Anyone who has sat in a lobby with me for more than 10 minutes knows how disappointed I was in Bungie's new game "Destiny". There are many, many, many flaws with the game and a vast amount of things that could have (and should have) been done better. Some of the things I take issue with would require an overhaul of the entire game, but here are some quick and easy ways that Bungie could improve Destiny and make it a better experience for everyone.
5 simple ways to make Destiny better:
1) Allow the 3 factions at the Tower to accept both Crucible and Vanguard marks.
Currently, there are 5 different vendors that are always available at the Tower to sell weapons and armor. Of those 5, only 1 accepts Vanguard marks. If you want to buy something from the other 4 vendors, you need to slave away in PvP for a few days.
Whether or not the Crucible is actually enjoyable is a subjective matter, but suffice it to say that not everyone likes to play PvP. I have nearly broken my controller and headset several times after playing in the Crucible and my girlfriend has started to say that I'm not allowed to play it anymore because she doesn't like how frustrated I get.
Destiny would benefit from a more balanced perspective in which PvE players aren't penalized for avoiding the Crucible.
2) Make sure that ALL of the Exotic weapons are genuinely over-powered.
Exotic weapons and armor are supposed to be so powerful that Destiny's creators imposed a limit on the number of Exotics a person can use at one time. I can understand the reasoning for this, but in all honesty, Exotic weapons aren't much better than their Legendary counterparts. A fully-upgraded Exotic and a fully-upgraded Legendary have the exact same damage rating, and I often find myself preferring certain Legendary guns over Exotic ones.
For example, the Exotic hand cannon "The Last Word" is a great gun and it's very fun to use. The game mechanics for the weapon make it so you spin the gun around on your finger when you change weapons, and it even shows your left hand pulling back the hammer every time you shoot, just like in old Western films. The actual statistics for it, however, aren't much better than Legendary hand cannons.
In my opinion, the Legendary hand cannon "The Devil You Know" is actually a better weapon than "The Last Word". It has better Range, a higher Impact rating, and a larger magazine (12 rounds as opposed to 8). When it boils down to it, some Exotic weapons are more like novelty items rather than over-powered ones, which makes it really frustrating when you can only carry one at a time.
3) Have Xur available more often.
After a certain point in a character's progression, the 5 vendors for weapons and armor start to become obsolete. The game becomes centered around Xur and the items he offers, which are only available for two days out of the week. When you add in that over a dozen missions and bounties include buying something from Xur in order to continue the progression, you realize that he ought to be available more often.
The twitter account @legendaryengram said it best:
"Bungie increased Xur's responsibilities. He's now the most important NPC in the game but available the least."
4) Restrict certain weapons from the Crucible.
It might seem like I'm attacking the players that run around with Vex Mythoclasts and Gjallarhorns, but I'm actually trying to protect them. Shortly after people starting using Mythoclasts in the Crucible, Bungie's forums lit up like a Christmas tree from people complaining that the gun was over-powered. The biggest complaint was that it was an unfair advantage because not everyone had the gun and it was rather difficult to attain.
Bungie responded by "nerfing" the Mythoclast. Even the players who only used it for PvE and never once used it in the Crucible saw their beloved, hard-earned Fusion Rifle get crapped on. This led to a lot of PvE players demanding that the Crucible be removed entirely if it was going to have this kind of effect on them.
A simpler solution would be to restrict those hard-to-obtain, over-powered weapons from being used in standard Crucible matches. Allow players to use them in the Iron Banner though, because the Iron Banner should be a straight-up "your best character vs. my best character" kind of battle... which brings me to my next point.
5) Fix the Iron Banner.
As it currently stands, every Iron Banner match has a maximum player-level difference of 7 levels. This means that if the highest player in a lobby is a Level 32 and the lowest player is a Level 4, the game will adjust the lowest player(s) and bring them up to Level 25 for the duration of the match.
To put it bluntly, that's just dumb. Iron Banner matches are supposed to be pure Player vs. Player action without any modifiers or restrictions. A strong character should completely obliterate a weak one, for a very simple reason: the player with the strong character put more time and effort in ranking it up and deserves to kick the crap out of the other players who failed to do so.
Obviously, that kind of ideology doesn't work for every PvP match, but that's what the standard Crucible is for. Seeing as how we only get Iron Banner events maybe once a month, the players that have worked hard and put in the time grinding out strong characters should have that short while to enjoy them to the fullest.
5 simple ways to make Destiny better:
1) Allow the 3 factions at the Tower to accept both Crucible and Vanguard marks.
Currently, there are 5 different vendors that are always available at the Tower to sell weapons and armor. Of those 5, only 1 accepts Vanguard marks. If you want to buy something from the other 4 vendors, you need to slave away in PvP for a few days.
Whether or not the Crucible is actually enjoyable is a subjective matter, but suffice it to say that not everyone likes to play PvP. I have nearly broken my controller and headset several times after playing in the Crucible and my girlfriend has started to say that I'm not allowed to play it anymore because she doesn't like how frustrated I get.
Destiny would benefit from a more balanced perspective in which PvE players aren't penalized for avoiding the Crucible.
2) Make sure that ALL of the Exotic weapons are genuinely over-powered.
Exotic weapons and armor are supposed to be so powerful that Destiny's creators imposed a limit on the number of Exotics a person can use at one time. I can understand the reasoning for this, but in all honesty, Exotic weapons aren't much better than their Legendary counterparts. A fully-upgraded Exotic and a fully-upgraded Legendary have the exact same damage rating, and I often find myself preferring certain Legendary guns over Exotic ones.
For example, the Exotic hand cannon "The Last Word" is a great gun and it's very fun to use. The game mechanics for the weapon make it so you spin the gun around on your finger when you change weapons, and it even shows your left hand pulling back the hammer every time you shoot, just like in old Western films. The actual statistics for it, however, aren't much better than Legendary hand cannons.
In my opinion, the Legendary hand cannon "The Devil You Know" is actually a better weapon than "The Last Word". It has better Range, a higher Impact rating, and a larger magazine (12 rounds as opposed to 8). When it boils down to it, some Exotic weapons are more like novelty items rather than over-powered ones, which makes it really frustrating when you can only carry one at a time.
3) Have Xur available more often.
After a certain point in a character's progression, the 5 vendors for weapons and armor start to become obsolete. The game becomes centered around Xur and the items he offers, which are only available for two days out of the week. When you add in that over a dozen missions and bounties include buying something from Xur in order to continue the progression, you realize that he ought to be available more often.
The twitter account @legendaryengram said it best:
"Bungie increased Xur's responsibilities. He's now the most important NPC in the game but available the least."
4) Restrict certain weapons from the Crucible.
It might seem like I'm attacking the players that run around with Vex Mythoclasts and Gjallarhorns, but I'm actually trying to protect them. Shortly after people starting using Mythoclasts in the Crucible, Bungie's forums lit up like a Christmas tree from people complaining that the gun was over-powered. The biggest complaint was that it was an unfair advantage because not everyone had the gun and it was rather difficult to attain.
Bungie responded by "nerfing" the Mythoclast. Even the players who only used it for PvE and never once used it in the Crucible saw their beloved, hard-earned Fusion Rifle get crapped on. This led to a lot of PvE players demanding that the Crucible be removed entirely if it was going to have this kind of effect on them.
A simpler solution would be to restrict those hard-to-obtain, over-powered weapons from being used in standard Crucible matches. Allow players to use them in the Iron Banner though, because the Iron Banner should be a straight-up "your best character vs. my best character" kind of battle... which brings me to my next point.
5) Fix the Iron Banner.
As it currently stands, every Iron Banner match has a maximum player-level difference of 7 levels. This means that if the highest player in a lobby is a Level 32 and the lowest player is a Level 4, the game will adjust the lowest player(s) and bring them up to Level 25 for the duration of the match.
To put it bluntly, that's just dumb. Iron Banner matches are supposed to be pure Player vs. Player action without any modifiers or restrictions. A strong character should completely obliterate a weak one, for a very simple reason: the player with the strong character put more time and effort in ranking it up and deserves to kick the crap out of the other players who failed to do so.
Obviously, that kind of ideology doesn't work for every PvP match, but that's what the standard Crucible is for. Seeing as how we only get Iron Banner events maybe once a month, the players that have worked hard and put in the time grinding out strong characters should have that short while to enjoy them to the fullest.