I still haven't figured out why Bungie hasn't done this yet. [u][b]The History[/b][/u] We kicked off Destiny with the "Forever 29" system. [u]All of your power was dictated by reaching the light level cap of 30.[/u] If you were a single gear piece below 30, you had something like a 30% decrease in your effective health and damage output. To make matters worse, RNG was the only way to earn that level. If your warlock raid boots never dropped, you were stuck feeling weak and like a burden to any team, despite being a seasoned veteran when it came to raid mechanics. The we entered the alt-running phase of the game with The Dark Below. I can't tell you how many of my friends would delete a character to roll multiples of the same class, just to run the glorified strike that was Crota's End several times per week for Radiant Shards and Energies. Getting the gear was substantially easier than it was in the Vault of Glass, but leveling it up was the time gate, unless you decided to bypass that road block by [u]deleting and re-running the raid several times per week just for those Radiant materials.[/u] Another failure to the raid loot system that left players feeling underwhelmed and not in control of their power. With the release of the House of Wolves came the introduction of Etheric Light. [u]Etheric Light[/u], in theory, was a nice way to bring your previous gear pieces up to the level cap, but [u]quickly made everything else in the game obsolete[/u] -- especially if you were sitting with the lethal Fatebringer, Black Hammer, and Gjallarhorn trio. The fundamental flaw of making every piece of gear in the game relevant again (and at maximum power) is that it all needs to be balanced. Otherwise, there would be no reason for anyone to ever chase after anything else! This, coupled with reforging, lead to pretty much every player in the game with the exact same PvE and PvP load outs and armor sets, which only exposed Bungie's inability to provide any sort of balance outside the standard automatic balancing of RNG gifting certain players with certain items. Now that we're a good month into The Taken King, Bungie has acknowledged that powering up everything in the game with Etheric Light, grinding for limited materials that only drop in the raid to slowly level up gear, and so heavily favoring light level as the only means of acquiring power were all flawed systems. Why not take a step toward a system that has proven to work for years and years in any other successful end-game oriented MMO style of game? [u][b]The Solution[/b][/u] We all know that Destiny isn't a traditional MMO, but it [i]is[/i] really heavily centered around team-based PvE content. They want you playing PvE. They want you raiding. They want you chasing drops until you're blue in the face. This is no secret. But why not adopt the system that we all know works for players and developers alike? They don't want us to get bored and acquire everything we'll ever need in the expansion too quickly. They want us to keep playing. Keep grinding. And we want some sort of loot guarantee for our efforts. I can't be alone in being frustrated that a raid run can yield nothing but Moldering Shards and low light armor and weapon drops that I already have. [u]Just bring in the classic "raid token" system.[/u] We all want it, we all deserve it, it would make us feel like we have some sort of guarantee for our efforts. After you enter the portal into the King's Fall raid, a chest with some little goodies is a great start. Chests throughout the raid with "chance" drops like exotics, runes, ammo, engrams, and Moldering Shards is fine! I fully support that! It's the boss drops. [u]Boss drops have to get better.[/u] Taking the joy out of seeing purple loot bouncing around by knowing that it's probably a 302 chest piece that you already have a higher level version of is a crushing feeling. Not to mention, one of those purple drops is just Moldering Shards any way! Why?! We should never feel deflated by seeing one purple engram sitting next to a bosses corpse after a glorious kill knowing it isn't even loot! [u]Every raid should have 2 guaranteed raid token drops.[/u] One dropping off of a boss, one dropping off of Oryx. Now, hear me out. [u]Every boss in the raid should have a chance to drop a raid token, but only one can drop that week.[/u] This encourages people to actually play through the whole thing, without skipping bosses knowing what guaranteed loot each boss will drop. You can't just kill Golgoroth for the raid token and then leave, for example. Finally, [u]a raid token should be granted for full completion of the raid.[/u] Every part of the raid, cleared, that week, by that character. Perhaps a weekly raid bounty available to each of your characters that requires you kill all bosses to cash in for a raid token could be a nice addition? To sum that up. Full clearing the raid gives you one raid token. This doesn't have to be in order, just every part must be completed. On top of that, each boss has a chance to drop a raid token. If you kill all of the bosses except one without a drop, you're guaranteed to get it on that last boss. If you get lucky and get it on say, the Warpriest, you cannot get another one from the other bosses. In other words, RNG will determine what boss gives you the token, but you're guaranteed to get it. Still with me? [u][b]The Rationale[/b][/u] 2 raid tokens per week is not enough to fully gear someone up in that week, but it does guarantee 2 items of your choice per raid clear (one token if you get lucky one one boss and don't finish the rest). The RNG comes in with other items, like weapons, and 20 Moldering Shards can grant you an opportunity for a bonus piece of armor or weapon on top of everything else. More incentive to full clear, grab shards, and kill Oryx. With this system in place, we don't gear up in a week and stop playing, but we also get rewarded for our time. Win/win. [u][b]The Implementation[/b][/u] The best way to implement this system is to have a [u]Raid Armor vendor[/u] standing in a section of the tower, previewing all of the armor that you can purchase with those raid tokens. Items for sale would include the: Helm, Gloves, Chest, Boots, Ghost, and Cloak. With this system, it would take 3 weeks of raiding to acquire all 6 armor pieces. All raid tokens and raid items purchased with tokens are bind-on-pickup, meaning they can't be transferred in the vault to your 2nd and 3rd hunters. If you want to roll with 3 hunters, you can take the time to gear them all up. Weapons are still transferable as they are all RNG raid drops as they are currently. To take it one step further and really give the players what they want, take the RNG right out of armor perks too by having 3 sets of every armor piece available, each with different Int/Disc/Str rolls, +Ammo bonuses, and so on. Why limit us to all having to purchase the exact same items with those tokens? If one player wants Int/Disc with sniper ammo on a chest piece, but another wants Int/Str with shotgun ammo, why not let them make that decision? It also encourages players to farm multiple gear sets for back-ups! If you're all geared up and don't need your raid tokens anymore, where's the incentive to raid at all? Well, still the RNG of weapons and other items, and raid tokens can be cashed in at the raid vendor in exchange for Legendary Marks! [u][b]The Conclusion[/b][/u] First of all, thanks for reading and I commend you if you managed to get through all of it! As the game stands right now, [u]the RNG of gearing up is just too frustrating.[/u] Not only do we have to hope we get any loot at all from the raid, we have to hope it has good stats, perks, high light, and isn't a duplicate. It's going to go down in Destiny history as another loot system failure that really bummed players out. I personally would like to see the proposed raid system come into play, so be sure to bump if you like the idea and maybe someone up top might take notice! Thanks, and happy hunting, Guardians!