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Hai Reddit friends! Over the past two days I was on an 1800 mile road trip, so I listened to about 15 hours of Destiny Podcasts because what else do you do when you drive that far alone and can’t play video games. I adore listening to other people's thoughts and dreams of the game, but I have decided it's time for me to share my hopes and wishes for the next iteration of Destiny, and whatever that may be.
Let me also preface this with a bit about me. I am a full time working, mom to 3, married to a guy I met through the destiny/twitch community. I play Destiny for 3-4 hours each night after the kiddos go to bed. I play a decent mix of pvp, pve, gambit, raids etc. I don’t like raids, not since Wrath of the Machine, but I have done a few of the D2 raids. I played the beta of Destiny 1. I didn’t get back into it until right before the April update and I went hard. I leveled up all 3 characters on xbox, moved to ps4 right before Age of Triumph and then played both consoles until D2. I am not a streamer, a youtuber, a podcaster. I just play video games because I love them. I got lucky because my husband is a streamer and I found friends to play with through that, but I have also had to find my own friends to play with when he was off playing something different during droughts. I was the one that played every week, regardless (except for a few weeks but that was due to health issues with myself or kiddos). We found a clan that I get to play with. I found other streamers I adore and consider real friends.
So enough about my back story, here is my thoughts. Also, if you don’t agree, that's totally cool. These are my opinions and I am in NO way telling the amazing humans behind Bungie what they should do, just what I loved and wish they continued to do in the next world we go to. This is going to be long, so if you read through the whole thing, you're the real MVP. I am trying to get everything as organized as best as I can, but I have A LOT of thoughts on this. Complaints, praises, and dreams for the future. Again, I am NOT speaking for everyone here, and maybe not even a majority of players. But I had to get this off my chest.
I feel that we have a lot of nostalgia for D1. But does anyone remember the way year 3 pvp was? Sticky nades anyone? I know D2 had a rough start. The sandbox was scary, nothing felt good to me, and the fact that 99% of my trials gear is on PS4 and I switched to PC makes me sad.
So let's start with pvp. I am mainly a casual potato in this realm of the game. I love jumping into the crucible with my friends, or solo, just to knock my bounties out. I don’t have the pinnacle weapons, I just don’t have patience for it. BUT I adore the idea of having those pinnacle weapons. However, I miss being able to run to the tower to the crucible vendor and purchase weapons each week with the legendary marks I earned. Do you remember the god roll palindrome? I didn’t even like hand cannons in D1 and I bought that baby. I don’t really care for the way weapons and armor drops at the end of the crucible now and I don’t like the packages because I normally delete everything I get from them, but if we could purchase weapons from Shax on a weekly rotating basis, get armor/weapon drops from playing, and we can SEE what everyone else gets, I would be down with that. I miss getting salty when my friends would get a god roll weapon I was grinding for. To me, that was a ton of fun.
Now for the weapons. We need new weapons. Sure, it’s neat to get things like Last Word and Outbreak Prime/Perfected. But do you know what would be even cooler? More weapons like Whisper of the Worm or Midi Mini. Yes, I love being able to play with weapons I adored in D1, but the way they moved Hawksaw (my bae in D1) to D2, Swift Ride, THAT is the shenanigans I want. It’s been mentioned before, and I will get into the Eververse stuff later on, but if we could take the design work that goes into ships/sparrows/shaders and put that into weapons/armor we can EARN I would be happier. I understand it's hard to make 9 billion weapons to all look different, but if you keep reskinning weapons why should I grind for them? Random rolls? There aren’t that many variations I feel. I want to look dope. Fashion game is a big thing for me, it is for a ton of players. So please, let me have some dope looking legendary hand cannons/pulse rifles.
Meta. The meta needs to be changed more frequently. I rarely play with meta weapons, mainly because I haven’t grinded for them in comp (I am just not that good) or my RNG is butts. I don’t think it's as fun to be forced to play with the same 3-4 weapons for months on end, especially if you love another weapon. Sandbox changes are tricky, I have listened to the vidocs from Bungie when they explain how one small move can break the sandbox, I get that. BUT we had a crucible playground, the Labs, and we don’t use it. Maybe D2 could have a permanent Crucible Labs (maybe once a month) that we can test out new metas? Again, I am not sure how that works, but it seems like a good idea to test..
Gambit. Gambito is a ton of fun, if you have a full team. I am one and a halfish resets away from Dredgen and I soloed a ton of it. I wish the weapons were a smidge darker and had different perks than the regular weapons, but that’s only because they aren’t vanguard weapons, they are supposed to be dark. Similar to Thorn, they might be more fun if they had “darker” perks? Maybe that’s me pushing it, but it would be neat and a way to make things different. Also refer to meta for this, because the meta here needs to change too.
Eververse. This is a tricky one for me. Personally, I don’t care about my ship's/sparrows like I did in D1. I don’t want to buy them, I want to earn them. Skins, shaders/chroma, emotes. THAT is something I can get behind buying with bright dust/silver. I bought “Instructional Dance” as soon as I bought D1 because husband and I loved to Dougie together in the tower and on the bodies of our enemies. I have WAY too many emotes now. The eververse packages are neat, but I would rather have those things drop in game and be tied to an activity vs RNG packages I earned from playing the game. The ornaments for the Outbreak Perfected are (again, in my opinion) perfect to have to purchase with real money, but the sparrows/ships, I delete 99% of them. And that sucks, because they are mega gorgeous, but I don’t feel connected to them at all.
PVE. I am a pve addict. When no one was online, I ran strikes. I went into the worlds and farmed materials. I love doing that stuff. I used to help strangers in the tower run nightfalls in D1 & I still do in D2. I wish the nightfalls were harder. The modifiers, and having to chose those is a pain in my ass. Heroic nightfalls were hella hard, and the rewards were amazing. I remember farming the Shield Brothers nightfall for the Treads Upon Stars for husband. Hiding on the pillars so you didn’t get smashed, and then wiping right before you finished. We did that for weeks until his dropped. But it was HARD. When D2 came out and we had timers/orb things we had to shoot to extend the time, that was awesome to me. Watching Datto speed run those was hilarious because that guy is so good at that puzzly stuff. I don’t turn on modifiers for nightfalls anymore. I don’t need to. I run them for the weekly powerful engram, and I MIGHT run them to help others get their strike specific weapon/sparrow, but nothing else drops that means anything so why? How many times did you farm Omnigul for the Imago Loop? Be honest here. If you played D1, you grinded that. Same for The Grasp of Malok. That was a blast. I wish we had more relevant weapons in strikes/nightfalls to grind for.
Another thing I hope we get in D3 (I will just refer to the next iteration as D3 because it's shorter to type) is the world's we already have. I know bringing weapons back is a bit, well, annoying. BUT if I can go back and explore the Dreadnaught again, that would be neat. When we went back to the cosmodrome, even for the ONE mission, that was amazing. I miss being able to load into Vault of Glass and play Hide and Go Seek with my fire team. 6 member patrols could create some amazing content. Forges were a ton of fun, for the first few weeks. Maybe add things into that instead of making them irrelevant unless you want the Blacksmith title? I would go back to the forges if new pve weapons had a low chance of dropping from them with random rolls. The public events are a ton of fun, I still “enjoy” screaming (in my head) at other players not knowing how to make them heroic. But they are essentially pointless unless you are getting your weekly powerful engram. I just feel like these activities need more of a point in the long run, instead of trying to create new activities all the time. When lost sectors had a purpose again with Forsaken and we had to go hunt barron's, THAT was a good use of my time. Now? I just use them in between public events to keep busy while I wait.
Vendors in the tower. I really like Ikora having a powerful engram for completing 20 bounties each week. I MISS gunsmith having his Armsday order. That was a blast to get mail each week, and you didn’t know what weapon it was or if it would be any good, but I logged in for it regardless. Factions. I am Dead Orbit (Best Orbit) through and through. But I want to be able to use them whenever I want. If I run out of planetary materials for upgrading weapons because I banked them all at Jalaal that’s my own dang fault. Running lost sectors to farm tokens was almost heartbreaking. I disliked that tremendously. I did love seeing which faction won, that was neat, but it also made me pledge to FWC for the silly good sidearm, and I don’t use sidearms lol. Having different weapons for each faction seemed unfair because we just went for which one was better, not because we loved a faction more.
Raids. I LOVED D1 raids. They were the perfect mix of puzzly, hard, and fun. I don’t feel that way about D2 raids. Maybe it’s just the group I run with, but it’s hard for me to even want to attempt raids. I also miss Heroic versions of the raids. The challenges are fun, and I know it's essentially pointless to make two raids when no one will use the “basic” raid after Heroic drops, but that was more fun to me. Hard mode Kingsfall was the most annoying/fun thing I did, and I only did it twice, but I remember to this day our buddy Chris popping his Titan bubble to save me in the final fight. Wrath of the Machine is still my favorite raid to this day. I think it was the mix of being able to carry people through it, but them still feeling important because you had to work as a team, that was fun to me. I am going to give raids a shot again with the new one dropping, but personally, I can’t put my finger on why I don’t enjoy them so much. (Ps, the raid development team is incredible, they all look amazing and the puzzles are dope as heck, just not my jam and I don’t know why…)
Events. I really enjoy our spring and fall events. The Revelry was a hecking blast to me. I do wish the forest had harder difficulties the further you went, and SkipNadeCrucible might have been better off in its own playlist, but reusing the forest was neat. However, why take away my neat ass ornaments? I earned those. Imagine this, a brand new player logs into the tower, and you see another player with wings on their helmet. How did they get those? Oh a previous activity that they grinded for, but guess what, we have those every few months so stick around and get something neat next time. That seems like a better use of design work to me.
I think I have covered everything I can think of with this, and I don’t really have a TLDR other than I love this game, I just really hope things kinda merge for D3 from all the things we loved about D1 & D2, but we get to experience more new things that have a purpose. I could write a bunch more about things regarding power level and how dope the secret missions are, but my forearms hurt from typing all of this. Remember, this is just my thought process and we 100% don’t have to agree, I just wanted to speak my mind and this is the place I can do that. I want to see your thoughts too so please write them below (just be nice). Also, Bungie, please just make D3 the last iteration and don’t take my things away again. I want to load into a raid with a white weapon to troll new players because that's hilarious.
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