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Bungie has been upfront from the beginning that they are building a social game that rewards commitment. If it were different, the rewards wouldn't be the same and wouldn't mean as much. Friendship is the secret sauce of Destiny. Playing with friends is when the game really hits all cylinders. There are plenty of other games that don't work this way. Bungie invites all because they know that even though it requires more effort than some are used to expending, they know it's worth it because it's a different level of fun. I don't fault them. They're absolutely right. I've never had as much fun playing any video game as I've had raiding in Destiny.

I think I agree that Bungie has been upfront about Destiny being a social game. But I've never seen an advertisement that says you have to be a "committed" player to enjoy it. All of the great moments I've had been in Destiny have been playing with others, but I've never enjoyed anything that requires "commitment". In fact, towards the end of D1 I pretty much didn't care about finishing a raid I started anymore. The rewards weren't worth it. The social experience was.

A great example for me was beating Skolas for the Y1 achievement. I tried several times with people from here and we just weren't able to do it before the time was up for me. So I missed out on that. That was actually the opposite of fun and I spent too much time chasing it instead of having fun. Since then I don't think I've bothered chasing rewards like the yearly achievements. I didn't bother finishing a single one of the books that Bungie provided. I just did the things I enjoyed and I enjoyed the game more.

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The weekly reset is there so Bungie can easily cap how much loot you can gain per-week. If you could just continue to run the raid until you finished, but the loot cap applied I don't see how that would be a problem. If you can't schedule all your people to finish it in one week they don't have to start over.

Please no. In this regard I like things the way they are. Part of the challenge of completing the raid is doing it within a week. Raids in general would be diminished by adding another watered down flavor.

I disagree, because at its core the raid is not about time pressure at all. It would be designed differently it it were.

Way back when, most games had to be completed in one sitting. They would reset your progress every time you started the game! Even more hardcore than once a week. This was a game design decision; password systems were easy to implement even in the simplest of games.

First of all, these games were short. We are talking less than 45 minutes typically, and even that may be high. The emphasis was on mastery, and since you could not save your progress at all, you had to play masterfully and continuously for the duration of the game. You could mess up a few times (hence lives systems), but you basically needed to play from start to finish and not mess up at all.

This pressure for mastery and continuous play is completely removed when you are allowed to save progress, and when you no longer have limited lives. And guess what? The raid has both those features! You can wipe an unlimited number of times, and you progress is saved. On principle, there is no fundamental difference in terms of design philosophy if your progress is saved forever, or if it is saved for a week. Just the act of saving it fundamentally changes to nature of the game.

The fact that you have to beat the raid in a week is not what makes it special. It's special because the challenges are unique, and you are doing it with other people with whom you must co-ordinate with in game.

If Bungie redesigned the raid system so you checkpoints never reset unless you either reset them yourself, or you beat the raid, this would not affect hardcore players at all. They'd still bust through the raid in one night and get their loot every week. But those for whom scheduling is a problem, could potentially play over the course of three weeks, and still get their drops. The gear resets could still happen, but since you haven't gotten the final boss drop, it resets from 'available' to 'available'. See?

The week limit is NOT a challenge, and it is NOT a meaningful design decision since the fact that you have unlimited lives and saved progress is just like every other modern game. All it does is hurt people who have lots going on in real life.

I agree with many things the author said. Pieces of it echo what I've said here and other places. The viewpoint is not particularly welcome amongst Bungie, Destiny end-game fans.

I guess I've demonstrated that in my responses. Consider this, though. Trials is an end-game activity that I can't participate in successfully. That doesn't bother me at all. I think Trials is super-cool, and I'm very happy that the game has it. I don't consider myself ripped off or some such nonsense just because every pixel in the game isn't available to me.

Your progress in trials is not wiped every week. You practice, and you get better and better. That's your brain rewiring. That does not go back to zero at the end of the week. Each trials match is completely self contained, unlike the sections of the raid which are sequentially linked.

Because the trials map changes every week, you could make a legitimate argument for an incomplete card not carrying over to the next week, but I think that being allowed would be just fine.

Well, sure. I could play it all weekend every week, and I'd surely get better, and who knows, one day I could have a very lucky flawless run. I'm not committed to the time and effort that would take. When I say can't I'm saying I've got other things I'd rather do. I have no problem with anyone who feels that way about the raid, BTW, as long as they don't blame the raid.

Your progress in trials is not wiped every week. You practice, and you get better and better. That's your brain rewiring. That does not go back to zero at the end of the week.

I disagree with this, strongly. (It might be true for some people, if they play enough. For most of us, though, there are too few games of Trials played to do anything REMOTELY like 'rewiring your brain'.)

Cruel your a great guy, give lots of good advice and help plenty of people out. You just can't come to terms with how much easier these games are for you than a 'lot' of other people.

Bungie made Destiny Raids for people just like you, not my skill tier. They've been faulted for it by themselves and others and that will continue until they offer different flavours of the Raid. There's no reason why a Raid has to be an unplayable space for 'most' customers.

We have a dedicated (old) group playing Tue. and Fri. for 2 hours each. We managed to open the Castleum door twice. Subsequent stages saw little progress and we aren't even running blind. Our time investment is huge but success is slow to arrive. We would benefit greatly from a non-resetting Raids as well as other performance changes.

There was and is no reason why Destiny Raids couldn't have differing skill flavours. Give better rewards to the Elite versions while letting more people check out the playspace at a more favourable setting.

There are different skill flavors, aren't there?

I may have come across as antagonistic in this thread, but I haven't meant to. I always like playing with you, DEEP. I don't think I'm a better player than you. I think my agreement with Cruel indisputably proves that you do not have to be an elite player to share his opinion about raids. Every single raid has given me moments that made me think I'm not capable of doing what needs to be done. Every single raid has gotten easier over time. I've had plenty of weeks where me and my team have been unable to finish. I've had weeks where we couldn't make it past the first boss. As long as everybody is learning, making distinctions, and enjoying each other's company, I don't mind. That's not to say I don't get frustrated or don't expect others to.

It took 14 hours to beat VoG blind. Maybe that's not something to brag about, and I realize that's beyond the patience threshold of most, perhaps, but it was glorious when we finished. The sense of accomplishment was worth it for me, and wouldn't have been the same had it taken less time. Within a few months it wasn't uncommon for it to take an hour or so, and that provided a different kind of fun.

I know nothing about this raid yet, but I can't imagine it's so different than the previous raids regarding the challenges it presents. I want to be able to say I climbed that mountain, and I don't want it to be a hill instead. I know I won't be the first, and I don't really care if I'm the last, but I want to do what others have done, even if it's harder for me than it was for them.

The real world has challenges that are more challenging for some than others, so why not video games? It's cool. When you say there's no reason why a raid has to be a challenging place for most customers, I say there is, because that's exactly the goal of the raid. That is the nature of what the raid is.

Cruel your a great guy, give lots of good advice and help plenty of people out. You just can't come to terms with how much easier these games are for you than a 'lot' of other people.

Bungie made Destiny Raids for people just like you, not my skill tier. They've been faulted for it by themselves and others and that will continue until they offer different flavours of the Raid. There's no reason why a Raid has to be an unplayable space for 'most' customers.

We have a dedicated (old) group playing Tue. and Fri. for 2 hours each. We managed to open the Castleum door twice. Subsequent stages saw little progress and we aren't even running blind. Our time investment is huge but success is slow to arrive. We would benefit greatly from a non-resetting Raids as well as other performance changes.

There was and is no reason why Destiny Raids couldn't have differing skill flavours. Give better rewards to the Elite versions while letting more people check out the playspace at a more favourable setting.

I do take your point, truly. But my gut reaction is that the solution may not be quite as simple as you present it.

Luke Smith has talked several times about the process of creating a raid, and how it differs from creating other content in Destiny. One of the major differences is that the raid designers are able to make certain assumptions about the player... assumptions that cannot be made while designing other activities. They can assume that players are in a full fireteam of 6, and everyone has headsets. They can assume a certain level of commitment over time. And while I've never heard Luke specify this, I bet one of the assumptions the raid team makes is a certain level of compitence and mechanical mastery of the game. I would stress though that I do not believe the raids are particularly demanding on that final point. I'd argue that the Nightfalls are a far more demanding activity in terms of requiring players who can perform like a 1-person army. But to your point, the raids are somewhat more demanding of skill than the rest of the game.

When I think about the implications of your suggestion (adding an "easy" mode), my gut reaction is that something would be lost in the process. I think about the way the current setup has lead to fireteams struggling for days or even weeks, grinding against every encounter, before finally succeeding. How amazing do those teams feel afterwards? How many of those teams would have just given up and done the easier version, had it been available, and robbed denied themselves the sense of accomplishment in the process? Is that a good trade to make? I genuinely don't know. Or what about the social aspect of these challenging activities? Look at all the connections that have been made thanks to players going out of their way to find help, or to offer help.

There's an element to all of this that overlaps with the debate around raid matchmaking. I think, in some cases, it is worthwhile to demand certain efforts of the player. I think certain experiences are only possible when the players involved have put in a certain level of investment. That's a real tricky line to walk, and Bungie hasn't nailed it flawlessly every time, but my gut tells me that the raid right now is in a pretty good place overall. It's demanding, it's tough. It is not for everyone. And I think that's ok. I don't see how it could be made "for everyone" without diluting what makes it special.

That said, there is another layer to all this. I think (but I could be wrong), that there is a large group of players who are more interestied in *seeing* the raid than they are in *playing* the raid. What I mean is they want to see the locations, fight through some of the playspaces, and explore without worrying about all the stress and pressure that they might feel while joining a raid team. I think Bungie actually addressed this issue quite well with TTK, by creating story missions that took us down into the Vault or to Crota's throne room. I loved that, and I hope Bungie does something similar with the Leviathan raid locations in the future.

The truth is that, while much has been made of Destiny’s fusion of the first-person shooter with the MMO, as an MMO, it’s woefully lacking in meaningful social interaction. Without building this in, the leap they expect you to make comes incongruously. There’s no economy to participate in, no plots to launch against other groups. You can’t help a friend out in a pinch or ruin an enemy’s day ... Its social hubs contain no actual social activity, but rather dozens of sometimes-translucent avatars sprinting about their various errands. ... The game is less a social platform than it is a beautifully designed argument in favor of being antisocial.

What the author is really upset about is that they don't have a crew dedicated enough to raid, and probably don't have that dedication themselves. But it's a great point that if you don't already have a dedicated crew, you're probably not going to build one just by playing Destiny.

True. I will always be a proponent of no matchmaking in Destiny's raids.

But on the specific issue of checkpoint resets, Bungie is needlessly making it harder for people, with no benefit to everyone else. Not having matchmaking provides such a clear benefit in the form of challenges in the activity. But resetting your checkpoint on Tuesday? That provides no benefit to anyone whatsoever, and does screw some people over.

There's an argument to be made for the idea that a weekly reset acts as a bit of a motivating factor. And sometimes, that's not a bad thing when it comes to a group activity. Maybe without resets it would be too easy for groups to put it off, get distracted, and then fizzle out.

But I don't know if that possible benefit outweighs the downsides. I'm just thinking out loud.

I think self motivation is always best. If you aren't motivated to finish on your own… then why are you doing it?