You are level 20 not level 34, but level 20. You will get a 1 time boost to get a character to 20 so that when TTK drops you can begin your adventure. You will need to attain 20 levels to hit 40 and then after that you will be able to equip "light" items to determine your power. They did it this way so that by just playing you could hit max level and not be left out of content, but at the same time rewarding players who grind.

Again, future tense, I am talking about what will happen when TTK comes out and light level no longer applies. Deej has said if you are light level 34 currently you will default to level 34 when TTK comes out. I am aware that we are all currently level 20 I have taken my armor off before...

He actually said you will be "good to go" he never said the number You are probably right but because of how he phrased it there is room for interpretation

This is true, would seem really stupid to me to lock everyone back to 20 so they couldn't do VOG or crota yet we would all still have the armour for doing it? It would also mean once we got back to that point what would the point in doing it be? unless they reskin the weapons so you can find an elite Fatebringer and dis-guard your old one.

Oh I absolutely agree and HOPE we are higher than that or if we do revert to 20 the content level works a different way Can't wait for the twitch reveals to clear some of this up

Correction he does say you will remain at the level you are eg light level 34 will translate to level 34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cNIu0fMtMg check it out at about 5:10.

Just watched it and with the role of light vs our levels I think there is still room for us to not be level 34. Look at it this way, we have 2 levels one is our base level 20 the other is our light level 168 which in the current game replaces base level He says our level won't change, sure but since they separate the two in ttk it would not be wrong if we went in at level 20 because our base level would be unchanged. Our light level would also stay the same Since they are upgraded differently we could still have 20 levels to gain even though we are effectively doing the same damage and have the same defense we have now due to how light levels work So for example VoG hard, we CAN run that at base level 20 because that will no longer dictate how much damage we deal and take. VoG hard won't be a base level 30 raid anymore but instead a LIGHT level 120 raid that we run at base level 20 and light level 120 So what I'm saying is we COULD still have 20 base levels to go while maintaining our same damage output and defensive ratings Essentially we won't notice a change except in our base level number but since activities will be off of a suggested light level we can still do everything we have but would still have from levels 20-40 to level up

Yeah I see what your saying, the thing that I think contradicts this is the first mission is level 25, this suggests that the level system must be somewhat in place, he does talk about being level 26 and you being good to go suggesting if your level 26 you will start at 26 and be a high enough level to do the first mission that has a level 25 cap. I can only speculate on my own interpretation on what he says, everything you have said does make sense.

And I don't disagree with you just tossing out a logical argument for the sake of argument

The level you are is 20. Check your character screen!