In general, the last year has been a very good one for Destiny in terms of story. It feels like questions are being answered. The places we get to explore are more novel and relevant than ever before. And that both the in-game and Lore based storytelling has accelerated nicely especially since Forsaken.

Really agree here. I'm not totally invested in Drifter vs. Aunor, but it's reasonably interesting. Really think they've done good with audio snippets during missions or in the tower, but I want to *SEE* these characters interact. Huge steps in the right direction, but I want them to keep it up.

In particular, both the Tangled Shore and Dreaming City were beautiful locations that seemed to hold a stronger sense of "these places have meaning and character built into their foundations." I loved the Tangled Shore's pancake layering of structures below, and above, and below as you passed between the various layer. And, of course, the Dreaming City is just a marvel to behold with the specific location-based lore snippets being given out by the Techeuns being a fun way to highlight some of the spaces/

I can take or leave most of the Tangled Shore, but I think that's largely because I felt like I had to rush through it to get to the Dreaming City. I'm willing to be there are plenty of nooks and crannies I still haven't been to. I found it neat, but the Dreaming City is a work of art. Maybe it's me, but I still feel like I don't know my way around. Makes it feel mysterious by design, I suppose, but I'm not complaining.

Weaving in important characters like Cayde-6, Petra Venj, and Mara Sov and making them more part of the spaces instead of simply cutscene characters was a big step in the right direction.

The Lore team is killing it. Not that Destiny's lore wasn't good before, but now it seems like we are getting more of it on a regular basis. There are so many good stories and story threads now!

Completely agree here. Not pursuing it and allowing it to come up in conversation and enjoying it via the conversations amongst the community has really allowed me to enjoy it more.

All in all, the stories being told during Forsaken and its seasons have been very interesting and most feel like they will have deliberate direct impacts on Destiny's future content.

That said, there are two areas I hope to see improved upon:

• Zavala has not been portrayed in a very good light in quite a while. While it feels like he carries the weight of Humanity on his back, I can't really recall the last time he was allowed to make a good decision in Destiny 2. While on Titan, he planned to attack the Almighty openly which would have lead to the destruction of the solar system. During Warmind, he seemed to oppose the investigation of Rasputin even as Rasputin helped our Guardian and Ana Bray. In Forsaken, he opposed hunting down Uldren Sov and in the lore he practically turned his back on the Reef and only offered The City's help if Petra Venj and the Awoken would commit to abandoning the Reef and fully supporting The City under his command. Is Zavala ever going to be unambiguously right about anything? Or heroic without needing rescuing? Even if all he does is win an important battle only to have his victory overshadowed by the arrival of the Darkness or some other reversal of fortune, at least he would be shown doing something important and helpful. Right now, he often feels inflexible and in the way of the player.

I completely agree here. Zavala gets a bad rap. So many Destiny players out there have turned on the character because he wasn't willing to get revenge for Cayde. And I understand the Drifter's (or at least I think I do) desire to survive and via more ethically grey means, but Zavala still makes the good-faith effort to stand for something bigger than himself, but gets eternally clubbed for it.

[*]We need to hear from the Light. With the Books of Sorrow, and the Hive, and the Worm Gods, and Callus, we've seen many points of view of those who more or less follow the Darkness. But we have heard almost nothing from Agents of the Light. The Speaker could charitably be called very perceptive about the qualities those following the Light possess, but he could also be called a fraud. And who or what else is there? The Traveler is supposedly awake, but all we have from it are some visions and echoes of past quotes. Why does the Light seem to be on the run and losing the battle for the universe? What counter argument does the Light have vs the Darkness’ point of view that everything is trending toward universal heat death? What good is morality and safe places if resources are indeed going to eventually run out?

Furthermore, since Forsaken, there has been a trend of both Mara Sov and now the Drifter implying that the correct answer is not pure Light or pure Darkness, but that a balance of the two is the best way forward. Rejecting the Darkness is easy. It and its minions seem to only value destruction and power at the total expense of others. But if the Light is also not the right choice, why is that? Is the Light skittish and only in it for itself with the Traveler running away from most of it’s major fights over the last several million years? Is the Light aloof or uncaring in that it makes safe spaces but leave it up to the benefiting races to defend those spaces? Is the Light too rule bound or controlling or fanatical such that following it without compromise would somehow be bad for Humanity and the other races? Is the Traveler a rogue god of creation that is itself upsetting a delicate balance of life and death?
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Gameplay

You've put your finger on all the most important questions, I think.

In general I don’t have a lot of specific good things to day about Destiny 2’s gameplay because it feels like all of it is in a pretty good place as it is. If anything, gameplay of Destiny is stronger than it’s ever been. Missions feel more diverse and epic than before. Allies and set pieces like friendly ships and bombing runs and npcs actively holding defensive positions give more life to the world. Strikes, Missions, and Raids are seeing good variety and challenge. There are a few sore points I would like to point out, though. Just a few places I wish Destiny could improve to help adjust the balance between classes:

• Spectral Blades currently feels like it is completely dominating the Crucible. There is something about it’s high speed, strong damage resistance, and long runtime that makes me feel like I don’t get outplayed in the Crucible. Instead, the deciding factor in far too many games feels like the team that sports the most Spectral Blade Hunters is the one that will win. To me, it feels like fighting back even as a team does no good, running away only sees you run down, and even hiding or jumping off the edge of the map seems to do little to prevent the slaughter of the rest of your team. I don’t think the Super needs huge tweaks. Maybe cut five to ten seconds off of its runtime and drop its damage resistance by 25-50% to force players using Spectral Blades to rely more on their invisibility than their damage resistance when attacking.

I think the amount taken off of the super with each swing needs to be increased. Using stealth to get in close (even add a speed buff when cloaked and not attacking!) and securing a kill with a few swipes feels like the way it should naturally work, not as a cloud of swirling scythes bearing down on you from halfway across the map. I've killed Juggernauts mid-charge with some calmly placed pulse fire, but there's just nothing to do against Spectral Blades.

[*]Void Titans seem to be getting the short end of the abilities stick over the past few releases, and I think this is severely hurting the power fantasy of playing a Titan to be “the wall against which the Darkness breaks.” Specifically, the Warlock’s Well or Radiance’s combination of strong damage boost + healing + quick charging over shield makes the Warlock the defecto standard with regards to support. With a Well or Radiance, there are few dangers in PvE content that can significantly challenge a team of Guardians. Meanwhile, the Commander Titan’s Banner Shield is largely seen as superfluous given it’s smaller effective size and increased difficulty of getting a team to use it properly. Even it’s damage blocking is subpar because Well of Radiance provides enough damage mitigation for almost all content. If there was content that required blocking incoming damage from the front while a Fireteam moved forwards that would be something, but there's really nothing like that in Destiny with any consistency. I'd also love to see Ward of Dawn get some new offensive abilities in order to make it relevant again.

So, Ward (and Saint-14) is super useful on the Bridge of Folly, but not much of anywhere else that I can see. Code of the Commander's shield needs an increase to the damage buff to make it worth devoting an entire Guardian's damage output to putting up the shield. But hey, Magnetic Grenades feel like they're in a pretty great place.

[*]Then, somehow, with the Way of the Current Hunters, the Sentinel Titans have also lost their claim to fame of being the best at blocking damage. A Sentinel quickly loses bits of their Super bar as they block damage to the point that some heavy attacks such as Heavy Machine Guns and some forms of Golden Gun can kill a blocking Titan without too much trouble. Certainly, the Titan’s ability to block is shortened dramatically while blocking heavy damage. Meanwhile, an Arc Hunter using Whirlwind Guard is allowed to block an infinite amount of damage for the full duration of their Super’s normal runtime as even the strongest attacks to not shorten their Super bar. Plus, they even reflect the damage of many attack types. As someone who has historically loved my Void Titans and was thrilled with the Sentinel variant we got with Destiny 2, I’m pretty unhappy with the way the Sentinel’s most noteworthy abilities have been overshadowed by other classes.

It occurs to me that reflecting a lot of the minor enemies' fire back at them, while having to aborb majors/boss/Guardians' fire might make for more interesting play, while allowing them to feel a bit beefier. This could apply to Ward as well as the normal Sentinel block, and give Code of the Commander the ability to direct the angle of fire reflected to sort of use it as a weapon.

[*]At the same time, it feels fairly odd that Hunters using Golden Gun receive zero default damage resistance. Yes, Golden Gun is a powerful ranged attack, but when I see the single blast Supers like Nova Bomb or Blade Barrage absorbing quite a bit of damage while their super animation plays out, and I see roaming Supers such as Spectral Blades straight up tank incoming fire from three or four Guardians at a time, I can’t help but wonder why Golden Gun is so easy to put down. It feels like I need much more of a drop on my opponents when I am using Golden Gun than I do with literally any other Super since having even a pair of enemies looking my way while trying to engage means I’ll have a lot of difficulty getting even my first two shots off.
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I feel like stand-off distance is the balance that Golden Gun strikes here. You can nail someone in one hit at range, but you have to use the distance and some good aim. Making them damage resistant is going to mean lots more guaranteed destruction in medium-close ranges, and precision will be less a factor. Which I think goes against the concept. So it may be that Golden Gun has its own situational aspect.

Grind and Release Cycles

In a lot of ways, Destiny 2 is in good standing with me with regards to grind. We’re long past the days where you could not advance your Light Level except by doing a very limited number of activities or a Raid. Most of the time, if you are playing Destiny and keeping even just half an eye on the Powerful Rewards on offer when you play you will advance your Power Level. Things like Clan Rewards and “play one match of this or that” type Bounties mean it’s actually pretty hard to stagnate your Power Level even if you have a limited amount of time to play. But, again, there are a few places I’d love to see further improvement:

• Armor types, perks, and mods feel just a bit too hard to come by if you are trying to assemble anything resembling a coherent Build or appearance. Right now, for instance, I’m trying to make a Hunter build with Hand Cannon bonuses for aiming and dexterity, but in a week’s time I think I got zero pieces of armor with perks favoring the build I was working towards. Mods are in a little bit better position what with Black Armory combined with the Gunsmith. After a few weeks I was able to build myself five Paragon Mods that give my Hunter the ability to dodge/cloak/disorient/reload almost any time I need to. But, if hoping to RNG into favorable perks is hard, trying to build out a specific appearance with those perks and mods is all but impossible. Lets say I want a Survivalist Hunter that favors Hand Cannons and is wearing the current Vanguard style armor… I basically can’t do it! Not even over weeks or months. There are various solutions I’d like to see. Maybe letting me pick what any given picece of armor looks like. Maybe giving me more control over what perks or attributes a piece of armor has. Right now, it just feels like I’m a little too at the mercy of the RNG.

Very much my experience as well. Looks matter, but they often come secondary for me, because I want all perks to serve my build in some way. Which often means I can't have very tight control over how I look. I'd really like there to be some Armor forging ability added, via the Forges or some other way, where I can take a mod or a perk and target that specifically to be added to another piece of armor I've got.

[*]...Take Reckoning, for example. Tiers 2 and 3 have been released at such a pace that I feel like I’m being left behind. Instead of the content being released somewhat close to in time with my advancement in Power Level, it seems like content is released so that it can only be beaten by players who can play Destiny during the day all week long. I don’t think there’s been any real life physical prizes for things like Reckoning or Escalation Protocol that I’ve been locked out of like I have been for Raids, but I always fear that things will move further in that direction.

This is exacerbated with the new Prime Armor gameplay loop (which I happen to love), because if you haven't earned your high-level perks via Reckoning clears (which you HAVE to be high LL for), then you're going to be subjected to Giant Blockers and draining Invaders and all the worst that the sweatier players can muster while you struggle your way up. Which is where I find myself.

[*]How to solve all this given that there will always be some players with more time than others? Chiefly, I’d ask that the coolest physical rewards be far less tied to extremely short time span accomplishments. But that’s the easy one. For more general grind relief, why not stage big activities like Raids with a lower Power Level suitable for most players, basically by situating them at the previous seasons’s level cap, but simultaneously releasing an identical mode with a high Power Level meant to challenge the best teams and quickest players. Instead of new Raids being exclusive to a tiny fraction of the player base on day one, why not open them to everyone? I honestly think under such a system that some players and teams will provide some very surprising and innovative gameplay and strategies that we may not get to see until weeks or months later otherwise. For rewards, give out shaders and glows and emblems and stuff for the hard modes, but leave the physical gear open to more people.
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Sounds like you're advocating for Prestige and Normal to be released simultaneously in the future. Can't say that I see any issue there.

I absolutely agree with almost all of that. The new season is doing a great job of bringing old lore to the forefront and making it really feel relevant.

My only real issue is still with the power grind. I still fundamentally don’t understand the appeal of grinding out an extra 50 power level every three months. It’s bad design. I haven’t really engaged with The Reckoning, because I have to get back on the treadmill to do so, and, frankly, I don’t want to. But now we’ve reached the point where I’m an actual liability in Gambit Prime because I don’t have those perks and I’m underpowered against invaders, so I don’t do that either.

The current progression system is a literal “fuck you” from Bungie to the people that don’t play every week. It makes the entire game less fun.

I still wish they’d kill the soft cap. Make every purple engram a +1 to your average power level. So it won’t be guaranteed to help, but, eventually you’ll still be powering up just from playing whatever you want to play. Keep the milestone system as it is. Make the power tier Powerful Engrams a guaranteed +1 to whichever slot it drops for, make the higher tier Powerfuls either a guaranteed +3 for a slot, or a +5 to your average. Milestones are then still the best way to power up, but they won’t be literally the only way. The current system is complete garbage, especially considering that there’s no path forward if you’re not just grinding old content week after week.

My Previous Post

Ok, so that’s where I feel Destiny is right now, but where should it go?

We MUST fight the Darkness.

But, it can’t just be yet another enemy type. The Darkness should be a threat so large and all consuming that it threatens the entire solar system, including the planets themselves. Ok… but how do do that without just killing all players in the opening minutes of Destiny 3? Well… I would do a few radical things to add new challenge and meaning to the world of Destiny:

• Planets themselves need to become far more hostile: Only the biggest, scariest, enemies will be able to survive on the surface of a planet when the Darkness is everywhere and distorting everything. As a practical result, Patrol should no longer be the mode you drop into so you can have an easy drive towards the next quest marker. Instead, imagine if all the Patrol Zones were amped up to something near midpoint of one of the Enemies Are Moving Against Each Other events. That point where sure, you can still hold you ground with a fireteam, but where trying to stand in the open solo is going to be very tough. While we’re at it, lets flip things around. Instead of having Nightfalls or Flash Points that make things harder, let’s have Shafts of Daylight that cycle from Destination to Destination and make things easier temporarily. But have the Daylight move day to day.
  
  
• Restrict Guardian travel: Right now, we’re basically free to go where we want when we want. But with the Darkness drowning the entire solar system, that should no longer be the case. Instead, players at the Daylight planet can go to any other planet, but after that you are partially stuck. To travel anywhere, you’ll need to generate “Charges of Light” yourself by filling the “level up meter” (whatever we call that thing that gives us Eververse engrams…). Each destination will offer one easy bounty each day that gives you a Charge of Light. Get 100 kills. Generate 50 Orbs of Light. That kind of thing. But you can only do one of those bounties each day. After that, you are on your own. This might seem harsh, but Fireteams can piggyback on each other’s jumps, so with a little planning travel won’t be too difficult, but going in solo might find you fighting on a Nightfall planet’s patrol zone to get that Charge of Light you need to continue a quest.
  
  
• Change things based on a multi-month story: The Dreaming City, and in a lesser example Xûr’s Invitations, are showing us that stretching content into a predictable rhythm instead of letting us binge on it all in one sitting actually works pretty well. So, do that for the whole game. Make this a drawn-out protracted war, not a Ghaul/Oryx style over before it started beatdown. With some good planning and regular storytelling, we could have the Darkness encroaching ever closer as the Traveler expends the last of its energy giving us the chance to find the real solution… or whatever. From week to week there should be new missions, Strikes, adventures, quests, etc. But they should be leading somewhere. And from time to time big things should happen. Imagine if in week two we successfully raid a Clovis Bray facility on Titan… only to have the entire moon consumed by the Darkness the next week making it a permanent Nightfall Destination.
  
  And yes, this is going to make Destiny’s universe advance without some players, so changes will need to be made. Destiny 3’s main story flow needs to be based on each character’s start date instead of a global progress common to all players. Things like special Crucible weeks and festivals can still take place even as one player is on Week 4 and another has completed the initial campaign. For fireteams playing together, you simply take on the progress of the fireteam leader. At the end of the main storyline will be a common ground where all players eventually end up so Destiny 3 can introduce new content and DLC without having to worry too much about which week players are on.
  
  
• Give us a branching storyline. If Bungie is already keeping track of character level progress week to week, might as well keep track of three or four important choices spread throughout the campaign. Maybe the end result is always both the Darkness and the Traveler leave our system or are destroyed, but the how and the why and the implications for the distant future (a universe again filled with Light and life vs one that succumbs fully to death and Darkness, for example) while our Guardians in the present day work to improve the prospects of our solar system no matter the larger outcome.
  
  
• Take Gambit-style invasions and add them to patrol: Imagine if at certain times, say during Public Events that have at least three Guardians participating, a single Guardian who has chosen some sort of path of Darkness can “invade” the patrol space and try and make things tougher for the good guys. I think we’ve all long since realized that Destiny is more than capable of combining PvP and PvE seamlessly, and now with Gambit we’ve seen Bungie finally fulfill that vision to some small extent. Yeah, they’d need good story-based reasons to let Guardians occasionally attack other Guardians, but once they figure out the lore, I’d love for Patrol to be just that much more dangerous!

Beyond that?

Just play the various plot threads (Mara Sov, Rasputin, the Exo Stranger, Variks & the Kell of Kells, Savathûn, The Dreaming City Curse) out to their edge-of-your-seat-mind-blowing conclusions in combination of the overwhelming threat of the Darkness. Easy-peasy!

...on and reaffirm that Maya Sunderesh is the Exo Stranger. Not her sister that was mentioned exactly once before Warmind. Thanks.

How about you? Where do you want Destiny to go next?

I agree, Zevala has taken the brunt of the criticism of late. His struggles with holding everything together without Cayde, and now Ikora, need some expansion.

Equally, we have plenty of voices saying you can use darkness, and that the Light isn't all it's cracked up to be. We need a new speaker to advocate for the Light and the Traveler, to tell her side of the story.

From a supers standpoint:

Ark Strider suffers from dodging/reflecting being too limited compared to stealth. You run out of super too fast while people can just jump away most of the time, plus they see you coming, so they can prep. This means from a melee standpoint players will choose voidblades as they offer far more advantages to compensate for the lack of range and reflection.

Void Titans have an advantage in that they have a melee power that can block, plus a ranged attack. Their lack of use is due again to the same limitations that ark striders have in that everyone can see you coming and avoid you most of the time, jumping and running away.

The bubble and the shield are also harder to use then the dawnblade, so from a blueberry standpoint why go that route?

I think there is an issue with having to level up before trying the new content. I have a newborn now and can't put 10 hours a week into the game anymore. By the time I get to max out level on one character the new content will be out.

Same with titles and such, I'm not going to be able to reset pvp 5 times in a season, and if i'm lucky I'll get gambit once. It's a bit dishearting now to know I can't do the top tier stuff and I haven't seen the inside of a raid since Eater of Worlds. it would be nice if there was an option to face raids at a lower level for the armor and weapons sans the high PL.

In Forsaken, he opposed hunting down Uldren Sov and in the lore he practically turned his back on the Reef and only offered The City's help if Petra Venj and the Awoken would commit to abandoning the Reef and fully supporting The City under his command.

That offer came before Cayde's death.

In the Abide the Return Lore Tab, Zavala actually publicly supports Guardians' involvement in fighting the Curse:

Kamala Rior climbs onto a railing at the top of the Tower in the Last City. "Guardians of the Tower!" she calls out.

A few look her way. One begins dancing at her feet. Others fool around with a purple ball.

Kamala can feel Zavala watching. Tess and Rahool, too, though both pretend otherwise. She goes on, "The Awoken are Humanity's shield. We entered the Reef Wars to prevent a Fallen coup here on Earth. We met Oryx head-on and endured immeasurable sacrifice, all in the name of a shared future."

The dancing Guardian falls still. The purple ball is forgotten.

"We ask you now for your aid. One of our sacred cities is at risk. There are so few of us left; we cannot defend it alone. We do not ask this for free: We will open our armories; we will share our wisdom; we will teach you what we can. Please. Come to the Dreaming City. Fight with us."

"The Vanguard stands with the Reef," Zavala calls, strong and true. Kamala turns to look at him, shocked, and he smiles: apologetic, genuine, honorable.

-------

Is the Light skittish and only in it for itself with the Traveler running away from most of it’s major fights over the last several million years? Is the Light aloof or uncaring in that it makes safe spaces but leave it up to the benefiting races to defend those spaces? Is the Light too rule bound or controlling or fanatical such that following it without compromise would somehow be bad for Humanity and the other races? Is the Traveler a rogue god of creation that is itself upsetting a delicate balance of life and death?

My own theory is that the Traveler's been chased and beaten to a pulp by the Darkness every time it tries to uplift races, but because Humanity is Special™, this is the only time it fought back and remained dormant — allow Humanity to Become Legend™ enough to fight back against the Pathways into Darkness, with Ghaul/the Red Legion forcing its hand into revealing it's been alive.

I think the Praxic Order are the ones to actually have moral objections to using Darkness, with the Vanguard only allowing Gambit/The Drifter to hang around to see what controlled Darkness could do for Humanity. I doubt the Traveler wants anything beyond to be some sort of gardener god. Simplistic and goes along with the Cultivator/Collector dualism of the Light/Darkness.

That or the Traveler is just the Cyborg having fun playing Durandal with his own army of undead.