So, I've recently picked up Diablo 3 for PS4. I played it for a month or so at launch on PC years ago, then promptly forgot about it. It's a completely different beast now.

It's lead me down a train of thought that I can't quite wrap my head around or completely make work, but I think it could give some life to Destiny.

First and foremost, I think Destiny just take a lot more from the way Diablo III is structured at the endgame, which ultimately just boils down to stretching it out a lot more. Diablo III has something like 17 different difficulty levels that are basically just gear checks at a certain point. You get good enough gear, you bump up the difficult level and basically start from the beginning and keep grinding loot to get to the next difficulty level. It wouldn't change the way Destiny is currently played (replaying content over and over and over again), but it would keep a sense of progression going for much longer so it wouldn't feel so "useless" to be replaying the same stuff. Imagine finishing the raid, which would give you the gear to push you over the edge to be able to start the next difficulty level. You could then go back and play old missions at that higher difficulty, which would reset all the quests so you could earn the rewards, but now with the next level of gear.

And that would lead straight into the introduction of Seasons. The console version of Diablo III doesn't do this unfortunately, but the PC version does. Basically, every few months a new Season starts. You create a new character and designate it as a Seasonal character. You start the game completely fresh at level 1. Each season contains unique gear that can only be found and used by those participating in the season. When that season ends, your character and all the gear get transferred back to the normal game, and that unique seasonal gear gets added to base loot table so it can be found be everyone. This strikes me as a neat idea, and, again, just adds a good reason to replay the game and redo stuff that we're already replaying anyway. Plus, I've started new characters a handful of times, only to abandon them because no one else is at my level and everyone is just doing the raid over and over. It'd be neat to have the whole community basically do a character reset every few months.

Another small thing I like about Diablo III is Paragon levels. Once you hit level 70, you start earning Paragon points. When you earn a Paragon point (which just replaces leveling--think getting Motes of Light), it gives a Paragon point to every character on your account. So, once you get a character to level 70, you start earning rewards that can be used account-wide, which makes it easier, quicker, and more convenient to level an alt.

I'm really compelled by Diablo III's long progression and eventual end game in a way that I'm not with Destiny for some reason. And I'm inclined to think it's just because the sense of progression and gear hunt is longer, and somehow more fulfilling than Destiny's. Destiny is in a bit of a corner because of it's nature as a shooter (player skill is much more important in Destiny than Diablo, which really is just a series of gear checks) and the way PvP and PvE are so connected (and again, skill based).

I'm not sure how Bungie's content pipeline is structured, or if it could reasonably support this, but it'd be nice. They'd have to find a balance between being able to support seasons and the unique gear that is associated with that, and proper expansions. I do think it would work well in that they could focus on doing one large TTK style expansion per year, and then rely on seasons for the rest of the year until the next expansion.

No. No gear gating!

I remember the disappointment when Kings Fall hard mode, for all the hype of it being different was exactly the same. But what if it wasn't?

What if the endgame activities were designed to be different challenges depending on the difficulty? What if Hard Mode were designed by thinking "How would players complete this fight in normal mode", then altering the mechanics of the fight so that the normal mode strategy wouldn't work at all. Give the bosses completely new attacks and forms / phases. You can make gear a small part of overcoming the new challenge, but only a little.

Do this for Raids, strikes, PoE, Court of Oryx, and whatever the new thing in RiFe is called. Wouldn't that be a much better approach if changing difficulty upped the challenge, rather than just making it harder?

Do this for Raids, strikes, PoE, Court of Oryx, and whatever the new thing in RiFe is called. Wouldn't that be a much better approach if changing difficulty upped the challenge, rather than just making it harder?

Sure it would. It also seems pretty clear that they're not going to do that. And, in any case, one doesn't preclude the other.

If they're intent on making a loot-based game, they should stop half-assing it. They need to pick a direction and lean into it, not stick to this weird middle ground they're in now.