The alternate title being "Your multiplayer is bad and you should feel bad... for now". So, let us all take a moment to establish an understanding. We have all purchased this game with certain expectations, and now that it has been purchased "not playing it" is not really a viable option. I have held a lot of respect for Bungie for a lot of time, so I am approaching this topic from the perspective of respect and helpful critique - I would appreciate it if the rest of the community and the Powers That Be would read and respond as such. Flippant humor aside, of course. For as long as I have played games, I have not particularly enjoyed multiplayer. I am very much a collaborative sort, and extremely averse to confrontation. Hence, I usually avoid deathmatches because the entire premise is "other team bad, kill them". Hence I usually approach games from the perspective of gaining as much single player play time as possible, with cooperative adding a measure of extra happiness for good measure. So when I say that a significant portion of the Destiny gameplay is locked behind the multiplayer door, you can understand why that is immediately disturbing to me. [b]"But Loon,"[/b] you say with a respectful if somewhat gruff tone, [b]"If it bothers you, why don't you just *not play* it?"[/b] A perfectly reasonable query from a perfectly reasonable person. I'm glad you asked: The problem as it stands right now is that all levels above 20 are gear related, and there are only 2 vendors of import that I can use (via Vanguard Marks, hereafter 'VM'). [b]"Surely not!"[/b] Unfortunately, this is very much the case. There are 13 vendors (+/-2 limited time), but only 11 relevant to any single character (the armor for each of the three classes is now lumped into one). Of these, another 4 are purely cosmetic or low-level exclusively. So the vendor list drops to 7. Yes, the 3 faction vendors can earn you [i]rep[/i] for their faction, but they all work off of CM (Crucible Marks) for currency. So a player who only goes PvE *can* get to rank 3+ with all factions, they can't actually [i]buy[/i] anything. On top of that, aside from Public Events, every special event (Queen's Bounty, Iron Banner, etc) is at least partly Multi. Iron Banner is completely multi, while Queen's Bounty was impossible to reach Rank 3 while playing only PvE. So you can understand why I see there is something of a disparity between Bungie's attending to Multiplayer gamers and the (dozens or more) PvE/Cooperative players. When you lump in the fact that Vanguard gear is mismatched such that you can't even get a full armor set by purchase alone... So the good news, your first solutions: 1 - For Marks, give us someone on the Tower that will let us exchange VM for CM (& vice versa), or set Faction vendors so that they accept both VM and CM. As a PvE player, I am willing to accept that not going multi is going to hobble me, so I won't ask for the Crucible vendors to be so altered as well. I would willingly and gladly exchange VM at a loss (preferably 5:4) so that I could buy CM gear and get on with my game. The alternative (turning in farmed resources) is less than appealing, unless you added the ability to sell broken down armor components and gun parts. 2 - For special events, make the bounties attached to them PvE capable. We have seen bounties that have weighted values (ex: the exotic Machine Gun bounty that counts extra for head shots). If you weight Crucible events such that you only need, say 10-20 kills in PvP but 20-40 in PvE, that will allow me to go out and do my own thing while still participating in events that would otherwise be utterly unappealing to me. 3 - Find some way to implement Reach's Firefight gametype in Crucible. It says in the Grimoire several times that many of these PvP levels are safe not because of defenses, but by virtue of the Guardians who are already in the Crucible gleefully murdering each other. If you do a 3vE crucible event, I would be utterly overjoyed and finally have something to do on that playlist. Moving on. The above was mostly to address the problems for avoiding PvE entirely - this is a rather safe assumption for many of us, but it won't help the game improve over the long term. Ignoring a problem until it goes away doesn't work, so let's try to fix it. Now, the first big issue with PvP is the number of one-shot kill abilities in the system. Just running off the top of my head, every character has a Super, many of them learn abilities that can one-shot (such as a Titan's Storm Fist charge), shotguns, Sniper Rifles, Heavy Weapons, a good grenade... The list goes on. [b]"But that's game balance! Everyone can one-shot!"[/b] See, there's the most common argument against my stance. Let's put it another way. I've invented a game I will call "swift kick to the gonads". You get an adult male you and some other adult male who you don't like much, and you stand in front of each other and swiftly punt each other in the groin. Now just because you both have an equal ability to punt and/or experience excruciating pain and possible hospital visits doesn't mean that this is particularly fun for anyone involved. So let's compare this to Halo: Reach. In Reach, combat was brief but not instantaneous. If I got shot at, I had enough time to duck behind cover, toss a grenade, or leap cackling into the abyss whilst making obscene gestures. In all, fights usually lasted between 10-20 seconds. In Destiny, fights last between 2-3, or 1 if someone's camping a doorway with a shotgun. The big difference in fun here is the use of tactics. The absence of these numerous one-shot AOE murdersplosion abilities made the game fun, and that one rocket launcher on the map kept people on their toes. I still fondly remember a 14 year old yelling "WTF I had the sword and everything!" when I managed to pistol whip him into my score pool. Destiny, on the other hand, is very much a "Quick and the Dead... and the dead again... and again... and again" game. Fights end almost before they begin because there is no time to apply tactics, movement or even surprised yelps before you are reduced to a smear. The bigger problem is that most of the Supers are lost on death, as is ammo - especially Heavy. [b]"Game balance?"[/b] Not really. See, the easiest way in a team fight (say, Skirmish doing 3v3) is to establish dominance on the terrain, and disrupt the enemy team's ability to coordinate. So let's say that in the beginning your team got wiped out in a triple kill. Game spawns two of you on one side of the map, and the third somewhere near another game. Now you have a 2-man and a single trooper versus an established 3-man team who have [i]not[/i] just lost all their Special ammo. So the other team hunts down your one guy and he's down again. The 3-man keep an eye on the marker so your 2 still can't revive him and the fight goes on. Eventually, your team is completely disrupted and having to spend effort recovering that the others do not. Then you get that wonderful announcement: "heavy ammo on the way". And as soon as it spawns, the enemy team gets both boxes because they have already established dominance over the terrain, turning a difficult match into a meat grinder. With that understanding set out, we also have the issue that the PTB has tried to address already - namely, that everyone rolls in with an Assault Rifle, a Fusion/Shotgun, and a Machine Gun. See, that equipment issue is actually based off of real-life tactics and the realistic assessment of weakness for these guns. In Crucible, you barely have time to aim so it's better to spray and pray. On top of that, if you miss a low Rate of Fire (RoF) weapon, it takes longer to adjust and refire than it does for a Full Auto to just walk fire onto the target. Then you need to ask yourself about the ranges over which engagements tend to take place in here. If you answered "too close", then you have already perfectly identified why a staged down sniper rifle is not ideal for CQC. In addition to the gonad kicking. Cont'd in comments