[quote]After finally having Eyes of Tomorrow drop from my 67th time of filling a floating blue ball slightly below Taniks with slugs, I was left with a sour taste in my mouth. I know that I’m not the only one with such a horror story, and so it got me thinking: what is the better way to give out the raid exotics to players: random drops, or quests? [b]What we’ve had so far:[/b] From VoG to Vog, we’ve had 10 unique raid exotics overall. Of these, six have been RNG drops from final boss kills: both iterations of Vex Mythoclast, Necrochasm (quest to upgrade Husk of the Pit, but final piece was random drop), One-Thousand Voices, Anarchy, Tarrabah and Eyes of Tomorrow; and four were quests: Touch of Malice, Outbreak Prime, Legend of Acrius and Divinity. [b]RNG Drops:[/b] This method is nice because of its simplicity - beat the final encounter, and you have a chance at getting the exotic, lately with that chance increasing as you clear the raid more. That simplicity provides RNG Drops with quite a few benefits: no increasing run lengths to do quest steps and no needing to spend more time outside of the raid watching videos and researching the quest, to name a few. However, the main downside is it’s very nature. Given that it is simply a [i]chance[/i] to get a drop, it is impossible to dictate when any given person will get it. Additionally, since the increasing drops never actually makes it guaranteed, it is still technically possible for a player to never get a drop, however rare it may be. [b]Quests:[/b] Quest exotics are not beholden to the RNG gods, and present several unique benefits. One such is the ability to dictate how many clears it could take to get the exotic, being a first run if the quest is primarily done outside of the raid and only requires a clear, or could be a few in if it is a puzzle. Additionally, there are many more clever ways to integrate these exotics into the story of the raid or it’s lore, with Touch of Malice being an example that springs to mind. However, this method too presents several downsides. One is in the difficulty of a quest could drive players from doing the quest, a clear detriment to those players. Additionally, with the way Destiny raids work now, with only one dropping Pinnacles, the odds of getting a quest done within a raid drops dramatically after a new one is introduced. [b]Which is Better?:[/b] In my personal opinion, I would like to see more Quest exotics in the future. I don’t believe it is reasonable to expect insane clear counts in order to get these exotics, and quests provide a good solution for this. If I had to pick a model, I would have to say Touch of Malice had the ideal quest. Great story behind it, and the quest had players run activities outside of the raid itself, which would increase its completion rate. Plus, future raids could drop the quest only after a first completion, thus making sure there are no first-run drops. Personally, I would be in favor of straying away from lengthy, in-raid puzzle quests, as that can lead to far more problems than I feel like any of the puzzles were actually worth. [b]RNG Solution:[/b] For prior raids, Bungie has touted “bad luck protection” that increases your drop chances of the exotic for each looted run. However, as outlined before, that still has its issues. To fix this, I came up with an idea for solving this that makes use of Spoils of Conquest, which quickly become obsolete after obtaining all desired drops from a raid. The solution is this: if a player so desires, they can deposit Spoils into the chest at the end of the raid. This would fill a cumulative count that, upon completion, would also reward that raid’s exotic. This value would ideally be 500 Spoils (25 clears from 0 Spoils if a looted run gives 20), meaning it is more than can be held in a player’s inventory, yet still within a reasonable (albeit slightly excessive) number of clears, if running from 0 Spoils, only doing looted clears. At the end of the day, however, the important thing is that regardless of the method, we all just want this to be done right, so we can have fun and enjoy the new exotic that is brought to us. Thus, we should give any and all feedback we have on this subject, and hope that the raid team follows what we want to see.[/quote] RNG guarantees replay ability with less development resource strain. Quests are fun, but being raid exotics, they should be harder. With master VoG coming out, bungie could have an opportunity to put the raid exotic behind a triumph similar to tempos edge as in you do the raid and all challenges under GM delta.

I like both versions. I think both should stick around.