That's a good read. I had assumed that we would be trading up to other weapons, but this being a long-term game it would make sense for our current weps to "become legend" as we do. I think this is a really good idea, and it completely fits in with their ideas of player investment. But I don't like how in WoW people are just hunting items based on stats. The obsession with getting "that new gear" seems to be the driving point of that game apart from level grinding. Any implementation I think will come with an amount of control from up top. Bungie is opening up this world unlike they have with games before it, but I think people will run wild and break immersion/fictional sensibility. In TF2 a naming system for example works because the game doesn't take itself seriously at all, and Valve has an almost completely hands off approach to stylistic choices. Game mechanics on the other hand... In TF2 we see all kinds of user created pieces in use in that game. I mean people literally model their own items and submit them for review by the community and Valve, and in turn if an item is popular enough it makes it into a drop or crate or seasonal celebration. It's just that when it comes to weapons, ultimately it's up to Valve to decide how it fits in with the other weapons already in the game as far as balance goes. I think that giving players a great deal of stylistic control is a very good idea. But I think about it this way, there is something about the exotics you find that inspires the imagination about an unspoken past, and the name is just more of a placeholder. Perhaps we can have all of these stylistic things minus the in game naming to keep with the spirit of the world. That way we don't have profane and silly names getting attached to people's items. There is something underestimate and mysterious about an interestingly adorned weapon with no name to speak of. It's also very western i.e. "The Man with No Name" which has also been referenced at GDC. I think letting people have that capacity to stylize their items but putting the functionality of the weapon on predefined upgrade trees, trees plural, is a good way to go. Allow Bungie to make sandbox decisions, but make the functional end result open-ended enough for players to feel like it's their own creation.