so i was playing on my main character last week, when i got an invite to do Crota's End. I needed it on another character, so i went to the tower to place items in my vault. I put VoC, Fatebringer, Icebreaker, and Hunger of Crota all in my vault. I then went to orbit, switched to my secondary character and headed back to the tower.

Once in the tower, i picked up my weapons and equipped fatebringer, icebreaker, and hunger. then i went to orbit and joined my friends. while we were waiting on everyone to join, i went to my inventory and noticed that none of the weapons i grabbed from my vault were equipped. I looked through my inventory and fatebringer, icebreaker and hunger were not there. Only VoC was in my inventory. I about had a heart attack, and left the party to check the tower.

When i got back to my vault, all my missing items were there. What i don't understand is that I had grabbed them, and equipped them before going to orbit, yet they vanished and went back to the vault.

I'm guessing that for whatever reason, the weapons didn't sync with the server (even though VoC did).

I always go to orbit myself when using the vault (i don't sign out, join parties, or switch characters while in the tower).

If you were still in your vault on your inventory screen, 'equipping' them put them back into your vault. I do this all the time too. I always feel like an idiot, which is normal for me, because most of the time I am one.

The Vault should be an options menu page available in orbit or in the Tower.

The UI would be close in appearance to the Character page but with an item grid between the gear category icons instead of the character model.

When you open a gear category: Primaries, Specials, Legs, whatever - it stays open.

To open another category you hover over its icon for ~ 1/4 second and it opens and the previous one closes.

When a category is opened the grid in the middle is populated with all the items of that category that this character is able to equip.

Click on an item in the middle to select it.

It is put into an available equipped item slot but also stays in the middle (it is drawn dim to indicate that you have already got it).

If all available equipped weapon slots are full then all middle items are drawn dim.

Click on an equipped item to un-equip it.

Notes:

• equipped items remain in the same place in the middle grid so their location persists for a long time and can be memorized so you can find items easily
  
• because they remain in the middle - multiple characters can equip a single weapon without playing the Vault-Shell-Game mini-game.
  
• you equip your one-and-only Gjallarhorn once for each character and then never have to touch it again - no more which-character-has-it? questions - no more shell games - no more making your fireteam wait whilst you get equipped - equip it once and leave it alone

Also:

You should be able to switch characters in orbit or in Tower as easily as you change shaders.

The character banner on the top left of all options menu pages should open as a dropdown menu that shows all your character banners. Select a banner to switch to that character.

It should be the player who is a member of the fireteam - not the character. Therefore switching character shouldn't force you to leave a fireteam.

How do items get in to your Vault?

The gear grid in the middle shows all gear owned by you, the player. So whenever any character picks up a weapon - it is appended to the Vault.

If your Hunter deletes an item that is equipped by your Titan then it become un-equipped for the Hunter but the Titan still has it and it is still available in the Vault.

An item only truly disappears when no character has it. And there will be a waste basket to catch accidents.

So if your warlock picks up a rare shotty and you don't want it then you just delete it at the first opportunity. No other character will have equipped it so it will just be deleted. The new Vault's ability to share gear between characters will not interfere with discarding dross.