Very minor matter I know in the light of all the good suggestions on this thread but it would be nice

Rewards for repeating missions / Repeatable Quests
I would love to be able to replay certain quest lines / story missions and still get SOMETHING for completing the missions. Give me blue drops or something at the end screen.

Also, don't make me go back to orbit after I finish a mission, just drop me into patrol please. (I see problems with this though, you might lose your sense of completeness.)

I was going to post this. I love immersion in a good story. Year one's story wasn't great, but I still would have appreciated it more if I'd gotten to play through it again in a less fragmented way than how Destiny encourages replay. The expansion missions are much better, but now when I play the daily story mission, I often feel like I'm dipping into a chapter of an epic book or movie I can't easily re-experience. There are also a handful of missions you can only play once. Let us reset questlines. Give us only materials or glimmer. Maybe there could be a campaign mode that worked like the Vanguard Strike playlist, where you'd automatically be dropped into the next quest step, and as long as you stayed in, you upped your chances at an exotic.

Also, don't make me go back to orbit after I finish a mission, just drop me into patrol please. (I see problems with this though, you might lose your sense of completeness.)

Have to admit that..

If I need to 'talk to Petra', she can call me.

..Made me laugh louder than it should have.

LET ME MAKE MY OWN DAMN SHADER BUNGIE!!!!!!
Colour customisable emblems? YES YES YES YES

Also, for the love of all things sparkly let me wear my cape WITHOUT the hood on it as an option.
Titans could swap sides for butt towel and warlocks change their band from each arm (or even to a leg?)

Swap 'Perks' for 'Abilities'
I would like to see the variations from weapons and armor switched to the character/subclass. I don't become a brain surgeon just because I put on a lab coat. If bungie wants me to invest in a character I play, then don't let me lose a skill of reloading faster just because I change my gloves.

Weapons/Armor stats should be fixed/standard
Others have said they would like the specs on guns to be standard, I would agree. Would also say the same should go for armor.

Level up your character, not your gear.
My car does not get magically better the more I drive it; I get better driving it the more I drive it.

Let me pick the scopes
Seems fairly easy to me; let me choose what sites I like on whichever weapon I choose.

Let me pick the colors - Characters, Ships, Weapons, Banners
How about a web page/app on which to make and share our own shaders with other players? Allowing people an outlet to express themselves creatively is a sure fire way to keep them playing. People want to make shaders for, well everything. Don't they have 'paint' in the future?

Stop forcing me back to the 'Tower' every 10 minutes
Feels like I'm commuting more than saving the universe. It's the future; we have space-cell phones.
If I need to 'talk to Petra', she can call me.

Simplify the exchanges/money system
Feels like a need a degree in future economics some times. Maybe set the values of things/items and let me exchange what I have for what I need across the board. You want an economy, fine. Set the values. Then let players exchange everything for anything. That's how money works.

Take out the Vegas slot machine factor
Instead of the 'random' reward system, how about rewards that we can use/exchange for what we need/want? Forcing us to replay over and over and still deny us just desserts is more than a little... frustrating.
As others here have said, 'Random is not fun'. Could not agree more.

Scale encounters/Missions/Strikes/RAIDS for different teams sizes
No one is on the same schedule these days and missing or losing people in the middle of heavy gameplay is no fun. Plus many times the only options I have to play, no one is even around. Be nice to have a more varied range of team player options, including down to just a single player choice, without the mission being completely impossible. Why only 3 or 6? Why not 2 people, 4 or 5 people? Or dare I say, even just solo.

Varied Weather
Enjoying the Destiny lighting and time of day factors that have been incorporated. (Well done Bungie, love it!) Now, having actual weather variations could increase the replay value. (Rain, High wind, Snow, Blizzard, Lightning, Clouds, etc) All these could help make playing levels feel brand new, every time. Walking through the wastes of the Cosmodrome in pitch black night with heavy rain and lightning could be... awesome.

Keep ammo I pick up
Would be nice to be able to save ammo in game. I can use my reserves in game. Why can't I add to those reserves in game as well?

Your ship should be your storage
Have 'being in orbit' be the new 'tower' for managing your gear, weapons and ammo. It would save a lot of time when you just need to do a few things to get ready for the next mission, instead of going to the tower, doing what you need, going back to orbit, and then load the next game. (Some of this can be mitigated by the web/phone apps, but it would be nice to be able to do this without needing third parts applications or devices).

Choose Specific Strikes in Playlist
When you get the same three in a row... yeah. Bungie, let me drive for a while.

Pick your own entry point
When replaying RAIDs, it would be nice to have the option to specifically choose where your party begins. If you've unlocked one or all the levels, it would be convenient to pick outright at the beginning then reloading specific characters or swapping party leads to get to the correct save point.

"Character Design and Customization Options?"

People talking about strikes, weapons, Light, and leveling.

Come on, fellas. :P

Conversations evolve.

Usually after answering the initial question, yes.
Most folks in this thread ignored the specific question and jumped into their own tangent.

"Character Design and Customization Options?"

People talking about strikes, weapons, Light, and leveling.

Come on, fellas. :P

Conversations evolve.

"Character Design and Customization Options?"

People talking about strikes, weapons, Light, and leveling.

Come on, fellas. :P

I'd have ten global stats for all classes and each stat has 10 light levels.

1. Attack-starts at 0% and maxes out at +5% increase
2. Health-starts at 95HP and maxes out 105HP
3. Armor-95HP to 105HP
4. Recovery-starts at 4sec maxes out at 2sec
5. Agility-0% to 10% increase in movement speeds/height
6. Intellect-starts at 5 min to super max 3 min
7. Discipline-1 minute to 30sec
8. Strength-1 minute to 30sec
9. Stamina-0 to 5 secs added to length of sprint and reduction in cooldown between sprints
10. Capacity-0 to 20% increase in ammo reserve for all weapons

10 stats with 10 light levels gives a total of 100 points to be filled. Assuming the same content DLC pattern from Destiny 1, here's how I'd setup the Leveling system.

To start, all subclasses would have 10 points preassigned to certain stats that fit their roles. Ex: A defender would have more health and armor, say 3 levels of each, 2 levels of capacity, and 2 intellect. This starts the defender down the path of a "defensive" character.

So D1 had Vanilla, TDB, HoW, TTK, tiny April DLC, and assuming finally Rise or Iron. So for Vanilla D2 we'd start at 30 as the max level giving you a total of 40 light levels out of the 100 possible. DLC 1 & 2 would go up 5 each for a max level of 40 and LL of 50 for Destiny 2 Y1. Expansion 1 (think TTK) would bump you up 10 more with the following DLC adding 5 for a Y2 max of 55 level/65 light level. The Final DLC would bump you up 10 more for a total of 65 level/75 light level.

Of course this would all need tweaking/testing to see how well it would work. The range of stat increases may be too small/big, the amount of total light levels attainable may be too many by the end of all DLC's. But I feel like this is a good start to simplify things for everyone from the developers to the community. Like Cruel mentioned, it would be nice to know that certain weapons will do specific damages for all folks, with the difference being the attack value of your character.

I had to add the stamina and capacity to make a nice round 100 point system. I'm a big fan of slowing down the overall speed of the game slightly. I think that the world we play in would feel much bigger without so much sprinting, and it would be even nicer if they removed sparrows as well. Imagine having to walk the entire cosmodrome! :) Just that alone would make the world seem larger to us as players without having to actually make it that much bigger.

In hindsight having a total of 75 out of 100 points may be too much. 7 maxed out bars seems like alot. Perhaps we could set up a system where the final max takes extra levels to fill if you want to fully max it out at level 10. Or simply reduce the number of levels. I'd imagine the most maxed out levels we'd want per character would be 3-4? That way it feels like a player can specialize.

2nd, guns. I think we need to change the way guns are classified. Instead of common - rare guns having crap stats, what if they had basically the same stats as legendaries, but just fewer perks

This is an idea I had long ago, but with a different twist: legendary guns would have more perks, but they would have slightly worse overall stats. This way, you can either have better base stats, or more perks. So depending on the roll and the situation, you may use greens and blues along side your purples. Exotics would get better stats AND better perks. If the perks were not boring perks (stats up), but rather perks that changed the way you play, then this could be a cool set of tradeoffs.

2nd, guns. I think we need to change the way guns are classified. Instead of common - rare guns having crap stats, what if they had basically the same stats as legendaries, but just fewer perks. A common gun would have 1 perk, uncommon 2, rare 3, legendary 4, and exotic 5. Instead of random perk rolls for the same guns, the perks would always be the same for each gun. Think about how many guns there are in destiny. Even without random perk rolls, there would still be so many guns to choose from. But it would be nice for us to all have the same experience when playing with a named gun. I would never sell any gun other than a rare at the shops/vendors, and you wouldn't need a rank to equip any type of gun. All legendaries would be rewards, or found by exploring and discovering clues to find their chest. Lets say for every X number of dead ghosts you find, the next chest you open will have a specific weapon in it. Chests will be in fixed locations and always have that specific weapon so you will know where to go to get what you want. You could never have more than 1 of any gun but once you unlock it, it would be in the kiosk for you to buy if you decided to delete it. Exotics would be the only weapons with a unique perk only found on that weapon. Weapon light levels would also disappear, as I would try to fix the leveling/damage system (but thats for another time). So any gun from vanilla to the last expansion would always be viable.

3rd, armors. Very similar to what I discussed above. I'd remove class specific armors except for the ones that are Exotics. Their perks could have to be specific to their classes ability though. An armor that gives 2 grenades, or radar while aiming is too generic. It would have to enhance a specific ability for that class/subclass. This would allow any class to be fitted to any look they desire. Who cares if a Titan wants to wear a cape? or a hunter wants to have a bulky blocky armor look? Your class/subclass should only affect your abilities. Armors would follow the same rules as the guns above. Number of perks determine the rarity, and are fixed for a specific names piece. Armors don't have any ratings for defense so rares works just as well as legendaries for protection. I'd also remove int, dis, and str from armor as well.

Finally, light levels/rankings. Fix this system somehow. I'd remove int, dis, str and defense rating from armor, remove attack level from guns, and place them into the list with armor, recovery, and agility for the class/subclass. So when you pick your class/subclass, you'd be given a starting set of stats on the low end of the spectrum. As you reach each new rank you'd be given a point to spend on leveling up each of these categories as you see fit. Eventually when you hit max rank, you'd run out of points and would never be able to max out all the categories. For example, Titans would generally have more armor/defense and less agility starting out. Hunters would be the opposite. Warlocks would probably be somewhere in the middle for those stats. You could create tanks by maxing out armor and defense, but you'd lose out on getting super/abilities as often. Your level in destiny would be your access to activities, your light level would be the number of points you can put toward your specs. These may be the same number or separate numbers depending on the need/design.

Fewer currencies!

Build your own shaders.

Customize weapons on top of the base archetypes. Similar to how changing scopes can change the weapon's appearance. I want choices in how to customize my weapon, not just a static set of options and not randomized re-rolls. Random is not fun.

Yes, yes yes!

I can't fathom who thought it was a good idea to basically add some new currency with like EVERY update. There's no depth or meaning to them, at least not for me. They're just all extra layers in the way of having fun.

I also think Legendary Marks(or whatever high-end currency they're gonna use) could be retrievable--i.e. Postmaster-able. Until I find something I want to spend my Legendary Marks on(280 Randoms from the Cryptarch, anyone?) There's not even a point to me doing anything the Director says.

AND DINKLAGE. DAMMIT!!!