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I fully agree with you on story. It's all in the initial missions and there's very, very little left to discover later. More cutscenes sprinkled throughout would have been nice.

As far as the game goes, the missions are generally better than anything we've seen yet. There's variety, creativity, and new stuff being thrown at us. The game is set up nicely, as doing all the story missions and post game quests leads to to being around the correct light level for the raid. You can play the game, just doing the new things offered to you, not grinding at all, and experience all the activities the game currently has to offer. No grinding to play the raid! How fucking cool is that! It's mega fucking cool!

Spot on. VAST improvement in variety of activities and keeping the game fresh.

This was made possible by the light system… which while it enables this constant progression it also introduces us to old problems, and I'm convinced it needs to be modified further. The biggest problem is that we are back to being penalized for equipping unleveled gear. This was solved in House of Wolves, since if you wanted to equip a piece of armor, it was either already 42 light, or you could use an etheric light to ascend it. Basically, you could equip anything immediately and not have your level suffer. This isn't so with the light system, and is in fact worse because now this applies to your guns too. It's less of a problem when you are high in light - I only go down a few points when equipping a 280 weapon, but as you are progressing through the game initially, you are often forced into a very specific load out because using other guns will decrease your light too far. The truth is, guns have a bigger effect than armor. It's completely stupid and unintuitive that merely equipping a weapon should cause my overall power to go down, even if I'm not using it at the time. The attack power of your weapon should mean only one thing: how much damage that weapon does.

The solution which still allows for incremental progression, is to split light into two stats: attack and defense. Attack is equal to whatever weapon you are currently shooting with. Your stowed weapons do not effect it, it's basically just your current weapons power and equal to it's attack value. Then, you have defense which is an average of your defensive gear. So when an activity recommends 280 light for example, that means your attack and defense should be around 280.

I completely disagree with you here. Right now, if you have level 300 gear everywhere, you can equip a 170 weapon from year 1 and still come out as a 290 guardian. Which means your Fatebringer isn't dead; just sayin'. With your proposed solution, you're actually making things worse. Your complaint is that equipping a lower power gun makes you slightly less powerful, but if you split the light level into two, equipping that same lower power gun lowers your attack twice as much as in the current system, while not affecting your defense at all. That's not better.

What's the benefit of this? Well, it's more intuitive, and your weapons determine how much damage you do, and your armor how much damage you take. Your stowed weapon won't bring down the damage of the one you are using, and so you won't be locked into loadouts to get your light level up. You also get wiggle room: if your armor is a bit below, you can still tough it out of you don't get hit, and if your attack is low you can still do well if you can stay alive. As it it now, the system is not the best, but it is better than before.

Your idea is more intuitive, sort of, but again, I don't think it's better as it would magnify the effect of lower gear. Right now having a single low piece is mitigated by averaging all of your gear out, and having more items to add into that pool further mitigates the effect of single low pieces. Furthermore:

The infusion system is interesting, and ultimately a good alternative to etheric light. I just wish that instead of getting 80% of the value, you got 100%. It's going to be a pain in the ass to get the weapons you want up to max, because you'll need to find multiple maxed weapons, as the benefits are less and less with each infusion. I think when you are within five points of the weapon you get everything, but that still means to go from 280 to 310 you'll need three maxed weapons. I fear that 300 and beyond will be ridiculously grindy, as you have no guarantee your stuff that's dropping is going to even be a higher level. Maybe the raid hard mode drops guaranteed 310s. I don't know. I'm hoping that you are never 'required' to be the max, and it simply isn't intended to be hit.

Exactly this. The infusion system means that you're not going to be underpowered if you want to use a new gun, because you can just infuse it with your old gun and BAM it's a powerful weapon immediately. Find a light 200 gun that is just *awesome*? No problem, infuse it with some light 290 blues and you're good to take that puppy into the raid. I like this a LOT and I like it a lot more than the old reforge RNG system. You know exactly what you're getting every time, before you spend the resources.

The gunsmith tests are pure grind, and stupid. There are some quests which are pure grind and stupid. Get 50 Hadium flakes? Come on. With so much creativity elsewhere in the game, it's shameful that these exist in the game at all. Bungie has shown they can largely move beyond that, and have succeeded wonderfully.

I love the gunsmith tests. They let me try out different (and sometimes really interesting) weapons, and are incredibly free-form in terms of how and where I choose to do them. 50 hadium flakes is pretty grindy, but then again, I got 24 just exploring the dreadnaught and only had to go "farm" the final flake for my sword quest. So I have a feeling I'll be able to get 50 fairly easily.

All three of the new subclasses are very very good for PvE, largely outshining the other. Defender Titan will always be amazing, and the Gunslinger Hunter can be useful with a year 2 Celestial Nighthawk, But for most other content, the storm caller will be dishing out massive damage, the night stalker wrangling enemies, and the sunbreaker just hammering away. It would have been nice for Bungie to rework the older subclasses to make them more useful in PvE and PvP, wherever they are weak.

The new subclasses feel to me like hybrids of the other two classes' best subs. Hunter stalker is like a nova bomb had a kid with a defender titan and created a support bomb. Palpatine Warlocks are a sort of bladedancer meets striker fast moving aftermath thing. And hammer titans are golden gun by way of radiance. Bungie *nailed* these in design concept as well as how they fit into the overall balance of the game. I think you're seeing a lot of them right now because they're new a shiny, but in the end - as with vanilla Destiny - the class balance here is some of the best I've ever seen in any game. Each sub plays differently and brings something different to the group. I love it.

I haven't done the raid, so I can't comment.

In general, I've been blown away by the changes in this game. Bungie nailed it, and only one year late.

The other issue is that it is very straightforward. Oryx threatens us, so go kill him. And you kill him. There are no revelations, real changes other than his murder, no deepening or twisting of things (except for the grimoire). It is confusing that everybody seems to know immediately that he is coming, and that his ship is at Saturn. How do we know this? Starting the game with a huge battle scene that we don't care about is silly… that should have been the middle of the game! Hear me out. Imagine the Taken attack Phobos. Nobody knows what they are, then you discover the come from Oryx. So you have to go find Oryx, since the Taken start attacking key areas. Through your missions, you discover his location on Saturn. THEN the Queen launches her attack. Perhaps Cayde thinks it's suicide and wants to try a different plan, but Zavala pushed forward. It ends in failure and you are set back. THEN Cayde goes rougue and does his thing in secret, you kill Oryx, and Zavala and Cayde make up. Wouldn't that have been… better? You could build up the battle and the Queen's 'death', you get even more character development, and it offers something a little more deep.

I sort of wondered about something like that myself. I can't say the story for TTK was "great" but it's presentation through Nathan Fillion sold it, and made it great. Your way, if done correctly, could have been better, yes.

The infusion system is interesting, and ultimately a good alternative to etheric light. I just wish that instead of getting 80% of the value, you got 100%. It's going to be a pain in the ass to get the weapons you want up to max, because you'll need to find multiple maxed weapons, as the benefits are less and less with each infusion. I think when you are within five points of the weapon you get everything, but that still means to go from 280 to 310 you'll need three maxed weapons. I fear that 300 and beyond will be ridiculously grindy, as you have no guarantee your stuff that's dropping is going to even be a higher level. Maybe the raid hard mode drops guaranteed 310s. I don't know. I'm hoping that you are never 'required' to be the max, and it simply isn't intended to be hit.

I'm loving the infusion system so far, but I'm only at 284, and my highest weapon is 293, I think. We'll see how it plays out when I have better gear and am sitting around 300.

The gunsmith tests are pure grind, and stupid. There are some quests which are pure grind and stupid. Get 50 Hadium flakes? Come on. With so much creativity elsewhere in the game, it's shameful that these exist in the game at all. Bungie has shown they can largely move beyond that, and have succeeded wonderfully.

I think the Gunsmith tests are fine. Yeah, they're not all that interesting, but they're very easy to get if you just equip whatever gun it is for patrol and do patrol things for five or ten minutes. You'll get it naturally.

The Hadium Flakes thing is alright, too, I think. I still think a lot of folks are playing Destiny stupidly. Rather than grinding through finding Hadium Flakes, just play the game and let it happen naturally. I really think this is Bungie's intention. I don't think they want anyone to get that quest and then spend the next two hours running circles in the Dreadnaught opening chests. It's one of those quests that you just keep in your inventory and complete as you play the game and do other activities.

All three of the new subclasses are very very good for PvE, largely outshining the other. Defender Titan will always be amazing, and the Gunslinger Hunter can be useful with a year 2 Celestial Nighthawk, But for most other content, the storm caller will be dishing out massive damage, the night stalker wrangling enemies, and the sunbreaker just hammering away. It would have been nice for Bungie to rework the older subclasses to make them more useful in PvE and PvP, wherever they are weak.

I've only used Nightstalker and Stormcaller, but both are tons of fun. However, I still feel like the other classes will always have their place. I will still prefer Voidwalker in PvP to Stormcaller. I can't say which is "better" because I'm not a top level player, but Nova Bombing a group of Guardians standing around Heavy Ammo or capping a Control Zone is stupid fun.