• people who have no alts therefore never need to share weapons
  
• people who have alts but rarely share
  
• people who share regularly

Making it easy to share weapons does not have a massive impact on people who rarely or never share.

I think that the suggestions made here make life easier even for people who rarely or never share but just use the vault as storage.

Under that scheme any weapon picked up is in the vault. If no other alt equips it from the vault and you delete the weapon in your character page then the weapon is deleted and is gone from your vault.

Note that you put stuff into and took stuff out of your vault without having to even access the vault.

Imagine you pick up some greens during a strike and delete them in a lull between fights or in orbit. You haven't needed to see your vault, you don't need to care, and the stuff is now gone.

If you pick up a legendary or exotic then it is immediately in your vault without you having to do anything. If you hate the exotic then just delete it in your character screen. It will be gone and it will never bother you again.

If you want to share it with an alt then, when you decide to play as that alt: just equip it from the vault and both characters are now sharing it.

If you want to give it to an alt (say you feel that it doesn't suit your current alt) then just enter the vault and un-equip it. Notes:

• it is already in the vault without you doing anything - the other alt can pick it up when you start playing as that alt
  
• the un-equip just frees up a slot in your current alt's equipped gear slots - this can be done before the other alt picks it up or after (the order doesn't matter)

1. Expand the vault to 4x its size. Just make 4 tabs to cycle through.

Yes to bigger but cycling through tabs is an unnecessary task. (see my reply to point 3)

2. The vault can be accessed from orbit or in the tower by tabbing over between inventory and settings screens. It cannot be accessed outside of these places.

I could live with it only being accessible in non-combat areas.

Though, given that you can already have ten of each type of item to choose between in combat areas... I don't think that there is much strategy left in loadout selections, especially given the known nature of all encounters. In the strike playlist you can be selecting your loadout whilst dinklebot narrates.

There is no NEED for vault access in combat areas but I'm fairly laissez faire about these things. If there is no strong need to stop a consenting adult from doing something then I'm inclined to let them do it.

Maybe this would me more of an issue to PvP players. Would it be a problem for you if anyone could pick between all their weapons? I'm not suggesting that the current character page be removed. I'm just suggesting that vaults could be accessible anywhere.

3. On the vault page, you can open the inventories of other characters, and move those items to your vault.

Ez Pz.

Have a quick gander at this.

I was initially thinking, "how do you make it easier to find stuff that other characters hold?" But then I thought, "who cares who is holding it? I just want to see the stuff"

If you filter by gear category then the middle grid shouldn't get too big. I took two 1080p images of a character page and an inventory page and copied a 5x3 grid from the inventory image and pasted it over the character screen.

You can fit a 7x7 grid without scrolling into the middle but I think that a 6x7 grid would be less cramped. That's room for 42 primaries or specials or whatever before you even need to scroll. I suspect that a 6x10 grid would not be too cumbersome to scroll. 60 helmets, 60 gloves, space ships, etc.

If you want to filter out armour that the current character can't wear then you would have room for 60 Hunter helmets and not need to worry about the 57 Warlock and 30 Titan helmets you own ;-)

And remember, if items stay in the grid when selected then you get to know where in the grid they live so they are easier to find (they don't shuffle around as you equip and un-equip items).

If someone wants to grind 3 of the same gun, more power to them, but to feel as if you HAVE to is wrong.

Yes, very much so. Which is why I suggest that Bungie make weapons stay in the vault so that people only have to grind one copy.

Remember it takes time for people to have enough exotics and legendaries that all characters can be equipped with a wide variety of them, all fully upgraded.

An ability to easily swap weapons would make these people's lives easier:

• people who don't have many great weapons - not enough to equip all characters without swapping
  
• people who do have many great weapons and want to try them all out on each character, whenever they want to
  
• people who only want to grind one of each type of weapon

I think if people are limiting themselves to just a small number of weapons that they switch around, then they're missing out on the fun variety Destiny has in its arsenal. If it's just from lack of weapons, then that's understandable. I wish legendary weapons were a little cheaper.

I don't think there are legions of players who are playing this game and farming 3 characters. Does it exist? Oh I bet. But people that play that way aren't playing Destiny for fun, at that point.

I have 3 characters, all level 31, and I'm playing for fun. I have fun leveling. I like setting goals and working towards them.

I also don't have these complaints on the vault. Each character has its own weapon specialty, so there is very little weapon sharing. The vault is very handy for me to share materials and currencies. Pick up what I need, make a purchase or upgrade, then put the remainder back. If they made any improvement, I would like to be able to pick up or place one item at a time rather than the entire stack.

Exactly, another player that doesn't fit the mold of these complaints.

You play a lot like Korny does with us.

I don't think there is anything weird or problematic about moving a few key weapons\armor to your characters from time to time, like say the nightfall or when the mood strikes you.

RNG bless you with two or more of your favorite gun? Hey, that's awesome. But trying to do something like buying three of the same gun from Xur every week seems pretty dumb to me.

I've got a hunter that I occasionally switch to if the mood strikes, but it's not even leveled up all the way.

I remember how you said early on you wanted to have a Titan for PvE and a Hunter for PvP, or the other way around maybe and I thought about doing that, as I like some of the perks a hunter has (and it rewards my Scout Rifle preference) but I just prefer my Titan more.

I think it's cool Bungie gave us 3 slots so we could do each character, and a channel via the vault to share our favorite gear with them.

If someone wants to grind 3 of the same gun, more power to them, but to feel as if you HAVE to is wrong.

The current vault implementation is appallingly bad when you have > 1 character and it can certainly be improved.

And here is the impasse, with you: when I call you out, now you're talking in "metaphors" while I talk as it is actually.

The vault IS an inventory system, and how it is used is going to vary from person to person, especially if they run multiple characters.

The vault is implemented just fine.

It's the way we chase objects, items, things and put them into the vault that is a concern.

There is no one way to play Destiny and manager your characters\items. This is naturally going to cause frustrations for some and not others.

For me, intentionally playing the game in a way that I have to have 3 characters (different or same, it doesn't matter), and each of them has to have the same loadout if you will, to maximize chasing coins and loot does not sound fun

All this talk of efficiency vs fun is draining. If I wanted to play an efficiency simulator, I'd buy something from the Germans or, I don't know, actually go to my job or something.

Your argument is that it "sucks" because there are lots of people who feel they must have 3 of the same gun to use with multiple characters-

OK- where are these players? Are you one of them? I don't see hundereds of threads on B.net about people complaining that the need 3 icebreakers etc. I think your opinion is clouded because of some of the more high level players we have here on DBO- Your Cody Millers, Cruel Legacys, Korny Munkys and CyberKNs might have a beef with it, but then again, they ARE the type of players that are constantly switching characters (for fun, mind you).

I feel as if you are proposing some ludicrously large ingame inventory with tons and tons of items to sort through. Who has the time for that?! I'm too busy playing the game! I don't spend much time in the menus of Destiny. Perhaps I'm playing more efficient than these people you describe. Then again, I only run one main character, and a second when the mood strikes me.

Look, I'm done with this with you, because you've already hit that point with me where I can't read things you write in a non-complainy voice.

I'd love to see some official stats from Bungie about how many players are running 3 characters, how many of those characters have 3 of the same weapon, or how often people are moving stuff between them. Show me these "masses". Show me their plight.

Until they do that, I think the vault is working exactly as intended, and needs no changes other than maybe, MAYBE adding a few extra slots, if possible, as more content comes out.

Imagine if all weapons were available in the vault at all times.

Oh for crying out loud! You just got done snipping up my sentences to claim that not what you intended! I know you don't like me, but is a little consistency and honesty too much to ask for!?

Your three stated problems with the current Vault were:

It does nothing useful for the player and only makes their life more difficult.

(Presumably because of the logout/login/tower/logout/login shuffle)

(It) drives people to the Tower

(Presumably because you see it as a waste of time having to, at the very least, leave your mission and return to the Tower)

(It) encourages them to level up 3 copies of the same weapon (so they expend more time in the game doing make-work)

(Presumably you only want to level up one weapon and easily use it with all three of your characters)

Later, you said that the Vault:

...wouldn't be a physical place that you reach into and take things from.

And that:

Bungie should replace the vault as a place metaphor with the vault as an inventory system...

So, by my reading your idea of the Vault was an inventory system that lets the player store a weapon and easily transfer it between characters without having to travel to a location like The Tower. It seemed logical to me that if there is no physical in-game Vault to press X on and it is thus not located in a in-game location like The Tower it would be an "always accessible extended inventory." Your post below here mentions not having the "vault" accessible in a combat zone something I admittedly didn't think of, but beyond that was my thought process so unreasonable?

Where do I carry the 50+ things (weapons, armor pieces, sparrows, space ships) that I equip?

What are those dodecahedrons that we pickup? How do they turn into weapons?

Where does our ghost go?

Does our ghost store all our equipped spaceships?

I imagine that there is some sort of space magic involved.

So I can imagine that when in orbit I can use space magic radio to download space magic dodecahedrons to my ghost. My ghost has limited memory to hold items so each type is capped to ten.

To me that seems to fit the Destiny world fairly well. To me, nothing in Destiny totally makes sense but the above seems OK.

-PS and sharing money is done with a shared bank account with parental control.

Ez Pz.

1) store for unused gear

2) means of swapping gear between alts

There are many ways to achieve those roles. There are many possible implementations.

Bungie decided to implement a bank - a place where alts can put stuff in and take stuff out.

I am suggesting that they use an inventory instead.

Given the unfortunate consequences of the bank paradigm... I believe that the inventory is by far the better implementation.

As a means of achieving the two roles mentioned above - the vault IS an appalling implementation.

or anything that is simply a type and a number...

have those things per player (not per character).

That way all alts have access to them without needing any number swapping UI.

No work is the least possible work. If I had 23 Spirit Bloom and my Hunter needed 16 then my Hunter would have immediate access to that bloom without me having do anything.

I'm not counting the work I did to collect the bloom. I'm talking about any UI overhead that would be involved if it was per character but swappable via the vault.

As a general principle: if something is possible then it should be easy unless there is an overriding need to make it difficult. But you really need to justify why you'd want to make something hard to do.

Yeah, but you're applying UI principles for apps generally. This is a game, and in a certain sense it's a world simulator. That means that some (not all, of course) of real world logistics are recreated in the game, and is justified in the name of realism.

I fully agree that switching characters and all the travel to orbit and back is too much, and you could maintain realism with much less (or a different, less time consuming mechanism). I also agree that the UI for handling weapons at the vault could use some work, but your immediate access idea, that starts breaking down the aspects that make it realistic.

and the accessibility of an item in the vault.

But you are right, Ragashingo's statement could be read as always accessible items: limited to those circumstances were you can access the vault.

If the design spec stated that an alt must not be able to access gear held by another alt without without having to:

• goto settings tab
  
• select logout character
  
• wait for select character screen to load
  
• select character
  
• wait for character to load
  
• select Tower
  
• launch
  
• watch spacecraft for a bit
  
• wait in darkness for Tower to res properly
  
• run to vault
  
• enter vault
  
• goto character gear screen
  
• select weapon category and weapon to place in vault
  
• return to vault
  
• pick up other weapon
  
• quit vault
  
• goto orbit

then the spec was a bad spec.

If all that wasn't in the spec then the implementation of swapping weapons between characters was poor.

They know their own game - they can't have thought people would prefer options 1 and/or 2.

I think that Bungie was picturing more "I got Bad Juju with my Warlock, and I'm giving it to my Hunter" than "I use this Gjallarhorn with every character."

Maybe they did play testing in a grind free environment. Perhaps with easy drops and cheat codes.

And they said that they got used to throwing away characters as builds changed.

If you stare at something long enough then you stop seeing it. maybe they just couldn't see the life of the ordinary Joes playing the released game, people who don't see Gjallarhorns very often and can't quickly get amazing builds for every character.

Nightfalls and Raids weren't done every week to grind gear and mats: they were play tested. They couldn't wait for luck to equip a character for a play test. They probably had a matrix of characters and gear and tested every combination in order (repeatedly). Or they used cheat codes.

If you got a gun that would go better with your Warlock from a Raid you did with a Hunter, than yeah by all means go ahead and swap it over. But I don't think they envisioned just having one set of weapons for all your characters, or having three characters who were functionally identical.

I never claimed that the vault should be always accessible.

I'm hesitant to even get into this, but did you not previously say that weapons should stay in the vault, and be always accessible regardless of where you are? That seems to be the same as saying "always accessible."

have those things per player (not per character).

That way all alts have access to them without needing any number swapping UI.

No work is the least possible work. If I had 23 Spirit Bloom and my Hunter needed 16 then my Hunter would have immediate access to that bloom without me having do anything.

I'm not counting the work I did to collect the bloom. I'm talking about any UI overhead that would be involved if it was per character but swappable via the vault.

As a general principle: if something is possible then it should be easy unless there is an overriding need to make it difficult. But you really need to justify why you'd want to make something hard to do.

Not to mention that I'd be SOL as a handcannon lover who's only ever had one Legendary handcannon drop. Or do you think I was supposed to buy 3 identical Devil You Know with my hard-earned marks?

I very much doubt that Bungie didn't anticipate that people would find good gear and stick with it, rather than go with whatever gear they find lying around.