Copied from a reddit post I made earlier today:
I think we can all agree that Destiny 2, no matter how fun or boring any of us may find it to be at this time, is repetitive. It is repeating mistakes from the days of Destiny 1, and that is indeed an issue. However, there is a greater problem than that. We all know the issues in that department and how they could be fixed, but I would like to bring notice to a larger issue: why the game is getting boring to some people. Many of us have been playing Destiny since Year One, and frankly, we've been doing more or less the exact same things for nearly four years. I'm specifically referring to the end game activities. Strikes. Raids. Crucible activities. These are all fun activities, and they definitely are centerpieces of the Destiny franchise and hold important places. But frankly, they alone cannot be enough to keep the game consistently entertaining to the entire fanbase. New strikes are great and I always want them, but after a few runs they become apart of the same repetition that the game has had for while.
Here is a suggestion of an entirely new activity for the series that could have so very many possibilities in the way of easing out the repetition.
A round based, procedurally generated infinite activity.
I will not speculate on what story purpose these could serve nor suggest a name for them. I think we all know Bungie is unlikely to take our specific story suggestions for a multitude of understandable reasons. I will merely suggest how this mode could work.
Imagine this: Built for three people, but it allows fireteams of up to six. Three difficulties, Normal, Hard, and Prestige. Normal and Hard feature matchmaking, but only will matchmake up to a three-person fireteam. Prestige, however, would not feature matchmaking. To go in with more, you need to have that many going in.
In this mode, all the races of enemies could pop up. The rounds work like this, you get five rooms, and the rooms are procedurally generated for their layout.
Within the room, you need to complete one of fifty to a hundred possible different tasks, ranging from platforming, defending an object, escorts, boss fights, small-scale puzzles, even possibly building defensive structures (this could be an advanced system or an extremely remedial system where you gather materials and bring them to a spot where a pre-defined structure appears once the quota is met), and many other possibilities. You complete each of the five rooms, and the round ends. There are infinite rounds. The activity ends with a wipe. Once you complete the round, you enter a room similar to the treasure room from the Prison of Elders. The farther you make it, the better rewards you get for each round. Each round sees the enemy levels increase.
The difficulty you select determines the starting levels of the enemies, and the cap to the potential rewards you receive, as well as a cap to enemy levels. Normal would be about 20 lower than the current max power, and see enemies' levels increase up to 10 higher than max. Hard would see them starting out at current max power, and see them increase to 15 above. Prestige would see them start out at 5 above, and see them increase to about 20 above.
The cap on round-end rewards would be as follows: in Normal, each round continuously nets you a Legendary engram, however after five rounds, the engram features a power level that becomes slightly more useful. After ten rounds, the potential power level of the engrams stops increasing. Throughout the entirety of the game, from round 1 to infinity, the chance of the engram being a masterwork could increase slightly. (Very very slightly. If this becomes too much of a guarantee of a masterwork then they will lose their flair.) Hard mode would see the same legendary engram system, however every five rounds you have a 25% chance of receiving an exotic engram instead of a Legendary, and every intervening round would have a 10% chance. As for Prestige, same deal, except every five rounds you have a 20% chance of receiving a "Powerful Engram."
Keep in mind, a single round should be quite challenging!!! It would only take five ROOMS (not rounds) for the enemies to reach their highest possible level. That way, every room of every round after the first round is permanently fixed with the max level enemies to that difficulty, making progressing farther than one round a real challenge.
An important aspect to this would be to also include MANY different possible variations of activities. The rooms do not need to be small. They can range from the size of a room in Prison of Elders to twice the size of the Mercury patrol zone. The room's layout must be procedurally generated, and there must be MANY different possible goals for each room, so that players do not get used to performing the same ten goals over and over. They must each be quite different from each other and there must be at LEAST fifty of them.
Each expansion could introduce new difficulty options for those with the light of the expansion. For instance, Normal Hard and Prestige would exist at the release, but for the next Expansion those would remain, but only net rewards useful to the max power of that expansion, and there could be Normal - Expansion III, Hard - Expansion III, and Prestige - Expansion III that are useful and level-scaled to the new max power of that expansion. These would be added with each expansion, but if the Power level increases without requiring a new expansion, just the latest one, then the power of THAT expansion's version is increased.
Additionally, these newer difficulties that are added to match the newer expansions could also feature even more possible goals within them on top of the ones that were already there, as well as including any and all new enemies types/races added with that expansion.
Also, let there be a variety of aesthetic possibilities for any given room, based on the aesthetic of each location within the series (including locations from D1 that are not present in D2). Perhaps the aesthetic changes with each room or it shifts with each Round instead. I would say each Round, but shifting between each room would be fine, as well, and make each run even more well varied for those players who can only make it through a single round.
The intent here is to provide a game mode which allows many different possibilities and can take a while to be seen as repetitive. This makes it IMPERATIVE that there be AT LEAST FIFTY VERY DIFFERENT possible goals for each procedurally generated room, and that the rooms still be GENUINELY challenging to complete and take real effort. The goals must not be overly easy and the enemy levels MUST be scaled similarly to how they were mentioned earlier. This gives the game an activity that is rewarding, fun for friends, highly varied, and challenging all at the same time.
Perhaps you can only receive rewards from a specific round (per difficulty) once per week. I.e., if you do Normal Round 1 but don't finish Round 2, if you boot it up again and finish Round 1 a second time, you won't get anything from that, but you WILL still get rewards from Rounds you have not yet reached ON THAT DIFFICULTY that week. I.e., you can do Normal, Hard, and Prestige Round 1 and get three different rewards once, but if you want to KEEP earning rewards, you can replay but to keep earning rewards you need to make it more rounds in.
Perhaps with prestige, every other round has a 35% chance of locking your loadout until the end of the Round, making it important to pay attention to your equipment before starting the next Round.
The activity could even be impacted by events. Earning rep for factions, featuring snowballs during The Dawning, extra aesthetics (limited time or permanent) added during the event, and other various possibilities.
I believe an activity that works in this way would do a great amount toward making the game more fun and rewarding for all players and SIGNIFICANTLY cut down on the grind being overly repetetive. Please, Bungie, add this into the game. It would be so, so great.
So, what does everybody think of this idea? Fun? Stupid? Suggestions? Let me know!
Edit: Fixed a typo.
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This isn't a bad idea at all. It can easily be put into part of the story for the Destiny universe, like say... The Trials of Osiris? I have love for PvP, but the main part of the game should be PvE. The Vex Gate Simulator is also another catalyst for Endgame material such as this. There can be [i]SO[/i] many possibilities with all of these combinations. I would definitely play it. Great job!