I’m liking Forsaken. Hit 530 LL a few days ago. I didn’t play much D2 at release, but picked up again when Forsaken came out and chugged through all of the expansions and had a great time. It’s hard to beat Destiny for a fast-paced run through some light, weird sci-fi. Also, the Forsaken campaign has great character and art design (that feels a bit wasted because it’s over so quickly).
There really aren’t many loot hoops to jump through at this point. Maybe I’m misinterpreting you, but I think the only thing that feels complicated/bizarre is the choice whether or not to boost your gear. The reality is you rarely ever should boost gear because of the cost (a ton of several different resources AND an item of the exact same type and higher LL). It’s almost always easier to just accept the upgrades from quests and not worry about boosting stuff until you get past roughly 540 where you start optimizing for raid and Nightfalls. You can hit 500 by doing pretty much anything you want, and then the only focus after that is to grind the daily/weekly quests with “Powerful Gear” rewards.
Once I hit 500, I just started storing any 500+ exotic/interesting legendary I out-leveled so I could POSSIBLY upgrade them later.