No wonder people found solace in the loot caves. It was an easy, rather enjoyable way to circumvent days of having to progress in a pretty boring game.

Another one on board.

Destiny fun comes in phases. 1-20 is great. 20-26 sucks. 26-28 is great. 28-30 sucks.See the pattern? Basically, when you reach a level where you can start doing new things it's fun. 26-28 was great because you could do the raid for the first time, and you don't really have to worry about gear, since you can perfectly well do the raid with blues, as I did the first time.

That sounds great, but unlike simple XP progression, I have to accumulate enough gear with a good light rating to even get there. Before I stopped playing a couple weeks ago, I was stuck at 23 for quite some time. Who knows how long I'll take to get to 26 or even to just 25. Having to equip certain gear, which may or may not be as good as what you already have, just to rank up is pretty absurd. The vast majority of guns and armor shouldn't be anything more than tools. They should be the center of your world going through a story or a raid.

When I got to Level 20, I couldn't find any gear with light for days, so you're not doing anything wrong. It seems pretty much the norm. Randomness galore.

The easiest way to get Legendary Gear is to rank up one of the factions and buy it from them, or get an Exotic or two from Xur. Keep on going, the Raid is easily the most fun thing in the game, well worth participating in. (And it annoys the hell out of you at the same time.)

I still must be doing something wrong because I only get the occasional general Crucible mark or rank increase and never a faction-specific one.

This weeks Nightfall isn't to difficult if you are willing to cheese it.

I'm willing to help when I can. This weeks Nightfall is brutal.

This week's nightfall is actually one of the easier ones that I've played (though the Thralls at the very end can easily send you to Orbit if you're not careful, as I found out the hard way). It's also one of the more fun to do solo, since you're at the risk of getting melee'd a lot more than getting shot unfairly. Had the fortune of needing Fusion Rifles kills as extra incentive to run it multiple times...

If anyone on PS4 needs help, I've been doing a thing where I get Phogoth down to 2% help, then invite two random friends (or specific folk) to the game. Just let me know, and I'll get you through... Also, I recommend doing most Nightfalls with only one other, rather than as a Fireteam of three. The enemy doesn't scale as badly, and you can have a chance to survive past a bad mistake...

Also, people complaining about RNG seem to miss the point that you can buy gear from both Vanguard stores and Crucible. How people think they can depend on RNG for specific drops is beyond me. The key word is RANDOM...

That said, the Nightfall rewards are always solid deals, so you should definitely run more.

And the other post by Jironimo in this thread.

While obtaining gear is doable with no RNG involved, mats are a little harder to manage. Most ways of getting them involve the RNG, besides buying gear and dismantling for shards (which still is a lot of play time for a small reward). I did a public event run and out of 3 public events in a row (all I had time for) I got no random drops whatsoever. Only the single initial gold tier package, which gave me Energy, which so far has been about 75% of my drops regarding A-Mats, which I really don't need right now (considering I still don't have Legendary weapons to upgrade, and my Exotics are a ways away from needing Energy).

I've played this game for 38 hours of game time. I played Oblivion for 100 hours and felt like I got a lot more enjoyment from it than this grind fest. :/

It's things like this that really makes me see the fault in Destiny. Leveling up after 20 isn't necessarily about your skill or all that you've accomplished, it's only about how lucky you are to have found that great piece of gear.

This isn't necessarily true. There is a predictable method to moving up, with NO RNG involved. Get Vanguard Marks, that's your top priority. Do the daily mission every day for 5 marks, do the weekly strike, do public events which always get you some marks, and most importantly do the highest level strike playlist you can which guarantees you marks as well. Once you have 65 marks, buy your first legendary armor piece from your Vanguard mentor and then get more marks until you can get your next 2 armor pieces. Along with the way you will get level 20 rare gear to move you up some levels, they especially drop in the Strike playlists, but nonetheless even if you don't get that you can progress by buying your Legendary armor one piece at a time.

Still seems like it's one hell of a grind, but it doesn't seem all too bad. I always find some enjoyment with the daily missions and the weekly strike when I'm able to get around to them.

I would NOT buy your helmet from the Vanguard, save Strange Coins which you get from the Weekly Strike and buy your helmet for 13 coins. You want to do this because buying a helmet from the Vanguard is twice the cost in marks of any other armor piece (130 marks vs 65), AND you also cannot get the Raid Helmet from the Normal difficulty so an Exotic helmet is the only way to guarantee you can eventually get to level 30 without having to do the Raid in hard mode.

Sounds great. Thank you so much!

You need to give up on "finding" gear in-game, and focus on buying it from the vanguard or a faction. You will get a good loot drop here and there, but it is far-between.

Isn't that the truth. So, yeah, I'm going to definitely go with the marks route instead of praying for a good engram or loot drop.

All these patches/fixes (not that they weren't needed) are bad for causal gamers b/c the hard core guys grind them out, get all the benefit from them, and then they are patched. This widens the gaps between the haves and the have nots.

I really wouldn't mind that at all if this game was entirely PvE or if your PvE and PvP characters were wholly different. But facing a Level 20+ with all these ridiculously powerful armaments and armor just gets to be such a bummer in PvP. It seems like no matter how good your tactics are, regardless if you were able to get the first and multiple succeeding shots on them first, they'll always be able to bear down their Death Star turbolaser of a fusion rifle on you with little harm to them.

Once the Master Chief Collection comes out, I'll probably just get on to run the raid weekly, and then go back to Halo.

Yeah, having the first three games all on one console is going to be such a joy. I could play Halo 2 endlessly and I am so freaking excited to finally try out Halo 1 on a network.