Originally Posted by
abmccray
Toriyama didn't really think of SSJ2 as actually being "SSJ2"; just Gohan's perfected, super awesome version of Super Saiyan. That whole arc was about perfecting the SSJ form and Gohan basically did it. Then people outside of Toriyama named it SSJ2 in the meantime, and somewhere midway through the Buu saga, he decided to create the useless SSJ3 that never really accomplished anything, wasn't -that- much more powerful, and kind of sucked.
Battle of the Gods scaled things back down, and now Toriyama is basically saying "SSJ2 and 3 are weaker transformations, further perfecting SSJ is the way to go." The "god" power is accessed in regular SSJ now, ad they're basically using that, only at this point.