True but would you be [i]against[/i] seeing only lower-level weapons being affected?

Yeah. Actually in gameplay terms it makes more sense for that to be a balancing factor in a 1sk, highly accurate weapon at long range where other weapons can't reach; make it harder to place the shot, but the bullet path is always predictable. No thanks on the windage. The scope would definitely need to do a better job of telling you where to adjust to, though, I don't need to crunch numbers for minutes or have to consult some online guide for every weapon, or trial-and-error every damn weapon. That might be fine for a "sim"but it's frankly asinine game design (I'm looking at you BF3).

Funny, that's part of my idea; You can find upgrades to your rifles or better rifles that either compensate for (auto-adjust or indicating sights) or affect bullet drop directly (space magic, higher velocity/streamlining, better power or whatever for certain energy weapons). Ideally an energy rifle will have less drop or more power, with only a few rifles having both. Any super powerful rifle would be subject to drop or some other normal balancing nature such as slowed fire rate. The idea being that people play the missions and find loot and upgrade their space magic in order to improve their chances in the arena, where a sniper rifle unaffected by bullet drop is extremely desirable.

"Find loot in order to improve your chances in the arena." Unless you mean "improve chances given the player's skill set and preferred playstyle" that's actually where I'd strongly disagree. "Sidegrades" are fine, upgrades muck things up. They create advantage as function of mere time played and not improvement of motor skills or familiarity with game mechanics. Everything should add up so that disadvantages and advantages of any given weapon, or gear/perk/class/whatever for that matter, balances out against any other in aggregate. I realize the higher/longer damage/time to kill gets the harder this is to pull off, but it's an ideal to aim for. Otherwise you're not getting milege out of the stuff you worked hard to put in the game because all but a few are rendered obsolete, and the flaw becomes perceived as a kind of bait and switch: "Buy yourself a copy and you get all this variety! Sorry, most of it's garbage or only something you'd equip as a handicap." Since it seems like the weapons you wield are [i]your[/i] weapons you've decided to equip as your gear, and not stock weapons you just pick up and swap out on the battlefield on the fly, I think that becomes even more important.

Eh, I meant that in the arena the pace is much faster and knowing where your sniper round is headed is desirable, on a mission you have all day and the enemy may never find you. So it would be up to you if you don't want bulletdrop or not, based on a guess that weapons will only have so many -gradable slots. Sorry for the length. In Reach the first reaction to an encounter was reduced to a certain level of randomness due to AA's having no discernible tell, but the playing field was equal. It balances out. In Destiny even the silhouette of a character will tell you something about their style, and I'll bet something valuable to me that armor permutations will as well. That allows for there to be a varied playing field because it will balance out. I [i]want[/i] the flaming sword that does 9 more damage than my last one. Not the poison cloud dagger that swings faster and does an equivalent amount of balanced units. Why? Because someday I'm going to hang that flaming sword above my mantle and remember when I slaved through some 14 miles of a delapitated L track above a flooded city, just to get my better, cooler, and more rewarding flaming sword that does 9 more damage. -blam!- yeah. I don't need to be rewarded and swaddled, I want to fight stronger enemies that want to tear my face off even more than the last ones. And yes you can only raise the stakes so much and I don't expect to upgrade forever because that's an incredibly unrealistic expectation. But I want them raised.

Of course that makes sense for getting cooler shit over time in co-op/campaign, that's obvious and hardly needs iteration. I don't see any reason to bring up balanced classes or AA, that's not what I'm talking about at all; let's just focus on the idea of better weapons and gear and get away from classes and their inherent abilities. What you're overlooking is that it confounds matching fairly with players and teams in PvP unless you're being dynamically matched by whatever your team's loadouts are. Which means longer times to find a suitable match, so not likely. To clarify by loadouts I mean weapons and gear not classes in the sense that you say Reach's AA loadouts are respawn classes; I agree with that comparison but it's not the point of contention at all. In other words, either PvP arena needs to be either stripped down to regulation weapons only (seems uninteresting but could be fun), or it allows you to bring in whatever you get in co-op/campaign but [i]all[/i] of those are [i]side[/i]grades of the vanilla weapons. That is, not objectively, inarguably better versions but are rarer [i]choices[/i]. Otherwise, "anything goes" arena settings are going to be frustrating to go into until the "endgame" when you've gotten all the best shit. With an episodic story that continues to increase in length after launch, that's especially frustrating for the player that doesn't purchase or play the game from the launch date to whatever the current "level" when he matches up with the player who's played longer to get the best shit. Which is completely possible if they're both at about the same ratio of k/d and wins/losses; their past records aside, you can easily guess the victor in that matchup regardless. It's the guy with the best shit. Of course in the system I'm speculating the sniper rifle that does the highest possible damage will be a prized commodity that you have to earn, but it could have other disadvantages, bullet drop maybe being one of them, that would help balance it out.

The reason I brought up AAs was to compare the two systems of balancing and provide a possible logical reasoning behind why we could see weapons tipping the playing field in Destiny. My justification for this type of system or progression would be to get people to actually [i]play the game[/i], not finish downloading disc 2 and head straight for multiplayer. The player that does not have sufficient gear (to fill out their chosen play style) or that arrives late to the party would be wise to play the campaign/missions/episodes and find what she/he is looking for. That being said, I agree with you once again, I think it would be detrimental to the series for a number of reasons to try and supply upgrades far into the game. I don't think I was clear enough but if at a certain point the upgrades faded away and the sidegrades began to appear I think this would make for more interesting gameplay. Fights become more demanding up until a certain point and then/after you discover your play style and choose to specialize just as everyone else will because it will be more advantageous. The best primary gun will be no match for a sidegrade-only tier specialized weapon wielded properly [i]by[/i] it's bearer. PvP will be balanced, deflect greenhorns, and will only have to navigate minor issues divvying nonspecialists. Campaign will be more necessary, exciting, and rewarding. I pretty much agree with everything you've said. Thanks for the discussion by the way, I really appreciate hearing views put forth in such a coherent argument.

Thanks for clarifying, though I don't think I considered what you were saying very coherently in my response. I think maybe the last part of your reply previous didn't hit me in its entirety until I thought about "not upgrading forever" as in, over the entirety of the episodic story. I also think I get the gist of what you meant by varying playing field now. Not just between classes with main weapons being top-tier and secondary possibly lower (is this what you mean by minor issues divvying nonspecialists?) But also in the sense that greenhorns go in at their own risk, but still mostly get matched with other greenhorns and they all still have fun with their less exciting, entry-tier weapons. Still exciting enough that it doesn't sour their experience of PvP and make them want to return the game, of course; but so that there's an incentive in the possibility of playing with higher-tier shit and the faster paced and hopefully more nuanced experience that goes with it – we still don't know about gameplay-modifying gear or character class progression. So: Campaign, earn progressively better weapons. The promise of finding your first top-tier weapon is incentive to invest in the world, fight the good fight with other Guardians. Each tier of weapons balanced for pluses and minuses in their type (shotguns, automatic rifles, etc) and between types in said tier. Yeah, I think I'm on the same page, and I can see it working. Something running to take into account that highest tier earned in campaign in terms of PvP matchmaking – to keep the veterans separated from the greenhorns on top of matching by skill – is almost surely a given here, too, and probably not as complicated as I originally thought.

Still, you have a very well thought out and ordered voice (nice vocabulary by the way), at times I can paraphrase and discuss something as though my already knows what I'm talking about. Goddamn this is extremely long, Godspeed. Looks like you understand precisely what I was getting at. The problem with using terms like primary-secondary-tertiary is that without a well established basis of definition they don't mean anything, especially when they're already commonly accepted as reference to main weapons and sidearms! Nonetheless you still got exactly what I was saying despite my insomniac choice of words. What I meant was that the first group of weapons (primary as I referred to it) would be relatively underpowered next to a specialized top-tier/sidegradeable-only weapon, with maybe a few levels in between but I'm not sure how that would work down to a tee. I hadn't really thought about secondary weapons (as you referred to them) being lower-tier weapons but that would be interesting and is very logical. I also hadn't thought of matching greenhorns mostly with their general range of skill. I was actually describing negotiating matchmaking with two groups: fully specialized players and non-specialist greenhorns. But there would be a great deal of overlap unless non-specialists were relegated to play with each other which makes far more sense (I was going to kick them into the campaign). That would definitely give them incentive to forgo upgrading for specialization so they could play in more exciting matches. However there still might be a coagulation of players who refused to make the leap and sidegrade but I suppose you could call that MLG, so no problem there. Players with fully specialized weapons/gear (depending on how we want to generalize) could be matched to other players with similar levels of specialization of top-tier stuff and that would keep incentive alive. The problem would be matchmaking in between these two groups, what do you do with the players who have one gun halfway/fully specialized and a upgradeable sidearm/secondary? And what about those with minimally specialized weapons in both slots? I guess you could see two or more in every lobby of greenhorns or veterans. Beyond that I don't really know, it would appear to be difficult to match them within their own ranks although I'm sure it's possible. If I may be so bold, maybe by the number of specialization slots filled? Regardless, going beyond a three or even a two-tiered weapon armory might get messy though, but I don't know if I would even want more than that or if I could warrant such a want. I can't see [i]much[/i] that would be worrying if this were the case, then again I don't work at Bungie so I'm not exactly an expert. I'm sure if we knew how they actually planned to build the game we could see a nominal system amidst the haze. This would definitely make for a game which would cater to anyone's preference of play style [i]and[/i] progression format. Good -blam!-ing idea, External.

You may also have to take into account armor permutations and such. It'd be a very challenging system to implement effectively over such a large sandbox.