This. ALL OF THIS. Bless this thread. My two friends and I have been playing Destiny since the day it came out, and have been on board with house of wolves since the moment it launched on the server. We've spent hours trying to ready ourselves for PoE and all the new content with the raised level caps, but after this entire time we've hit such a huge impass. Last week we managed to earn maybe 1 EL per person from completing the level 34 PoE run. It was tough since we were all still 32-33, but we made it after a really long haul. This week however we can't help but feel the struggle is too dire for any EL rewards. Bungie kind of screwed a lot of people out of getting EL this week with a dramatically increased difficulty on the 34 PoE run and boss, which I found to be a bloody mess after trying for over TWO HOURS on the boss fight alone in the final round and we still walked away with nothing to show for it. We could always try level 35 (and we did) which was seemingly [i]easier[/i] (????) until we got to the fourth round. Again, a few hours later we walked away with nothing. The fact that EL is a super-special drop in only super-difficult events is just maddening. We've played the nightfall on three characters both this week and last, with no EL anywhere to be seen. We've been spending at least 5-8 hours a day trying to get EL in PoE and in nightfalls, crucible daily and everything else we can think of. The game has been set in a kind of way that's left a lot of people feeling helpless and overwhelmed. [b]In order to get to level 34, you need EL. In order to get EL, you need to be level 33 or higher.[/b] It goes hand-in-hand with that trapped job mindset going around these days "In order to get a job you need experience, but the only way to get experience is to get a job." Essentially, [i]you need experience to get experience.[/i] I figure that some of you understand what I mean and can back me up on how unfair and crippling that is. To feel that the odds are stacked against you even after you try your best is a new thing for HoW. In no time before this has the path to leveling up been this out of reach and contradictory. Even with all this going on, there's still that one person in our friendslist that has every character maxed, gets all the new guns/gear before anyone else and has EL falling out of their pockets at the seams. Especially when that person was a known cheeser before HoW, so it feels more than just a little unfair? I don't think it's exactly the time you put into the game, it's some kind of RNG bias or something. (I'm not going to go off about unfair odds or what bungie needs to fix etc, etc) But I mean with my friends and I doing our best and being proven time after time that our best isn't worth squat, it is extremely frustrating to keep playing when all you have to look forward to is pushed out of your reach. Each week is basically the 34 PoE and the nightfall per character, then there's nothing to accomplish until next week. They should add EL into final drops for the raids on hard mode, and even stay true to their word and have a chance for EL to drop in the crucible daily package, not just passage coins and motes of light every single time. At least then you have a better shot at getting rewarded for putting hours of time into the game. Sometimes, playing for hours just isn't enough, you have to be favored by the game's RNG to see any results. You either get all the rewards for average effort, or you try your hardest and get absolutely nothing for it. This thread is brilliant, I really want to see bungie actually listen this time and make the game feel like it's worth continuing past level 32.