Both Chris Barrett and Cosmo are saying this is getting a lot of attention. I'm discouraged. I never enjoyed the god roll grind.

Both Chris Barrett and Cosmo are saying this is getting a lot of attention. I'm discouraged. I never enjoyed the god roll grind.

You are right. Random rolls are bad and we don't need them back.

Byf had a video recently where he was spot on: None of the exotic / raid weapons had random rolls in Destiny, yet lots were cool and fun to use. The problem is that the rolls assigned to weapons in Des2ny are boring and don't synergize with other things. The combination of perks should make the gun stand out in certain playstyles and situations. Make each gun stand out in a different place, and you have cool variety.

Easier said than done of course.

Both Chris Barrett and Cosmo are saying this is getting a lot of attention. I'm discouraged.

It could be done right: Have a default roll, then let players infuse a matching weapon type to randomize the roll, and such.

I never enjoyed the god roll grind.

Which is entirely, 100% self-imposed. If you don't worry about it, you never have to worry about it, and you'll be much happier.
Hung Juries, 1KYS, whatever that gun was that dropped from Omnigul... If the sweaty otherwise-unskilled mouth breathers want to chase after a crutch weapon, let them, and find something that you like.

Both Chris Barrett and Cosmo are saying this is getting a lot of attention. I'm discouraged. I never enjoyed the god roll grind.

Me neither.

I can understand why people want them back though.

Random Rolls would lead to combinations of perks that were fun, effective, and unique. My hope for D2 was always that Bungie would ditch the random rolls (and the grind associated with them) in favour of a selection of weapons that were designed around the kinds of combinations of perks that made the D1 “god roll” weapons so desirable. But instead, the weapons we got in D2 have been largely bland with uninspired perks (with a few exceptions, of course).

And while I disagree with the whole “we need random rolls so that we have gear to chase and a reason to play” outcry coming from Reddit land, that is the exact thought process that Bungie spent 3 years fostering and reinforcing with D1. Every update was built around a new set of gear that was basically the same as the previous set, but with higher numbers attached to it. New activities were always locked behind increasingly higher Light Level caps, making the grind for gear inascapable and unavoidable if you wanted to play all the new content (some people fell much further down that rabbit whole than others, but there was no way around a certain amount of grind).

So it’s really no surprise that a large portion of Destiny’s most vocal fan base really enjoys that kind of game.

Both Chris Barrett and Cosmo are saying this is getting a lot of attention. I'm discouraged.

It could be done right: Have a default roll, then let players infuse a matching weapon type to randomize the roll, and such.

I never enjoyed the god roll grind.

Which is entirely, 100% self-imposed. If you don't worry about it, you never have to worry about it, and you'll be much happier.
Hung Juries, 1KYS, whatever that gun was that dropped from Omnigul... If the sweaty otherwise-unskilled mouth breathers want to chase after a crutch weapon, let them, and find something that you like.

Sort of.

You really can't argue that some rolls in D1 weren't significantly better than others. All other things being equal, if you choose not to chase after god rolls, you'll lose that 1v1 against someone who chose to chase it.

Which means your choice is "play better with less good equipment" or "play a way you don't enjoy". Yeah, you can pick a different weapon, and yeah, you can just learn to be better... but both of those are THINGS YOU DO BECAUSE YOU DON"T LIKE CHASING THE GOD ROLL AND YOU DON''T LIKE LOSING TO THE GOD ROLL.

It's a small thing - but it's a real thing, and suggesting that it's only an issue if you let it be an issue is a pretty obnoxious viewpoint.

Random Rolls would lead to combinations of perks that were fun, effective, and unique.

I'll agree with the first and second adjectives. I will NOT agree with the third. When you have a huge pool of players, you very quickly determine which rolls are the most effective - 'effective' and 'unique' are actually mutually exclusive. (When a roll is effective, it quickly becomes super-sought-after, and when a roll is unique, it's usually because nobody can use it very well. ;) )

Random Rolls would lead to combinations of perks that were fun, effective, and unique.

I'll agree with the first and second adjectives. I will NOT agree with the third. When you have a huge pool of players, you very quickly determine which rolls are the most effective - 'effective' and 'unique' are actually mutually exclusive. (When a roll is effective, it quickly becomes super-sought-after, and when a roll is unique, it's usually because nobody can use it very well. ;) )

From that point of view, you’re 100% correct :)

I was thinking “unique compared to other weapons”, not “unique compared to what everyone else has/uses”.

This could just be me, but I suspect there are far more guns in D2 than I think there are, but so few of them have perks or behaviours that make them uniquely memorable, that most of them just blur together in my mind. I’d often feel that way about guns in D1 until I got one with a roll that made it memorable to me ;)

Both Chris Barrett and Cosmo are saying this is getting a lot of attention. I'm discouraged.

It could be done right: Have a default roll, then let players infuse a matching weapon type to randomize the roll, and such.

I never enjoyed the god roll grind.

Which is entirely, 100% self-imposed. If you don't worry about it, you never have to worry about it, and you'll be much happier.
Hung Juries, 1KYS, whatever that gun was that dropped from Omnigul... If the sweaty otherwise-unskilled mouth breathers want to chase after a crutch weapon, let them, and find something that you like.

Sort of.

You really can't argue that some rolls in D1 weren't significantly better than others. All other things being equal, if you choose not to chase after god rolls, you'll lose that 1v1 against someone who chose to chase it.

Which means your choice is "play better with less good equipment" or "play a way you don't enjoy". Yeah, you can pick a different weapon, and yeah, you can just learn to be better... but both of those are THINGS YOU DO BECAUSE YOU DON"T LIKE CHASING THE GOD ROLL AND YOU DON''T LIKE LOSING TO THE GOD ROLL.

It's a small thing - but it's a real thing, and suggesting that it's only an issue if you let it be an issue is a pretty obnoxious viewpoint.

I’m pretty sure “Obnoxious viewpoints” are at the top of the “special skills” section of Korny’s resume, ;p XD

Random Rolls would lead to combinations of perks that were fun, effective, and unique.

I'll agree with the first and second adjectives. I will NOT agree with the third. When you have a huge pool of players, you very quickly determine which rolls are the most effective - 'effective' and 'unique' are actually mutually exclusive. (When a roll is effective, it quickly becomes super-sought-after, and when a roll is unique, it's usually because nobody can use it very well. ;) )

I believe my Purifier VIII had both effective AND unique rolls judging by the amount of questions (and cursing) I got in messages after wrecking with it in PvP.

I was going to make the same reply. (:

Random Rolls would lead to combinations of perks that were fun, effective, and unique.

I'll agree with the first and second adjectives. I will NOT agree with the third. When you have a huge pool of players, you very quickly determine which rolls are the most effective - 'effective' and 'unique' are actually mutually exclusive. (When a roll is effective, it quickly becomes super-sought-after, and when a roll is unique, it's usually because nobody can use it very well. ;) )

I believe my Purifier VIII had both effective AND unique rolls judging by the amount of questions (and cursing) I got in messages after wrecking with it in PvP.

Heh - that's just as angering now as it was the first time I saw it. :)

(I've never been able to use Fusion Rifles effectively, so it's not something I would have ever tried to get... but I've played against enough of them to know that some of those kills were simply unreasonable. :) )

Meh. A secondary problem with random rolls not addressed by personally ignoring them is that Destiny is a social game... and random rolls pushed me to hate some of my friends. There’s only so many times you can listen to someone complain about not getting a specific drop while they in the next breath insist you play Omnigul again...

in the next breath insist you play Omnigul again...

I bet they blitzed through strikes as fast as possible, skipping 90% of encounters while complaining about lack of content too.

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I play D1 about 2-4 times a month for funs.

I have three characters with just about every item they'd ever want.

Nevertheless, every single time a legendary drops, I get that little excitement tickle to see what it is. It's a familiar weapon, but what are the perks? I miss that tickle in D2.

If one chooses to play the game as a "god roll grind," I think that's fine, and I've done it, chasing a FateImagoLooperBringer. It was fun, I never got it and I don't regret the chase. If it's not fun, then don't do it. I mean, if you can't ingest Crack responsibly, then is Crack really for you?

Having the little excitement from every legendary drop is a really wonderful element of D1 that I miss a lot. I don't think it ever really broke the game -- PVPwise, you could buy Hacksaw, and PVEwise, well it was never game breaking.

You'll still have to pull my Cryptic Dragon with Explosive Rounds, Firefly, and Crowd Control from my cold dead hands.

. . . that is related to what you said about always being excited to have a new weapon drop is really important. Regardless of having had it before. And that is definitely lost in D2. But with the issue of "god rolls" (which this thread touches on in various ways) there is a pretty easy way of seeing where the problem lies with the grind in D1. Most of the perks you could roll weren't good or synergistic combinations. Someone mentioned Byf's recent video, in it he hammers on synergies pretty hard.

God rolls exist for most people as the ideal roll for their play style, even if that is just whatever is best supported in the current meta. I think Des2ny suffers in light of this circumstance for two reasons. First, overall disappointing perks. The desirable perks are pretty well represented in popular weapons. And then there are a lot of perks that people just aren't excited for. Some of that has been adjusted with 1.1.4, I'm looking at you Dragonfly. Second, weapons with single, set perks. This probably will be better as its own section.

I think it is easiest to illustrate this through Raid weapons. For ease, how they were handled in VoG and KF. VoG weapons (and Exotics) show that having fully static perks can work for weapons to make them worth chasing at low drop rates. So only worrying about the static columns (2/4 for Y3 versions) the Primary VoG perks are Persistence/Glass Half Full, Headseeker/Secret Round, Full Auto/Zen Moment, and Firefly/Outlaw. These were hand designed for synergistic interactions. Fatebringer being the obvious example, but in D2 the perks are mutually exclusive. D2 weapons are flat and uninteresting comparatively. In contrast all KF weapons had Cocoon in column 2, and column 4 each had 4 perks randomly rolled of varied attraction. Generally 2 that most people didn't want, 1 that fit certain gameplay loops well, and one that was the meta roll.

Not getting into base stats (as the KF weapons suffered there) but overall they were not the unicorns that VoG primaries were for many reasons. I think one that usually gets under-represented is that they were single perk weapons. The AR wasn't worth keeping without Crowd Control. Most people were set on Firefly with the Pulse (though Glass Half Full was still solid). You wanted Full Auto for the Scout. Firefly again for the Hand Cannon. I feel pretty confidently that if Cocoon had been an intrinsic perk built into the weapons and we got something else hand picked for column 2 that the KF primaries would have been better received, even if they still only would have one main perk everyone wants in column 4. Something like Persistence/Crowd Control, High Caliber Rounds/Firefly, Triple Tap/Full Auto, and Spray And Play/Firefly. Auto, Pulse, Scout, Hand Cannon respectively.

So D2 suffers from having weapons that are hamstrung like the King's Fall weapons in that when it comes into active play with them they are single perk weapons. KF weapons don't fix having bad perks no one wants. I think that is better suited by just making perks that are better all around, and then having a variety of them available that all feel at least pretty good with the weapon archetype, but avoid having a bunch of weapons dropping that no one wants because they have perks that are just that bad. One curated perk + one random perk from a specific selection for that weapon archetype would go a long way to flexing out people having something to chase for. But if combinations are narrowed, now it is easier to make sure that most weapons don't have one roll that is both the only one anyone wants and highly unlikely to get.

Sorry this is such a long reply that doesn't really directly respond to most of your post.

. . . that is related to what you said about always being excited to have a new weapon drop is really important.

Easy way to fix this would be to change how infusion works. Rather than the way it is now, guns could have an exp bar. If you infuse a green weapon into it, it goes up a little. An exotic and it goes up a lot. So if you get a legendary roll you don't like, you can still be excited about the gun you do have increasing in power by a lot.

Now I don't now if I want THAT, but it would solve that problem. Or some kind of Horidric cube type thing where we can covert items we don't want into items we want, but then this becomes a bad item 'tax' essentially.

The ultimate, and only really workable solution is:

1. No random drops at all. Every gun is acquired by doing a specific thing. Want the gun? Do the thing.
2. Every gun's perks are fun, usable, and exploitable in some situation or play style.
3. Far fewer guns.

Additionally greens could have the best overall stats, but fewer perks. Legendaries and exotics should not be as good stat wise, but have more and more interesting perks. This would make every gun usable potentially in some scenarios.

Random Rolls would lead to combinations of perks that were fun, effective, and unique.

I'll agree with the first and second adjectives. I will NOT agree with the third. When you have a huge pool of players, you very quickly determine which rolls are the most effective - 'effective' and 'unique' are actually mutually exclusive. (When a roll is effective, it quickly becomes super-sought-after, and when a roll is unique, it's usually because nobody can use it very well. ;) )

I believe my Purifier VIII had both effective AND unique rolls judging by the amount of questions (and cursing) I got in messages after wrecking with it in PvP.

Heh - that's just as angering now as it was the first time I saw it. :)

(I've never been able to use Fusion Rifles effectively, so it's not something I would have ever tried to get... but I've played against enough of them to know that some of those kills were simply unreasonable. :) )

Ironically, fusion rifles are the only special weapon I find myself consistently getting kills with- at least, after they removed the Shot Package perk. I've always struggled with quickly aligning my sniper shots, and I usually lose shotgun distance-judging competitions.

A mid-range, mid-charge fusion rifle and the Jade Rabbit has been my go-to loadout for well over a year now.

And of course, nothing in the Destiny arsenal has ever been able to match the raw destructive power of the Pocket Infinity...

And of course, nothing in the Destiny arsenal has ever been able to match the raw destructive power of the Pocket Infinity...

I still remember playing some crucible with you way back in the early days of D1... you were using Pocket Infinity, and I was running around with Plan C. Between the 2 of us, I bet the other team was pretty darn sick of Fusion Rifles, lol

And of course, nothing in the Destiny arsenal has ever been able to match the raw destructive power of the Pocket Infinity...

I still remember playing some crucible with you way back in the early days of D1... you were using Pocket Infinity, and I was running around with Plan C. Between the 2 of us, I bet the other team was pretty darn sick of Fusion Rifles, lol

It was stupid fun. I forgot how special ammo used to rain like candy.

And of course, nothing in the Destiny arsenal has ever been able to match the raw destructive power of the Pocket Infinity...

I still remember playing some crucible with you way back in the early days of D1... you were using Pocket Infinity, and I was running around with Plan C. Between the 2 of us, I bet the other team was pretty darn sick of Fusion Rifles, lol

It was stupid fun. I forgot how special ammo used to rain like candy.

Heh, that was great. Super close call at 1:58 lol

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If you have fun until you stop playing… what's the problem?

How many concurrent players are there on Until Dawn right now? Does that make it a bad game?

If you have fun until you stop playing… what's the problem?

How many concurrent players are there on Until Dawn right now? Does that make it a bad game?

Until Dawn doesn’t suffer if you’re literally the only person playing it. Low player counts would actively make Destiny less fun.

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As cheapLEY pointed out, Destiny isn't that kind of game. But in the context of putting the luster back into a game, taking out most of the variety and sense of accomplishment isn't the way to do it. I know that one can wax on for hours about ways that Destiny could be an entirely different experience, but personally I don't want an entirely different experience, and given the general tone of conversation around the internet, neither does most of the games population.

I just booted up D1 to get ready for tonight's King Fall raid. I went to the tower to get some gear, and saw an icon floating over Zavala's head. So I went over to him and saw I had a rank-up package waiting for me. I opened a Vanguard Weapon package, and out popped a Devil You Know with Triple Tap, Explosive Rounds, and Grenadier :D :D :D

Go figure.

If you have fun until you stop playing… what's the problem?

How many concurrent players are there on Until Dawn right now? Does that make it a bad game?

Until Dawn doesn’t suffer if you’re literally the only person playing it. Low player counts would actively make Destiny less fun.

Maybe for PvP, but this change wouldn't affect PvP now would it? PvE only suffers if you can;t find 5 other people at most.

If you have fun until you stop playing… what's the problem?

How many concurrent players are there on Until Dawn right now? Does that make it a bad game?

Until Dawn doesn’t suffer if you’re literally the only person playing it. Low player counts would actively make Destiny less fun.

Maybe for PvP, but this change wouldn't affect PvP now would it?

How does changing everything about how the weapons in Destiny work not change PvP?

PvE only suffers if you can;t find 5 other people at most.

Have you ever loaded into a patrol zone alone? It happens to me pretty often, and it sucks. Patrols were far more fun around launch when all the zones were full and it was chaotic rather than lonely.

We can argue about whether Destiny would be a better game if it was just a Halo campaign again, but that’s not the game Bungie made. The game they made is designed to be populated, and it’s a worse game when it’s not.

As much as you and others hate it (myself included, pretty often), it’s part of the reason Destiny has and focuses on its investment systems so much, why they’re so important. The fewer players there are, the worse off Destiny is. Random rolls, strike specific gear, things to grind for in general actively contribute to keeping players around. Whether it’s worth the trade off for the average player is a discussion we could have (and we’ve had it a fair number of times).

Like it or not, the community at large has made it orettt clear what they want, and Bungie is seemingly going to cater to them. Destiny will never be the Halo Reach styled game I really want, so the best I can hope for is that they somehow walk a fine line between keeping the hardcore players engaged and letting the casuals get in and back out without hours wasted grinding. I think that’s harder than most seem to think, and I think Destiny 1 after the Taken King was the best they’ve done it so far. I hope they can get back to that point pretty quickly. It sure seems like they’re trying.

I disliked random rolls as well. It is true that lower perks per weapon mean guns have less personality. Most fps games get by with 7-8 guns, so it shouldn't be the amount, but the lack of customization the weapons offer. You have to hope there is a perk and subclass combo for the gun you want.
D1 allowed you to grind out that combo.

D2 should repurpose the mod slots to add perks, and most of the complaints would go. Let people customize their guns again.

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In all seriousness, what happened between D1 and D2? I'm not going to say there aren't any attractive sets in D2, but I feel like I liked basically everything in D1 and there's tons of stuff in D2 I think is just straight up ugly.

Also, I logged in to D1 to play Wrath of the Machine that night a few weeks ago, and my Hunter looked badass, with some of the cool Crota ornaments, and it made me real bummed with D2's armor again. Like, I chased those FWC ornaments through two faction rallies, and I think it looks cool, but really it's just some dots that get put on the armor. Where are my cool glowy spikes?

I really don't want to sound belittling, truly, but some of that stuff seems so low effort compared to the stuff we saw in Destiny 1. And maybe that's not true--maybe that's just comparing three years' worth of D1 content to six months' worth of D2 content. I dunno. I guess when they were talking about seasonal ornaments for everything, I was thinking more along the lines of the crazy Age of Triumph ornaments versus the minor armor skins we have seen so far in Destiny 2. And again, some of those really do look great, I just hope we get more of the really obvious, ostentatious stuff.

In all seriousness, what happened between D1 and D2? I'm not going to say there aren't any attractive sets in D2, but I feel like I liked basically everything in D1 and there's tons of stuff in D2 I think is just straight up ugly.

Also, I logged in to D1 to play Wrath of the Machine that night a few weeks ago, and my Hunter looked badass, with some of the cool Crota ornaments, and it made me real bummed with D2's armor again. Like, I chased those FWC ornaments through two faction rallies, and I think it looks cool, but really it's just some dots that get put on the armor. Where are my cool glowy spikes?

I really don't want to sound belittling, truly, but some of that stuff seems so low effort compared to the stuff we saw in Destiny 1.

Mods, pls tag as #Criticism

And maybe that's not true--maybe that's just comparing three years' worth of D1 content to six months' worth of D2 content.

I mean, the VoG armor was awesome from the get-go, and the Crota armor was awesome months later. And even House of Wolves Introduced the God-tier (literally) Trials armor sets. And this was all before Ornaments or "Prestige" armor sets. And Iron Banner throughout all of the expansions had some great stuff.

And we had great, unique armor pieces like the Viper Spine IV legs for Warlocks, Commando helmet for Titans, and the Neuroghast legs for Hunters, with none of those being Exotics, which are a whole nother thing that we can get into.

I dunno. I guess when they were talking about seasonal ornaments for everything, I was thinking more along the lines of the crazy Age of Triumph ornaments versus the minor armor skins we have seen so far in Destiny 2. And again, some of those really do look great, I just hope we get more of the really obvious, ostentatious stuff.

Or they can bring back D1 armors. I wouldn't complain.

If you have fun until you stop playing… what's the problem?

How many concurrent players are there on Until Dawn right now? Does that make it a bad game?

Until Dawn doesn’t suffer if you’re literally the only person playing it. Low player counts would actively make Destiny less fun.

Even with high player counts Destiny took 2-6 minutes to matchmake one premade 4 man team against another. With low player counts I can only imagine that number will go WAY up.

The core problems of Destiny 2 are the fundamental pillars of design: There's no nimble backend, so changes take forever. There's no dedicated (pvp) servers, so matchmaking is a p2p and vastly flawed as a result. There's no strong leader with a true vision for destiny's design, and everything feels like it's designed by a committee of 100 as a result.

There's a really basic philosophical issue at the core of all of this, which is what to do about imbalance in your game.

The GOOD way to handle imbalance is to take the lesser performing design and buff it until it's just as desirable as the better performing design. Your benchmark should be the best performing thing in the game that is also the most fun to use. Occasionally you will take something down a peg because it's blatantly broken, but by and large "make it better" should be the driving mantra. This is, of course, scary as fuck to control freak game designers because it often leads to emergent and incredibly powerful gameplay that needs to be reigned in quickly due to its brokenness, and it also means the game will start spiraling out of the constraints of your neat and tidy design spreadsheets very very quickly. We can call this approach "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."

The BUNGIE way to handle imbalance seems to be to nerf the heck out of whatever is currently fun to use in order to bring it back down to a rigidly constrained pre-determined spreadsheet level of game effectiveness. They're also combining that with a really habitual problem of misinterpreting data in the worst possible way. If you told them your car window wouldn't roll down, they'd take the door off the car to "solve" the issue. People seemed to play until endgame, and rather than making endgame more fun, they made the grind to reach endgame more frustrating so it would take longer. They seem to have a very hard time separating knee jerk internet reactions from well considered design theory, don't seem to understand the core of why D1 was fun in the first place, and are completely married to overcorrecting any and all changes in rare and massive updates rather than performing weekly balance tweaks or feature adds. We can call this approach "the nail that stands up gets hammered down."

I really strongly feel that game design benefits most from applying grease to poorly performing elements, rather than by hammering down the more exceptional parts of your product. The first method leads to many varied and complicated systems that are at first confusing, but ultimately very fun and interesting, while the second leads to homogeneity and boring, simplistic interactions.

Ultimately, I stopped playing because the whole game became far too predictable and boring without any opportunity for emergent play, clutch play, skill plays, etc etc. Sadly, I don't see Bungie changing that any time soon, especially given their published road maps, because - ultimately - the same people are in charge over there making the same flawed decisions to hammer down nails rather than risk letting the game grow into something other than their spreadsheet's perfect angel.

And now a shameless plug here: Fortnite has the squeaky wheel philosophy on full display and it's HELLA fun.

Fighting games generally have the best approach to balance where not only do they not overcorrect, but they allow for local imbalance as a part of fun play.

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What do you play as?

I think a lot of the Titan stuff is good, there’s some good Hunter stuff, but I main a Warlock and I liked the old duster look more than the robes and dresses we got in D2. I honestly gave up on finding Warlock gear that I actually like.

but I've seen no dress I dislike as much as this style in D1.

but I've seen no dress I dislike as much as this style in D1.

I mean, that's not great, but that's miles better than 90% of the Warlock gear in D2. At least it doesn't look like it was once a sleeping bag stolen from a homeless person in a dark alley of the Last City.

. . . I honestly gave up on finding Warlock gear that I actually like.

Most of the Warlock stuff in D2 is also awful. I used the Wildwood robes pretty much exclusively until someone I play with periodically asked me why I didn't mix it up. So I put on the homeless robes. Titan and Hunter stuff, too, though. A lot of it is nitpicking for me, because the designs are still executed really well and they fill the aesthetic of Destiny (in noting that they do fit for Destiny for folks who like D2 armor), but of all of the D1 armor that I liked? Basically none of it was brought aesthetically forward and the pieces I liked least were what we saw get brought to D2. I main Titan and I'm sorry, but I would like an apology from whoever decided taking shoulders and increasing their size by 150%+ was the appropriate aesthetic choice. Or to give me a dozen different options of slightly different flat metal covered legs.

As mentioned many Warlock sets are weird, almost-formal gowns. Like they are almost all for ceremony. Minus 3 sets with a +1 reskin to each (The Crucible homeless "sleeping bag" robes, the Vanguard "that fur lining is warming nothing" jacket, and the Wilwood jacket) most of them don't feel as grounded as the D1 gear did, or as aesthetically pleasing. Even when those looked more like space dresses.

I will admit that I'm actually pretty happy with the gear I have on my Hunter in D2, though. But I spent 3 years trying to make my Hunter look as much like an ODST as I could in D1, and I could do it within a few months in D2. The toe socks are still unacceptable, though.

I main Titan and I'm sorry, but I would like an apology from whoever decided taking shoulders and increasing their size by 150%+ was the appropriate aesthetic choice. Or to give me a dozen different options of slightly different flat metal covered legs.

My Titan wears Kairos Function Greaves specifically because they're interesting at the top.(I'm with you 500% on the shoulder gripe.)

As mentioned many Warlock sets are weird, almost-formal gowns. Like they are almost all for ceremony. Minus 3 sets with a +1 reskin to each (The Crucible homeless "sleeping bag" robes, the Vanguard "that fur lining is warming nothing" jacket, and the Wilwood jacket) most of them don't feel as grounded as the D1 gear did, or as aesthetically pleasing. Even when those looked more like space dresses.

I'm flabbergasted there isn't a simple leather duster option. I'd wear that all day every day, if there was. :(

I will admit that I'm actually pretty happy with the gear I have on my Hunter in D2, though. But I spent 3 years trying to make my Hunter look as much like an ODST as I could in D1, and I could do it within a few months in D2. The toe socks are still unacceptable, though.

Toe-sock boots = instant shard. (I don't follow that rule for special boots - raid, faction - but for any regular boots, I don't even look at the stats, I just destroy 'em if they're split.)

Fighting games generally have the best approach to balance where not only do they not overcorrect, but they allow for local imbalance as a part of fun play.

Fighting games, RTSes, most card games, they all have solid balance.

Games like FortniteBR are grossly imbalanced, but the player has total agency and starts on equal footing with every other player, so the imbalances are due to luck and play throughout the game, rather than poor design, which makes it waaaay more fun.

And then there's games like Destiny, where you can't easily switch classes due to the time sink required to bring up each class, and the specs within classes are almost totally devoid of choice. Your character customization is limited at best, so you're at the mercy of the game devs who, in this case, have straight up admitted to not understanding high end play.

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but I've seen no dress I dislike as much as this style in D1.

I love the collar, I love the asymmetric nature of the jacket, the color is on point. The bottom part is meh, but that's definitely in the direction of my style.

I main Titan and I'm sorry, but I would like an apology from whoever decided taking shoulders and increasing their size by 150%+ was the appropriate aesthetic choice. Or to give me a dozen different options of slightly different flat metal covered legs.

My Titan wears Kairos Function Greaves specifically because they're interesting at the top.(I'm with you 500% on the shoulder gripe.)

As mentioned many Warlock sets are weird, almost-formal gowns. Like they are almost all for ceremony. Minus 3 sets with a +1 reskin to each (The Crucible homeless "sleeping bag" robes, the Vanguard "that fur lining is warming nothing" jacket, and the Wilwood jacket) most of them don't feel as grounded as the D1 gear did, or as aesthetically pleasing. Even when those looked more like space dresses.

I'm flabbergasted there isn't a simple leather duster option. I'd wear that all day every day, if there was. :(

I will admit that I'm actually pretty happy with the gear I have on my Hunter in D2, though. But I spent 3 years trying to make my Hunter look as much like an ODST as I could in D1, and I could do it within a few months in D2. The toe socks are still unacceptable, though.

Toe-sock boots = instant shard. (I don't follow that rule for special boots - raid, faction - but for any regular boots, I don't even look at the stats, I just destroy 'em if they're split.)

I’m still at the early end-game point with my Xbox hunter (y’know, that point where you keep the first legendary item you get in each slot, add a mod that you like, then infuse subsiquent drops into it to raise your light level). So for the time being, my Hunter is stuck with toe-boots and it drives me nuts, lol. But when I look at the few other legendary pants that have dropped for me, I don’t like the thighs. So half my hunter’s legs are going to look ugly, no matter what ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It begins with “Amazing...”

There's no dedicated (pvp) servers, so matchmaking is a p2p and vastly flawed as a result

THAB. Dedicated Server Edition. You, yourself, said: “This is really good news, especially for pvp.” Your about face on this point is actually quite spectacular! How do you square away “In any case, this is all good news, and I support it!” with your quote above?

The GOOD way to handle imbalance is to take the lesser performing design and buff it until it's just as desirable as the better performing design.

Josh Hamrick, from the recent “Go Fast” YouTube video:

...and so we, we went back to the board and looked at everything and just said like hey, here are a couple of weapons we feel like are in a really good spot. And by really good spot they’re kinda hot, right? They’re probably too hot for D2. In D1, people would have said, probably correctly, that means we would nerf those things. There are nails that are sticking up out of the board and we would have hammered them back in to be even with the board. Uh, for this update, we did the opposite, we said these things are hot, let’s bring everything else to them. And so we started raising each thing up whether it be in PVE or PVP. We’ve also learned the lesson: don’t sand the coolness down. Leave the jagged spikes of personality in there.

Personally, I think this is a very good description of what this latest update did. My favorite weapon type, the High Impact Pulse Rifles got an 18.8% boost in the Crucible. Many other weapons got buffs. Various jumps got big, noticeable buffs. Multiple Supers got significant buffs as well.

On a recent livestream (I think it was today?) Josh was quoted as saying:

You should absolutely see the average TtK get significantly faster, I don't want to spoil anything as I think you guys(to DeeJ) are going to talk about that over the next couple of weeks but there is some incredible stuff; if you saw the Sturm and Drang video from last week's TWAB, there's a lot of stuff like that that's pretty cool and pretty fast.

So... what you were going on about... you know about Bungie preferring ‘the nail that stands up gets hammered down’ approach? Yeah, “...every word of what you just said was wrong.”

Not literally, of course. Your point about big updates vs more frequent balancing has merit, for instance. You also aren’t entirely wrong about Bungie’s past approach to balancing. But it REALLY feels like you, a player who has moved on, are ranting about things that happened in the past. And that you are at least mildly out of touch with the present. I’m not out to get you or piss you off, but dude, Bungie has recently been saying the opposite and, more importantly, has been doing the opposite of what you claimed in your post. Hell, they even specifically mentioned your hammer down approach in their video as something to avoid!

Govern yourself according.

Random Rolls would lead to combinations of perks that were fun, effective, and unique.

I'll agree with the first and second adjectives. I will NOT agree with the third. When you have a huge pool of players, you very quickly determine which rolls are the most effective - 'effective' and 'unique' are actually mutually exclusive. (When a roll is effective, it quickly becomes super-sought-after, and when a roll is unique, it's usually because nobody can use it very well. ;) )

I believe my Purifier VIII had both effective AND unique rolls judging by the amount of questions (and cursing) I got in messages after wrecking with it in PvP.

Heh - that's just as angering now as it was the first time I saw it. :)

(I've never been able to use Fusion Rifles effectively, so it's not something I would have ever tried to get... but I've played against enough of them to know that some of those kills were simply unreasonable. :) )

And to think during the Alpha you told me fusion rifles sucked…

Random Rolls would lead to combinations of perks that were fun, effective, and unique.

I'll agree with the first and second adjectives. I will NOT agree with the third. When you have a huge pool of players, you very quickly determine which rolls are the most effective - 'effective' and 'unique' are actually mutually exclusive. (When a roll is effective, it quickly becomes super-sought-after, and when a roll is unique, it's usually because nobody can use it very well. ;) )

I believe my Purifier VIII had both effective AND unique rolls judging by the amount of questions (and cursing) I got in messages after wrecking with it in PvP.

Heh - that's just as angering now as it was the first time I saw it. :)

(I've never been able to use Fusion Rifles effectively, so it's not something I would have ever tried to get... but I've played against enough of them to know that some of those kills were simply unreasonable. :) )

And to think during the Alpha you told me fusion rifles sucked…

They DID suck during the Alpha. Final release, though, Bungie had over-corrected and made them glorious, and so the nerfing tradition began.

I fell down a bit of a Reddit-hole, and stumbled across this suggestion.

It sounds quite interesting to me, for 3 main reasons. 1) I think I would really enjoy interacting with this version of a loot system. 2) It has the potential to solve several common complaints at the same time. And 3) It is based on relatively minor tweaks to the system that is already in place (in other words, it wouldn't require a complete massive redo of the current system, making it potentially feasible to implement).

I'll copy/paste the text below for those who can't open the link:

-----------------------------------

"Three things are lacking in the current loot system: Variety, customization, and vault space. Gear variety and customization pair nicely, more customization automatically adds variety. More variety opens up more avenues for customization. But this leads to inevitable conflict with vault space, the more cool stuff we get, the bigger the vault space issue becomes. Kiosks help a lot but only for static items like exotics, custom gear can’t go there.

Fortunately, there is a solution that essentially uses systems we already have available in D2, no massive rework of the game required. I’ll be using the D1 favorite Doctrine of Passing as an example. Believe it or not, we can actually build a very similar gun using a combination of static rolls and the current mod/masterwork slots. (Edit: naturally this should just be a starting point, lots of good ideas about later improvements are coming from people below in the comments.)

Step 1: Mostly keep the static rolls we have now (no, seriously, hear me out). These serve as the “base model” (or frame) of the gun. The reason we need to keep them is for vault space – this makes it possible for legendary weapon kiosks to exist. Going back to the Doctrine, the “base frame” would be just the scopes and fixed perk. Exotics have a kiosk/collection because they are always the same. You can go grab one any time you want. Static legendaries should work the same way. Go to the kiosk, pull one out. The mod and masterwork slots would be empty, obviously, but at least there’s no more worrying about “do I keep this terrible gun? What if that archetype is OP someday?” (looking at you, pulse rifles). If that happens you can just go to the kiosk and use the base frame to build a new one, as we segue to the next step:

Step 2: The mod slot is where we make the big change - We use it to bring random rolls back. Instead of the worthless mods we have now, this becomes an actual random perk slot. Every legendary weapon will drop with a purple mod containing a random D1-level perk: firefly, perfect balance, shank burn (couldn’t resist), army of one, whatever. It’s on a mod, but otherwise not much different than D1; each weapon ideally would it’s own pool of possible perks so you know what to expect. Your 10th Better Devils is actually interesting now!

One random perk is better than we have now, but 2 is even more better. So what do we do with the masterwork slot? That could turn into whole big discussion of it’s own, so for the moment let’s just say we keep them the same in terms of the orb generation. However, if we also increase the size of the stat bonus to be more meaningful, that becomes another random node. Look at the middle perk slot for the Doctrine: masterworks do (sortof) the same thing - more ammo (extended mag), more range (we’ll call that smallbore), or more stability (braced frame). The only real difference is that the stat bonuses are currently smaller (that and you would have to re-roll the masterwork if you wanted extended mag instead of braced frame but in that case you are clinically insane and beyond my help). I now expertly segue once again to step 3:

Step 3: Gear customization. This is a big one for me. Random rolls are good. But being able to further customize the gear on top of it is great. It epitomizes what D2 should have been, an evolution of the systems we had before.

We also customize gear using these new and improved mods. Again, to keep it simple I’m not going to go in to a long winded discussion of the pros and cons of 15 different ways to do it, but just buying mods from the gunsmith is definitely one of the worst possible ways. The main source of mods should be from our gear. Dismantling gear should give you mod components.

It doesn’t have to be exactly like this, but as an example, let’s say you get a Bad News with firefly. That’s cool, I mean, everything’s better with firefly, right? But you know what would be fucking amazing with firefly? Midnight Coup, of course! But Calus is a dick and won’t give me one. RNG being RNG, I might never get one.

So I dismantle the Bad News and get a firefly mod component. Later on I get some other gun with firefly. Same thing. After I get X number of those components, I take them to the gunsmith, he makes a firefly mod for me. I then give him the gun I want to put in on, and bang, I just crafted a custom gun. It’s “my” Midnight Coup, just the way I want it.

How many mod components, what the gunsmith charges for it, do I need 2 Midnight Coups instead of 1 (I’d vote yes), that’s all up for discussion, feel free to put in your 2 cents below. We don’t want to make it so easy that we run out of stuff to do in a week because we already have a god roll everything. But the concept is the same, take a gun you don’t want and use it to improve a gun you do, without being 100% reliant on luck. You have just a tiny bit of control over the situation.

Unlike HoW-style reforging, no grinding for generic parts and praying to RNG as you pull the gunsmith slot machine. Instead, you have a specific thing to go after: I want firefly. I know that a gun that can roll with firefly drops from the flashpoint world boss on Io or whatever. So I can go farm that like you would have done with Omnigul if you wanted a Grasp. (But if you really like rerolling stuff there’s always the masterwork slot. Personally, I think I’d prefer it wasn’t completely random but acted more like the raid perks where you get to choose but I’m not married to that idea)

Even better, you can stockpile mods to use later. Mods stack in your inventory, so instead of using 37 vault spots for various guns that are either not quite perfect or “might not be terrible someday,” you keep a few stacks of high quality mods to use later, setting up yet another seamless transition to the next and final step:

Step 4: Enjoy all your newly freed up vault space! The legendary weapon kiosk holds modless base versions of every weapon you’ve ever found. Mods are stackable and take up less room. So you don’t need do the things we did in D1 like keep 16 different not-quite-God-roll Eyeaslunas, or hold on to those high impact pulses for 2 years “just in case.”"

I play D1 about 2-4 times a month for funs.

I have three characters with just about every item they'd ever want.

Nevertheless, every single time a legendary drops, I get that little excitement tickle to see what it is. It's a familiar weapon, but what are the perks? I miss that tickle in D2.

If one chooses to play the game as a "god roll grind," I think that's fine, and I've done it, chasing a FateImagoLooperBringer. It was fun, I never got it and I don't regret the chase. If it's not fun, then don't do it. I mean, if you can't ingest Crack responsibly, then is Crack really for you?

Having the little excitement from every legendary drop is a really wonderful element of D1 that I miss a lot. I don't think it ever really broke the game -- PVPwise, you could buy Hacksaw, and PVEwise, well it was never game breaking.

You'll still have to pull my Cryptic Dragon with Explosive Rounds, Firefly, and Crowd Control from my cold dead hands.

That talk of a "little excitement tickle" sounds like something from a gambler's anonymous meeting. Are we going to have to have an intervention, nico? ;)

Just not my thing. (I've said before that I'd spend money on Eververse if it wasn't random. I feel like a sucker.) I know what you mean by the tickle, though. In my case it was countered by the anxiety I felt over vault space. I kept way too much because I was always anxious that I might dismantle the God roll of the next meta.

I fell down a bit of a Reddit-hole, and stumbled across this suggestion.

It sounds quite interesting to me, for 3 main reasons. 1) I think I would really enjoy interacting with this version of a loot system. 2) It has the potential to solve several common complaints at the same time. And 3) It is based on relatively minor tweaks to the system that is already in place (in other words, it wouldn't require a complete massive redo of the current system, making it potentially feasible to implement).

I'll copy/paste the text below for those who can't open the link:

-----------------------------------

"Three things are lacking in the current loot system: Variety, customization, and vault space. Gear variety and customization pair nicely, more customization automatically adds variety. More variety opens up more avenues for customization. But this leads to inevitable conflict with vault space, the more cool stuff we get, the bigger the vault space issue becomes. Kiosks help a lot but only for static items like exotics, custom gear can’t go there.

Fortunately, there is a solution that essentially uses systems we already have available in D2, no massive rework of the game required. I’ll be using the D1 favorite Doctrine of Passing as an example. Believe it or not, we can actually build a very similar gun using a combination of static rolls and the current mod/masterwork slots. (Edit: naturally this should just be a starting point, lots of good ideas about later improvements are coming from people below in the comments.)

Step 1: Mostly keep the static rolls we have now (no, seriously, hear me out). These serve as the “base model” (or frame) of the gun. The reason we need to keep them is for vault space – this makes it possible for legendary weapon kiosks to exist. Going back to the Doctrine, the “base frame” would be just the scopes and fixed perk. Exotics have a kiosk/collection because they are always the same. You can go grab one any time you want. Static legendaries should work the same way. Go to the kiosk, pull one out. The mod and masterwork slots would be empty, obviously, but at least there’s no more worrying about “do I keep this terrible gun? What if that archetype is OP someday?” (looking at you, pulse rifles). If that happens you can just go to the kiosk and use the base frame to build a new one, as we segue to the next step:

Step 2: The mod slot is where we make the big change - We use it to bring random rolls back. Instead of the worthless mods we have now, this becomes an actual random perk slot. Every legendary weapon will drop with a purple mod containing a random D1-level perk: firefly, perfect balance, shank burn (couldn’t resist), army of one, whatever. It’s on a mod, but otherwise not much different than D1; each weapon ideally would it’s own pool of possible perks so you know what to expect. Your 10th Better Devils is actually interesting now!

One random perk is better than we have now, but 2 is even more better. So what do we do with the masterwork slot? That could turn into whole big discussion of it’s own, so for the moment let’s just say we keep them the same in terms of the orb generation. However, if we also increase the size of the stat bonus to be more meaningful, that becomes another random node. Look at the middle perk slot for the Doctrine: masterworks do (sortof) the same thing - more ammo (extended mag), more range (we’ll call that smallbore), or more stability (braced frame). The only real difference is that the stat bonuses are currently smaller (that and you would have to re-roll the masterwork if you wanted extended mag instead of braced frame but in that case you are clinically insane and beyond my help). I now expertly segue once again to step 3:

Step 3: Gear customization. This is a big one for me. Random rolls are good. But being able to further customize the gear on top of it is great. It epitomizes what D2 should have been, an evolution of the systems we had before.

We also customize gear using these new and improved mods. Again, to keep it simple I’m not going to go in to a long winded discussion of the pros and cons of 15 different ways to do it, but just buying mods from the gunsmith is definitely one of the worst possible ways. The main source of mods should be from our gear. Dismantling gear should give you mod components.

It doesn’t have to be exactly like this, but as an example, let’s say you get a Bad News with firefly. That’s cool, I mean, everything’s better with firefly, right? But you know what would be fucking amazing with firefly? Midnight Coup, of course! But Calus is a dick and won’t give me one. RNG being RNG, I might never get one.

So I dismantle the Bad News and get a firefly mod component. Later on I get some other gun with firefly. Same thing. After I get X number of those components, I take them to the gunsmith, he makes a firefly mod for me. I then give him the gun I want to put in on, and bang, I just crafted a custom gun. It’s “my” Midnight Coup, just the way I want it.

How many mod components, what the gunsmith charges for it, do I need 2 Midnight Coups instead of 1 (I’d vote yes), that’s all up for discussion, feel free to put in your 2 cents below. We don’t want to make it so easy that we run out of stuff to do in a week because we already have a god roll everything. But the concept is the same, take a gun you don’t want and use it to improve a gun you do, without being 100% reliant on luck. You have just a tiny bit of control over the situation.

Unlike HoW-style reforging, no grinding for generic parts and praying to RNG as you pull the gunsmith slot machine. Instead, you have a specific thing to go after: I want firefly. I know that a gun that can roll with firefly drops from the flashpoint world boss on Io or whatever. So I can go farm that like you would have done with Omnigul if you wanted a Grasp. (But if you really like rerolling stuff there’s always the masterwork slot. Personally, I think I’d prefer it wasn’t completely random but acted more like the raid perks where you get to choose but I’m not married to that idea)

Even better, you can stockpile mods to use later. Mods stack in your inventory, so instead of using 37 vault spots for various guns that are either not quite perfect or “might not be terrible someday,” you keep a few stacks of high quality mods to use later, setting up yet another seamless transition to the next and final step:

Step 4: Enjoy all your newly freed up vault space! The legendary weapon kiosk holds modless base versions of every weapon you’ve ever found. Mods are stackable and take up less room. So you don’t need do the things we did in D1 like keep 16 different not-quite-God-roll Eyeaslunas, or hold on to those high impact pulses for 2 years “just in case.”"

Honestly, this is how I assumed D2 would work when they first announced mods.

Random Rolls would lead to combinations of perks that were fun, effective, and unique.

I'll agree with the first and second adjectives. I will NOT agree with the third. When you have a huge pool of players, you very quickly determine which rolls are the most effective - 'effective' and 'unique' are actually mutually exclusive. (When a roll is effective, it quickly becomes super-sought-after, and when a roll is unique, it's usually because nobody can use it very well. ;) )

I believe my Purifier VIII had both effective AND unique rolls judging by the amount of questions (and cursing) I got in messages after wrecking with it in PvP.

Heh - that's just as angering now as it was the first time I saw it. :)

(I've never been able to use Fusion Rifles effectively, so it's not something I would have ever tried to get... but I've played against enough of them to know that some of those kills were simply unreasonable. :) )

And to think during the Alpha you told me fusion rifles sucked…

I still think that. Read the passage you just quoted again. Doesn't mean they don't suck for OTHER people... just that they don't work for me.

Not as punishing as D1 God Rolls while improving the current mod system. Sign me up!

I don't really care about the vault stuff... kiosks are nice, but I don't think everything needs to be a kiosk item.

I actually like how the vendors have armor and a rotation of weapons you can buy. Maybe just make those purchasable with glimmer instead of tokens (if you've already "acquired" the item?