Would you kindly give me your thoughts? (Off-Topic)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Monday, February 29, 2016, 21:31 (3000 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Agree with you 100% there. I think the key difference to me is that in year 1, when you finally did get that weapon you were hoping for, there were none of the caveats that exist now. You never said "I FINALLY GOT A FATEBRINGER... oh, the perks aren't great". The drop rates were certainly too low then, but you knew what you were getting when it finally dropped. This time around we have higher drop rates, but I'd argue that the chances of getting the "ideal" drops are even lower. I'm not convinced that it's an improvement. Is there really an argument against making every single normal Oryx drop a 310 and every single heroic drop a 320? Would that not be an instant improvement when it comes to the enjoyment players get out of the activities? Considering we still might not get a roll that we want, at least it would be awesome infusion fodder. Yes, there is challenge mode, but I see that as a solution to a problem that should never have existed.

Do we have some indication that challenge mode wasn't planned all along? Honestly (and I say this as someone who has spent many hours this week unsuccessfully completing a challenge--BTW, Cruel, get on early tonight and HELP!), the challenges are not substantially more difficult than doing it the usual way, and they do entice you to raid, so perhaps the "problem" was presumed to be short-lived from Bungie's perspective.

That's a very interesting question. The first thought that comes to mind is "what has challenge mode done to the raid?". Or put another way, "look at how challenge mode has effected the way we play the raid".

I can't remember the last time I jumped in with a group and played the raid from start to finish. It just doesn't seem to happen anymore. I believe the reason for that is simply that the raid drops were abysmal until challenge mode came along. People don't want to bang their heads against Oryx for 2 hours and walk away with a 311 hand cannon with crappy perks. By comparison, Challenge mode showers loot on the player in such a way that it can be tough to pass up the opportunity.

I could be way off on this, but my gut tells me that the way many of us play the raid now is probably not what Luke Smith and the raid team were hoping for when they released King's Fall. It just doesn't seem like the kind of experience they would want us to have.

I'm a fan of finishing a raid in one session--it gives me a sense of completion and feeds that immersion-in-the-story itch I have. I don't know that I've done that for King's Fall. It wasn't about the drops--it's just too long. So if one-session playthroughs were what Luke Smith intended, a bigger-is-better mentality collided with their vision in terms of the practical consequences. The challenges, however, encourage playing chunks, which is more reasonable. Who knows if they anticipated our behavior? They probably didn't. But what keeps me from saying the challenges were the answer to the problem is that I can't help but think they were thought of while the raid was being designed. We've already been told that hard mode was the initial design, and they scaled back for normal. Makes sense that challenge mode would be tested from the start.

I could be wrong, but I though Bungie said as much just before Challenge mode was released, no? At any rate, I agree with you that Challenge mode was planned far in advance. What I'm not sure about is if the Challenge mode rewards were planned just as early, or if that was a sort of band-aid reaction to the outcry from the community surrounding how poor the raid drops seemed to be.

What if they had a week where if you completed all challenges in a given week Zavala gave you a choice of 320 raid weapons or armor?

That would be very interesting. Perhaps something similar to the Prison of Elder rewards, where you would be given a currency that could be used to purchase a 320 item from one of the vendors, and the available item(s) rotated each week?

Yeah, hire this man for your progression team, Bungie, and hire Raga for the story, and hire me as the resident Elder. I can push a coffee cup.