Ok... so let me say, with all due respect,

To quote Ashley Williams, "why is it that when people say 'with all due respect' what they really mean is, 'kiss my ass'"?

that perhaps you don't know enough about multiplayer gaming to repeatedly attack me on this matter? Everything I am saying comes from a place of logical understanding of current multiplayer game design.

Except that no part of the discussion is actually about the multiplayer game design. It's not about the mechanics of shooting, it's not about the experience of playing the game a lot or a little, or being bad at it or being good at it. It's about the progression system and how it works across both the PVE and PVP portions of the game.

Absolutely central to your complaint was that you had a progression-based goal and failed to meet it because circumstances for you personally at that moment were less than ideal, and you wanted them changed to something closer to the ideal.

However the context of your complaint as described by you somewhat undermines the justification for making that change.

For instance: You pointed out that 2 hours without a win for a player of your esteemed calibre was totally without precedent. Which means that if this situation is so rare that it NEVER happened to you until now in 15 years, what possible reason would Bungie have to alter the way the progression system works to compensate for a situation that affected you once in all those thousands of hours, knowing that making that change would affect millions of others in slight ways?

I don't just bitch about videogames. I talk to designers and reviewers, I read about this stuff, I write about it, I study it as I play it and I talk about it with others who the same. You don't even play these game modes. It's fine to disagree about me, but you are slipping into attacking me directly, while I am talking about game design. Sure, "armchair game design". Is that so bad?

I find it interesting that you felt insulted by the latter portion rather than the former, especially given that armchair design is pretty much the most any of us do here, with a few notable exceptions.

The progression system works pretty much the same across game modes, and there is nothing about your complaint that was specific to the multiplayer game mode-- what you wanted changed was the way the bounties were distributed. You described it as a "design flaw"-- in other words, something done wrong in a way that either demonstrates ignorance or incompetence. I am trying, desperately, to suggest that these things were done knowingly and intentionally for certain reasons, and to point out potentially what those reasons were, and why making the change you suggested, while it might have benefited you personally at that precise moment, was not worth making that change because they chose the design to be that way for a reason, and altering it for all the other gamers in that mode does not make sense.

By putting in bounties that required victories into Iron Banner 15 months ago, Bungie knew full well that there would be some times, for some players, that advancement in terms of faction rank would be blocked for players unable to get a win. If they were unwilling to accept that circumstance they would not have created those bounties. In fact, since then, they have gone from one such bounty to two. That didn't happen by accident.

They also know that when matchmaking shoots for a 50/50 win/loss ratio when doing skill-based matchmaking, that this does not mean this average will be hit for everyone, nor will it be hit within a playing window as short as 2 hours for a single player. It's a long term thing. The idea that the bounty should be changed because of what happened to you just sounds so utterly ridiculous that I'm not only having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that you suggested it, but that you are continuing to argue for it.

Explain to me, please, what you think has happened at Bungie that led to this travesty of game design. Are they simply unaware of your plight? Did they put those bounties in there not knowing how they worked? Did they prioritize skill, connection quality, and other factors into matchmaking without realizing it might mean it would take you slightly longer than you wanted to get your fusion rifle? Does the system throw randoms into JIP games just because Bungie figured, "f*** it, we don't care about those people"? Or is it because with all the factors that need to be considered, as well as making matches in minimum time, it's simply going to happen in rare cases that people have a streak of bad luck, bad matches, bad teammates, etc?

Losing straight for 2 hours once over a course of a decade of play I still think hardly constitutes a design flaw, and the complaint contributes to the continued pollution of the term.

It is an example of matchmaking failing to work as designed... which I've already said is understandable. Matchmaking is tough, and sometimes it doesn't work properly. However, in my personal experience (which is considerable), Destiny's matchmaking is particularly problematic for solo players when compared to other online games.

Because as a game it is completely designed around the concept of a fireteam, more so than other games-- so much so that it extends deep into the PVE portion as well as the PVP portion, which is not typical for online console FPS games. Bungie has consistently (at least up until recently) resisted the urge to cater to solo players, not just in PVP content but in PVE content as well (until they gave in to requests to add matchmaking to damn near everything-- a decision I personally do not like, but that I do not term as a 'design flaw' because the reasons for doing so are clear, comprehensible and logical).

All I'm saying is that many other games (including Bungie's past games) were able to provide a more balanced and fun experience through matchmaking than Destiny often does. Others may have different experiences, and I'll totally accept that, but you've said yourself that you don't play these games at all so it strikes me that you're arguing with me simply out of a belief that "I'm wrong" with nothing to back it up.

Nothing to back it up? I'm backing up my interpretations about what Bungie's design goals are, for the purpose of judging how well their implementation of those goals are achieved by the game, by looking at the clear choices they've made-- by looking at what bounties they put into the pool. You're comparing what Bungie's design decisions have been compared to what you think they should be, not what they are.

What you mean by "nothing to back it up" with is "with fewer PVP hours than me".

Your complaint is about how progression and bounties work, and these are consistent across the game. There is absolutely nothing specific about the experience of spending thousands of hours shooting other dudes in multiplayer that applies to this evaluation. If you were talking about any of the other things about multiplayer, I wouldn't even be commenting-- weapon balance, how powerful supers are, how the scoring system works, any of dozens of other things, I might have chimed in once but I would have dropped the discussion long ago and deferred to those who play that mode more and experience those things directly more often.

But your complaint is about the need to complete a bounty, and wanting that bounty condition to be different. That is not about the multiplayer game, it's about the meta game of progression that works pretty much the same way across all of Destiny's modes, is pretty well documented and understood by the community as a whole, and although I don't play Iron Banner much, at least not recently, plenty of people still write about it and what's going on there, and I read it, and there are lots of videos to watch.

Your appeal to personal experience is meaningless unless you can explain to me how more time spent or more skill demonstrated at shooting dudes means you are more qualified to comment on the nature of how a bounty works-- otherwise what it really sounds to me like you are saying that is that I don't understand how you were feeling at that moment, unable to get a win for two hours, because I don't play the same mode.

The idea that all win-state multiplayer bounties should be removed in order to cater to this one instance is, I think, an overreaction. The idea that their presence constitutes a design flaw I think is a bit silly. Basically you're asking for a change to be made in the game that would affect all players a little bit in order to prevent it from affecting you, badly, once.

You are assuming that I am the only player that has been affected by this.

So it affected you once in 15 years, but is happening to others regularly? Are you just that much better than them? Does it affect more players than it does NOT affect, such that the change you suggest would be a net positive? Do you believe Bungie had no design goal behind including these bounties, such that they'd consider deleting them worthwhile to address your complaint? Or do you think the fact that they added one such bounty, rather than deleting the one they had, to be an indicating that they considered the design goal behind the victory bounty to be worth pursuing, despite the negative consequences for some players in certain particular situations?

You are also assuming that I want all such bounties removed...

...from Iron Banner. All two of them out of nine. Because that was both your complaint and your suggestion. The other half of your complaint was about how matchmaking works, but I think you know that's barking up the wrong tree because matchmaking is trying to do so many things that it's difficult to suggest that Bungie is just dumb and everything would be perfect if they just tweaked one thing. They are constantly changing things in a way that they think will improve things, and they have access to all the necessary data to judge how well it is performing, and the player base is so large that almost ANY change will meet with vocal complaints from one quarter or another. It is extremely difficult to judge how well the

Crucible also has such bounties, but I was only citing those in Iron Banner.

which I don't necessarily think is the answer. I have no problem with win-state bounties in general crucible, because there is not time constraint. When it comes to IB, there are other ways to solve this admittedly niche problem. Perhaps give players more than 3 IB bounties per day? Or perhaps they could still limit players to 3 IB bounties per day, but give us a larger list to choose from so we can decide which goals we want to work towards?

Let's say they had given you four, but that your IB ranking was a bit lower than it actually was. The situation could have been identical-- you would have needed one more bounty to rank up, and that bounty required a win.

Is it still a design flaw? Is it a design flaw if you needed only one more bounty, or if you needed two? What about more? What if they gave you five bounties, none that required winning, but you needed six bounties worth to rank up?

Two hours without a win for a single player across millions of player-hours is simply not statistically significant. Bungie should not be making changes based on data of that kind. Nor, as far as I can tell, do they.

Again, you're assuming this is just me? I listen to Destiny podcasts, follow streamers and players on facebook and twitter... every comment I see on the matter is that this week's IB is particularly brutal against solo players.

I'm speaking with you about your particular situation.

Players are quitting more often than usual,

Which means players are causing most of the problem by quitting. My immediate response to that would be to punish quitting more harshly, but we know that is also difficult because people will complain about that as well. Perhaps the mercy rule needs early invocation but I've also heard this week about some pretty dramatic come-from-behind wins, so that may not be warranted either.

leading to more lopsided games, mercy rule matches, and JIP instances. Forget all talk about progressing for a moment;

The entirety of your initial "design flaw" allegation related almost solely to progression, and that's the statement I started off by addressing, so, no, I'm not going to forget it.

Beyond that the only subject was in general the idea that IB should cater more to solo players simply because it allows them rather than prohibiting them, and I reject the assumption that any additional hardships solo players experience should be ameliorated simply because they are not barred from the activity completely.

these problems sap the fun out of the game. "So don't play it", you say. Fair enough. But when bring up my thoughts on how a minor change might help alleviate the frustration that some players run into from time to time, I'm "entitled".

I don't believe I've used that word even once in this thread. You have, though, at least twice.

The crux of my objection is that your minor change, multiplied by all the players it would affect in some other way, is not justified by the need to address whatever group of players you represent and the situation they faced trying to rank up on the last day while being one bounty short, because that is extremely specific. In addition I think you presumed a design goal not in evidence-- namely that the role of IB bounties was to exclusively guarantee daily solo progress.

I've made those points over and over, showing how what Bungie has actually done in setting up the mode and the bounties it offers seems to indicate their design goals are different than you suggest, but you keep repeating the same things over and over, as if Bungie's design goals ought to be what you think they are, or what you wish they were.

I already wrote this in another thread, but in case you didn't see it, my thoughts basically boil down to this:

If I was having a beer with Luke Smith and I said "Dude, I played Iron Banner for over 2 hours today and didn't make a single point of progress towards my rep or bounties", I'm don't think his reaction would be "that's fine". I think the men and women at Bungie want to know about these little issues, rare as they are, so they do as much as possible to smooth out all the little rough edges in the game. I'm not ranting about "my own annoying experience". I'm pointing it out because it would suck for other players to run into the same problem.

He probably wouldn't say that because I think enough people already have called him and others in the development community (I'm thinking Adam Orth here) for flippant replies that seem to indicate that people should "get over it" when they have a bad time.

On the other hand, I'd be willing to wager something fairly significant that Bungie has all the data it needs to track players, how quickly they do or do not progress, and has had that information flowing in over the last year plus the game has been out, and the several instances of the Iron Banner activity already held.

I think one of two things are the case:

1) Either this situation is as rare for other players as it was for you, meaning it is not experienced by enough players to warrant making such a change;

2) This situation is MORE common than you think, but it is not outside the range of Bungie's expectations for solo players in the activity.

That Bungie has added, rather than remove, the particular class of bounty you objected to, indicates they are moving the activity in the opposite direction than the goals you believe they have. So either Bungie really has no idea what they are doing at all, or you've made an incorrect assumption about what the design goals for solo players in Iron Banner are.

That said, I think we've both asserted our respective positions about as well as we can without being able to convince each other, and we're probably just yelling in the wind at this point. Sorry about that.