Division had the inverse problem of destiny. They had a somewhat coherent story arc, and a much more explorable area, but the actual gameplay involved 3 enemy types and a difficulty that scaled by adding HP to super huge bullet sponges. Weapon balance and perk/ability balance was very off.

I didn't stick with the Division long enough to really dig in to the end game, so I can't comment much on that.

My biggest problem with the main story missions was the pacing and level gating. During the early missions, I was having a decent amount of fun. I'd finish a mission, and earn just enough XP and loot to get me where I needed to be in order to tackle the next mission. But as I got deeper into the campaign, the story missions grew further and further apart in terms of level requirements. It got to the point where I would finish a story mission, then I'd need to grind XP in the open world (Division's equivalent of Patrol Mode) for a couple hours before I could do the next story mission. It was a total drag.

I did really appreciate the way Division handled on-the-fly matchmaking for all activities, including story missions. The advantage of having everything take place in a single "overworld" is that you can literally just walk to the "mission location" on your map (no menu or loading screen, unless you fast travel), and when you get to the mission entrance there is a little button prompt asking if you want to matchmake with other players. If not, you just continue on in and do it solo. Destiny is more complicated thanks to featuring multiple planets, but it did always seem strange to me that if I'm patrolling the Cosmodrome, I need to fly back to orbit and select "The Last Array" from the director just so I can fly back down to the location I was just patrolling and start the mission. It would be nice to see Bungie handle those transitions a little more seamlessly.

I have to say I enjoyed the ME multiplayer, and if Bioware expanded on that they could have a very good competitor. It really seems that you need the core play mechanics to be good if you want to have any longevity. I think we are seeing the start of a merger between MMOs and FPS type gameplay, with large overlapping sections of both. The loot/reward system seems to be very effective in addicting the player base, and every game is adding that as a must have in some form. Same with customization.

So really it falls back to the gameplay itself.

Obviously, we don't know anything about what Bioware's new IP will be like, but I can't help using ME3 as a "jumping off" point in my imagination :)

ME3's multiplayer was fantastic. On the surface it is just another "horde" mode, but in practice it ended up feeling like a lot of the best parts of Destiny, distilled into a far more streamlined experience. You team up with other players and travel to locations around the galaxy to play repeatable co-op missions with simple but varying objectives. You collect random loot drops as mission rewards. You can customize your characters with a wide range of different abilities and gear. Then you replay the same missions over and over and over, earning better loot as you complete higher difficulty levels.

Rather than take that framework and build it into an MMO style game, I would love to see Bioware take that initial blueprint and build outwards in ways that make sense. By which I mean "don't add resource gathering just because you're making a hybrid MMO and those games are supposed to have resource gathering". (IMO this train of thought lead to a lot of clutter in Destiny). ME3's multiplayer works as well as it does because Bioware had a firm understanding of what the gameplay loop was going to be, and none of their design choices came across as punishing to the player. Yes, there were random loot drops. But instead of having a thousand different guns cluttering up the sandbox, they made like 15 of them, so it really isn't a struggle to get the one you want. And if you get a duplicate drop, it automatically "infuses" into the one you already have, making it slightly more powerful. They knew that playing their game meant replaying the same missions over and over, so they continuously added new objectives, added new threats or hazards, reworked level geometry, all to improve the experience and help keep things fresh. And they also saw to opportunity & fun that came from playing with different character classes, so they leaned into that BIG TIME. They added boatloads of new characters, all with their own unique sets of powers. The different characters ended up being a huge source of replay value for the game. Every time I started to feel like I'd had enough, I would switch classes and it was like playing a whole new game again.

One thing that both Destiny and The Division have in common (IMO) is that in both cases, the developers created this massive framework for the game, then struggled to create enough fun things to do to fill out that whole framework. I think there is an opportunity for a developer like Bioware to come along and create a tighter, less sprawling, refined alternative. Start with a fantastic core (like ME3's multiplayer), then add pieces to that as long as they don't detract/interfere with the core loop.

Yeah, so much this. For some reason no one has figured out how to properly design an investment game

Why do you think that is? Oh wait, it's because investment games inherently suck. The proper way to design them is to make them something else. Aspects of your game are required to suck in order for an investment system to work.

Ultimately, to make something feel valuable in game it needs to require significant effort to obtain. In some cases, like ToO or Raids, it means that the action itself is hard to do and only a limited number of players can martial the skill to accomplish it. In other cases, grinding is used to turn a long time investment into value.

If I had my choice, I would prefer more of the former, then the latter. I hated grinding in WoW, or World of Tanks, and currently in Destiny. The randomness factor is just a multiplier, a grinding mechanic. I played the heck out of ME 3 and never got all the guns. I know people who still play it and still don't have all the classes unlocked.

Part of the fun is exploring the new and different options. there has to be a way to allow people to experience that without forcing them into long slogs through the game. I just don't know what that is. I'd love to pull some friends into Destiny, but at this point they would have to grind so long to get all the gear that they want they won't do it. Some of my friends love war frame, but likewise I don't want to drop the time into it to level up just so I can play with them every so often.

At least when I have friends over I can loan them one of my 40k armies and we can still duke it out.