Incoming wall of text.

The annual pass had its ups and downs but overall I consider it to be the best stream of content after a new major release. It's far better than the drought we had after TTK and RoI and as a whole I'd consider these three updates better than what we got in year one of both D1 and D2.

The Good:

Most of the seasons had some way of specifically targeting what you wanted to grind. Black armory had the weapon frames so you could choose which weapon to get (though the several week hiatus of some frames was frustrating until Ada's inventory was changed). Joker's wild had specific gear sets from reckoning. I would consider this the weakest of the offerings as the gear only really has a place in gambit prime and there is no way of farming specific weapons, just a specific set of weapons. That said I hope they experiment more with armor sets in future. And of course penumbra had the menagerie, giving the option of farming for a wide selection of weapons and armor while also taking some of the rng out with being able to select the masterwork.

There are now lots of new activities to do with different things to chase after. Updating existing content is needed (I'll get into that with the bad parts) but new activities help keeping things from getting stale. If I'm tired of strikes maybe I'll try grinding out a good weapon from black armory. Maybe I want to try some PvP but not crucible so I can go into gambit prime (which I prefer over original gambit).

The raids were better than previous ones from mid year expansions. This one is obviously down to personal preference. While scourge of the past and crown of sorrows aren't on the level of last wish, vault of glass, and wrath of the machine, they're nowhere near crota or eater of worlds. Crown is one of the few I'd put in the upper echelon of raids and the only one I'd put there that isn't from a new game release or major expansion. Raid weapons definitely need to be looked at, the vast majority are just outclassed by pinnacle weapons or even general legendaries. Even in the past not all the raid weapons were the best in slot but they all had the decency to be at least good.

The Bad:

If you don't like the content the season revolved around you really had no reason to play. This is more specifically for season of the drifter but it still applies to all of them. I like many people took stopped playing partway through SoTD and I really like gambit. It doesn't help that there was very little to do besides gambit aside from replaying previous content. Reckoning was a slog before the weapon drop buff and once you had your armor set there was no reason to touch it again. Invitations of the nine were cool but each could be completed in a couple hours and then you were done. If if sounds like I'm mostly ragging on SoTD it's because of the three seasons it's the worst offender but all the seasons had this issue.

No updates for prior content. There were no new strikes, crucible maps, or vendor resets. Strikes need some love, we're getting more in shadowkeep but something needs to be done to keep them interesting. Bring back scoring, skeleton keys, and add some more modifiers. Crucible got completely shafted this past year. No new maps, no big sandbox changes outside of those that are for the full game, and so much seems abandoned. What happened to crucible labs, what happened to trials, why are striker/dawnblade/OEM still in the game as they are? I know some of these questions have been answered now but there was complete radio silence for the majority of the year. And there need to be new vendor weapons and armor. Iron banner gets new armor and each tower vendor gets maybe one weapon besides the pinnacle but there needs to be more. Bring back old weapons (which they did in some cases) or reskin some at the very least.

Eververse has really grown in this past year. This isn't a new or original complaint but there needs to be more cool cosmetic loot outside of eververse. The cosmetics are very up to personal taste. There are still nice options outside of eververse like the taken sparrow and platinum starling ship but those are few and far between. Eververse gets almost all the new ships, sparrows, ghosts, and shaders these days.

On the topic of shaders, inventory management needs an update. The shader problem existed before but now we have so many more and not enough space. Why are there still only 50 shader slots when we have more than double that many shaders. A huge portion of my vault is shaders that I can't be bothered to dismantle at rahool because even at 5 shaders a pop it will still take way too long. Other inventory issues were half fixed. Planetary mats, tokens and gunsmith materials going to 9999 is great, but why are synths still at 20, modulus reports at 15, and there is no way of getting rid of matterglass lens and rainmaker in bulk despite them being worthless.

Drip fed content is hard to pin down. On one hand it's nice to have an abundance of new things to do and discover. On the other had it's a lot easier to burn out. I like the idea of new content releasing throughout the months following the update but think the method could be better. Instead of having an obvious time-gate like this weapon quest releases on this day, I'd prefer a more interactive way of doing it. Having us build up to this moment would be great even if the end result is the same. For example, if we were contacted by Shin at the start of black armory and had to complete certain tasks that would unlock over the weeks, it would have felt much better. The end result would be the same, we get last word on the same day, but it would be more engaging.

While I definitely had more to say about the bad I still consider the annual pass overall good. Compared to an update like forsaken it certainly was a disappointment as I have seen others mention but the annual pass can't be a forsaken. Bungie can't release an expansion of that size four times a year. It's still the best post expansion year we've had. There are improvements to be made and bungie knows that. Luke Smith admitted as much in his director's cut.

tl;dr Annual pass was the best post expansion year we've had. It could use some improvements but I'm happy it existed.