How's that new model working out? (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Friday, May 20, 2016, 22:09 (2906 days ago) @ Cody Miller

What surprises me is that Bungie doesn't seem to be designing to the strengths of the game. The core gunplay and movement of Destiny is a joy, but the vast majority of actual gameplay is staid, repetitive, and grindy as hell.

I've been trying to get the point across that such a failing is inherent to the genre itself. Bungie DID design Destiny to its strengths. That's why it's an MMO that is actually somewhat bearable to play, which is a testament to their abilities. But it's working as a genre in which stale, repetitive grinding is not only prevalent but necessary. Hence my trashing the entire genre of MMOs.

Cruel's description of how Chroma works is absolutely insane. Nobody who actually loves games and is trying to make the best experience possible would ever sign off on something so utterly stupid and exploitative.

I fear they are on the MMO train, and there ain't no getting off till the stop. If they redesigned Destiny as an RPG, then it would not be at an inherent disadvantage, and could possibly rise to greatness without caveats.

First, I think Cruel's description of Chroma is off a little. It costs 100 glimmer to reroll your slot and there are only four options: White, yellow, blue, and red. You only lose a chroma rerolling if you already socketed a chroma in the slot before you rerolled. You also get a bunch of chroma for free from each of the free weekly packages. At 3 free packages per week (one that just shows up in your mailbox, one from pvp, and one from PoE), I'm currently sitting on 10 of each color just chillin' in my vault. And you get chroma from scrapping chroma-related gear. It's not hard to come by at all, so much so that it would make more sense to just let you apply it for free without there being some weird resource associated with it.

Second, Destiny is already an RPG. You play the role of a guardian in this game. It also has RPG tropes: character levels, progression, items, inventory, skills, magic, enemies, enemy levels, dungeons, etc... It's all there.

The fact that it's not ringing true isn't because it isn't an RPG, it's because the RPG elements kind of suck. The FPS elements are mostly great. Amazing movement, amazing feeling guns, generally good gunplay. But the level design is pretty bad. It's all stolen from WoW and is linear, boring, and restrictive. There are no missions where you choose which way to go, how to approach the fight, or are given the ability to be creative with your powers or gunplay. Every fight is either "shoot it til it dies" or "do the very specific thing that we designed this fight for you to do." Minor exceptions like Golgoroth are really just optimization issues rather than emergent gameplay.

There also isn't anything close to a compelling narrative, especially where the player character comes in. Not only do the other characters never tell you what the hell is going on, but there's no hook to make you feel like your actions are important in any way. Wow, I did all that for one mote of light? Gee, thanks Mr. Speaker. Sure was worth it. Until TTK, none of your actions had an impact on the game world, either. TTK at least you get to drop the patrol beacons and set up patrol mode on the Dreadnaught - that was super cool to do! But then you finish the few story missions and you're back in pointless endgame.

Now, I happen to find the pvp really compelling (except when there's lag), but the endless strikes and raids really bug me. Why aren't there more long term goals? Why aren't there weekly community goals? Why are the rewards so fucking RNG-awful? Well, we know why. It's because they built the game intentionally to be addictive with all sorts of meters to fill and levels to level at the direction of someone who designs slot machines for a living. They intentionally made the game to abuse dopamine responses in their players, not so the players would *enjoy* the game, but so they would keep playing even when they did not enjoy it.

It's pretty fucked up.

And yet TTK was good. Going back to play my alts through the new subclass missions a few weeks ago was great. It was like, "oh, wow, this is what this game can be." But for some inscrutable reason, TTK didn't add that polish and glow to the endgame experience. I cannot fathom why not. For most of us, our primary memories of Destiny are the lackluster and grindy endgame, rather than the warm glow of TTK's cutscenes, humor, decent plot, and engaging characters.

We can only hope that they take their design philosophies from TTK and expand them to every activity of Des2ny. Especially the endgame.