I'm with you.
I've been playing MMO's for a while. Wasn't a scarab lord or anything but had Thunderfury back in Vanilla WoW. Not a stranger to the grind.
The only parts of Destiny's current situation that chafe me are the reduction in weapon parts and the events tied to dailies. Everything else has been steadily reducing the grind.
When it first released, leveling a gun in Destiny was a chore. To illustrate this, lets take a look at one of my old favorites, Corrective Measure.
Leveling a gun with that many perks took forever. That's why the Nightfall buff was a such a big deal. It made a noticeable dent in leveling a weapon. Now lets remember that every row in that gun's upgrade tree took either 16 planetary mats or shards. Circling the rocket yards for hours getting spinmetal was not exactly compelling gameplay.
I don't exactly miss the 5000xp bounties either, because they were usually "Kill X enemy in Y mission". So you kept a checkpoint saved, loaded it, got the kill and went on your merry way. It took maybe five minutes at most and didn't do much in terms of entertainment.
The 3000xp bounties still aren't exactly riveting, but they don't ask much of me either. I usually complete them while doing strikes or patrols. I can also hold a hell of a lot more of them.
I'm not exactly crying about reduced rep gains either since its dead easy to kick a reputation over now. Instead of relying on Nightfall + Heroic rep each week, I just give them any spare motes I have. I usually have a ton because I'm getting a shitload of engrams. This is anecdotal at best, but I've noticed I'm getting engrams at a steady rate. It may not be more than before, but it sustains me. I'm sure as hell getting more legendary engrams and using 3oC to farm exotic engrams actually gives me more incentive to run that playlist now.
I'm rambling, but it annoys me to see someone just go "Let me stack up all the negatives" and leaving out the context.
And you, Zero_FeniX, probably agree with me. I've obviously just latched onto your post to get visibility.