Okay this will be long so buckle up and bear with me here. I don't generally complain about games but I happily critique and analyze games and their game design. Rather than just say what I don't like and it is therefore bad, I will explain the issue, why I have an issue with it, and some possible solutions. TL:DR Forsaken is wasting content in the form of old guns and armor by not making all new drops of said gear compatible with the new perk and mod system with random rolls. This should be changed to allow players to wear their armor they like the look of, and still be viable. It also synergises with the changes to planet activities and rewards. This would make previous raid gear and gear in general viable by end game. If all that can’t be done, create a transmogrify ornament obtained from dismantling gear to make armor and weapons look how you want. TL:DR END So first things first, this is about armor and weapons in destiny 2 forsaken. I know forsaken has not been out that long, but this doesn’t need time to be a glaring issue, it is right up front. All old armor and weapons are obsolete with this new expansion. Yes you heard me correctly, ALL. The high tier armor that you just got from the hardest content from the last expansion that you haven’t really used much yet, or the one year anniversary armor that you spent a week trying to grind out from a few weeks ago, all obsolete. Why? Because they are incapable of competing with new armor added in forsaken due to the new mod system (making all old mods no longer function) and armor having random perk rolls. Don’t get me wrong, the new armor system with new mods and perk rolls is amazing and allows for a lot of player control in how their character plays. The problem comes in that there are very few new armor sets and weapons. New armor sets and weapons takes a lot of effort and time to make and expecting to many new additions would be unreasonable. Which is why there is such a dissonance, since all the old content is unusable. The effort on both the development side, as well as the player side becomes meaningless. Well, what’s the issue with having few new armor sets and weapons if they can all be rolled with random perks? This would mean players are unlikely to have the exact same stats and weapons and therefore playstyle. While true on some levels, having such a large collection of armor and weapons that already exist be useless is widely wasting a lot of content and variability. It is disheartening to look in the new collections page (which I love btw, the shader section is long overdue and something I wanted since launch) and see these pages filled with cool guns with their own base stats (that are constant) and unique appearance and realize there are few, usually 5-7 at most, weapons of the 20-30 that can actually be used and rolled for perks. Not mentioning some weapon archetypes have literally 0 viable weapons that can get perk rolls. It’s never fun in any rpg when everyone looks the same, in the same armor with the same weapons that players grind to have the “optimum” rolls. Players often look for ways to make their character their own and stand out from everyone else, but with these small numbers of viable options, the path of least resistance is to use the same armor as everyone else, and grind the same weapons for the same rolls that are most effective in the meta. What can be done about this without requiring unreasonable amounts of new content be added? Breathe life into old content! As it stands right now, many old activities are obsolete even though they have had a lot of work done to them to make them better. For example on planets: the heroic adventures, the faction bounties, and the resource collection systems have all been upgraded and provide players the planet’s resource which can be used to infuse gear or trade with the faction on said planet. It loses value quickly however, because trading with said factions once done their heroic adventures, bounties, and gathering resources, provide gear that is obsolete and useless. The most you can get out of this is feeding the weapons and armor you have to use that are new to forsaken. Right now old raids and raid gear is useless to play and grind for because they will inherently underperform compared to easier to get new armor. However, by revitalising the old armor and weapons and making all of them able to roll the new perks and use the new mods, all the old content, painstakingly developed, is renewed again and people can search out their favourites. This doesn’t necessarily touch on the meta of “optimum builds” but it does allow players the options to pursue what they like most in the entire game instead of just the forsaken content and what becomes “optimum” has a bit more wiggle room in the eye of the user. Now I’m not expecting all the current armor a player has should be rerolled and made new, I think it is still perfectly fair that only new drops of the armor/weapons are upgraded to the new perk/mod system, but even that change is enough to give players a reason to play and a reason to grind. The pursuit of a better, meta-viable option of their old gear that they can use in a completely new way is exciting. Making this function isn’t as difficult as it sounds either. All this content is already in the game, it just needs tweaking to be part of the new systems. What’s best yet, is in this new system, players’ old guns can still be used if they like how they are already and can scrap ones they don’t like now. This allows the player to get new versions of a weapon that they may enjoy or make just right for their build, and any new players that join or old players that never got that gun can still potentially grind for a gun of their choice until it rolls the same as the original gun. So for example, say I have a gun with triple tap and outlaw as the original, I can keep that gun and enjoy it, and a new player may get that gun with other perks and decide they want the old version of the gun. They can then grind until they get one just like mine (the old one) with triple tap and outlaw. In the end, all players win in that scenario, because they can find what they are looking for. As said previously, I don’t think all weapons and armor need to be moved to the new system and I could see time limited gear not necessarily returning as part of the new system. I personally find it no fun when content from a game is only available for a limited time and then never available again (with some exceptions like founder’s content being a one-time deal or pre-order content or stuff like that). Unfortunately, Tess’ shop is full of this content with its seasons. Seasons I think make sense and I like them in concept as it places new content in the spotlight and shows players “here is new cool stuff to get!” but I don’t like the gear being unobtainable after it’s spotlight showcase. I have an idea of a way to change this for the better though, and it’s thanks to the collections pages added in forsaken. I propose that old content such as ghosts, armor, sparrows, and ships previously available from Tess or events be added to Tess’ store in the form of blueprints. This would be a purchased with bright dust and adds the specific item to your collections page. As part of your collection page you can “craft” the item if you want to add it to your inventory, otherwise, it is a method for collectors to add lost items to their collection. Finally if all this is too difficult to accomplish, ornaments as a transmogrify I guess could work for character visual changes. By dismantling armor you get an ornament of how it looks which can be applied to other armor, allowing for customization.