Having chests not count for swords is infuriating and arbitrary just to make it take longer. Especially the moon where patrols are only outside so every mission that takes you into the hell mouth has the added get back out or go to orbit time wasted. Patrols now give rep, some exotics for taken champions, and a few quests. That's it. If the primary rewards are grind rewards then the patrol needs to at the very least be interesting. Right now it definitely isn't. The areas are so empty it's pathetic.

For that vip quest I literally got a rocket launcher with grenadier and vacuum

Best place on Venus to find these are Citadel, Waking Ruins, and the Ishtar Academy. They have a higher chance of showing up near where the actual VIPs hang out. Go there grab patrols and discard, they regenerate fairly quickly, and one will pop up (eventually). Not as often as the Divide on Earth, but still quite often. (Edited for typos)

Patrols are actually the most useful they have ever been. Daily Vanguard bounties are typically worth 50 rep on average. Patrol bounties are now also worth about 50 rep on average. So if you are say 300 rep from ranking up your Vanguard but don't have any more daily bounties, you can do 6 patrols and rank up. Hopefully, getting a good piece of gear.

The cryptarch on the reef has had a long standing glitch where he shows duplicates of the glimmer items you have. It's only him that does it and I can't give you a reason why it hasn't been fixed.

try cancelling current objective (from ghost, same menu as go to orbit) - i'm in the same boat. only venus left, and stuck at 1 of 3 for almost 5 months. this is fun, right?

Artificial grind is the point. Enjoy? i mean Destiny at this time only exists to keep you playing until the next release of content, unless it was always like this and we never realised. I know other games do this, the grind, but there is no reward or progression behind the grind in Destiny. Bungie can do so much with this IP but they don't. Year 2 never changed anything, it is just Year 1 with a different face.

I understand the concept behind why Patrol was always a thing in the game, and what the game's rationale is behind calling it that. The problem however is simply that you have these spaces filled with basically nothing at all. And I don't mean the endless, predictable waves of enemies that spawn to populate said areas, either. There is zero sense of exploration here. One could argue that you go around in search of Dead Ghosts, but that entire aspect of the game has been one of the largest complaints as well since the Grimoire Cards aren't reflected at all by the game itself. Its just filler garbage that the vast majority of people don't really care about. And because of the game's lack of dedicated servers, Destiny does not have the means to give you an actual MMO experience. Instead, the game plays as like Dead Island or Dark Souls only with forced co-op. Not like there is really enough space or even enough things for you to do in these areas that could support or justify having 50 people or more showing up in the same place. I would say that is an entirely whole other kettle of fish, a major problem for the game that has been needed addressing since the beginning. Back in Year 1 there was a proposal that myself and others were backing that did in fact end up being implemented (to an extent...) in TTK, which is the "Ghost Scanning" mechanic that adds more interaction with the environment. This was good, but they made the mistake of relegating this ONLY to the TTK exclusive content and to such a limited extent. Patrols offer a good deal of untapped potential. For example, Patrols could be made to support "Open World PvP" and use an Invasion system similar to that of Dark Souls. Let's say I'm a New Monarchy affiliated player and I'm out and about on patrol. If I have myself set to "Allow PvP" in the settings (For a simple On/Off Switch feature to give people the choice of participation), literally at any second I could be "invaded" by a member of Future War Cult or Dead Orbit. They would show up at a random location on the map somewhere nearby and could come at me from any direction. If they manage to kill me? They earn Faction Rep, Crucible Marks and their victory goes towards their faction's "Global Score" that every single member of that faction contributes to. At the end of the month, whichever faction has the most points will earn an "Upgrade" for its shop which will sell high end weapons and armor and other unique items. (Either for a limited time or permanently) Of course, if I should win the encounter then me and my faction reap the benefits instead. There's all manner of ideas I can come up with for how they could improve the general way the game is played and the things that you could do. The real obstacle in order for us to get these things however is much more difficult to overcome, sadly.

What would be nice if Bungie made good with their advertising and open up the borders. They started "[b]if you can see it its playable.[/b] So far Bungie's opening up new area's have been running backwards through things most have done over a few hundred times. Strikes are not new area's you can go back to without entering the strike, and even if you can go back it's only to a certain point and its empty. Bungie needs to open the borders that will allow many other possibilities like... Running more then 3 in a fire team. Would bosses. More types of vehicles, and maybe we can actually use our ships to a certain extent. Actual quest. More bounties. Different types of public events. Clans can interact with bigger groups. Clan wars etc. More structures. More material. More landscape scenery. Opportunity to make the chest relevant. By adding chest like they did in the Oryx ship. Faction Quest. Giving Xur qest light Bungie said they added in ttk. Bungie needs to open the borders because if what we have now is their ten year plan. That will totally destroy the concept of this game.

Every chest should drop 1-2 weapon parts AND 1-2 armor materials as well as the other material with and increased chance of blue engrams dropping

I like patrols, the rep & glimmer you get are pretty good considering some of them take no time at all to complete. Plus, I can do this at my own pace which makes it nice at times not having to worry about afker's in strikes, etc. Also, I've gotten quite a few legendary engrams from chests add in the glimmer and materials makes it a nice find at times. I do wish they would open the areas up more as well as having the chests you find give reputation, nothing crazy but like 5 rep or so would be nice.

"Why do low level areas exist"

Patrols are good for maxing out glimmer for those that want/need it, and they are also good for grinding rep to rank up Vanguard/faction. Other than that, though, they are boring and useless. I remember when the Wolves used to drop which kind of made them relevant, but now you get the boring taken that gives you a worthless reward.

Bungie doesn't care! They won't fix the problem with sterling packages repeatedly giving the same items because people are still buying that shit. Sure some people might say the SRL packages were better and didn't repeat the same rewards, but after people got all the sparrows and loot they wanted they stopped buying silver. And there is no immediate need for any fix whatsoever, truthfully the fastest fix in Bungie history was due to the SRL record book not costing silver. Now that really had to be fixed lol.

The way the game is now, patrols are essentially useless. The bounties can be completed just as easily in strikes/missions (if you even do them at all, since the reputation and xp gains are not worth going out of your way to do).

100% agreed, "year 2" (i have to lol 😂) patrolmissions are awesome bullcrap and to search a "whole planet" (lol) for takens are not very funny aswell.

Yeah you're right. We should Nerf patrols.