Variety (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, June 11, 2015, 03:32 (3266 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Something about this point you made is stuck in my brain. I think there really is something to it, I just can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe the fact that as long as I've played videogames, they've presented a series of challenges to be overcome? That I (we?) have come to expect that if there is an obstacle in a videogame, we are supposed to conquer it? Or that the "power fantasy" is so deeply ingrained in to what games like Destiny are, that some of us have a difficult time reconciling with the idea that there are some challenges that exist outside the range of "beatable" obstacles?

What came to mind immediately for me was the outcry over the ending of Mass Effect 3.

Not so much the skill mastery issue, but the power fantasy issue-- the idea that what gamers are used to is being set free in a world and then, to the maximum degree possible, shaping that world entirely. That's what messianic hero characters do. In Halo that means destroying the Covenant, the Flood, and every Forerunner ring we find, along with anyone who stands in our way. So everything in our way has to be beatable, defeatable, by design. It doesn't make for a particularly believable game world, of course, but that's where suspension of belief comes in.

In RPGs it means saving the world, perhaps even coming to rule it. So when ME3 ends with a tough choice that remakes the galaxy in a way that has advantages and disadvantages, it undermines the extreme player agency people are used to.

I think all of Destiny's enemies are meant to be beaten. But the game of "collecting all the stuff" isn't meant to be. It is clearly not meant to be a meritocracy where all the best players have all the best guns. First of all, the best players are already the best and don't need better guns; and secondly, when you've then got all the guns there are to get, you put the game down. For whatever reason, Bungie has extended the player engagement that normally only includes multiplayer to the PVE experience-- perhaps because it makes players better customers for DLC, or because that's just the game they wanted to play-- Diablo and Halo combined. (Several people at Bungie were big Diablo 2 players.)

That also leads to a lack of variety. If, as some players have asked for, there was a reliable and predictable way to get all rewards, then the collection of items amongst similarly-skilled players would be the same. Player preference alone isn't enough to guarantee a variety in how players play, especially because balance is hard and player communities tend to min-max stuff when they can.

Lots of design choices in Destiny seem to back up the idea that they want a variety of players using a variety of gear, not letting them settle on a perfect combination that is the same everywhere. If everybody had a Gjallarhorn everyone would use it all the time-- why bother modeling all the other guns, then?

RNG means some of the best players won't have some of the best weapons, and vice versa. Burns and other wrinkles in particular events mean that you won't always use the "best" gun in all situations. I think this is part of what Bungie wants for the Destiny experience.