I'm going to be exposing myself as a scrub casual (among other things) by commenting on this but alas. The thing about these long-running games (or just MMOs and other derivatives) is that you have to balance around both people who have 12-hour shifts at the office and people who pretty much play the game for a living. Obviously any sort of "lifestyle" game is going to have this problem because they're the sort of thing where you're encouraging the fans to sink as much time into it as possible, so there's going to be huge skill gaps in between the hardcore players and everybody else, but when you staple on RPG elements and gear / ability builds it starts to get real wild.

I'm not new to these games, I've technically been playing since the beta of the first Destiny, but that obviously doesn't mean I'm amazing at it. Despite the fact that I've racked up quite a few hours in both games, I have friends who somehow beat my time investment within 3-4 months of getting into the series. I'm the kind of person who doesn't really have the time or energy to sink enough into the game to have optimal builds for three characters, whereas some of my friends seem to be paid 71.3 USD/Hour to whoop Atheon's transparent ass.

Lightfall is fine if you ask me. I think the content is fine. The campaign leaves a lot to be desired story-wise, but the ending is psychedelic and pretty unexpected, and the Season of Defiance narrative is endearing and pretty interesting. The thing is that this drop came with a bunch of changes to buildcrafting and, most importantly, an adjustment to difficulty in a bunch of sections of the game. What difficulty means in this context is that red bars (pretty much trash adds) can facetank any number of shots from your primaries and that you are limited to be several levels under in challenging activities if you can't get your season level high enough in time. This can be fine in certain activities, but a few, such as Lost Sectors, are frankly unbearable as of now.

Most importantly, the aspect most turning me off right now is the fact that Bungie just doesn't want us to feel strong. The buildcrafting rework is, functionally speaking, a "sunset" of pretty much all our builds. There are inferior alternatives to everything and elemental wells are just straight up gone, so good luck. Again, I'm the kind of person that will take a hot second to assemble a build, so it's grown to the point that I stop and think if it's worth grinding up something new because Bungie might just gut it completely.

The strangest part is a lot of the people I'm surrounded with seem to be perfectly fine with this, and I just don't understand. I don't understand what's fun about feeling like your power as a player is constantly fluctuating based on what Bungie thinks is being used too much. They claim they want us to feel like space wizards, but they actively go out and take away our best (and often most fun) tools.
The truth is a bunch of these changes are happening because of a very general complaint that the game is simply too easy. Yet it feels like everybody who I've heard say that is playing 24/7. Datto, my man, your videos are good and informative, but I'm not sure if I should trust you when you say that the game is too easy when your employment consists of playing it.

Like I mentioned before, it can't be easy to balance the game around two opposite crowds. It's often said that these sorts of games shouldn't be balanced around the casuals because they're often trend-chasers who won't stick around anyway. Yet I don't think that everybody who loves the series is necessarily skilled at it. I purchase all the expansions, I follow the lore, I play pretty much every chance I get, but I will never step foot inside a Grandmaster Nightfall.

It's not even that I mind a difficulty increase, I just wish Bungie would test their own game more, and not have me constantly missing stuff I used to be able to do with my weapons and abilities. How did you guys not notice that one of the ultimate abilities was dealing literally double the damage it was meant to? Seriously?

I'm writing this a few hours after contest mode for the new raid has ended, and of course, every fireteam has like four warlocks with Starfire Protocol. I feel like I'm staring at a man who's about to get his head shot off within a couple minutes. How grim.

So good yet so glaringly flawed, and it's a shame that most casuals mostly pick up on the flaws and decide it's a bad game, because it's one of the most solid FE games with it's excellent difficulty and map design. The game is basically just a huge escort mission to get Roy to the throne, and yes, unit balance is terrible, and yes, hitrates are awful, it's a pretty janky game at times but it's otherwise so goddamn solid and genuinely challenging. As a strategy game, this is one of the better FE games.