Five Little Destiny Tweaks That Would Make A World Of Difference

I’ve been playing a lot of Destiny lately, and it’s one of the most peculiar games I can recall. It’s got a solid foundation and I can see greater potential, but it seems like Bungie completely whiffed a lot of the small stuff. The game’s gotten a lot of flak online for its poorly implemented story, stingy loot distribution, and allegations of on-disc DLC, and while those are certainly problems, that’s not what I’m focusing on here. I’ve got five suggestions for relatively small changes to the game that I think would reap big rewards for players – and earn back some valuable goodwill for Bungie in the process.

1. Hello, waypoint?
There’s no fast-travel system in Destiny, so you’re going to be spending a lot of time either navigating planets on foot or mounted on the seat of your speederbike sparrow. If you’re not blessed with a great sense of direction (guilty as charged), those two travel options simply affect how quickly you get lost. Fortunately, getting one’s bearings is as simple as pulling out your Ghost companion and getting a popup navpoint in the process. Unfortunately, those helpful markers are fleeting. After a few seconds, they disappear from sight.

When you’re doing patrol missions – particularly ones that task you with standing in a particular survey spot or surveying an area – this process can quickly become tiresome. I understand that Destiny’s artists worked very hard to create beautiful areas and they don’t want people to focus on little white triangles. At the same time, I’m going to jam on that button anyway because I have work to do.

How about a compromise? Let players pull up persistent navpoints by double-tapping the button that summons our helpful Ghost. Once it’s no longer needed, another double tap would remove the point from sight. Simple enough, right?

2. Resource hogs
Once you hit level 20, progress isn’t dependent on XP – it’s all about your gear. At that point, you start acquiring armor that has a light rating. The higher the light your equipment generates, the further past 20 you can go. It’s kind of a strange concept, but by the time your character reaches that milestone you just learn to roll with Destiny being Destiny.

Upgrading your gear adds even more light to its rating, which lets you reach even higher levels. To do that, you have to scrounge up a variety of bizarre-sounding materials like helium filaments, relic iron and, my favorite, spinmetal. These items are located in chests or in their natural state strewn throughout each planet. And finding them is a colossal pain in the ass.

You’ll eventually gain a knack for locating the items, which typically have a subtle glow around them, but it’s still unnecessarily tedious. A natural solution would be creating a consumable item that would highlight nearby materials on the minimap for a set amount of time. You can already use items to temporarily increase the amount of cash that enemies drop; I’d gladly pay a few hundred glimmer to make my farming sessions slightly less annoying.

3. Share and share alike
When Destiny first launched, some of the guys in the office excitedly formed a clan. It would be great! We could all visit Bungie’s website, request an invite to the group, and then, after it was approved by our fearless leader Matt Miller, we could…have…the name of our clan appear after our character name …?

Our clan name is pretty cool and it looks nice on my screen, but there’s no real reason to be in a clan right now. Bungie is pulling elements from MMOs into Destiny, and they clearly missed a big one here. How about letting people in a clan exchange items through a shared bank or similar system?

I don’t mind if things like armor and weapons are linked to each player – it gives everyone an incentive to play more. But I can’t think of one good reason why friends can’t contribute extra glimmer (or spinmetal!) to help outfit their buddies for the game’s high-end content. 

4. Card collectors
Destiny has a story (I think), but it’s just hidden in one of the least interesting places possible. You know all those grimoire cards you keep unlocking as you explore the planets and kill everything? They don’t just earn you bonus glimmer. As the popup text says, you can visit Bungie.net to view them (or use the game’s iOS, Android, or Windows Phone app).

There, you’ll find nicely detailed art and a few paragraphs of back story, character information, or other lore-like content. And that sucks. You spend a ridiculous amount of time looking at your ship during the game’s loading times; why not allow us to something constructive as we idle? When your character unlocks a card, it only makes sense for them to be able to check it out in-universe.

Allow me to flip through a binder while I’m in orbit, or tab through grimoire entries in my inventory. Virtually any solution is better than tucking this stuff away on a website or app that few people are likely to visit. If Bungie didn’t think the work that the artists and writers did on them was worth an in-game presence, why pay for them to do it at all?

5. Cut the scenes
The grind is a part of Destiny, whether you like it or not. Personally, I don’t mind it too much as long as I have a podcast handy. Something that I do find unforgivable is the inability to skip cutscenes after you played through the campaign.

Don’t get me wrong; if you haven’t beaten the game, I get why Bungie doesn’t want you to blow past what they deem critically important story content (go ahead and laugh). But after you’ve seen what the game has to offer, forcing players to sit through the same cinematics repeatedly feels downright punitive.

It’s especially bad when they’re tied to strikes – modified story missions that feature lengthy cutscenes. Please let us hold down a button to move past them in those instances. I’ll settle for the loading time that they’re conceivably hiding instead. Especially if it means I could use that time to peruse my collection of grimoire cards in the game (hint hint)!

What do you think? Are there any little things in Destiny that you think could go a big way in improving the overall experience? Tell us about it in the comments.