First of all, this is not a rant. I am not simply venting. I am playing Destiny since D1 was released. I believe I know this game very well. I am also a software developer. I have written a 3D game myself once and put a lot of thought and player feedback in it; So I believe I have something worthwhile to contribute to this subject. In this post, I will try to address the main issues regarding high end rewards and weapon crafting I have observed in this game. I have to say that whichever way Bungie tried to tackle these things, they never really seemed to have thought this through. [b]Rewards and Weapon Crafting[/b] Let me start with the TL;DR: Bungie does not respect the time players are putting in this game to get rewards that are worthwhile. Not at all. When they state otherwise, reality proves them wrong. The people at Bungie responsible for designs like that also don’t really seem to play their own game enough to get a deep understanding of where and how it works and where and how it fails. Too many design decisions here seem to be made from a theoretical point of view without sufficient feedback “from the field”. Bungie can say what they want here, reality proves otherwise. Some “theory” ahead. Basically, two types of gamers can be found in a loot shooter like Destiny: “Gamblers” and “control freaks”. For a gambler, the excitement lies in never knowing what’s inside the next piece of loot he gets: Is it awesome? Is it useable? Or is it just crap? He loves the randomness of stuff he gets. The advantage of random loot is that even a player with little time to sink into this game has a chance to get a god roll. The control freak on the other hand wants a predictable result he can achieve with a predictable effort within a predictable amount of time. He wants something equivalent in value to what he puts into getting it. For a long time, Destiny has mostly catered to the gambler type of gamer. Weapon crafting has changed that for a good bit, but not to the extent it should have. [u]Main issues:[/u] [i]1. Throttling: You can only get a limited amount of loot per week (particularly in regard of deepsight resonance weapons). 2. Lackluster rewards: Many drops have mediocre or outright bad perk combos (which is worse in D2 than it was in D1). This is particularly true for adept rewards: Way too often these have lackluster perks. The master mod slot most of the time is useless if you want to put an auto fire mod on your gun (which in many cases is the most desirable option). 3. Some rewards do not seem to be worth playing for them at all. 4. Manipulated RNG: Loot tables are set up in a way to make you get loot you don’t really want way more often than the stuff you’re after (class items anybody). 5. Despite of Bungie’s claims, there seems to be no RNG protection (or they put it in, but it is broken). There are e.g. still players with 100+ raid clears who haven’t gotten their raid exotic). #2 and #3 together make it even harder, more tedious and more time consuming to get a reward item that is actually worthwhile playing for and using.[/i] A few details on #2. Trials guns are a prime example here. Apart from a (god roll) Reed’s regret, I wouldn’t know what Trials gun to play for, at least this season (of Plunder). Even regarding that, if you got a crafted god roll Cataclysm from the Vow of The Disciple raid, you won’t play your Reed’s anymore anyway, since to fully exploit its potential you need to play your Statis subclass with a somewhat elaborate mod setup and probably have a second player producing elemental wells for you. With Cataclysm on the other side I just have to shoot the target with my primary and energy weapons once and then switch to Cataclysm, giving me a solid 35% damage boost for at least 10 seconds. Now for a god roll normal Reed’s you have to get close to three Trials rank resets. Want the adept god roll version? Good luck. On the other hand, to get the weapon pattern for Cataclysmic you have to play VoTD once a week for three to five weeks (depending on your luck with deepsight resonance weapon drops). Once I had the pattern, it took me two days of just playing anything in Destiny to get it to level 20. Btw, looking at weapon crafting, Cataclysm is one of the examples where it really shines. There is no Trials gun where there wouldn’t be a better alternative from other sources (very often from the world loot pool, and certainly from crafting). Shayurah’s wrath was the only other notable exception imho, but it is currently not available, and also has been nerfed – so what. As far as I am concerned, I don’t play for guns just to have something I could flex. I am looking for good tools making life easier for me in other high end activities. [u]Potential Fixes:[/u] [i]1. Let high end rewards (particularly adept rewards) only have good perks. To throttle this, have players an increasing probability of getting such a gun the more often they play the related activity. 2. Remove the bias for armor and class items in the loot tables. 3. Instead of offering a master mod slot, offer two mod slots on adept weapons, allowing players to e.g. add full auto plus an additional mod to their gun.[/i] Why would this be a good idea and not just cater to a few elitist players? [i]1. If you put a lot of effort into grinding a gun, the reward should be appropriate and not a slap in your face as apparently is Bungie policy right now (yes, I have to put it this way, as this topic has been addressed often enough, yet Bungie has decided to disrespect their paying customers in this regard until today). 2. While these guns may give an edge to players owning them, such players a. Are a minuscule minority b. Would wipe the floor with you in PvP even if they were just using blue gear, so what[/i] [b]Weapon crafting[/b] [u]Main issues:[/u] [i]1. Not all desirable perks are available 2. Crafting doesn’t go all the way – if you e.g. want a PvE and a PvP version of a gun, you need to craft two guns with all the extra required for that. 3. Some improved perks aren’t worth getting them. Improved Snapshot Sights e.g. do not give you an even faster zoom in, it just adds a little stability.[/i] Imho giving improved perks that do not actually improve the base perk is a slap into the face of the player taking it upon him to get a crafted weapon to level 16 (which in the case of sniper rifles is a pain in the neck). An improved perk should do exactly what the term suggests: Improve the property of a gun it is related to. [u]Potential fixes:[/u] [i]1. Make all perks that are available for a certain weapon type available for crafting (Ambitious Assassin!) 2. Allow to craft a second row of perks similar to the vendor guns you get after several vendor rank resets. Make it expensive if you will, like having to spend an Ascendant Alloy per additional perk. 3. Make improved perk actually improve their property in all cases (not just some or most of them).[/i] [u]Related issues[/u] Adept guns currently are said to be worse than crafted guns. Bungie plans to address this by putting improved perks on adept guns. This will foreseeably not cure the problem, since the basic reward issues will still negatively affect your loot experience: [i]1. You will still get random perk combos. What’s an improved perk good for if I don’t want it? 2. You will still have to go through a potentially long term boring grind to get a good or perfect roll.[/i]