So, we all know the five tiers of loot in destiny; common, uncommon, rare, legendary and exotic.
But every high-level player knows there are actually two tiers hidden inside those last two. Legendaries can have customization slots in the form of chroma and ornaments, be uniquely strike-exclusive (or none of the above), and exotics can be got from xur and 3oC or quest-exclusive.
I don't know how I feel about Bungie's sub-basement design philosophy with regards to weapon balancing in D2, I haven't had a chance to play around with it. But this is one area where they should probably give themselves some room for improvement. Make exotics truly hard to come across, (xur no longer selling them, 3oC no longer dropping them, but a chance of getting one after each kill or activity(tied to difficulty)) but don't make them the only way to complete a raid. This will (hopefully) have the effect of lowering the requirements for raid groups a rarity tier, and allow some interesting choices when combined with my next idea.
Red engrams. Between legendary gear and exotics are Mythic items; only two can be equipped at any given time, and not if an exotic is present in the same category (weapon/armor). Mythic gear will be almost like proto-exotics, and may be a fluid state legendaries and exotics can take.
For example, we've all thought about pairing the ats/8 tarantella and arachnid, or dire ahamkara skull and claws of ahamkara, but because both are exotic, it's not possible. Well, if you could weaken both effects somewhat and turn them into Mythic/red gear, you could. Or vice-versa. A quest could give you legendary armor that you turn to mythic and then eventually exotic as some guns already do. Especially if it were all easily revertible.
Alternatively, some of you have been asking for armorset bonuses for wearing a full set of say...challenge of elders armor. You could upgrade two pieces to mythic status to unlock bonuses set bonuses on the armor without having to lock the entire armorset onto yourself, allowing you to experiment with combining it with scarlight armor while also adding a balancing factor to make sure it didn't just become the new legendary gear.
This would free up chroma to be an artifact you could apply to all the armor you wear at once, creating synergized looks effortlessly, almost like a second shader. (Although we may lose out on multi-chroma guardians...I haven't seen many of those on purpose though.) But it doesn't just have to be chroma, there could be artifacts that add accents to your armor like extra doodads, or subtly change the look of your supers. Let me know what you think, unless you're a troll.
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Exotics are the only way to give Guardians new powers. Make them "truly hard to come across"...and you break the game. ...and Destiny's Year One loot system and economy were broken.