*IMO* Bungie really misplayed the RPG elements of Destiny (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, March 11, 2015, 21:46 (3354 days ago) @ iconicbanana

I think Cody is right on the money with the suggestion that attack/defense ratings should be dropped. Halo played well because it made difficulty based on AI strength, not hit point inflation. Destiny gets caught between Halo and Borderlands and it doesn't really pull either off as well as the originals do.

Destiny PvP plays significantly more like Halo PvP than their respective PvE counterparts. I find PvP to be terrifically unique and enjoyable because it executes gunplay balance and scaling far better than PvE. I've never really found PvE to be up to snuff with Halo or Borderlands; it's fun but it's not ideal. They're definitely caught between balancing the two and they haven't found an ideal solution yet.

I don't personally mind having attack and defense values that affect damage done, but I think they need to be more transparent and more directly related. The weird interaction is the hybrid of attack, defense, and level. It's made even weirder by the fact that it behaves totally differently in regular crucible, and then a 3rd way in Iron Banner. That makes deciding on which guns and armors are good a rather obtuse evaluation.

My wish list for systems is:

1- simplify the numbers. They're basically meaningless right now because of whatever weird forumulas are used to determine them. Just make attack = the level of character you can deal full damage to. Then do the same for defense, but get rid of the "armor" stat and just have your level = the defense value of your character (so if you're level 32, an enemy needs an attack rating of 32 to deal full damage to you).

2- Treat Crucible as if everyone's attack and defense are level 20.

3 - Treat Iron Banner the same as PvE in terms of determining attack and defense.

4 - Change the impact stat to just be "damage per shot" so that players can see how much damage they should be doing against an equal level enemy.

5 - Re-balance enemy health to have numerical values that make sense if the player weapons do the same amount of damage as the crucible. If you're scaling damage resistance to the level of the monsters vs. player weapons, you won't have to inflate damage values, ever.

Mostly, I just want these stat interactions to be way, way more transparent.