It's a shame, because grind *can* be fun (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, December 01, 2016, 17:45 (2701 days ago) @ someotherguy

I used to think Destiny's problems were standard MMO problems. But then I played other MMOs.

In the last year I've spent about as much on FFXIV as I did on the first year of Destiny and got a lot more content out of it. Sure, it's still grindy (that is an MMO problem) but there's a ludicrous amount of variety. 12 very different classes, 50+ dungeons, 46 Raid Bosses (plus 29 significantly more difficult/complex HMs), 5 24-man dungeons, 16 Dungeon-lite activities, minigames, an actual plot (plus additional stories for 8 classes and 12 jobs), etc.

You can absolutely have grind that's still fun. Or at least varied enough that it doesnt wear on you. Destiny just isn't trying very hard.

This is the corner that I fear Bungie have painted themselves into with this idea of an MMO/FPS hybrid. On the one hand, there is nothing else like it and they deserve all the credit in the world for that. But at a certain point, it does feel poorly thought out to me (benefit of hindsight and all that).

Most MMOs have staggering amounts of content compared to Destiny. And they NEED huge amounts of content, because breadth and variety of activities is what they are all about. The raw gameplay is rarely anything special on a mechanical level. It's all about taking the player to as many different places and doing as many different things as possible, coordinating with large groups to take on complicated challenges.

Part of what Bungie has done differently is to make the raw mechanical gameplay THE HOOK to the whole thing. And that's awesome. Destiny's gunplay is fantastic. The game feels wonderful to play. The trouble is developing content that is fun and challenging with such tight and refined mechanics takes a very long time. So in order for this whole FPS/MMO thing to work, Destiny would need to ditch some of the usual MMO design tropes... like grinding. Grinding in other MMOs can be made bearable because there is such a huge range of activities to do. The repetition doesn't need to become overwhelming. But Destiny doesn't have that wealth of content. Actually, I'd make the argument that Destiny does have a wealth of content, but most of it is not organized in a way that allows it to be incorporated into "the grind". So instead we have situations like Rise of Iron where you finish the story missions somewhere around level 340, and then there is 1 strike playlist that contains 6 or 7 old strikes that you need to grind for 15-30 hours before you level up high enough to do the raid. If those strikes were really fantastic pieces of content, then maybe it would almost be ok. But they're not. They're ok, but certainly not deep enough or diverse enough to hold up under that level of repetition.

That's the trap that Destiny has put itself in since the beginning, and continues to fall into with every release. Certain aspects of the game require a level of repetition that the rest of the game can't hold up under.