On the same vein as the original post, I think the game would have more legs if Bungie gave up on the idea of random drops as a part of the game. I'm all for differentiation through choices, but to be limited by randomness is frustrating, especially when PvP is a big part of the game. Players are working around this design flaw by playing more, i.e. grinding, to increase the number of random drops. Subsequently, we have lots of playtime, but how much of it was fun?

Don't let this get lost

Wow. I love Destiny, and have seen this posted here and there. But you are spot on. These are all things that we thought Bungie was going to deliver on, because these things are all staples in successful games of this genre. Bungie didn't have to "promise" us. All the other RPGs already "do" this. And let's face it. Destiny is an RPG, just from the first-person perspective. One can only hope that the next year+ will bring this about. I just hope enough people are here to see it come to fruition.

[quote]From what I see in the game and from topics posted around the Forums, the main issue that everyone has is the inexorable grind. I come from a long, long history of MMO's and RPG's. I have a deep understanding and appreciation for grinding for crafting mats and grinding strikes/raids/instances for that one specific piece of armor/weaponry. But what Bungie has done in Destiny is just mind-boggling, they've made the grind the core concept of the game. Before 'The Dark below', there was precious little to do in this game. Repeat the same twelve bounties, run the same strikes, complete the VoG for the *insert number here* time, nightfall, weekly heroic, daily story mission... when typed in a Forum post, that seems like quite a bit to do; but in practice while actually playing the game, it's not a lot and all of it can be easily knocked out in an hour or two. So we settled in for the grind, leaning on the promises ActiBungie leveled at us through DeeJ that the first expansion would give us what we wanted. Very simply, they lied. If 'The Dark Below' actually id anything, it made the grind doubly worse than it was before the DLC (because there is a laughably small amount of content, this is not an "expansion" as it added really nothing to the game). The DLC added new Light levels, made everything harder with the new levels while not adding to the rewards at all; which took the same grind we had before and added in huge amounts of frustration because in order to get the exact same rewards as before the DLC, you now had to deal with a frustratingly increasing difficulty. For no added benefit... There is a new vendor, sure; but then you place all of her items behind a wall of reputation gain, then gave her half the bounties that the original bounty vendor carries. this only doubles or triples the amount of time it takes to gain rep, thus exponentially increasing the grind for no other visible reason than to try to arbitrarily slow down player progress. Bungie introduced new weapons. This is one of my bigger issue points with the DLC. Not only did you introduce new weapons, but at the same time you flat out took away the very option to get the older weapons. Why is this important? Because even though the new DLC weapons do more damage at base/max stats, the actual stats for all of the weapons are far, far worse than the original base-game weapons. A higher damage max does nothing to mitigate the crap-fest weapons when the stat/perk combinations make actually using the weapons a laughable concept. Those very same stat/perk combination make using the new weapons almost impossible, and they are far less effective than the older base-game weapons; but as I said, we don't even have the [i]option[/i] of purchasing the older and better weapons any more. Why would you do this, ActiBungie? What did we do to piss you guys off so badly? So, in order to deal with this we as players found ways to cut corners to get the maximum amount of materials/loot, for far less of a time expenditure (i.e. shorten the grind). But now we're getting punished yet again by ActiBungie because we're "not playing the way they intended". Is this just a sick intra-company joke that we were never let in on? No wonder people cheese the Raids/Strikes/Loot Caves/etc. You've made the grind so horribly difficult and time consuming that it quite literally sucks the fun right out of the game. All of that effort for no greater rewards and weapons/armor that are worse than we had before? Why [i]wouldn't[/i] we find ways to shorten our punishment? You've really given us no other choice, Bungie. Look; it's possible for people to love your game eventually, but you guys have to add in content. Not another lolDLC with three hours of new story and a Raid half as long as the original one. We're talking Skyrim/Dragon Age levels of DLC content. Those games gave us real expansions, and for the same amount as you guys are charging for a pathetic pittance of new content. You know; actually listen to us, ActiBungie (I keep calling you guys this name because it's obvious that the Activision suits in your office have more input than the creative people on your development teams. The corporate business strategies are showing very clearly in the lack of quality/content in this game). 1) Give us full Legendary weapon Upgrade capabilities. This includes all Raid gear from all Raids and every and all Legendary weapons/armors. They are supposed to be Legendary, let us make them part of our Legends. 2) Bring back the original base game legendary weapons and armors, and allow us to upgrade them as mentioned in point one. 3) New content. Lots of new content. Planets would be nice, or being able to visit the Reef more than twice would be lovely. But you guys definitely need to add in 10-20+ hours of new story content. that's called player retention. I know that term is being thrown around your offices, maybe it's time to actually try retaining some players. 4) Loot tables. Really? you say the new Raid is 'smarter' with loot, but now it is even less consistent than the VoG was? That's a joke in itself. 5) More armor. Lots of more and different armors for all classes. Why? Right now, we all look the same. Aside from the minor variations in color offered by a small handful of shaders, we all look the same. How is this supposed to be me 'building my own Guardian/Legens when I'm a cookie-cutter clone of the guy standing next to me? 6) Get the Radiant crafting mats out from behind a level 4 rep wall. there's no reason that any grind should be that tedious. 7) Give us some sort of player housing. Even if it's just a small apartment in the tower, give us a space that's our own. Let us access and store our treasures in a vault accessed from our private quarters and vastly increase (at least double) the storage capacity. I hate having to pick between two great weapons or pieces of armor simply because I have no more room. 8) Could we do something more with our ships rather than just watch them bobble-head through orbit animations? Maybe? Please? 9) Going back to weapon/armor upgrading; how about something every other MMO and/or RPG in the world allows you to do, at least the free-roam games like you guys are trying to make succeed? [u][b]Weapon/Armor customization[/u][/b]. Let us use those crafting mats that are already in-game, along with some new ones added in to the drop tables for enemies/chests, that allow us to modify our weapons and armors with perks and stat allocations of our choosing. It would also give us an actual reason to visit the weaponsmith for more than just refilling on ammo consumables. 10) If you're going to make everything in the game more expensive, we need a Glimmer cap increase. At least up to fifty thousand. 11) Not least; how about some stable servers? It's an 'online only' game. This should be a no-brainer. 12) Please, please get rid of Crucible/vanguard Commendations. there is/was absolutely no reason to implement these new currencies, and they are (again) a thinly veiled method to do nothing more than slow player progress. Want players to tackle your content at a slower rate? Give them more content to work through. Quit programming in arbitrary roadblocks for no other reason than to impede our progress! it's ignorant and insulting to us as Gamers and paying customers! These are just some suggestions that I have, and I've seen them touted by much more than one person around the Forums. Boot the Activision suits out of the planning, design, and implementation meetings and actually listen to us, Bungie. So far, you guys have given us really nothing that we've asked for; and you've given us nothing that makes this game "great". Adding in features and content as I've described above would not only get people flooding back into the game, but it would also keep them playing for years upon years. It's been proven to work with other RPG's, Skyrim is still one of the most played games on PSN and LIVE. Bethesda is [i]still[/i] raking in the cash from Skyrim game sales and expansion sales. More content and a higher degree of customization will always make a game sell, and will keep players coming back for more. It's been proven many times over. Pitch that to your Activision overlords. They should be able to smell the money already.[/quote] But it still means more money to spend first,activision don't like to spend money... Out of the question..Love the ideas, pretty much what makes mmorpg games interesting and more enjoyable is customization etc like in wow,diablo etc

fantastic post! hitting all the problems in the overall game

I enjoy when a respected community member says this shit. It shuts up the trolls. Bump this.