More Subclasses With More Versatility
It came as a bit of a shock to some players when Bungie officially revealed that progress from the original Destiny wouldn’t carry over to Destiny 2. After spending so much time fine-tuning subclasses, players didn’t want to let go. But this gives Bungie an opportunity to make things bigger and better. By starting from scratch, subclasses could be designed from scratch as well.
Now we’re not asking them to completely do away with the likes of the Sunsinger Warlocks, Defender Titans, or Bladedancer Hunters. But we wouldn’t mind an evolution of each class that introduces new ways of using the different Burns, or perhaps a more versatile system where we can mix and match abilities, or even decide the burn for our builds rather than have certain powers locked.
Destiny 2 would really be able to embrace the RPG side of this shooter by offering more options of this nature. This would also allow for more personal legends, rather than everyone running around with the exact same skill set, which is what you see in the first game.
Deeper Customization
Destiny is this odd mix of RPG and first-person shooter. It’s definitely much more of a shooter than anything else, but it had more than a healthy dose of RPG elements in the form of skill trees and customization. That customization was never very deep, though, leaving most players looking exactly like a lot of other players. It’s hard to create a unique legend with such limited options.
Of course, that was Bungie’s first RPG outing, and the team has learned quite a bit leading up to Destiny 2, which is due out this fall. This is a chance to really embrace the RPG elements that were present in the first game but never really came into their own. This doesn’t have to be all about a character’s physical appearance either.
Clothing is one of the parts of Destiny that fans really like thanks to so many different pieces of armor and class items. Giving more control on how they look — such as more ornaments and the ability to color individual pieces — would go a long way. More armor slots would be welcome too. Having attachments for weapons would fall in line with gun customization in other games, too, which works really well in titles like Battlefield, The Division, and Ghost Recon.
Having more options that alter your appearance, and abilities, would really help Destiny 2 feel like more than just another shooter.
More Wildlife
One of the highlights of Destiny 2’s reveal was Cayde-6 shrugging off some alien/beast/dog thing that tried to tackle him. In the current entry to the series we’ve only faced the alien races themselves along with a few machines like Spider Tanks, Shanks, and Servitors. We’d yet to have seen any actual beasts from other planets, heck not even any on Earth. Seeing a beast actually charging at a Guardian was actually pretty cool.
Having wildlife like the above beast would add some much needed diversity to the enemies you face while also adding some life to the worlds you’ll undoubtedly traverse. Sure the Cabal, Fallen, Hive, Vex, and Taken were cool in their own ways, but you still essentially shot enemies who were busy shooting back at you. A wild element will shake things up quite a bit.
Larger, Living Worlds
We’re not gonna lie, some of the locations in Destiny are simply gorgeous. However, they aren’t the most lively things out there. Sure you have some enemies here and a few public events, but all in all the worlds feel relatively dead. After a little while you find yourself simply falling into a cycle of farming enemies or making your way to objective points sort of brainlessly. The worlds are very constructed.
Destiny 2 could benefit from larger, living worlds. They could be full of civilians like we saw in the trailer, as well as quest givers. Outside of hubs could be roaming, wild beasts, and enemy encampments. Maybe optional objectives that work like the public events we have now, or even complete sidequests you can stumble upon while playing solo.
Destiny was about pushing back the Darkness so that we could protect humanity, but there was no humanity to be seen throughout the game. We were just fighting on and defending dead worlds. If you really want to keep players invested, give us something worth fighting for.
More Weapon Variety
Weapons are Destiny’s bread and butter. Players spend hours, hundreds of hours, seeking out and collecting the best weapon that the game has to offer. We keep them stored in our vaults, carrying our favorites with us everywhere we go. We show off our collections, and thanks to new ornaments, we style them to match our clothes whenever possible. But in the grand scheme of things, a lot of them are very much alike.
Don’t get us wrong, there are some gems in there that we’ll always remember. Gjallarhorn, Fatebringer, Vex Mythoclast, Grasp of Malok, and many, many more. But there were a lot of weapons that just didn’t stand out. They were either only slightly different from other options, or were the same but with lackluster looks. The addition of melee weapons was great, but that eventually fell flat too thanks to the lack of many options.
A diverse armory with creative options that will not only provide a unique setup for your Guardian, but also new means of taking down enemies would be great and really show some advancements to the experience.
We don’t know what Bungie has settled on for the upcoming sequel, but we are waiting patiently to continue our legends.
Until we can answer the new call, safe travels, Guardians.