Since the release of the Destiny 2 trailer I've seen a lot of whining (yeah, you heard me) about the tone and direction Bungue seems to be aiming for; the emphasis on Cayde-6's goofy, loveable rogue personality seems an unimaginative and hackneyed solution to what has, until now, attempted to be a sincere and humourless universe. Considering the original story was such a bland experience, devoid of any real personality (even Nolan North couldn't spice up those Ghost lines) until Nathan Fillian took over as Cayde in the later expansions, the general consensus amongst reviewers was that the best way to play Destiny was to ignore the storyline completely, so I have a hard time sympathising with anyone who wants to maintain the status quo; I'd rather have some personality that none at all.

Anyway, I could dive deeper into this argument buuuuuuuut I don't really care. And this is my blog, so fuck it. Instead i'm going to list off all the stuff which I want from Destiny 2 in no specific order.

Matchmaking for Raids

I can understand why on PC this isn't such a big deal, because the infrastructure for matchmaking is immediately available elsewhere on sites like reddit, but that's a hassle when you're playing on console. Use some smart filters to let players be specific about what they're searching for, and have some kind of system that indicates how many times each player has completed a raid so prospective groups can recruit appropriately. Which brings me succinctly to my next point;

Dynamic raids

The problem with having only one endgame raid is that after you've done it a couple of times it gets a bit repetitive. Raids, and raid secrets, are easily the best part of Destiny - having raids that change and evolve with their playerbase, special events, modifiers, and a range of rewards, could all extend the replayability of raids indefinitely. This would also prevent old raid content from stagnating - as new raids were introduced and the level cap was raised, old raids became redundant as the loot you received for completing them was considered more trouble than it was worth - why spend 5 hours completing this old raid when the new strike drops better loot in 15 minutes and it's green. For anyone joining the Destiny community late, the existing expansions (which you were still required to pay full price for) were a total waste of money as, even if you could find a group willing to run it, there were few rewards worth the trip.

Chat Wheels

Give us the option to issue basic commands with a chat wheel. It works, and it's useful. I don't play with a headset unless I know the people in my party, and being able to issue dumb orders like "follow me" or "regroup" is invaluable when trying to show the random knuckleheads online how to finish a strike.

Strike Design

See what I did there? Strike bosses need to be more than just a huge bullet sponge. A strike should effectively be designed in the same way as one segment of a raid. There should be puzzled (procederally generated, because you're going to end up doing them a bunch of times) and fights which encourage exploration, teamplay and strategy, with a more interesting dynamic than "strafe and shoot until the big alien falls over".

PVP

Iron Banner was awesome. The best way for people to showcase all the cool loot they got was to let them use it to unfairly blow the shit out of one another. I appreciate the attempt to balance all the weapons out and make PVP fair but it was never as satisfying.

Class identity

By the end of the final Destiny Expansion all the classes had kinda merged to become interchangeable. That simplifies things when you're trying to get a group together, but does trivialise the class choice to begin with. There should be more emphasis on complimentary skills and less focus on turning every class into a solo-proficient death machine. Synergy is the buzzword of the day, folks.

Alright, that'll do for now. There's plenty more ideas whizzing around so I'll probably update this as and when I feel like it. Stay tuned.

Thanks For Reading

Love Sweep