I have spent a great deal of time researching this topic, playing destiny, and researching user experience. However, translating the ideas I'm going to talk about here will be a little hard, so I hope you stick with me. First we'll show this from an economic stance, but we'll get to Destiny. I will use myself as the example here, but I'd like you to fill this in yourself so that you can really see my point. How much is my time worth? A rough estimate is $27/ hour. Alright, and how much time do you waste in a week? I'd say that I spend about 20 hours per week that I could be spending with my family, sleeping, learning, or working on myself. How much is that per year? $28k. Well dang, why would I be wasting that much value? That right there is an example of what occurs when you have something to strive for (Found in capitalism). You can tell yourself that you are wasting time that you could be making yourself better with. That time could be used to make you more valuable to yourself and those you care about (Friends and family). This is where things in Destiny come in. Why would you spend hours every week to play VoG? To get a weapon with set a role? To get that missing armor piece with the perfect role? Why would you want that when you could guarantee that you got the perfect role every time you got the armor piece and increase the rate at which the weapons drop? The answer is because you are making yourself more valuable. By getting the perfect role and weapon when others can't shows that you are willing to put the time in and that you are competent. Your friends will enjoy playing with you more, randoms in the tower will want to play with you more, and opponents in the crucible could be worried to face you. That feeling is what we are all here for. The feeling of striving to be powerful, even if only in small ways. Now, lets say that it doesn't matter how much time you waste OR how much time you put into your work. You worked 20 hours on something that should have taken 60 hours or more? You still get paid. You worked 80 hours on something to make it better than anyone else's? You only get what they got. (This is an example of socialism) Destiny 2 shows an example of socialism, where it doesn't really matter where you are or what you're doing. The loot will come either through that engram that a dreg dropped or through Hawthorne when a clanmate puts in his 80 hours to complete the raids week after week. Did you earn your loot then? No, not the same way your clanmate did. So when your clanmate sees you in the future, will he doubt how you got that armor and weapon? Yes. Is that loot worth your time then? No. Will you put more time in the future to get better loot? Not when I can just wait for it come. Here is the moral of the story. In an ideal world we won't all get that perfect role on a gun, that awesome rare OP exotic, or even complete a raid. The rule will be that the square root of all of the players will have half of the loot. That's okay, because each of us will be treated like how much time we put in and still feel like there is something awesome for us to get that's just around the corner. Those who put in 60 hours a week should get the best loot in the game. They've earned it. Those of us who only play 3 hours will have fun, get some loot and see all of the cool things to work on over the next year while we spend the rest of our time trying to better ourselves in other ways. I hope this strikes the right tone. Please, let me know what you guys think. :)