Bungie recently announced its next expansion for Destiny 2 and plans for future content. Despite abandoning core aspects of the first Destiny, Bungie has shown that they are supporting Destiny 2 for years to come.
With that said, certain systems from the first game are sorely needed in Destiny 2. Subclass customization, exclusive loot, and a reason to play Raids weekly are just a few of the game's current issues that were addressed in the original. On the flipside, Destiny 2 made many improvements over the original that many overlook. Here are 5 things we want Bungie to add first back into Destiny 2, along with 5 things we hope never return.
10 Return: Strike-Specific Loot
Strikes are a core part of the Destiny experience that rarely get expanded upon. While Nightfalls have exclusive guns and sparrows in Destiny 2, the original Destiny took this a step further.
Instead of Nightfalls, every Strike in the game had at least one unique item players could earn by earning and spending Skeleton Keys. The unique weapons and armor from these activities kept the Strike playlist healthy for most of Destiny's lifespan, something the second game needs desperately.
9 Stay Behind: Exclusivity Deals
For a game so focused on becoming a legend, the game's exclusivity deals with PlayStation ruined that fantasy for the franchise's lifespan until recently.
Destiny and the first two years of Destiny 2 had exclusive Crucible Maps, Strikes, and Exotic weapons that could only be experienced on PlayStation until they migrated to other platforms a whole year later. Some weapons like Zen Meteor have not been experienced by Destiny players at all on Xbox since Destiny 2 came out before this weapon was made non-exclusive! Destiny 2: Shadowkeep removed this practice when Bungie split from Activision, but this isn't a guarantee an exclusivity deal like this won't happen again.
8 Return: Factions
Factions did exist in Destiny 2 as a time-limited event during Year 1, but they were never implemented as a core vendor like they were in the original.
Dead Orbit, Future War Cult, and New Monarchy were all factions players could earn XP for by pledging to the respective faction. These factions granted unique shaders, armor, and provided powerful weapons like the meta-defining Hung Jury SR4 Scout Rifle from Dead Orbit during The Taken King. Destiny 2 has few vendors that can sell the player gear, let alone items as strong as what factions offered.
7 Stay Behind: Storing Engrams
Most items in the original Destiny had to be decrypted by a Cryptarch in a social space. Since they took the same inventory slots as your actual weapons and armor, players could store them in their vault for other characters.
This made leveling alternate character—usually referred to as "alts"—a trivial process. Players could hoard engrams, swap characters, decrypt them, and now have a character at the Light cap. Destiny 2 requires players to complete content on other characters to level up. The Collections system and high-Power weapons can be used to circumvent much of this grind but never to the degree the old system allowed. It also needlessly cluttered your inventory and vault, unlike Destiny 2's separate Engram inventory system.
6 Return: Warlock Shoulder Armor
Warlock fashion is objectively worse in Destiny 2 than the first game. Fans decry that it's the armor design itself that is lackluster, but those who mained Warlocks in Destiny 1 know that shoulder armor pieces are completely missing in Destiny 2.
Titans and Hunters have their shoulder armor attached to their arms, but this isn't the case for Warlocks. Instead, Warlocks have their shoulder armor tied to their chest armor. This results in the gauntlet slot being unnoticeable in most circumstances and puts too much focus on the body armor players wear. Gauntlets for Warlocks should be reverted to how they worked in the original Destiny to make members of the same class much more distinct from each other.
5 Stay Behind: Ammo Synths
Ammo Synthesizers were consumable items in the original Destiny that instantly refilled a certain ammo type in any PvE activity.
Raid Banners do the same thing in Destiny 2, but these banners only apply to difficult content and can stack 100 times each. Synths, on the other hand, stacked up to 20 times and had to be manually consumed in your inventory. This completely broke game flow and was a poor way of bandaid-fixing the random ammo economy in Destiny 1.
4 Return: Raid-Exclusive Perks
Many players remember Fatebringer, GENESIS CHAIN~, and Black Hammer as pinnacle Raid weapons that could not be matched anywhere else.
Perk combinations and, in the case of Wrath of the Machine, unique perks made Raids an exciting activity that rewarded aspirational gear. Destiny 2's Raid gear, in comparison, has no unique perks and a lack of unique perk combinations. There are some in the Last Wish and Scourge of the Past Raids, but these combinations don't match the power of Genesis Chain's Focused Firefly or the combination of Firefly and Outlaw on Fatebringer.
3 Stay Behind: Perks That Rely On Luck
One major reason Bungie reset everyone in Destiny 2 was the unbalanced sandbox in the first entry. Perks that relied on luck nullified the skillful aspect of Crucible that Bungie couldn't patch out.
Perks like Luck in the Chamber were all about dealing extra damage on a random bullet. Exotics were even built around RNG like the infamous Hawkmoon Hand Cannon, capable of having a single bullet affected by 3 damage-boosting RNG perks that could instantly kill Guardians. It's likely why the likes of Hawkmoon will never return unless Bungie reworks them, which would likely ruin their identity and nullify the purpose of bringing it back.
2 Return: Subclass Customization
Destiny used a node-based grid system where players could select the passives and abilities they wanted to bring to battle. To simplify things and maintain PvP balance, Bungie opted for curated loadouts in Destiny 2.
Every subclass has one of three specializations they can select with no room for tinkering. Bungie has pushed build crafting hard since Shadowkeep with the likes of Armor 2.0 and seasonal mods, but this game will never have true build diversity until Subclasses get customizable trees back.
1 Stay Behind: Leveling Gear
Nothing felt worse in the original Destiny than obtaining an Exotic and having to grind XP to unlock its perks.
Of course, leveling weapons in Destiny 2 doesn't exist in the traditional sense. Instead, players invest resources into Legendary gear to Masterwork them, granting bonus stats and the ability to generate Orbs of Light. Exotics have objectives tied to Exotic Catalysts to unlock their full potential, but these perks are never paramount to make an Exotic functional like it was in the first game. Bungie wants to focus on adding investment systems into Destiny 2 in the coming years, but leveling gear is a system that should ever return.