save for that first one, lol) ones to collect.

-Tex Mechanica weapons are all interesting additions to the sandbox, but I haven't found one that I would add permanently to my loadout yet. Maybe when I get F000CH's roll on that sidearm...

-Some lead designer at Bungie really hates hammer Titans. It felt so good to run a Warlock again (especially as our vastly Superior jump really shines in this Dungeon), and I'm terrified of running this Dungeon with a hammer. Far, far too many places to launch it into the sunset (Shane! Come baaack!).

• Eramis is a caricature of bitterness because stasis, I suppose. And as a stasis wielder (or wielded) voice, Eramis often strikes me more a personification of the ability than any actual character. Lots of talk, little on answers. Really good at slowing things down.
  
• Do these legendary Tex Mechanica weapons also reload all fancy like?
  
• Considering the straight game breaking things folks were doing in combination with that hammer, I'm think'n this one is a mulligan, or at least a worthy venting of dev frustration.
  • Thanks for the heads up. #AtLeastWeStillHaveTheBestJump

...oh and, woah woah woah, hol' up. You named the Titan hammer... Shane? When it's CLEARLY an Sjöfn?

-Man, DIM is kind of essential to enjoy Destiny now, isn't it? I was grinding my teeth without it today...

Which is exactly why I've not yet played it. There I was, I had made a build a night before, cleared out some of my secondary vault (AkA The Postmaster) and had made sure I had time to give for my blind lone wolf run. BUT, with D.I.M down I'm not even going to try. I'll just give it a go later.

It's been fun watching other folks talk about this though. It's kinda nice to see voices not my own saying the jest of what I've been rambling on about for multitudes of years now.

(Something something INSANEdrive ranting about how these API functions should be in-game and not exclusive to 3rd or 1st party apps for the Wumbo-illionth time something something. Yes I'm aware of the forth coming build system next season/expansion.)

-Man, DIM is kind of essential to enjoy Destiny now, isn't it? I was grinding my teeth without it today...

Ok legit question. What's DIM do that's so critical that the Official Companion App doesn't?

I'll admit to being slightly disappointed by the first run through. Don't get me wrong, it was still tons of fun, and I really love the Warmind aesthetic, so there's lots to enjoy there. However, the new dungeon is more straight-forward and linear than perhaps any of the previous ones.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. While initially amazing and sort of cool to explore and feel lost, I now hate the opening of Shattered Throne. I still don't know exactly which symbols go where, so it's always ten minutes of running in circles until I eventually find all the areas I need.

We've traded a bit of the initial wow factor for a more seamless and enjoyable long-term experience. After multiple runs, I think I'm okay with that. The new dungeon has grown on me every time I've done it (as opposed to Duality which was immediately my favorite ever thing in Destiny). I don't think I'll love the new one as much as Duality, but it's still something I'll likely never turn down the opportunity to run through. It is fun, and I really enjoy the gimmick. It was fun to figure out, straight-forward to execute, but still just that little extra thing to manage that can turn encounters from good to great. I also really enjoy the process of actually learning where all the nodes are instead of having to strictly follow the lines. Slowly memorizing the route is something that's enjoyable within Destiny in an odd way.

Unlike many others I've seen online, I also actually liked seeing the reused boss. That was an interesting boss when we first encountered it, and it works just as well a second time.

I remain a bit disappointed that dungeon gear does not really follow the theme of the dungeon. Granted, everything else this season already hits the Warmind theme hard (and it's all great), so I'm not sure what the solution is there. It just feels weird to get what feels like random gear from a dungeon.

-Man, DIM is kind of essential to enjoy Destiny now, isn't it? I was grinding my teeth without it today...

DIM is essential to my enjoyment of Destiny, there's no arguing that.

But the outrage over this weekend feels fucking ridiculous to me. Not from you, just from the community in general.

What's the solution. What game has a better solution? No loot game I know of lets you just carry unlimited gear. A vault equivalent becomes necessary at a certain point. Lots of games don't even let you transfer gear between characters, as those characters are essentially their own save files that don't interact with one another.

Warframe is the only game that handles it better in that your "characters" are just another piece of gear that you equip, so there is no worrying about moving gear around between them. But that game comes with the massive tradeoff of only being able to take one weapon in each slot into any given activity.

I've seen very little in the way of any real understanding of how good Destiny players have it than any other loot game I can think off because DIM exists at all, and I genuinely don't think it's something that will ever be solved within the game. It will always be a pain in the ass that, at the very least, requires a Tower run for the Vault. I'm not even sure it would be possible, but being able to transfer weapons between all of your characters while in the vault would be good, but what's that end up doing for load times and server calls? It already takes forever to just load my character selection menu from the server, now I have to do that every time I go to the Tower? No thanks.