RPGs are all about barriers (Destiny)

by Durandal, Sunday, January 25, 2015, 12:36 (3382 days ago) @ Fuertisimo

Improper benchmarking happens. I've seen it in my own, largish company and that has been in business for far longer then Bungie.

All it takes is a lack of clear direction, or a change in direction from the top or technical issues late in development. It is one thing to play a game and say "I don't like x". You don't know why x is there, what compromises, errors or technical limitations led to x being implemented the way it was.

Look at the Elevators from Mass Effect 1. They initially had planned on them only being a handful of seconds, but as the game progressed they needed to make the time longer and longer to cover for the technical issues until you were picking all female members of your team just so you had something interesting to look at while waiting.

The pistol's evolution through the Halo series is another example. They buffed it at the last second in 1, and it was a sign of a skilled player. In 2 it got nerfed and everyone hated it, and in 3, ODST and Reach they changed it back to a more damaging, solid design.

And I'm sure everyone remembers all the complaints about running missions backwards in Halo 1 with the addition of flood enemies.

Even COD and Gears of War had their issues, and they both had the benefit of benchmarking the Halo series prior to their own releases. Heck, at this point I think COD keeps all the quickscoping and knifing garbage just because they have a large subset of players who think that they are skilled when they do it.