Patch 2.0 has been active for about a day now. I've fit in a couple hours, and while I can appreciate the added measures such as the greater FOV, unique quests, cosmetic items now awarding actual stats, some of the aesthetic aspects being greatly redone (my free Thorn!) and the knowledge that September 15th will be bringing even more to the table with Legendary Marks and Level 40, my overall feelings are still that of great disappointment, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Please allow me to share my gripes, and should you feel you want to bridge off something, inform or simply disagree, feel free to do so. : - "[i]Pledging Allegiance[/i]" to factions to was portrayed in developer talks as being something far more convenient than the current cloak/mark/band system we had for accumulating reputation. In my experience at least, this is only half true. Pledging allegiance to a faction now requires a glimmer fee of 2,500 REGARDLESS of whether or not you already have a standing reputation or cloak/mark/bond with that faction (these aren't redeemable and come with no perks for their respective factions either, meaning faction cloaks/marks/bonds are fairly meaningless outside their defense stats now, which, at a glance, are easily outdone by RARE gear) Paying the fee nets you a "badge" item that, so long as it remains in your inventory, allows you to gain reputation for this faction, [u]alongside the Vanguard[/u] (which is nice, actually). Doing so, however, locks you out of pledging allegiance to other factions, and you can only re-align yourself once per week (for reasons which elude me) doing so will demand a fee from that respective faction, as well as kicking you out of your old one. I imagine this also removes the old faction's badge from your inventory, and as such, realigning with that faction will likely demand ANOTHER fee. The idea here seems to be to get players to engage in more long term relationships with their current factions, and while I personally have no beef with that; I know that more than a few hardcore players who wanted to expand their options as broad as possible when it came to collecting legendary gear, and would purchase cloaks/marks/bonds for all factions and chose what reputation they wanted to advance at their own leisure, and to this end the new patch has considerably limited their freedom to chose in that regard. - The [i]New Leveling System[/i] is headed in the wrong direction. I was able to leap from level 32 to the maximum, 34, over the course of a couple of Patrol missions on Mars, something like 20 minutes to half an hour. Understandably, pre-patch it might have taken me 2 hours to get from 19 to 20 going along the standard experience route, which was a little much, and applied to current level would have likely lead to abysmal amounts of wait time between levels; but this new rate is so much so that it borders on making individual levels redundant, or the entire leveling system in itself. I worry this is indicative of making the Light System the deciding factor in character building from here on out, which was the exact OPPOSITE of what the community has been pleading with Bungie to do with it. The Light System should be meant to augment you're base character's capabilities, not DECIDE them. That's were standard leveling comes into play. - The "[i]Quest[/i]" System, pray, has something added to it beyond the current ability to replay the campaign (which, lets be frank, nobody wanted to do anyway) and a handful of class related ones which are more or less glorified list bounties. The campaign ones tick me off namely for how horribly redundant they can be if you're a campaign veteran already, and the ludicrous amount of space they take up in your quest log. They offer little to no reward for having completed them once again, and restrict you to the seemingly lowest possible level you can play them on start-up. Meaning if you'd be interested in maybe going through the campaign once more in quest format on a difficulty that matches your current level, you'd be better off just replaying the story missions over again in sequential order. [u]Nitpicks / Personnel Complaints[/u] : - On visiting the bounty board, your completed bounties are no longer brought up immediately upon entering conversation with Xander, instead you need to open your inventory and manually turn them in now. Why? It's just an added inconvenience. - All Ghost shell perks that I've seen deal with pointing out upgrade materials in the world. Maybe that only accounts for what I've seen, but if not it that's a terrible waste of an otherwise good idea. We could definitely do make more use than that with them. - This new soundtrack added to the menu and orbit is... unimpressive. It feels very generic MMO-ish. I understand Marty isn't coming back in any foreseeable future but this feels almost spiteful. The soundtrack for drifting about space, organizing your inventory and planning has go from tranquil ambience, something of a breath of fresh air in the franticness of the game, to oppressive war drums, and it's just depressing. (I'm aware of how opinionated this one complaint is, please don't feel the need to remind me)