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There have a been a lot of posts about the loot update, it not working, and general suggestions about how to improve the game. I wanted to take some time and write up some of my thoughts on the game, it's strengths, weaknesses, as well as some missed opportunities.
First I have to say the world is beautiful. I love the aesthetics and flying around the open world is truly breathtaking sometimes. I will admit I could use a little bit more sci-fi in some places, or some more moments of awe, but I have a feeling this isn't the end of the world and at some point it's going to change and grow. The game play is engaging and I'm having a good time with it. I'm just over 100 hours in already, but I've feel like I've experienced everything the game has to offer at this point. In my opinion this game is more closely tied to Diablo than it is something like Destiny. This is a loot hunting game, going forward my ideas will focus on that.
DIFFICULTY
The difficulty in this game is very counter-intuitive. Within each GM difficulty there are multiple tiers of difficulty, and to players this is very confusing. Why do the enemies I encounter on GM Freeplay feel totally different than the enemies I encounter in GM1 Strongholds? This feels very strange, and should be changed so that globally a difficulty means something. I think if you reevaluate your difficulty system you can fix a lot of the current shortcomings of the current game. What if you took your current GM system and split it into 5 different tiers. GM1-5. On each tier the difficulty for all the enemies would be the same. Now people know exactly what they are getting into when they join a game. Additionally you would now be able to incentivize everything differently. Strongholds give you a guaranteed ability. Contracts give you a component. Freeplay can give you a guaranteed weapon after X number of events, ect. Now I have the ability to identify what I'm after, run an activity that helps me obtain what I'm after, all on a difficulty that's cohesive and makes sense. Not only that but it encourages people to play all the different modes of your game.From this point you can then add the other four GM difficulties, and bake in additional luck, drop rate, difficulty, ect. This would allow us as players to have something to progress into, while helping to reduce the reliance on the luck stat. This would also allow you to tune the game for incremental difficulties instead of having monumental jumps that scale on multiple levels within a single difficulty as you do now. You could also start adding additional guaranteed drops as the difficulty scales up, or you could add guaranteed masterwork embers as the difficulty scales. This system would ideally encourage people to farm for gear, equip the gear that best suits them to push challenging content, and play on the toughest difficulty that they can manage for the best rewards.
LUCK & HARVESTING
These stats seem to be unnecessary with the changes I've suggested above. Luck needs to be removed from gear and baked into the content difficulty. It does nothing good for the game, and only encourages people to stack an un-enjoyable and often detrimental stat to get better loot.
People want the most loot for their effort, so instead of stacking dps and attempting higher difficulties they stack +luck and tank their dps becoming a hindrance to the team they join. This is poor design, and the same thing that happened with Diablo 3 and magic find. At some point the D3 team changed magic find from being an individual stat to being a stat that was average over the group. This then turned into 1-2 people stacking nothing but luck and just being there as buffers while the other 2 stacked dps. Again this was a poor design that eventually led to them removing the magic find stat entirely and baking additional drop percentages into the difficulty tiers.
I really think removing the Luck stat and upping the base drop rate for each difficultly would have a very positive impact on the game. You should be building and optimizing your character for the highest tier possible, and then be rewarded for tacking more difficult content instead of stacking luck and grinding on the lowest GM difficulty. The same is true for Harvest. Bakes these additional rewards into the difficulty setting. It will encourage people to gear up, and bump up the difficulty.
FREEPLAY
More events. Keep making and adding new events to all of the Freeplay encounters. I would also like to see some additional wildlife. There has to be a Dragon or two out there somewhere! (They could also be utilized as a bossed for the Cataclysm suggestion below)
LOST SECTORS (?)
I don't know what to call these Lost Sector style dungeons that you find in the open world, but they are actually pretty neat. I've gone into all of them looking for rune for one of my challenges, and every time I think they should be utilized more. Put some more enemies into them with a boss type guy at the end. Make them worthwhile enough for a group who is grinding Freeplay to clear out any one of these they come across. I just want more variety, more reasons to do things. You could put some small but substantial reward at the end. 10 guaranteed masterwork embers or something, plus whatever the boss drops, and have a chest that's locked until the everything in the room is dead.
STRONGHOLDS
I think it's safe to say we all want more of these. The more you can give us the better. There should also be a Stronghold play list, with a stacking buff that gives you additional drop rate % for each strong hold you have completed while in the playlist. Make 5 the maximum stack, something reasonable so it doesn't feel detrimental to people when they have to step out. This playlist should also have a base bonus as well, so it's more beneficial to queue for a random stronghold instead of farming the same one over and over. You could also have the same type of playlists for contracts and Freeplay. Or maybe on Freeplay you get a stacking buff lets stay with 5 for each event you complete. With the current load times in this game these playlists would encourage people to engage in activities for longer, and it would help eliminate the feeling of constantly bouncing between loading screens.
EXPERIENCE
We need something to do with all of this experience that we are earning. I recommend looking to Diablo 3's Paragon system as an option. As soon as you hit level 30 the experience screens seem pointless. I know they effect your Alliance exp, but that's it. We should have some sort of specialization, or general buff choices that we earn points for through all of the experience we are earning at end game. Some sort of character progression outside of gear. Maybe they can be basic things like weapon damage %, or Fire damage %, Pick up radius, ect. That way they can be the same for every Javelin and the player can customize them to their liking. Having these buffs be generic would make it so you didn't have to come up with specifics buffs or skill bonuses for each Javelin. Maybe let them be upgraded into endlessly and each point we earn is more expensive than the last. This would ensure that no matter what activity we are doing we are advancing our character outside of drops.
CATACLYSMS
I don't know what you intend these to be, but I am hoping these are something like Greater Rifts from Diablo. Make it so that you need consumables that you earn from other activities in the game to activate one of these cataclysms. I'm hoping they are randomized strongholds basically. I don't need these to make sense, I just want them to be fun. I'd love to see something like randomized zones, and randomized enemies. Maybe have some sort of point value assigned to a room, where you can see 100 basic enemies, or 10 Furys. Maybe add some modifiers to the Legendary enemies so they do different things, again like Diablo. Give them a bit of a glow so they are identifiable and give them a pool of a bunch of abilities, which they choose 3-4 of, very similar to Diablo. The end boss could be any of the Strong hold bosses, or several others that you design for this. I know some of them would need retooling, but if it could be done it would be great. I would expect that each faction would need more diversity than they currently have now, but those additional units can be added as they are introduced. With the rooms being populated individually and randomly each play through you never know what you're going to get.The reward form this would need to be different than elsewhere, what if you did something like an Enhancement slot on each piece of gear we have. Each time you run and complete a Cataclysm you would get a few upgrades to put where you liked. Each upgrade point would add 1% of power to that piece of gear. If you did this the Cataclysms would have to have a difficulty scaling that's totally separate, that you would select before each time you started one. Obviously you would need to continually turn the difficulty up to keep upgrading your gear. You couldn't just run the level 1 Cataclysm over and over to make your gear super powerful. I would look at Diablo 3 greater rifts for inspiration here.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and I really hope someone from Bioware gets a chance to read this. This is my first post like this for any game, and I only spent the time to write it up because Bioware seems very active and willing to listen to feedback.
Please pardon the random formatting edits.
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