Okay, literally about to walk out the door but I thought of the greatest idea to make Nightfalls relevant and awesome again.
Removing the weeklong buff was a mistake.
Even if having the XP and rep bonus didn't fit in with the design ethos of their new economy, the concept of having a buff of some kind you could get early in the week that would stick around until the next reset made Nightfalls an event, and compelling to get done on each of your active characters despite their difficulty. Plus the blue headflames were just damn cool!
So Radiant Light is retired. Let's make it a new buff. Call it Exotic Light. When you've got it,
exotic engrams decrypted on that character have a higher chance of being 310 attack or defense, whether or not you yourself are 300+. If you are 300+
and have the buff, the chance should rise to 75% or more of getting a 310.
Because 310 exotics aren't just a roll of the exotic itself but potential infusion fuel for players of all levels, suddenly there's a good reason to do your Nightfalls again. Especially for median players that are still gearing up and have access to the Nightfall but aren't 290+ yet- now they're actually getting a chance at some progression out of it for the rest of the week.
Also, now all the seemingly dumb rewards from the Nightfall suddenly make sense.
Handful of Three of Coins? Go toss these at bosses for the rest of the week and get you some 310s.
Strange Coins? Here you are, sonny. Go buy a nice engram from Xur and enjoy.
Get a 290 exotic from the actual loot roll? No worries, you'll still have chances from the buff- and don't dismantle that thing! It might have a nice roll you want to infuse.
Nightfalls solved. Bungie's desire to not have it be a rep/xp thing remains intact, and Nightfalls are magically endgame-relevant again. If they
really don't want to incentivize players doing it as early in the week as possible, they could have it operate like Tempered where the % increase is a fixed amount that goes up each day of the week regardless of when you first acquired it, so it wouldn't matter when you got it done as long as you managed to get it done- just collect and save all your engrams for the week til Monday and have a decryption party.
Boom
