My response ended up being longer than is allowed in one post, so I've divided it up into parts. (Part 1) To the first point, we can look at the different glitches/bugs (though we're more explicitly talking about exploits in this case) and see how they affect the players, and then objectively discuss which are the most pressing, important, and/or game-breaking by how they universally negatively affect players. From there, glitches that users utilize to get through a more difficult part of the game have very little negative impact to the individual player, to yourself, or to the other players, which is your claim. Certainly, the game designers might notice players exploiting these things and decide to remove them. However, that's not what you're taking issue with, or the principle on which you base your argument. Your point is to argue that it negatively affects the overall game experience by somehow diminishing the value of the items gained, or how satisfied the player is after attaining the items. I hope I've shown that such an argument is essentially invalid in the context of Destiny. Were there a P2P trading system, then each item WOULD have a value, based on rarity and usefulness and such, which would then be negatively affected by players getting them easier, but that is not the case. It's a case of you, for some reason that makes very little sense when you fully consider it, feeling slighted because someone got something(s) that you didn't much easier than you. That you haven't tried the raid yet is inconsequential, because you're making the argument as if you [i]have[/i] tried it. To the second point, the crucible is absolutely not balanced, or fair. Inclusion of the supers, more so than anything else, is wholly unbalanced in its implementation. For one, it creates a trump card that is 95% unblockable or unavoidable, no matter how good a player you are. Worse, it's incredibly easy for a group to set off a chain reaction where each player can use their supers in close sequence. How is that balanced? Sure, all players get them, but that doesn't make it balanced. Being balanced means not giving an unfair advantage to one player over another, or at least minimizing the advantage. An example of this is having better weapons, which they balanced by scaling damage. No attempt was made to balance supers, however. Consider for a moment the GREATER impact supers play in Skirmish, where close-knit teamwork and strategy are essential. In Skirmish, supers are hugely unfair. Now, if there were a barebones gametype where the supers were removed, THEN you could make a good argument that the game is balanced. I have a great amount of experience with MMOs, actually. I played EQ for several years, starting at Velious and then up through PoP, and then I played WoW for the first couple of years after it released. I even played FFXI for a while when it first released. I've also played a very large number of other level-based multiplayer games in general. So my credentials are there, though that is entirely irrelevant. To the point, though, we're not talking about how other games--MMO or otherwise--implement their level system, though we can certainly draw comparisons. We're discussing Destiny. In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with the level system. I like it, actually, and it feels very fair. You said it yourself, though, that Destiny is not a full-fledged MMO. Given that, they have a very limited amount of content. Whereas other games had several instances or raids to choose from, Destiny only gives two, and they aren't even at the same level. If we're drawing comparisons to other games, in WoW, you have level 15-20ish instances, and then there are level 25-30ish instances. Granted this is all based on player choice, but the purpose of the first is to prepare the player for the next instances they can attempt. Across the board, the gear gained in those instances is better than anything you'll get by buying from vendors. Moreover, and I admit that this is a difference of game design, whereas most other games do not allow you to buy your level through items (excluding websites that sell items for money, and buying gear for a second toon), Destiny's design DOES allow this. Yes, this is part of the design. However, that Destiny allows players to buy gear that is [i]better[/i] than what they can get in the first raid makes very little sense. To make a comparison (but again excluding players having high-level chars and buying stuff for a low-level char), this would be like allowing a player to easily buy high-end raid gear that's better than what can be found in the raids themselves. Back to Destiny, since it only has the two raids, then Bungie shoots themselves in the foot either by not making VoG a requirement to do Crota, or by not scaling the gear in VoG up so it still has value. Now VoG is nothing more than something you can do just to get Ascendant materials. Would this matter in a larger game? Not at all. In Destiny, though, it matters, because there's precious little content. The game has spun so close to redundancy that it's saddening. Replacing old gear is nothing more than doing the very same content as before (with only a few new things here and there, but those are the same in application), and then having to wait, and wait, and wait. Instead of killing Hive majors, now we kill sword bearers. So you're right in that it solves the "issue" of players not getting gear for the new raid, but it creates an all-new problem that I've just explained. This isn't a smart solution. Fixing the drops so they're even just a bit more frequent is a viable solution. Or better, if they'd have planned better, they could have scaled the game and leveling a bit differently so each piece of armor could be found in VoG on normal, and all four pieces would get you ready for VoG on hard. Then, if the drops were slightly more frequent, they could get gear from this that would prepare for Crota on normal, which would in turn prepare for Crota on hard. Because, again, with the lack of content, they can't afford to allow players to so easily skip the first raid entirely, which they've effectively done. On the point about variety, this is completely false. The amount of gear being sold by vendors is the same as before, only slightly more powerful. That isn't adding variety; it's adding replacements. Completely different. So the names are different and some of the abilities are different. So what? It's still the same, with the first helmet adding Int/Disc and the second adding Int/Str. Again, that's not variety.

Bringing out level 31 Vanguard/Crucible gear absolutely does make VoG pointless. You say they had to do it since people couldn't get armour drops in VoG yet Bungie fixed this in Crotas End - how could they not improve the drop rates in VoG and keep it a big part of the game? Your point about the glitches improving the game for you. Unless you use these glitches, they don't effect you. The things that do effect you are the unavoidable mechanics bugs that are mentioned above. You don't want to 'improve the game', you want everyone to have to do it the right way so that you can feel better that you obtained the gear they can't. And don't get me wrong, I think it's better if people achieve the gear properly, but do I really care? Does it [i]actually[/i] effect me? Nope, not one bit. If you really want to improve the game, flag up the global, unavoidable issues that people [b]have[/b] to experience. And that whole "I want people to feel like they earned the gear", what even is that? Why do you care what other people feel? I go back to my point about you Just wanting to feel better about the gear you obtained. It seems that what you really want to say is "cheesers shouldn't get the gear, only people (like me) who play it properly should" but instead tried to make it sound like you're only wanting the best for people (again, why?). I don't even know how to explain it, it just seems so fake!

VoG is not pointless. New IB/tower gear and the upped light level faction gear and weapons still need shards and energy. The raid is one of the few reliable ways to get these. Not to mention the off chance of getting an exotic. I'm not going to comment on the rest because i'm tired of repeating myself. In fact some of the things you mentioned I replied to when replying to this first post.

Fair point, I actually forgot about shards/energy from VoG since I have Crota gear and exotics that don't need them (not trying to be funny, genuinely did forget, will be using it for my new hunter gear). But you can see even in that they made it more and more irrelevant. And the exotics - They're not even new, they're the old 300 attack ones (unless this has changer since I last played, which was post TDB).

I wouldn't say irrelevant. A new currency for the new raid gear extends play time and doesn't screw people over who don't have the raid gear yet. I can remember several times having to scrap legendary gear I fully upgraded just because I found either a raid piece or a better stat roll on a current raid piece that I own. Shards wasted there.

But when you dismantled that gear you got some shards that you could put back in to the VoG gear. Now when you find Crota gear, you'll be dismantling gear and have no use for the shards that come out of it. I think that wastes more shards.

True but no where near the amount of shards I put in. Do we know what we get when we dismantle new raid gear? I would assume they would be radiant materials.