Since I'm all up for variety and challenge, I thought I'd share this idea with you. [b]Legendary Enemies[/b], or in other words, [b]Optional Bosses[/b] aka [b]Raid Bosses[/b]. Basically, they'd be rare monsters that have a chance to spawn in certain areas inside strikes and raids. Exceptionally strong and tough, on the same level if not superior to end-instance bosses, they'd be easily distinguished by a purple health bar, a special name and unique looks. Allow me to explain my idea on how this would work: Upon engaging battle with a legendary enemy, an instanced event along with a forced darkness zone (if not already in one) will trigger and a countdown will begin. Guardians have then a limited time to defeat the beast, and to make each battle different to further extent, a special debuff, like "Weight of Darkness", will also affect guardians during the battle. If guardians manage to down it in the given time, it will have a chance to drop an exotic item, being a piece of armor or a weapon, unique in both appearance and perks depending on the monster defeated. Yet, if the players aren't able to defeat the monster within the time limit, it will kill the entire fireteam with a total attack (Crota's oversoul style) forcing it to respawn from the last checkpoint without a chance to repeat the battle until future encounters. There would be still possibility to run away from optional bosses, just by entering another area of the instance, although if all guardians escape after the battle has begun, the boss will have disappeared upon their return to that location and will not have a chance to return until a whole new attempt at the strike/raid. The same will happen if all guardians are killed and consumed by darkness. The highly sought-after loot from the legendary enemies would be, of course, weekly bound. -------- For instance, let's translate this into an alleged in-game situation: imagine a Vex legendary enemy we will call "Kheron, Nexus Keeper", a massive armored Praetorian equipped with both a single Aeon Maul and a rapid firing Slap Rifle. Kheron has a chance to appear in a praticular place inside the Nexus strike of the highest difficulty playlist available, Weekly or Nightfall. (Nightfall will provide greatly increased drop rates as levels will be higher and the Nightfall modifier will unevitably bring everyone back to orbit upon wipe. Beating a Legendary enemy during a Nightfall would indeed prove to be the hardest challenge available.) - The squad composed by John, Jill and Jack is doing The Nexus strike in the Roc Playlist when, just before the final cave leading to Sekrion, encounters Kheron and is now given the choice to ignore it and go on as usual, or engage it. - The squad engages and the event begins. From now on, a timer of five minutes will begin counting down. Although Kheron doesn't have any shields, it casts a debuff on the guardians for the entire duration of the battle: "Void's Negation", which consists in all void damage done by Guardians being resisted by Kheron. - Guardians fight the beast for the first time, but are still unprepared. Unfortunately, they do not manage to take away that last sliver of health and the time runs out. It's a failure. Kheron unleashes its lethal attack over the entire area, killing all of them, only to be brought back to the last checkpoint by their ghosts. The squad now can just go on with the story or leave the strike. - Later, during a new attempt, the squad meets again the ominous beast. This time though they succeed by using superior coordination and strategy and so the mighty Kheron ultimately falls. It's time to find out the loot! John gets twelve Ascendant Energies, Jill over twenty strange coins, and Jack is luckily awarded an unique exotic weapon called "Kheron's Aeon Maul"; a Rocket Launcher type heavy weapon that instead of rockets can fire blasts of void energy, much like the original Vex Torch Hammer, albeit producing larger explosions and linear traveling shots, akin to regular rockets. And that's it for this week. The next week, if they make another encounter with Kheron, even John and Jill will have another chance at getting the weapon. So how does it sound? I know this kind of things is more like a staple to the MORPG genre, but Destiny, after all, isn't an hybrid between an FPS and a MMORPG? I think this would work quite well in Destiny's environment. EDIT: Like it has been suggested, a public version of these Optional Bosses could be implemented to patrol areas to appear on rare occasions. In this version, it could be interpreted very well as a true large scale event. But yes, why not? It would provide some sort of challenge and reward even to a public instance. you know, it actually reminds me of the first gameplay of Destiny I saw at E3, when the fireteams joined together to fight the Devil Walker I had imagined something more like this.