Big changes, that I think are great.

Pledging to a faction should be a meaningful choice.

Yes, they should have an impact on players, and on the effect that it has from a social perspective, and from a lore/gameplay standpoint.
When people demanded this, they meant that it shouldn't just be focused on grinding for tokens.

So what is Bungie's solution? Limitation... and Tokens. All focused around our favorite activity: Grinding Lost Sectors (or rather, the single easiest and fastest Lost Sector).

• Players may now only pledge to one faction per account during a Faction Rallies event

This is terrible. I want Dead Orbit armor and ornaments for my Titan. I want New Monarchy shaders and weapons for my Warlock/Hunter. But now I'll have to lock into a single stream of rewards. What this means is that If I want to hit max rank with any faction, I'll more than likely have to forego any of the other two for the entire Season. And no matter which faction you want to support, the non-faction-related rewards are the only effective motivator now.

[*] Reputation progress is retained through multiple events, and it will not be reset during the season, even if a player changes allegiance

Which would be great if Faction Rally wasn't a once-a-month deal, which is made worse by the points above.

[*] Each faction offers unique rewards, such as Exotic armor ornaments or Masterwork Catalysts for Exotic weapons

Right, but these rewards have nothing to do with the factions themselves, and railroad you towards joining a faction you might not otherwise like. If there were faction-themed exclusive rewards, it would be a whole 'nother thing, but it's Stabbim's MIDA problem on a grander scale instead. I don't want to have to fully commit to Dead Orbit just because I want a Catalyst for my Lance. You know why other games can get a pass for a similar system? Because there is always a trade/market system where we can pay a premium to get things from factions that we aren't a part of. There are alternatives.

We are planning to host three Faction Rallies events over the course of Season 3

So you have one shot at loot from all three factions. That will just put more pressure on the grind, and people will have more incentive to finding the cheapest, fastest way to get the rewards. That doesn't lead to engaging interactions with the factions. That doesn't make them more interesting or "meaningful" in the sense that players have been asking for. It's not player-friendly.

• Dead Orbit will offer the Eye of Another World ornament and the Graviton Lance Catalyst
  
• New Monarchy will offer the Crest of Alpha Lupi ornament and the Sweet Business Catalyst
  
• Future War Cult will offer the Knucklehead Radar ornament and the Sunshot Catalyst

I'm glad that pledging a Faction will actually mean something now, rather than just running three characters through on different factions. Really going to be a tough choice between Dead Orbit and Future War Cult for me.

I'm calling it right now:

Dead Orbit wins the faction Rally, solely because of the Graviton Lance catalyst. It won't even be close.
New Monarchy ends up in second place. Some folks out there want the Sweet Business catalyst more than the Lance's. That's cool.
And Future War Cult will, as always, be dead last. If Benedict was a faction, he'd be above FWC.

GG Bungie, you "fixed" Faction rallies alright.

And a new Renown system, that acts a sort of modifier. Get Renown by killing High Value Targets or doing Public Events. It stacks (no mention of what the cap is). The higher the Renown, the more tokens you'll get in Lost Sectors. It also lowers damage resistance, increases enemy damage output, and lowers health regen. Renown is lost upon death. With Renown active, you can see what Faction other players have pledged.

Other than the stupid (IMO) armor effects (Can I please have an option to disable those, Bungie?), the Renown system is pretty great. That's good challenge design, though it sounds like building stacks can be a bit time consuming. Still, it's a good change that I'd love to see built upon moving forward.

But yeah. Factions should be more meaningful in the sense that we should be able to build our characters through interacting with them, and it should give us a better understanding of the faction's lore, characters, mission, and impact.

Saying "They're more meaningful, because you're locked into a single faction account-wide, content is locked to each one, and you can only interact with them on three specific weeks until our September DLC drops" is not what we've been asking for.

Renown is lost when players are defeated by enemies, so be careful when you're attempting to loot a Lost Sector with high Renown!

So uh, does that mean they are going to actually make lost sectors hard? :-p

Reading these stats, not as many players are attempting Escalation Protocol with a fireteam of three as our designs intended, mostly because of how difficult waves 6 and 7 are.

Maybe the rather punishing light level requirement has something to do with that too…

It seems to me the best thing to do would be to scale the difficulty with the number of players in the event. They said it themselves: they have the ability to 'switch' the enemy levels to different values. So why not set the difficulty based on the number of current players? Why not spawn extra enemies for additional players? It should be such that more players is always advantageous, but not overwhelmingly so. I remember while playing Diablo 2, if a player joined the game "Diablo's minions grow stronger". It was the same type of system designed so that large groups don't completely steamroll, yet single players aren't hopelessly overpowered by the enemies.

In Borderlands, not only do the enemies get stronger when people join you, but the quality of the loot drops also increases (and you can stack drop-rate-boosting artifacts on characters, too).

I think you're over-estimating how much effort Bungie put into the difficulty flags.

I think a better solution for Escalation Protocol would have been to have two modes by default:

Normal- Activated like it is already. It's much lower-light, but the more people you have in your fireteam, the tougher it is, and the better the chances are at loot drops.

Heroic- Doing two Patrol missions, a Heroic Public Event, or successfully completing three Normal waves of Escalation Protocol will rile up enemies in an area (reward you with a Heroic Token). You can hold down the activation Button longer on a tower to trigger Heroic Escalation Protocol, which is at the current difficulty that it's been at. It's very tough, but clearly doable, and you have a higher chance at Catalyst drops on every boss fight. Completing Three waves at this difficulty guarantees Legendaries, with a high chance at being at or above your current Light level (If you do get a Powerful engram drop on wave 3, you will have to beat Wave 5 to reset a reward cooldown so that Wave 3 can drop a Powerful engram again). Solo players who help you complete at least three waves also have a higher chance at a Powerful/exotic Engram drop. You can also get exclusive ornaments for Ana Bray's armors, apart from the existing EP armor set.

Now randoms have a much higher incentive to help you, while you have a higher incentive to activate Heroic Escalation Protocol, but lower-light/solo players can also experience a version of the content in its entirety, and have it be rewarding!

Reading these stats, not as many players are attempting Escalation Protocol with a fireteam of three as our designs intended, mostly because of how difficult waves 6 and 7 are.

This line that you highlighted seems to be the basis of so much frustration. We aren't playing the game as they intended. What if the intention of the game was just to have fun? Instead of having all these stipulations and rules and designs of intention, how about we just have a game that we can play however we want.

I am so tired of constantly referencing Halo as a comparison to Destiny but, my goodness, the freedom we had in that game! I think we would have way more fun with this game if it were designed as a playground. Or maybe when they are brainstorming things, replace the phrase "but they have to" with "and they get to".

Imagine the difference in Escalation Protocol using those two terms.

Guardians will fight multiple waves of powerful enemies [but they have to] be in a fireteam or scrap together random players to beat it.

Guardians will fight multiple waves of powerful enemies [and they get to] be in a fireteam or scrap together random players to beat it.

The first design locks you in to only beating it one way.
The second design provides multiple ways to beat it.

At this stage of their existence... have we EVER played the game they way they intended?

[*]Dead Orbit will offer the Eye of Another World ornament and the Graviton Lance Catalyst
[*]New Monarchy will offer the Crest of Alpha Lupi ornament and the Sweet Business Catalyst
[*]Future War Cult will offer the Knucklehead Radar ornament and the Sunshot Catalyst
Translation: We hate Future War Cult too, but it's ok because they already knew that.

Dude, if they hate Future War Cult so much, would they be bribing everyone to join by offering up this sweet, sweet sidearm for new FWC recruits?

Wait, sorry, that one's a little hard to see. One sec...

Aww, yeah. There she is. Rightfully given pride-of-place in the bottom-right 5% of the image. We're going to have so many new FWC recruits, we'll have to start turning people away!

-Disciple