I want to preface this long post by saying, all this is subjective, I’m very passionate about this topic, and unfortunately, I have pretty rough ADHD, so paragraph flow isn’t always the best. I cut two pages of rambling before posting, hope it makes sense. Regardless, thanks for reading! Recently I put out a post expressing my feelings towards the announced weapon retirement system that has been discussed in Bungie's latest directors cut. That post was simply to share how I felt about the decision; however, I didn’t take the time to address the issues more thoroughly and provide possible solutions to the problems at hand. If Bungie is to take the community seriously, I believe criticism must be positive and constructive to hope for any change. Below, I’ll be covering what I think can be done to effectively alleviate the pressures of power creep, as well as allow players to hold on to the hard work they’ve put in for the gear already acquired. The problem with weapon retirement: Now I have heard a lot of discussion on both sides of this issue. Many people are defending the move, others such as myself disagree with the outcome. A few arguments in support of the change say that we will have new incentives to go after better and evolving gear as the game progresses, as well as creating new meta’s and diversified game play experiences. However, these points to me don’t at all clash with being able to keep our old gear. The key factor in all of this, is incentive and how Bungie plans to provide this to its player base. To address the first point that by retiring old weapons we gain new incentive to go after new materials, I say this will have the exact opposite effect in the long run. The problem with progressive power limits and weapon retirement isn’t the immediate impact. Sure, when we get the first new content where our old gear is restricted, we will only have that new material as a barrier. The thing about Destiny is it doesn’t stop changing and growing. At one point, the Leviathan raid was the end game. Later on, it was Last wish, and so on. As we move forward, our old gear will be unable to be used in the newest content, however the new content will be un-usable later on, and the older gear will be even less relevant. This completely takes away player incentive when activities are challenging. It would be one thing if “god rolls” were as common as blue engrams, but they aren’t, often taking weeks to months for the perfect roll. Bungie is effectively phasing out all player hard work. Nothing we do going forward has meaning if our rewards for the work we do is on a timer. The second point is meta change, and while I agree mixing it up is a great thing to do, I think there is a better solution. Player incentive and power creep: While this could be simplified down to Bungie give us cooler stuff, I really do think we need to understand that Bungie has as a company has gone through an insane amount of transitional stuff in the last year and a half, and they have a much smaller work force than when the game first released. So, with that said, let's look at why we hold onto old weapons, and what can be done to prevent it. First off, I want to say that while a lot of people were not happy with much of this current season, I found many of the weapons to be insanely unique and I think it was a step in the right direction. At the start of the season, I actually had no interest what-so-ever in the sundial and what I assumed to be re-skins and re-rolls of weapons that could be found with better perks. I will happily admit I was totally wrong, and currently, I’m working towards two god roll time lost weapons that will straight up replace my old gear, and this is the biggest point I want to make. We do not need to cap our weapons ability to perform in game in order for them to be phased out. What we need is incentive to set aside our recluse and mountain top, and pick up something new. This puts pressure on Bungie I understand, but in my opinion the pressure shouldn’t be on the player to stay engaged when there is nothing to work for. My example for weapon replacement hinges on the ability of Bungie to continue to make content worth grinding for, and better yet worth replacing the stuff we already have. If they take away what we already put hours of work into to get, we’ve just wasted our time and effort. By incorporating new activities and actually providing weapons and armor that exceed what we currently have, we can continue to use our old favorites, but we will have the incentive needed to seek out newer and better gear. The argument for power creep in this manor, and that Bungie can’t keep making better material I see as laziness. Something as simple as enemy specific weapons that do more damage to specific enemy types would provide months of farming for the community. Just imagine having weapons, that would be more beneficial than others just based on which strike you were in. You start getting into amazing loadouts and builds just based on the fact you’re fighting cabal instead of vex, and this is just the simplest thing I could come up with, let alone the entire Bungie dev team. A compromise: Now, I don’t think anyone posting here from the community actually knows what Bungie knows. I’m sure there is reasons for why they initially chose this route, however I do hope they would be willing to concede to a compromise. In order to prevent the feeling of loss across the community in regards to all the hard work and effort already put into our gear. I’d recommend a system similar to that of etheric light in D1Y1. I would say that, the ability to unlock a weapons infusement to above its time limit cap, would be a good solution to many of the problems faced here. Weapons that weren’t tirelessly worked for, would be incentivized to be let go in favor of new material, while the weapons that were extremely hard to get would have an avenue to progress forward. I’d recommend a once a week item dropped from completion of the grandmaster ordeal. This is supposed to be immensely hard, and would no doubt require new weapons to complete. You give a player incentive to get new gear, while also rewarding them the ability to continue to include their old hard work moving forward. Conclusion: Overall, I honestly can’t say enough good things. Over that last year and a half Bungie has brought back a game that I had truly thrown away and left to die. D2 year 1 disappointed me so heavily that I chose to quit, however Bungies progress with the game impressed me enough that I rejoined after the release of shadowkeep on PC, and I’ve loved the experience so far. I think Bungie is doing their best to listen to us, and as long as they continue to put in this kind of effort, I’m more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and keep playing. I truly believe the best path forward with player engagement and avoidance of power creep is a combination of greater incentive in game to move away from our current weapons, and a greater increase in creativity with the new weapons we are given. To me, the time lost weapons provided a glimpse at what this could be for the game, and I’d absolutely love to see further development with new weapon abilities in the future. I simply hope that Bungie understands that their player base does want them to succeed, but not at the cost of our hard work. I know there are other ways to do this, so let's keep at the creative ideas, and hope that Bungie gets a bit of inspiration from one of us. Thanks for reading!