In the times I've been around the block in the gaming world (four, five? not sure how those are measured) I've observed a trend that I've found to be self validating in all the communities I've watched. I could be wrong, because I'm definitely not an old gamer, but the following is what I've observed to happen. There is a direct relation between the amount of complaining in a community/individual and how addicting/how much the community/individual plays a game. When I say "community" I mean the average of it, discluding individuals. I only mean individuals when I say as such. The more addicted (ranging from casual fondness to hardcore raid three times a week) an individual is to something, the less receptive they are of change to this something. The less addicted they are, the more receptive they are of change. Addiction is most often spurred from tangible investments in an activity that create a feeling of progress. Destiny is an activity built entirely around these tangible investments within the game. In past Bungie games, such as Halo Reach, there were also visible investment systems but failure to comply with these investments did not impede your progress at all in actual gameplay. I.E: Opting not to bother with daily challenges (comparable to Destiny bounties) did not make you fall behind in your actual gameplay effectiveness compared to other players. On the same coin, opting to complete these challenges offered no real gameplay benefit. But in Destiny, the player is more or less required to take part in every investment system and its related activities in order to be as powerful as they can be. Unlike in other MMOs where climbing to the end game of a specific investment can make one as powerful as those who ascend another, Destiny requires one to do, quite literally, everything. Even a strict PvP player must go about PvE investments if they wish to synergize their builds the best they can in PvP. The inverse is true as well. All things considered, twenty four currencies must be exploited by players seeking to be the best. This isn't even counting continous investments such as faction reputations or grimoire bonuses. When a weekly challenge (comparable to Weekly Heroic/Nightfall) in Reach reset to a challenge the community found unfavorable, there was comparatively less complaining. If a weekly happened to be "Complete Long Night of Solace, Legendary, All Skulls On (LASO)." The community relatively cared little save for individuals attempting to obtain max rank. Even so, max rank held no baring on gameplay. On the flipside... Even something as singular as the burn modifier of a weekly activity is met with a lot of response. Some complaints, some praise, but a lot of response nonetheless. This is because a good deal of Destiny's investment system hinges upon RNG. Arcburn? God damnit Bungie, 40 raids and no Fatebringer. Now what do I do? So on and so forth. Bungie has engineered a game with very deep and intertwined investments and they have done it so well that it is incredibly difficult for even casual gamers to not become addicted to. The addiction is evidenced by the tiniest of changes causing uproars in even the most pleasant of communities such as this subreddit. As interconnected as the game is, small weapon balancing can potentially negate fifty hours of gameplay and lots of used currency, perhaps more. Every player plays different, and this upcoming auto rifle nerf may mean some players will find another weapon class more favorable for their playstyle. Provided they're a good player, they've invested their build to be centric to their weapon class. Of course they'll want to keep being good, and now they're going to need to acquire commendations, marks, shards, energies, and probably something else I'm forgetting. Marks are even capped, too. This player may now be gimped for two, maybe even three weeks. It is my opinion that Bungie over achieved their goal of a persistent game that players can invest in. I think this because the only objective feedback they're ever going to receive is the statistics their own telemetrics collect. They can't acquire legitimate verbal feedback from invested players, because these players are...invested. VERY invested. Most of them aren't just going to say "This gun I'm using in PvP is SOOOO powerful compared to others!", because to risk consideration of another sandbox update is to risk hours upon hours upon hours of investment. But Bungie is still new to this genre. It has been, is, and is still going to be trial and error of balancing out Destiny so that "there is no one way to win Destiny". Their objective telemetrics are fine and all, but there is still going to be an inequality of weapon use after this next update. This will inevitably lead to more updates until they themselves figure how to really develop a post-release Destiny. Each update, collective thousands of hours of investment forsaken. This issue of an over achieved goal is a side effect of an, I dare say, over developed game. There are a tonne of plates to juggle here, and I think it's evident that Bungie is having a hard time keeping them all in the air. That considered, I think this could be one of the reasons why the current Destiny seems to be much different from the work-in-progress Destiny we saw in years prior. There was yet more investment systems that tied together and they simply weren't confident with trying to juggle so many plates so quickly. If this is the case, maybe we should be thankful Bungie didn't bog the game down in investments up to its eyes, rather than waist? Twenty four currencies is enough for me. TLW: Destiny communities are prone to complaining so much because they're addicted so much to the investment systems that Bungie is failing to fully juggle.