As we look to the future, Revenant and beyond. I wanted to give feedback regarding crafting/enhancement systems as they stand in the game. It was mentioned in a recent [url=https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/twid_10_03_2024]TWID[/url] that part of the success of Into the Light, was the chase for weapons and the attunement system therein. I want to briefly address the elephant in the room, that is a divisive topic across the community, crafting. I can see its merits, I can also see its drawbacks. 1. It allows players that can’t sink tens maybe hundreds of hours into the game the ability to “target” and obtain something with a roll of perks they want. 2. It actively harms replayability for a given activity. Obtain every “red border” craftable weapon, and there’s little reason to go back into that activity. The scope of the second point is rather broad too, affecting Raids and Seasonal Activities alike. Reducing those activities to one that is [b][i]just[/i][/b] an exotic weapon chase. Otherwise relying on reinforcement from the game to push the player to seek out triumphs. Which then relies on a player’s drive to pursue such triumphs, effectively reducing the activities to a triumph chase relying solely on a player’s willingness to help friends and clanmates alike. With that out of the way, I’d like to look to the future. That is to say, what I feel is a good middle ground between straight crafting of weapons and “the chase” as it is today. [b]Attunement[/b] In a world where every weapon in the game from this point onward, as a standard drop is enhanceable, the merits of chasing the ability to craft a weapon are softened by the ability to enhance traits on a weapon. With the right implementation, attunement as a system could make “the chase” at best a little less tedious, and nullify or at least soften the necessity to craft weapons. What I envision is a system that works alongside the reputation system for current vendors, though not requiring “reputation gates” for unlocks. Similarly it wouldn’t replace the ability to focus engrams into a weapon for those willing to sink many engrams into doing so. As an example I’ll be using Vanguard rewards as the focus, though realistically such a system could be expanded across to other vendors too. The attunement system would be available from Rank 0 at the beginning of the Episode/Season. It would appear in a similar array to the current attunement system for Onslaught that is currently available, in this example the array of options would display the current Nightfall Weapon offerings. You would see each attunement option in front of you. If we assume a selection of six Nightfall Weapons, when viewed in the first week of Grandmaster releases you’d see an array of six Adept Nightfall Weapons to attune to, five of those weapons would be greyed out, and unable to be attuned until at least one drop of that Weapon had been granted to you. At minimum a total of six weeks would be required to eventually attune to each Weapon. Moving on to attunement in action. Assume we have the entire array unlocked to attune to. When you complete a Grandmaster Nightfall, the featured weapon of the week drops alongside the typical expected resource drops based on the “level” of completion. Attunement would respect this system, while working alongside it. Attunement would be a percentage drop chance for a weapon based upon the “Champion Rewards” level attained on completion, the lowest being at Bronze, the highest being Platinum. If the attuned weapon matches that week's featured Weapon it would function simply as a percentage chance to get an extra drop alongside the usual drops. With regards to weeks wherein there are double rewards, you’d get your typical doubled rewards and either a guaranteed attuned weapon or the percentage chance for the attuned weapon is doubled per reward tier on those weeks. This is all very barebones of a system, it just boils down to here’s a percentage drop chance for a Weapon to drop alongside your expected drops. So to expand on that, a mini “milestone” system, similar in aspects to Seasonal vendor behaviours in that each milestone benefits the player with some effect to their drops in a given activity. The point of this milestone system isn’t for a meaningless grind, just a means to work towards maximum benefits, that even those that enter the activity casually can attain. [b]Milestones[/b] 1. Complete a Grandmaster Nightfall using a Light Subclass - unlocks 2x third column perks 2. Complete a Grandmaster Nightfall using a Darkness Subclass - unlocks 2x fourth column perks 3. Complete a Grandmaster Nightfall using a Prismatic Subclass - unlocks partial masterwork completion (4-7 tiers of masterwork completion) 4. Complete all featured Grandmaster Nightfalls - unlocks the ability to choose the masterwork of weapon drops (accessed in the attunement subscreen, reminiscent of the Menagerie Chalice slotting for focused masterwork drops) Dedicated players can knock all of these out in a matter of weeks, but that is the point. They’re minimum benchmarks not a ridiculous grind to attain. Dedicated players will get most of these immediately, average “drop in” players will attain these with reasonable ease over the course of a season. Now, this wasn’t intended to be a big “idea” this is how I’d do it post. It was intended as a feedback post, targeting the fact that Attunement seemed to be viewed in a positive light by the dev team. To cap things off, I’ll address that to a small degree. Attunement seems to be [b][i]THE[/i][/b] way forward. Everything is enhanceable, in a similar manner to how you can craft enhanced perks onto weapons. Attunement allows players to target weapons they want while still keeping activity in a given activity across a season, rather than the current means of “I want xyz weapon, all I need to do is get 5x red borders of this weapon, then I can drop the activity entirely”. I acknowledge that this is far from a perfect system, I’m sure there are aspects, and flaws I’ve overlooked. However, an attunement system is able to reign in RNG giving players some degree of control over their drops without eliminating the RNG factor entirely, allowing for the chase to continue. Such a system translates reasonably well to other Vendor rewards, with milestone adjustments necessary where applicable. Time limited events would also benefit from such a system, in that the player would no longer be entirely at the liberty of RNG for their drops, perhaps never seeing a single drop with perks they want for the entire event only for the weapon to be rotated out at the end of the season.