What can be added to Destiny to make it better?

[wings]

Time trials?

[wings]

Getting rid of the 25k cap for Glimmer. There is no linmit to how many Cryptarch items I can store in the vault so why the limit now that exotics take 7k to upgrade?

[markopolo]

eeekk.... 7k?

Thank goodness I don't have many exotics, lest they cut into my shader addiction.

Oooh.... another addition: more shaders

[mannon]

I'm telling you, shader crafting! Collect components then pick your texture, primary, and secondary colors and bingo, custom shader. You can still keep some textures and effects back to make the other shaders special, but it would give us so much more customization. Plus collecting the textures and colors to use gives us more loot to collect. ;p

Bungie should seriously raise the glimmer cap at least. It is set awfully low, and I don't really see the point anyway. I can't think of a way to really abuse glimmer to the point that it breaks the game or makes you totally OP. The closest you can get is what, ammo consumables? Everything else requires more than just glimmer alone.

[markopolo]

Customizable shader crafting...

you had me at hello

[markopolo]

Addition/Ammendment: Give the factions elemental damage "supremacy"

Rationalle: right now... other than their gear, there's no reason to buy a faction's weapons. By giving the factions a mastery of certain types of elemental damage, you give us a reason to rank up all the factions. Want the best arc snipers? get to work on Dead Orbit! Want solar? Get New Monarchy... you get the idea.

[wings]

Customisable shaders? How about being able to customise your class item itself? I'd have the Crimson Omen. So you can create may be stuff from other games from (near) scratch.

[wittyscorpion]

IMHO the best thing that they can make this game better, besides making vault accessible outside the Tower:

add a top-down map view! With all the crazy technology and magic they have in this era, surely some scientists have figured out a way to make that available at Guardians' finger tips.

Once they have the top-down map view, they can do the following:

1) show incoming and in-progress public events on that map;
2) show hints of where the destination materials can be found;
etc.

[markopolo]

I won't lie to you Witty....

I have no idea why no one has never mentioned that yet.....

[mannon]

I think I would just integrate a holographic 3D map from a bird's eye view into the ghost "screen" when you whip him out. Maybe have one button switch from zoomed in on your area to zoomed out to whole planet. Map rotates around as you turn with you always in the middle for the close up view then for planet view it centers itself, but probably keeps the rotation or else it doesn't rotate but has an arrow icon for your facing direction, but I kinda like the idea of it rotating.

[markopolo]

Addition/Amendment: add mats to shaders to allow camoflague/invisibility

Rationale: Because why should the Fallen get all the fun? At the cost of 1 spinmetal per 5 seconds, it will allow a guardian to be a invisible ninja of light!

[markopolo]

Addition/Ammendment: add mats to shaders to allow camoflague/invisibility

Rationalle: Because why should the Fallen get all the fun? At the cost of 1 spinmetal per 5 seconds, it will allow a guardian to be a invisible ninja of light!

[mannon]

If you're going to do that it should just be a consumable like a stealthboy and have a cooldown like ammo packs.

I'd rather keep shaders 100% cosmetic so no one feels compelled to pick them for any reason other than style and rarity.

[wings]

Get rid of the cooldown on synthesis packs.

[wings]

Interesting piece I agree with regarding the game:

www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/12/10/destiny-must-truly-expand-if-it-wants-to-survive/

[wittyscorpion]

With my way of playing Destiny, I actually don't care much about his ideas of expanding the game, but it's probably just me.

I am fundamentally a shooter player. My wife and I can play Halo campaigns repeatedly, just to shoot stuff. Destiny is multitudes better for providing that experience, mainly by adding interesting weapons/armors with varied abilities to freshen up the experience of shooting-the-same-enemy-at-the-same-locations.

Another main area of adding content (besides new weapons/armors) is the raid. As proven by VoG, at least for me one raid content can hold me over for 2+ months. This is because each play though can be quite different, due to the weapons/subclasses/armors I am using. As I earn loots from the raids, I can come back with different and better approach the next run. Even with CsE out, I can see myself going back to VoG for at least another month.

Of course more stories, characters, and new areas to explore would be very nice, and I hope Bungie would do that. However, as it stand for Destiny 1, even if it does not happen (which is quite likely), I will still be happy with the fun I am having with the game and will keep buying expansion packs similar to "The Dark Below" (s small set of new missions along a quest line, a new raid, and a big pool of new weapons/armors).

IMHO the experience I mentioned above is what Bungie is shooting for: primarily a shooter with MMO like investment system (but significant better due to much less painful grinding). I maintain that it is NOT an MMO and Bungie has no intention to make it one (I hope).

[iw5000]

Dec 14, 2014 11:24:26 GMT -5 wings said:

Interesting piece I agree with regarding the game:

www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/12/10/destiny-must-truly-expand-if-it-wants-to-survive/

That was an interesting article.

I disagree with one of his main points. The point of people playing for their own unique segments. I don't think there are that many players who love (and play) only crucible. Or only play Story. Or who only do Raids. I think there are just 'Destiny Players'. Mostly one type of player. People who play the game and simply have fun, wanting to level up.

That said, I do think from within that large group, some have more success than others. But success there isn't due to skill, but solely due to 'who you know'. Knowledge, info bases (like this site) and tight friend networks basically are what's needed to advance, and those NOT having all three, stall out in their progress. Being 'skilled' in Destiny isn't really related to skill. 'Skill' is mostly related to time played and the above factors.

I have two friends (local to me) on PS4 who play this game. They are not on this board and play solo. One tried the VoG once, and the other hasn't done it yet. They are having fun mostly doing strikes and bounties. Would they like to do more Crucible? Raid? Hell yes, but just have stalled out, even with the LFG route. It would seem they are more typical. Actual Bungie data seems to support this. Six weeks into Destiny (mid Oct), Bungie released data on Raid completion. 3.2 million players. 14% had completed the VoG on Normal. 1.1% had completed it on Hard. Have things really changed that much in the last six weeks? Maybe it's now 28% and 3%?


As far as Bungie's new DLC, and the article? The Raid is great. There is a lot to do. The new mission/Strikes are fun. But seeing them all after a week, thinking on it.....the article writer is right. The three areas are just a few rooms extended off of the old maps. The 'Wakening' Strike is just like a hallway and a room coming off the Moon map. The DLC shouldn't be called new strikes or missions....but simply "YOU GET A FEW NEW ROOMS"

And the new guns and stuff? But after a week of playing to experience it all...again, a little bit of a downer. A bulk of the new gun stuff is just taking guns I have already spent dozens of hours grinding on.....and then making me grind dozens of hours again just to keep the gun up to pace. Hours and hours on my Suros. Hours and hours on my IceBreaker. I would love to explore other guns and options (Bad JuJu, Thorn, etc...)...but I simply DO NOT HAVE THE TIME. And I am the dipshit who spent probably six to seven hours a day the past four days playing. WTF. I feel duped.

And that's where I am at now. The exhilarating fun of the new raid, Crotas End, ...is the drug(& buzz) that is keeping me going. Great stuff there. But the feeling of being duped/played as described above is quickly sobering me up, way to fast. I feel like this DLC is just one big con job to allow Bungie to give all those players (the 70% who haven't kept up)...the ability to get a free pass to catch up, while keeping people like me occupied and busy with mindless dumb shit. Bungie is saying to me..."Hey Stone, we see you are out ahead. Here you go, redo all your weapons again. That will keep you busy!!"


Like the author said, Bungie's business model does not have subscriptions. So they don't have the resources to give us new worlds and areas. Only dribbling out tiny bits in DLC. And IF they don't allow the masses out there to keep up with the front-runners, they will be out of a job. Going forward, is there really any hope out there in avoiding time sink bs?

[markopolo]

I disagree with the article.

I think Destiny is doing a fine job of balancing the two genres to be a MMOoter. I think the problem is that there are people are trying to play Destiny like it's CoD and are getting frustrated... and people who are trying to play it like a MMO and are getting frustrated.

I will agree that I was expecting "more" from the update. I dunno... I knew it was going to be Hive based, but I thought there'd be more. But I can totally understand why they did what they did... this was an "update"... this was "1.1" As much as I think they should have given us a new planet... or 10/15 new missions... or a new class... or a new subclass... or a new enemy... all of those things are Destiny 2.X stuff. I expect the rest of the solar system next game. I expect Pluto to be a tropical paradise... I expect to drive our enemies from earth.... I expect a lot more. I think a lot of people thought this update would be a new game... and it's not.

I think once the updates are done to Destiny 1 and we go to Destiny 2, there'll be more significant stuff.

[iw5000]

Here's a good article

www.destructoid.com/bungie-keep-destiny-s-vault-of-glass-relevant-and-fix-the-rewards-284908.phtml

The jist here is this. Vault of Glass Hard mode is still a fun experience and a good accomplishment. Why is Bungie already downplaying it as nothing more than a glorified farm quest for shards? Why shelve this raid as outdated? The smart thing to do would be to add some nice 330 weapons as an end prize. Or maybe even some new shards, or even some Lv 31 gear.

Bad move on Bungie's part, with how it's going.

[iw5000]

Dec 15, 2014 11:32:38 GMT -5 markopolo said:

I disagree with the article.

I think Destiny is doing a fine job of balancing the two genres to be a MMOoter. I think the problem is that there are people are trying to play Destiny like it's CoD and are getting frustrated... and people who are trying to play it like a MMO and are getting frustrated.

I will agree that I was expecting "more" from the update. I dunno... I knew it was going to be Hive based, but I thought there'd be more. But I can totally understand why they did what they did... this was an "update"... this was "1.1" As much as I think they should have given us a new planet... or 10/15 new missions... or a new class... or a new subclass... or a new enemy... all of those things are Destiny 2.X stuff. I expect the rest of the solar system next game. I expect Pluto to be a tropical paradise... I expect to drive our enemies from earth.... I expect a lot more. I think a lot of people thought this update would be a new game... and it's not.

I think once the updates are done to Destiny 1 and we go to Destiny 2, there'll be more significant stuff.

I disagree completely with you. I don't think ANYONE expected the DLC to be a new game. Not a single person.

But I do think many people thought it would be slightly more than two new hallways & rooms (at least for the Strike missions). And in regards to guns, I think many people are getting frustrated that most of one's efforts with new guns, are just going to be RE-GRINDING old guns allllll over again, to get them updated. I was able to squeeze a lot of time to play this game the past week, ...and I couldn't even keep pace. I got my Suros done. Big deal. At this pace, I might take me a month to get four exotics done? What's Bungie want? Six hours of playing a day? *(I suppose the Murmur is kind of a cool new gun, but if that's the best we can do....)

Personally speaking, I am find with the dlc. The Raid alone was worth it to me. Just that one night we did it. That was worth $20 on it's own. And the two new rooms I got were fun too. So the cost/price isn't a factor to me. But I can see where people might gripe. It's pretty limited. My biggest beef is with my other point, that this WHOLE process is one big time burn/grind to try and get people to catch up with each other. Allow the 70% in the back to catch up (which in and by itself is ok)...by making the 30% in the front simply waste time repeating sh1t ALLLLL over again (which is not ok)

[hebbnh]

I think a big issue is Bungie terming the Dark Below an expansion. It's not. It's just DLC -- completely worthwhile and fairly priced DLC in my opinion (compared to CoD map packs for $15 each, bleh), but still DLC. There's not enough content to justify calling it an expansion. The true expansion is going to be the "comet" release between Destiny and Destiny 2, which is called for in Bungie's contract with Activision. I'm guessing that's where we'll see truly new areas vs opening up a couple rooms and hallways we couldn't access before. I'd imagine that's probably a year or so away though.

I really hope they do something to keep the VoG relevant other having as the de facto ascendant material farm. A lot of people are overstocked on those big time, and with Crota's End gear needing radiant materials instead, that doesn't leave much/any incentive to replay VoG other than to help friends out. At a minimum they HAVE to change the exotic drops to 331 ATK versions. While I appreciate the MIDA I got yesterday, it's not really going to do me any good or be worth using until I can get it reXurbished, and who knows when that'll be. Major oversight there.

[mannon]

I don't like they way they did this either. Oh I assumed all the grinding would be there anyway. But jumping directly to level 31 based solely on vendor gear? Plus, what was the point of gutting the old legendaries? Level progression was already very skippy where you get to 20 and might progress a level or two at a time to 24 or so when you can start buying some vanguard armor them boom boom boom you'd go to 26 and 28 pretty quick. Now it's even worse. You'll skip 26, go strait to 28, and once you level your armor up and get an exotic you'll hit 30 pretty fast too.

It does feel like a ripoff. I just finished working my butt off to get to level 28 and hadn't even managed to run VoG yet and now there's all this new stuff. And it was easier to get. I rebought my exotic, purchased two vanguard items, and Rahool gave me some gloves and boom. Now I just have to grind the resources and I'll be level 31. But it feels like a missed opportunity. Players who were in the right spot at the right time (around level 24) are even luckier because they effectively get to skip ahead to catch up with me right away doing what would have only gotten them to 28 before, plus all those players ahead of me that were 30 have had to do the same and now I'm almost caught up with them other than actually running CsE and getting new raid gear. (Though, I'm still weak on weapons.)

It doesn't feel like extra content. It feels like replacement content. Like they gave us new stuff but took old stuff away so we actually have about the same amount of stuff... Aside from a new raid, that is. And it's as you said with the new areas... just a few extra rooms here and there... woo

I'll be honest. I would have preferred them pool those resources making all the extra rooms and just give us one big new area, preferably with a new public space for patrol as well. That would have been great.

I have been really enjoying the Eris stuff, though. And I like that a lot of it has been a bit different. It's pretty cool on that note. Plus I'm actually getting some usable items as mission rewards for a change. All the vanilla story rewards are pretty much useless after you hit level 20. But the honeymoon is definitely wearing off. I AM still really enjoying Destiny. It's humbling and pathetic how much play time I'm getting out of the game and how much I enjoy it. But I'm also not sure we are really getting our money's worth on these DLC's... at least, not from the non-raid aspects. I am very glad to hear that the raid is a pretty cool guy, though. Hope I can start running raids soon. (Not until after IB and I level up my gear at least, though.)

[mannon]

Dec 15, 2014 12:04:52 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

I think a big issue is Bungie terming the Dark Below an expansion. It's not. It's just DLC

This! "Expansion" is a loaded term and does suggest a significant addition of content. New areas and enemies are generally common. Honestly this DLC offers no such new areas. While I do like the new additions they are quite small and really not utilized outside of their respective missions. That's part of what I don't understand. Why spend so much effort on a room and a hallway that we'll only see while playing one mission? Why not pool all those different areas into one big area and have the new missions branching off in different ways like the tunnels under the moon? And in the process Bungie could have given us a new public area or at least new routes we could take in patrol, but in the end we got neither. We got some dead ends. I don't think you can even get to any of the new spaces in patrol.

Though, patrol does feel more lively with new Hive running around all over the place and having turf wars with Fallen. Still, though...

[iw5000]

What Mannon said.

What would have been a smart move is to just combine all these new 'rooms & hallways'....and for Bungie to say unlock a whole new area of the Moon map, say across from the HellMouth. If you buy the DLC, you get a special pass/code from the head guy at the tower, and you get to go across say a new Hellmouth bridge. Then a new map area to roam around in. Explore. Jump around. Then maybe two (or three if PS) underground areas to go do Strikes and Missions in. And at the end part of the new area...the big drop/jump down into Crotas End.

That would have felt a bit better. Easier to digest.

As it is now, one has to basically repeat 80% of the old missions, just to get to the new rooms we have in the 'Warmind' and 'Wakening' missions. And the Grotos mission, I have been told that's a one time, one shot mission, already gone from the game. Lame. And I suppose we have this setup, because that's how it's been designed from day one. These new rooms have been there (content wise) since day one. Just the doors going in were locked.

[mannon]

I think part of the problem here is most of this is already bought and paid for long before it comes out as I think most players who own the DLC's just bought the guardian edition of the game and paid up front. So every extra man-hour spent on these DLC's is costing revenue and reducing profits. Bungie will have budgeted the DLC's already and while they are clearly responding to the community in many ways we aren't going to get more content than they planned to give us, because they won't expand the budget by all that much.

Honestly I don't think we'll see much in the way of actually new content until said "comet" arrives and we have to shell out more cash for it. Unfortunately, I suspect that will also be a breakpoint where a large section of the community drops off, deciding to quit rather than drop more money into the game. (Although I'm sure there will still be quite a few who either do get it, or just keep playing anyway.)

Part of me wishes there were some kind of microtransactions in the game as long as they weren't AIDS inducing, just to help fund expansions. On the other hand the number of games with microstransactions that aren't AIDS inducing can probably be counted on one hand.

[mannon]

Whipping out your ghost seems really underutilized to me. About all you can do from this "screen" is goto orbit, summon sparrow, and drop bounties, and the only additional info you get is distant waypoints show up. I think this should be greatly expanded in several ways, many of which I've mentioned. One thing I haven't was something that always struck me about it. When you pull him out it looks like your ghost scans the environment. The visual scan effect is pretty cool, but also functionally useless. I was kinda sad about that because it reminded me of the vision modes and scanning the environment back in Metroid Prime. I think it should take inspiration from that.

Scan targets should not just be walk up to and hold X or square. Instead you should pull out the ghost and which shows you visually what has to be scanned and then you get him close to what you're supposed to scan. It actually becomes something of a mini game where he gives you some visual cues and you have to find the object to scan and get him as close as possible. Scanning goes faster the closer you are to it.

Some other things for scanning. See what items are before you pick them up by aiming the scan at them to get a small hud popup. Scan enemies both living and dead to fill in special grimoire items. Scan any item in the environment, (get close, aim, hold a button) to have in game access to it's grimoire entry. Loot indicator tells you approximately how many lootable items are in the area and maybe gives some vague indication of direction. (I would keep the direction indication more long ranged with only a little overlap with the range of the sound, so that soundwhoring is still useful.)

You could also build in more minigames such as trails to follow to find objects or even assassination targets.



And of course I think the ghost should display a 3d projected map of the area, and give us access to at least 4 consumables. Perhaps you should have different modes so you don't clutter the HUD with too much information.

[wings]

Dec 15, 2014 12:10:51 GMT -5 mannon said:

I don't like they way they did this either. Oh I assumed all the grinding would be there anyway. But jumping directly to level 31 based solely on vendor gear? Plus, what was the point of gutting the old legendaries? Level progression was already very skippy where you get to 20 and might progress a level or two at a time to 24 or so when you can start buying some vanguard armor them boom boom boom you'd go to 26 and 28 pretty quick. Now it's even worse. You'll skip 26, go strait to 28, and once you level your armor up and get an exotic you'll hit 30 pretty fast too.

I think they could have kept the old legendaries from the Vanguard Quartermaster without needing a dumb additional currency to buy one. You cannot buy a gun within a week with Marks and the Commendation reduces this. I would not be surprised to see new players actually be short on weapons. I do not see myself buying much from the Quartermaster any more. Despite the fastness of levelling, there are still some obstacles. Titans after Intellect and Discipline will be forced into PvP because the Vanguard has none.

I don't know how much to bother playing because I can see a repeat with the House of Wolves DLC.

[iw5000]

I am really starting to sour on this new DLC. And on this game.

My grades for the DLC after a week.

First up, the DLC Raid. I LOVED the Raid initially, that part of the DLC. We did a blind run and I had an awesome gaming night. But.... (always a but) then in the following days, I soon found how easy it was to glitch the Raid. First stage can be solo'd dozens of different ways. Then the 2nd stage can be glitched. I was part of it, saw it in person and did it. Glitched and switched characters in the next part, triple dipping on loot. Yeah, I was on that, but I hated doing it because now this Raid just feels like a glitched pile of shit, and nothing really special to it once you know all the cheats. I mean, what's the fun and special-ness of getting a group together to accomplish the goal....when you know you can spend 1/2 the time and cheat it, even solo? There's nothing left here. Doing the old VoG on Hard mode feels more rewarding this now. Got to grade it a C-

The DLC leveling process. This is a fail all around. F. Guns I spent like 20,000 glimmer on in the last Iron Banner, already rendered obsolete by this DLC. Time spent getting three characters to Level 30, completely wasted all those shards, as new 33-gear is now given out like free candy. Time spent grinding away to get my seven plus exotics done? Time completely wasted, as now I have to start all over on them yet again, plus have to spend glimmer. And for what? If I go ahead and time-sink hours upon hours repeating them again....Bungie will just Foxtrot me over on the next DLC. Got to give this an F.

The Maps. I wasn't expecting much. So I wasn't shocked when they just gave us a few new rooms and hallways, off of existing parts of the earth and moon maps. But it was pretty light. Bungie couldn't have given us a full, start to finish NEW strike? Nope. As far as the three new 'rooms' we get to play, they are kind of fun and challenging. So all in all, I will give this a C+

Crucible. I tried one of the new maps. It's a huge map on Earth. Played TDM on it and it was kind of bad, lots of hiding. The timer ran out before the score limit. Lame.

[markopolo]

Regarding the guns and armour, I think you might be overusing the term "obsolete" there IW... Nothing the DLC did made anything obsolete... all it did was take it down a notch. Just because you're not first anymore, doesn't mean you're last.

To quote the great Sage, Mr. Reese Bobby, "That doesn't make any sense at all, you can be second, third, fourth... hell you can even be fifth."

[mannon]

Well part of the issue is that the new 33 light armor also gutted the middle ground where 300 attack weapons would get the most use. You can now skip from 24 to 28 with nothing but marks and 2 commendations then all you need is XP, materials, and shards to hit 31 and if you have the materials and shards stockpiled like we did then you'll skip right over 28 as well.

I do agree that 300 attack weapons aren't completely useless, however. At least for most activities. They probably start falling behind in level 30 activities, and I'm sure they don't fare well towards the end of the new raid. But that's okay. I'm not dismantling my TDYK any time soon. (I'm not so sure about my red hand. I've got the XP now to max it out but am loath to spend all the weapon parts and energy. I can't decide if it's worth keeping when I have a maxed out TDYK or not... Although it does spec better as a pocket sniper due to range mod.)