Implying that any of the perks in Destiny would be pay to win is silly. They’re all varying degrees of mediocre to completely irrelevant.

I really hope the new system changes that.

You could easily argue the opposite then. All perks are good in situations, so they didn't give them the worst perks either :D

Implying that any of the perks in Destiny would be pay to win is silly. They’re all varying degrees of mediocre to completely irrelevant.

I really hope the new system changes that.

I don't think a game like Destiny can really use perks in a good way.

Let's go back to Deus Ex. You can customize your character with 'perks' in a wide variety of ways. The game allows you to complete it by using your perks. In the final area you can hack the weapons systems to fire at your enemies if you have sufficient hacking skill. If you harden yourself to environmental hazards, you can sneak in through entrances and routes that would kill you otherwise. Or, you can go in guns blazing with a heavy weapon and stone skin.

All of this works because it is a single player game, and the goal is to have fun, progress, and explore. The perks are also not random; you choose them.

But look at a game like Diablo 2/3, where you can likewise select your perks but players converge on very specific builds. That game is based on killing things quickly. So there will be a set of skills that is just flat out better at that. And especially if you play with other people who want to level up or find items, they are going to expect you to be fast and efficient at killing.

Deus Ex does not prioritize quick killing. Diablo does. And Destiny does too.

If you make perks that have a noticeable impact, the ones that impact your ability to kill quickly will be preferred. And because you are so good at killing, hard content will have to be designed around having those perks. Otherwise it would be easy. So if you don't have them, you are at a disadvantage. It's no longer about choosing playstyle, but about measuring up.

Ultimately if you take 3 hours to beat Area 51 in Deus Ex by being stealthy instead of rushing in guns blazing and doing it in one, that's your choice. But you wouldn't have that luxury if you are in a strike or raid fireteam. They want the drop as efficiently as possible most of the time.

Of course if you make perks not have much of an impact, they don't really matter much do they?

The main problem is that Destiny just prioritizes certain things way more than others. The only solution I can think of is to design more parts of the game where alternate strategies are more desirable than murdering everything as quickly as possible, or provide some set of alternative goals for encounters.

In PvP, there are just perks that are straight up better. Again, if they have a huge effect, if you don't have them you are straight up disadvantaged. I think weapon mods should probably be disabled in PvP, but what do I know.

I didn’t highlight the worst interpretation of a minor comment in an article of otherwise positive news.

Of course, this has never stopped me from wearing the armor that I liked, and I couldn’t tell you what a single perk was on any one piece, but as a matter of principle, it’s been manipulative and evil.

Manipulative and evil is a bit strong. I think it's just been a bad system. They were trying to create a revenue with "skins" without breaking the economy of the game. What they got was a system that annoyed gamers and probably doesn't bring them all that much revenue.

I still think one of the best systems for this stuff was in Fortnite. You purchase a pass that opens up 100 tiers of unlockables. The game itself is free, but what you pay money for is customization of your character. A similar adaptation of this model could be beneficial to Destiny, imo.

I'm afraid of finding out later there is an inventory check date, like when they unveiled Collections. With Collections, didn't we find out later there was a 1 time inventory check at a future date and if you started sharding too early you may now be missing items from your Collection? Or at least wasn't it a bit murky when it was first communicated?

No, there wasn't a future date. It was a nebulous date in the past. They guaranteed that everything from Warmind would be in your Collections, even you had already deleted it, but they couldn't guarantee that anything before that would come over if you didn't still have the item when Collections debuted.

EDIT: I think that's the case, anyway. I presented that with much more confidence than I actually have. I don't recall if Warmind was the "guarantee" cutoff, but it was always that they weren't sure exactly how far in the past it would reach.

I'm inclined to trust them on this one. If they say you can safely delete Eververse gear, I'm going to believe them. Plus, deleting excess Eververse crap is a great way to get some Bright Dust.

There's already SO MANY bounties I don't have time to collect or even complete on each Destination. Plus what if they start manipulating Bright Dust Bounties to have very difficult objectives, or very time consuming, menial tasks like collecting planetary materials, etc.

I think a decent solution there would be to make some of those bounties more generic. A lot of those require very specific activities. If they made them more generic kill type bounties that could be completed no matter what you were doing, it might be a little less stressful.

Note due to the ever redundant (if memory a serves) "Can not pull from Collections" Restriction, if you shard then you won't be seeing them again in-till this "transmog" option goes live.