In the wake of the Niobe Labs Incident, I started thinking about what might constitute a community event we all can get behind and contribute to. What would it look like? How would it unfold? What would be the ultimate result? [u]Step 1: Keep It Connected, But Isolated[/u] It's cool to tie the event in with existing content. Heck, it'd be a hard sell if it wasn't tied in somehow. The trick is in making players feel like it's not something they've explicitly paid for. We all knew Niobe Labs was going to be part of the Black Armory content. Being fair, we knew all the Forges were going to be part of the BA package. The problem was accessibility. The content was not immediately accessible for a large percentage of the player base, whether because of Light Level or abstruse puzzle designs or godawful activity slogs. Niobe Labs just happened to have the most egregious of the barricades. In a genuine community event, it would be its own thing. There might be references to existing content, maybe even a linkage of some sort. But not something which requires items, or even gear, from the existing content. For example, if you have to shoot a specific target with a particular weapon, keeping it as general as possible is the best way to go. Shooting it with just a Kinetic weapon, perfect. Shooting it with one of the weapons from Gambit, hmmm, possibly but iffy. Shooting it explicitly with [armory]Trust[/armory], no. [u]Step 2: Create A Sense Of Mystery[/u] Telling players, "Hey, there's a mystery you have to solve. Hope you've boned up on your Ninth Century Frankish history!" is not a great way to provide incentive. It shouldn't be a big gnarly thing as a general rule. [i]World of WarCraft[/i] has done big gnarly things as community events in the run-up to expansions, like their "Plague" event, but the circumstances are a little different. A good community event for [i]Destiny 2[/i] would be more successful if it started small. Something seemingly insignificant at first. A named yellow bar enemy, not a boss, but something more powerful than a red bar. Ghost prompting us about a strange transmission fragment coming from a particular direction. An item drop which shows up in the Pursuits tab, giving a clue about where it might have originally come from. It doesn't have to start with a big explosion and mole people coming up from the ground to proclaim their dominion over the Earth. Sometimes, getting the player to say, "Huh, that's funny," is all you need to do. [u]Step 3: Down The Red Bar Road[/u] Once you've got the player's curiosity up, keep feeding it. Not by suddenly dropping them into a puzzle straight out of [i]Saw[/i], but by showing them doors which are less and less ajar, and enemies who seem to be further ahead than the player. There's a meme out there about how video games have taught us that if there are enemies in front of us, we're clearly going in the right direction, and it's not entirely wrong. Particularly in a shooter, we look for enemies because we are expected to shoot them. So if there's a knot of enemies ahead of us, and they're dropping more of those strange items we found from before, we're going to keep moving forward to see where things lead us. Or if the signal we've been following seems to be receivable by the enemy, we're going to try and race them to the end. The end of that line should be something momentous, immediately for the player, and very shortly after for the player base as a whole. Puzzles are perfectly fine so long as they're not completely arcane. Ideally, we'll have picked up the mechanics of the final puzzle by making the journey through the preceding areas. [u]Step 3a: Standing Around, Minding My Own Business...[/u] This is related to Step 3. Getting a raid crew together should not be a prerequisite for starting things off. Even getting a fireteam together shouldn't be a prerequisite. A solo player, or even a duo, should be able to initiate and complete the introduction to the community event. A full fireteam might get it done faster, but it should be about the journey, not about how fast you complete it. [u]Step 4: Meanwhile, In Metropolis...[/u] Once that final puzzle in the MacGuffin Vault has been solved, there should be a means for players to leave the area without having to fast travel. Of course, once they do, there should be a change in the environment from what they left behind while they were following the trail. Now, the real community event begins. It might be custom public events related to the overarching story. It might be Escalation Protocol-style or Blind Well-style events which require a certain amount of "coup" in order to activate. It might be alternate versions of Strikes and Nightfalls which wouldn't be available unless all the players are carrying the same item (similar to how Dreaming City required the fully restored Talisman item in Pursuits). What makes this possible is the instanced nature of the maps. When a player goes into the MacGuffin Vault, they have to have the item in their possession due to them following the breadcrumbs. Completing the final puzzle should provide them that key item which places them in the instances supporting the community event. That way, the players who don't have that item yet won't notice anything going on, but they will know [i]something[/i] is going on from all the chatter on Reddit and what not. And they'll be looking for the item to start their own journey into the community event. [u]Step 5: Profit[/u] The community event should be something where the community is working towards a specific goal. It might be fighting off an unknown enemy. It might be trying to gather up information about a new location. Whatever the end result is, there should be a feeling that each individual player has in some small way contributed to achieving it, and there are rewards to be had from it. The face of the map should be changed to reflect the new reality that has come about from the community's actions. New opportunities for adventure should be available because of it. And, it should go without saying, a special piece of gear should be a reward for the efforts. Most people would say an exotic weapon or armor piece. I'd argue for a locked Legendary, one that doesn't have random attributes. And probably an emblem of some sort wouldn't be out of line. I'm pretty sure Cozmo, Deej, and others won't be reading this, but I figured it should be put out there.