I am, unfortunately, going to have to add my voice to those who are disappointed with Destiny. Yes, I realize that there are other games I could play, but instead I'm going to do what I can to help a game I would like to continue to be interested in playing. What I am not going to do herein is gripe without presenting what I believe to be a viable solution: I honestly can't stand people who bitch about something without also presenting a means to alleviate their desire to bitch. This will be a lengthy, categorical post outlining what I see to be problems with the game as it exists now; as well, my proposed solutions to those problems. For those who will read this "book" and add anything critical or meaningful to this discussion; many thanks. For those that will do nothing more than bleed negativity and ignorance, please feel free to dunk your head in a toilet, breath deep, and spare us the headache. Now, let's get to it. [b]Updates and Patches[/b] Updates/Patches, to me, are one of the most critical aspects of a game like Destiny. It has been years since I wrote a line of code, but I do recall the often infuriating moments when a new string was added that turned a functioning progy(program, yes I'm that old) into a nightmare. Despite my empathy, no one was buying the things I was tinkering with, so I had absolutely no obligation to provide a functioning end-product when I decided to add functionality. As I can only speak for myself, I am beyond frustrated with you(Bungie) and your constant failure to adequately test patches and updates. What utterly confuses me is, your(Bungie) seeming ignorance of the fact that you have all you could hope and dream for in the way of testing capabilities(which could also be said of most developers in the gaming industry). You have, as you have repeatedly claimed, millions of people to use as testers. You have the ability to actually produce a working update/patch that doesn't break something else in the game. Instead, you rush things to deployment without adequate testing that, invariably break other elements of the game. Take for instance the Vault of Glass. You were in such a hurry to fix a "cheese" that you broke the rest of the Atheon experience (detain bubbles when teleporting, teleporting the wrong number of people, and so on). I feel confident when I say that most of us would rather wait for you to test these updates, ensuring they don't break our raids or heavy ammo synthesis, rather than have a patch every other day. [i]Solution[/i] You already have the framework built for a testing/monitoring application with your error tracker. Implement a means for user-side bug tracking/reporting, and pull focus groups from the community when you complete a patch. Let that test group, which should consist of more than 10 people, download and test the patch on a larger scale. Yes, this means that you are going to have to tweak your patch deployment to accommodate user-specific deployment, but I think that headache is worth the end result. People in these test groups are obviously only going to be able to interact with each other in-game, so the group size is going to have to be fairly large. Implementation should follow a volunteer model, where you open the testing up to all users, and then pull from the overall pool based on activity. Obviously you don't want someone who spends 4 hours a week on Destiny testing a deployable you need done yesterday. You can use your forum to communicate with the focus groups, or use the in-game "blast" capability to indicate what you need them to focus on. Timing for these tests should be dependent on the nature and volume of bugs the focus group finds, and how much of the game they are actually touching. Given a large focus group, I doubt you'll need to run these tests for longer than a week. Once you've gotten the data you need, tweak what you need to tweak, and deploy the patch. Obviously you are going to have to give some of these individuals something, so create a shader, emblem, and a ship. Once they've finished the focus group cycle, give each person an engram and let them head to the cryptarch. The shader, ship, and emblem should be unique, and only attainable by being part of a focus group. The engram should only provide an item specific to focus group participation. You effectively have all the free labor you could ever hope for, so be smart and use it. [b]Level Caps and Gear[/b] While I think it is great you guys have put as much effort into creating gear for this game as you have, I think you've overlooked the simple reality of what makes these sort of games great: "it's mine, mine, mine; all mine, mine, mine". What I mean here is that each of us adopts a specific play style, and we accumulate gear that accentuates that play style. We get comfortable with what we have, and become masters with it. This unfortunately means that we're not going to be willing to give it up simply because you have elected to periodically raise a level cap. You tried to mitigate the sense of loss by telling us, "Your gear isn't useless, it will still work", but then that's not entirely true. While gear pre-DLC still functions and is still mostly effective post-DLC, it isn't on par with the post-DLC additions, nor will it be effective at all as of the next DLC drop. This means that the gear we have stubbornly held on to is on it's way to being useless. I want my favorite Crypt Dweller and Devil You Know to follow me throughout my entire time on Destiny, or until such a time as I find something I like more. This means that I need the capability to make that gear relevant two or three DLC drops down the road. I get that you guys have this vision for how we should all play, evident by the often totalitarian style with which you eliminate what you deem to be exploits (loot caves, et al.). This is one instance I think that you're going to have to relent however, as I really can't see maintaining interest in a game that continuously makes me have to repeat upgrade cycles for gear I don't want ad nauseam; which means I'm not likely to buy anymore more DLC packages nor the next iteration of the game. This is not to say that your efforts are wasted in creating new gear content for the game, because I like some of the new gear better than the old gear: most of it actually. Unfortunately though, we have to settle down and have a nice glass of reality here, because this gear isn't going to survive more than one DLC drop before being obsolete. Of course, we can engage in the highly rhetorical argument of "well, you can still use it, blah blah". I can still use the original white AR you get from the first mission, but that doesn't make that rifle effective in a raid now does it? I put the time into the grind to acquire exactly what I wanted, and so I want to keep exactly what I wanted whether you like it or not (sorry, I'm a non-conformist). [i]Solution[/i] You had a good idea with the exotic upgrade feature you implemented, and thank god you did (who the hell wants to go through the Thorn bounty again?) You should expand this feature to include Legendary weapons and armor as well, only these should be on demand upgrades at vendors(Iron Banner "re-roll") and not dependent on some creepy dude that shows up once a week. Vendors should give you the option to upgrade your gear for a set glimmer and mote price point, which then resets the gear and increases it to the current light/armor rating(Vendor standard, not raid standard). This also gives more relevance to motes of light, as they are pretty much useless for those of us who have been playing since launch. I am not going so far as to say that you should give us the ability to "re-roll" for different perks on weapons and armor, but I'm not saying you shouldn't either(I would love to be able to trick-out my weapons and armor to be exactly what I want them to be). I'm simply stating that you should give us the ability to keep our favorite gear relevant until we either find something we like more, or the Destinyverse implodes.