[quote][b]6) Epilogue[/b][/quote]As I hope this thread has shown the reader, Exotics are a great excuse for Bungie's designers, artists, writers, and engineers to go all out with their respective crafts to create the most beautiful and interesting equipment to decorate the landscape of Destiny's endgame. This thread has only focused on mechanical abilities, but there is so much more that goes into the creation of an exotic that can't be covered today. I'm very excited to see the result of their hard work, be it special animations, intricate back stories and lore, or unique mechanics that I didn't even consider. I'm sure that there are no doubt some people who are concerned that Destiny's exotics have the potential to unbalance both the PvP and PvE aspects of Destiny's gameplay. While these concerns are not unfounded, I really don't feel that things will be as bad as some people predict. For one, the overall power level of the exotic tier will be limited by the fact that players can only equip up to one exotic weapon and up to one exotic armor piece at a time. This should prevent the game from becoming too complex or pants-on-head silly, while empowering player decisions and making entry into the end game more accessible for average gamers. Not to mention, Bungie has said that they are committed to dynamically balancing the game post launch using a variety of systems they unfortunately haven't detailed yet, but in my mind there are enough simple solutions to enact should a particular exotic start to dominate in the metagame that it really shouldn't be that huge of a concern. In general, as long as exotic abilities are designed with both conveyance and counterplay in mind, the metagame should remain fairly healthy on its own, shifting backwards and forwards in a rather natural and interesting fashion. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the topics I wanted to cover in depth with this thread, and for that I must apologize once again. I'm rather well known for my long threads, but even I have my limits with regards to scope and size, so you must forgive me if I choose to wait till another day to continue the conversation. As a parting gift though, allow me to share with you an unsorted list of ideas that I was unable to work into the main body of the thread. Hopefully they will spark the reader's imagination and lead to some critical thinking. ____________________________________________________________ What if there were abilities which multiplied the amount of super energy you could earn for a duration after performing certain feats? Something like "Earning a double kill with this weapon multiplies the amount of super energy you gain for a duration"? Would something like that be too infrequent to be useful? Would it be too frequent to be balanced? What if there were abilities that generated orbs of light on certain triggers? A team oriented ability like that would encourage fireteams to work together, but what sort of trigger would complement an effect of this power? If it occurs too frequently, you'll have snowballing supers for days. What if there were abilities that allowed you to fake out your opponent? Something like a Rocket Launcher which first fired a harmless Hologram Rocket before firing the real rocket after a delay so you could anticipate your opponent's movements and nail him good? Would that effect be too binary with its success rates? Would there be ways to convey that ability properly so victims wouldn't be overly frustrated by the deception? What about applying movement or stat debuffs with your weapons? Can you make things like slows or roots or a loss of stability appreciable to the user without making them crippling for the victim? Is it possible to bake enough counterplay into those forms of abilities to make them feel fair for the targets? Or would this design space be better handled by subclass abilities which have a greater potential for counterplay than weapon abilities? We have plenty of abilities that do all sorts of things like "You can throw grenades farther" or "You can reload faster", but what if we had abilities which applied those effects to nearby members on your team aside from you? Would that be valuable to players? Can you convey when the aura is working properly? Could it compound and become too powerful depending on the effect? What if there were super strong abilities that came with significant and unique drawbacks? Imagine something like a cursed scope which allows you to see player outlines through thin walls, but the drawback is that it drains your super meter to power and keep the ability active. Would players actually go for a double edged sword like that? How powerful does the ability / drawback have to be to allow it to be balanceable while maintaining its appeal? I didn't even really cover many abilities for exotic armor pieces. What if there was an effect that triggered whenever the player slid? What if there was an effect that triggered whenever the player took damage or whenever the player took damage from a specific elemental source? What if there were abilities that modified the way your vertical movement mode worked? There are so many unexplored triggers for this particular design space, I'm really curious to see how exotic armor abilities are able to transcend over the otherwise less exciting sub-exotic armor abilities. What if there was an ability to increase the rate of item drops or experience gain? Would equipment with those abilities be overly dominant in PvE, ala the jester's gloves / covetous serpent rings in Dark Souls 2? Could tradeoffs be implemented to make it more fair, like increased exp at the cost of drop rate? What if some of the exotic weapons didn't even fit into an established weapon archetype? The enemies of the Last City have numerous weapons at their disposal which don't fit into any of the archetypes of weapons that we Guardians use, what if you could acquire those weapons from a rare drop? Some of them might be considered sub-exotic, but perhaps some of them would be weird enough or powerful enough on their own to be considered exotic without even having a ton of super crazy abilities tagged on. Would that add meaningful variety to the sandbox? Would that add mechanical depth to the metagame? What if certain abilities were only active at certain times of day? Imagine something like a weapon which gains extra damage during nighttime. Would players enjoy the theme that such an ability would bring even if it was somewhat inconsistent and unreliable? Or, what if certain abilities gave you bonuses against specific enemy races? Much of the lore talks about how this weapon was used for killing Fallen or this weapon was used to kill Cabal, what better way to show that than having an ability specifically tailored for destroying enemies of that type? The flavor reminds me of the favored enemy mechanic for Rangers in Dungeons and Dragons. What if some weapons override your usual melee or grenade abilities while equipped? It seems almost thematically wrong if a weapon like Red Death didn't have an ability to go along with its blood soaked bayonet (though I am fully expecting some sweet melee animations for that thing at the very least). Would that be appealing to players? Would that increase the complexity of the game too much? What if we had abilities which assisted vehicle operation? Something like "Kills with a vehicle shaves time off its boost" or "Splatters with this vehicle repair it slightly." Would those abilities be too powerful? Would players value equipment which pushes them into more of a pilot role than an infantry role? Could we even stick some of these abilities directly onto some of the higher level Sparrows? "Splatters with this sparrow increase your super's energy", and stuff like that? ____________________________________________________________ There's just so much out there to think about and explore and I could probably generate ideas for days. It's one of the reasons that this topic has kept me captivated for the past six months, but every time I tried to write about it things quickly got too long and spiraled into madness. For the present though, I'm interested to hear what the community has to say about the ideas proposed in this thread. Again, while much of this is speculation, I hope you can see where I'm coming from and take that into account when you reply. I'm hoping to see civil and critical discussion on the topic, and if there's anything I can clarify or expound upon, please let me know. I do not know what will happen on Bungie Day with regards to IGN's coverage of Destiny's high level equipment, but I'm excited to see how many of the ideas I've been puzzling over for the past couple of months make or do not make it into the final game. This really is an exciting time to be a member on Bungie.net, even though we've seen so much of what Destiny has to offer, I feel that we still haven't seen anything yet :) Hopefully the next thread doesn't take me several months to complete, not sure what I'll write about... but until then keep the conversation going! ~Hylebos [b]If you would like to comment, please reply to the Original Post. [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973135/0/0]Please click on this Hyperlink to return to the top![/url][/b]