Here's my thoughts on a new set of 4 strikes. Bungie, please take whatever you think would be appropriate and run with it (see, this is called [b]free content[/b] [b]hint hint[/b]):
1) Crippling the War Machine
The mission is to disable a major manufacturing center for the Cabal. Your fireteam is dumped down on the outside of a major foundry facility which is heavily guarded. You have to sneak past the perimeter guards, and break into the foundry. Inside, you plant demo charges on the equipment, which gives you 5 minutes to evac. However, you also have the choice of heading to the factory storeroom, where you can collect 50 relic iron. If you can get in, get the iron, and get out before your charges go off, the strike is successful, and you get a 2 hour buff (time increases based on difficulty, if you beat this on nightfall you get a 24 hour buff) that reduced incoming cabal damage by 10%. If you get blown up by your charges, you get nothing. If you fail to plant the charges, the Cabal get a 10% buff of damage on you.
2) Vexing Minds
One (random) member of the fireteam starts in a room surrounded by Vex, strapped to a chair. The vex are trying to invade the captured member's mind, and the member has to play a mini-game to keep them out. The mini-game gets harder the longer the vex try. Meanwhile, the other two have to quickly neutralize the Vex in order save the fireteam member before his/her secrets are spilled. If you successfully save the 3rd member in time, you can continue on into the Vex establishment to capture key intel. If you get all of this done, you get a buff that allows you to do 10% more damage to vex for the next # of hours (based on level). If you fail, and the Vex get a 10% damage buff.
3) Defeat their shields
You're sent to a remote part of the moon to capture intel on the Hive. While there, you find a dark ceremony where wizards are being "blessed" by an extra powerful wizard in a giant pool of something (it looks sticky). The wizards that exit the pool now have shields. Eliminate the wizard and cast the light of the Traveler into the pool, and for a preset duration none of the wizards you face will have shields. If you fail, Shields on wizards are 2x as tough.
4) Clan Wars
Intelligence suggests that two Fallen factions are already at odds with each other. Tip them into war by sneaking into one faction's headquarters and stealing a token, then going to the other faction's HQ and killing a high ranking member and placing the stolen token on the body. If successful, fallen spawn points will increase the spawn timers by 1 minute for a time duration based on difficulty, leading to less enemies. If you fail, spawns will be faster, and will spawn more guys enemies.
Couple of thoughts on Farming, which is just dreadfully boring in Destiny:
If we have to have some sort of upgrade material, I'd much rather have a strike where we teleport onto an enemy starship, fight our way into the engine room, and rob their helium coils, knocking out an enemy ship and filling our materials that way. Or a public event where an enemy convoy drives through the landscape, and if we hit them hard we can steal a truck and get materials. There has to be a better, more interesting way to get materials than just "run around and hold down X when you randomly get lucky and find a chest".
Anyway, these might be a little rough, but I'm just thinking that they'd be relatively easy to implement, and would provide some variety that we've all been screaming for. It'd be great if we could work in a way to get upgrade materials from strikes, instead of farming.
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You get these creative ideas OUT of here!!! It is already coded to let the ghost unlock things while you defend him, so it's much easier and they can spend time nerfing guns and changing the look of icons!! Your originality will NOT be tolerated by Bungie, and it would probably just give half the studio an aneurysm. But for reals.... [spoiler]I like em. Wish we had more variety like this. [/spoiler]