Bungie describes Destiny's post-level-20 content as the core of the game; an apt evaluation, if only because level 20 can be reached in a scant few hours. However, there is little true end-game to be had. A handful of three-man Strikes and a single Raid - the notorious Vault of Glass - is all the PvE you'll get, with the Crucible struggling to hold down the PvP front with its handful of maps. The former in particular is yet another case of 'play one, play them all'; Strikes simply drop players in a box and ratchet up the difficulty of pre-existing missions, while the Vault of Glass is currently all there is to raiding. The biggest source of variety here is in mission difficulty. Missions and Strikes can be tuned to fit your level of equipment - for the unaware, that's your Light Level, the post-20 measurement of strength constituted by the quality of your gear - but for what? What reason is there for making final bosses even spongier bullet hogs? Enemies don't change their behavior, they're just sporting higher numbers. Surely there must be some sort of reward, right? Not so; the gear handed out at the end of Strikes is completely random, making Hard Mode nothing more than a token way of manufacturing difficulty. If players want and beat a challenge, reward them. Tack on some extra loot for each mission modifier in place or for each added level of difficulty. Whatever it is, something needs to give players a reason to aim higher; otherwise we'll just go back to the loot cave, and we can see where that went.
A freelance games writer, you say? Typically battling his current RPG addiction and ceaseless perfectionism? A fan of horror but too big a sissy to play for more than a couple of hours? Spends far too much time on JRPGs and gets way too angry with card games?
Well that doesn't sound anything like me.
