Whilst Warmind was a lot of fun there were a few things that could have been improved and should be improved on in the future with regards to the patrol zone, public events and Escalation Protocol. With Nokris slain, Xol dead and loving it and the Red Legion done with Mars to go assault Calus (and fail miserably) it is time things moved on with the red Planet. Now the Hive are going nowhere and it is clear that they can call on Savathûn to send reinforcements in the form of more Hive or even Taken so it would not be remiss if the Taken started appearing in the Hellas Basin. The Cabal are still a presence on Mars so they would very likely still deem Rasputin a threat and move to eliminate him, especially since they now know what the Warmind is capable of. With the Hive, Taken and Cabal raising merry hell I am sure this would be cause for concern to both Anna Bray and Rasputin. Anyway to the nitty gritty of this post. [u][b]Patrol Zone[/b][/u] Firstly remove Escalation Protocol from the patrol zone. As fun as Escalation Protocol is, it is annoying when a random blueberry sees more than three people in the area, starts up an Escalation Protocol and overrides the public event that is about to start in the next 30 seconds. It is especially annoying during the Mar Flashpoint when you are trying to get public events done so that you don't have to grind lost sectors. Instead have Escalation Protocol as a 6 player match made activity that is activated from the map using the two Escalation Protocol icons, but more on that later. [u][b]Public Events[/b][/u] Add the Taken Blight public event to the list of public events that can occur. There is enough space in both the Glacial Drift and the Braytech Futurescape to allow this to happen. Add a new public event based off of Escalation Protocol could then be added. This public event would be possible in both Glacial Drift and Braytech Futurescape and is called Extermination Protocol. [u]Extermination Protocol[/u] The idea is that on starting the Extermination Protocol public event a tower is raised nearby that summons the Hive. The players must defend the tower from the Hive by standing near the tower with a circle around the tower to denote where they should stand to allow a counter to fill from 0% to a 100%. The tower then drops and a second tower rises. Players move to the next tower and defend it against harder enemies this time. Players repeat this a third and a fourth time as more towers rise and lower with enemies getting tougher as they clear more towers. If players clear four towers within the time limit they successfully complete the Extermination Protocol public event. To activate the heroic public event, after the second tower has been cleared a Shadow Rift appears surrounded by crystals. Stand in the shadow rift to cleanse it and then destroy the crystals to summon a knight that must be destroyed. Players then must defend the third tower to lower it and when the fourth tower rises a second shadow rift appears that must be cleansed, in the same way the first one was, and the knight destroyed. Killing the second knight will start the heroic version of the public event which summons a Hive Ogre. Killing the Hive Ogre before the timer expires will complete the heroic public event. [u][b]Escalation Protocol[/b][/u] Escalation Protocol is a lot of fun and when Warmind hit, completing it was hard. Admittedly half the battle was getting enough people together and coordinated enough to actually complete it since the maximum number of people that could form in a fireteam within any given patrol soace is 3. These days Escaltion Protocol can be completed by 4-6 people depending on skill and loadout that is. To put it bluntly the challenge has gone out of this activity. So what to do? As I said above remove Escalation Protocol from the patrol space and make it into a 6 player match made activity that can be activated from orbit via either of the two Escalation Protocol icons on the Hellas Basin map so that if players want to enter as a fireteam then they can do. Which area they choose will play a part later on. Escalation Protocol can then take place in a simulacrum of either the Glacial Drift or the Braytech Futurescape albeit with the exits sealed off so that neither players, nor their enemies, can escape. Escalation Protocol should play out much like it does normally with players activating towers to draw out the Hive and destroying those Hive to progress. But there should now be a few more things changed and a few things added to mix things up. [u]What should change[/u] The power level requirement should be a lot higher. Escalation Protocol should be a true end game activity so requiring players to at least have reached the soft cap in terms of power, or even higher, is a must. Instead of having a set amount of time to complete each wave players should start with a 15 minute countdown timer. To complete Escalation Protocol players must get through seven waves of enemies before the timer expires. However this is clearly not enough time to complete all seven waves so players will need to earn extra time. They can do this by killing enemies, with majors and bosses granting more time, completing waves and completing optional objectives. [u]The Waves[/u] The waves should be as they are now but the only difference is that public event waves are triggered by activating a tower as opposed to touching a flag and the public event will start as soon as that tower activates. The public events that should appear are as they are in the patrol space so Defend the Warsat, Witches Ritual, Injection Rig and Taken Blight. What is different here is that there is no requirement to complete the heroic public event to progress, only to complete it and kill all the bosses, but it is in the players best interests to complete the heroic public event. [u]Optional Objectives[/u] Each wave should have an optional objective that grants players extra time. In the public event waves this is to simply complete the heroic version of the public event, however in the other waves the optional objective is that either a Hive Ogre, Cabal Colossus, Taken Deceived Hobgoblin or Vex Hydra will appear surrounded by their respective minions. These bosses will have a lot of health and they, as well as their minions, will attack any players who get too close. If they are a Cabal Colossus or Vex Hydra they will also attack the Hive denying players sources of additional time. [u]The Bosses[/u] The final wave should be a boss fight as normal. However things should be mixed up with a Cabal boss, a Vex boss and a Taken boss added to the current pool of five Hive bosses for a total of eight bosses. Instead of having the current five week cycle have two bosses feature each week rotating on a four week cycle. When players get to the final wave they will fight one of the two bosses for that week depending on whether they chose Glacial Drift or Braytech Futurescape. What is more is that the two bosses will switch places each day. Week 1 - Hive boss 1 or Cabal boss. Week 2 - Hive boss 2 or Taken boss. Week 3 - Hive boss 3 or Vex boss. Week 4 - Hive boss 4 or Hive boss 5. This means that initially players cannot be sure of which boss they will be fighting so they will have to careful with their loadouts. [u]The Loot[/u] Defeating the boss will summon a chest from which players get their rewards. Players should no longer require keys to open the chest but having a key will grant an additional powerful reward. Bosses will no longer drop rewards, all rewards will come from the chest. This provides the opportunity to update the current IKELOS and Braytech weapons with random/curated rolls and the ability to take weapon mods. This also provides the opportunity to add new IKELOS weapons to the loot pool as well as a new Escalation Protocol armour set. [u]Escalation Protocol (Heroic)[/u] A heroic mode would require a 6 man fireteam, require a higher power level to complete, have the Extinguish modifier active in addition to random weekly modifiers. The reward for completing the heroic mode could be masterworked IKELOS or Braytech weapons and Escalation Protocol armour with better stats than normal as well as enhanced perks. In my opinion these changes would make Mars a lot more interesting and would make Escalation Protocol an end game activity worth doing. Let me know what you all think.