Destiny 2 Raid Ideation - Player Rewards and Theming

From the beginning, I designed this raid to draw upon traditional MMORPG dungeons and raids: distinct player roles and tense moment-to-moment combatant engagements. The encounters increase in mechanical complexity while remaining grounded in a hard combatant experience as the primary design consideration. Because combat and role-specific gameplay is the main focus of the raid, rewards should follow in their design.

Typically, raids have a suite of legendary weapons, an armor set, and an exotic weapon. The legendary gear can drop, in distinct pools, from each encounter. For instance, encounter 1 can drop 2 weapons and 2-3 armor pieces while encounter 2 drops 2 different weapons and 2-3 different armor pieces. I'm a big fan of splitting the loot pool and making certain encounters drop certain pieces of loot — however, this comes with some interesting give-and-take:

• Players, assuming they are not collectors, will prefer to clear specific encounters over others because of the limited loot tables associated with each

• Most players will want to clear the last counter for a chance at the exotic, but may not want to clear other encounters

  • This was ameliorated somewhat when Spoils of Conquest were introduced

• Loot tied to difficult, tedious, or otherwise 'out-of-reach' encounters may be perceived as less desirable by players

I don't think loot should be divorced from this specific-acquisition system. In fact, this system aligns with the traditional MMORPG approach of tying rare gear to boss loot tables. What I would like to do is further the theming of The Emperor's Tomb by changing loot acquisition within the raid.

Originally I thought it would be a clever idea to introduce new perks unique to the raid, similar to those in King's Fall with Cocoon or Deep Stone Crypt with Reconstruction, Redirection, and Recombination. However, I want these perks to be distinct enough to fulfill their own niches, powerful enough that players want to engage in the raid's loot chase experience, while not pushing the power envelope too far and moving other weapons to the wayside. This is a pretty hard thing to accomplish. How do you make things that are unique and distinct, while also making them powerful but still in-line with existing legendaries? The answer I've arrived at comes all the way back to my desire for The Emperor's Tomb to be thematically representative of that classic MMO raid feeling.

Each encounter should have its own exotic weapon, which only drops from that encounter.

You might be thinking, "hold the phone, Graham. Exotics take a lot of time and energy to design, develop, and test. All of the previous raids only have one, why does this raid have three?" This is perfectly valid, and maybe I'm overestimating the difference in development time between legendary weapons and exotic weapons. However, I think they're more similar from a development standpoint than they are different. All weapons in Destiny 2 have a unique feel, even repurposed models to some extent, and that's perk agnostic. So to return to my earlier proposition that each encounter has one exotic weapon, there are a few precedents I would like to mention:

• Typical raids have between 5 and 9 weapons in total

• A specific raid's loot is visually distinct from the entirety of other loot in-game

• With Deep Stone Crypt, unique raid-only perks have returned

• With Harbinger and Presage, exotic weapons can now have random rolls

Given these, I think it's fair to distribute loot in The Emperor's Tomb as follows:

Encounter 1: exotic primary, legendary primary, boots, gloves

Encounter 2: exotic primary, legendary special, class item, helmet

Encounter 3: exotic special, legendary heavy, legendary heavy, chest

That's 3 exotic weapons, 4 legendary weapons, and 5 pieces of armor per class.

The exotic weapons in the raid would follow the design aesthetics of the legendary set, with added flair (particle effects, ceremonial wrappings, etc.) to set them apart visually. If there were an additional tier of loot in Destiny 2 between legendary and exotic, I would classify these three in that between category. Some existing exotics that more-or-less fit into that category are guns like Huckleberry, Merciless, and Truth. They perform at a higher level than legendaries do, but lack that distinct 'sci-fi alien magic' feel that other exotics dominate — Ruinous Effigy and One Thousand Voices come to mind.

Each exotic would fulfill a role, similar to those created by the three raid buffs. One would provide some form of group healing or regeneration; another could provide the user with damage resistance on kills; the other, some form of buff/debuff amplification for damage dealers. Complete mastery of the raid could involve a team of six utilizing two of each in their respective roles, maximizing the efficiency of the run. Of course, these could trivialize raid mechanics, but over-leveling typically trivializes encounter difficulty as most mechanics (not all) become much easier when combat is less of a consideration. These guns would have incredible utility outside of the raid as well, allowing active specialization of builds similar to how users might feel with Lumina or Ruinous Effigy equipped.

Furthermore, with the introduction of random-rolled exotics, avenues for targeted weekly farming open for players to get that perfect godroll. A consideration here would be limiting the available perk pool so that players don't feel their ideal roll is impossible to get, as this loot would be on a weekly lockout, even from the final encounter chest where players can target specific raid loot (as it exists Deep Stone Crypt).

Introducing this kind of loot chase with the raid further differentiates it from existing raids, ties it more closely to its core theming, allows for creative build potential both inside and outside of the raid, improves player role fantasy, and adds a new layer of mastery to the raid.

I feel like this would be an interesting alternative to one, super-unique exotic weapon while still keeping the loot chase in the raid alive. What do you think?

* Edit:

I think I can do something better. Maintaining the one-exotic-per-raid chase seems important to the core of Destiny's raid reward philosophy, so I'll stay within those constraints. I still want to make the raid exotic tied to the three roles present in The Emperor's Tomb. So what should the exotic be? Here's my idea:

True Trichotomy - Exotic Void 450RPM Submachine Gun

• Weapon Perks:

  • Smallbore

  • Steady Rounds

  • Threat Detector

  • Short Action Stock

• Exotic Trait (Selection Node):

  • Three options are present here, and are locked at first

    • Stoicism: Kills grant damage reduction. Stacks 10 times.

      • Provides 2% damage reduction per stack, for a max of 20%

    • Bloodrage: Kills grant increased damage. Stacks 10 times.

      • Provides 4% damage reduction per stack, for a max of 40%

    • Tranquility: Kills grant stacks of Tranquility, which increase reload speed. Reloading consumes all stacks, healing the wielder and fireteam members. Stacks 10 times.

      • Healing increases with more stacks, providing a full heal (~200 health) at 10 stacks, and a small heal (~20 health) at 1 stack

  • All stacks are lost after 10 seconds — decay timer resets on kills

• Catalyst:

  • Greed: Gain stacks twice as fast. Stacks decay one-at-a-time instead of all at once, at a rate of 1 per two seconds immediately after getting a stack

    • This timer also resets on kills.

I mentioned True Trichotomy's three exotic trait options being locked at the start. While this gun would only drop from the final encounter, each encounter would have an associated unique gemstone available to drop. These gemstones would be Red, Green, and Blue, and can drop at any time for the player. They are assigned to the account and do not take up inventory space, but instead unlock their corresponding exotic trait on the True Trichotomy when a player acquires the weapon. This retroactive behavior should mitigate player frustration, as getting an incomplete gun has caused player frustration in the past (see Hawkmoon and Dead Man's Tale & subsequent acquisition random rolls).

True Trichotomy remains faithful to my original design goals for the raid's exotic chase, as it fulfills all three role fantasies, provides players with a per-encounter exotic chase, and differentiates itself from other exotics in an interesting and unique way (3 toggleable exotic traits). This also cuts down on weapon design time, as only one exotic is required —however, three traits would still be developed.

I think this solution is much more elegant and maintains the current raid exotic paradigm present in Destiny 2, so I'm pretty happy with it. Also pretty happy with the weapon name since it's a play off of False Dichotomy, and I like the fact that this weapon provides players with a good sense of player agency. They can make the gun work how they want it to work, and it augments specific playstyles within the raid.