‘Destiny’ Sparrow Racing League Starts Strong, How Can It Be Improved?

Bungie launched the Sparrow Racing League as part of a free Destiny update to PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Overall, it appears to be well received by the community and a potential hit. The first Sparrow Racing event only lasts three weeks though, which means there are opportunities for improvement when it hits the garage. Let’s take a look at some of the ways it can be improved coming off the first week of the event.

The racing is solid addition to Destiny overall and gives the game some additional competitive flavor outside of grinding Raids, Strikes, and Crucible. It’s also a wonderful source for high Light level Helmets since Oryx has been so stingy with them. Still, there are some improvements that are of the low-hanging fruit variety.

It should go without saying that Bungie needs to clean up some of the controls and physics in Sparrow Racing. There are times when hitting gates does not register for a boost and invisible rocks or barriers can send a Sparrow racer bouncing the wrong direction. Also, changing from a regular Helmet to a racing Helmet with the “Air Control” perk should not automatically push a Sparrow lower when jumping.

What are some other ways the Sparrow Racing League could be improved? Here’s four suggestions. Share yours in the comments below.

Four Ways Destiny Sparrow Racing Can Be Improved

More Tracks

Adding more tracks to Sparrow Racing is a no-brainer. How much time it takes to develop and test a single track will determine how many Destiny players may get in a future update. The two tracks have many small nuances that obviously went into their construction.

Still, Mars and Venus are nice, but tracks set on the Earth, Moon, and Mercury would be superb. The Earth alone has two different palette sets to choose from with Old Russia and the European Dead Zone, where Crucible maps like Widow’s Court is set. And who’s to say that the Guardians couldn’t discover a race track on or outside the Dreadnaught? It sounds like something Cayde-6 would do at least and Saturn’s rings are beautiful but mostly unused.

Leagues / Ladders

Sparrow Racing is great and the Record Book is nice to keep track of your own stats, if you’re willing to plunk down $10. However, a competitive racing game needs something more to compare performance against other players.

The ability to compare track and lap times, tricks, wins, etc with friends and others in the game or on the Bungie website and app would be a good start. The community website Guardians.gg has already implemented such a feature, which shows it is within Bungie’s realm of possibility.

The ability to run leagues or an overall ladder competition with other Destiny players on each of the four platforms would be even better. Forza Motorsport 6 uses racing leagues to match up players of roughly the same skill with the ability to move up and down leagues based on performance, as an example, to make things more competitive.

Experiment with Weapons and Supers

Some Destiny players and media commentators have compared Sparrow Racing to Mario Kart. That comparison isn’t exactly apt due to the fact that there are no power-ups littering the courses. It’s more comparable to Star Wars Pod Racing or even another Nintendo classic, F-Zero. But who’s to say there shouldn’t be a separate mode with players going bonkers with weapons and supers while racing?

Just think, The Truth would suddenly become the equivalent of Mario Kart’s Blue Shell. A Nighstalker Hunter’s Void Bow could slow opposing racers. The options are endless.

It’s unlikely to happen due to the fact that neither super abilities or weapons can be used with Sparrows, but it is fun to dream.

Make Sparrows Customizable

This likely getting into danger zone territory and may in fact be more work than Bungie is willing to take on. However, the ability to customize and tweak Sparrows would give the game mode some depth. The parts used to customize Sparrows could be an end of race drop.

The challenge for Bungie would be to make sure this all stayed balanced in the end. It could still be small tweaks such as trading top speed for longer boost times or vice versa. There could also be purely cosmetic items that could be used to customize Sparrows.

Just anything beyond the annoying horns. Please.

[Image via Bungie]