I think the new direction Bungie is going in regards to elemental primaries is two giant steps backwards. This might end up long so bare with me.
What I think should've been done in the place of removing elements from primaries was to have a drop from the hard raid that allows you to put an element on any primary for a rather steep price. And in an effort to make the environment still a challenge they should've boosted enemy shields in a couple of ways. Make all shields maybe 25% stronger as well as [i]reducing[/i] the damage of using the wrong element against the shield all while keeping kinetic the same across the board. You see what I just did? I increased the value of Kinetic weapons as it could handle any and all shields the same way while using, for example a solar weapon against void shields would bring down the damage significantly. This still brings that factor of making smart choices with your weapons while still allowing for elements in a way that's not as dominant as in year 1.
I cannot shake the feeling that Bungie is scared to make the players of this game too powerful and it's a damn shame. No other game in history has seemed to have a problem with making players ridiculously strong. It's a game for goodness sake let me do crazy shit.
This has never been more obvious than with the changes made to perks in 2.0 that they kinda blindsided us with reducing all of their effectiveness. And don't even get me started with the raid gear. Those guns are god awful and have no more use than infusing into other guns. Crazy how raid weapons in year 1 were the most sought after in the game because you knew what you wanted and how you could get it and it made playing the raid worth it. I'm not playing this raid for the gear. I'm playing it for the number attached to the gear which in turn allows my character to reach a higher level, but for what exactly? So you can raise the cap again in a month and repeat the process? That's just silly and obvious that you want your players to meaninglessly grind with no true end goal other than "hey I'm the highest level possible in the game... For a week."
The main counter argument in favor of no elemental primaries is that it allows for more variety in choosing a weapon. Let me be the first to call bullcrap on that. I'm willing to bet quite a bit of money that the vast majority of players right now are using the vendor version of Hung Jury for all high level content right now. Simply because it's an [b]easy to obtain gun that packs quite a punch with perks that are really good[/b] (see year 1 raid weapons) Those who aren't using it have been blessed by RNGesus with a better gun which to be honest there simply aren't very many of. The "variety" is a total myth when there will always be a "best gun" regardless if there's an element on it or not.
TL;DR: Elemental primaries need to return in a less dominant way than in year 1. Elemental infusion is a start
Let me know what you guys think of this. I'm genuinely curious to see the results.
Happy Hunting
Edit 1: Let me use an analogy.
Say you have a product that has sales going crazy good for a year. After a year you make a change to that product without letting anyone know ahead of time. 7 hours later you find out through a poll that half of the users of this product don't like the change you made. That would be catastrophic don't you think? Some food for thought
Edit 2: The poll isn't biased because the opposition to my views still has a clear choice. Meaning the data is still accurate
Edit 3: People seem to forget that it wasn't just the burns on raid weapons that made them unique. Fatebringer was the [b]ONLY[/b] year 1 hand cannon with firefly and VoC was the only scout with full auto up until House of Wolves. The burns were just an extra to top it all off
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Edited by Ostensibly: 10/24/2015 3:57:51 AMThe problem is purely the fact that some guns are given perks that can't compete. If every shotgun had the same range and no range increasing perks they wouldn't be rampant. If fusions had little ammo, and if snipers had slower reload speed then the distribution would be even. For primary's it comes down to the first point I made. Re forging was great, but it failed because the base stats of hand cannons were just too good. But at the same time if every gun was the same then there'd be no variety. It's very hard to balance.