Join Josh Mosqueira as he discusses the dramatic shifts in gameplay, core philosophy, itemization, and rewards in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls.

https://youtu.be/vWYEWRrFgUY

I found this talk to be very compelling and I think it bears bringing up within the context of Destiny's own loot system. In my opinion, the two best loot based games that are out there right now are Diablo 3 with Loot 2.0 (drop rate+ variety) and Borderlands (RNG Loot Weapons + variety). The replay-ability (hyphenate?) of Diablo 3 allows for me to defeat the same bosses and play the same areas over and over again, but I never get bored since I'm always building towards something that's fun (becoming overpowered and customizing builds with interesting items).

I love Destiny, but I feel like what's missing is variety of the items and the rate at which they drop. The only really unique feeling items are exotics and the effects and mechanisms of those are so known and controlled. The legendaries just feel like it's a stepping stone to level and that's about it. It's not particularly meaningful to grab a piece of gear over another since the perks are so mundane outside of the Raid armor perks (which are really only supposed to help with HM Raid). Plus, binding the gear to your light level means that I'm grinding away to get basically the same set of perks on armor, but a different look and light level.

I'm guessing that the real challenge that defines Destiny's systems is trying to let what makes a PvE loot based system fun, but balance PvP. Thus, all Diablo 3 based arguments needs a huge grain of salt since they basically abandoned PvP because it is crazy hard to balance!

I know this is a bit rant-esque (?) but thought I'd throw these thoughts down anyway.

It's not particularly meaningful to grab a piece of gear over another since the perks are so mundane outside of the Raid armor perks (which are really only supposed to help with HM Raid).

I guess you have never gotten a scout rifle with the firefly perk :-p

If I weren't working today, I'd watch the video immediately and weigh in.

Join Josh Mosqueira as he discusses the dramatic shifts in gameplay, core philosophy, itemization, and rewards in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls.

https://youtu.be/vWYEWRrFgUY

I found this talk to be very compelling and I think it bears bringing up within the context of Destiny's own loot system. In my opinion, the two best loot based games that are out there right now are Diablo 3 with Loot 2.0 (drop rate+ variety) and Borderlands (RNG Loot Weapons + variety). The replay-ability (hyphenate?) of Diablo 3 allows for me to defeat the same bosses and play the same areas over and over again, but I never get bored since I'm always building towards something that's fun (becoming overpowered and customizing builds with interesting items).

I love Destiny, but I feel like what's missing is variety of the items and the rate at which they drop. The only really unique feeling items are exotics and the effects and mechanisms of those are so known and controlled. The legendaries just feel like it's a stepping stone to level and that's about it. It's not particularly meaningful to grab a piece of gear over another since the perks are so mundane outside of the Raid armor perks (which are really only supposed to help with HM Raid). Plus, binding the gear to your light level means that I'm grinding away to get basically the same set of perks on armor, but a different look and light level.

I'm guessing that the real challenge that defines Destiny's systems is trying to let what makes a PvE loot based system fun, but balance PvP. Thus, all Diablo 3 based arguments needs a huge grain of salt since they basically abandoned PvP because it is crazy hard to balance!

I know this is a bit rant-esque (?) but thought I'd throw these thoughts down anyway.

I feel what you're talking. I really wish Bungie hadn't taken the Borderlands approach to the damage mechanics of the game. Borderlands did things much, much better with creep scaling too. I remember being really bummed the first time I saw little numbers popping up on the first dreg I shot. It worked in the Borderlands universe because of how ludicrous the gunplay of that game already was. It doesn't fit the Destiny universe, to me. Diablo is just a step further and Destiny doesn't have the mechanics to support all the nuances of combat that D3 does.

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 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.

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.

Shoot a level 30 thrall. Shoot a level 30 Cabal. Do they do the same damage? Nope. Your idea won't work. We need to get out of the numbers game entirely.

A bar for impact is fine, as you get a general idea of which weapon does more damage. If you were to eliminate the number display as well, then how would people know what weapon to use? Simple. They try it, and use whichever they seem to do best with! In fact, many of the old builds of Destiny (including the E3 2013) had no damage numbers at all.

The majority of FPS games get by fine without number displays. The bars should be there to give you a quick overview of the weapon stats, with the ultimate test be actually using it.

Some notes and quotes:

"Smashing pots was the most efficient way to get loot"…
"Bag full of legendaries wouldn't result in a legendary"
"150 drops before he got a quiver… for his barbarian"

<We've seen these same things both early on (with purples) and currently (other class drops) in Destiny>

"The low loot drop rate was to pace rewards so high man hours would still have content to grind for."
"Randomness was considered what was important for fun. What they determined was replay ability was key, and randomness was just a stand in."
"Online guides and forums circumvent the need for players to experiment or get out of their comfort zone and explore the aspects of the systems."
"Short, low level beta to avoid spoilers prevented any testing of the above systems, had lots of bugs with raid bosses." <Boy Bungie is suffering from the same issue>

"Peaks and valleys in player power are how players feel rewarded."
"They had to drop fewer items and make each more significant to the player." <Bungie seemed to focus on this as well>
"Items need to have clear differences and clear power relative to each other." <Again Bungie has pretty good differentiation>
"Any bonus that improves killing is better then other support abilities." <Exotics and some legendaries suffer from this>

"Legendaries were piles of stats not fantasies" <Bungie seems to half get this. All exotics have interesting stories behind them, but we don't really explore these fantasies much and many exotics are outclassed by lower level items.>

Blizzard's Changes:
Drops for your class only.
Identify how the stats relate in the overall distribution for this item (low or high roll)
Power items have powerful, almost game breaking effects that change the way the class plays.
Trading ruins the loot reward loop
Game needs to be about killing demons, not shopping for loot. <how does Zur fit into this?>
Variety is the most efficient way to play the game. <Bungie's method for forcing variety needs help. Random bounties and weekly missions are not a good substitute>
Gear, not level, is how peaks and valleys are created in power. <Bungie uses this pretty closely>

So overall, Bungie committed some of the same errors, but avoided some as well.

It's rather embarrassing for D3 that Loot 2.0 had to be implemented in the first place -- when you're talking about a respected franchise and a title six years in the making. Diablo 2 had some very forward-thinking ideas, and D3 really took a few steps back in that regard. I wonder if some of the D3 team even played D2.

Some ideas that I think would translate well to Destiny:

1. Set items. For example, having two items, such as a Hand Cannon and a Rocket Launcher provide some kind of synergy if you have both equipped. (In D2, they were mostly armor.) Some were non-class specific, but the best ones were. The really sneaky smart thing was that some of the set items could be worn by ANY class, but the 3rd or 4th item, which gave the big bonus, was class-specific.

2. What D2 called rare, i.e., yellow items, could roll with certain mods that made them Best in Slot -- for example, being ethereal with the repair to durability mod -- armor god sky high stats, as did weapons.

3. The ability to "gamble," i.e., purchase rare weapons with random rolls -- great gold sink

Translation to destiny:

1. I think Iron Banner, with "reforging" is a great step in the right direction. Exchanging gathered assets into a chance for a better weapon is a great concept. I wish there were a way to upgrade beloved old legendaries to 331, especially when with raid weapons.

2. If Bungie ever decides to implement trading, one thing D2 did was to provide gathered assets used as crafting materials that were used by "high level" players to reroll items. This effectively created a trading platform for someone who might have (in Destiny terms) three Gallahorns, but who might not have the time or inclination to gather the assets needed to reroll a piece of armor, assets which a casual player doing daily bounties might have a surplus of.

Uh, that's my two Kopecs anyway.

The majority of FPS games get by fine without number displays. The bars should be there to give you a quick overview of the weapon stats, with the ultimate test be actually using it.

Not showing the numbers may be a style difference in other shooters, but I think people definitely crave that data transparency. There's definitely a trend these days to more data driven analysis etc for games that have some competitive side to them. Just as an example, if you've played a recent COD or Battlefield Game you've used Symthic to evaluate weapons and damage models etc.

I also think people tend to lean towards a more data driven analysis because as games have become more complicated, there are a lot of 'hidden' mechanics that not even the largest and spoon-fed tutorial could ever expose. I think this is especially true in Destiny for the Crucible since there's not really any explanation as to what factors do and don't matter in standard Crucible (Your light level, your armor, the 'bars' vs the attack rating etc). The user base has had to kinda 'figure that out' and I think it hurts.

Also, I prefer seeing the numbers instead of the bars since I just find it easier to compare things. Also, I love graphs and data anlysis
:)

It's not particularly meaningful to grab a piece of gear over another since the perks are so mundane outside of the Raid armor perks (which are really only supposed to help with HM Raid).

I definitely agree on the armor perks being kinda mundane. I generally just care about the gloves since you can increase reload speed. I never really find myself running out of ammo.

I guess you have never gotten a scout rifle with the firefly perk :-p

JUST got a Fatebringer last week, so I'm working on it :)

If I weren't working today, I'd watch the video immediately and weigh in.

I watched this in the office this during my morning email/coffee time

So overall, Bungie committed some of the same errors, but avoided some as well.

This makes a lot of sense since Destiny is effectively blending a whole bunch of not really compatible game genres and ideas together at once. Honestly, after seeing the GDC stuff and playing the game etc I'm still really impressed at what Bungie has accomplished and I can't wait till the next release.

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.

Shoot a level 30 thrall. Shoot a level 30 Cabal. Do they do the same damage? Nope. Your idea won't work. We need to get out of the numbers game entirely.

A bar for impact is fine, as you get a general idea of which weapon does more damage. If you were to eliminate the number display as well, then how would people know what weapon to use? Simple. They try it, and use whichever they seem to do best with! In fact, many of the old builds of Destiny (including the E3 2013) had no damage numbers at all.

The majority of FPS games get by fine without number displays. The bars should be there to give you a quick overview of the weapon stats, with the ultimate test be actually using it.

But you missed the part where I had enemy health rebalanced to make damage from the weapons match the crucible. So if you shot a level 30 thrall and did 40 damage, you'd say, "wow, that thrall only has 50 health." Then you could shoot a level 30 Cabal and do 40 damage, and say "oh, jeez, this guy has like 300 health." See how that works? You'd have a MUCH better understanding of what it took to kill each enemy, as well as how your weapons were performing.

You nailed it. Diablo 2 is still far more fun for me to play than D3, but that has more to do with how skills work and the ease of generating new characters. If a version of D2 was released today that had a shared stash and ran on modern OSes, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, and I'll wager it would out-sell D3 quite quickly.

Other things in D2: Even "crappy" grey and white items would become desirable with the horadric cube. You could turn them into socketed items and upgrade them from normal to nightmare to hell versions of the weapons, thereby creating the perfect rune word item from what would in D3 is a completely garbage drop. Also, rune words let you collect several rare items (runes), and then use them to create an extremely powerful item, but with known properties. Farming runes was the major time sink in D2 as far as gear goes, because rune word items were dramatically more powerful than most other gear (even set items). D3's bastardization of "runes" into simply skill mods hurts my heart and mind.

If you want the game D3 should have been, check out Path of Exile. It's fantastic!

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.

Shoot a level 30 thrall. Shoot a level 30 Cabal. Do they do the same damage? Nope. Your idea won't work. We need to get out of the numbers game entirely.

A bar for impact is fine, as you get a general idea of which weapon does more damage. If you were to eliminate the number display as well, then how would people know what weapon to use? Simple. They try it, and use whichever they seem to do best with! In fact, many of the old builds of Destiny (including the E3 2013) had no damage numbers at all.

The majority of FPS games get by fine without number displays. The bars should be there to give you a quick overview of the weapon stats, with the ultimate test be actually using it.

But you missed the part where I had enemy health rebalanced to make damage from the weapons match the crucible. So if you shot a level 30 thrall and did 40 damage, you'd say, "wow, that thrall only has 50 health." Then you could shoot a level 30 Cabal and do 40 damage, and say "oh, jeez, this guy has like 300 health." See how that works? You'd have a MUCH better understanding of what it took to kill each enemy, as well as how your weapons were performing.

Whenever I hear talk about how a major game developer could have done something "easier" to make it more simplistic, I think of the Scenarios:

• The developers are truly idiots and didn't even think of doing it that way
  
• The developers had originally done it that way and but had to change it to create other effects
  
• It's impossible to make a game as complicated as Destiny with simple game mechanics as that

Maybe if they are started out doing something like that, they could have kept it going like that, but I highly doubt it. Games evolve, especially when new features keep getting added.

But you missed the part where I had enemy health rebalanced to make damage from the weapons match the crucible. So if you shot a level 30 thrall and did 40 damage, you'd say, "wow, that thrall only has 50 health." Then you could shoot a level 30 Cabal and do 40 damage, and say "oh, jeez, this guy has like 300 health." See how that works? You'd have a MUCH better understanding of what it took to kill each enemy, as well as how your weapons were performing.

Again, it won't work. The game is set up such that you do much less damage to lower level enemies, in order to allow a high level player to either play with a low level player and not one shot bosses, or to not completely wreck public events in low level areas. A gun that does a fixed amount of damage completely negates this.

No matter what, there is no way to currently have a representative numerical value for how much exact damage a bullet will do. This is why the bar exists: it is telling you in relative terms how much damage your gun will do.

Whenever I hear talk about how a major game developer could have done something "easier" to make it more simplistic, I think of the Scenarios:

• The developers are truly idiots and didn't even think of doing it that way
  
• The developers had originally done it that way and but had to change it to create other effects
  
• It's impossible to make a game as complicated as Destiny with simple game mechanics as that

Maybe if they are started out doing something like that, they could have kept it going like that, but I highly doubt it. Games evolve, especially when new features keep getting added.

I spent 13 years of my life making video games. I know what goes into them, and I know that lots of times coders want to show off their super complex maths to the point where, if no one reigns them in, the game suffers.

• I don't think the developers at Bungie are idiots, but it's pretty clear to me that this was an ambitious undertaking for them and they got in over their heads. Destiny 2 should be much better, but Destiny 1 has missed the mark in a number of ways, several enumerated in this thread.
  
• This is possible. They clearly went through some major overhauls, but their systems design seems cumbersome and obtuse, even to them (hence the heavy ammo bug taking so long to fix). It's clear that they didn't design the game to be particularly fluid or to have a quick patch turnaround time. Compare to Mass Effect 3's weekly balance changes or CoD's "as needed" system and Destiny is patching at a snail's pace. It's surprising, because the Halo games' PvP were so great, but then again - part of the balance there was the limited supply of powerful and available weapons. In a game where you bring your own gun, balance is totally different.
  
• Patently false. The more complicated your game overall, the simpler you need your core mechanics to be. Simple fundamental systems allow for greater interaction and complexity without generating the kind of weird and obtuse number schema that Destiny currently employs. It also allows your players to more easily grasp what you're doing, because not all of them have a PhD in Statistical Analysis.

So I'm going to go with option B. It's clear to me that the ground layer systems for armor, damage, and level interact in wonky ways, and that's a bad fundamental design - hence my agreement that Bungie misplayed the RPG elements in Destiny. They missed the mark.

But you missed the part where I had enemy health rebalanced to make damage from the weapons match the crucible. So if you shot a level 30 thrall and did 40 damage, you'd say, "wow, that thrall only has 50 health." Then you could shoot a level 30 Cabal and do 40 damage, and say "oh, jeez, this guy has like 300 health." See how that works? You'd have a MUCH better understanding of what it took to kill each enemy, as well as how your weapons were performing.

Again, it won't work. The game is set up such that you do much less damage to lower level enemies, in order to allow a high level player to either play with a low level player and not one shot bosses, or to not completely wreck public events in low level areas. A gun that does a fixed amount of damage completely negates this.

No matter what, there is no way to currently have a representative numerical value for how much exact damage a bullet will do. This is why the bar exists: it is telling you in relative terms how much damage your gun will do.

Actually that's not how the game is set up at all. Here's the detailed post in Reddit. Basically, in the current game, guns do X damage to enemies at or below their attack value. So if I shoot a level 33 guy with my 331 attack gun and do 10 damage, and then shoot a level 1 guy, I'll still do 10 damage to him. You only do less damage to enemies that are higher level than your attack value is scaled for. Enemies, near as I can tell, have the same health for the same type of enemy, regardless of level, so a level 1 dreg has X health and a level 30 dreg also has X health. The different types (Elder, etc.) have different base amounts of health, but enemies of the same type, regardless of level, take the same number of shots to kill as long as your gun is at or above the required attack value to deal full damage to them.

In my desired set up, the theroy of doing X damage to enemies at or below your level doesn't change. You do less damage to higher level enemies, and do the same damage to all enemies at or below your current attack value. That number, however, is much smaller than it is today in the game, because it matches the damage number in the crucible, and enemy health values are adjusted accordingly.

And it's trivial to have a representative numerical value for how much exact damage a bullet will do. That's how we know that high RoF ARs do 11 damage per shot in the crucible, compared to low RoF ARs that do 19. Here's a reddit post that links to a spreadsheet with all the data for you.

Also, that bar *is* a value, it's just not a number. Maybe it's 183/255 pixels or whatever, but it's still a quantifiable value, and I'd prefer the number to the bar, because I don't need to count pixels in a number to know the value of it.

Actually that's not how the game is set up at all. Here's the detailed post in Reddit. Basically, in the current game, guns do X damage to enemies at or below their attack value. So if I shoot a level 33 guy with my 331 attack gun and do 10 damage, and then shoot a level 1 guy, I'll still do 10 damage to him. You only do less damage to enemies that are higher level than your attack value is scaled for.

Wrong. Try it yourself. You do less damage against enemies significantly lower level than yourself. On Venus Patrol I do 1200 per critical to Goblins, while in a daily or raid where they are level 30 I do 1700. Same gun.

Enemies, near as I can tell, have the same health for the same type of enemy, regardless of level, so a level 1 dreg has X health and a level 30 dreg also has X health.

Again, this is completely wrong. A level 30 Goblin has just over 1700 HP. A level 26 Goblin has just over 1500. I can kill a Goblin on VoG normal with a Devil You Know in one shot, but that one shot, doing the exact same amount of damage (~1500), does not kill a level 30. In fact, even a 331 hand cannon the does about 1700 just barely does not kill. HP increases as level goes up, most definitely.

The different types (Elder, etc.) have different base amounts of health, but enemies of the same type, regardless of level, take the same number of shots to kill as long as your gun is at or above the required attack value to deal full damage to them.

Again, completely wrong. A 300 Devil You Know takes 2 shots to kill a level 30 Goblin, but only one to kill a level 26 Goblin. Same thing with a 331 TFWPKY, which has an attack power way higher.

All of these are as a level 32.

Actually that's not how the game is set up at all. Here's the detailed post in Reddit. Basically, in the current game, guns do X damage to enemies at or below their attack value. So if I shoot a level 33 guy with my 331 attack gun and do 10 damage, and then shoot a level 1 guy, I'll still do 10 damage to him. You only do less damage to enemies that are higher level than your attack value is scaled for.

Wrong. Try it yourself. You do less damage against enemies significantly lower level than yourself. On Venus Patrol I do 1200 per critical to Goblins, while in a daily or raid where they are level 30 I do 1700. Same gun.

Enemies, near as I can tell, have the same health for the same type of enemy, regardless of level, so a level 1 dreg has X health and a level 30 dreg also has X health.

Again, this is completely wrong. A level 30 Goblin has just over 1700 HP. A level 26 Goblin has just over 1500. I can kill a Goblin on VoG normal with a Devil You Know in one shot, but that one shot, doing the exact same amount of damage (~1500), does not kill a level 30. In fact, even a 331 hand cannon the does about 1700 just barely does not kill. HP increases as level goes up, most definitely.

The different types (Elder, etc.) have different base amounts of health, but enemies of the same type, regardless of level, take the same number of shots to kill as long as your gun is at or above the required attack value to deal full damage to them.

Again, completely wrong. A 300 Devil You Know takes 2 shots to kill a level 30 Goblin, but only one to kill a level 26 Goblin. Same thing with a 331 TFWPKY, which has an attack power way higher.

All of these are as a level 32.

Even if I assume you're correct on all of these points, none of them invalidate my desired, simpler system in any way.

Even if I assume you're correct on all of these points, none of them invalidate my desired, simpler system in any way.

It demolishes your system. Your system would ruin patrol, public events, and playing with friends who are a lower level than you.