What makes a good raid? (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, June 30, 2016, 23:11 (2849 days ago)

What makes a good raid? What would it be nice to see in September?

1. Quiet and Intense.

I think a good raid has a good mix of quiet and intense. Moments of intense action, interspersed with quieter more exploratory sections. Crota's end didn't really do this so much, but VoG and King's Fall did wonderfully.

2. Mix of bosses and encounters.

VoG did this pretty well with a mix of encounters with regular enemies and bosses. Crota had basically no bosses, and King's Fall feels like a boss rush to an extent. Having more sections with alternate goals besides burning a boss is pretty fun.

3. Flexibility

I think a good raid should be challenging, yet flexible. The encounters and bosses should lend themselves to variation and experimentation, and be more open ended. One thing I didn't like about King's Fall was that for half the bosses, the strategy and required actions were very rigid, and one small mistake would ruin it with no way to recover. Both VoG and Crota were all about this.

4. Juggler

The encounters where you have to keep track of and manage multiple elements are generally the most fun I think. The gatekeeper section is an example where you have to juggle keeping the portal open, getting the relic from the portal, and keeping the minotaurs from sacrificing. Combined with #3, these types of encounters are very enjoyable. Crota suffered a bit for being relatively straightforward, without the need to really have the team manage multiple things.

5. Mystery and Awe

The raid should make you feel a sense of wonder, awe, and mystery. It should feel lie you are going somewhere forbidden.

6. Timed sections

I don't like timed sections like the Confluxes in VoG. We should progress based on propulsive actions on our part. The totem section in King's Fall is a good way to do this: you progress by depositing the deathsinger's power onto the plate. So while it's more or less technically a timed event due to the timer on the buff, in actuality it's you actions that drive it through to completion.

7. Listed level requirements:

This is a nitpick, but it'd be nice if Bungie listed the real level requirements. Every raid has scaled beyond the initial recommendation, to the point where it was extraordinarily difficult to beat if your entire team was at the listed level. A raid at 320 light should mean the top tier enemies are also 320 light.

Let's see how the fallen raid stacks up.