If lootboxes are bad then what to think about Bungie's behavior with Destiny 2?
In short, during the game you gain XP to level up. After reaching lvl 20 (max) you still gain XP but no longer levels. Instead you earn "bright ingrams" - lootbox type item that contains various goods, like vehicles, color shaders for your armor, weapons. Virtually cosmetics and some gear upgrades. What was proved is that if you gain XP too fast then game outright lies and cheat on your actual XP gain. Despite showing you numerical values for certain activities, in fact granted you a fraction of it. Players have calculated cuts as much as 95% less than indicated.
When this came out Bungie, with PR-ish approach somewhat admitted such system exists but "they weren't happy how it works" and switched it off. They stated that there may be some XP gains adjustments across the board. Few days later players found out how the issue was "solved". Bungie indeed turned XP throttling off so players got exactly what game showed them they got (within 5% error margin). Success? Nope. Bungie raised next level requirement by 100%, meaning it takes twice long than it used to be. So Bungie replaced one hold back with another.
What's the fuss about, you may ask. Well, Bungie offers in-game method of gaining cosmetics and upgrades. Those ingrams. But aside they also offer in-game shop wher you can buy silver for real $ and €. Making purely in-game methods giving low return or requiring extensive grind (which was cheating on you) Bungie "incentivised" to spend real money on microtransactions.
As I'm not accusing FD for plans about introducing any kind of lootboxes or paid transactions that influence balance, some decisions feel similar to mentioned above. Not so recent mission payout changes? From personal experience it feels about 75% drop. This change alone makes achieving anything taking longer. Luckily FD doesn't offer shop related things to bypass this. And let it be like this. I can cope with things taking longer to get. Only when it isn't treated as "suggestion" to spend money on microtransactions.