Dear Bungie:
I’ve been playing Bungie games since Myst when CD-ROMs were a new thing. I have a 12-year XBL account, and a demo disc for Halo 1 is a treasured part of my collection of Bungie offerings I’ve followed over the years. I went to midnight releases for most of the Halo games. I was a semi-regular of #HBO (irc.bungie.org then) and I was even credited with a news story in the HBO news once =)
I made several suggestions before Halo 2 came out, many of which were actually implemented into Halo 2 — either I was really good at predicting them, or the ideas really stuck with someone.
I was the kind of D1 player that couldn’t wait to get home from work to dive in, even years onward. Icebreaker was my jam, and before D1’s year 2 light raise, Timur’s Lash was my go-to Hand Cannon. I was Hunter main then, but in D2 am Titan main. Destiny 2 has been out about a month now, and I’ve got about an equal mixture of rants and raves to offer.
I’m trying my best to avoid comparing early D2 to late D1, considering D1 had about 3 years of development while we played, and early D1 had its share of frustrating things. I’m also trying to avoid suggesting major changes like reworking the power/light system, which D1 did itself at one point). What I consider more major changes would be things like halting this Quickplay garbage, returning 6v6, etc — but for the purposes of this article, I mean to address more subtle things like UI or additional vendor ideas.
1. Show the actual vs. displayed Light-Power level if it is modded.
We know that purple-modded weapons give a +5 boost to the total light-power, but displaying the number with the 5 added, seems to confuse too many people who can’t seem to grasp that you can infuse a 267 blue that has no mod, into a 270 purple that has a purple mod, because the light-power is actually just 265 with a +5 bonus, raising it to 272 total. Displaying only the total needs to change to perhaps “265/270” or “288(293)” or whatever, to properly display the actual unmodded light-power.
2. Make an option at the gunsmith to allow us to extract a mod from a weapon, at a legendary shard cost.
When you dismantle a weapon with a mod, the mod is just lost to the ether somehow, but I would presume Bashee more than qualified to be able to extract it from the weapon, for a price. Since there are so few things to spend shards on, this would be a great start.
3. There needs to be an emblem vendor, who can mod/customize them, with tally/etc mods that record specific variables I want to show off.
Currently there are some cool emblems that record, say, Striker Titan kills of any kind, but the emblem colors/design itself is not to my liking. Arguably no one in the entirety of Destiny 2 wants to show off that they’re level 20. Let us pick which stats can go on which emblems that we prefer, or even let us grind to find the emblem mods we’re after.
4. The “Clan XP earned” notification function is very strange.
It still displays earned Clan XP even after the cap is reached, so basically informing us that we’re earning Clan XP that is wasted because it can’t be applied. The function could also be used for other more-badly-needed notifications, such as “match has begun” while sifting thru menus would be helpful, especially when a guided-game match has been assembled.
5. There needs to be a shadow put on the background of notification text.
They currently are simply completely transparent backgrounds, so any white text in the further background clashes or blends into the same text of the notification text. The perfect example of this is getting something from Tess when decoding a Bright engram — it’s tough to read what the acquired object’s description is, because the text behind it clashes. Putting a dark or blurring effect in the background of the notification text to blur out any text/colors behind it, would be loads of help.
6. Allow us to re-scan PVE objects.
Currently we’re able to occasionally scan objects in PVE and get a morsel of story of it the object’s purpose, but if part of the dialogue was missed because of an interruption like a public event dialogue taking over, we can’t rescan it to hear it again. Let us do that.
7. There is no PVP kill icon for Titan Feedback gauntlet kills.
When you get a kill in PVP, the feed in the bottom left shows how you were killed, with a little gun icon, fist-action icon, etc, showing the method of the kill, but when someone takes fatal damage from the burst put by the Feedback Fence gauntlets (which reflects damage caused by melee), it just shows nothing, as if the icon is simply a spacebar character.
8. Challenges need be replaced by another challenge
Instead of simply saying 100% complete and hanging there forever, once a challenge is complete, have it zip away and be replaced by a new challenge, perhaps one of the same type but be incrementally harder and offer incrementally/proportionally better rewards.
9. The challenge list is obstructed from appearing by other items on that side.
If we do something that gains us glimmer, we have to wait until the glimmer notification goes away before the challenges will appear. Ain’t nobody got time fo dat. Make the challenges appear underneath it or alongside it, or make the glimmer/etc notification go away as soon as we try to pull up the challenges list.
10. Allow us to disable certain milestones on the list from ever reappearing.
I don’t ever plan to Raid or do Trials. Continually reminding me that I haven’t done them is both obvious and annoying to me. It’s fine if they want to flash across the bottom when reset happens, but let me remove them from the list.
11. Allow us to lock mods or shaders from being dismantled that we want to keep.
12. Allow vault legendary weapons to stack, or be made a collection item.
Since there is no variation in weapon stats, such that all of them have the same stats, allow only 1 slot per weapon of the same name in the vault, rather than 2 of the same kind of weapon taking up 2 slots, and have their light simply match the current blue-drop level.
13. Allow us to turn in a full row of legendary engrams in for a powerful engram.
Since we can keep up to 10 legendary engrams at once, allow those of us who grind, to keep a stash of undecoded legendary engrams to turn them into the Cryptchump in for a powerful engram. This would help people who only play a little at a time to still be able to get milestone-level rewards..
Once we’ve obtained one kind of shader (including ornaments), allow us to pay legendary shards to get another copy of it from the vault so we don’t need to waste vault space with them. These could be located in the collections side, maybe.
14. Make a shader vendor similar to Gunsmith.
In the way we can trade 3 blue mods for a legendary mod, let us trade in lower-tier shaders we have a bunch of but don’t want (or hate), into getting a higher-tier shader that is shinier/etc. This could be integrated into Tess to assist the player with being more-often interacting with her and perhaps therefore more likely to buy/spend silver on something. Additional vendors could be located at the Farm to have a reason to go there.
15. Make the communication beacons on EDZ serve a purpose.
I’ve noticed that sometimes I will spawn into an EDZ server where someone of under-20 level is, because there are a bunch of Fallen communication beacons around in places, but when I destroy them, nothing happens. Make these be a trigger for something like how there used to be a “mysterious message” patrol in D1, or make them give us at least glimmer or something once we’re past 20.
16. There is an occasional public event in the EDZ that isn’t shown on the map most of the time.
If you head out of Trostland, thru the U-shaped exit and continue south along the shoreline as it curves east, near an underpass/bridge by the shore, a Fallen tank public event with the domes will occasionally happen, but rarely seems to show up on the map unless already in that loading zone.
17. Reduce the number of invisible barriers.
This has been a criticism of mine since Halo 2, that there are too many invisible barriers that serve no rational purpose from the gamer’s perspective. If you don’t want us to see absent textures from up high somewhere, put textures in, don’t just put an invisible barrier that prevents me from walking there. Make the fact that I can’t go there reasonable. For instance, I’ve been able to climb up to one of the upper ledges of the Devrim’s tower.. the ledge above his window, but when I try to go higher, there’s some kind of invisible wall for no logical reason that prevents me from jumping even barely an inch. LET ME CLIMB!
18. Let us acquire the Dance Party key in some way outside of the raid.
19. Let us still be able to join or leave factions at will.
Outside of the faction rally week, we can’t earn faction tokens — if you want to have faction tokens only “count” toward the faction totals during the rally, fine, but let us earn faction rep rewards (or at minimum, their shaders).
20. Have way more secret things to do in the new Tower and on the Farm.
This could even rotate by each week, especially ones that have a series of nonsensical tasks similar to the Farm’s scout jumping puzzle or the new Tower’s ball puzzle, and related to that week’s theme (such as faction rally, iron banner, etc).
That’s 20 so far; as I think of more I will append them to this list. If anyone else commenting has an idea I like, I’ll add it to my list and credit..
Sincerely, thehomeland.
the ablestmage press 