Top Edit: If you're wondering where the numbers and full list of guns are, the Weapon Stats Spreadsheet has you covered.
Several things to note:

• Classes are broken down into Impact sub-classes.
  
• These are strictly my opinions, so I'm very aware that a lot of people will probably disagree with them.
  
• The Bolded Perk/Perks in each slot mean that I recommend using them. If there are no bolded perks, it means that I feel any of the listed perks are fine to use in the slot.
  
• All Times-to-Kill are assuming Guardian has 200hp (9 Resiliency).
  
• Pros and Cons are determined by comparing weapons within the same class, not by all weapons in general, and not by only the weapons within the archetype. If you would like a different or more specific comparison than what I have listed, feel free to ask and I can provide one in the comments.
  

Scout Rifles

Lightweight
Pleiades Corrector - Energy

Pros - Above average stability. Very high reload speed and handling. High aim assist and mag size.
Neutral - None.
Cons - Very low range.

• Time-to-Kill: 1.20s (4 crit 1 body), 1.80s (7 body)
• Rate of Fire: 200
• Impact: 60 (44 crit, 29 body)
• Range: 35
• Stability: 49
• Reload Speed: 67
• Handling: 74
• Mag Size: 16
• Aim Assist: 76

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - Spark PS, Transmission MS7
• Magazine - High-Caliber Rounds, Flared Magwell
• Set Perk - Rampage

Manannan SR4 - Elemental

Pros - High reload speed, handling, aim assist, and mag size.
Neutral - Average stability.
Cons - Very low range.

• Time-to-Kill: 1.20s (4 crit 1 body), 1.80s (7 body)
• Rate of Fire: 200
• Impact: 60 (44 crit, 29 body)
• Range: 32
• Stability: 46
• Reload Speed: 57
• Handling: 71
• Mag Size: 16
• Aim Assist: 72

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - Candle PS, Impulse MS3
• Magazine - Alloy Magazine, Steady Rounds
• Set Perk - Explosive Payload

Two scout rifles in the MIDA archetype that don't require you to give up an exotic slot, both the Manannan and Corrector are formidable replacements. Manannan offers up Explosive Rounds, which actually provides more flinch than the HCR on MIDA, and combines that with great aim assist, and passable stability. Corrector, on the other hand, has HCR, and also has one of my favorite perks in Rampage, which is amazing when team-shotting. Corrector's only drawback here is low range, but honestly on most sightlines in this game you probably won't even notice the drop off.
Honorable Mention - Nameless Midnight.

Pulse Rifles

Lightweight
Nightshade - Kinetic

Pros - Above average stability. Very high reload speed and handling. High aim assist.
Neutral - None.
Cons - Low mag size and range. Very low recoil direction.

• Time-to-Kill: 1.20s (3.33 bursts, 10 crits), 1.73s (5 bursts (15 body)
• Rate of Fire: 450
• Impact: 27 (20 crit, 14 body)
• Range: 40
• Stability: 59
• Reload Speed: 62
• Handling: 69
• Mag Size: 30
• Recoil Direction: 56
• Aim Assist: 68

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - Red Dot Micro, Red Dot 2 MOA, Rifle Scope ST
• Magazine - Tactical Mag, Armor-Piercing Rounds
• Set Perk - Kill Clip

Rapid-Fire
Lincoln Green - Kinetic

Pros - Very high aim assist. Above average mag size.
Neutral - None.
Cons - Very low range, stability, reload speed, and handling. Low recoil direction.

• Time-to-Kill: 1.13s (4 bursts, 9 crit 3 body ), 1.67s (5.33 bursts, 16 body)
• Rate of Fire:540
• Impact: 27 (18 crit, 13 body)
• Range: 32
• Stability: 46
• Reload Speed: 33
• Handling: 30
• Mag Size: 36
• Recoil Direction: 60
• Aim Assist: 74

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - IS 5 Circle, Model 6 Loop, Mark 15 Lens
• Magazine - Steady Rounds, Alloy Mag
• Set Perk - Quickdraw

Nightshade was a favorite weapon of competitive players in the Beta, but was hit with a slight nerf between then and release. Stat-wise, it's solid in aim assist, handling, and stability, but it lacks range and has a poor recoil direction. In order to counter this, I like pushing closer than I normally would with a scout before I engage, while still remaining outside of AR distance. I also like to run a Kinetic Counterbalance mod to help with the recoil direction. Although time-to-kill isn't great for Nightshade, it has probably my favorite perk in the game, Kill Clip. Kill Clip allows you to do bonus damage when you reload after a kill, which in this case easily drops it down into the 3-burst range, doing 26 per crit. Lincoln Green is the second recommendation here, which, although it has poor stats, I've found to be my favorite weapon in the Crucible. The super high aim assist, Quickdraw perk, fast RoF, and great time to kill make it competitive against both Uriel-class and MIDA-class primary weapons, and the ability to improve the recoil direction with a Kinetic Counterbalance mod helps it feel good while doing that. Highly suggest giving it a shot.

Auto Rifles

Separate Post Coming Soon!
I'm going to make ARs their own separate post, as there are so many of them and they are all so good.

Hand Cannons

Lightweight
Dire Promise - Kinetic (Dead Orbit)

Pros - High stability and mag size. Very high aim assist. Above average reload speed and handling.
Neutral - None.
Cons - Below average range. Very low recoil direction.

• Time-to-Kill: 1.20s (2 crit 2 body ), 1.60s (5 body)
• Rate of Fire: 150
• Impact: 78 (60 crit, 40 body)
• Range: 45
• Stability: 50
• Reload Speed: 54
• Handling: 61
• Mag Size: 11
• Recoil Direction: 84
• Aim Assist: 87

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - Fastdraw HCS, SteadyHand HCS, TrueSight HCS
• Magazine - Steady Rounds, Appended Mag
• Set Perk - Triple Tap

Daedalus Code - Elemental

Pros - Very high aim assist, recoil direction, and mag size. High reload speed and handling.
Neutral - None.
Cons - Very low range. Low stability.

• Time-to-Kill: 1.20s (2 crit 2 body ), 1.60s (5 body)
• Rate of Fire: 150
• Impact: 78 (60 crit, 40 body)
• Range: 39
• Stability: 41
• Reload Speed: 62
• Handling: 66
• Mag Size: 13
• Recoil Direction: 97
• Aim Assist: 87

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - Fastdraw HCS, Crossfire HCS
• Magazine - High-Caliber Rounds, Extended Mag
• Set Perk - Auto-Loading Holster

Hand cannons are underutilized in PvP right now, which is understandable. They were some of the best feeling guns in the game in D1, and their D2 counterparts just don't seem to stack up. I will admit to struggling to use them consistently, but when I'm on with them I'm not sure there are many weapons that are more forgiving at short to mid range. I personally have had the best experiences with the Lightweight archetype weapons, as they have more competitive times-to-kill while retaining the ability to only need 2 crits out of 4 shots to kill most targets. Dire Promise and Daedalus Code are two different types of this same archetype, with Dire Promise having better range but worse recoil direction. I don't much like the perks on it, but the rest of the stats are good enough to make up for it, and it feels great to use. Daedalus Code, on the other hand, has HCR which is basically tier-1 in PvP right now, and also has insanely high aim assist and recoil direction, plus a large mag size. Poor range and stability hurt, but if you use this weapon in its golden distances it's a blast.
Honorable Mention - Better Devils

Sub-Machine Guns

Precision
Antiope-D - Kinetic

Pros - Very high range and aim assist.
Neutral - None.
Cons - Very low stability, reload speed, handling, and mag size. Below average recoil direction.

• Time-to-Kill: 0.90s (10 crits), 1.20s (13 body)
• Rate of Fire: 600
• Impact: 25 (20 crit, 16 body)
• Range: 63
• Stability: 39
• Reload Speed: 27
• Handling: 26
• Mag Size: 26
• Recoil Direction: 90
• Aim Assist: 58

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - GB Iron, SC Holo
• Magazine - Ricochet Rounds, Tactical Mag
• Set Perk - Kill Clip

Adjudicator - Kinetic

Pros - Very high range. High aim assist. Above average recoil direction and stability.
Neutral - None.
Cons - Very low reload speed, handling, and mag size.

• Time-to-Kill: 0.90s (10 crits), 1.20s (13 body)
• Rate of Fire: 600
• Impact: 25 (20 crit, 16 body)
• Range: 60
• Stability: 46
• Reload Speed: 24
• Handling: 29
• Mag Size: 27
• Recoil Direction: 93
• Aim Assist: 54

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - Chambered Compensator, Corckscrew Rifling, Polygonal Rifling
• Magazine - Slideways, Hip-Fire Grip
• Set Perk - Dynamic Sway Reduction

Although I'm not a fan of the 900 RPM SMGs at the moment, I very much love the 600 RPM ones. Better range, damage, time-to-kill, better stability, they basically run the gauntlet of stats and come out on top in most circumstances, with the exception of mag size, reload speed, and handling, which I can deal with. The Antiope is probably the more sought after of the two thanks to its higher range and aim assist, not to mention the fact that it has Kill Clip, but I wouldn't sleep on the Adjudicator. Better stability and recoil direction help, and the Hip-Fire Grip and Dynamic Sway Reduction combo means you're accurate firing from the hip or ADS.

Sidearms

Omolon Adaptive
The Last Dance - Elemental

Pros - Very high stability. High recoil direction and mag size. Above average handling and aim assist.
Neutral - None.
Cons - Below average range. Low reload speed.

• Time-to-Kill: 0.73s (2.66 bursts. 7 crit 1 body ), 1.00s (3.33 bursts, 10 body)
• Rate of Fire: 415
• Impact: 75 (27 crit, 20 body)
• Range: 36
• Stability: 86
• Reload Speed: 35
• Handling: 57
• Mag Size: 27
• Recoil Direction: 97
• Aim Assist: 70

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - Target SAS, Tactic SAS
• Magazine - Extended Mag, Armor Piercing Rounds
• Set Perk - Moving Target

Last Hope - Elemental

Pros - High stability and mag size. Above average handling, aim assist, and recoil direction.
Neutral - Average range.
Cons - Below average reload speed.

• Time-to-Kill: 0.73s (2.66 bursts. 7 crit 1 body ), 1.00s (3.33 bursts, 10 body)
• Rate of Fire: 415
• Impact: 75 (27 crit, 20 body)
• Range: 41
• Stability: 82
• Reload Speed: 37
• Handling: 55
• Mag Size: 27
• Recoil Direction: 93
• Aim Assist: 70

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - Control SAS, FarPoint SAS
• Magazine - Ricochet Rounds, Steady Rounds
• Set Perk - Zen Moment

Etana SI4 - Elemental

Pros - Very high mag size. High stability. Above average range.
Neutral - Average recoil direction.
Cons - Below average reload speed and handling. very low aim assist.

• Time-to-Kill: 0.73s (2.66 bursts. 7 crit 1 body ), 1.00s (3.33 bursts, 10 body)
• Rate of Fire: 415
• Impact: 75 (27 crit, 20 body)
• Range: 45
• Stability: 80
• Reload Speed: 40
• Handling: 53
• Mag Size: 30
• Recoil Direction: 90
• Aim Assist: 60

Perks:

• Sights/Barrels - Shortspec SAS, Tactic SAS
• Magazine - Appended Mag, Steady Rounds
• Set Perk - Hip-Fire Grip

I've been a fan of the Omolon Adaptive sidearms since day 1, and if the meta is any indication, a lot of other players are too. Boasting the fastest times-to-kill in the game, at close range, nothing is better. While I personally prefer The Last Dance due to the perk increasing movement speed and aim assist when ADS, a lot of players out there have found Last Hope to be more to their liking, with its maxed out stability plus Zen Moment. Etana is probably the red-headed step child here, with better stats in range and mag size, but the worst aim assist, and the least useful (although still okay) perk in Hip-Fire Grip.

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This is a remastery of the original guide written by dougthonus (he has moved on to stuf other than MFF).
I posted a new "Streamlined" Version
 
Goals
Here are a few goals to keep in mind as you go through your first month.

• Get your first T2. You get a T2 ticket after logging in for 30 days. I would recommend Sharon, Elsa, or Carnage. Keep working on their gears to 20/20/20/20 in preparation for this (need ±366 bios for max gears).
  
• Beat 'Hard' Villain Siege: Sharon should do the job nicely.
  
• Beat Alliance Battle every day. Your score should increase every day from week to week until you "beat it" for that day and have access to extreme alliance battle. You will need a strong Sharon, Loki, Iron Fist (w/uni), and Elsa (T2 and uni) or some other variation of blast, universal, combat, speed, female, and villain.
  
• Beat World Bosses. Get nine 6* characters for 3 daily wins. There are no restrictions to who you can use, but you can only use a character in the main battle once. So you'll eventually need 5 good teams which will likely have Sharon, Iron Fist, Elsa, Loki, and somebody else plus some decent leaders and strikers (Ignore Dodge for Corvus).
  
• Get five good 4 star cards that all have skill cooldown and ignore defense. This will take a lot of time, but the earlier you work on this the better. You get cards from rifts.
  
• Clear floors of Shadowland. This is one heck of a goal, but it's good to keep this vision in mind. You will need strong 6* characters. By strong I mean really strong. Gear up your World Boss and Alliance Battle clearers. Try Iron Fist or Loki for floor one. As motivation the 1st time clear rewards include rank up tickets and floors 5, 10, and 15 reward bio selectors.
  

 
Your two six star selectors (Day 1 and 7):
The long standing starter kit is Sharon Rogers and Loki. Neither are immune to powercreep, but with update 3.0 came Sharon's incredible Star uniform, so she's safe. I still believe that Loki is the best option for selector 2, but you can read this pre X-men analysis/discussion and decide for yourself. Note that X-men cannot be obtained through 6 star selectors or bio selectors
 
Your three day trial of bio subscription:
I would recruit Enchantress, Agent Venom, and Kid Kaiju who are all still useful at T1. I would only use them on Carnage if you plan on paying for a bio subscription to T2 him (need ~366 bios to max gears). Ironheart and Hyperion are also "paywall", but they aren't as good.
T2 Carnage > Agent Venom > Kid Kaiju > Enchantress > Ironheart > T1 Carnage > Hyperion
One useful strategy (especially for free to play users) is to use all 3 days of bios (60 bios) on one pay-wall character to get them to 3*. Then you only need 4*, 5*, and 6* rank up tickets which conveniently are first time rewards on Shadowland floors 2, 4, and 6! You can get these in event boxes as well. I would not do this strategy on Carnage because he needs his T2 which can't be accomplished without either a bio sub or a mega tier-2 ticket.
 
Don't do hero's journey:
After you farm all the characters that are options in hero's journey or reach shield level 11, you can do journey of growth instead which allows you to collect enough bios for almost any character and is much better than being limited to hero's journey. Consider using this investment on one of the Facetank characters mentioned below. Again, this analysis/discussion might be enlightening. An alternate strategy would be to use the bios for Sharon's gears.
Note after your first "failed" mission you get to choose a character at 4*. I would highly recommend Iron Fist.
 
Don't pour resources into Epic Quests:
Dr. Strange is amazing, but as a beginner you will reach some significant resource barriers to fully upgrading him. That being said you could work through a few of the lower tasks (including 50 Red Norns and 200 Blue Norns) to start farming Baron Mordo in "Road to the Monastery." It would be a good idea to use some tickets/bio selectors for Ancient One as well. You will eventually need: 4* Mordo, Wong, Ancient One, Kaecilius and 5* Satana, Hellstorm, Clea (save a few rank up tickets). For a better idea of the required investment check out the Dr. Strange Epic Quest Guide.
Also Wolverine and Jean are amazing, but similarly will be a huge resource sink-hole. You should however get far enough to unlock "Going Rogue" and "Friends and Enemies" to start farming Rogue and Beast (who have a barrier of 100 Red Norns and 100 Dimension Debris). That pair are a good complement to the Sharon/Loki starter kit. If you feel the need you can also work through a few more tasks (including a 1000 Red Norns) to unlock "Weathering the Storm" to farm Storm. Feel free to pay 6600 crystals to unlock Magneto (at 6*). Unfortunately 6* selectors, bio selectors, bio subscriptions, and hero chests will not get you closer to unlocking Cyclops, Wolverine, or Jean. For a better idea of the required investment check out the Rise of the X-men Epic Quest guide.
 
Get in as high level alliance as you can:
Use the recruitment link on the side here or the weekly recruitment thread to get into as high level of an alliance as you can (ideally 24+ to get the bonuses in Shadow Land and World Boss). You can't do alliance battle (good source of resources) until you do, and you get a pretty hefty alliance bonus for being in an alliance. Also, you can run any rift opened by your alliance mates, and if you have any luck you land in an alliance with some VIP 10 or VIP 15+ people to open rifts with better drops and more contributor spots.
 

Characters and why you want them:

Face Tank chars - These are characters that you can play with a relatively low skill threshold to help you defeat world boss and shadowlands stages. They are particularly valuable for new players. These are also frequently the characters you should T2 first, as they will be able to sustain in long difficult fights.

Character	Survivability	Farmability
Sharon Rogers	iframes + damage immunity	Use starter selectors. Otherwise Bio Selectors.
Loki	shield + clones = RUN	Viable starter option. Otherwise Dimension Rifts.
Carnage	iframes + invincibility @ T2	Bio $ubscription only. Use Rank up Tickets and save bios for gears.
Enchantress	shield, and can permanently charm world bosses	Bio $ubscription only. Use Rank up Tickets and save bios for gears.
Kid Kaiju	iframes + summons + shield	Bio $ubscription only. Use Rank up Tickets and save bios for gears.
Elsa	iframe + damage immunity @ T2	Villain Siege Chaos Tokens
Captain Marvel	damage mmunity	Timeline Honor Tokens
Songbird	snare attacks + shield	Special Mission, New Avengers "Baked Alaska"
Crystal	snare attacks + shield	Special Mission, Inhumans "Crystal Palace"
Inferno	iframes + shield + damage immunity	Special Mission, Inhumans (striker). Bio $ubscription.
Yellow Jacket	several iframes	Dimension Rifts
Wasp	damage immunity "bubble" + iframe	Dimension Rifts.
Ancient One	invincibility + heal	Epic Quest, Memory Mission "Monastery in Trouble"
Hellstorm	immunity + summon	Epic Quest, Dark Dimension "Increasing Darkness".
Captain America	damage immunity + iframe (uni)	Story Mission 1-1, 3-10, and 5-6
Iron Fist	uni: invincibility + iframe; dodge @ T2	Story Mission 4-5 and 6-5.
Elektra	iframes + stun	Story Mission 4-6, 7-2, and 7-5
Black Panther	damage immunity + iframes	Story Mission 8-1
Thor	guard breaks + shield	Story Mission 8-9, 12-5, and 12-8
Blackbolt	guard breaks + damage immunity @ T2	Story Mission 8-10
GR (Robbie Reyes)	iframes + shield	Bio Selectors.
Mantis	iframes + heal + fear bubble	Bio Selectors.
Moon Knight	iframes + heal @ T2	Bio Selectors.
Red Hulk	guard breaks + heal + damage immunity (uni)	Bio Selectors.
Silk	shield + webbing	Bio Selectors.
Rogue	damage immunity (skill/leadership) + iframes + heal	Epic Quest: Rise of the X-men, Tracking "Going Rogue"
Beast	stun + snare + iframe	Epic Quest: Rise of the X-men, Tracking "Friends and Enemies"
Storm	stun + guard breaks + iframes	Epic Quest: Rise of the X-men, Tracking "Weathering the Storm"
Cyclops	stun + guard breaks + damage immunity + iframe	Epic Quest: Rise of the X-men, Tracking "Blindsided!"
Magneto	bind + guard breaks + shield + iframes	6600 crystals for "Deluxe" pack; "Mutual Enemy"

 
Leadership characters - These characters are good just for the bonuses they apply, you don't need to rank their skills, buy their uniforms, or give them obelisks/iso sets unless you will use them outside of leadership as well those I've marked with ‡

Boost	Character(s)
48% Damage to Male	She-Hulk (uni = +55%)
45% Energy Attack	Hela, Ironheart
45% Energy Attack for Blast	Ancient One‡, Star-lord (uni = +50%)
45% Physical Attack	Gorgon, Beast
40% Energy Attack	Ebony Maw
45% All Attack	Magneto (for X-men)
36% All Attack	Moon-Girl
24% All Attack	Wiccan‡, Sin, Punisher, Ultron, Shang-Chi‡, Hyperion‡, Hogan, Cyclops‡ (+24% All Defense)
30% Energy Attack	Crystal‡, Singularity, Lash, Captain Marvel‡, Modok, Blackbolt‡
30% Physical Attack	Elsa‡, Deathlok, War Machine, Crossbones, Winter Soldier, Ulik‡, Hulk
18% All Attack, 18% All Defense, 6% Speed	Wasp
36% All Attack for Universal	Ronan (+36% all defense), Medusa
60% Lightning Damage	Lincoln
60% Fire Damage	Satana, Red Hulk
60% Cold Damage	Misty Knight

 
Support characters - Characters that are valuable for other reasons:

• Warwolf: can transfer his skill 5 to massively increase damage (+80% all attack, +20% all speed, +60% crit rate). At T2 gives team-wide stat boosts: +20% crit rate and +30% crit damage.
  
• Daisy: can transfer her skill 3 to massively increase damage (180% increase "1 attack"). The amount of damage is increased by her Quake uniform ("2 attacks") and by her T2 (+15% ignore defense and 100% chance to penetrate barrier, shield, and damage immunity).
  
• Coulson: At T2 gives team-wide stat boosts to heroes: +20% to crit rate and +45% damage to villains.
  
• Groot: Can be switched in to drop healing circle (skill 3). At T2 gives team-wide heal proc. Uniforms make him very flexible (Main is combat; Throot is universal; Baby is speed)
  
• Wasp: At T2 grants team-wide buff proc against debuffs. Her T2 is the anti-Dr. Strange for your team in Time-line.
  
• Mantis: At T2 grants a team-wide buff: +15% ignore defense and +20% critical damage. Also skill 3 adds +15% dodge to all allies and her skill 5 makes an awesome fear circle. If you switch her out and stay inside you get +20% crit rate.
  
• Beast: can transfer his skill 5 to boost Attack, Defense, Speed, and Ignore Defense. At T2 gives team-wide stat boosts: +8% crit rate, + 110% recovery rate, and decrease damage received by 15%.
  

 

The Daily Grind:

Complete each of the daily "challenges". First order of business for a new player is being able to kill the highest difficulty missions for Villain Siege, Daily, and Special missions.
Story missions:
Complete story mode chapters up to 10 as soon as you can. You can level characters more quickly using higher levels. After you have done such, here's a list of story mode characters (alphabetical) that you might want to get:

• Black Panther: He now is strong even at T1 once he is 6*and is one of the best farmable combat characters.
  
• Black Widow: Very strong speed char for non spenders and ignore dodge striker for Corvus.
  
• Blackbolt: only 10 bios a day, so slow to farm, but one of the elite T2s now.
  
• Captain America: Easily farmable plus damage immunity on skill 1.
  
• Daisy: Support char as mentioned above. Really lackluster otherwise.
  
• Deathlok: +30% physical attack Leadership and is an Ignore dodge striker (for Corvus Glaive in World Boss). Really lackluster otherwise.
  
• Elektra: recently rebalanced with iframes and a stun.
  
• Ghost Rider: With uni can gain invulnerability to be a face tank like character, T2 allows him to beat all the WBs with some practice
  
• Iron Fist: Needs his "Hobo" (Netflix) uni but can then kill WBs pretty easy. T2 boosts survivability further.
  
• Lincoln: decent survivability and "hit-lock" attacks.
  
• Thor: Very powerful with Unworthy thor uni.
  
• Other leadership chars as listed above (Ultron, Modok, Winter Soldier, War Machine, Punisher, Lincoln etc based on what you need).
  

 
Special missions:
Always run special missions during hot time (reduced energy) for the full 20 minutes on auto repeat to max your collection of gear equipment and to farm characters. Crystal should be your top priority, but after that it is more dependent on where your roster is lacking. Songbird and Wiccan are really good characters, but there tends to be an abundance of powerful blast characters. As such White Tiger and Gorgon may be next most important. Karnak and especially Hulkling are pretty much trash.

Rank	New Avengers	Inhumans
1	Songbird	Crystal
2	Wiccan	Gorgon
3	White Tiger	Moon Girl
4	Squirrel Girl	Maximus
5	Hulkling	Karnak

 
Rifts:
Rifts are good to collect comic cards and to get bios for rift characters. If you can coordinate running rifts in hot time with your alliance then you can also get big gold/energy bonuses. Note MFF etiquette strongly suggests you commit to several battles in a rift if you choose to enter it.

1. Farm out a good Loki card. It's probably the single best card (F2P) in the game.
   
2. Rifts have tons of good chars: Loki, Wasp, Yellow Jacket, Ronan, Groot, etc... Of these, I'd say Loki/Ronan are most important followed by Wasp/Groot.
   

 
Alliance Battle
Gives great gold, bios, and clear tickets. Also offers some friendly competition amongst your alliance members. I would also consider this a priority for beginners. Most, if not all, characters that can clear this battle will also be able to clear world bosses. Check out this labor of love for an in depth discussion of how to clear normal Alliance Battle and it's older brother Extreme Alliance Battle. But here is a quick reference table:

Day	Main Damage	Leader	Support	Notes
Open (x2; reset day)	Loki, Sharon, Hellstorm, Strange	She-Hulk, Ancient One, Gorgon, Hela	Warwolf (T2), Coulson (T2), Groot (T2)	save combat/villain (i.e. Carnage) for XAB
Combat	Hobo Iron Fist, Agent Venom, Carnage, Black Panther, Moon Knight, Red Hulk, Captain America	She-Hulk, Hulk, Shang-Chi	Groot (T2), Warwolf (T2)	save T2 Warwolf for XAB, unless you have T2 Coulson.
Blast	Sharon, Enchantress, Strange, Mantis, Cyclops	Ancient One, Star-Lord	Coulson (T2)
Speed	Elsa (L), Kate, Rogue, Silk, Kid Kaiju	Elsa, Winter Soldier	Baby Groot (T2)	Speed day is tough. Get Elsa's uni and her T2.
Universal	Loki, Hellstorm, GR (Robbie Reyes), Captain Marvel, Black Order, Dmmu, Odin	Ronan, Medusa, Hela	Throot (T2)	Loki strikes again.
Female	Sharon, Floki, Elsa, Mantis, Rogue	Hela, Ancient One (uni)	Ancient One (uni)	Starog is easier than Loki (uni) and would allow Floki to be used for XAB as DPS (if no BO) or team-up (w/DMMU).
Villain	Loki, Enchantress	Ronan, Hela	n/a	Looookiii

 

Comic Cards

For u/dougtonus 's full card guide go here. However, here is an excerpt:
 
For beginners, I'd recommend not focusing on getting mythical (rank 6 cards) right away, but instead focus on getting really good rank 4 cards. Then build cards in your inventory (do not reroll/combine equipped cards) until you have the stats you want: Skill cooldown > Ignore Defense > All attack > energy/physical attack > attack speed/crit damage.
 
These are the cards that you should focus on:

• Loki: Ignore defense in 3, attack speed in 4 is optional, if you get a 3 star with ignore defense equip it, then work on the 4 star with def pen and attack speed
  
• Marvel Zombie (#2): Ignore defense or energy attack in 4, since zombies requires either Heroic Rifts or a lucky chest draw you might just equip the first one you get, and then work on getting def pen/energy attack afterwards.
  
• Star-lord (Yondu rift): Physical attack in 3, skill cooldown in 4
  
• Baby Groot: Energy attack in 3, skill cooldown in 4
  
• Nebula (Avengers): all attack in 3, skill cooldown in 4
  
• (Punisher #19: skill cooldown in 4, optional Crit Damage in 3. Acquired in the same way as Zombies.)
  

 
This yields something like:

Card	Skill Cooldown	Ignore Defense	All Attack	Energy Attack	Physical Attack	Attack Speed
Loki	7	5.1	7	0	0	5.4
Zombies #2	7	0	0	5.4	0	0
Star-lord	5.4	7	0	0	5.1	0
Groot	5.4	7	0	5.1	0	0
Nebula	5.4	7	5.1	0	0	0
Total	30.2	26.1	12.1	10.5	5.1	5.4

This should give you close to max skill cooldown (50%) with alliance bonus (~10-14%) and character gears (~5-10%). It will also get you some much needed ignore defense and attack. Work on getting incredible mythical cards from there.
 
Note for Cards, Obelisks, and ISO:
It is very expensive to swap out and keep the original item. For this reason, you want to build your obelisks or cards in your inventory and only equip them after you have something really good. An alternative can be to equip something temporarily that you know you will replace and don't mind throwing away all together (which is free), but rerolling obelisks or cards that are on a character or in your equipped list already is generally not preferable.
 

Character optimization

Gears
The most important thing to understand as a beginner is how to set them up. Check this out for more in depth explanation, but basically your gears should look something like this:

Gear	1st slot	2nd slot	the rest
1†	Energy/Physical attack per lvl	"base" energy/physical or all attack	"base" energy/physical or all attack
2	Physical defense per lvl	Energy defense per lvl	All defense
3	HP per lv	HP per lvl or HP	HP
4	Skill Cooldown in as many slots needed to get 50%	Ignore Defense in leftover slots (until 50%)	Crit damage, attack speed, or crit rate if both SCD and Ignore Defense are maxed

† You need to figure out if a character has attacks that base off of energy or phyical. From there you only want one or the other. A bit confusing.
My only other beginner recommendation is to aim for 17/17/17/17 on characters you use semi-regularly and 20/20/20/20 on your main characters.
 
Skills
Only upgrade skills that have a percentage increase in damage or stat boost like summons or other buffs. Also it is a good idea to increase the guard hit skills like Loki's 3, Enchantress 3, Robbie's 4, Thor's 5, etc.
 
Obelisks:
Initially rolling recovery obelisks (only rank up 1* obelisks with 30%+ recovery rate) seems to be a good strategy, but you need to match them with a heal iso set, passive, or obelisk proc. Immune to guard break (which actually stops people from breaking your attack, not your guard) is one of the best end game first stats in the current meta. Ignore Defense is good until your cards make it redundant. Critical damage is another good attack stat. Invincibility and increase damage "1 attack" are the two best procs while heal has some merit and the other damage procs and shields are more or less worthless. Lock your ITGB obelisks and Ignore Defense obelisks for building later rather than burning now.
For Obelisk building start with:

• Increase HP or Recovery rate (to match with a heal set or heal passive)
  
• Attack stat (ignore defense, critical damage, fire damage)
  
• Immune to Guard Break (especially for characters with long wind-ups or long non-iframe animations)
  
• Stun resist (for characters only used in Shadowland)
  
• Snare resist (for combat hero XAB)
  
• Ignore dodge (for speed hero XAB)
  

and then upgrade/change option until you get a good proc. Ideally increase damage "1 attack" (any mode but especially XAB) or invincibility (any mode but especially timeline and alliance conquest).
 
Iso Sets:
Initially healing iso sets will help you the most as you round out your skills (I Am Also Groot > Stark Backing). However, heal sets aren't great in shadowlands, and in the long run, I find I want attack sets on virtually everyone (Power of Angry Hulk and OverDrive seem like the best, with Hawk's eye being okay but redundant on skill cooldown in the longrun). It is probably best to put heal sets on your characters doing a lot of work initially as it will help you clear alliance battle and world bosses because the heal may trigger 4x in the fight. After your skills and cards and everything else improve, your fights are shorter and the attack sets help more. Heal sets are most valuable early on when fights are longer. When you get into more advanced game modes where DPS (damage per second) is the most important and the times are shorter, your heal doesn't have enough time to proc, and the value you get from an attack set is much higher.
 
Iso-8:
Most important, don't equip any fully awakened 6 star ISO 8 until you really, really know what you are doing. You get a bunch of these from various rewards early on, and at some point, you will want to equip 8 of them on one super meta character, but even if you equip them on your best character now, that might not be the best character when you are ready to do really hard content.
It is generally a waste to upgrade early, so I don't bother. Higher ISO gives your iso set a better response, but you need 6 star awakened iso which is way too difficult and costly to get to really move the meter, so don't spend money upgrading isos just use 4-6 star isos you get from other events. Also, if you do upgrade, don't use 1 or 2 star isos as upgrade fodder. The cost (at least using the red growth isos) is the same whether you use 1, 2, 3, 4, etc star iso, so you will spend way more money upgrading if you use these low ISOs.
 
Uru
Uru are a huge resource sink-hole that become increasingly available to you from level 60-70. They can fill in the cracks of your character build after you have used up your gear options. Uru follow similar rules as cards: SCD > Ignore Defense > Attack. Do not try to get mythic uru unless you are willing to sell your soul rather shoot for 4* and maybe 5*. Once you are at level 70 try the following algorithm:

1. Fill all empty uru slots with worthless 1* uru (physical defense) then amplify until you have 3-4 shiny spots.
   
2. Equip 2 attack uru (energy or physical) on each gear in the amplified spots.
   
3. Max Skill cooldown at 50% (200=1%).
   
4. Max Ignore Defense at 50%. (200=1%).
   
5. Equip whatever you feel the character needs. Critical Damage/Critical Rate are solid options (boost at about 2:1 ratio). Attack speed is useful, but not for every character (shortens iframe time). HP and Energy Defense is great for Destroyer. Dodge might be useful.
   

If you only have a few slots available then I would focus on SCD and Ignore Defense, but recognize the uru you equip might not be there to stay. Amplifying is RNG (as most things in this game are) and you may end up with redundant stats (i.e. a slot with SCD or Ignore Defense gets amplified). That is why it is recommended to equip lower ranked uru that you wouldn't feel sad about trashing. That is also why Attack uru go in the amplified slots: there is no attack cap!
 
Uniforms:
Never buy uniforms unless they are on sale (750 or less). Also, only buy uniforms of characters you will use as primary attack uniforms. I bought uniforms for Red Skull, Star-lord, and Ronan (and many others), but never use them as primary attack characters, so the uniforms are largely wasted. It's fine if you are putting a lot of money into the game, but if you aren't these crystals can be better spent elsewhere. The characters listed above as tank characters will benefit most.
There are a few uniforms which are game-changers for the wearer. If you have these characters or look to get them then these uniforms should be viewed as must haves. There are many other great uniforms that help considerably by adding damage immunity, iframes, crowd control (stuns/webs/snares), etc. There is always a benefit from buying a uniform for a character that you use, however, these are uniforms that are far more game changing in their impact:
 

• Iron Fist ("Hobo"/Netflix): Likely THE biggest "game-changer" uniform granting a heal/invincibility proc when below 30% health plus an iframe on skill 5 and a damage immunity on skill 2.
  
• Red Hulk: Significantly increases heal and adds a damage immunity on skill 3.
  
• Elsa (Monsters): is the equivalent of a T2 in terms of upgrade. Elsa still needs to be T2 to be truly viable as a character, but she needs her uniform to be a damage beast. Elsa with uni at T2 may not be the top speed character (Kid Kaiju or Kate), but is likely the most reliable.
  
• Loki (Lady Loki): This one isn't purely game changing in terms of power like all the others, just that Loki is so amazing at T1 and able to help new players so much that the uniform makes sense. It lets you enter 1 additional day of alliance battle and likely get one additional clear as well. Early on, that's a lot of extra resources.
  
• Dr. Strange: adds a heal to his two star skill which is also a high dps skill which you can spam to death to always stay at full health if you get hit.
  
• Silk: adds an extra second to web, and in Shadowlands, it turns Silk into an automatic win for virtually any stage she qualifies for if you have an attack set on with a little skill, you can permanently web everyone.
  
• Black Bolt (tux): adds a significant damage boost which can stack with damage procs of obelisks.
  
• Wasp: a slight, but noticeable change to her skill kit which allows for more time in her damage immunity bubble.
  
• Amadeus Cho: Great buff from new 5 skill and uni's passive.
  

 

Tier-2

T2 will always increase a character's overall power, but there are a few that are particularly useful. When looking to Tier 2 a character take particularly note of how their skills may change and possible team-wide boosts.
Elsa, Black Bolt, and Carnage absolutely need their T2. They gain a damage immunity (invincibility for Carnage) on one of their skills which significantly increases their survivability.
Support characters have significant team boosts at T2 which may make their T2 of higher priority than other "worth it" T2's. These include Coulson, Warwolf, Groot, Wasp, and Mantis.
 

Other modes not mentioned yet, and what they're good for:

Missions

• Story: Your main mission as a beginner. Keep in mind Chapters 11 and 12 are end game content.
  
• Daily Missions: Gives gold and the option for Iso-8/nornstones, more gold/experience chips, or M'kraan Shards (X-men material).
  

 
Arena Modes

• Timeline: A "one vs. one" matchup that gives honor tokens for each battle (win or lose) and crystals at the end of the week for how high you scored in comparison to others. Note that your characters start with all skills on cooldown while the enemy's do not.
  
• Battleworld: Rewards vary per week, starts on thursday and usually ends sunday with a couple rounds. Rewards are bios, cards, obelisks, or isos. It is usually good to max your participation if you can just for the gold participation rewards though which scale up with number of entries.
  
• Alliance Conquest: An incredible, interactive battle game between 3 alliances. It is reminiscent of the world domination game Risk. It has two phases: the obvious Attack phase (3 times a day) and the slightly more confusing "prep" phase. During prep phase all you can do is revive defeated character with alliance tokens from the store or switch defending characters with crystals. It will be difficult to contribute much until you get a few 6* characters.
  

 
Challenge

• World Boss: Gives black anti-matter, chaos norns, and bios for the black order (BO) characters. One of your primary goals of the game should be to beat world bosses as soon as possible. Each boss is generally defeated in the same way (powerful characters with good survivability), but it will help you to use Ignore Dodge strikers against Corvus Glaive and maybe Movement Speed strikers against Thanos. Upon unlocking these "native T2" characters you shouldn't focus on building them until you can clear 30/35 world bosses. Opinions vary, but most recommend to focus first on building Dr. Strange, Corvus, or Proxima. Beyond those three your focus should be Odin, Dormammu, or Jean. Thanos is a low priority unless he gets a uniform.
  
• World Boss Ultimate: End game content with even harder bosses. Each "phase" adds wrinkles to the battle. Beyond the "first clear reward," the rewards are similar for phase 1 as compared to phase 3 (idk about phase 5).
  
• Villain Siege: Gives a variety of awards, good money, clear tickets, bios. Get Elsa T2 first then consider using the chaos tokens for Obelisks. Both Ant-Man and Lash are a bit lackluster.
  
• Shadowlands: Rewards and challenges vary by stage, you should get as far as you can, which may not be past stage 1 for quite awhile. Floor 1, 5, and 21-25 are the only stages that stay the same. You will need a strong combat characteteam for Floor 1. Check out my guides: SHADOWLAND, Shadowland Solos, Six Pieces of Advice for Shadowlands and the accompanying SL spreadsheet
  

 
Co-op

• Co-Op Battle: Varies depending what VIP level you are. But at VIP 2 this becomes on of your best resources for gold. Can also give gold, gears, debris, norn stones, iso growths.
  
• World Boss Invasion: WBI prorates up your characters, so you can do some damage. Make sure to read carefully the requirements on the left side to figure out which characters to bring so everyone can get a reward. The limitations apply to all 9 characters (your 3 and the 6 of the two people who play with you), so don't be an idiot with what you bring. Also remember to hit the purple button whenever it shows up. The rewards from WBI are pretty good, but much better if you are able to be the top damage producing character. Ghost Rider (if you have uni use 2 when available then 4 and 5), Miles Morales (don't know a good rotation), Dr. Strange (hit 5 whenever available then hit 3 and cancel immediately into 2, repeat), Enchantress (hit 2 whenever available, 3 when available then alternate 4 and 5 in between), Proxima Midnight (I use everything but 2 which brings you close to the enemy), and Supergiant (don't know a good rotation just jam buttons) are some good characters which scale up well to give you good damage. In general, many modes in WBI require that you not take damage, so it is a good idea to use face tank characters listed above as well and make sure to use their immunity skills. You may look like a boss with hulk smashing buttons and attacking the boss, but you're actually doing almost no damage and you are destroying the odds of the group winning.
  

 
Lab
How much you actually want to upgrade these things is up to personal preference, but imho it is generally too costly. But you can get a second opinion

• Anti-matter generator: This one is important for the Anti-matter that is used to upgrade gears. Anti-matter is also used elsewhere in the lab like missions and upgrades. Doesn't have to be a super high priority, but upgrading a few times is worth it.
  
• Item Shop: This can be a very useful place to get Gear Up Kits and Dimension Debris. You will need a lot of those materials so it is worth it to invest some money in the upgrades. At lvl 11 the store resets every 30 minutes.
  
• Warp device: This one has its uses because everyone loves free bios, but after a certain number of upgrades it just becomes tedious to click on each of the missions. Plus you likely won't have the anti-matter needed to send out your characters.
  
• Converter: This was a rip-off until they introduced X-men materials. The bio conversion is random though so not much use. The norn conversion is mediocre at best. The X-men materials however are a bit trickier to come by, however you sacrifice an already "tricky to come by" material: black anti-matter.
  

 

Quick Start Glossary

I tried to avoid jargon and acronyms specifically in this guide, but here are a few you will definitely come across:

Term	Definition	Example
Proc	Shorthand for Programmed Random OCcurence. It can be used as a noun or a verb and refers to stat boosts that require some sort of trigger to activate. This is most commonly seen in obelisks and iso sets but can also be seen in character passives and cards.	An iso set says "Activation rate: 12% when attacking increases by +20% of all attacks (20s)"
Iframe	Invincibility frames. This refers to skills that have a duration in which the character cannot be targeted. These tend to occur when a character leaves the ground.	Sharon Rogers's skill 4.
RNG	Random Number Generator. This is referring to whenever a random event occurs. The meaning comes from how the code runs a script that requires a random number to put out a result. A good result is a "blessing from RNGesus"	It takes anywhere from 300-450+ bios to max gears to 20 because of RNG.
Reroll	I use this to refer to any repeat event that requires chance (or RNG). This could be cards, obelisks, iso, or gear options. There is no "reroll" button, but upgrading and "combining" these items will change their stat options.	"That card doesn't have very good stats. I would reroll."
Skill Rotation	In certain modes there is benefit to using a character's skills in a specific, repeating pattern.	"For Sharon I recommend using 3-1c-5-4-2c."
Kite	This just means to run while you are in danger or your skills are on cooldown.	"For Floki, just drop her clones, put up her shield, and kite.
Facetank	An apt description for the act of "going all out" with little thought to survival. Characters with built in survivability can do that kind of thing.
ShaRog/Starog	This is Sharon Rogers, aka the best all around character of MFF and Netmarble's darling. "Starog" refers to Sharon with her Starlight uniform.	"Starog has always been meta."
Uni	Short form of uniform. So-and-so w/uni implies the character has the best uni available (usually the most recent).	"Don't get the white or black unis. The Hobo uni is wayy better."
Meta	Comes from greek and means "after, above, beyond," or "by way of change." It has a sort of nebulous meaning but usually refers to the Most Efficient Tactics Available. It sometimes refers to discussion or strategy "beyond" the basic game.	"Odin, Dormammu, and Starog are meta in Time-line."
Whale	Whales are the top spenders that drive most of the revenue for a "free to play" game. They tend to be the top scorers in most modes and also have newer characters maxed out the fastest.	"What do the whales think of the new characters?"
OP	This is a confusing term because in reddit it means "original poster", but in most games it refers to "over-powered." This can be used as a form of complaint or as a statement of praise.	"I hate Timeline. Time-freeze is OP," or "Just got my Dr. Strange maxed! His time-freeze is OP!"

Acronym	Meaning	Explanation
Common Modes:
WB	World Boss	End-game boss battle in "Mission" tab.
WBU	World Boss Ultimate	End-game boss battle in "Mission" tab that is stupid difficult.
WBI	World Boss Invasion	Co-op boss battle in "Arena" tab.
TL	Time-line	PVP mode in "Arena".
AB	Alliance Battle	Boss and Mob battles with day specific restrictions in "Arena" tab.
XAB	Extreme Alliance Battle	Boss and Mob battles with day specific restrictions unlocked after AB completes
SL	Shadowland	End-game marathon of 25 battles in "Arena" tab.
AC	Alliance Conquest	"Risk" type world domination game in "Arena" tab.
Common Iso sets:
IAAG	I Am Also Groot	An Iso set with a heal proc when hit.
DDE	Drastic Density Enhancement	An Iso set with a shield proc on attack
OD	Overdrive	An Iso set with an increase damage proc on attack
POAH	Power of an Angry Hulk	An Iso set with an increase damage proc on attack
HE	Hawk's Eye	An Iso set with an increase damage proc on attack
Buffs:
Def Pen	Defense Penetration	An old term for "Ignore Defense". An attack stat that is particularly helpful for end-game content.
SCD	Skill Cooldown	A specific stat that helps your skills become available faster.
ITGB	Immune to Guard Break	A passive inherent in "Super Armor" or granted by Guard Break Immune Obelisks which prevent your skills from being interrupted by certain hits.
CC	Crowd Control	A broad term for all debuffs that prevent a character from moving or attacking. This includes: Stun (circles around head), Snare/Bind (circles around feet), Fear ("fearful" wandering), Web, Paralysis, Freeze, and Time-freeze (Dr. Strange or Jean).

 
Updated as of 6/9/2017: Added X-men to tank characters. Changed Epic Quest recommendations.

• Updates of 6/5/2017: Added "Glossary" section.
  
• Updates 5/16/2017: Added "Goals" section.
  
• Updates 4/28/2017 (3.0): Added Mantis as a tank character and short descriptions of World Boss Ultimate and Alliance Conquest.
  
• Updates 4/18/2017 (2.9.5: Rise of Hobo Iron Fist and rebalance of Kid Kaiju): Added Inhumans and a few other face tank characters. Added formatting. Expanded on Alliance Battle.
  
• Minor updates 1/4/2017: Added Asgardian update leadership characters, a few new characters to face tank status as well.
  

TL;DR- Animal crossing is awesome, and Destiny 2 could grow in meaningful ways by taking some aspects from that game in terms of organization and collections.
To the developers of Bungie,
First and foremost, congratulations on the successful launch and growth of such a fun game. Playing Destiny 2 with friends and building a clan has been a positive, relaxing, enjoyable way to spend the little amount of free time that I get between two jobs, an internship and being a full-time video production student.
Destiny 2 is a lot of fun. The campaign was a huge improvement over that of Destiny 1's launch campaign, and the additional storytelling with the adventures and missions is also a huge improvement.
However, this is an open letter, and that does mean that I have some concerns with the game as a whole. I would like to state those concerns and hopefully provide some meaningful suggestions on possible ways to remedy them.
I don't want any of this to feel like an attack. I completely understand that the internet, even those of us who enjoy your games, can be harsh, emotional, and overly critical. This isn't that. I believe in open dialogue and respect. I wouldn't treat you like an asshole if we were face to face, so why would I treat you like one online?
So here are a few concerns that I have with Destiny 2, and I hope that you take a look.
The Destiny franchise, at least to me, is a mix between three game genres: first person shooters , dungeon-crawling loot-finders (Diablo, Torchlight, Path of Exile), and role-playing games. The core gameplay is centered around the first genre (shooting enemies and objects to progress), the core gameplay is supplemented in a progression system with a cyclical gameplay loop (loot/gear drops from enemies), and then the gameplay is capped off with customization and linear progression that makes each character feel unique to the players (levels, a choice of talents, grenades, etc).
Destiny 2 has definitely done a great job of being a first person shooter. Just like with Destiny 1, the designers at Bungie know how to make shooting guns feel fun. From the amazing visual and sound design, the brilliant unique sound effects and directionality of bullets, rockets, and the Foley work to make each shot give that dopamine drip? The handling of the guns, to make every handcannon shot make me feel like Dirty Harry, and every fusion rifle blast make me feel like I'm letting loose a monster unto the world? There are no critiques here. I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it. It's perfect. it's fantastic. It's brilliant.
However, on the loot-drops of the game, there is a bit to be desired. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's really break this down and see where some problems lie.
Collection of gear
Destiny 2 feels like it is a game about sets. What sets are there?
-Vanguard
-Crucible
-Trials
-Raid (Leviathan)
-Dead Orbit
-FWC
-New Monarchy
-Iron Banner
-Destiny 2 Starter (Ikora memories)
-EDZ
-Io
-Titan
-Nessus
-Suros
-Veist
-Omolon
(Bold sections are the ones that are for both armor and weapons, italics are the ones that are armor only, and normal text are for weapons only)
16 sets. That's a lot of sets. With 15 pieces of gear for 13 of them, (5 for each class), that's 195 pieces of unique armor that need to be named, itemized, modeled, colored and rendered. Add on roughly 160 unique guns in the game, and we're looking at a few hundred unique pieces of gear, easily. That's a lot of work. Thank you for doing that.
However, the Destiny community is what it is, and what it is happens to be efficient and competitive. If there's a "best" gun in the game, the community will find it, and use it until the cows come home. Meta-games are natural in any sort of game. When players find something that works well, and it works better than other possible solutions, they are going to congregate on the best thing. So those hundreds of pieces of loot? They're cut down to a fraction of that size in what people will use.
Now this isn't to say that it is that way for everybody. I suspect (I have no data on this) that only a small percentage of players search for gear that is based on the stats of Mobility/Resilience/Recovery. Those people will mix and match different sets to find a good combination that will max out one of those stats, and give good supplemental numbers on the other stats.
I suspect that the rest of us are either A) trying to collect full sets of armor from the above list or B) mixing and matching random pieces that look good and tying them together in a cohesive look with a shader.
Those are the only 3 options that I see, but your data may show other groups that I haven’t thought of.
The first option, the min/maxing meta-forming option? They are helped through the sandbox changes that are coming each season. Your data collection and number adjustments will put them into a frenzy every few months, and new weapons and armor types will rotate around. Season 1 may lead with scout and auto rifles like MIDA Multi-Tool and Uriel’s Gift, but Season 2? Maybe submachine guns and hip-fired handcannons will rise up and our far-ranged guns of keep away will become melee-ranged skirmishes where turning every corner becomes a moment of sheer terror.
The second group, however, requires a bit of work on your part to keep happy. They’ve already found their end-game at the moment: get one of every piece of armor, and possibly even one of every gun. These are your collectors. These are the people who are trading in hundreds of legendary shards for exotics just to break them down into gunsmith parts for the small chance of getting that Antiope-D that’s been eluding them all these weeks.
As collectors, though, they like organization. I’ll bet you good money that their bookshelves are alphabetized, separated by height or color, or, if we’re going full High Fidelity organized by chronological date of release. These are the people who got every dead ghost, had high grimoire scores, and could easily give me a lecture on who Saint-14 and Osiris are.
These people have 160+ legendary guns to collect, 200+ pieces of gear to collect (because running 3 characters is fun), and then all of those fun exotics to get, too. That’s somewhere in the range of 380-400 pieces of gear to get. It sounds insane. It sounds like too much work. And yet, that’s how they get their fun. Destiny, after all, is a game that promotes this sort of behavior in its vault space and storage space. Exotics are actually the easiest bit for us to not worry about here as they have their own collection space. They are already accounted for. If I get a Merciless (and boy have I gotten a lot of Mercilesses..Mercilessi...Merci beaucoups), then I don’t need to worry about keeping ANY of them. I can destroy them all, freeing up vault space, because I know that if I ever want to use it again, I can visit my Exotic Collection and get another one.
But what about all of our legendaries? 360+ pieces of loot, but 200 vault spaces, plus an additional 30 slots for guns, and 50 for armor. That’s 280 total slots. That leaves us with at least 80 pieces of loot that we simply cannot hold. The worst (albeit also the best) part of all of this is that you’re Bungie. You’re still out there being awesome and making new sets of gear (Mercury, Season 2, Raid Lair) that we still haven’t accounted for yet. And this group of people, the same people already struggling to find places to store the loot they already have, are going to even more hard-pressed to get the loot that is looming on the horizon.
Simply put, Destiny 2 would be even better with a means of collection organization for legendary pieces of loot. Destiny 1’s exotic, sparrow, ship, and shader collections were AMAZING. Look at this picture.
That picture looks like a slice of fried gold to me. It shows all possible exotic weapons, including not only what we have, but more importantly, what we’re missing! That second part is brilliant because it tells us, “You, uh, you know that you’re not done, right?” To which we respond (to this imaginary voice enabling us in our addiction), “Oh? The collection’s not done?” Said voice continues with, “Nope! See that shadowy bit over there next to your D.A.R.C.I.? That’s supposed to be lit up with a Borealis.” And then suddenly we’re off to the races, again, trying to get a Borealis.
Now imagine that happening for all of our legendaries. If they were separated by set (Iron Banner, FWC, Vanguard, Crucible, etc), or separated by weapon type (scout rifle, auto rifle, fusion rifle, sword, etc), then we could look and say, “Oh man, I need to join Dead Orbit next Faction Rally so that I can get these two missing pieces!” or “Man, I’m missing two pulse rifles. What are they!?” The best part about this, though? By creating a separate collection system for loot, there’s a lessened need to worry about the vault space. Our vaults could be used to store shaders, ships, sparrows, mods, tokens, consumables, ghosts, transmat decals, and all of those other precious goodies from the Eververse.
Is this a lot of work? ABSOLUTELY. It’s implementing code that shows that the weapons and armor pieces we’re collecting are being tracked somewhere, it’s new UI for separating and organizing gear, and more importantly, it’s a fundamental shift in how the loot system works within Destiny 2. Is it worth it, and possibly even necessary for the long-run of the game? I think so. We’re on the tail-end of Destiny 2’s first season. We’ve had two Faction Rallies, and (at the time of writing this), Iron Banner’s second run will be starting tomorrow morning. We already don’t have enough inventory slots to keep a hold of everything, and more loot keeps on coming. With the new season, we’re looking at new exotic ships, sparrows, ghosts, guns, armor, emotes, and then even more legendary pieces of each of those, too. Something needs to change, it needs to change quickly.
I see two possible reasons why these sort of quality of life (QOL) changes wouldn’t be implemented:
A) Destiny 2 isn’t supposed to be pokemon. We’re not meant to collect them all. We’re meant to get them all, and then choose what we enjoy, deleting the rest.
Or
B) It was too much work and had to be put onto the back burner for a later release than launch day.
To the first reason, I would say that the Destiny franchise is supposed to be pokemon. So much time and effort went into every bit of flavor text of those guns and armor pieces, so many man-hours were put in by both the developers and the players to make and then find those pieces of gear that to see that work end in a simply roll of the eyes, a mumbling of, “Oh great, MIDA’s been nerfed. I guess it’s time to use Three Graves this season,” only to have your Three Graves be missing because you disassembled it for those legendary shards you needed to upgrade your MIDA? It’s disheartening. Without a grimoire, every piece of loot, every mission, every adventure is now how we get our story. Why destroy that story? Why not cherish it, dust off a bit of a shelf for it, and put it there to display? By having a collection, I can show off my collection! I can boot up my PS4 when my fireteam buddy comes over and say, “Hey, I finally got all of the New Monarchy weapons. Check it out,” to which he’ll reply, “Oh man, get a life...uuugh.” But secretly? Inside? He’ll be miffed because he’s still missing Good Counsel IV, and I’m over here getting headshots on Vostok with my pretty little scout rifle.
If it’s the second reason? I completely understand. Games are big and hard to make. I used to teach video game development to middle schoolers, and the first thing I would say when starting that class would be, “Video games are held together with a magical combination of baling wire and spit.” It’s a miracle that video games are ever released; there are simple too many moving pieces, and yet, somehow, you magicians pull it off year after year after year. If these collections were simply pushed to the wideside as a side project to make way for other things, that makes sense. However, if this is the case, please also open up a bit of a dialogue with us and placate our fears by saying, ‘Hey guys. We know you love collecting things, so we’re gonna make that so much better for you with legendary gun and armor collections. We don’t know when they’ll be ready, but we’ve heard your cries and they are getting worked on.”
That would be awesome. <3
Finally, WAY WAY BACK to the three types of players in Destiny 2, we have the mix-and-match folks. These people are happy already. They’re playing the game, getting new gear as it comes, making interesting costume choices for their Titan (New Monarchy helmet, Devastation Complex chest, Wildwood Gauntlets, Lion Rampant legs, Mark of Optimacy tabard) and then decking it all out in Bumblebee or Watermelon shaders. I feel like this group of people will grow into one of the other two groups, maybe not fully, but to some extent they’ll decide they want a full set of matching gear, or they’ll find they want to maximize a stat for survivability, but at the moment, they’re just fans of getting some cool looking pieces and playing dress up.
I guess the big point I’m trying to make here is that, for a game that is so focused on having unique sets with unique properties, and unique pieces of loot with preset perks on them, and each piece getting unique flavor text (some with extended lore, which, by the way, is one of my absolute favorite things about Destiny 2...that L2 lore tab? chef kiss mwah, perfect), it’s a shame to not be able to keep it all and look back at it all. It doesn’t solve the problem of what happens when we get our seventh, eighth, or ninth Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun, but it does solve two other problems:
A) Inventory space
And
B) Something to spend our legendary shards on
This second point I haven’t touched yet, but bear with me. Let’s say my loadout right now consists of Halfdan-D, Nameless Midnight, and Better Devils for my hunter. I really like these guns because of their playstyles, their aesthetics, and their unique sound effects (whomever made the shooting Foley work for Halfdan-D, give them a bonus). Now come Season 2, what if these three guns all get run into the ground and the meta changes things up. I may still use them because of the fun to play, but I may also learn that I absolutely love Three Graves, Lincoln Green, and Call to Serve. But, oh no! I deleted all copies of those guns because I didn’t have room for them/didn’t see a point to them. But what if I could look at my gun collection and see that I had the blueprints for them right there? All I have to do? Trade in 50 legendary shards per gun. Now I have some guns that we changed in the sandbox rebalancing, I’m using things that I wasn’t using before, and I’m spending a lot of those shards that previously were wasting away doing nothing but making a large number in the top right corner of my character’s inventory screen.
Is it the most exciting solution? No. Is it a player friendly-solution? Yep. Does it remove from the game the time spent in re-farming those weapons? Absolutely, but bear in mind, that what’s being removed is time that the player would find frustrating in favor of time that the player would be able to continue doing what they love: playing the content with fun guns without feeling like they were indirectly penalized for not holding onto every gun made in preparation for the balance changes. And not holding onto every gun? Well, with the number of item slots that would take, and how many are missing, can we really blame them?
I think that the time removed from a new farm for old guns is replaced by the farming of gear that is missing from one’s collection. New Mercury sets and guns, season 2 armor sets, new Faction Rally sets, missing Vanguard and Crucible gear...there are a lot of reason to keep playing the game when there are visible collections to chase after, but without those visual components, without the space to keep everything, the act of collecting isn’t fun. It’s a chore. It’s weird to say, but I think Destiny 2 could learn a lot from Animal Crossing.
Who in their right mind would want to go out at 2 AM to an island and catch bugs? Or spend New Year’s Eve on their console because of a cool couch or wallpaper that could drop? I’ll tell you who: Animal Crossing Destiny players. Why? Because we can see it in our collection and say, “Kyle, I got this awesome rhino beetle fusion rifle and you didn’t because you were too busy drinking why I was chilling with Lord Shaxx!” And you know where the guardians could show off said fusion rifle? That’s right, in the museum legendary collection run by an owl.
This owl. In the farm. I’ve named him Blasters. He’s a guardian now.
I think that’s enough said about the merits of collections. Let’s talk about lore.
Despite what people may say, I would argue that Destiny 1 had a great story. Mind you, I had no idea where to find it in the game, but outside of it? Well...My Name is Byf’s lore video is pretty extensive and awesome and I should really watch it for a third time.
The universe of Destiny is great. It’s rife with betrayal, loss, romance, hatred, adventure and humor. It has unique and interesting characters, ranging from those in game (Vuvuzela, Ikora, Cayde), those to the sidelines (Mara Sov, Amanda Holliday, Eris Morn), to those who we have only heard about in grimoire cards and flavor text (Erianna-3, Saint-14, Osiris).
Destiny 2 did a great job of bringing that lore to the forefront. The first 3 missions of the campaign felt like I knew more about what was going on in the world than all of Destiny 1’s campaign. You guys knocked it out of the park. And then you added on additional missions and adventures to continue side stories after that. You brought in more characters like Devrim and Failsafe. You brought to life some of those sideline characters, like Asher Mir (and now Osiris!). Man, just writing this makes me want to boot up the game and go read some of that stuff! Oh… Oh wait. Oh, I can’t.
Bungie, you did a great thing: you brought the lore into the game in accessible, fun ways instead of leaving it to an outside mobile app or accessible through only the website. However, just like the guns and the armor, the lore could use some sort of unified place of consolidation. A...collection, as it were. Those grimoire cards? All of those books that the warlocks are known to read? I bet Ikora wouldn’t mind having a small library opened up on The Tower for young warlocks and fellow guardians to add to from their adventures and findings. All of those audio clips we hear from our chipper little ghost when we find an interactive bit of the environment hiding lore from us? We recorded that audio and documented it in the library. The completed lore of the Leviathan on its armor and guns’ L2 lore tabs? Let’s number them or name them, and having a Leviathan book in the library that show us what pages (loot pieces) we’ve obtained, leaving blanks with our missing loot. Let me read the lore of Eriana’s Vengeance and cry over and over again because it’s so bittersweet.
Why do I want this? Again, because being able to track what’s in the game gives me incentive to FIND what’s in the game. I started the campaign giddy to find interactive bits in the environment, learning that the Fallen house in EDZ was using the color purple (previously a color unused by Fallen houses). I would go out, running around with ghost in hand, to find the shiny pieces of the environment just to scan them and hear what I was missing. Now? Now I’m three characters in, and I don’t look for anything in terms of lore because I don’t remember what I’m missing and what I’ve already scanned. If I knew that I had 3 pieces of EDZ Fallen lore missing, you bet your bottom dollar I’d be out there scouring the zone for them.And then? Then I’d listen to it all from the beginning and say, “Yes. Yes, this was a good way to spend my evening.”
Finally, because I just noticed that this is nine pages long and it’s 3:09 in the morning and I need to drive to the airport in three hours, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for making a game that has captivated me for four years. Thank you for giving me a huge inspiration to enter the game industry as a Foley artist and learn sound design. Thank you for writing lore for a freakin’ imaginary spaceship that made me cry. Thank you for giving me a means to keep in touch with my friends back home in California while I freeze to death in Ohio. Thank you for giving me a reason to want to visit Tampa Bay, Florida in July. Thank you for making me realize that Paul McCartney could do worse than Memory Almost Full. Thank you for giving me laughter, and fun, and glee, and thank you for making something that I am apparently so passionate about, I will willingly lose sleep over it time and time again.
Thank you.

Having fun with CodeName Steam so far.
I have played many hours of strategy games, XCom UFO (and EU) along with Valkyria Chronicles being some of my favorite, which CodeName Steam compares closest to.
4+ hours played so far
I like the bizarre 1800s steam setting with Abe Lincoln secret covert group to fight aliens. Comic book style cutscenes. Has that Freedom Force vibe.
You can have up to 4 units on a map. About right with the map size and gives you a variety to work with.
Really has that Valkyria Chronicles feel, but on a smaller scale.
C-Stick Bullet weapons you do aim, wanting to point at the critical point of aliens. This is done using the C-Stick (or Circle Pad Pro) or the middle of the touch screen. I have a New 3DS XL and the C-Stick is very nice for aiming and moving the camera. Gets a lot of use.
Alien movement length Alien Movement turn length seems to be the biggest complaint. The problem lies in every alien is active and each do its own turn check, even if they do not move. Valkyria Chronicles does the same thing but it is a little quicker about it and units across the map generally do not move or spawn in later. XCom EU is quick since it only worries about active alien groups.
Now I do not find the Alien Movement length to be that bad, having played Valkyria and XCom EU. Even XCom UFO missions could be lengthy with a lot of aliens on the maps, but generally aliens not in line of sight go quicker. All the aliens appear on the map in Steam regardless if you have LOS or not.
Amiibo: Fire Emblem Amiibos are simply optional characters you can use. Which with Marth and Ike, they have swords instead of any ranged attacks, which can make it interesting to replay levels. They even have their own voices. Slots for Robin and Lucina once they are released.
Replayability: You can replay any past missions using your new characters and characters, aiming for a High Score. There are special modes you can choose, like not being able to backtrack your movement to recover steam or aliens are twice as strong. These give Medal (Score, currency) bonus multipliers. You get bonus Medals for hitting the Turn Target and everyone surviving. So its a mix of trying to get the most medals in your turn limit, while everyone surviving.
Street Pass: Street Pass seems to compare your chapter high score to others. If you have the top 4 high score you get some bonus Medals. Have not tried this yet.
Multiplayer: Local and Online. Have not tried it yet. It looks like you use your characters and items you have unlocked, which is a mistake I feel. There are Tournaments you can participate in.
Other No overhead view of the map hinders trying to plan out your plan of attack, getting all the Gears and Medals. Can be annoying but not the end of the world.
Liking it so far. I can see the Alien Movement time be a turn off to some but so far it is not to bad. Once you kill a couple aliens its at a pretty good length. If you like Turn Based Strategy, XCom, Valkyria Chronicles, you likely will like this game.