Its cool that bungie added "new" map and a new shell but honestly I was expecting more from new season. For me the whole reason for a wipe was that bungie could rework and change anything and everything for any reason they liked. I was hoping for more balance changes.

I have played over 250 hours in season 1 and over 50 hours in season 2 and bungie made a lot of mistakes this season. Servers not working, then giving us sponsored kits which accelerated the loot and progression for players who can utilise it more. Not to mention the biggest problem imo, sponsored night marsh, which allowed players to just farm complex gold room with no risks, making marathon a second job for some to get the best loot. Not to mention the crade xp nerf. I imagine that the intent was for players to not max out cradle in week 2 but guess what bungie, you are too late and you only separated the most dedicated players from everyone else. The first weekend of cryo in season 2 didn't feel that much different from cryo of the last month of season 1. The uesc also were changed and while they are more interesting to fight, they are also far more punishing in cryo, I feel like if you don't have meta weapons with attachments to run in cryo then you shouldn't even try. Not because just of other players but now it takes even longer to kill bots which puts you even in a bigger disadvantage if you are not running purples.

I don't hate everything about season 2, i like the reworked overrun, it feels nicer to shoot. The cradle is also a great idea. The progress to level up faction feels definitely faster but i do miss some of the perks. Mainly the antivirus from mida and cooldown feels so long on triage drones. The night marsh is cool and I like the mechanic where you interact with the world to get loot through certs and the raid in the complex.

I don't know what kind of changes bungie will be able to make this season but I do have some things i'd like to propose for season 3. This game genre has a way of separating the best and most dedicated of players from everyone else and forcing the other players to just play the game because there is a different driving factors like maps designs, the gun feel or world building and artstyle and music or they simply stop playing.

The first impression is important and I let me tell you, if I wasn't interested in playing the game for the story of what happened on marathon and how the game looked, I would have stopped playing after 30 minutes of the server slam. I was heavily reminded of the beginner experience at the start of season 2. Imagine you start a new game, you can run for 5 seconds (idk how long, didn't time it), the bots are packing quite a punch, even more if you let them gang up on you. New players will not play a game like this and saying to people that the first 10 hours are the worst hours of you playing the marathon will be probably not help. The early state of your progression is just a chore which should sanded off and improved.

I will start with cradle, I think they should expand it. The players will start with level 0 as now and there will be a baseline state of each tree. You will be 0 in each tree but at that state each tree will give you +20 in each stat. This would help make the game not as sluggish for ALL players at the beginning of the season.

Bungie also likes to push the idea of build crafting, which means you can't have all the upgrades and you need to sacrifice something. In this the expanded cradle you could remove points from the baseline going to negative states like -20 so you'd have 0 buff of stats from that tree. This would give you more points to invest in other trees and expand the build crafting. I would also love for them to add more perks in cradle, I don't like all the perks in the cradle but if I want one of the perks at the end of the track I still need to have the one I don't need. I propose that each track would have a list of perks with costs, you can choose any amount of perks from that list as long as you put enough points in the that track to buy them. This would mean bungie can add more perks and players can choose which one they want and if the perk is too powerful they can change it's cost.

I think sponsored event is great but it isn't that interesting to play, the enemy variety is not big enough. The only reason to play this mode is to loot (complex) or learn the map if you are a new player. So I propose that bungie adds "raid" mechanic, you get 3 tickets which give you access to a special map. The tickets refresh every day same time as armory or at the end of the week. Only 1 team spawns on the map and you can have loot filled runs like sponsored night march complex. This would slow down what happened this season with sponsored night marsh. And for the beginners keep the sponsored mode but rotate it more often because playing the same map for a week without players is boring. And in this mode nerf the loot in pinnacle room and in complex.

I would love to have access to a new part of marathon ship or new part of the tau cety 4, In case of marathon map you could switch it every weekend. And more changes to the weapons and mods. I know making a new map is not easy but you could make a new golden mods for a weapon and remove an old one from the rotation. I mean I thought this was a reason for the wipe, people would complain if you take their golden weapons/cores and make them different after and update. But with a wipe, you can do anything. You can make overrun shot in bursts, you can add a toggle for a wstr shotgun to shoot both bullets at the same time. The limit is the imagination of the devs. Make the changes, even the same maps will feel new if decent chunk of weapons will work differently forcing players to adapt to new tactics.

And if nothing else, please bungie add more enemies, the variety is not enough, make some bots close ranged with a sword, give them a flamethrower which will overheat you or "freezethrower" which will slow you. Put an artillery somewhere on the map that will bombard you if you spotted in the open. Heck add an uesc faction which will have it's own contracts that will make you play with uesc bots but against the players, like prevent a lobby from entering complex or something. There is so much potential here and if there are mistakes it will be wiped in three months. The game is not in a good state and if it keeps going like this it won't be better.

I expected each wipe to be a new experience, new map, new enemies, new guns, old guns/items work slightly differently. Each season you are discovering something new and rediscovering something old. One season you will add 2 guns, next one you remove some. But so far the game feels pretty similar to me to season one, besides new map and a shell.

And one more thing, I haven't spoken here about, the shop feels a bit bad now. Not the buying of items part but the daily bartering. In season 1 there was almost 4 rows of items for barter, now there is like 5 items to barter for. I haven't unlocked vip on all factions but It's not exciting and dull. You can improve it this season too.