[quote]With every expansion, patrol gets more and more boring and tedious. Patrol is the only activity that SEEMS to remain untouched after an expansion. There are a load of things that can be done to make it better. Increase the difficulty for example. Have 2 different patrols on each planet. The first would be the standard and the second would be the same difficulty as the weekly and nightfall. It could even have modifiers in it! So much more could be done. Edit: Improving patrols would most likely improve the quality of the game as a whole because it would be one of the few things with actual replayability. Edit: I'm seeing some AMAZING things. I'm truly impressed with a lot of you. We all have good ideas. Patrol seems to not be on the front of Bungie's agenda. Let's make our voices heard. Even a whisper is louder than silence. I think this is an important issue...what do you guys think?[/quote] Wrong, wrong, Wrong!!! You guys are looking at it all wrong, we are supposed to be the saviors of the universe right, well what or who the hell are we saving, seriously think about. There is nothing on these planets, I mean nothing worth saving. Here the gist... bad guys spawn out of cave... "no guardian to shoot at, no problem we'll just wait right here. Hey look a guardian, quick shoot..." guardian kills them all, then they just respawn from the same damn cave and stand and wait. If bad guys had an objective like say "let's destroy that little town of farmers" the farmers call for help, the speaker sends out a bulletin to all for help. Think "Mass Effect" with its side mission. One of the best games ever. The more towns everyone saves, the bigger they grow these people that take on the missions, the smaller the towns become. BOOM!!! You now have a real reason to patrol. BTW, the town can give stuff as a thank you

Add random items! Reward the player for exploring and admiring your world... Examples: I find a skeleton with a postcard on Venus. I can examine the postcard which is a short note from a husband to his wife, promising he will make it home in time for the birth of their baby. Was it the skeleton? Did he make it? The story can be whatever [i]I[/i] envision it to be... I find a snow globe on the Moon that has the moon made out of cheese. My Ghost pipes up about the stupidity of that notion, then quips that the Hive have actually turned it into Swiss cheese, so the analogy isn't too far off. I find some research notes in an abandoned building from Golden Age soldiers/scientists/helpful-persons that detail some quick info on an enemy type, their combat styles, and an effective strategy for fighting them (using specific element types on certain shield types, or the location of their critical weak spot, or shooting Cabal phalanx in the hand to make them stumble, etc) Random elements that make me [b]want[/b] to get lost exploring the world, rather than just "where do enemies respawn faster so I can farm?"

World bosses with global notification, and a ramping up of public events prior to.... Get something like "large influx of enemy forces appearing in the divide. report immediately" in your HUD Then after a few public events some big badass just comes busting in...

Patrols are done probably more than any other activity in the game. ADD TO IT BUNGIE.

How about.. [b]PvPvE?[/b] A mode of Patrol where player's can wreck each other? Could have it's own selection of bounties and new/altered public events. Perhaps even tie in the Factions.. so that say your doing a Defend the warsat? it's now a king of the hill, and your extracting for the Faction you represent. Eliminate the target? He now carries an item that has to be captured and brought to a drop-off point. Kind of like one-flag capture the flag but has several possible teams, or even free for all. -- [b]CHALLENGES[/b] (This can be available in regular patrol) Challenges would be activities a player can issue to other players while on patrol. Issued by inspecting the a player, and a non intrusive note pill pop up warning to you of your challenge (you can opt to auto reject challenges in the options menu.) Races: Players have to be in same given map area, each map area will have a "starting zone" and a randomly selected "Finish Zone" in another area far away that will be named before the race counter starts. Players can take their own path to the finishline. This doesn't have to be limited to Sparrow Races. Foot, Pike, and Interceptors races can be held too. This can be a public event as well for grander races or it can even be Fireteam base, winning team determined by overal team performance. Duels You can issue a duel to other players, perhaps even fireteams. Once a duel is inniated, players have a moment to get ready (maybe 15-30 seconds) Revival (Fireborn being an exception) is disabled for the duration of the duel. I don't know if team revivals should be enabled... maybe an option. Leaving the instance the duel is being fought in counts as forfeit. Light Bringer competition See who can whipe out the most minions of the Darkness the quickest. A timer starts, super's reset, and player set out to earn the most EXP within a given time set wins. Only kills and Assists count, not EXP gained from Patrol Missions. Soccer: I don't think this one would work all to well, given the maps aren't really built for it (maybe limit it to specific areas like Mothyards or the divide). HOWEVER The purple magic ball from the tower appears, as well a two "scoring" zones on opposite sides of the map. General note of Challenges: due to the competitive nature of challenges, winning should be rewarded with CRUCIBLE marks. However you gain rewards against a given player more than once a day (to prevent cheesy farming), maybe even a daily cap to be earned this way. -- [b]Six Man Fireteams in Patrol ( with a twist on concept).[/b] Add in Six man fireteams: I don't know the the actual map limit for players on Patrol, but what can be done is that during 6 man fireteams is that the players are split into two, three, or effectively six sub-fireteams. This way a group of friends can do planned PvPvE or Challenges in larger groups than three.