I want to start by making it clear that this post is intended on providing critical feedback regarding DLC 2 / The Roadmap / The Future of Destiny. The feedback provided here is a summary of the feedback I have collected, and generally represents the majority of views/opinions felt by the community in the game. Therefore I understand/recognize that there will still be people who have different views/opinions than those presented in this post. My source of Information: I run a clan of over 250 members. I speak to (and game with) a wide variety of players (Top Ranked PvP And PvE Players / D1 veterans / casual players / hardcore players / people who never played D1 etc). I am also very active within the community - which helps me to gather a wider spectrum of opinions / feelings / feedback. ------------ [b]Iron Banner 6v6:[/b] There's a lot of mixed feedback surrounding 6v6 PvP / Iron Banner. The majority of players seem to enjoy the fact a 6v6 option was re-implemented, but feel that there are issues with how it was implemented. The issues I hear with 6v6 are regarding the following: - Maps being too small for 6v6 (the maps in Destiny 2 were no doubt intended for 4v4), which leads to not enough space to work around the map with your team. I know a lot of players enjoyed the larger maps in Destiny 1 which were more functional for 6v6. - Spawn Killing. Very common issue. Part of the reason why this happens could be the smaller maps, but it could also be caused with issues in the algorithms that determine player spawn locations. - Matchmaking. Another extremely common issue. A lot of players are frustrated with the matchmaking in 6v6, such as 6 individuals (or something similar) being matched against a team of 6. There are other issues I hear about such as skill-based matchmaking. The last issue I hear a lot about is regarding the reward system for Iron Banner. A lot of players would like to see improvements here (unique/valuable gear that is more effective in game, as opposed to ‘collection’ based rewards). ----- [b]Private Matches / Multi-Emote / Seasonal Vendor Progression / Nightfall Challenge Cards / DLC 2 Campaign / Mars Social Space / Seasonal Crucible Rankings / Exotic Weapon Changes / Power Level Changes / Exotic Masterworks:[/b] I won't go into too much detail here, but I just wanted to say that the majority of the community felt these updates were a good addition to the game and have positive feelings towards the changes. Great work with these updates. ----- [b]Heroic Strike Modifiers:[/b] Another update that the majority of the community seem to feel positive about. I think the modifiers are both creative and effective for making strikes diverse/difficult, leading players to challenge their decisions/change strategies based on the modifiers. However a lot of the community would like to see further improvements in this areas of modifiers/rewards for heroic strikes. ----- [b]DLC 2 - Spire of Stars:[/b] The 3 big concerns for raids (new or old) always seems to be surrounding difficulty, length and mechanics - which the majority of the community feel Bungie addressed effectively with the Spire of Stars Raid lair. The one big let down / issue with the raid lair was surrounding it's rewards - the armour sets were not far off being re-skins of the armour from Eater of Worlds, and the weapon rewards were not exciting (mainly just weapons for collection purposes). The rewards ended up feeling lazy / unrewarding, which took away from the quality that went into the lair itself. ----- [b]DLC 2 - Escalation Protocol:[/b] I know the vast majority of players feel positive about this update. The difficulty / replayability for the event were well implemented. Another really good piece of thought that went into this was having different bosses with different mechanics. The one issue players have frequently commented on is the difficulty creating a 6-9 guardian fireteam for the activity. ----- [b]Crucible / PvP:[/b] Crucible has had some minor improvements, some of the issues which still seem unresolved: - Time to Kill. There have definitely been some improvements in this area, but I still hear consistent feedback from veteran/casual pvp players that the Time to Kill in PvP needs some more improvement. The gameplay is still very 'teamshot' based as a result. - Radar in Competitive. I get mixed positive/negative feedback regarding this change. The negative feedback is that it encourages camping / teamshooting even more (teams just monitoring choke points and team shooting, or camping corners). The positive feedback is that it requires communication / visual and team skills. Some suggestions I've heard is that the radar should at least show you where your team mates are (but still not highlight enemies), to help communication. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [u][b]The Future of Destiny / Outstanding Issues:[/b][/u] [b]Reward System:[/b] There are still a lot of issues with the Reward System in Destiny 2, some of which I will point out below: - Exotics are too easy to acquire. Not only are exotics easy to acquire through in-game activities, but Xur also essentially 'gives away' 3 predetermined exotics and 1 that a player is guaranteed not to own each week. This is built on the idea that almost every player has ample amount of legendary shards, which are acquired for almost no effort. - Glimmer / Legendary shards are insignificant additions to the game. Both currencies are extremely easy to acquire, everything is cheap to buy using either currency, and both currencies are mostly used for insignificant purchases. - Legendary Gear / Engrams are too easy to acquire, and feel unbalanced regarding how much of the gear is actually useful in the game (only about 25% of legendary items seem to be actually useful). Players typically only get excited when they are rewarded with a specific piece of legendary gear (generally one of the pieces of legendary gear that sees actually use in the game). I believe Bungie need to rely less on 're-skins' and should invest more effort into making unique legendary gear, that is designed in a way where they believe it will see use in the game. - Exclusive / Hard to Acquire Rewards. Bungie are starting to improve in this area - such as nightfall exclusive gear that is reasonably hard to acquire, more exotics/legendaries being tied to harder objectives/quests (such as those introduced in DLC 2). However I know a lot of players are dying to see more extremely rare gear (i.e < 5% drop rate), exotics tied to hard/hidden quest lines, activity exclusive exotics (raid / nightfall / pvp / strike / public event exclusive exotics that vary between hard and very hard to acquire). I know this was also something in Destiny 1 that the community enjoyed. ----- [b]Weapon System:[/b] A lot of players have been screaming for exotic swords / machine guns to return to Destiny 2 (I know the first exotic sword was released in DLC 2 - so I hope Bungie continue with this feedback). The 2 big issues with the Weapon System are the weapon loadout and the weapon types, which I will talk about separately below. Loadout: I constantly hear feedback that the weapon loadout system needs to return to the way it was in Destiny 1. I tend to agree with this feedback, but I know there are some issues within this idea that Bungie would need to look into first (otherwise new or previous issues will come up again), so that improvements here can be implemented effectively. One of the issues is Sniper spawn killing in pvp, and another is having a weapon like the Acrius in the Energy (or secondary) weapon slot. There are a variety of ways these issues can be resolved (i.e rebalancing the Acrius so that it is an appropriate weapon for that slot). Weapon Types: The current weapon types in Destiny 2 are very 'static'. Meaning that for a particular activity (whether it's a raid / nightfall / pvp etc), only a certain amount of weapon types are used and the majority of guardians use a very similar (or the same) loadout. There are a lot of weapon types never or very rarely used that need improvement/purpose in the game. I think Bungie need to re-establish the pros/cons for a weapon type (whilst considering how those pros/cons might impact how much the weapon will be used in game) to provide a more diverse selection of weapon loadouts. This ties in with an advantage of the weapon loadout system used in Destiny 1, where only certain weapon types could be used in the energy/secondary slot (shotguns/snipers/grenade launchers etc) - so if you wanted to use a shotgun, you had less flexibility as a result (which is a great way to incorporate strategy into choosing a weapon loadout). If the weapon types and weapon loadout system are implemented together correctly, you end up with players having to make decisions: - how do I play (is it feasible for me to play like that in this situation/do I need to adjust?) - what is my team doing (do we need/are we lacking long range damage?) - what situation am I going into (i.e enemies shooting at me that I can’t reach with short range weaponry) ----- [b]Subclass Skill Trees:[/b] I have heard a lot of feedback from the community who want to see improvements to the subclass skill trees. Players feel they should have more flexibility/options/depth within the skill trees similar to Destiny 1. ——- [b]Eververse:[/b] I have heard very negative feedback from the community about Tess selling gear that cannot be acquired in game. I know the community feel that they should always have the option to earn anything purchasable in-game as an alternative, particularly after what happened with the Dawning. ----- Thanks for Reading, I've tried to summarize as much of the feedback I've received as I can. En Route Out.