While many have tried, in my opinion Bungie’s shooter is the best of the last decade and one of the best ever. Destiny’s biggest asset has always been the shooting mechanics and simply how awesome it feels to shoot in the game. However, one of the biggest issues facing Destiny, is the lack of anything new to use those guns on, or in many cases, a reason to use those guns at all. I first want to compliment Bungie for having Triumphs/Seals that required you to use Season Pass weapons during Season of the Hunt/Beyond Light. That is a great step in the right direction. What direction is that you ask? Thank you for asking!
I just turned in 28,000+ Crucible tokens and got zero guns I needed or wanted (I’ll save the fact that only 6 pieces of armor dropped above 60, out of 1,481 engrams for a different blog). I don’t need more kinetic Shotguns of any kind because I already have my god roll Heritage. Stop sending me solar Snipers, I already have 2 Ikelos’s and I don’t need kinetic Sidearms as my High Albedo has that slot on lockdown (with Breachlight fading into the “sunset”). What I want is for Bungie to give us a reason to use all the different guns. I’m not talking a Call of Duty-esque Prestige system, although Diamond guns are pretty sexy, just a solid reason to use them.
For a bit of backstory, I’m going to use the Beyond Light Europa guns from this season as my examples. There are 8 guns you can acquire from Europa, 3 kinetic, 3 energy and 2 heavy. I’ve only got 5 of these in my vault and I only use 1 with anything resembling regularity, which is the Void Shotgun Bonechiller. I normally use this to take out the Minotaurs during the gambit/eyes 3rd encounter in the Garden of Salvation Raid. The bow, fusion and pulse never had a chance for various reasons. The Biting Winds bow isn’t as good as the Demolitionist Whispering Slab I already have, Coriolis Force Fusion got quickly replaced by the Dawning’s Glacioclasm, and while Hailing Confusion is nice, my Sacred Provenance is just crispier and nastier. The other 4 I did keep are in my vault and just, well, sitting there really. Arctic Haze (720rpm) is fun, but Summoner (600rpm) is still a better option for Solar Auto, Thermal Erosion Solar LMG (900rpm) is also fun, but Avalanche (450rpm) hits tighter and harder. High Albedo can’t come out until Breachlight dies and Subzero Salvo is only there because Rockets get a buff tomorrow (writing this the day before Season of the Chosen launches) and I spent last weekend running some bounties to get one with Demolitionist. Otherwise my auto-loading + tracking Shining Sphere still rules the Arc Rocket slot (while having 0 kills I should add). That means that Bungie gave me 8 guns and I kind of sort of need 1 of them this season and only because Retold Tale died.
According to my D2Checklist account, there are currently 660 guns I can get in total, of which I am only missing 10 Trials/Adept guns (except Summoner) and only using 20 – 30 with any regularity. The white, green, and blue guns are currently pointless, with an exception for early levelling every new D2 year, after that people begin asking for auto-deletion of all blues. But I would argue most of the Legendary and Exotic guns are pointless as well. People find their favorites and that’s that. The game has given us no reason to use any other guns than the ones we have settled on.
My point, and I eventually will have one, is there should be a block of Gunsmith Seals and Triumphs where people can earn achievements for using the various guns in the game. For a completionist like myself, having a reason to use those Europa guns would change things dramatically. In our day-to-day wanderings of the D2 universe, through various Hunts, Gambit, Strikes, Patrols and Bounties, we can basically use any guns we want to as the game is relatively easy in its base mode (another blog for a different day). Because Destiny has trained us to expect a reward for doing something, most people are not going to grab an SMG they believe is inferior to their Ikelos (and won’t make Warmind Cells) just for a laugh, they’ll need a reason. Bungie can provide that reason by giving us a whole slate of Gunsmith achievements and Seals.
Previously, Bungie sort of did this. There are class Triumphs for using each type of Grenade per class (500 kills I think?) and for using each Super in unique ways. Those were great and I did them all, but they should have been combined into a seal and title (Merlin for Warlocks? Cayde with an Infinity symbol for Hunters? Atlas the Titan for…Titans?) that people could have applied to their character and should have gotten you some Super-Warlock/Super-Hunter emblem of some kind if you did all of them. That would have encouraged more people to diversify their characters and playstyle to get rewards. They did it a bit for Crucible guns as well, asking for gun class achievements and a few specifics for Luna’s, Recluse, etc. which I also did. I don’t think they’ve gone far enough though.
I suggest adding a tab at the top of the page called Armory and you can have a circle icon for all 15 types of guns. Each archetype of weapon gets its own seal and its own set of triumphs. While the below picture has some ideas for seals, they’re probably all copywrite protected, no matter how much I want the sword one to talk about my name being Inigo Montoya and something about killing my father… Oh well.
If you open the Scout Rifle icon you will see a list of all (available) Scout Rifles down the left side menu while the right-side rectangles will have all the different things you need to do to Triumph with that gun. These could be basics like headshots, ADS, hip-fire, kills, assist, minors, majors and bosses, etc. but also expand to the rolls of the gun and the way the perks work. For an example, I’m going to use the Void Scout Rifle Royal Chase from the Season Pass and the info from Light.gg (Royal Chase – Destiny 2 Legendary Scout Rifle – Possible Rolls – light.gg). I’ll ignore mags and barrels and focus on Perks. First perk drops with Full Auto, Field Prep, Auto-loading Holster, No Distractions, Graverobber and Slideways. Second perk drops with Multikill clip, Thresh, Quickdraw, Dragonfly, Threat Detector. As a side note, you could give extra credit for certain activities, like 1 precision kill in PVP counts for 10 PVE precisions, 1 in Raids counts for 5, things like that. Below is my mock-triumph page for Royal Chase. Complete all of this and you’ll get a shiny tag with the name of the gun where your title goes and a cool emblem with the gun in it. Complete ALL of the Scout Rifles and you’ll get some yet to be determined emblem and a title like “Invisible” or “Now you see me, no you didn’t” (because I can’t currently think of a great movie quote about scouts). Complete every triumph for every gun class and we’ll tag you as the new Hive God of War as that job will probably be open once Year 4 of Destiny ends.
I’d obviously adjust the triumphs for the white, green, and blue guns as no one should have to do 5,000 kills with the white gun, but you should have to use Stubborn Oak in a few different ways in order to earn the Shotgun Title “Say Hello to My Little Friend”. You’ll also notice I left out anything requiring people to use the guns in specific activities. I know too many people who refuse to play Crucible/Trials, Gambit or even Raids to think these triumphs should be locked behind activities. The only one that is close is #4 Champions and I’m not 100% sure that should be included? Although realistically I suppose you could just jump into a 1250 Nightfall and shoot the Unstoppable 200 times if you really wanted to spend your time that way? However you choose to do it, use the gun how you want, where you want and when you want as you work towards the achievement.
If Destiny had a system like this, I would be using tons of guns trying to work on my Triumphs and hopefully discovering new favorites and new ways to play. As it stands now, I have 5 kinetics in rotation, maybe 7 energy and 5 heavy, across all 3 Guardians. Less than 20 guns out of hundreds of possibilities? While I realize a chunk of that is my fault for sticking with what I know and what works, I believe much of that blame lands on the developer when they don’t give us reasons to use all the guns. I love Destiny and so do the people in my clan, my twitter feed and the Discords I’m in. We want reasons to play the game and use the guns, please help us out here Bungie.
TL/DR – I wanna shoot stuff and I want shiny things for doing it!
And of course…
