I’ve been playing Destiny since The Taken King. Across Destiny 1 and Destiny 2, I’ve logged more than 6,300 hours, earned 42 titles and built nearly 155,000 lifetime triumph score. I’ve watched the game evolve through reworks, reinventions and resets. Some changes made it stronger. Others chipped away at what made it special. Now, Edge of Fate has introduced systems that fundamentally alter how Destiny feels to play — and not for the better. The Portal, Scoring and Reward Scaling mechanics were designed to modernize progression, but, in practice, they’ve dismantled the loop that kept players engaged for nearly a decade. If Bungie doesn’t rethink this direction, the game’s longevity — and its relationship with its community — will keep slipping away. For years, Destiny 2’s progression relied on Milestones and Pinnacles. You’d complete weekly activities, earn predictable rewards and feel steady progression toward the power cap. It was fair. It respected time. It allowed casual players to take breaks and return without losing their footing. That balance was the invisible glue that kept the ecosystem healthy. With Edge of Fate, Bungie replaced that foundation with the Portal system, which ties progression to modifiers, scoring and performance-based rewards. Instead of playing the game, you’re managing its systems. Want a decent power bump? You’ll need to enable difficulty modifiers that push missions beyond Grandmaster-level challenge, then score high enough to avoid a penalty on drops. What used to be a simple gameplay loop has turned into a bureaucratic one. You don’t play Destiny anymore — it plays you. That shift reveals a deeper problem: Bungie’s design focus has moved away from the average player. Listening to content creators and competitive elites may help generate visibility, but it warps the experience for everyone else. The new systems reward efficiency, not engagement. Players who live for optimization thrive; the rest feel punished. It’s a subtle but devastating change in philosophy. Destiny’s strength was never its elite few — it was its massive casual base, the players who could log in after months away and still find their place. By stretching out the grind and linking every reward to performance, Bungie tried to increase player retention. Instead, it made progress feel out of reach. The game’s loop no longer feels rewarding — it feels conditional. Before Edge of Fate, effort and time reliably translated into progress. Now, your success depends on how efficiently you complete content. It’s not enough to show up — you have to excel. The result is pressure masquerading as depth. What used to feel like a reward structure now feels like a scoreboard. If Destiny wants to recover its rhythm, it needs to remember that time spent should matter more than score achieved. Challenge modifiers should enhance rewards, not gate them. Players shouldn’t feel that underperforming negates their effort. Games survive when they respect the player’s time. Right now, Destiny feels like it’s measuring it instead. The same imbalance defines Bungie’s obsession with high-end content. “Day 1” raids — the pinnacle of Destiny’s elite challenges — represent just 0.55% of the year, yet so much of the game’s tuning and design revolves around that tiny window. That worked when the rest of the game remained accessible, but, now, difficulty scaling and performance-based systems built for the few bleed into the experience for everyone else. The game that once welcomed all players now feels tuned for those who would never leave. And that’s what makes Destiny’s current direction so concerning. What’s missing isn’t content — it’s connection. The systems intended to promote cooperation, such as scoring and reward scaling, have actually created friction in teamwork. Matchmaking should be seamless across all core activities. Challenge should be optional, not required. Rewards should scale with time and effort, not performance. When players feel punished for playing at their own pace, the community begins to disappear. That community has always been Destiny’s real strength. It’s why players stayed through content droughts and expansions that didn’t land. The game once made heroism feel attainable. You didn’t need to master the meta to feel powerful — you just needed to show up. That sense of belonging gave Destiny its longevity. Today, that feeling is fading. The grind is heavier, the systems more complex, and the rewards less rewarding. Bungie can still reverse course — by simplifying progression, valuing effort over efficiency and designing for players instead of performers. The writing’s on the wall, but the story isn’t finished. Destiny can still be saved if Bungie remembers that its power has never come from difficulty, modifiers or scoring systems. It’s always come from its people.