Let's Piss into the Wind! (A Destiny Redesign Thread) (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Monday, January 26, 2015, 12:02 (3381 days ago)

I've spent a lot of time posting on these forums about what doesn't work in Destiny. I'm not going to re-hash that right now. Instead, I'm going to post suggestions and ideas for ways that Destiny could be changed. These are coming from the decade+ of my life that I spent gainfully employed as a production tester, my general knowledge of computer programming, and my lifelong video gaming habit, just so you know that I actually thought about these a bit. Some would be easy to implement, and others would require massive re-writes. I figure while I'm dreaming, I may as well dream big.

Please post your ideas here, too! We're almost all long time gamers and we know fun when we see it. How could Destiny 2 be different from Destiny 1 to be more fun? Post your ideas!

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Let's change engrams completely. The game lore already stipulates that glimmer is a substance that is used as money because it's actually a nano-material that can be changed into virtually anything. Thus, let's assume that all loot drops are different forms of glimmer. Normal glimmer (money), common glimmer (green engrams), rare (blue), legendary (purple), and exotic glimmer (yellow). Then the vendors would just convert your glimmer into a weapon or armor design based on which type of glimmer you had. Okay, so lore-wise that would work. In game concepts, it just means that you'd get a legendary engram and it would essentially let you buy any legendary weapon or armor piece that you wanted, and same for exotics. No more double-roll RNG. You just need to get that low percentage Exotic glimmer drop, and then you can turn it into whichever exotic you like. This also gives more player agency to the items that you hold, which is good. Added bonus: You no longer have to talk to the cryptarch. Even though, conceptually, this is quite different that what's in the game, the actual implementation would be easy. All engram drops are now basically new currencies (I know, I'll address the plethora of currencies next) that you turn into items in the tower. Or maybe you can convert them yourself in your inventory? Either way.

Let's eliminate most currencies. Seriously the armor currencies are terrible and can just be dropped completely (sapphire wire, plasteel, etc.). Vanguard and Crucible commendations can equally be dropped (they only served to prevent people stockpiling from buying a single new weapon immediately upon xpac release; which was mostly ineffective as we all just got our reps to 99% and waited. At this point it takes far longer to get 150 marks than to get rep up for another commendation). Normal glimmer (money) is also worthless, and can likewise be dumped. I spend about 1/5 of my gametime right now farming glimmer. That's not fun under any circumstances. Black wax idols, ether seeds etc.. will no longer be needed if glimmer farming ceases to be a thing, so we can dump those. Even in the case of Eris, they're only gates to slow down conversion of yet another currency from one to another - lame. Speaking of: Can we agree that radiant shards / energy and ascendant shards / energy are a terrible gate to artificially prevent players who earned a weapon from leveling it up all the way? Those are gone, too. So now the only currencies left are Vanguard Marks, Crucible Marks, Strange Coins, Motes of Light, and Exotic Shards. I like Motes and marks as they can be earned through specific things (motes by "leveling" up after 20, marks through bounties, world events, pvp etc). I don't really like strange coins but I do want something to gate the open purchase of exotics, and they work as a partial exotic reward for some activities. Exotic Shards are okay, too, but if we took my glimmer idea above, we'd change them to just need an exotic glimmer and lose the shards as well. Crafting materials are a thing, too, I guess. I don't mind them so much now that the drop rates are improved and you can buy them with marks. Though I'd love to be able to spend a commendation to buy 100 crafting mats (unless we eliminate commendations).

Move the vault to the spaceship. Accessible in orbit. I don't think I have to explain this too much. You'd then be able to access the vault immediately upon character load rather than having to fly to the dumb tower every time you want to swap weapons between characters or whatever.

Speaking of swapping between characters, let's eliminate multis. Let all characters spec as any class and subclass. One character per person. This eliminates multi-abuse, and also solves all of the "it takes me forever to give X weapon to a different character" problems. Not to mention it solves the problem of some people raiding 3 times a week (once per character) and thus gearing up 3 times more quickly than others. It also removes the compulsion to run the same raid 3 times a week by lowering the ceiling on the number of identical raids you can run to just 1. I would still want to see gear that is class-specific, however, though I'd be okay with it being general gear that just had class-specific perks on it.

Re-record all of Peter Dinkledge's audio with a proper voice actor. Peter is a fine actor live, but his VO leaves much to be desired. Replace, replace, replace.

Change how the missions unlock. The Stranger plot line is fine as the primary plot to follow. Balance all missions down in level so they run in a straight sequence and don't unlock any other missions until the Stranger Plot line is completed with victory in the Black Garden. Then, upon completion, unlock the warmind plot line and the crota plot line, as well as all strikes. After that, unlock the handful of totally unrelated missions.

Make Strikes contain random elements. I once read an interview that described the Dust Palace's enemies as being chose like this: There are 1000 enemy points. Normal enemies are worth 1 point, elites are worth 5 points, and ultras are worth 25 points. Enemies are then selected and placed randomly until there are no more enemy points left for the level. This report was clearly false, but it's a good idea to keep things interesting for the players. You could also have the end boss be randomly chose from a set of 3 options, or have there be a chance to be fighting a different faction's enemies on the same map, etc.. Do something to keep strikes interesting.

Make Nightfall Strikes more like raids. Chiefly, having bosses that 1-shot you all the time isn't fun when the punishment for wiping is restarting the whole thing. Rather, give the bosses raid boss type behavior such that you need to approach them with actual strategy. Hopefully this would cut down on cheese while simultaneously making nightfall more fun than simply being about bigger numbers.

Put players in charge of skulls. Let's eliminate how strikes are handled right now completely. Let players turn skulls on or off for greater chances at rewards (and make the odds added by each skull transparent). Note that the Nightfall and Heroic skulls can't be used at the same time, and can only be used once per week, each. Let players running Roc strikes run some with skull mods for fun and for increased challenge.

Custom PvP Games. It's about damn time. Also, one of the best Bungie game experiences I've ever had is having 15 friends over to play 16 player halo. Bring back the magic!

Replays. This has been a thing in every other Bungie game since Marathon. Where is it???

Web support needs a massive improvement. Dear Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: Reach, please teach Destiny what sort of awesome information should be available on the web. Love, Kahzgul.

In-game grimoire. The story of the game should be in the game.

Make my weapons tell a story. The story of The Last Word: I did a strike and it dropped. That's a shitty story, Bungie. But I know you have it in you. The story of The Necrochasm is really interesting (if a bit grindy). The story of earning Thorn is actually really interesting, if poorly told. There are ways you could make these weapons feel MUCH better by giving us items that could be upgraded a'la Husk of the Pit, but making them more interesting and less grindy challenges a'la Thorn's PvP challenge. They should be hard, but they should also be things that aren't pure grinds. Clear every strike is far more interesting than clear 5 strikes. Get 50 headshots in PvP is far less cheeseable than getting 50 headshots in PvE, even though it will take much longer. And why not put in some weird or tough challenges like melee kill 10 enemies without dying with the lightswitch mod turned on, or fall a distance of 100 feet without dying? Anything that could be an in-game achievement could be changed to a weapon upgrade challenge towards earning the stories behind the exotics. It would be okay for some challenges to gate off certain weapons from players with less skill, too. No Land Beyond, for example, is garbage, so making it a reward for coming in first place in 50 PvP matches would be wholly acceptable. It would be relegated to pure status symbol, but right now it's worthless so... that's an improvement, right? Hell, Mythoclast is gated such that players who don't have 5 friends capable of hard mode VoG will never get it, so it isn't like skill gating isn't already in the game.

Speaking of weapon upgrades: Make some upgrades require challenges. It's standard faire in shooters to have unlockables from scopes to weapon mods that are the result of challenges such as 50 headshots or 1000 kills. Destiny just has the nebulous "experience" but could easily have a few options that are challenge based. OR

Make the gunsmith actually able to smith guns. The potential for this guy is enormous. What if I could give my green and blue guns to him, have him rip the scope off them, and then put the scope on my legendary? I'd love to see the ability to cannibalize a perk from one gun and then socket it into another. Maybe you could make weapons with specific frames and perk combos get a name and become Exotic or Legendary as a result, effectively encouraging players to experiment with the "recipe" of how to build their guns. This would further reduce the frustration of random rolls of weapons, give the players more agency, and give a stronger feel to the world by encouraging interaction.

Raid gear should not be better for PvP than PvP gear. It just shouldn't. Make those crappy blue PvP drop weapons have much higher impact than normal, but low attack values. Suddenly they're amazing for PvP but garbage in PvE. Problem solved by simply changing a few numbers. The Cruicible gear should be even better for PvP than the normal PvP gear, and the Iron Banner gear should be even better than that. Totally fine if no pvp gear gave light at all, and no pvp weapons did any form of elemental damage. Change Iron Banner to look only at total player armor, rather than light level for determining damage drop-offs. Obviously the PvP gear from this change would be terrible at PvE, thus preventing the rewards from one type of play becoming "required" to compete at the other type of play.

More game modes. When was the last time you played an FPS without CTF? Other than Destiny, I mean. And Bungie, you're well known for your interesting and creative Halo game modes! Where are those?

More huge battles in patrol mode. The enemies are moving against each other is the best thing in patrol mode by a country mile. Why not put in lots of stuff like that, where waves of fallen will just run across a zone, or a hive seeder will fall from the sky and try to invade mars? Mix it up and get crazy with lots of enemies! That's FUN.

More set pieces. The only (seriously the ONLY) large set piece in the entire game is the satellite array that you open to communicate with Rasputin at the end of the main story plot line on Earth. This game needs some scripted and dynamic elements in the story to give the player the sense of having some impact on the world. Right now there is no feeling of being special because literally nothing we do has any effect on the game world whatsoever.

Skippable cutscenes. For the love of god.

Dynamic mission joining from patrol mode. What do I mean by that? I mean you enter patrol mode, go to the Devil's Lair area, and walk inside... and now you're in a Devil's Lair strike. Just by walking in. If you had buddies in your fireteam, they join you. If you didn't, you get seamlessly matched with someone else. If you're near someone doing a story mission and you start shooting the same things they're shooting, you get an option to join that player on their mission, and at the end you get dumped back into patrol mode. Basically, allow strikes and missions to be joined as easily as joining a world event.

Choose your own patrol mode spawns. Let me pick where to land my ship.

Patrol mode missions in out of the way places. You know why I abandon every mission on the moon that says "examine a hive seeder?" Because I know that after I fight my way down there, I have a 15 minute walk until I can get my next patrol mission. Spread those beacons around to every area, Bungie.

Large, explorable locations for patrol mode. It's all fine and dandy for missions and strikes to have linear progression and levels that are basically long hallways, but patrol mode should let me go anywhere, as advertised, rather than forcing me to run circles around the same loop. Put some big areas in that are purely for exploring. Vault of Glass sized, with maybe a handful of enemies, a spattering of chests, and some tricky jumps to let me go from area A to area C without passing through the usual path of area B. Maybe just put three spider tanks in the middle of a big plain, guarding a chest, and see how many players just go out there to see if they can kill them.

NPCs. Every other person I encounter in the wild is a guardian. I don't feel like I'm helping anyone or saving anyone or doing anything truly useful or important to the cause. Throw some hapless scavengers into the mix, or a civilian transport, or a science team, or hostages of the Fallen, or someone that I can run across and say, "I'm here to save you."

Multi-character vehicles. I want a large vehicle that I can drive while my buddy mans the main cannon. Something that requires teamwork. You're almost constantly forcing us into three man teams... give us a three man vehicle to maraud across the wasteland in!

Make my space ship matter. I initially thought the quality of ship might gate off different worlds, but that turned out not to be the case. Obviously you can't make a ship made levels load more quickly. But maybe the quality of ship can determine where you can spawn in patrol mode, or how big your vault is, or give you a bonus to a certain type of weapon or against a certain type of enemy, or maybe there could be an area in space where I can actually fly the damn thing and it can have stats and maneuverability, and guns, and space combat! I'd also love to be able to apply a shader to my space ship.

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TL;DR: Identifying problems is only half of the battle. Here are some solutions.

Post your own ideas here!