How do you ‘solve’ a problem like Destiny?

Bungie’s Destiny has been with us for around a month now and it’s fair to say it’s come under a lot of scrutiny. Some of it’s a little unfair, but a lot of what is said is valid. Lack of story, repetitive missions and bounties, RNG rage, and the Cryptarch. All of these have been discussed to death.

Even though a lot of people are feeling pretty sour about Destiny right now, they are still managing to pull in massive amounts of players. But Bungie still need to do something to address the lack of content variation. But what exactly can they do?

Since launch we have seen various ‘things’ added to the game for limited times, The Queens Wrath, which just turned out to be basically the same bounties we’ve already been grinding for the last few weeks. Then there was the Iron Banner, the ultimate test for Guardians… Well, not really. It was just a slightly, and I mean slightly tougher Crucible. These additions weren’t enough, not by a long shot, and if anything just made the problem worse.

Personally, I think there are some ‘quick wins’ out there for Bungie to have.

WHO THE F**K IS ATHEON AND WHAT DOES HE WANT?

1st add Grimoire cards to the game. I haven’t read them on the app or on Bungie.net, and there are hundreds more like me. But, they do actually add a decent amount of lore to the game. Being able to read them whilst in game would be a nice little addition. If they wanted to take that to the next level, then add some dialogue to go with them. Maybe when you unlock a new one, a message plays telling you about it.

Did you know there is a reason that you’ve been raiding the Vault of Glass? Well there is, and it’s actually a pretty cool story, but it’s not in the game… Why? You have to dig around on the internet to find out, or hope to unlock the Grimoire card explaining bits of it.

In case you wanted to read it, here it is.

GUARDIANS, SOMETHING IS HAPPENING! STAND HERE AND SHOOT IT.

2nd, add some more variation to the public events. Most of them revolve around standing in one place and shooting stuff until that stuff is no longer around. Why not add an escort mission?

“Guardians, this Inteceptor holds some vital information in its computer that the Fallen desperately want. We need to get it back to X. The problem is, it’s damaged, and the guns don’t work. You will have to work together to get it to its destination in one piece.”

I just thought of that in 2 minutes. Ok, it’s not a ground breaking idea, but it’s something a little different to ‘Stand around this object and shoot’.

I’VE GOT A MISSION FOR YOU.

3rd, more variation for patrol missions. Just like public events these are also very similar. It wouldn’t be hard to add a little variety to them. How about searching for something? Ghosts? Except that you don’t just simply get a way point telling you exactly where it is. Maybe you just get a random message with a general location, or a cryptic location. Then when you get to the area, there aren’t enemies, but puzzles. Maybe it’s a jumping puzzle? Maybe it’s a timed run to the bottom of a cave to get something before it collapses? I don’t know, anything!

CAPTURE AND DEFEND, GUARIANS!

4th, MORE PVP GAMES MODES! This is Bungie we are talking about, the guys who brought us Halo and some of the best PVP consoles have ever seen. Where is capture the flag, where is Juggernaut?

Actually a Juggernaut type game mode has been mentioned on the Destiny Reddit a few times (I’d link it if I could find it), but what if was like that but with the a Sword of Crota? How awesome would that be!

Ok, I know Bungie will want to move away from the association with Halo, but comparisons are bound to happen. And I’m sure that they will have a lot of game modes planned for the future, but why are there so few to begin with?

FOLLOW ME, GUARDIAN.

This one will kind of break in to two things. The first being voice chat. I don’t think I need to say anything else on that subject.

The second part though revolves around vehicles. Why aren’t there any vehicles that can carry more than one person? After all, the game was designed with co-op and fire teams in mind. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all get around in one vehicle. Plonk an extra seat in the Inteceptor, it’s big enough.

DECOHERENT ENGRAM

You’ve just finished your latest bout in the Crucible, a little purple weapon engram pops in your inventory. Whoosh, back to orbit and off to see Mr Cryptarch to see – pray, that it’s something good. You hand it over, he umms and ahhs with his smug little face. Then he hands it back in the form of a lovely exotic weapon… But hang on, what is this weapon? I’ve never seen it, or heard of it.

How about Bungie secretly add new items to the game? Personally I think that would be really cool. No warning, it just appears one day. I know I would get pretty excited about seeing mysterious items pop up unannounced.

I also came across this post on reddit. It has some excellent ideas, but in reality, I just look at this and think, “Why weren’t these in the game in the first place.”

There are bigger issues with the game, and I’m sure that they will be addressed over time. But in the mean time I think that a few little things here and there like the ones mentioned above could really help out.

Bungie didn’t like people shooting for hours upon hours in to a cave, but there was a reason people would do it. And that’s because it was the easiest of the monotonous tasks, and yielded a better chance for decent rewards. If you don’t want people to do it, give them something else to do, don’t just take it away and say “That’s not how your meant to play Destiny.” Address the reason it was happening!

What do you think? What ‘quick wins’ would you like to see in the game?

– Will