Hello forum and Bungie. I'm unsure how seriously Bungie takes their forums and whether or not this will be seen by the people who should see it. I feel I should add my own opinions, perspective and ideas to the topic; everyone else seems to have done so. As a disclaimer this will probably be long so anyone who hasn't got the attention span or interest can find another thread to read or some crayons to play with. For the Bungie employees without the time to read all this please skip to the end where I will write a TL;DR. Before I begin, by all means give your own ideas or feel free to challenge mine. I am in no way a Bungie fanboy. If I'm completely honest I despise the Halo franchise. I bought and played Halo 1 and thought it was ok; I didn't play 2 at all. I bought 3 purely because all of my friends did and I was given Anniversary as a gift from a friend who wanted someone to play it with. Needless to say I 1000g'd it with him but it was a painful process for me. I have only recently acquired a copy of Reach because it was free on Gold. I haven't played it yet. After all the time that has passed I still don't know why I was fighting that menagerie of aliens or what they did to humanity. Nor do I care. Nor do I wish to find out. I became aware of Destiny when the Beta went free on Xbox Live. I played it. I liked it. I did some more homework on it and decided to buy it. So far I'm thoroughly enjoying the experience. Before I purchased Destiny I was probably about a month away from selling my 360 console and saving to buy a PC. I really enjoy RPG's and, although I have experience with only two MMO's, I also can say I enjoy MMOs. TES:O was the only MMO for consoles and I didn't want to shell out more than my gym membership in yearly costs to play (or fork out for an XBOne) a frankly mediocre title. I played the Beta for that too for the record. I enjoy storylines as much as anyone else but Destiny's lack of one doesn't bother me. Going back to my experience of MMOs I played GuildWars for 2 years. I don't know why I was fighting stuff in that game either but I loved it. For me an MMO is about character progression; I will do missions purely to advance my level and abilities. I don't care why I had to go to X and do Y for person Z. All I care about is the reward I get for doing it and if it will let me do another mission to do the same thing. My one complaint with MMOs is the lack of personal skill involved. Both MMOs I played needed you to have spent a fair amount of time to even consider competing in PvP. And even then, the person who has played longer than you will usually win. Time spent shouldn't equal tactical knowledge or reflexes but in MMOs it usually does. Which brings me neatly to my next point. I enjoy FPSs and TPSs. I have played Gears of War since the first although I boycotted Judgement. I played CoD avidly from the first ever title on PC until BlOps 1 where I sort of tapered off. I didn't buy MW3 although I borrowed it for a week or two. As I mentioned I dabbled in Halo a little but not very much. My point is I would like to think I am skilled in these games or I at least I was. This is where, for me, Destiny absolutely shines. It combines my love of RPGs, MMOs and character progression and fuses it with the personal skill level of an FPS. Destiny is the reason I still have my 360 and will probably buy an XBOne when 360 becomes obsolete. Destiny is basically the reason I did not turn to the Dark Side and become a PC bumboy. Now that my little backstory is out of the way I will move on to the crux of this thread. A lot of people don't share my view on storylines and find it a personal affront that Destiny has a severe lack of "Why". My way to address this would be as follows: Bungie can go the way of GuildWars, Gears of War, Dead Space and probably others. What you cannot tell within the game you may do so outside of it. Gears of War 2 and 3 have a 14 month gap between them which was supplemented by a series of 5 novels. Guild Wars 1 & 2 are set 150 years apart and so novels helped to bridge the gap. Dead Space released free webcomics that you could watch to get an idea of what the Markers did. I am NOT saying you should shirk on storytelling in-game and then put it all into a novel. I am saying that you should flesh out what needs to be fleshed out in-game but you can, for example, talk about the factions and why they are there, how they started, what they stand for etc in a novel. You can talk about some exotic and legendary weapons and how they came to be in a novel. You can talk about Xur and the Nine, you can outline the Traveller's arrival, the Battle of Twilight Gap, Dregden Yor and Thorn, how the Awoken came to be, the creation of Exos, The Fall of the House of Wolves and many more. The list is endless. You could also throw us a bone and release these things for free via the Grimoire or maybe a weekly web comic or short stories published on the website. I don't know if that would be feasible but it certainly would help. For those of us that care enough to know they will read this stuff. For those of us that don't care, we won't. Do not FORCE us to buy more stuff though. You already made your costs back; don't squeeze us for more profit please. Also as a side note, if you need someone to get the ball rolling with the fiction side of things I am a budding novelist and I am looking for a project. Just saying. I am aware people have had problems with the Grimoire and the Clans being made online etc but to be fair it takes nothing to load up a website and have a read. It also means you spend more time playing the game when you are on it rather than messing about with clans. I have an allocated time slot to play my games. The Grimoire allows me to continue being involved with the Destiny universe outside of that time. Good call, in my opinion. A problem people have, which I also share, is the lack of communication within players. An easy way to remedy this, in my opinion, would be the ability to have a personal message system. A 100 character box that appears above your head in the Tower and on your Inspect profile that you can have to say something that is instantly visible. For example if I want to do the Weekly Nightfall and my friends aren't online I would simply write Looking For Party Weekly Nightfall in it. This would then appear above my head in the Tower and anyone interested could message me. Or I could write LF1M Vault of Glass, or LF1M Queen's Wrath, LFP for Bounties, etc. This will also carry over to the Trade side of things if you are going to implement it. WTS Thorn PM offer is one example. WTB SUROS Regime PM offer is another. This small implementation can revolutionize the Tower in my opinion and turn it into a proper social hub. Also having the message appear on your Inspect Profile means you could be smashing the Crucible and when someone Inspects they can see you want to do the Nightfall and you might pick up a team mate. I feel this is the biggest thing I would want in a future update. TL;DR Supplement the lack of storyline by adding the necessary information in-game then releasing weekly novellas or full novels to give backstory to other important but difficult areas to implement into the game. Also I am a novelist so give me a job doing this please. I will work 13 hours a day for £500 a week and all the Creme Eggs and protein shakes I can ask for. A textbox that appears above your head and on your Inspect profile that can be used to project what you wish to play and who you wish to play with. Thank you for reading this.