I’ve debated on making this post. It’s been a long time coming. After the Weapons 2.0 update, I could not ignore the discussion any longer. I genuinely did care for this game and wanted Bungie to succeed and I was totally committed to the 10 yr endeavor, but now I’m indifferent to the company and game. My Background: I have been a Bungie fan since Halo 1. I have over 10+ days worth of game time (1600 hrs on X1, several hundred on PS4). I'm 34 on all characters X1. 100% achievements. I’m around level 30 on all PS4 characters. Bungie: There is no excuse for mediocrity. I’ve been here from the beginning since the days of Halo 1. From Bungie we have witness 20 years of game making at it’s finest: story, music, firefights, forge, multiplayer. Sure there were bumps in the road, but those games have withstood the test of time. Truth is Destiny had a ton of potential and failed on meeting the bar that they set. In defense of Bungie, I have to honestly say this was more of Bungie’s partnership with Activision. To give a developer $500M over the course of a 10yr ambitious game, investor and publisher pressures needed to be met. Several years of hard work were canned due to bad project management and to meet expectations. What was famously shown in prior e3s to the story now and game design now shows the product players received was a shell of it’s former glory as Activision forced Bungie to make it more accessible to casual and younger gamers and make more profits by developing for older last gen consoles. This created severe limitations on the ambitions of Destiny.It’s very noticeable on the game itself as many Year One Vets (YOV) have seen: 1) Unused potentially wasted areas, invisible walls, death borders, etc. 2) The story got butchered as the decision was made to chop up the story into DLCs (Josh Staten quit). 3) Technical issues as the game was developed for 360 and PS3 diminished what they could do (graphics upscaled, gameplay (number of enemies, complexity of AI, size of maps, variation of enemies, coordination, etc.) and vault limitations that have not been addressed (Bungie has stated that additional solutions would come, but it’s been ignored). 4) Decisions to go with peer to peer servers, DLC content or lack thereof to save costs, and rushed game to secure the year window where Destiny faced a complete lack of competition. Unlike an "early access" title which you pay for up front and they continue to add to the game up to full release, Bungie has sold us an "early access" game where we have to pay extra for everything that makes it a complete game. In short, the time you put in doesn't match up with the rewards you get. Year One Vets were true QA testers for this game. YOV summary and final conclusion: There's a lot to like: The game design is beautiful, the score is fantastic, and the gameplay is tight and incredibly addicting. As in most traditional games, most gamers apex in hours gaming is about 2-3 months before a steady to sharp fall off. Destiny broke that trend successfully is debatable: https://m.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2itlvw/destiny_addictive_formula_detailed_by_bungie/ Year One Weapons and Weapons 2.0 Updates on Sept 15th Deej commented in regards to Year 1 ascended weapons and vault space http://youtu.be/s8SwrFn-oZE when TTK releases (skip to the 10:30, 12:20 mark). Vault space isn’t going to be improved. This is all in a drive to force the user to make changes to their habits as their user research claims that we only use a handful of weapons. If the DLC had better weapons designed (black hammer being the exception, we would have happily switched to those weapons). The problem is they released arguably the best 19 exotics and legendary weapons day one. How do you combat this? Well the recent post from Bungie https://www.bungie.net/en/News/News?aid=13147 is bringing heavily criticized buffs and nerfs within Destiny to all of our fav weapons we like to use. Why are YOV and gamers being punished for overuse of favorite weapons? With the buffs to Necrochasm and No Land Beyonds, if we overuse them, are they next? Essentially what they are doing is all of the weapon collecting and ascension worthless. PvP: I don’t want to debate this too much as it’s an extremely divisive issue. Edit: Removed Hawkmoon arguement. @BNasty5 made several good points. PvE: Gjallarhorn, Ice Breaker (Patience & Time 2.0, P&T2.0), and Black Hammer getting nerfed. This is the biggest issue I have. I personally feel bad for those that don’t have Gallarhorn or just recently got it and will only have a month and half to enjoy this coveted weapon. It truly is a game changer. If you buy the argument that Gjallarhorn made those that wanted to run raids and strikes “gballer” only teams. In beginning of nongballer days, I was denied invite, I was excluded from raids and NFs with many friends on my list as the difficulty and newness/glitchiness of the events made it extremely difficult to carry a non-gballer. It made me angry but more determined, to start building three characters and running strikes, NFs, and Raids consistently untiI finally got one 800+ hours into the game. Did those that complained did not actively seek out the right people on LFG. Are they not social enough? But then is that the gamer’s fault? Or the failure of Bungie to introduce a matchmaking system within Destiny? P&T2.0 and Black Hammer nerfs are more puzzling. Why mess with this setup? Is it because of the overuse of these weapons? Were there complaints from gamers and YOVs that the levels were too easy or the weapons were too OP? If Year One weapons will not ascend to year two why do they need to be nerfed? They will eventually be invalidated anyways. There’s a more to this than just societal exclusion argument. YOVs have run through every PoE, raid, strike, and nightfall with these crucial weapons to overcome the lackadaisical level design and enemy/boss fights that we all know that are just glorified mini-firefights (PoE obviously is) and bullets within an hour or less to move on to run it on another character or timely event. So why would Bungie want to nerf these OP weapons? [u][b]When quarterly earnings are announced from Activision, Wall St. analysts and investors demand to know how Destiny is doing from a user engagement standpoint. By destroying our OP weapons this will cause our engagements levels on all activities rise dramatically from week to week. Especially with this fall (all the triple AAA titles coming out), what better way to keep YOV and new noobs who have bought the collector’s edition to remain engaged.[/b][/u] If you argue against this, think about NF run at Phogoth (Icebreaker), Oracles & Templar Checkpoint (Icebreaker, GHorn, Black hammer) Skolas (GHorn), Valus/Tank (black hammer, ghorn, icebreaker), Walker battler Sepiks Prime (Ice Breaker, Black Hammer), Crota Run (GHorn), PoEs. The strategy changes guardians, and not for the better. YEAR 1 VETS PRIZE: So after the Luke Smith/Deej comments, rebuttal, and the egregious greed on exclusivity and pricing from Bungie what was the “reward”? After you finish all the “tasks” you get an emblem. That's it. All the toils and trauma from glitches, patches, nerfs, and buffs that we endure. All I get as a thank you for being a QA tester forking over ridiculous money is an emblem. But if we spend $20 we can get all the new cool exclusives when TTK launches as well. On top of that all the weapon adjustments that will launch will make us feel more engaged and challenged to do all the events in Destiny. I feel so blessed to put in in even more hours. PvP will be rebalanced. Great, so unskilled guardians have better chance to win. All the work put in for Thorn bounty attaining coveted Iron Banner weapons, motes & glimmer spent on re-rolls for weapons will be for nothing. Trials? Forget the stats and perks you will get on those weapons. Hey if that's their decision to reward us dedicated folks to make us happy, so be it. Their business decision has been made. So have I. Conclusion: Bungie does not want you to play Destiny your own unique way. You must conform to the way they want you to play it. Bungie is making this game accessible and pricing attractive to noobs for rewards this fall and the lessons learned from YOV experiment is over. Bungie always said, “no weapon class or weapon will dominate and be overused”. Great so if all weapons are meant to be vanilla than so be it. What is the argument and reason to own exotics and legendaries? All weapons classes must be leveled? Aside from supers and jumps, how is Destiny any different from Halo, CoD, Battlefield, Battlefront, and every other first person shooter that have same stats/perks. If we can’t differentiate ourselves and earn the weapons we so proudly worked for, what’s left for us in the game?!? The Year One Vets like myself may start being in a smaller minority these days. Our voices haven't been heard. Our complaints that for the most part are for betterment of the game still have fallen on deaf ears. I'll continue to play the raids, NFs, and Weeklies until they conveniently raise the levels for those strikes to push me and non-DLC buyers out. PROUD TO BE A YEAR ONE VET SIGNING OFF UNTIL DESTINY 2 or THE BETTERMENT OF THE GAME OCCURS.