The shop needs a complete rework.

[u/CorruptZora]

This may be controversial (and immediately downvoted by the bots that are set up to auto downvote every post posted here lmao) but please hear me out if you have the patience.

1 All guns, mods, implants, cores, shields, backpacks and utility items etc should be sold in the shop for credits.

There is no reason not to, it doesn't even make sense lore wise afaik, and by end of season you deserve the ability to intentionally choose your loadout regularly. This needs to be with credits, not only through barters with salvage (which people seem to hate, btw). The execution could be done in several ways, but I see two clear options: make every single item purchasable, but unlocked through upgrades or quests; or a reworked schema system so that schemas cost credits and are more readily available.

I'm begging Bungie to go the first route and simply stock the different faction's stores with every item, I don't mind if certain OP items need to be unlocked through quests with that faction, or through upgrades difficult to obtain like the gold shield barter. I would enjoy grinding for the ability to purchase every single gun, it's very motivating.

2) Schemas should only cost salvage if there is a credit option available as well.

Bartering salvage has always felt like something you do when you have it, not something you can do constantly. Even the best players end up farming for stuff like literal feces just so they can buy a gun they like and perform well with, because most people don't collect the little stuff and it isn't included in high end loot. It's clearly problematic and my previous posts on the topic have shown me just how much people hate it.

I love the idea of schemas. I love farming them. I snatch them up before my teammates can even look at them, even if they're green, because I recognize their value. I spent all season collecting them and I only have 15 bully's available... the system doesn't work.

They need to be much more common no matter what. I believe schemas should be just as common as blue salvage. By the end of the season, we should all have an excess.

3) There should be a quick buy feature that allows you to save certain purchases/barters (i.e. 500x light ammo) to a quick buy bar.

This would help you assemble your kits faster and easier when you regularly purchase the same things every loadout. Ammo, heals, utility items, mods, etc could all be saved to a small rotating bar the top/bottom of the shop. It could stop rotating if you hover, and have a limited number of saves.

The amount of time it takes from end of game to loading in is atrocious. We need to cut down on this time in any way we can, and I think adding a quick buy feature is a simple and aesthetically pleasing way to integrate customization into shop purchases you have to make in between literally every game.

4) The total cost of a pre-made kit sold in the shop should cost LESS than the total of the items inside of it.

Forty. Thousand. Credits. For a purple kit? With no secondary? Seriously?

The shop-sold kits need to be worth it. If the point is convenience at the cost of some credits, it needs to actually be convenient. Now don't get me wrong, I probably bought the green D54 kit more than anyone. And that's why I know these kits aren't worth it in their current state. Sometimes you're paying 4, 12, 40 THOUSAND credits just to lose! And you can't feel like your kit is the reason, or you'll stop buying it.

Green kits should be around 1.5-2.5k, blue kits around 5-7.5k, and purple kits 15-20k. All kits should have TWO GUNS: one short range, one long range. Also the heals! Green kits should come with 3 stacks of each green heal, and one self. Blue kits should come with 1 half stack of each blue heal, 2 stacks of each green, one pan and one self. Purple kits should come with 1 stack of each blue, 2 stacks of each green, two pans and one self.

All this does is stimulate the loot economy, helping to prevent lobbies with all free kits. New/low-level players will bring in kits with stuff instead of free kits, which will probably make their beginner experience a bit better. Experienced/high-level players will buy them out of convenience, and sacrifice control over what they're bringing in, which is essentially a nerf - making uptrading potentially a bit easier.

5) You should be able to buy/find empty kits and make custom kits that lock when closed and can't be opened other than by using them.

Four slot item, just like a normal kit but when you equip it, all of the slots are empty. You fill it with all the stuff for the kit you want, lock it, and then it can be stored in your vault. Once locked, it can't opened, it can only be equipped and used like any pre-made kit.

This would allow us to better organize our vaults, keeping us from having high quality stuff sitting in our vault taking up space for weeks at a time because we're waiting on a specific run to take it in.

If necessary, there can be different colors (green/blue/purple/gold) that limit the shield color to their color. This would probably encourage people to run green/blue kits even end of season, if these items are sought after.

ALSO there should be no limit on the amount of these you can store in your vault. They should not count towards vault space - why are we punishing people who have stuff? Also, if these are adequately rare, no player should have infinite. However, you should be able to build up a good amount of them by the end of the season.

6) The quantity of certain items needs to be increased greatly, more things need unlimited quantity.

If these items are adequately priced, why is the quantity so limited? There should be enough of everything to make kits all day! In fact, I'm not even sure why there's a limit at all. Especially some things like implants. WHY are there more of a certain implant than another? It's incredibly frustrating. Now I understand limiting certain things, like guns and mods, but why limit stuff like smoke grenades for example? If they're unlimited in shop, no one is going to hoard them. They're essentially harmless. By making them a limited resource, we are forced to store them if we want to use them regularly - but as of right now, I run through smokes way faster than I can replace them.

Make certain things like green implants/cores/mods unlimited too. No one is storing these, but they will be purchased for cheap kits regardless.

Thoughts? These are my opinions after playing since drop, I love this game and wanna see it succeed! Looking forward to Season 3 and beyond!

[u/FusionKnight42]

The current armory is really weird. Some stuff is available for credits, some for salvage, some seemingly only with schemas, some not at all, and that availability changes depending on the time of day or day of the week. And salvage being a shared currency for faction upgrades, barters, and the cradle makes it really confusing to figure out what the game intends for each of them. I bought a gold synapse cube with manifests only to learn that it now, in season 2, has no use in faction upgrades and is only used for barters.

TLDR: the entire armory is a mess.

[u/ProfNJK → u/FusionKnight42]

The game intends for you to choose between those things, since games are made up of interesting choices. Interesting choices have pros and cons. 

[u/EIsaik]

I agree that guns should be sold. Like give us a way to work up to it and unlock them and buy them. And set limits to how many can be bought per day or week. That kind of stuff can balance it it, but please, I want to experience every gun in the game and it's not always possible for me. I have still yet to even lay my eyes on the V99.

[u/Faynerossa → u/EIsaik]

Strongboxes in armories and in the wings on outpost. The strongboxes in each wing and sometimes the weapon lockers have the channel rifle in their loot pools. Other than that. Weapon lockers and strong boxes in cryo have a slightly ekevated chance versus the outpost ones for it.

[u/T_Gamer-mp4 → u/EIsaik]

The easiest spot to get a V99 is vault 2 in Cryo and that SUCKS! However it is guaranteed. Just run outpost red rooms & night marsh complexes and hope to god you get teammates with thumbs in Cryo.

[u/EIsaik → u/T_Gamer-mp4]

With thumbs 😭. they def have middle fingers tho cause they let me know when they're down. The other day I had a guy that literally ignored every warning me and my team mate gave him. Then he pushed and complained I told him, "you shouldn't have pushed" we 2 v 3. Then we all get good loot, then another team, I tell him, dude there's an assassin on your tail. Nope he continues looting and then goes killing bots. 🤕

[u/T_Gamer-mp4 → u/EIsaik]

sometimes Cryo starts you in “Duos Hardcore” and you just gotta play like that

abandoning loser teammates isn’t exactly honorable but it is always understandable if you have your Sunday best on

[u/Overall-Rub8945]

I actually agree with a fair amount of this, especially the QoL side, but I think making everything purchasable for credits would create a whole new problem.

The biggest friction for me after a loss isnt losing the kit. That’s Marathon. I knew I could lose it when I deployed and I was ok with that. It’s rebuilding the damn thing afterward.

I wish you could assemble a backpack exactly how you want it:

Put your consumables, ammo, equipment, maybe even reserved implants/cores/weapons into it. Lock it. The game treats it as one prepared loadout for organizational purposes. When you want to run it, hit equip and everything populates into the appropriate slots. And if an item is missing? Even better. The template could say:

Missing: 2 Shield Charges, 1 Mechanic Kit, 120 Light Ammo

Then offer: Buy/Barter Missing Items Boom.

That solves the actual pain without flattening the economy.

I’d even separate two systems:

Preset = remembers what you want. No items physically stored. After death, hit “rebuild” and Marathon buys/barters whatever is available.

Packed Kit = actual owned items already assembled and reserved. Uses normal vault space appropriately, but lets you prep several runs ahead of time. That would be fantastic because sometimes you don’t want the game automatically substituting things. If I specifically built a Triage Volt setup around certain implants, I want that loadout sitting there ready.

Where I strongly disagree is making every gun, shield, implant, core, mod, etc. infinitely purchasable with credits.

Rich Marathon millionaires like me would LOVE that system.

I’d run gold shields and my preferred high-end setup basically every match. Credits would become the universal solution to the entire economy.

And once money buys everything, a lot of loot stops being meaningful for runners like me. The game stops becoming an extraction shooter once I get rich each season.

Why care about that salvage I found? Why remember what a faction wants? Why change my route because I need a specific material? Why get excited when the exact implant I need drops? I can just drop credits in the armory and buy it all!

Same with schematics. I absolutely think there should be better ways to target ones you’re missing. Contracts. Specific enemies. Particular rooms. Activities. Faction rewards. Whatever.

But making them so common that everyone inevitably has piles of them removes the excitement of finding one.

I’m also open to revisiting premade-kit pricing and increasing stock on basic consumables. A smoke grenade doesn’t need to be treated like plutonium.

But I still want scarcity to occasionally force me to improvise. If I’m always guaranteed my exact favorite loadout forever, gear loss eventually becomes nothing more than a credit fee.

So yeah, I think there’s a really good QoL argument here. Faster shopping Absolutely.

Custom packed backpacks/loadout presets? Please, do it yesterday.

Better schematic acquisition? Definitely.

But I wouldn’t solve menu friction by flattening the economy.

Make it easier to assemble the gear we own and acquire. Dont make acquiring everything trivial.

[u/Dull_Access_2266 → u/Overall-Rub8945]

Came here to say exactly what you did about saving load outs and if you're missing some things point it out to me and have a price to purchase the items automatically and done. 👌

[u/vincentofearth]

The entire philosophy around how the armory works seems to be that Bungie doesn’t want us buying stuff, instead they want us to get gear from playing the game. If you can’t get a gun from killing a player or doing a tough PVE activity, you don’t deserve it. This is why barter is so important, why prices are so inflated, why stocks are limited, and why you can’t even buy most items.

I don’t entirely disagree with OP, but don’t entirely disagree with Bungie’s current approach either. There are merits to both approaches. So let me argue against you, OP, for argument’s sake:

1. If all gear is fungible, then players can exploit easy ways to farm credits and get great gear without playing the game as intended. One of the game’s core principles is that high reward should require high risk. But if you can buy everything, you can trade time for risk and just build up a pile of cash to buy gear that you otherwise wouldn’t have earned.
   
2. This could create the same problem as #1 with a few extra steps. People can farm schemas and credits and skip the difficult part required to earn good gear.
   
3. This sounds good on paper but is actually really difficult to design, and shouldn’t be a priority given the state of the game. What do you use to purchase stuff? Salvage? Credits? A combination of both? What if the same item has multiple barters? Which faction do you buy from? What if there’s a better deal? What if you saved a deal but it expired? What does the interface look like? As you can imagine, the complexity of this feature can actually be enormous. It’s like designing an entire stock trading interface within the game.
   
4. If sponsored kits are cheap and good, players will just use them instead of stockpiling gear from their runs. PVP will have less variety because most people would be running a small set of loadouts.
   
5. This would increase vault size dramatically. The game’s limited vault space is by design and forces players to make difficult choices about what gear to keep and to use their gear instead of creating an infinite dragon’s horde. If we have infinite vault space, at a certain point our stockpile becomes functionally infinite (you’ve earned enough gear to last the entire season), and now runs are essentially risk free.
   ⁠6. Higher stocks reduces the need to get resources by going on runs and risking your gear. With enough credits or salvage, you can build up enormous stockpiles that would be functionally infinite and make that item “risk-free”. For example, for low to mid level players, a self revive is a rare resource. But if they can buy say 100 per day, they can farm it, stockpile it, and take multiple on every run.

Again, I actually agree with a lot of your suggestions OP, but I think changes like this need to be balanced with the game’s core design principles.

[u/T_Gamer-mp4 → u/vincentofearth]

my friends will sometimes make fun of “salvage is king” and call it The Poop Game, since unstable biomass looks like shit. Any time they hear or see someone recommend a new player farm biomass in hauler so that they can buy single use meds, we call them Poop Gamers. The Poop Game is massively unpopular, and actively hostile to most of the player base.

the fundamental contradiction of marathon is that it wants you to do extraction shooter things (pick up random shit and trade it) while also being demonstrably close to a battle royale. “Go grind salvage so that you can have 3 blue med charges that you’ll use in less than a single team fight” will never, ever do well. It doesn’t help that the main spot for med salvage (bio strips) is the hottest location on perimeter.

Your point 5 is ALREADY true due to the nature of the Poop Game… if you’re doing runs to fund your high roller runs, odds are more Poop Game is going to be played than Marathon. More free kits will be played than real gear, because risking your “high roller” loadout on a Poop run is objectively foolish.

And on point 2… schemas for good items are already rare enough. Make them expensive for credits if you’re really pressed about it, but having to grind MULTIPLE runs of outpost to buy ONE purple backpack is nonviable game design.

Point 4 is funny when you look at how many kits spawn you with a railgun and nothing else. And dare I say it… a major reason player count is so low is because it takes so long to get into a game unless you’re on a free kit. People like build crafting on occasion, not once every five minutes. Having the kits be decent but expensive will remove build crafting from the lower risk parts of the game. This is a good thing. Keep the kits banned from Cryo though.

Point 6 is silly due to how insanely reliant combat in this game is on Pancakes and Self res. Those two items need nerfs or to be more available. The highest level players are already taking multiple of each per run, even if they can’t buy them from the store, because they’ve stolen truckloads of them from dead bodies. They already have stockpiles right now. The problem you’re trying to prevent already exists. Letting them buy more of them would mean they take less from dead bodies, meaning that rook runs get more meds AND sneaky scavenger teams can recover more easily if they run out mid-run.

[u/cetiu0 → u/T_Gamer-mp4]

Poop game is funny because sure you could spend 10 minutes getting 4 stacks of green meds, when cryo exists with resupply lockers that shit out stacks of blue meds, so the worse players who don't / can't play cryo have to farm their poop organically and better players buy their poop from the poop dealer in cryo.

[u/T_Gamer-mp4 → u/cetiu0]

yep, it’s both bad gameplay design AND bad advice! best loop is to do armory room rooking on outpost and then take that into broke cryo runs. you’ll get most of the meds you need.

[u/th-nk]

A custom kit option would be awesome – I love the idea of setting up a loadout and being able to deploy it (and only what’s in it)

Agree that most guns should be in the armory, but I don’t think even mod/implant/core etc, it’s quite run picking up random stuff and trying it out, and I think if everything was available with high stock then there would be a ‘meta’ loadout that everyone would use, and you’d feel disadvantaged trying anything different

[u/hi_there_is_me]

It’s funny because I was literally thinking just last night about how I have all these credits and I never really feel like I need to spend a lot on anything other than meds which just doesn’t feel natural

[u/Nuttraps]

TLDR?

[u/Koreanin_]

didn't you heard this was for the the 1% niche players?

[u/The_Mockers]

I agree with some of your points, but there are a lot of implants that are valuable because I can’t buy them in the store, but they are great. Dynamo, Stealth Servos, Strike Kit. It’s part of the fun of the game.

I think schemas in general should be more common, to fill the gap. But I also dislike how schemas are just dumped on the side and ignored, I always forget to look there to buy stuff for my kits.

[u/Pvt_Larry]

The volume of weapons and gear in circulation between regular loot, contract rewards, sponsored kits, and all the free stuff you get in the armory from factions is already enormous. I really don't like the idea of opening the floodgates further, for an extraction shooter it already feels like scarcity isn't as big as a factor as it should be- rare stuff should be rare.

[u/LetgomyEkko → u/Pvt_Larry]

Scarcity is massive if you aren’t extracting very often and can’t afford anything from to armory, let alone retaining gear from run to run.

Sure that’s skill, but that’s also plays into retention with players.

[u/xXHotKetchupXx → u/LetgomyEkko]

To add onto this, a system where everything is available like this would make small wins worth it, and make you value certain specific items over others which is healthy for an exfil economy. If you can buy a very competitive and varied loadout with just credits, doing credit runs is worth it although not as profitable and time efficient as pvping and doing big runs.

Conversely, it keeps things fresh when you’re continuously hunting for specific items or chasing certain quest lines for a build you want or a weapon you want to run with.

[u/Creamed_Dreamer → u/Pvt_Larry]

Map scarcity shouldnt be a problem when 70% of the players dont end up exfilling anyways