I think Destiny's bigger issue is that players really can't interact much with the world other then by shooting things. Perhaps if you could do stuff to manipulate the environment you would have more of this, but for now really it's quite limited.

I agree, although it is worth pointing out that other shooters have found ways to create systems that overlap in creative ways, even if "shoot stuff" is the only real point of interaction. Titanfall 2 is a great example of this. You can use gravity grenades to curve your shots, or to trap pilots as they try to eject from their doomed Titan. You can use the momentum of a moving Titan + your grappling hook to slingshot you through the air.

Zelda takes the idea of interacting systems further than most games, but you don't need to take things to such an extreme extent to be effective. One of my gripes with Destiny from a mechanical gameplay point of view is that nothing interacts with anything. Aside from the death animation, there is no difference between shooting something or punching it or hitting it with a grenade. You can't slam enemies into the environment or into each other, your abilities don't overlap or affect each other except to stack damage, etc.

We need some Chronotrigger team up attacks.

Every game needs this :)

That kind of play works great, in a single player situation. In a multiplayer version it can quickly cause issues.

I think Destiny's bigger issue is that players really can't interact much with the world other then by shooting things. Perhaps if you could do stuff to manipulate the environment you would have more of this, but for now really it's quite limited. We need some Chronotrigger team up attacks.

Also I second the "loot economy" issue. Randomly generating loot means that a large proportion of it is garbage. I'd rather have a crafting system, where a player accumulates drops to build weapons unique to them, but that means killing Draksis 10,000 times to get all the exotic drops goes away.

COD especially pads out the game play this way. Boarderlands used it as a selling point, but people pretty much only get like 3-4 specific guns in that game and scrap everything else.

The idea is that people like getting presents. the problem is people don't like getting 20 pairs of sweaters before getting one good present,

Totally agree.

yet all, ALL loot based games give out socks like some crazed Y2K cult. It really obscures the rest of the game.

And now I disagree. There are games that present very excellent road maps for loot based gaming.

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The pinnacle is Diablo 2. Unlike D3, D2 makes every single drop potentially useful via the horadric cube. Even a shitty broken grey level 1 sword can become a beast, because you can use the cube to:

- repair it.
- upgrade it to white quality.
- upgrade it to 2nd playthrough quality.
- upgrade it to 3rd playthrough (that's the max) quality.
- add sockets to it (at any point along the way, and they stay if you do it before upgrading etc.)
- put runes in it to make it a runeword weapon.

The downside here is that it requires a slightly higher character level to use that if you naturally found a socketed 3rd playthrough sword of the same type (I believe it would be 7 levels?) but it's never impossible. The upside is that any piece of trash loot is potentially exactly what you're looking for when you want to make something.

Then look at gems and runes: You can combine 3 of 1 quality to make 1 of the next quality. Runes eventually become more expensive, and require 2 or 3 of the previous type of rune plus a specific gem, but - again, this means that not a single drop is useless as they all add to your overall loot progress. Same with potions etc.

You can even devolve your items to lesser tiers if you want to twink out a new character.

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And then there's Japanese investment games. My favorite right now is Puzzle & Dragons. Again, absolutely none of the drops are worthless here. Every drop is worth something to you. Even a top tier player still wants to spend time in the noob dungeons from time to time for various reasons.

The basic innovations are:

- There's a 'monster points' store where you can buy super powerful stuff, and you get money for that store by selling your "trash" drops. Every single drop in the game sells for at least 1 monster point, though some can be worth thousands.
- The monsters on your team need experience to level up. Every single drop in the game is worth at least some experience, though some are worth far more than others.
- Your team is made up of monsters that start as drops. So sometimes you get a drop that you can evolve (pokemon style) into a great teammate. Not every monster is worth evolving, but several of the good ones start out as very lowly monsters who need to be evolved many times to reach top tier team status.
- Many of the monsters may not be top tier teammates, but they have the same skills as top tier monsters and are then usable to provide skillups for those teammates, meaning that players with specific team needs will be farming different dungeons than players with other team needs.
- There are also some very rare monsters that are skillups for *any* other monster, or that provide a significant bonus to *any* other monster. The truly RNG monsters like this are useful to everyone, regardless of what team they have.

So, again, every single drop is valuable to some degree, and every single drop contributes to your progression. You also know exactly where to go to farm up certain teammates if you want them, and where to go to farm skillups for those teammates, and the only drops that are true RNG drops are always useful to everyone when they drop, but are useful rather than necessary.

They also have multiple difficulty levels for most dungeons, so the easy mode has a 50% drop rate, but the hard mode has a 100% drop rate. The reward for hard mode isn't better gear (to make the best players even better), but rather a dodge of RNG.

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How can these examples pave the way for Des2ny? Simple:

- Weapon upgrades. Rather than getting an entirely new gun and throwing out the old one, you simply apply ever more powerful upgrades to your existing weapon frame. The gun grows as you do, and this would serve the Destiny talking point of "your weapons tell your story" as well as making the weapon feel like another character in the story and a more personal element of your player. These upgrades could easily follow the D2 or P&D models.

- Make drops from strikes more reliable and with smaller pools of items. Need pants? Go to the pants strike. Pistols to the pistol strike. And so forth. Present players with a semi-reliable path to farm items they want rather than telling them "it's all RNG so you can do whichever!" Making every strike an RNG drop from the same pool encourages players to farm the single "most optimal" strike over and over for all of their loot, rather than encouraging them to mix it up.

- Instead of making hard mode give better gear (this is a huge problem with destiny, imo, because it means the best players also have default advantages in pvp), just make the hard modes reliable drops of the same gear you can get from normal mode. Farm normal for 2 months or hard mode for 1.... same loot, just a faster path to it for the better players. If you must make something exclusive, make it cosmetic.

- lastly, give players some sort of agency towards earning what they want in *every single activity*. Whether that means all exotics are purchased from a store with legendary marks (not ideal imo, but an option), or players choose quests for specific loot and those quests lay out a series of bounties players can complete in order to earn that loot (I like this idea).

Example of questified loot: The gunsmith says "I can upgrade that pistol for you, but I need some stuff." Quest is given to the player. First and foremost: You already know before you start that the new gun IS AN UPGRADE. That's huge and a big problem with existing destiny. The current game often times does not respect your time or investment and just gives you garbage. Okay, so we're going for an upgrade to our existing gun. The quest says I need "materials" : 50 spinmetal, 24 dreg docking caps, and 5 ogre eyes. Weird, but okay. Now I have a shopping list, but I can shop anywhere those enemies are found. Get the materials and now you need to forge the receiver in... the Archon's forge. Complete 3 archon's forge battles. Now I have a specific activity to participate in, but I'm not relying on any sort of random drop. Do 3 and done. Now I need to "calibrate the optics" of my gun by getting 10 headshot streaks. I can do this anywhere, but it requires player skill now. Cool. Finally, the gunsmith needs me to gather a renewable energy source - either the light of fallen opponents in the crucible, OR the darkness of boss enemies in strikes, raids, and patrol mode. Whichever I finish first determines what element my final gun will be (solar or void, or I can bring a 50/50 mix and get arc damage). Bring it all back to the gunsmith and bam, an upgraded gun.

Now, I imagine the upgrades will be incremental rather than massive. Think 1 or 2 more rounds in the chamber, maybe +5 to accuracy. Eventually you'll cap it out and be able to evolve it into the exotic version of that weapon, given the proper raid or pvp loots.

Anyway, I think Destiny could easily do this if they had the will and direction to make it happen. It would be cool, and fun, and always rewarding and respectful of your playtime.

Also yes. "Loot economy" is just such a terrible thing that negatively impacts every game that has it. Every. Single. One.

I have no problem with the existence of a loot economy, per say... but when that loot economy is prioritized over fun gameplay discoveries, that is a problem for sure.

Which is 'always'. The very existence of a loot economy means that loot is prioritized over everything else. If it wasn't then it would not matter who got what how, and who has what now.

You can make fun gameplay discoveries on the way to loot, however.

What if a step in getting the gjallerhorn was to "beat X boss in under Y time." No restrictions on *how* to do that. Or maybe "Jump 50 feet in the air on a sparrow" again - no limitation on where to jump. So this is a fun thing players can figure out for themselves. "Kill an ogre with a melee punch" or "get a noscope headshot with a sniper rifle." The problem Destiny has is that they only reward loot for completing strikes, which essentially makes those strikes optimization challenges. And then, when Bungie sees that players have optimized a strike in a way they don't like, they patch it out, which is lame. It is, in fact, exactly what you described in your OP: Bungie is removing emergent gameplay from the game, and instead of letting you play their game how you like, Bungie is forcing players to play their game how they like. It's just not as fun.