Dear Bungie, this is an open letter regarding what myself and others have come to believe is a ripe opportunity for improvement in the weapon system of Destiny. I have over 500 hours in to this game, my friend has over 1000 hours, and others have under 200 hours. I believe this feedback covers the full spectrum of the average player base for this game. After having a lengthy conversation, this is what we came up with. I hope it’s not too late to see at least some of this make its way in to TTK in September. Part one, Exotics: We all love exotics, but the RNG system has a tendency to make exotics a crutch. I think the best example of this is obviously Gjallarhorn. There are those of of us that had it drop in the first 200 hours and have never unequipped it since, then there are those of us (such as myself) that had to play over 500 hours to get Gjallarhorn and find it useful only in specific situations. I can’t speak for others, but my impression has been that players who get OP weapons early on tend to require those weapons to complete raids, strikes, etc. I think this is what leads to a system of exclusivity with people believe that only OP weapons can complete a raid or strike. If people are forced to earn these weapons over via quests, then this balances the playing field for everyone. If suddenly everyone said no gally, no raid, people would be forced to get better so they could complete the quests necessary to obtain those weapons. My friend recently complete his first thorn bounty. It took him forever and it was very, very painful for him to complete. But as a result of that bounty, he became substantially better at pvp. He went from averaging 0.20 k/d to 1.0 k/d and he didn’t have to crab walk around the map with a machine gun to do it. Quests promote skill advancement and encourage a cohesiveness in the community as a whole. They also provide an equal playing field for everyone to have an *opportunity* to obtain said item. Part two, Weapon progression: I recently watched this video interview ( http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/10/8929667/destiny-the-taken-king-quests-bounties-interface ) on Polygon.com. I thought it was interesting that the lead game designer thought it would be boring to use the same gun for 10 years. Myself and others whole heartedly DISAGREE. I want one gun that I can fall in love with and improve over time. I want the option to unlock damage types so I can swap when appropriate. I want the opportunity to choose my stats on my gun in real time w/o penalty. I want to “purchase” upgrades for my gun that allow me to choose range or impact. Impact or reload speed, etc. I want to be able to quickly swap out a long range scope for a short range red dot. If we are to believe that Destiny takes place hundreds or thousands of years from now, then at the very least, they should have weapon technology from today covered. Many combat rifles have a 4x scope attached with a red dot site on the side. Seems like it would be reasonable to have something similar as an option on guns in Destiny. I find it depressing that I have to constantly swap out weapons for different situations. I personally don’t want to use auto rifles. Ever. I like hand guns, and pulse rifles. I would like the opportunity to find something I like and then modify it over time. This includes color, accoutrements, etc. Part three, Weapon choice: We want weapon choices. Not just options for types of guns, but we want options on how we can use those guns. As you further develop the weapon categories in Destiny, it would be nice if (as said elsewhere) we could choose how we use those weapons. Having the ability to swap which weapons are primary and which are secondary would improve playability. Some people want to hang back and be snipers. Equipping a sniper as a primary weapon should give a much larger ammo pool and negate the need for something like an Ice Breaker. Equipping a hand cannon as as secondary should give a smaller ammo pool but still allow close range defense w/o needing to hip fire your scout rifle. Part four, Primary versus Secondary: Primary versus secondary has been a fundamental tenet of game design for a long time, but I believe it to be a flawed concept. If you must have it, then here’s a way it could be improved. Let us put any normal primary/secondary weapon in any primary/secondary slot. If I want to equip Vision of Confluence in my primary and Fatebringer in my secondary, then I should be able to do that. Then when I use FB, it burns secondary ammo stores instead of primary. I understand the need to keep heavy separate because obviously it would “ruin” the game if you could just run around spamming heavy all day (but it would be fun!). With the way the current weapons are assigned to groups though, it makes no sense. Normally a load out would include a rifle, a hand gun, and a heavy. That gives you the medium to long range, the short range with quick fire, and the heavy spam. However the current system forces all hand cannons in to primary with the normal medium range rifles. I don’t see this changing any time soon, but the ability to choose my primary and secondary weapons would go a long way in improving the playability of the game. Especially so long as hand cannons are a primary weapon category. Part five, Weapon swapping: Let me equip all exotic weapons in PVE, or allow me to swap w/o penalizing my ammo. I would love to run around with Thorn, Lord of Wolves, and Ghorn doing story missions and strikes. Man, that would just be a blast. However, if you don’t want to do that, then at least allow me swap weapons back and forth w/o penalizing my ammo stores. Few things are as frustrating as trying to swap rocket launchers and suddenly having only one rocket left. Or you swap out your shotgun for a sniper and suddenly have little to no rounds left to fire. This is stupid and just increases the grind in the game. I want my missions and strikes to be fast paced when I run them. I don’t want to sit and wait for my ammo to magically replenish because I have a 5 minute cool down on ALL synth after using a heavy synth and there’s no ammo on the ground from killing AI. Either reduce the timer countdown from 5 minutes to 2:30 AND make the ammo synth timeout independent of each other, or let me swap weapons w/o penalizing ammo stores. As an additional aside, it would be nice if the weapon swap key had a fly out menu like other games so I could quickly swap from a shotgun to a sniper w/o having to jump in to a menu system that can be very quick, or very slow depending on my internet connection. This whole writeup is a work in progress. I encourage people to post ideas or clarifications below and I will update the post accordingly. If you read everything above, thank you. It took a while to write this up.