Disagree (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, January 12, 2017, 15:07 (2655 days ago) @ dogcow

I disagree with some of what is said in that article...

I'd never say that Skinner-box game design is inherently bad, but there are a lot of places where it's clearly abused, or used clumsily. Adding a Skinner box to a strong set of mechanics is fine.

I somewhat disagree with that statement, not super strongly mind you, but I still disagree. Goodness, I still play Destiny despite my disagreement. However, I think Destiny would be a better game with less random reward. Random reward, while it sounds fun to me, puts a bitter taste in my mouth when I experience it or give it some serious thought. My mind goes back to the early 2000's, I think of Diablo and my roommates and their friends who were obsessed with Diablo. Fortunately the game didn't appeal to me and I was able to see how completely hooked they were... They had been turned into rats in a cage trained to click a button. Now Diablo without the random reward wouldn't be nearly the same game. The gameplay and story might sustain one through a single playthrough, but I doubt you'd see more than a few people playing through the game repeatedly.

Aside: I'd seriously love to see a study of people playing Dark Souls to see if some people get most of their dopamine from the moment-to-moment successful dodges and strikes, while others get the larger rewards from major milestones like completing boss fights, acquiring weapons, or reaching new content. I don't have anything to back this up, other than the fact that it would retroactively make every Dark Souls flame war make a lot more sense. The divide between Dark Souls fans and Dark Souls haters is so intense, and people cross lines so rarely, that I suspect there might be some physiology involved.

I believe we could simply replace Dark Souls with Destiny and that paragraph would be perfect fit. I think it would be VERY interesting to do a study on people here & see if there's a correlation to their physiological response to playing Destiny and their attitudes/opinions about the game. I think he's right, there's probably an actual physiological reason why some are turned off by Destiny while others aren't.

I think there is a direct correlation between the elements of Destiny that each of us enjoy, whether or not those elements are part of the game's skinner box design, and our frustrations with the game (or lack there of). As I've said many times, 99% of Destiny's replay value (for me) comes from the gear. Playing with the different weapons and armor, experimenting with different builds and playstyles... THAT is a huge part of what makes this game enjoyable to me. Which also explains why I have so many frustrations with the game. A large portion of what I want from Destiny is trapped behind RNG and/or light level barriers, both of which only serve to artificially inflate my playtime with the game. Get that stuff out of the way, and I would almost certainly spend fewer hours playing Destiny. But, I would enjoy my time with the game far more than I do now.

On the flip side, there are plenty of people who get their enjoyment from Destiny simply by playing the story missions, running the occasional strike or crucible session... I wish that was the part of Destiny that I enjoyed. For me, those activities just aren't very fun on their own. There is not enough variety or depth inherent in the activities to make me ever want to play them. I need to bring my own variety to them through new and different pieces of gear.

Any time this topic comes up, my mind jumps back to what Jason Jones said a couple years back about making a game that people could replay over and over and over, like they did with Halo, but give them little rewards or new things to accomplish along the way. And I still think that idea is fantastic. However, when it comes to Destiny's execution, I don't think Bungie created a game that is anywhere near as fun or replayable as Halo was (subjective, of course). The rewards have become the very thing that drives the desire to replay most of the content. For some players, it is very difficult to think of loot drops as "a fun little reward" when the loot is the only reason you're playing.

It's also worth pointing out that I'm not talking about completionists who want to get loot just to have it. The reason I care about getting certain gear is because I want to play with it. So withholding that behind an RNG wall, and then making that gear obsolete due to unnecessary light level inflations is a particularly player unfriendly 1-2 punch.