I know a lot of people have issues with Destiny's investment system, the 'loot treadmill' so to speak. This type of progression has been a staple of the MMORPG genre. That said, Destiny is a very finely tuned FPS with shared world elements thrown into the mix, and it's audience appears to be primarily FPS players. These players are unused to this style of progression and many openly dislike it. We can't remove investment, as it's become something so inherently ingrained and dare I say necessary to keep a steady player base. I'm here to offer some ideas for how it can be modified. This is not a perfect solution, but it opens the door for what could be a perfect solution.

Level, Attack and Defense
The key to MMORPG design is advancement. Players are constantly in a state of advancing their character, their gear, or through quests. For a fresh release, the initial content is designed to teach the player how to play the game by earning skills and equipment at a rate which corresponds with the increasing difficulty of the game which ends with a penultimate challenge. Eventually, players will beat this penultimate challenge, have the best gear and all the abilities and will want a new challenge to beat. this means more powerful foes that deal more damage, have more health and require more coordination and strategy to beat. In order to beat these challenges, players must earn new armour to decrease the damage received and new weapons to take out foes with more health in a timely manner.

Destiny's loot treadmill isn't much different. Higher-leveled weapons and armor have higher Attack and Defense. Armour also has Light, which increases your Level beyond 20 and acts at a multiplier on damage received and damage dealt based on the level of the enemy you're fighting. In order to lessen the burden of investment, we must remove Level, Attack and Defense. By doing this, we level the playing field in PvE similar to how the playing field is leveled in PvP, making the only barrier for entry and success in a particular event the player's own skill and determination. This would also allow for more interesting gameplay mechanics, similar to what we see in the Raids. While this may allow players to run through content faster, they aren't burdened with needing to worry about keeping their gear up to date.

When you get down to it; Level, Attack and Defense don't actually do anything other than limit what the player can use in a given encounter. Destiny is extremely well-paced, something I commend it for, and it feels like Level, Attack and Defense were only tacked on to add artificial difficulty to the higher difficulty options available in the game. I've heard a lot of 'I like the look of this armor, but the Light isn't high enough' or 'I like the perks, but this gun has too little Attack.' This is even worse for Raiders, who are limited to the armour available in VoG and CE which has pre-determined perks and stat bonuses. I see many more positives than negatives to removing Level, Attack and Defense.

Weapons, Armour and Subclasses
By removing Level, Attack and Defense, weapons and armour become available to all. While everyone could be running around with whatever weapons they felt like, I feel like this is an area where we could incorporate a bit of the investment system. Destiny features many different weapon manufacturers that only have a little information here and there and maybe an emblem. Here's a list of the current ones:

Suros
Tex Mechanica
Nadir
Omolon
Häkke
Crux/Lomar
Daito
Cassoid

My suggestion is to flesh out these manufacturers more and turn them into factions similar to Dead Orbit, Future War Cult and New Monarchy. Each faction would focus on one or two weapon stats (Rate of Fire, Charge Rate, Impact, Velocity, Range, Stability and Reload). Initially Guardians would have access to only a few weapons from each faction, but by using weapons and armour from a particular manufacturer and gaining reputation, they would get access to more. This also allows the design of the guns to be unique from manufacturer to manufacturer. Armour would be earned just like weapons, but it would be cosmetic.

What does that mean for perks and armour stats (Intellect, Discipline and Strength)? Perks would be divided into Weapon perks and Guardian perks and be earned like weapons and armour by earning reputation with a particular manufacturer. Once a Weapon perk is earned, you can apply it to any weapon you have available. Guardian perks would be applied to your Guardian, not your armour like in game. As for armour stats, those would be another two columns in your subclass grid.

Subclasses would function just like they always do, except with the addition of the armour stat columns. Many people may decry that by removing levels from the game, it makes leveling up subclasses less intuitive. As someone that leveled both Voidwalker and Sunsigner at the same time on my Warlock, I found level-ups to be a nice surprise in the middle of a firefight, but far from required.

Exotics
Now that I've messed up the whole game, what does that mean for Exotics? Well, Exotics are a bit of a different breed. The current way of earning many Exotics is generally flawed. Exotic Bounties are a step in the right direction, but what if you weren't explicitly told what to do. I remember when everyone was theorizing about the chest for not letting the Templar teleport (which turned out to be true) and for not getting a Time's Vengeance on Atheon (which I never found out was true or not). Earning Exotics should be like that! Once earned, Exotic Weapons would have its two perks predetermined. Exotic Armour would take up one of the Guardian perk slots available.

With Levels, Attack and Defense out of the picture, anyone would be able to get Exotics at any given time, but they would require players of exceptional skill and cunning to earn them. As mentioned above, this would open the door for interesting gameplay, which would make things more like Raids. And it seems like everyone wants more Raid-like gameplay.

TL;DR - Remove Levels, Attack and Defense; give some personality to the gun manufacturers, armour is cosmetic, perks are interchangeable, Int/Disc/Str are in the subclass grid, Exotics are earned through hidden Exotic bounties, more Raid-like gameplay, more fun

So, that's the end of my spiel. What do you guys think?