[quote]Loot boxes and other gambling mechanics in a game with a 13+ age certificate is toxic and borderline illegal[/quote] All loot boxes in games are now actually illegal in most countries. That's part of why Bungie removed Bright Engrams, which were really only considered loot boxes if you squinted really hard, tilted your head, and blocked out logic [quote]The game used to even have a roulette wheel equivalent called the “prismatic matrix”[/quote] You couldn't buy the prismatic matrix, so it wasn't any type of loot box or gambling mechanic. If anything, it is akin to going to a county fair and spinning the free prize wheel that could give you a pencil or koozie [quote]This is old news but does not make it any less disgraceful[/quote] Again, most people preferred the old system. You earned engrams so fast that people rarely, if ever, had to buy anything, especially with dupe protection [quote]Is gambling legal now for kids? Har har[/quote] -.- [quote]Now to top it off the current “season pass” which plenty of people have paid for allows you to unlock limited time content (which you have already paid for so should be in no way limed) by either putting many hours in during that season or paying a second time for said content. The price is a snip of course at only $1 per rank and 100 ranks, now that’s RANK.[/quote] Correct. You paid for access to the full season, which included giving you the ability to unlock additional content content. If you didn't put in the time to actually do it, you can also pay outright for it without spending the time to grind. Think of it like this: You digitally rent a movie, and you start watching it. You like it, but for whatever reason you pause it and say you'll come back to it, but by the time the rental is due back, you still haven't finished it. The rental company is under no necessity to say "Hey, hang onto this and finish it whenever you like" because you paid to rent it for a certain time frame. You can pay to rent it again and finish it (akin to paying for ranks), you can straight up buy the movie instead of rent it (also akin to paying for ranks), or you can move on and rent another movie and budget your time properly to actually finish it. I play only a couple hours a night and have hit nearly rank 210 without once grinding bounties, just grabbing some for whatever activity I wanted to do. The $1/rank cost is there because, if it were purchasable for in-game currency, the people that didn't have the time to grind for ranks probably also didn't have the time to grind for currency. It can't just be fully unlocked for free at the end of the season, as the incentive to play and earn rewards would be gone. Just budget your time properly and you'll get it done. At a hyper moderate pace of one rank/hour, it would take you 100 hours of playtime. Over this roughly 2 month season, that's a little more than 1.5 hours a day. If you have the time for 3-5 hours each weekend day, you don't even have to play every day during the week