So the portal, definitely something that people seem to have opinions on nowadays. Figure I'd drop some additional points of feedback for Bungie to consider and some thoughts on what I think needs to be done. I'll categorize everything so it's a bit easier to follow along. [b]General Thoughts[/b] I can see the vision of the portal and what Bungie has set out to accomplish by introducing it. There are definitely some aspects of the game I feel have been significantly improved upon through the portal, whereas there are areas of the game I think the portal has been a bit of a detriment to the health of the game. My personal opinion is that while the portal is a great system and a good first swing at things, it never should have outright replaced the director as the primary hub of the game, instead it should have been a new "legends" tab that provided a quick-hub to the current stuff going on in the game (e.g., featured activities, new expansion content, etc). [b]Activity Selection[/b] Again, as a first "swing" at things, I'm "satisfied". I wasn't thrilled, but I wasn't disappointed either. This is definitely an area of concern I have and something I really wish Bungie has been more open on discussing / addressing, and that is just the general "empty" feeling the game has right now. There are six solo ops, and four pinnacle ops activities. From the perspective of a 400+ solo player, I'm not going to bother putting Fireteam ops here as the timers on these activities just downright suck. This in turn means that at most, only ten viable activities in any given day to play, and solstice, while a great showing of how events work going forward, reduces the viable activity list to two (Why would I play anything other than the solstice featured activity?). Not good. I like the idea of "featured activities" on events, but I think it needs to rotate each 2-3 hours instead of daily to keep things fresh. Getting more things into the Portal really should have been the primary focus of Bungie, and the fact that we've only heard next to nothing, other than "Dungeon Content" coming is very concerning to me. Scoring for Fireteam ops needs to be addressed. Right now its the only playlist scored on kills, while everything else is objective based. I personally think the best solution is to just move fireteam ops to objective based scoring at this point, especially given the prevalence of speedrunners in the playlists. Additionally, where's the six player stuff? It's a great opportunity to build upon the system while also bringing back some fan favorites. Fireteam ops has a curated (Albeit again, limited) selection of past strikes and battlegrounds, and head-scratching to me is that while we have everything from Echoes and Revenant (Almost, no CoE), nothing from Heresy? I definitely think the limited selection of activities is hurting the potential of the portal here. [b]Power & Progression[/b] I could write a whole separate post on the power and progression systems of the game, anyone who's read my topics since Lightfall should already know where I'm going here, but I'll keep things brief here. Power levels as a system are perfectly fine to keep, but we need to go back to how things were prior to Lightfall. While it's nice to see overleveling make a return, the portal is set up in a manner that level is nothing more than a gate to higher difficulties right now, and its introducing a whole separate suite of problems to the game. 10-200 were fine as is from the perspective of anyone who bought EoF and did all the expansion content, nothing to add here. 200-300 was a "tolerable" experience for me. Getting a +4 drop on "almost" every run of an activity (See difficulty below) was nice and bonus drops also increased power, but I definitely feel that some activities needed to drop a lot more engrams (e.g., Fireteam Ops, Pinnacle Ops). 300-400 was much less enjoyable, primarily due to the difficulty bands. The first 5-7 levels in each band was a terrible experience, while the last 12-15 felt manageable. In addition, going down to +3 drops and having the bonus engram drops only being on power did not feel good here. I think the system needed to keep the accelerator going on getting you up to 400 with +4 drops on activity engrams, and +3 on bonus drops to balance it out. I want to know from the person who green-lit the progression of 400+, who hurt you? This is one of the most oppressive slogs of a progression system I have seen in a long while in Destiny, and it really saps the fun out of the game faster than anything else. Prime engrams only, which drop on average once every 20 activities is terrible, especially when you get repeat slot drops (As I have twice now). I know 400-500 is going to feel like 300-400 in A&I, but going forward the last 50 points needs to be more achievable, perhaps drop things to +2 on activity completion and +1/on power for bonus drops. Outside of the portal, my primary feedback is that every R&D needs to drop pinnacle engrams. It's still technically endgame content, it should drop endgame rewards. This needs to happen ASAP. [b]Difficulty / Modifiers[/b] EOF launches and... overleveling is a thing again... if you want zero progression. In order to make progression, you need to meet score "thresholds", which has its own set of issues ranging from "featured gear" (Needs to be deleted from the game IMO), "season pass bonuses", "time limits", and "challenge modifiers". The issue, especially in the 300+ range is the absurd jumps in point requirements every 20 levels which means you essentially jump from getting to play a 320 level activity at 319, to a 350 activity at 320 in order to maintain your drops. This is one of the big issues I currently have with the system. In order to achieve these score thresholds, you are forced to "modifier up", and there are only a small selection of challenge modifiers you can use that don't also increase the "combatant power". I really wish this would change, I would love a world where I could stack 5-6 challenge modifiers on a Master activity, but it would still be a 300 level activity I could score a B+ on at 380 power. I wish Combatant Power worked like the old Nine of Swords card where you could up it or lower it to your liking. This could also work as a pseudo-power delta for those folks who want that. Sometimes I just want to "chill out" and blast hordes of aliens, not feel like everything needs to be a "sweatfest" just to make progression. I love the idea of banes, I feel like they are Champions 2.0 done right, which is why I was very disappointed to see a miniscule selection of them in the portal, and highly limited customization of them. Where did the Meteor banes go? or the comical Nuclear ones? I loved having those panic moments when one of those nuclear bombs was about to go off. I think banes need to be a separate section of modifiers (Outside of challenge). Individual bane types need to be in there (Not two grouped together), and as mentioned above, it needs to NOT alter the combatant power level. On the topic of champions, I would love to actually have control over champions. There were times in the 200-300 climb where I actually wish I could have thrown a few on for the fun of it, and now times at 400+ where I get downright frustrated by them and wish I could turn them off. I think challenge modifier wise, this is a great opportunity to give more player control over the game. Options to do: "No champions", "weak champions (expert level)", "base champions (master level)", or "difficult champions (GM level)", with respective challenge bonuses on each. In terms of player stakes, more control is always better, and I want the game to feel inviting, not that these become "necessary" (e.g., Must have locked loadouts always or you don't get to A without a stupid amount of challenge mods). I think the overall score requirements need to be dropped, a lot, so things don't feel necessary. Maybe a solution here is to add an even higher A+/S rating for using a lot of challenge modifiers, but make it guarantee a +5 drop that is a tier higher than the current power band limits. Res. Tokens/Timers. For a solo player, very annoying. I exclusively now play solo and pinnacle ops at 400+ because of them. I can't touch the fireteam ops playlist unless I have a friend "willing" to play the game, or I subject myself to the matchmaking because of two things: 1. If I die as a solo in fireteam ops, instant orbit, 2. The timer kills all res tokens at zero, and as a solo, it's impossible to ever make time. I get wanting to maintain the old feeling of tokens, but I would have liked to see this be an optional challenge in the portal, not a requirement at expert+. The bonus timer should ALSO be customizable for more/less challenge as desired by the player. (Fix the FT Ops Timers please...) Boons are effectively pointless due to absurd score thresholds. You are penalizing yourself for using them, so.. nobody uses them. I think risk/reward needs to be the idea here, with a pro and a con and a bonus to the challenge modifier added. [b]Final Comments[/b] So again, as a first swing on things, It's not a terrible system. But there are definitely changes I think Bungie needs to make to improve the overall player experience. I think Bungie also needs to start opening up the communication channels on some of these more pressing issues and soon, the game feels a bit stale right now, and some of the problems above (Activity selection) provide some "quick and easy wins" for Bungie to fix things. Alright.. I've wall of texted enough for one day, feel free to add in your own thoughts here too.