So I like Destiny. I think it's fun to shoot stuff, I don't mind the comparative lack of content to other games. I get it. At a high level it is very similar to games like PSO, which I played a ton of. For perspective I have also played a lot of Wow, raiding Vanilla, Burning Crusade, and Wrath.

What I don't understand is the character progression. Leveling from 1-20 is like any other game. You shoot stuff, you get XP, it's all very incremental, trackable, and obvious what's going on. After 20 is what I still have not grasped. Now I haven't played since before any expansions/dlc came out, but I'd like to recount my experience and see if anything has changed and what everyone's expectations are going forward since I'm completely out of the loop.

I know you need gear with Light on it to raise your level, I get that. What I don't understand is what the expected path is. The best I could discern is grind a lot of rep for a very long time to buy gear from vendors, get high enough, and then do raids for betterer gear. My problem is the game, after completing every story mission, just dumps you back in the world with no idea what to do next. The rep ramps seem so unrealistically long that with the locks and timers on bounties/events it would take weeks to get enough rep for one piece of gear to go from 21 to 22. It seems like there is such a huge aimless grind from the end of the story to the beginning of raiding. I'd love to know the statistics for players dropping off at this point.

The natural level has not been increased above 20, has it? How do new players attack the current DLC? Is gear just easier to get than it was before?

With this latest DLC you can just kind of level up your current gear, right? What's the point of getting new gear then? Why would you want to level up what you have instead of searching for new stuff? Is it because of random drops? I see a lot of complaints about the random drops from raids (which seem to have been relaxed a bit.) Was it like 1 in 100 or more like 1 in 5? How does it compare to Wow? The complaints I hear/read sound a lot like everyone feels they are entitled to gear with every raid completion.

Now for the future of the game, what's next? Games like Wow, with each expansion, circumvent the previous's end game with new single player content to allow players to continue with new levels/gear/etc. The natural base level also increases with each expansion. Is Destiny always going to be "get to 20 then grind out gear" for the rest of the game?

@notsonic: You sort of jumped between a lot different questions here, so I'll try to tackle them all as best I can.

You are correct, gear with light on it will increase your level. The expected path in the vanilla game was, upon hitting level 20, for you to run daily bounties, run strike playlists, and play crucible. Doing all of those will gain you reputation, which will put you on the path towards reaching rank 2 in both crucible and vanguard , which is the rank required to purchase legendary armor. All non raid legendary armor has the same amount of light on it, which in the vanilla game would get you to level 28 with a full set (29 if you had one exotic piece and three legendaries). Full raid gear (or three pieces of raid gear and one exotic) was the only way to reach the level cap of 30.

Also, both crucible and strike playlists drop rare armor, which can vary in light level, but the maximum level attainable from rare armor in the vanilla game was 26 (which is also the level of normal mode for Vault of Glass). The idea was that, as you were working on gaining rep to buy legendary armor, you were also slowly picking up armor that would take you through the low to mid 20s, opening up higher level strike playlists and allowing you to tackle the weekly heroic strike on the lower and middle difficulties to earn strange coins to buy exotics from Xur. It may take weeks to get full legendary gear to reach level 28, but not to go from 21 to 22 as you say, you'd reach that after your first handful of strikes or crucible matches, give or take based on RNG. If you were super lucky you could even jump to 25 or 26 shortly after hitting level 20.

With that said, if someone wasn't aware that focusing on gaining the rep to buy gear was the most efficient way to level up (which is really is, rank 2 is pretty quick to get, and after 2 weeks of capping your crucible and vanguard marks for the week you'd have enough to buy full legendary gear), it would be very frustrating. That's why things like the loot cave were such a big thing back in the early days, since legendaries didn't drop randomly that often, people did whatever they could to attain them. The smart players back then knew that earning marks and rep was much more efficient than shooting into a cave for hours on end, but most players didn't realize that.

As for how new players attack the DLC, neither expansion opens up until the mid 20s, but the ramp up has been significantly quickened since the early days. With the dark below, the new raid gear took you to 32 (level cap), the vendor legendary gear took you to 31, and rare armor drops could get you as high as 28 (the original non-raid legendary level). There are also legendary gauntlets that drop as a guaranteed quest reward for one of the optional DLC quests. With the House of Wolves, things are even easier. Vendor legendaries take you to level 32 and rare armor can get you as high as 30 (which means you can conceivably do hard mode Vault of Glass at level in all rare quality armor).

House of Wolves doesn't have a raid, but "end game" gear (from Prison of Elders and Trials of Osiris) will get you to level 34. You are correct that you can upgrade your current stuff to level 34, but only legendary armor. Rare or lower quality armor can't be ascended. Additionally, the material required to ascend your stuff only comes from current end game content. As to the point of getting new gear, it's about the bonuses. The new gear system allows to prioritize min/maxing your gear and shooting for the perfect stats and bonuses for your playstyle or for specific types of content. Rather than just relying on whatever raid armor you happen to get and rolling with that because it gets you to the cap, you can choose your armor based on the perks and just ascend it. The end game gear also starts at level 34 and comes with an extra bonus (in the case of Prison of Elders, ones that specifically affect that content) to set it apart from vendor quality gear.

To your question about random drops in raids, it was really bad in the beginning. The drop rates for Vault of Glass, specifically armor, are very low. The drop rates were so low that people were creating multiple characters of the same class so they would have multiple chances of getting loot for that class per week rather than run three different classes and spread the loot around. I know I personally ran Vault of Glass about a dozen times across my two warlocks before I finally had the gear to reach level 30. To put it in perspective, there are 4 encounters in VoG that can drop raid armor and you need three pieces of raid armor (if you have an exotic as well) to reach level 30. That's 48 potential drops to get 3 pieces of armor. I definitely got duplicates, but I didn't have a full set for quite a while (If I recall it was the gloves that eluded me the longest). It also didn't help that the helmet only drops on hard mode, which was incredibly difficult as a full team of level 29s.

With Crota's End, the second raid, they significantly increased the drop rates for armor. I had all three of my characters fully outfitted in Crota's End gear within the first few weeks after The Dark Below released. With HoW, the reliance on RNG is lessened even more. You are guaranteed one piece of end game gear and one end game weapon from Prison of Elders each week, with a chance for more, as long as you run each of the three challenges. You'll also get two of the material used for upgrading old gear. Trials of Osiris is less of a guarantee, since it requires being good at PVP, but one piece of gear and one weapon would be a guarantee upon reaching certain win milestones, with even more possible for 8 wins, and a windfall of loot being offered for 9-0 runs.

I'm not familiar with raiding in WoW (never made it to that point), but I do remember hearing long time WoW raiders trying to tell everyone during Vault of Glass that this was what raiding was supposed to be like, and running it over and over for the chance of getting gear was part of raiding. Whether or not the drop rates were in-line with raids in other games, Bungie certainly realized it was too punishing for the more casual game (compared to MMOs) Destiny was meant to be.

As for what's next, some of the leaked data for the fall expansion, which is supposed to be much larger than the previous 2, suggested that the XP level cap will be raised 30. As I explained above, the past two expansions have increased the easily attainable level cap (vendor gear) to match or even exceed the previous raid level cap, along with introducing a new end game light cap. If the leak is true and the XP level cap will be raised to 30 in the next expansion, it will be easier than ever to be capable of seeing things like Vault of Glass and Crota's End. Of course, the new raid will probably be somewhere in the 40s, and the new light cap may be as high as 50.

However, none of that is confirmed (we'll probably know a lot more at E3), but with each new expansion Bungie has made it easier than ever to level up (legendaries drop like candy now), so they have certainly made it easier for new players to get into the good parts of the game quicker.

Hope that helped.

I don't like character progression anymore, because every game has it now. Always perks or leveling. I was upset recently when I started Remember Me and was forced to use another of those boring menus. I understand the logic of it in Remember Me, but it gets so tiring having to deal with it over and over and over. I just wanna play the damn game, without having to think about which stats to upgrade.

@ll_exile_ll: Thanks for the in-depth reply. The original drop rates you describe definitely sound like early-mid WOW drop rates.

I think the notion of buying things from vendors via multiple accrued reputations and currencies is just very confusing and offputting. It definitely seemed like the rate I was going it was going to take weeks to get anything at all. I think it would also be a lot easier to make the decisions about what to do and what to farm and what to buy if it could all be compared (price wise) from the same menu screens.

Even after your very detailed description the gear path just doesn't make a whole lot of sense and sounds like a bit of a mess. I'm all for options (had no problem with the multiple gear tiers in WOW and the alternate means of getting them) I think I'm just stuck trying to compare a square peg and a round hole and wondering why it doesn't work when I've only got a round peg as a reference.

I should just dive back in and see what happens.

@ezekiel I thought Remember Me was a great game. Way overlooked. The character progression felt less like "xp stronger more levels" and more unlocking combos.

So I've been playing every day since I posted this, about 3 hours a day. Through bounties and patrols I've gained about 1000 Vanguard rep. Am I missing something? This is taking forever.

You should be able to get somewhere around 400-500 a day from vanguard bounties alone. There are 6 a day and they range from 50-100 rep a piece. As far as patrols, the "eliminate the target" missions give you 25 rep each instead of the usual 10, so you should always keep an eye out for those above all others. Also, do the highest level of the weekly heroic strike you currently can (If you're over level 20 that is), since those give a good rep payout.

You can also try running strike playlists, which give you rep on each completion, but these aren't the most lucrative or time efficient way to get rep. You're best bet is probably to drop down in patrol, run to each zone looking for eliminate the target missions (the icon is a star with a circle around it) until you do all the ones available, and then just go to another planet. You can get a couple hundred rep per hour doing this.

Even with all this having been said, you are right that gaining rep can be pretty slow, especially when you aren't high enough level to engage with some of the activities that boost rep gains the most. The weekly nightfall strike grants 500 rep on completion and also gives a 25% increase for all rep and XP gains for the rest of the week. Unfortunately, you need to be level 32 to have a reasonable chance of completing it, so it doesn't really help that initial rep grind with the goal of getting to rank 2 for armor.

You're basically at the point in the Destiny where it's at its worst. You're just trying to get the point where you can start experiencing the best parts of the game (raids, nightfalls, etc), but until then you're stuck grinding out the lesser parts of the game just to get to that point. PVP is a more fun way to grind rep in my opinion (if you're into that sort of thing), but if you're already 1000 rep deep into vanguard you may as well try to stick it out there for now.

@ll_exile_ll: Which vender has the best kit? Or are they all comparable?

Like @notsonic: I'm currently level 29 and grinding Vanquard rep but I've also gained FWC rep (accidentally, left the cloak on and didn't realise!).

But there's also Crucible rep, Iron Banner (which seems like it would need an inordinate amount of time), and then there's the option of grinding for coins for Xur's visit.

@burt: it depends on what class you are.

Future War Cult is good for every class because they have armor with intellect and discipline. Intellect recharges your super faster,discipline charges your grenades faster. The third stat is strength, which charges your melee ability faster. Most players consider strength the weakest, therefore making intellect/discipline combos on armor ideal.

All Future War Cult armor has intellect/discipline, all Dead Orbit armor has discipline/strength, and all New Monarchy armor has intellect/strength. Vanguard and Crucible armor varies by class, but they offer two of each type, each piece having a different stat combo. I know both the vanguard and crucible vendors sell intellect/discipline for warlocks, but I know it's different for the other classes, you'd have to check for whatever class you're playing.

As for weapons, each vendor has some good ones. Of the weapons you can buy, I'd say New Monarchy has the best hand cannon (Red Hand IX) shotgun (Judgement VI) and Machine Gun (Pacifier X). Dead orbit has an interesting high rate of fire, full auto scout rifle (Deadshot Luna SR1) a decent rocket launcher (Exodus Plan RS/1) and the best vendor fusion rifle (Final Rest II). With Future War Cult, you've got the best vendor rocket launcher (The Fear) and not much else worth bothering with other than the sniper (The Chosen) which is merely serviceable.

As for the vanguard and crucible quartermasters, the vanguard has a better selection. Vanguard has the best vendor auto rifle (Pest Control Matrix) the best vendor pulse rifle (55A-Allfate) a decent scout rifle (One/One Synesthete) and a great fusion rifle (Give/Take Equation). The only thing worth looking at from the crucible quartermaster is the scout rifle (Zero Point LOTP) which is of the most popular scout rifle archetype. It's good, but you'll come across others of this archetype you won't have to buy (each raid has a great scout rifle, and one of the common crucible drops is very similar to the vendor one (NA3D1 Salvation State).

Also, keep in my mind that if you choose to go with one of the factions, you'll need crucible marks to buy their stock, even if you gained rep with them by doing vanguard activities.

I hope that helped.

@ll_exile_ll: Thanks again for the info. Sounds like I'm not missing anything necessarily, it just takes a while. A friend of mine said if I had all blues I would see better bounties. Is that true? Is it specifically having blues or having some minimum Light level that would trigger the bounty change?

No, the daily bounties are the same for everyone.

No. Some people can't handle the fact of randomness and try to see logic and manipulation in it where there is none. I've heard so many things.

'I didn't loot the regular chest in Vault of Glass and then got an Exotic from the next chest. This happened 3 times in a row, therefor it is confirmed that not looting that chest makes more Exotics drop'.

'If you put on a green helmet you get Husk of the Pit to drop more easily'.

'You need to spend 100 Strange Coins with Xur and your next drop will be Gjallorhorn. It happened to me, I told my friend and it also worked for him'.

No. The bounties are just random. Additionally, they are the same for everyone every day so what your friend suggests makes no sense twice. Also, doing Prison of Elders 32 is by far the easiest way to level up now. You can buy a piece of Level 34 gear each week. And the 32 is not hard. You may need one experienced player among you, but it will be relatively easy to do.

Surely you can't do POE 32 at level 20, no? Is there no minimum level requirement?

No you can't do Prison of Elders until you're much higher level, you're not anywhere near doing that stuff. PoE 32 is the best way to level up from Dark Below cap (32) to the House of Wolves cap (34). I don't thing Zevvion realized you what part of the game you're at. That advice won't be relevant to you for a while.

True. I assumed you were in the high 20's, to 30.

It is easy, though time consuming, to get to level 32. You can straight up buy level 32 gear from the various vendors. Most accessible will be the Vanguard if you're doing PvE a lot. You need to grind your Vanguard reputation up by doing the weekly heroic, strikes, completing Vanguard bounties, participating in public events and doing Patrol missions (especially the kill orders, which are marked by a star icon which yield 250% more rep than other missions). Once you're at Rank 2 you can start buying that gear.

It is a long grind though... make no mistake. But it is doable.