I’ve been giving this some thought for a while now trying to pin it down. The release of CoO really helped me zero it in. Here, I’ll show you...
D1 Perk Guide;
https://www.destinygamewiki.com/wiki/Weapon_Perks
D2 Perk Guide;
https://d2.destinygamewiki.com/wiki/Weapon_Perks
Just look at those two lists.
The core difference from D1 to D2?
VARIETY and POWER!
D2 has minimalistic and redundant perks. Sometimes even on the same gun. (Appended Mag and Extended Mag, for example.) And CoO has brought no new perks with it on legendaries that I’ve noticed.
D1 has a LOT of variety to its Perk chart, as well as MANY more perks in general. And the perks were POWERFUL. Firefly, Headseeker, Mark of the Devourer, Luck in the Chamber, Icarus, Dead Eye, Bouncer, etc... The list goes on and on. (And they sounded fricken cool!!!)
Whereas D2 has a LOT of redundancies. Field prep and Firmly Planted could be the same Perk! And those aren’t the only crouch perks either! (Crouch perks are boring and suck IMHO) And perks that COULD be cool (like Dragonfly) and the perks from D1 that made it to D2 are super weak compared to D1 perks. Firefly could take out everything with 3 meters in a mob but Dragonfly (which seriously could be cool as hell) barely staggers the enemy next to the one you popped, and that’s only IF they almost on top of each other.
There’s like 6 to 8 combos of perks on ALL guns in D2! No wonder peeps are getting bored!
Like seriously, take some time and look at those two lists and you’ll see what I mean. (Not to mention the nostalgia tug when you run across a few favorites like I did) It might actually be the heart of the problem that everyone can’t put their finger on.
EVERY gun is going to be a reskin when you have such a shallow perk pool to choose from.
Did Bungie lose all the rights to this old perks or something?! Cause, W T F, man. WTF?!? There’s SO MANY cool perks in D1 that are missing from D2.
And not just on guns! Armor too! Armor has like next to nothing in the perk pool going for it in D2.
Answer; MORE PERKS!! And MORE POWERFUL PERKS!!
Hell, throw an extra mod slot on everything with the perks from D1 so you can just tweak a perk mod if it’s over or under powered and not an entire class of weapons.
Expand the D2 perk pool. Make perks more powerful. Throw some weird or useless ones in their for kicks like... I dunno... “Sparkler” where a critical kill makes fireworks. (Really, I don’t know, not a game designer, but you get the idea). Throw in guns with perks that actually work together, not redundant or against themselves. Like headseeker with outlaw or firefly. You get the idea.
That all I have to say about that.
Thank you for your time.