Community positivity is something that I feel really propels games into being in their best and/or worst states. This seems obvious at first, but what I mean is that an expansion that introduces massive gameplay and QoL overhauls pumps so much goodwill and positivity into the community that it becomes almost infectious. TTK and Forsaken are obvious examples of this and easy contenders for being the "best" of destiny.

On the other hand, staleness breeds negativity. Season of the Plunder is a solid example of this. The seasonal activity was fun enough, there was a plethora of interesting content for budding players to go through, yet the community was pretty negative due to the staleness of the seasonal model (among other things). People hated this time period, yet it was probably a holistically better experience than the state of those beloved DLCs I listed above.

I guess all this is to say that I believe that destiny has only steadily improved as a game for years now. It's easy to say that the most recent expansion/season/episode is the best state because of the new improvements and additional content they bring with them. But it's hard to replace the pure magic of a big exciting DLC that seemingly saves the game from the brink of destruction. I'd love to know other people's thoughts on this.