So for a couple weeks now I've been doing daily heroic story missions at level 26 to get ascendant materials for my legendary gear (full set of weapons and armor). Other than chance, it's the only guaranteed way to get them without grouping up (raid, weekly strike, nightfall).
I hit level 27 a few days ago and was able to do the level 28 daily heroic story missions without too much difficulty (26 -->28 is pretty rough in many of the missions). That doubled my pace of ascendant materials collection.
When Bungie said they were going to add a level 30 difficulty to the daily heroic story, I thought it would be incremental to the existing tiers, with a greater set of rewards. I fire it up tonight to find level 30
replaced level 28 - and has the same set of rewards. That's out of reach for my level 27 character, so now I'm back to just getting one ascendant material each day, as I'm stuck doing the level 26 instead of the level 28. My grind for ascendant materials just got twice as long to finish leveling the gear. (Last night's raid run helped, but I've a long ways to go yet.)
This really punishes lower level players who can't run the endgame modes with other players often (like me!). It's really demotivating that just when I was able to pick up the pace of leveling my gear, that pace gets knocked back down.
I really hope they add level 28 daily missions back in.