As it stands, I feel like the community at large is fairly unhappy with the current state of affairs for Destiny 2. While I can't speak for everyone, I hope that in this I do a decent enough job of providing ideas that would make most players happy, while keeping the spirit of the game intact. If you think I missed something, or I made a stupid spelling mistake, feel free to let me know what you think in the replies. [u]Disclaimer: This is going to be a very long post[/u] [b]1.) PVP Changes[/b] There are a few major things that I would like to see added to the crucible options. Firstly, there needs to be more options of games. For a game like Destiny that harbors so many different things to do, the fact that there are only 2 consistent crucible modes is kind of insane to me. I feel like the lack of crucible content is being addressed In part with the ranked PVP system should hopefully be added early 2018. I feel like that only addresses part of the problem, however. I realized this fact not too long ago, that people play games for a many different reasons. And for the most part, it can be boiled down to two simplified categories: playing for fun, and playing to win. Now while I am part of the later category, I understand the need to make space for both in the game. Which brings me to the first series of changes I would propose, keep competitive/ranked and trials 4v4, re-balance maps for 6v6 while keeping their 4v4 counterparts for comp, change casual mode to 6v6, and add a mode where supers and cool downs come back faster. It might seem like a lot of steps, but it hopefully shouldn't be too difficult to pull off. The over arching goal of this is to provide options for everyone to tryhard or trysoft. In total, I would hope there would be 5 selectable game modes, in addition to trials, and iron banner. As for in game balance of weapons in crucible, I think that I would make one change: de-incentivize rockets. Getting multiple rockets was fine in D1, because everyone was kitted out with snipers, and quick-kill weapons. Now that that isn't the case, I feel like getting 2 rockets might be too much. The reason I feel this way is due to 2 things, the risk vs reward for rockets, and the margin of error. In Destiny 2, when comparing to other heavy weapons, there really isn't much risk in using a rocket. You can fire around corners, and with no damage falloff at range (not blast radius) they're a decent option almost all of the time. When you compare that to swords, shotguns, and fusion rifles, there is much less risk in using a rocket compared to those weapons. As for the other two weapons, snipers and grenade launchers, you need to be [i]Very[/i] accurate to use those weapons effectively, essentially meaning there is a greater margin of error. Grenade launchers don't really have much blast radius, and need to connect in order to be significantly damaging, and snipers need to score a headshot to kill, which is a fairly low margin of error in my mind. I would hope that rockets are looked at by the live team, and effectively addressed so as to allow other power weapons to be useful. (and no, moving snipers and shotguns to the energy slot is not the answer) [b]2.) The Mod Economy or Lack Thereof + Weapon Variety[/b] The effective difference that mods make to the game is fairly close to zero. I'm willing to bet that many of us have put on the purple mods to our equipment just to see the power level go up, without even needing it to. There needs to be many steps made to change mods in the game so that they actually mean something. At the same time, the community is requesting that random mods return to the game. While I would like to believe that this would help increase variety in PVP and to an extent PVE, I can't say that I think it will. The functionality of the weapons will remain the same, all this means is you might need to spend some glimmer to re-roll your weapon over and over again. What is needed to increase weapon variety is a large amount of good options, not a lot of somewhat bad options and one good one that takes all of 5 min of re-rolling to get. Now I bet some of you might be wondering why these are lumped together into one topic. And that's because I feel like there might be a way to kill 2 birds with one stone. Picture this: let's say that you get an Old Fashioned, and you zoom in to get details on it, as of right now, you are prompted with all the perks already unlocked for the gun, and nothing else is needed to unlock them. So you can chose the perks how you like, and be on your way. What I would propose is that if you were to inspect the weapon, you would find only an intrinsic perk, a frame type, and 3 empty frames (4 for energy weapons, deciding what element you want). These frames can be filled with a huge variety of different mods and upgrades, many of which were based on the perks that weapons currently, to the point of even taking some intrinsic perks and allowing you to add them to the gun. This should enable the player to customize their arsenal in new, and unique ways. While I'll leave the balancing of this idea to the devs (if they even read this, I would love to hear what you think), lets get back to the Old Fashioned, and use it as an example of some of the things you could do. In my mind, you can use the system described above to give it: Increased handling [i]Mod 1[/i] Alloy mag [i]Mod 2[/i] Outlaw [i]Mod 3[/i] All of these would be in addition to the intrinsic kill clip found on the Old Fashioned, and would not change the type of frame. These changes won't change the handling and feel of the gun too much, since the frame and sounds will remain the same, but it allows players to "create" their own weapons that suit their playstyles. And it might even turn some guns that weren't used too often, into complete monsters, simply because their downsides can be minimized. I'm not exactly positive what the balancing for something like this would be like, but I feel like this is a great way to increase the value of mods, and actually utilize the system on weapons, aside from deciding what element they should be, while increasing the amount of weapons used throughout the game. The mod system for armor might take a little more thought, but I think a similar system could be implemented. [b]3.) Common Exotics + Strike Incentives[/b] From the "State of Destiny 2" blog post shown here [url]https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/46504[/url], I have one major thing that I can [i]not[/i] support, and that is the changes to Xur. These changes include: giving you an exotic weapon that you don't already have, and the return of the 3 of coins. The reason that I have a problem with this, is that most players are already swimming in exotics, so much so that I have sometimes found it harder to find a decent legendary than an exotic. At this point, exotic engrams are handed out like candy to begin with, and adding the 3 of coins, is only going to make that problem worse. The only exotic that feels kind of special to me, like its hard-ish to get, and I have it, is the Legend of Acrius. [u]Exotics need to be rare[/u] otherwise, they just don't feel worthwhile. There are some exotics that I would like to see buffed or changed, like the Graviton Lance, but that's an argument for another day. So, how to fix exotics so they aren't thrown at us like candy during a parade? Well, what about making him a trading post as well, allowing you to exchange some of your unwanted tokens in exchange for legendary shards, or glimmer. Or even reverse those roles, exchanging glimmer or shards for tokens. That would make him more worthwhile as a resource, rather than the Xur we currently have. But this is mostly about exotics, and that's what most of you care about, so what would I recommend? I thought about this for a little while, and came up with the idea, to give him less inventory. Ever since Destiny 1, Xur's sole propose has been to speed up the grind. But in Destiny 2, there isn't much grind in the game, and what is feels pointless, and to be honest, Xur isn't helping that feeling. So with so many exotic engrams in the wild, and Xur making it easier to get any exotic in the game, how do we make exotics exotic again? What I would recommend going forward, is to significantly reduce the drop rates of exotic engrams, and give those engrams and Xur the same set inventory. In my mind, this increases the grind for exotics, making them harder to get, while at the same time making it so that if you can't get a certain exotic via RNG, you're buddy Xur has got your back. "But if you're reducing the pool of exotics that you can get from the engrams, where do the rest of them go?" The rest of the exotics in my mind, would be set as very low odds drops from the named enemies that can spawn in each patrol zone, and to final bosses of the strikes. On a side note, I'm willing to bet a good amount of you played Borderlands 2, and have spent many hours killing Savage Lee trying to get a DPUH. This is the same theory that I have to incentivize the strike playlist. Each strike boss can drop its one or more exotics very infrequently, but that's not the only change needed. In order to bring that farming feeling, you would need to be able to consistently run that strike, which is why I would like to see a launcher for specific strikes, if you have a fireteam, or are ballsy enough to go it alone. This would allow you to run that strike over and over again, but it would also provide a distinct end goal: getting that exotic that you really want. That incentive to grind out that one weapon that you really want is part of the grind incentive for strikes, but I'm not sure how many tokens it would reward, but that's a question for the experts and Bungie. As a side thought, every other activity, including all of the planets has their own set of armor, why doesn't the vanguard? Thank you