One major issue I have with the story of Destiny 2 is how many cliff hangers / loose ends they leave themselves.
Bungie has said Destiny will be a 10 year franchise and we know at least two expansions are set to release.
They should not be teasing us this early on with 2 years of cliff hangers to try to keep us interested in whats going on.
I couldn't disagree more. The best stories plot things ages in advance. Look at One Piece as an example of this. We met Dragon in chapter like 100 and he has slowly been introduced more and more throughout the course of 500 more chapters. The Yonko were formally revealed at the end of Water 7 and none of them, outside of White Beard because he fought the World Government and sacrificed his life for honor, but I digress.
Destiny's biggest problem with, say, Skolas is that he is like every Dragon Ball Z villain. We fight the ultimate fighter, but then there is suddenly someone more ultimate that needs to go down. So, take your pick at what you'd prefer.
More things like Crota and Oryx or another SIVA?
but they shouldn't be handed to us like they are now.
They could be more involved, but a lot of them were just handed to us. There might've been more padding, but Raze-Lighter, Gjallarhorn and more were that way.
Even some of the beloved hidden quests (Black Spindle, No Time to Explain) were kill stuff after finding a hidden thing. Very few were like Outbreak Prime.
MIDA only takes shooting some stuff and the hardest / longest part of the quest is to dismantle some blue scout rifles.
I don't think MIDA is as bad as people make it out to be, but there were other meta weapons besides Thorn. For instance, a lot of vender weapons became metas (because they were easy to obtain) and that just required having XYZ marks or glimmer.
what gets me annoyed though is how it makes players feel like they cant slow down and have fun.
Swap slow down for speed up and you could say the exact same for the Nightfalls you're praising.
everyone sees the game differently
Personally, I think this is Bungie's biggest problem. They don't want to alienate anyone, so they try to make Destiny seem like it appeals to everyone. The sad fact is, the hardcore people will one want thing, cosmetic people another and you get the point. Bungie needs to make some solid choices and be like "this raid is for hardcore players" or "Trials is means for the best of the best" and instead of hoping everyone loves a single version of everything, create something for everyone.
Part of what made the hardcore players love VoG is that it had so many resources to obtain. Some of the best weapons, made the nightfall easier, only way to hit the cap, one of the best sets of armor and more. Bungie needs to do this for everything so we all have something, instead of feeding into someone going "XYZ is ABC and if you think otherwise you're QWE" that the internet loves so much.