As anyone who's been on these forums or social media the last week knows, there's been a very vocal backlash from community members expressing disappointment in Shadowkeep following the culmination of Ikora's Vex gate being completed and the Undying Mind boss added to the Vex Offensive. I personally have enjoyed this season more than any in year 2, (though I've run mostly PvP, I have had fun playing the PvE content I have done), but the complaints still got me thinking about the way this season has progressed and how it could have so many highs along the way (PvE was getting really positive shout-outs in the weeks leading up to the final gate build), but seemingly fall so flat at the end for many players. The conclusion I've come to isn't that the devs are lazy or that Bungie is out to rip people off because it's a giant greedy business, but rather that the game suffers from the same issues with content pacing that it's dealt with for years now; and while this could be applied to many things such as overlapping special events like Iron Banner and FotL, I really want to focus on raids and endgame PvE. Destiny raids have undergone quite a bit of evolution over the last 5 years in how they're made: full raids vs lairs, normal/hard mode, challenges, prestige mode, etc, as well as the level they play at, but one thing that's generally stayed the same is that they release in the first week of content drops (the exception being LW which dropped 10 days in). This is something I've given a lot of feedback on over there last few years including during my summit visit and I feel like the further we get into the life of this franchise, the more it affects how people perceive the overall success of content releases, particularly now with the season format. Going into and at the summit, my feeling was Destiny raids should be released later into content drops to allow the rest of the content (campaigns, planet locations, strikes, NF, etc) a chance to shine and hold focus as we level. I felt that vanilla D2 really suffered from how it paced content with the much hyped Dominus Ghaul campaign being hugely anticlimactic. After all the previews focusing on him as the big bad new enemy, we fought and defeated him hours into the game and that was it, he was done and replaced by Calus (I honestly still don't know what that pivot was all about); and it's not that the pivot itself was bad, but the pacing was not good and 4 weeks into D2 the hard core players and many big name content creators turned very negativity on the game. The feedback I gave then is that I thought the raids should be pushed back and the campaign given more focus and meaning as it seemed like a huge waste of resources in both development time/costs, plus advertising for something that was super easy, over in hours and never fully replayable after without starting a new character. Forsaken was interesting in that it did give us the Dreaming City which was that PvE story content that had legs, evolved and maintained importance as we leveled, but at the same time, the Campaign itself and death of Cayde (F) was mostly another one and done affair and as cool as the Tangled Shore was, once I reached the Dreaming City, I stopped going there for anything other than to buy Cores from Spider, so once more I question the time and resources sunk into that destination for it to be replaced by the Dreaming City within hours of play. Which brings me to LW. I'd long felt that raids released too early in content drops and was initially hopeful that LW being pushed back at least a bit would give the rest of the content more opportunity to shine and, for those who raided, lessen the need to burn through content as fast as possible to be raid ready, but with the massive leveling journey of Forsaken, that turned out to not be the case. I played 3 characters for 7-10 hours a day leading up to TLW trying to be ready and had clan mates who played even more and we weren't remotely close to being leveled enough to even beat the first boss and we weren't alone, for the first time in Destiny history, most dedicated raiders were power locked from raiding on release day, but that was also the day the raid first race really became a "must see" event and since LW, raids have undergone a fundamental shift in the purpose they serve within the game. VoG was true endgame content. It released at level cap 30 and hard mode was level 32 content. The Last Wish was the beginning of raids not as true endgame, but rather as leveling content. This was obviously necessitated by the months long leveling grind (it took me 2 1/2 months to hit cap) and the desire to still release raids early in content cycles because "that's how it's always been", but it's coming home to roost now with Season of the Undying and where the vocal feedback community is on this content release. I think the overwhelming positive reaction to the Last Wish raid race had a large impact as well on the shift and I understand fully how much it's great within the community during that event as well as how much having the high profile streamers pushing the game helps bring new players in, but now we're at a point similar to vanilla D2 where the hard core and big names have burned through all the content and now it's negative takes being seeded in the community and the hate is getting extremely toxic again towards regular players who just play to have fun and are loving this season. Which brings me to the raid, which I'm going to be honest, I struggled to remember the name of and THAT is telling in and of itself. Garden of Salvation should have been the crown jewel of this season, the ultimate goal and achievement. But it's not. Instead, just like LW and the other raids I can barely remember since (I ran over 300 mostly HM raids from mid-TTK through SoS and haven't completed one since or attempted one since LW), GoS was mid-tier leveling content and just like Shattered Throne was more the actual endgame content in Forsaken, Pit of Heresy was the big closing endgame content release for SotU. Destiny raids have become the endgame equivalent of a virgin on prom night. [quote]and... I'm spent! Was it good for you?[/quote] Probably not. I think Bungie needs to really think about the way content is paced, the return on investment for content that is created, be it campaigns, arenas, events, dungeons, raids, and how long content stays relevant for the time and resources invested (still looking at you Farm); and I think the role raids play in seasons and endgame really needs to be revisited. How different might this season have looked if the major content releases were reversed with the first 3 weeks seeing the gate being built and leading to the opening of the Vex Offensive, followed by Pit of Heresy and culminating in the Garden of Salvation to start the final month (and possibly a hard mode the final two weeks)? There has been a lot of content this season. We've also had 2 Iron Banners and Festival of the Lost, but there's been no buildup to anything significant with the way things released and now, even though there was so much praise up to as recently as a week ago (much like Vanilla D2 was raved about the first 4 weeks), the season is going to end up being judged by these final weeks and the forums are once more a cesspool of hate. If you read this far, thank you and I would love to hear you opinions on this.