[quote]I stopped reading when OP said Y1 was so good. Y1 grind made the game horrible...Beyond horrible to play. Story mode was utter trash. Raid was good...But boy those strikes and story mission were nonsense. Anyone that forgets the RNG nonsense is living in a dream world. No amount of grinding would let me get a specific exotic...Utter random luck.[/quote] The problem here is three fold. I know people think RNG is a dirty word, but lets consider the alternatives first: 1. Questification of all great loot: Some people like this in Y2, and it is good to a DEGREE, but when you start questifying all of the game's best loot, you leave nothing to grind for. Combined with the fact that they watered down the quality of raid gear, and you get an endgame that is pretty much entirely irrelevant in Y2. Overal: not good for the long-term life of the game. How much this was also compounded by the fact that 3oC made everything ELSE in the game easier to get is really an unknown, but the bottom line is that the game was always at its best when we had some elite tier white whales to chase. And everyone's white whale was different. 2. Another alternative to RNG used in some games is skill-based or performance-based rewards where the top tier players get the best rewards in a given activity. An example of this would be if you did a strike with 3 random players, and the player that did the highest percentage of damage or got the highest percentage of kills would get the best rewards, and the other players would get poor rewards. I wouldn't object to the system like this, but if they did this, there are simply players who would never get good rewards, period. You think "git gud" is bad now in PVP? Imagine applying that to PVE. If that was the case, rewards would be even MORE skewed towards the hardcore players as you would have hardcore players using their elite tier gear to outpace everyone elses ability to get kills in PVE content. Strikes no longer become a cooperative activity but a competitive one instead. That brings us back to RNG. Given the poor long-term effects overquestification of loot can have on the game and the foreseeable negativity that would arise from a skill-based or contribution-based rewards system, I think RNG wasn't so bad. It ensures that EVERYONE has an equally random chance to get a good drop. Sure, someone may get something great on their first drop, like a G-Horn, but they may never see a Foil drop from the VoG. And another player may get a Foil, but won't see a G-Horn drop for months. That's just RNG. It'll never be perfect, but I think its better than the two alternatives. Call me crazy, but I think guaranteed outcomes in a lootgrinder are just bad. I DO think you can mix in quests for some items, but those items shouldn't be the games elite tier items, otherwise you have nothing left to play for.