There are plenty of obvious things I'd like to see in Destiny 2 (better storytelling & character development, better mission design, 60fps, etc etc etc). I could go on an on here, so I've narrowed things down to 2 big ideas that I hope to see in Des2ny.

1) Levels, be gone.

Yeah, not a fan of levels. Extrinsic vs intrinsic...

2) A more seamless world

I think the area of Destiny that holds the most untapped potential is Patrol mode, and the "hub-world" areas in general. For all its faults, the Division does some things with its open world that I'd love to see worked into Destiny. The way story missions and strikes resolve with the player right back in the open world (patrol mode) keeps things feeling seamless and connected. Being able to look at a mission marker on your map, walk over to the start location and seamlessly begin the mission is very cool too (no need to go from patrol out to orbit then back down to the same planet to start a mission).

One of the best things about the Division was how seamless it all was. It felt contrived every time I abseiled right after beating some boss, but it was still 1 million times better than "Going to Orbit"...

Horizon Zero Dawn has been getting lots of attention for its open world, and rightfully so. One element that jumps out as being particularly relevant to Destiny is the way they handle enemy spawning. The map in HZD is filled with machine "zones"; specific areas where you can consistently find specific types of machines roaming. Very similar to the way you will find specific enemy deployment in the various patrol zones in Destiny. Except in HZD, you never see the enemies spawn. There are no "monster closets", you just happen upon them wandering around.

The monster closets and milling about that enemies do in Patrol make it feel much more like a shooting gallery rather than a living world. There's a reason why I feel a rush of excitement when a public event happens or even when pikes come rolling through.

The other great thing that happens in HZD is that the various herds of machines move around a bit, which leads to plenty of unique encounters. On your first trip through an area you might come across a couple Snapjaws and have a cool battle with them. Your second time through, you might be fighting more snapjaws in the same location, only to have a Sawtooth come wandering into the fray and completely change the dynamic of the fight. Adding various factions into the mix makes things even more dynamic. Destiny tries to do this in a few places, but that usually boils down to a few patrol locations where the same group of 4-5 vex keep teleporting into the exact same spot and fighting the exact same group of cabal, over and over and over, forever.

It's pretty fun when "the enemy moves against each other" or whatever it is.

There are so many ways that Destiny's open-world could be brought to life. I'd love to see as much focus on that as possible :)

Yeah, Raids and Patrol are what make Destiny special to me. Raids delivered and Patrol only started coming together with TTK and ROI

But the game places SO MANY barriers between the player and their ability to just enjoy that content.

Bungie: "Working as intended."

1) Levels, be gone.

I've posted before about my feelings towards light levels and character ranks in Destiny. Basically, of all the ways character leveling changes the game, I don't think any of them are positive. It twists the focus away from doing that activities we want to do, towards doing activities we need to do in order to reach the light level required to do the activities we want to do. And it can take MONTHS of constant grinding to get a full selection of weapons and armor leveled up to the point where a player can bring their guardian into any activity and have a full set of tools at their disposal. Destiny has lots of great, fun, exciting content (from raids or Trials or Nightfalls to cool weapons and gear). But the game places SO MANY barriers between the player and their ability to just enjoy that content. The whole level-up process is the largest and most obtrusive of those barriers. You don't need levels to have a difficulty progression (just introduce more challenging enemies/encounters). You don't need levels to have our guardians get more powerful over time (we already have a power-upgrade tree, and new weapons and armor could have higher damage and health ratings).

This first week playing the Age of Triumph update has helped confirm my opinion. For the first time since the release of Destiny, we have an update that doesn't include a light level increase. As someone who is going into Age of Triumph at max level, the difference to my experience is huge. I'm able to jump in and play whatever activity I want with my friends with zero concern over grinding, deciding which gear to level up first, playing the first half of a raid over and over until I've leveled up enough to beat the 2nd half, or any of that nonsense. Destiny right now is probably the most fun it has ever been, and the lack of level-cap increase is a huge part of it.

2) A more seamless world

I think the area of Destiny that holds the most untapped potential is Patrol mode, and the "hub-world" areas in general. For all its faults, the Division does some things with its open world that I'd love to see worked into Destiny. The way story missions and strikes resolve with the player right back in the open world (patrol mode) keeps things feeling seamless and connected. Being able to look at a mission marker on your map, walk over to the start location and seamlessly begin the mission is very cool too (no need to go from patrol out to orbit then back down to the same planet to start a mission).

Horizon Zero Dawn has been getting lots of attention for its open world, and rightfully so. One element that jumps out as being particularly relevant to Destiny is the way they handle enemy spawning. The map in HZD is filled with machine "zones"; specific areas where you can consistently find specific types of machines roaming. Very similar to the way you will find specific enemy deployment in the various patrol zones in Destiny. Except in HZD, you never see the enemies spawn. There are no "monster closets", you just happen upon them wandering around.

The other great thing that happens in HZD is that the various herds of machines move around a bit, which leads to plenty of unique encounters. On your first trip through an area you might come across a couple Snapjaws and have a cool battle with them. Your second time through, you might be fighting more snapjaws in the same location, only to have a Sawtooth come wandering into the fray and completely change the dynamic of the fight. Adding various factions into the mix makes things even more dynamic. Destiny tries to do this in a few places, but that usually boils down to a few patrol locations where the same group of 4-5 vex keep teleporting into the exact same spot and fighting the exact same group of cabal, over and over and over, forever.

There are so many ways that Destiny's open-world could be brought to life. I'd love to see as much focus on that as possible :)

[*] Change: No RNG on weapon rolls, or at least make the weapons names MEAN something. If there must be rolls NAME the weapon with the roll and reduce the # of possible rolls (Matador 64a, Matador 64b, Matador 64c, etc.). There are too many possible perk combinations and too many choices that affect how good the weapon performs, it's information overload for me.

This is one of the things I hope for most (besides an in-game story). Hunting for "God-rolls" on weapons needs to go away. When I pick up a weapon, it should have the same options as every other version of that weapon. Give us options on the weapon, sure, but give the same options to every player who picks it up. If they want to add more variety, then maybe let us discover extra sights or trigger mods while digging through the rubble of the last city, but again, everyone would have the opportunity to find those same mods.

Random armor stat rolls need to go away, too. This is RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG. Why is it even possible to get a piece of armor with only 80% of its possible stats? And how much vault space is currently dedicated to either multiple copies of the same gear with different stat rolls, or gear we don't even like but keep around because it's our best Int/Dis piece for a certain armor slot? I would love to have a slider that would let me determine how much of my Guardian's light will be dedicated to keeping my grenade, melee, and super abilities powered up. Keep RNG for perks if you have to cram RNG in there somewhere, but I'd like to be able to find and add armor mods for this kind of thing, too.

Maybe if each piece of gear starts off the same for everyone, but allows for some customization through some in-game action besides RNG, we'll actually get the "every weapon has a story" thing we were told about in D1.

-Disciple

I hope they separate weapons in PvE and PvP. I get that field scout was an issue for machine guns in PvP, but I miss having ammo for my secondary/heavy during long PvE encounters.

This trailer and the next could be the best things ever, but fundamentally, a lot of players DO NOT TRUST BUNGIE-ACTIVISION.

For context: I grew up on Marathon, dinking around in netgames with my dad. Didn't hear about Myth, but I adored Oni. Not as polished, but man was it fun.

Even before Halo, Bungie was one of my most beloved game studios.

While ago, I deleted my Destiny data on my PS4. End game content wasn't fun - I just sleptwalk through campaign missions, or Strikes were just a chore with strangers and modifiers that were either irrelevant or made the strike pointlessly punishing. I tried doing a fresh character, deleting my old Warlock. I just couldn't keep interest.

I want this to be great.

But I've been hurt before.

A great point was brought up in a different thread. I think it merits its own discussion however. So disregarding the tone of the trailer, worries about pre-orders and remaining customer dissatisfaction after the lqunch of Destiny, how are people feeling regarding Destiny 2?

What are things you are hoping to see changed? Things retained? New things?

Or perhaps you are more concerned about things you think will be detrimental that bungie does not appear to have learned From? (I know some of these points have already been hammered into the ground.)

More importantly from my perspective, how are you balancing your hopes for Destiny 2 against your fears for the same?

I'm posting this before reading the rest of this thread.

So... sheesh. Where do I start...*sigh*. Shit. I already know where I'm going to start, because of course I have to reference it. As the lot of you may be aware from a certain "1000 views" post, the overall whole year one result of Destiny hit me pretty hard. Fuck... I'll even go so far as to say I think something may have broke inside me, which is pretty an impressive thing to have done to a person that's is built together much like a Golem is rock.

I trusted Bungie, and I don't any more, or at least as long as Activision hovers menacingly in the background. In retrospect there were out word signs to be seen if I had bothered to pay attention to that sort of thing. I guess when you look outside-in among all the other bits of noise life can throw at ya, my missing of these little details might not be so surprising. I also wasn't as... well versed, in video games and their creation when it comes to business; so I guess there is that too. Anyway, enough of this public inword banter... Destiny 2.

The first thing I think of when I say Destiny 2 right now, is how much I want to mod again. I haven't modded a game since, well... my foundation Halo days. Ancient History. Geez, the original admins kid is probably... at least 13 years now. I can't seem to recall the date. Anyway, modding Destiny on the PC would be the biggest draw for me. This all would also depend on how modding would work in a "shared world shooter", and also the route Bungie/Activision take for DRM, since license code keys are no longer a thing, sadly (which was a thing last time I gamed on a computer). If they go with the ever ubiquitous Steam, then there is a chance that Destiny 2 can run on Linux, which would be nice.

That said, my hopes aren't very high currently for official modding capabilities. But I want... I WANT. WANTS... THE PRECIOUS!

With that idea out of the way, I shall be blunt, Destiny 2 needs a purpose. Purpose in story. Purpose in game play. Purpose in loot. Purpose. Purpose. Purpose. Destiny 1 was an aimless mess of ideas. Some of those ideas were very good! Some of those ideas even were able to captivate continued game play three years later for some, but not as many I figure as Bungie would like. For Destiny 2 I also have the same well documented (as I did alpha and beta reviews too) concerns as I did for Destiny 1. I can also say, if I find they have screwed up again, there will be no time to charm for a third.

Things that can be improved is a longer list.

Narrative. Give us a story. The trailers show promise because we have a premise, an immediate plot. D1 had stuff going on, but it was so large picture nothing was done with it, among other things. We also have an actual antagonist with Gaal, but the shortcoming of previous Destiny antagonists was that all they were was a name. Oryx had character, but it was flat and two dimensional villainy. The Codex does not count, because you don't see any of that "depth" in the actual game.

So yeah, good on them for this basic premise. More importantly, have our villains be characters. Have them speak, give them a motivation beyond conquest for its own sake.

Then theirs the actual context, the game world. See, we're going to be playing D2 a lot, by design. Thats not a bad thing to have a grind. Problem with that and D1 is that we have so little gameworld to go around. The individual planets are TINY, not even touching how they're further divided into bubbles. I was expecting something more like Halo's expansive levels. As railroaded as they were, they felt truly large in scope.

Second part of that is enemies. I could do some levels, some strikes, by rote memory. I go so far down THIS hall, and I'm already aiming to headshot the two Fallen around the corner before I see them. I doubt they'll do something like Warframe with entirely randomized, procedurally generated levels, but just do SOMETHING so I don't sleepwalk through the game on the second playthrough.

Weapon balancing could also be looked at. I mean, everything is balanced, don't get me wrong. But its so precisely balanced, to the point where a lot of guns just didn't feel rewarding at all. None of them really had a special something, because well we don't want to overshadow scout rifles or something.

Part of that I think is applying PVP changes to PVE as well. The values for the two game modes are so exclusive, they're probably better off giving us a set arsenal of crucible only weapons. They can do whatever they want to those things, and leave the weapon type as a whole unmolested.

Also, character creator, while we're at it. More options. And let us actually rotate and zoom in the creator. How anyone forgot those functions in this day and age I'll never know.

Finally, obsolescence. Every Destiny update made all the previous content trivialized. People only went back for nostalgia, trophies, or specific quests. Heck, I was trying to do a fresh Warlock and I found myself having trouble with quest-specific strikes and such. No one was doing them. They could not be done because it was outside that quests popularity window and the quest was designed with multiple people in mind. Not everyone has a good friends list to help them out.

If only they could add a simple chat function, right?

I'm going to wait a month or two post-release to even consider D2. Too much pain in the rear piled on a good shooter build. Trailer is good, but it doesn't reassure me in the slightest.

A great point was brought up in a different thread. I think it merits its own discussion however. So disregarding the tone of the trailer, worries about pre-orders and remaining customer dissatisfaction after the lqunch of Destiny, how are people feeling regarding Destiny 2?

What are things you are hoping to see changed? Things retained? New things?

Or perhaps you are more concerned about things you think will be detrimental that bungie does not appear to have learned From? (I know some of these points have already been hammered into the ground.)

More importantly from my perspective, how are you balancing your hopes for Destiny 2 against your fears for the same?

HOPE: Fuller story, grimoire integration somehow
HOPE: More frequent content generation, deployment
HOPE: Larger Raid teams? 8 people? Maybe not.
HOPE: Raid matchmaking?
HOPE: Better vehicle combat in PvP
HOPE: Functional ships (i.e. sip combat missions)
HOPE: Longer character progression - nothing was better than the initial climb to the top
HOPE: Smooth, ass-play gaming
HOPE: More monumentally challenging Public events
HOPE: More dancing, more emotes
HOPE: More playtime with good people

FEAR: Not much change - i.e. D2 is just D1 again
FEAR: Enemy AI weirdness in pursuit of difficulty (i.e. think Halo 2 punishing AI)
FEAR: Over-promising, over-hype
FEAR: Too much RNG (I don't mind some)

[*] Change: No RNG for getting a drop. Let us acquire loot based upon non-random stuff, such as completing objectives/missions, killing certain enemies, & such. Barring that how about we don't get duplicate drops until we have received the "full set" and we're guaranteed a drop upon completion of the mission. If you must make us grind for something make it clear, such as "you must defeat crota 5 times to get this weapon." Don't treat us like rats you're training to push a button, random reward is dumb (imho, you can like random reward and I won't hate you, I'll just disagree w/ you).

I thought Mass Effect 3 MP handled this better than Destiny. It was still not "perfect", but better.

Each weapon can be ranked I through X. So once you got a weapon to drop ten times and got to rank X, it is removed from your loot pool. This serves to mathmagically makes the chance of getting another gun greater.

Of course, you could get gun A ten times before ever getting gun B, but you knew that eventually you would get gun B.

I always wished the raids would adopt this behavior--have a checklist, and guns you don't have yet get priority.

But I don't think removing the open areas would be good either. Give me more unique areas for missions, strikes, etc. but also give me a place where exploration makes the local area still feel important. As Destiny has gone forward some areas being reused with changes to show the impact of time was great to making it feel more alive, even if still smaller.

A great point was brought up in a different thread. I think it merits its own discussion however. So disregarding the tone of the trailer, worries about pre-orders and remaining customer dissatisfaction after the lqunch of Destiny, how are people feeling regarding Destiny 2?

I'm quite hopeful. The fact that they're ditching all the old gear adds to this hope of mine. I am scared for the story telling though.

What are things you are hoping to see changed? Things retained? New things?

• Change: No RNG on weapon rolls, or at least make the weapons names MEAN something. If there must be rolls NAME the weapon with the roll and reduce the # of possible rolls (Matador 64a, Matador 64b, Matador 64c, etc.). There are too many possible perk combinations and too many choices that affect how good the weapon performs, it's information overload for me.
  
• Change: Don't make us level up our gear. If we're going to have to level up our gear then the perks should be static and just make the weapon better. However I'm fine w/ interchangeable sights, but let everyone have access to the same sights with the same gun, no RNG. It's ridiculous to have 2 sniper rifles with the same name but they can't use the same scopes because of RNG on the drop. (this applies to more than just the scopes)
  
• Change: No RNG for getting a drop. Let us acquire loot based upon non-random stuff, such as completing objectives/missions, killing certain enemies, & such. Barring that how about we don't get duplicate drops until we have received the "full set" and we're guaranteed a drop upon completion of the mission. If you must make us grind for something make it clear, such as "you must defeat crota 5 times to get this weapon." Don't treat us like rats you're training to push a button, random reward is dumb (imho, you can like random reward and I won't hate you, I'll just disagree w/ you).
  
• Keep/Change: The definite begin & end to an activity is good. Keep the opening dialog & "end mission" screen. It would be nice to enter an activity w/o going to orbit, also let us stay after an activity is over, but give us the chance to go to orbit from the "end mission" screen or to jump to the start of the next mission.
  
• Keep: distinct missions, don't turn missions into steps in a quest.
  
• Change: more linear main story line.
  
• Keep: side quests are fun little distractions and can nicely add flavor to the main plot & add subplots. Please mark them CLEARLY as side-quests/missions.
  
• Keep: the "Bungie Console Shooter Feel".
  
• Keep: The Vex. I love fighting them. They're the most fun to fight against IMHO. Maybe that's because the units are so different, I'm not sure. Cabal are my least favorite to fight, make them more fun (I suspect this is due to bullet magnetism pulling my shots away from the exposed hand/gun and toward the head making my shot miss & hit the shield, seriously frustrating, I've hated the cabal ever since, plus they remind me of the brute bullet sponges of Halo 2).
  
• Keep: The Fallen & the shanks. I love shooting down shanks, reminds me of the Drones in Marathon.

I'm good either way, really, but depends on size. I'd honestly love to get two or three planets that are like Borderlands sized rather than a bunch of Destiny 1 sized areas. I could see fast travel in that instance. I bet we will see something more comparable to Destiny sized areas, though.

That is what made Destiny feel 'small'. I would rather see more smaller, but hyper specialized areas. That way each activity has its own space rather than sharing with others.

instead of going orbit, you should be able to open up the director in-world, and choose your next destination. Then, it would automatically take you to orbit (loading screen).

While that would be better, even that feels half-assed. The Director shouldn't be necessary at all. It should be like any modern open world game. I finish one quest and can then traverse the game world to start the next quest (with a fast travel option).

They just need to work on the rhythms of going back and the intermediary steps. I understand orbit as a matchmaking/planet switching step, I just didn't like deciding that I was going to the tower and having to go to orbit, and then goto director, go to tower, and then hit A to go to tower.

Frankly if yes, there were a FOTC camps as Patrol/Mission entry points, that had various vendors, that would also be cool.