ITT: Cody undercuts his central argument against Destiny

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, August 12, 2013, 09:37 (3913 days ago) @ electricpirate

That's valuable in it's own right though... especially in a skill driven game like Destiny. See, Equipment, and leveling can act as a dynamic difficulty scale. Players can try, fail, go back to some easier content to improve themselves and their gear and come back and conquer. It's a much more organic system than difficulty sliders, or settings. Demon's/Dark Souls is a game that does this wonderfully.

Nonono! Relying on leveling to set the difficulty level is a failure of the designer to design a proper difficulty curve. It's cheating.

Even in Diablo leveling up is a strategic decision. Since you have a level cap, every choice you make means you can't invest in a bunch of other choices. And even without a level cap, a players limited time acts as kind of a natural cap. There's no functional difference between Diablo's skill trees with a level cap and Dues Ex's augmentations which are limited in a play through.

No, it's ALWAYS BETTER TO BE A HIGHER LEVEL. Now, where you spend your skill and stat points, THAT is the strategic decision. And guess what they removed in Diablo 3? Yup.

The difference is that Deus Ex awards exp as you naturally progress through the game. You can't 'grind' for it by replaying segments over and over.