By design? Totally possible. (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, July 01, 2015, 22:26 (3233 days ago) @ yakaman

Speaking as someone who has balanced weapons in FPS PvP, I think bungie has been balancing their weapons in exactly the wrong ways.

They seem to come up with base models for each class, balance all of those, and then add in perks and exotic behavior. The problem with this is that players don't want to play with the base weapons; they want the ideal perk combos and exotics with the largest advantage.

I wonder how much is intentional. Everything in balance probably leads to a sedentary player base, no? The slow cycle of "overpowered" kind of generates seasons of renewal as different weapons/exotics/perks rise and fall.

Debate and conflict are fuel, in other words. As soon as you get comfortable with Suros, it is diminished. Each player is softly pushed to grow and change. Maybe that's too sophisticated to do purposely, but the effect is probably pretty healthy.

And also periodically frustrating... :p

This is completely plausible.

Personally, I *hate* that theory of design (that nothing is locked, everything is fluid), and I especially hate it in an investment game where players have spent hours upon hours leveling up item X because it is the powerful one; to take that away from them not because it's overpowered but simply because you decide the move the meta is, I think, cruel. That being said, it's definitely a design philosophy that exists in several games I can think of. Grr.

Everything in balance can lead to a playerbase that gets the 1 thing they want and then stops investing in looking for new stuff. This basically removes your investment "hooks" from the player because they have everything they want. The game is laid bare without the slot machine and progression model tie-ins and the player realizes there isn't actually very much to do and they quit. In theory, anyway. So to keep the investment model working, you give players limited storage so they can't just keep every item in case of future meta shifts. Then you shift the meta periodically, forcing them to get back into the investment slot machine to get the new hotness (even if they already had it once). The hooks stay in.

This is what I deem to be "abusive" game design. It's really slimy and I don't like it at all, but it is totally possible that this is what's going on.