Apologies in advance. It's a long one :-P Imagine this: You are new in Destiny and you just finished the TTK story and brought your character to level 40. Now you want to do the raid. It is the highly acclaimed piece of content in Destiny (also highly advertised) and everybody seems to be talking about it. You want in on the experience. So here are the ways you could possibly do it: A. You have a full set of friends (at least 5) that you play Destiny with regularly and who can set aside some 5 hours at any given evening. This is the best way to do it and you all jump in and have the best time of your life. B. You visit an LFG site and look for sherpas / groups that are offering to guide new players through the raid. You watch a few Youtube videos beforehand so that you are not a complete hindrance and at least know the basics. You have a slightly confusing time but probably still the best time of your life. C. You watch video guides extensively so that you absolutely know what to do. Then you go to an LFG site and find yourself any group doing the raid or create your own. You don't mention the fact that this is your first time. You go in and have a frustrating, very confusing, probably the worst time of your life. You don’t want to do another raid for the next 6 months. Obviously A is the way to go but unfortunately most players don't have that luxury. B is something of a rarity, speaking from my own experience, since all you see on LFG sites are posts like "Need 2 more experienced for hard mode KF" or "1 more for trials looking to go flawless". C is the thing that I tried twice myself (though I did mention that I was a first-timer) and I can assure you, it is a mess. Also B and C kind of spoil the whole raid for new players because they have seen most of it on Youtube and there is none of that "fresh" experience with surprises for you. So what I am getting at is this: The way raids are implemented in Destiny now, they are simply inaccessible for the majority of the players. This is a damn shame since the raids are always advertised as being the centerpiece of the Destiny content (confirmed by many Destiny reviews out there). Basically the majority of Destiny buyers never get to experience its best content. I read something about only 20% of guardians having completed a raid (that was in 2015, the figure is probably higher now). This must be something that Bungie is aware of and as a game designer I would not be too happy about this. Here is what I would suggest for future releases (like Destiny 2): Make the raid gameplay mechanics intuitive and understandable without extensive experimentation and trial & error. Let me break this down for you: The way the raid mechanics work right now, makes the raids seem more like a ritual rather than an actual dungeon with big boss encounters. I mean try and explain some of the mechanics from the Kings Fall raid to somebody who has never played Destiny (but who is a gamer). "One player has to grab the relic where Oryx smashed his fist and run into the middle while the others need to kill the ogre spawning next to them…" "Wait a minute, wait a minute. But what is the boss doing in the meantime?" "Oh, you know. He is just chilling there at the edge watching. Anyway, everybody then runs in the middle and shoots this knight that has spawned, so that Oryx opens his chest and we can stagger him…" "Wait, why does Oryx open his chest?" "Oh never mind that. But it's important that we do enough damage, so that he gets staggered. Then we have to detonate those orbs simultaneously by standing inside them, so that we actually damage Oryx." "What the f%$k!?" I never got to the Oryx fight, so apologies if I got something wrong here. But I think I made my point. It’s just overly complex and it will not make any sense to any new player. This should be a badass encounter where Oryx throws all kinds of shit at you and tries to smash you and you have to evade his attacks. Instead this feels more like you are conducting some kind of voodoo ritual. Here is one example of how my idea would work for the warpriest fight (just an example, I bet a good game designer could improve greatly on my ideas): - Warpriest has a void aura surrounding him. Shooting the warpriest does not damage him so the players figure there has to be a way to weaken him. - The 3 plates are surrounded by void barriers, so players cannot stand on them. The barriers reach high into the room, so the players can see them easily and know that there are 3 of them. They figure that they have to use them somehow. - Enemies start spawning and there are a few with a void glow around them. Killing those slowly depletes the void barriers around the plates. The players slowly figure that out while battling the enemies. - When the barriers are gone the players should figure that they have to stand on them. Standing on those plates at the same time activates them (there is a cue sound and the plates stop glowing). - The warpriests aura dissolves. Everybody starts shooting the warpriest. - After the damage phase the warpriest shoots 3 seeking projectiles at 3 random players (they seek for a minute or so). Those insta-kill so the players have to run from them, while the other 3 have to deal with the now spawning enemies. - Void barriers around the plates are back and the phase starts again. - Warpriest fires throughout the entire encounter at you, so that he actually poses a threat to the players (except for the damage phase). This is something most players would be able to figure out but it still requires a certain amount of cooperation (for example defender titan for the projectiles). Notice how the players are actually guided visually via the purple void color. The difficulty would shift more to the actual fighting. If the complete raid would be designed in a similar way, then matchmaking would actually be an option again. And this way I believe most players would get to actually experience the raid (without having to spoil it beforehand with Youtube guides). Honestly, imagine the raid being that way and then compare it to the current raid. Would it really be less fun for you, because it is simpler? From what I heard the new raid in Rise of Iron is supposed to be simpler and more about "smashing stuff". That sounds fun and hopefully it is more accessible than the previous raids. Maybe this time around I actually get to complete one :-P. What do you think fellow guardians? I am curious to see your comments. [b]Update:[/b] Apparently many people like the complexity of the raids and I can totally understand that. I can imagine how it might be cool to figure out the mechanics of a raid with your team and beat it for the first time, but like I said, without a group of actual friends playing Destiny there is simply no hope for that. You have to resort to finding random groups through LFG and watching strategy guides beforehand which spoils exactly that kind of experience for you. I guess for me (and people like me) the core problem is still the difficulty of getting started with raids. Maybe there can be some sort of middle ground? Someone suggested a dumbed down difficulty setting for the raids that can get people started with them (of course leaving the "real" raid untouched). It could be implemented similar to the very first PoE difficulty setting, where there was matchmaking and you would only get a reward for the first completion only.