No solo activity in the game will require or demand weapons of armor at the level cap either. It was way worse when you had to gather materials for weeks just to be able to fully upgrade a character and its weapons. That was insane. Remember the 21 ascendant shards per exotic armor piece or 18 for legendary gear piece plus all the materials? Or the 18 ascendant energies that a single legendary weapon demanded? In those days you could only get 2 per day, plus the ones you could get weekly at the VoG and on Nightfalls without any guarantees as to which, shards or energy, and we had no way of exchanging one for the the other anywhere either. It was a real grind upgrading stuff and reaching the level cap was a nightmare. Now you do 1 top level activity and is guaranteed to reach the level cap of one weapon or piece of armor of choice. Not to mention that now any decent (top level) gear already comes maxed out in terms of light level and only requires you to unlock it's perks.

So I shouldn't want to reach top level, just because the solo activities don't have it as a requirement?... I'm going to leave you to that state of mind And I'd actually rather that? It used to be where I could just come on for half an hour, get my ascendants, and go. And then if I got a legendary piece of gear, or if I did the Raid or got a bit lucky on the Nightfall, then I'd have even [i]more[/i] ascendants. I could work toward maxing out my gear at a comfortable pace to fit around my lifestyle. Now it's 'oh you want to reach the level-cap that we've moved yet again? Well f*ck all of those materials you previously grinded for, they're now [b]completely[/b] obsolete. Yet again we've thrown in a new material and said 'there we go, grind for that now'... Well? Crack on?' Now if I want to get [b]1[/b] Etheric Light, I have to set aside the best part of two hours or so. Great. Thanks. Glad you did that Bungie

Ha! Not that I'm fond of the system of a new economy being introduced and replacing the old one at every single expansion. But at least this time it's a 1:1 ratio instead of 18:1 or 21:1.