That's weird. I'm pretty sure I got to 32 by playing the game and completing all the raids on both normal and hard. Before that I had to grind out the same boring content over and over again. I'm not sure what your definition of, "handed" is exactly, but I'm sure you'd love some of the Asian mmos that require years of boring grinding for rewards. Some people work for a living and don't want to turn a video game into a second job. there's a fine line between handing people things for free and having them work for them and this gameonly rewards grinding and raid completion. If you're referring to the cheesers, yeah maybe they got some gear a little easier, but they couldn't do that so well in the new DLC's hm due to the devs fixing most of the glitches before they released hard mode. I think everyone knows crota is the hardest boss right now and I don't know of a single person who knows how to cheese him.