This thread is regarding special weapon balance, which you have failed to achieve over the course of the last year. Your entire community that bought your game and supported you has pointed out what you've done wrong in a great effort to improve the game that we love. Yet, you've continued to ignore us and have consistently destroyed any kind of player vs. player weapon balance, and many people are just about done with it. 10 years won't happen if you won't fix the inherent flaws behind the very premise of your gun system. So, here's a short discussion on some basic points that you've failed to understand, why Destiny will never be a true competitive multiplayer game unless you make some changes, and how you can learn from some professional multiplayer FPS game makers, whose games rarely have "gun metas" that are truly game breaking. For example, in Battlefield 4, people make gun preferences because they "like the feel" of the gun, or "this gun works for me, I love it," etc. In Destiny 2.1.0, players choose The Last Word and 1000-Yard Stare, because most of them would lose without using those guns, and in Destiny, losing matters. No one wants to lose. In other shooters, people like to win, sure, but they enjoy the experience more than winning. Destiny really pushes some type of competition that requires players to resort to disrespecting themselves by running the meta in order to win. Bungie, you have failed. Let's look at why you've failed. There is a singular point which encompasses all aspects of your failings. [b]Lethality and range[/b]. Let's discuss shotguns, fusion rifles, and sniper rifles for a moment (which you have needlessly destroyed to no end). I'm going to highlight their purpose and how they should actually operate, not that I'm designing your game for you, but this is how they SHOULD work, to achieve balance. [u]Special weapons for dummies[/u]: [b]Shotguns[/b] Easy to use. Why? Because you've already tackled the difficulty of getting to close range. [b]Fusion rifles[/b] Kind of difficult to use. Why? Because they're lethal at mid ranges. Naturally, they require preparation. [b]Sniper rifles[/b] The most difficult to use. Why? Because they're lethal at ranges where you'd never get hurt from primaries. Each special weapon is equally as lethal at close range. The difficulty in their operation, however, should be proportional to the ranges at which they are lethal. This is how the weapons are balanced in every substantial FPS game out there. This is what ensures balance. So, Bungie, why is there a sniper rifle meta? [u]Special weapons for Bungie[/u]: [b]Shotguns[/b] Easy to use and lethal at close range (I would say their design is "ok" at the moment) [b]Fusion rifles[/b] Extremely difficult to use, some aren't even lethal anymore, and only usable if you can somehow handle the recent damage nerf and terrible stability nerfs that came with each patch and especially 2.1.0. [b]Sniper rifles[/b] Easy mode, easy mode, easy mode, (sniper rifles are the easiest weapons to use in the game at all ranges, Destiny sniper rifle montages are usually nausea-inducing because in other games it would be viewed as hacking or using an aimbot, etc). You can no-scope point-blank kill someone with a sniper rifle or fusion rifle at close range like a shotgun, for example, which requires less skill than killing from mid- to long-range. The problem is that at long-range, snipers are leagues and leagues easier to use than fusion rifles at mid-range. They have high target acquisition and little scope sway. Each special weapon should be equally as lethal (as should each primary, this is how balance is achieved). However, the difficulty should rise with range. If you're able to get to close range, which is difficult in and of itself, there should be some kind of reward there. Hence, shotguns are 1-shot kills and easy to use. Instead, Bungie rewards campers. There's no sway in sniper scopes, no holding your breath, no bullet drop with different gravitational constants on each planet, etc. Sniping is EZ mode, no matter what the range is, and with the 1000-Yard Stare archetype (fast rate of fire, no noticeable recoil, high impact), it's now the meta, because you'd be stupid to pick anything else. You place the reticle and click a button and it's all over. Simple. For example, when I can get headshot sniped from across the map during a sprint-crouch-slide to go behind a wall, there's a problem. If you insist on high-accuracy high-target acquisition sniper rifles, introduce scope sway, holding breaths, etc. It's just not fair to the other special weapons. Why is scope sway, accuracy, recoil, etc, an issue? Look at what you did to fusion rifles. The biggest issue with fusion rifles right now is the 2.1.0 stability nerf. We've already talked about it in COUNTLESS trending threads. Every fusion rifle was nerfed into the ground with respect to stability, and currently (for some odd reason), the highest impact fusion rifles have the highest stability/lowest recoil/lowest bolt spread. This is completely backwards. In every other gun in the game, the highest impact archetypes have the highest recoil, but with fusion rifles it's the opposite? Recoil is due to the mass of the ejected projectiles. Naturally, the hardest-hitting guns will have the most recoil. Yet, this isn't the case for fusion rifles. For the fast-charge fusion rifles, not only were they nerfed the hardest with respect to stability, they were given up to a 21% damage nerf [insert wtf here] and they were given maybe a 5%, hardly noticeable, increase in charge rate. The end result is a ridiculously unstable gun that will never 1-shot anyone unless you're at shotgun range and somehow manage to hit all projectiles. With their 21% damage nerf, you have to hit nearly all of the 7 bolts, and with the stability nerf, this nearly impossible. You've made fast-charge fusion rifles completely obsolete. Honest questions: Why is the ADS recoil in sniper rifles lower than the recoil of shotguns and fusion rifles? They are equally as lethal as shotguns and fusion rifles, yet the recoil from some shotguns and most fusion rifles requires so much work to control and reset your aim. Compared to the long-range scopes of sniper rifles, which hardly move when sniping far downrange. I believe most snipers should kick you out of your scope when taking your shot, especially without any type of bipod. So, why are the highest impact sniper rifles not bolt-action of some sort, requiring leaving the scope? Are guardians superhumans that can look far downrange with no scope sway whatsoever, with perfect hand/arm stability? If so, why do fusion rifles even have recoil? I mean if guardians are superhumans that can handle long-range sniping with no scope sway, they should be able to handle the recoil of other special weapons. What we have here are sniper rifles (perfect guns without a single downside), and two other special weapons that can hardly be used in player vs. player combat anymore. Especially in Trials where each "sniping lane" (do those even exist in other shooters?) has two snipers trying to kill each other. This is why the 1000-Yard Stare meta exists. It's mind-numbing. This is why Crucible is never interesting. This is why the only competition in player-vs-player combat has been reduced to who can use The Last Word and 1000-Yard Stare better. You made a great game, but thousands upon thousands of players just don't find it fun anymore. This is why many Destiny players have moved on to other FPS shooters. You can jump into these other games and have fun without inspecting other players, seeing every player running The Last Word and 1000-Yard Stare, and rolling your eyes. Time-to-kill for guns in most FPS shooters are balanced between every gun. Yet every gun is unique in the way they operate and few guns become a "meta." They just feel different, and success rates are balanced between them. There is sniper scope sway, for example, snipers have to hold their breaths, and snipers are rewarded for making difficult shots. Please think about this.[b] We want Destiny to succeed[/b], but it seems like we want it to succeed more than the very company that made it. Make Crucible interesting again. Balance the weapons. Because right now, when we inspect our enemy team and see 3 people running The Last Word and 1000-Yard Stare, what have you accomplished? There's a Gunsmith and Cryptarch for godssake and tons of interesting weapons out there. Yet only 2 weapons reign supreme. We did Trials last week and we were up against a team running three fusion rifles and we lost. We didn't lose because they were better or because fusion rifles are OP. We lost because we're so used to the new meta. I want to see everyone running different weapons. I want to see interesting strategies like in the game we lost. Right now, you need to fix your game to make that happen. P.S. [u]Fusion rifle balance for dummies[/u]: [b]Balance recommendation #1:[/b] [i]Equivalent stability across the board.[/i] Fast-charge fusion rifles: low damage Slow-charge fusion rifles: high damage [b]Balance recommendation #2:[/b] [i]Equivalent damage across the board.[/i] Fast-charge fusion rifles: low stability Slow-charge fusion rifles: high stability [b]Balance recommendation #3:[/b] Fast-charge fusion rifles: low damage, high stability Slow-charge fusion rifles: high damage, low stability [b]Bungie's current fusion rifle design:[/b] Fast-charge fusion rifles: low damage, low stability Slow-charge fusion rifles: high damage, low stability