Thanks for your consideration, and openness to intellectual debate. I will directly address each paragraph as a response except those that I feel countering won't be necessary. - Your first statement mentions upgrades. Yes. We did upgrade them. However a fully upgraded level 10 weapons is still, in the end, a level 10 weapon. I want you to realize something though. From the beginning, we've been able to upgrade weapons..why are you upset about this but not a level 4 green pulse rifle that you got day 1 of destiny, but found ineffective for Skolas when Taken King was out. Because it, despite how much it was upgraded, was hardly something fitting to stand up to a level 20 opponent. Similarly, a fully upgraded level 20 weapon is hardly fitted to face this new, stronger threat. And just like that green pulse rifle that you upgraded to have whatever perk it had, it is now useless in the face of stronger enemies that are scaled to match a level 40 guardian. Up until now, the level cap has been 20 and the only difference came from light levels. [b]This is no longer the case. The level cap is now, for the first time, changed - in fact, it almost doubled - meaning the weapons halved in effectiveness.[/b] - Another statement you made addresses the lore behind the weapons and armor. Gear does have a cool story behind it. Which is why I still have plenty of year 1 sets in my storage. The stories, the lore behind them, for example the lore following Dredgen Yor, intrigue and fascinate me. That does not change their effectiveness however. That's why I had to dismantle a lot of gear too. I was particularly VERY UPSET when I realized it was time to dismantle my Echo 33 (look it up, for some reason the lore of that really resonated with me), but I understood that it was just not viable to keep anymore. And again, I point back to the green pulse rifle, which also had a story behind it, yet you dismantle anyways. - "Honest bogus reasons" is another thing I'm going to tackle. I already explained the VIABLE, PHYSICAL reason for limitations (the HUGE level jump). But I'll also explain it from the lore perspective. Up till now, those weapons are what we've used to keep the city safe. We've taken them against the Vex minds and the Cabal might. We've destroyed Hive gods and Fallen armies. However, this threat that Oryx brings is like nothing seen ever before. He can destroy one of the strongest cabal bases in a matter of seconds, vanquish the entire Awoken armada with a single blast from his ship, and take - literally- anything and anyone he wants except those shielded by the light. And to combat him, our guardians had to evolve. We went from being on top, running through everything the game had to offer - nightfalls, weeklys, raids, prison - we were on top of it all. Then the Taken arrived, and we were suddenly so weak in comparison. We had to go from learning about the taken and running, ESCAPING, from the new threat, to GROWING, and working out a means to counterattack. Can you imagine how SHARPLY the growth would be cut if we just went in there with year one, level 20 weapons to fight him? They enforced that we had to grow in every way to fight this threat. Our weapons, our armors, even our very techniques (subclasses) had to evolve to stand a chance. And then, we climbed our way back to the top with a reminder - you know what? There's going to be a bigger threat, somewhere out there in the universe, that makes even our evolved guardians seem weak in comparison. We will always have to evolve. That's the only way to protect what is left of the traveller's light and our last safe haven. TL;DR - that stuff was top shit for year 1, year 2 is stronger and we had to evolve to deal with it, because that is what the huge level gap is manifested in lore form. Again, I ask you, in what universe is a a level 20 weapon supposed to be effective against enemies scaled to level 40 guardians?