The tweaks, additions and revisions Bungie needs to make for its inevitable sci-fi sequel to be even better
1 IN -GAME LFG SYSTEMS
Matchmaking for all content is something that many players have been crying out for from the very start. While we’re not sure it’s actually a good idea (King’s Fall shows just how much coordination and planning is involved in a Raid), having the option and simply deciding not to use it is still better than needing to use an external source to round up like-minded players. You’d still be better off finding and playing with a regular group, though.
2 ‘EXOTIC’ EXOTICS
One of the chief criticisms of many of the core game’s top-end Exotic items is that they’re just not interesting enough to deserve that moniker. The likes of Icebreaker, Vex Mythoclast and Gjallarhorn all felt unique but more recently, weapons like Boolean Gemini, The First Curse and Fabian Strategy are just… well, boring. Bungie has been pretty smart in how it updates Exotics for Year Two to make them more appealing (Dragon’s Breath is actually useful!) so at least the idea well hasn’t run dry just yet.
3 MORE OF EVERYTHING
It’s a no-brainer for any sequel, but it’s especially pertinent in discussion of Destiny. Many felt that the base game was lacking in terms of content and while the three expansions provided incrementally more to do, a full sequel is going to need a hell of a lot of content in order to avoid the feeling that history is repeating. It doesn’t have to be all-new, either – rejigged versions of Y1 stuff could double the amount of content in a sequel.
4 END GAME CHANGES
Bungie made some fairly substantial changes to how endgame gear both operated and was earned with The Taken King, but locking most 320 Light gear to the King’s Fall Raid still wasn’t ideal. Look at any MMO and you’ll find multiple viable routes to top-end gear – only King’s Fall Hard Challenges give guaranteed 320 gear, so PvP players and those who don’t like to raid are left relying on RNG. The best (or at least comparable) gear needs to be available through the hardest versions of all activities.
5 SPACE COMBAT
It’s cool that you can use any ships you earn or buy to express yourself or show off a little during Destiny’s load times, but what if those ships we more than just cosmetic items? Instead of fast-travelling between planets, we’d love to mooch around in space, picking off Cabal or Fallen transports before they even reach the surface and possibly even earning and levelling a whole new set of ship parts and pilot skills.
6 VARIABLE FIRETEAM SIZES
Destiny’s default three-Guardian Fireteams (or six for Raids) make sense in their uniformity, but why not have content that mixes this up? DC Universe Online offers Duo duties for pairs of players, while a four/eight person team would be more in line with the MMO genre standard. Different activities should have different demands, including some missions that can only be undertaken solo. Anything to make levelling and earning new gear more interesting, right?
7 VARIED VEHICLES
We’ve seen plenty of different vehicle types used by enemy forces and in truth, the lack of any kind of car pool incentive for interplanetary travel seems like a waste of humanity’s limited resources. Imagine hopping on the back of a mate’s Sparrow, leaping into the gunner’s seat in a tank or taking to the skies in a light fighter like Halo’s Banshees. Bungie would do well to check out Battlefield and Lost Planet 2 for inspiration.
8 BETTER STORY INTEGRATION
Nobody is going to tell you that spending hours trawling through Destiny’s Grimoire cards is the optimal way of taking in what is actually an extremely interesting universe with great lore, but it served as a means to an end. The Taken King’s entertaining cutscenes were a step in the right direction, so any further exploration of this universe needs to have characters, story and lore that doesn’t require the player to fire up a browser and get a degree in Hive Mythology in order to understand what’s going on.
9 DEDICATED SERVERS FOR PVP
If Destiny’s competitive multiplayer is ever going to take off properly, Bungie needs to take it as seriously as some players will want to. Peer-to-peer matchmaking isn’t so much of an issue for casuals but when you’re dealing in high stakes events like Iron Banner and Trials Of Osiris, leaving connection quality to lucky matchmaking simply isn’t good enough. Dedicated servers for high-level PvP events are a must.
10 PURIST CRUCIBLE MODES
You can argue that anyone who doesn’t enjoy having Supers and Heavy spawns is playing the wrong game, but that doesn’t change the fact that options are always welcome. A PvP mode that focuses on Destiny’s tight gunplay is something we’d appreciate, particularly for times when Supers aren’t balanced (remember the Shadowshot glitch, or TTK’s launch Hammers Of Sol? Yeah, times like those…) or Mayhem Clash seems like the last thing you’d want to play.
11 A CRAFTING SYSTEM
Maybe this would be a step too far into MMO territory, or maybe it’d be a useful way of allowing players to get gear they want or need without leaving things to luck so often. In reality, the process of purchasing Year Two versions of older Exotics you own is a very basic crafting system – we’d love for Bungie to take the next step and let us work from blueprints to use loads more rare materials in making our own weapons and armour.
12 SOCIAL SPACE ACTIVITIES
Bungie has really mugged off Guardians when it comes to ways to wind down in the Tower. One ball between 16 of us? How about some mini-games or something to let us chill after spending a hours banging our heads against a Raid? Gwent was awesome in The Witcher III and following rumblings that a card game expert joined Bungie last year, something similar isn’t out of the question…
13 LEAVE LAST GEN BEHIND
Considering it was a cross-platform game released less than a year into the PS4’s life, Destiny is beautiful. But after seeing what Ready At Dawn, Supermassive Games and Naughty Dog have been able to accomplish by focusing on new hardware, we’d have to suggest that it’s time to move on – keep the original alive by all means, but a sequel really needs to be tailor-made for current-gen in order to grow.
14 PHOTO MODE
Given how much hard drive space we have devoted to Destiny screenshots, doing away with last-gen versions and making it even prettier would just be begging for the addition of a photo mode. Those lush vistas as you look out from the Tower over the remains of Earth; the creepy and intricate caverns and corridors of the Hive’s lairs; the war-torn surfaces of planets… we’d spend just as long looking for the perfect shot as we would playing the game properly.
15 CHARACTER MIGRATION
People have put a hell of a lot of time into Destiny and if that all ends up being for nothing, there are going to be some pretty grumpy Guardians out there. While we’re not expecting to be able to pick up with the classes, gear and Light levels that we left off at, there needs to be some way of carrying at least a degree of progress across – hitting the reset button on every character ever made simply isn’t going to be a viable option.
16 STREAMLINED LOADING
While we get that there’s a hell of a lot going on behind the scenes as our ships are shown blasting between locations, that’s not to say that the process couldn’t be simplified. How about loading players into locations individually and matchmaking them on site, for instance, or even giving players the opportunity to forego matchmaking if they’re looking to get into some solo action in a hurry?
17 VANITY ITEMS
Sure, you can infuse most weapons and armour into other pieces in order to deck yourself out in whatever top-end gear you like, but it’s far from user-friendly or practical. A more typical MMO glamour system – where a second set of gear can be equipped ‘over’ your actual quality stuff, purely for show – would be a far simpler way to prevent all Guardians running end-game content from looking identical, while also offering versatility in terms of character customisation.
18 EXTRA EMOTE SLOTS
Whether you love or hate the fact that Bungie is selling emotes for real money, it’s surprising that people are dropping cash on extras when you can still only equip one at a time. In some case, this is just dumb – the Caesar-style thumbs up/thumbs down options, for instance, lose impact when people know which one you have equipped after you first use it. Giving us a loadout of emotes would really let us express ourselves, rather than just spamming ‘Grieve’.
19 PUT HIGH MOON TO WORK
It emerged late last year that former Transformers dev High Moon Studios is apparently collaborating with Bungie on the next chapter in the Destiny saga, and it’s important the old team gets the most out of this surprisingly good studio. The two Cybertron games on PS3 were solid third-person shooters, so Bungie would do well to let them get proper involved in the game. Fall Of Cybertron still has a fairly active online community too, so perhaps High Moon could take over Crucible duty while Bungie itself focuses on the main story?
20 PETS AND COMPANIONS
We’re not expecting anything as out there as a new pet-based subclass, but how cool would it be to be able to earn creatures that you can show off in the Tower or have follow you round while you go about your business? MMOs do this often, and pets can be as much of a status symbol as emblem or shader – getting a Vex buddy from a Raid or having your own pet Shank would be amazing.
21 LOCAL MULTIPLAYER
You only need to look at the PS Store to see that same-screen multiplayer is back. Indeed, it’s the main way we played Borderlands 2 and with data all stored on Bungie’s servers, you’d be able to play with friends anywhere without worrying about where your save was. Co-op is the obvious use of this but we wouldn’t say no to some Crucible shenanigans either.
22 1080P/60FPS
Given that other shooters like Black Ops III have managed to pull it off and still look great, the pressure is on Bungie to produce a game that can put out the best graphical fidelity possible on PS4. 60fps would be another reason for people to take the competitive multiplayer side of the game more seriously, and we’d be amazed if the resolution dipped below the original game’s crisp 1080p…
23 PLAYSTATION VR SUPPORT
You know we wanted space combat? Well how about this: on hopping into your ship, you can choose to pop on a VR headset and experience all that spaceflight as if you were actually there. That’d be awesome. We’d be reluctant to suggest wider VR support for a game where mobility could stand to be nauseating, but using it as an extra would be sweet.
24 DESTRUCTIBLE ENVIRONMENTS
We’re not expecting planetary demolition but it’s a little odd to see a Gjallarhorn nuke an entire room amd leave flimsy pillars standing. We’re not talking Rainbow Six Siege – even a basic destruction system could layer on a ton of new options, such as blowing up obstacles using a grenade rather than just going for a Hail Mary lob around them as you try to line up a decent shot.
25 MORE MYSTERIES
One of the interesting things added in The Taken King was the bevy of secrets hidden in missions. After someone found the alternate ending to Lost To Light, the internet exploded as players explored every nook and cranny in trying to turn up something equally cool. A few succeeded but this level of discovery has done wonders for the commmunity.