lol - and I've been playing with someone this past week who's been saying almost every night that Shotguns should be removed from the game. It's all about what you DON'T have, not what you do. ;)

I don't get this argument at all. Shotguns have received nerfs. Sniper rifles seem to just be stupidly unbalanced. Neither shotguns nor sniper rifles should be removed completely, but something definitely needs to be done in the balancing equation on sniper rifles right now.

Edit: Shotguns probably could use some tweaking as well, though I'm not necessarily clear yet on what I'd want to do with them. I would put sniper rifle balancing at a higher priority at this point, but both definitely need work.

Shotguns are now so irrelevant in end-game PvE that I don't know why I've kept any of them outside of the quest CTD for crucible.

Sidenote: I really don't understand shotguns in the world of Destiny. Who's developing these guns that you hardly use in PvE? It's an area of technology that doesn't seem to have enough use in the universe to warrant the time spent researching and developing better shotguns. The only plausible use of shotguns would be hordes of Thrall attacking you. It's really the only time in the story/universe where a shotgun would be the most useful weapon. Weapons better suited to the task of eradicating the darkness would have been designed and created in this universe. You'd focus on being able to take out targets from easy safe distances. But I'm probably putting more thought into this than people think I should.

Who doesn't use shotguns in PvE? When it comes to doing something challenging or new I always default back to Invective and No Backup Plans. Yes, shotguns got something of a nerf from their historic high of +200% damage, but I think they still do 150% more damage than they did two years ago.

As for in universe... Most of our enemies can appear anywhere either via dropships or transmat or teleporting in from an alternate dimension. Except for maybe the City, there are no safe distances. It sounds like we enjoyed a period of relative safety across the Earth for the past few hundred years but couldn't really appreciate it (outside of The City) since our society had been completely destroyed. But go to the Moon, or Venus, or Mars and you have Hive cutting through physical reality to rain Thrall and Acolytes on your head. Or you have Fallen decloaking directly above you. Or you have Vex dropping in from another when and where. Or you have a Cabal fleet overhead constantly hounding you with dropship after dropship.

Aside from Destiny shotguns being your typical infinite power up close, no damage beyond 5 feet kind of video game weapons, I would think some Guardians (who really can't permanently die during normal combat) would absolutely carry around one of these shotguns. :)

And while we're on the topic of Titans, there's another thing that grinds my gears. The buff to Shoulder Charge is ridiculous. I think it was fine where it was. I won't go into more detail. My blood will start boiling.

The them not having to hear me may sound silly but I think it's kinda an important courtesy I extend. :p

Obviously you are not complaining in an entertaining enough fashion. I think Up North has some phrases we could adopt.

Apologies for the no show.
May have been fortuitous - this was actually one of the very first 'Vault' strips I made.
Been waiting for the right moment for it to be... unleassssssshhhhed.

edit: I realize there are some hardcore annoying people out there who should be banned from ever opening their mouths. Let's ignore the obvious here.

Unfortunately there are a lot more than "some". I actually really appreciate that chat is disabled by default. I only ever have to talk to or listen to people I want to hear. In Halo Reach I always kept everyone muted by default once they made that setting available.

That's not to say that chat off by default is necessarily the best option, but I think it made Destiny a lot more fun than if they kept chat on by default.

As an alternative, maybe they could have come up with some kind of system where you can have annoying people automatically muted when reported enough by the community? Leave the ability to un-mute them and come up with some way to get themselves removed from the auto-mute so you can't get permanently muted by bad community members maybe.

Or perhaps add the ability to report people who violate certain chat rules and automatically have clips of their chat sent to Bungie for actual, temporary bans? Boy would that be a wakeup call for some idiots. Of course, it's also probably too much work for Bungie and it would require stating the rules very clearly in advance.

Anyway, just thinking about the whole playing solo thing more. I played some crucible last night (3v3 & 6v6) with a fireteam and had an awesome time just chatting away.

edit: I realize there are some hardcore annoying people out there who should be banned from ever opening their mouths. Let's ignore the obvious here.