I'm glad we're so chill in our disagreement XD

You're right, a lot of what Destiny does has been done before and yes by themselves those elements aren't very impressive. Guess I'm moving goalposts a little but I think that the fusion or synergy or w/e between those elements is what adds up to something quite new and the continuing strength of the playerbase bears this out. Activities have this confluence of mechanics, social aspect, cool gear drops that just gel (with raids providing "peak" instances of this) to the point where yep I've been playing the game for two years as have a lot of others.

What I'm saying is an irreducible minimum to keep the game entertaining would be just retaining that stuff and swapping in all new content. With a competent storyline (and 60fps) I'm throwing money at the screen.

New ways to hit the same buttons (new quest types/modes/dungeons/patrols/NPCs/factions/etc etc, larger player groups, better matchmaking) would be icing on the cake. New mechanics seem optional.

On the complexity piece I can totally see wanting more stuff to fiddle with. I have really mixed feelings about it. People who can put a bit of time and thought into optimizing things should reap the benefits, obviously and yeah any modern game should provide avenues to do so. But my experience in MMOs has been filled with piercing jealousy of those people who have the time, mental stamina, and in some cases money, to get amazing gear, builds and stats that seems out of reach to me. At the same time I always do the same thing to some extent. Destiny's no exception. But with RNG and without crafting it's a very different scenario, and I can't be even cautiously optimistic that significantly adding to the existing formula will yield something as enjoyable.

So I'm dubious about those ramifications. One thing I'm remembering now is that Bungie mapped "feedback" buttons for Alpha testers to express frustration, fun, confusion, excitement etc. What I'm getting at is, I want to think if they're gonna add new MMORPGish elements they're not gonna ship unless it's pretty certain to be well received. So economies and crafting, I'm sure, would be implemented in such a way that they're at least initially highly accessible. How our massive hivemind might learn to exploit them over months and years is another story.

ugh...I could say more but I gotta cut this off