A great idea, actually... (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Thursday, July 23, 2015, 05:56 (3511 days ago) @ Ragashingo

I think I get where he is coming from. There was a little something lost when you can't tell what a gun is by looking at its name.

For a long time I recommended Three Little Words to people. While you could technically get a Three Little Words with random perks from a drop, the chances of that were so low that I felt confident that when I talked about Three Little Words people knew I was talking about the slow, hard hitting Crucible Vendor Pulse Rifle that came with 3rd Eye and Headseeker. When I got killed by it in the Crucible I pretty much knew what roll it had on it. To me, even though it wasn't 100% technically correct, Three Little Words was very much a specific gun.

Now, post-reforging, that very rarely holds true. I don't feel comfortable talking about a 55A-allFATE as if it is a unique or specific gun because my 55A-allFATE (with 3rd Eye and Hidden Hand) might be very different from your 55A-allFATE (say with Full Auto and Counter Balance or whatever). The ability to buy a weapon from a vendor then drastically change how it acts vs another gun with the same name in a way dilutes the Legendary-ness of the name...

If you can buy that then sure, Cody is right. A Praedyth's Timepiece is more "special" and "unique" than any random Spare Change.25 since there aren't any variants. It is exactly what it is. It's name refers to one very specific gun. Same thing with Exotics. We all know exactly what a Bad Juju or The Last Word are because there are precisely zero different reforged variants of either floating around.

That's something that I've thought about, too. During the Alpha, people coveted the Mitternacht. It was vicious, and the lack of perks meant that you knew what you were getting.
During the Beta, the Jigoku became the thing to get.
At launch, while the Shadow Price was greatly desired, the fact that you could get one as a random drop with five different perks slightly changed the value of the weapon. Sure you could get the Vendor's version, but if you were lucky, you'd get one with a better roll as a drop. This was rare enough that someone with a better roll than the vendors had a slight edge over others, but for the most part, you knew what you were dealing with when it killed you. Now, the default rolls from Vendor weapons are essentially placeholders that few people keep.
Why keep a vendor roll when you can get whatever you want?
Maybe they could have cycled the perks and added cosmetic differences (Shadow Price Mk-3, with a green and gold paint scheme, for example) to give you an idea of what perks it had on it, so you could check out the vendors to see if they had the same roll, or if his was a special random drop.

The way it is now, with the ability to get any roll you want (if you have the resources to spare), there's little reason to run around without an optimized roll (Send It on Hand Cannons, Field Scout on MGs, Rangefinder/SP on Shotguns, etc.). I think Bungie put too much power in the hands of the player, when they could have been in control of what people could easily get their hands on (and automated algorithms are NOT the answer).

I think a Vendor overhaul should address this. Remove the ability to re-roll weapons, as that was the cause of the Felwinter/Party Crasher/other-sniper-shotgun debacle.
People who have their super rolls? Congrats, never shard those! But moving forward, Bungie needs to take more control, while giving us more options.
The fact that they gave people this power, then were genuinely surprised (according to the recent balancing article) that people exploited it is beyond words.