Destiny 2: Vault Updates
Quality of life changes to filter and sort 1,000 items
Final Vault Iteration
*More documentation work available on request.
Introduction
For years, the Destiny 2 community has expressed frustration with item management in the Vault – a collection of accumulated weapons, armor, and other equipment. The Vault lacked filters, and the few sort options available didn’t return meaningful or clear search results.  
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The need for filters and improved sorting was made clearer after The Edge of Fate’s release, which introduced more armor and weapon characteristics, such as gear Tier and armor Archetypes.  
Release Info and Feature Goals
  • Release: Renegades
  • Ship Date: December 2nd, 2025
  • Add 300 additional Vault slots
  • Introduce stackable (multi-selection) filters
  • Improve sorting options  
  • Streamline interactions for buildcrafting, item select, and dismantling (delete)
Pre-Renegades Vault Audit
Uncovering Issues
So why was the previous Vault giving players so much grief? An initial walkthrough didn’t take long to uncover the reasons:
  • Parsing up to 700 items, including duplicates and variations.
  • Sorting limited to four options.
  • Sorting doesn’t cover the wide range of item characteristics, shared across categories or exclusive to one category.
  • Sorting results unclear - “What does Sort by Default actually mean?”  
During a snack break, a colleague expressed their own frustrations, echoing community sentiment: “Sometimes I just want to see my weapons, and the sorting doesn't help me find the stuff I actually want.” They went on to say that they have tons of items they don’t even use, but navigating the Vault is so tedious they’d rather leave them than clear them out.
Audit Outcomes
  • Revisiting Destiny 1 item categorization: Weapons, Armor, and General
  • Identifying shared and category-exclusive item characteristics  
  • Determine item characteristic combinations – reinforcing need for stackable filters  
  • Examine existing systems frameworks
  • Maintain and update list of proposed filters and sorts  
  • Build interaction flows based on player use cases  
Referencing Frameworks
Before jumping into creating wireframes of layouts and UI components, we first addressed project timeline and scope by wading through the many intertwined Destiny 2 systems – were there other places that already used multi-filter methods?  

The samples that jumped out as clear reference points were the Eververse Store and Fireteam Finder:
Player Use Cases
With strong reference points, we began shaping sample player goals. These flows kept the focus on player needs, expectations, and interaction behaviors, while identifying potential issues and constraints (by the immediate UI/UX team and other discipline areas).

It was our responsibility to make sure our updates were shared with the rest of the teams to determine the scope and workload required for our proposals.
The player interactions informed which characteristics should be prioritized as filters or sorts (or both). From there, it allowed me to curate a live, updated list of the filter and sort criteria players might need.
Finalizing UI and Visuals
During the feature building process, we kept consistent check-ins with other teams to stay aligned and on the lookout for immediate and long-term issues. After several iterations, we eventually we landed on the final list:
Having strong foundations in early work before doing any UI work led to smooth wireframing iteration processes and handoffs to our technical, engineering, and visual teams.  

It was also crucial to have many discipline eyes on the iterations, as their feedback and area knowledge helped find other problem areas in interactions, feedback states, state changes, and information displays.  

Our visual designer then brought the Vault to life with updated Destiny-themed layouts, new direct pagination, color language, and iconography:  
Conclusion
Learnings
It was crucial to keep consistent updates to everyone involved in the feature, which helped me learn more about other disciplines and Destiny 2 systems I hadn’t explored before.
  • Keeping consistent lines of communication and feedback sessions among involved teams.
  • Opportunity to learn about Destiny 2 systems and discipline knowledge.
  • Maintaining a feature logbook/timeline of proposals, feedback sessions, iterative changes, and scope constraints leads to smooth adjustments and handoffs.   
While the updates don’t cover every aspect of item characteristics, it was enough to give players better control when managing 1,000 items; and better yet, an in-game feature accessed within the same space. Our hope is that the updates are a better, longer-term solution for an evolving game.
< Pathfinder