The Taken King; Would Trading Be A Good Idea?

Hi guys,

Today I wanted to talk to you about something that Destiny players have been talking about since the game came out, namely the ability to trade weapons, armour pieces and other items with other players.

I have a very firm personal idea about whether trading should be in Destiny, but if I came out and told you that at the beginning it would make for a boring post! So in the name of a reasoned argument, I will maintain my air of mystery for a short while...

Let's look at the positives of trading first, balance of frequency. What I mean by that is the randomness in this game(or RNG as I will be referring to it as) can stop you getting the rewards you want for a very long time. My introducing trading people will get the reward they want, by sacrificing a reward they don't want. For example, I have had 2 Hawkmoons(check out my review for it Here!), 2 The Last Words, 2 Lucky Raspberries, and 3 Knucklehead Radars. However, I am yet to acquire even my first Ice Breaker or Mida Multi Tool, so surely it would be fair for me to swap my Hawkmoon for an Ice Breaker? Well this works on paper, but I think that in practice it would feel hollow for me to get my first Ice Breaker like that. I still live in hope that one of these days a Nightfall will drop one, or I will become extremely lucking in a Raid or even a Dragon Strike of Crucible Match. The thought that I would be handed one on a plate somehow makes the experience less rewarding. However as a counter to my counter, Xur exists in the game, this means that next week he could sell the Ice Breaker and I would doubtlessly pick it up, the same can be said for the Mida Multi Tool!

They are the positives of trading being added into Destiny, now let's look at the problems! As many of you should know, the Gjallahorn(the most powerful weapon in the game) was recently sold by Xur, this means that basically everyone in the game now has the Gjallahorn. This means that there is a slight(if not major) imbalance in the game. Thankfully this will not last long, as it has been recently confirmed that the Gjallahorn will not be coming with us into Year 2! However this kind of imbalance would constantly be happening because of the Trading. Imagine people who play this game all the time, I know of several people(leaders in the Destiny Twitch directory) who have probably earned over 10 Gjallahorns since the game was released. If these copies could then be distributed to other Guardians, the afore mentioned imbalance caused by Xur selling the Gjallahorn would be a near constant problem. The counter to this is that it might force Bungie to balance weapons more frequently, due to the number of people who will have the powerful weapon. Another issue with trading is the potential for duplication glitches, but I won't speculate on what glitch might be brought into the game.

Now I have looked at positives and negatives of introducing Trading into Destiny, let's look at some of the ways it could be balanced if it were to be introduced! Firstly the option that springs to mind is that you must have completed 5 Strikes and a total of 5 hours play time with the person you want to trade with. This might discourage people from selling weapons online, like they are doing with Flawless Trails Passages at the moment. Secondly, you could make it so that the traded weapon is slightly less powerful than it legitimately earned counter part. For example at the moment(at the end of Year 1) the highest Attack Stat is 365, maybe traded weapons could be capped at 345 instead. I think one of these, or any other nerf would need to be introduced to traded weapons, in order to balance them. 

This whole time I have been talking about trading Exotic items, maybe they could introduce trading, but limit it to Legendary or lower tiers of rarity. If this were the case I think the only limitation that would need to be put in place was that you aren't allowed to trade Raid weapons or Trials of Osiris weapons. The problem with that is the fact that you are then left with a rather small pool of items that can be traded, so I doubt it would be worth implementing just for those few items!

All in all, I would be very happy to never see trading introduced into Destiny, I think I wouldn't feel I earned that weapon as much as getting it randomly. The ability to give the most powerful weapons to nearly everyone could be exploited very easily, which would reduce the balance of the game even further than it currently might be! Be sure to let me know what you think of trading being introduced into Destiny on Twitter!

Thanks for reading,
Ed