In the wake of our discussions since this week's live stream, a few questions have been floating around in my head. It seems to me that any time the topic of acquiring gear is raised, some dust gets kicked into the air around here (and anywhere else where people talk about this game). In particular, it seems the nature of "leveling up" combined with an RNG loot system is always a hot topic, even a sore spot for many people who otherwise love this game. Add the slightest hint of microtransactions seeping into this system, and things get noticeably more volatile.

So I've been trying to pull back a bit and nail down exactly how I feel about these issues, both in relation to Destiny as well as other games. The first questions I asked myself is:

"do I enjoy leveling up in Destiny?"

I understand that "leveling up" is generally seen as a core aspect of RPGs, and Destiny does have 1 leg deep into the RPG side of things, but I don't think I actually enjoy the dynamic it brings to this game. Leveling up often plays into the idea of building a character, increasing their skills and abilities... essentially its about becoming more than we were at the start of the game. I like all of that. But I don't think having a light level tied to our gear or our guardian is really in service of any of that.

Imagine a version of Destiny that existed without any form of rank or light levels. Our guardians could still unlock new abilities in our skill trees as we play. We could still acquire new, better gear that is more powerful or has unique perks or abilities. We could still "become more than we were" over the course of the game without having a 3 digit number assigned to all of our stuff.

This leads me to ask myself:

"what does the rank and light level system really add to Destiny?"

This is where things get sticky for me. I can't think of a single positive thing that this system brings to the game (for me personally... that's part of what I want to hear from you all about). I know there is a basic reaction in our lizard brains that makes us happy to see numbers going up... but is that really all it accomplishes? I mean aside from the arguably negative aspects? It helps reinforce the idea that we should treat this game like running a treadmill. It encourages players to replay activities they might not actually want to do, because that activity is the only available way to get their numbers up higher. Some of us fall deeper into this trap than others, but I'd say it's something we all consider or think about as we play the game. The whole question of "What do I feel like doing" vs "what activity will actually help me level up/progress". I bet that for most of us, this question is at least a part of our thought process fairly frequently. Am I wrong about that? Am I the only one who feels like perhaps the game would be more fun if that questions wasn't part of the equation?

Of course, I can't think about leveling up and progressing in Destiny without thinking about RNG. So I ask myself:

"In what ways is Destiny better thanks to RNG?"

I love the gear in Destiny. I love the way a new gun or piece of armor can transform the way we play. I love the way building a wide and diverse arsenal plays into the feeling of becoming "more than we were" over the course of the game. And now, after 18 months with this game, I am 100% convinced that RNG does nothing but interfere with this process. So much of the way we acquire and upgrade gear in this game is so clearly designed around the goal of "keeping us on the treadmill" rather than "giving us fun stuff to play with". Setting aside the completionist tendencies that some players fall into, I can't think of a single positive effect that RNG-dependent gear acquisition has on the game. As MacAddictXIV said in another thread, "you have to remember that for some people, getting items is the achievement". Except all too often in Destiny, it isn't. Winning the lottery is not an achievement. Black Spindle is an achievement. Sleeper Simulant is an achievement. Only a handful of other weapons can be "earned", the rest are pure luck.

Imagine if every gun, every piece of gear in Destiny could either be purchased from Vendors or earned through guaranteed, direct in-game actions and accomplishments. Bungie could still add random drops into the mix... they could exist as a nice little "icing on the cake", while we could treat the vendors as our main source of gear acquisition (if you go back to interviews in late 2014, that is precisely the dynamic that Bungie said they were aiming for). "But if people could easily get the gear they want, they'd stop playing" is the common response to this issue. Nonsense. Did picking up a BR in Halo make any of us say "well I've used that now, guess I don't need to play anymore". I've said this many times before: having a gun isn't fun, using it is. If we didn't need to replay certain activities countless times just to get the gear we want to use, then we wouldn't be so burned out on them and we'd have more space to actually use these fun tools and toys doing things we're still excited to do for the fun of it.

What I'm driving at here is that perhaps the reason these and other forums get so contentious about issues regarding gear and leveling up is that Bungie has brought these systems into Destiny in a way that is inherently contentious? I constantly see people arguing over how bad or not so bad some of these systems are... but I rarely see anyone say they actually like them. That's where I'd really love to hear from any of you willing to share your thoughts. Do any of you enjoy the RNG-based loot system (enough to say that you would prefer it over the more direct alternative I suggested above). What are your thoughts on the 1-40 progression and light levels? Do you enjoy what they bring to the game, and if so, why? I'd love to hear some different perspectives on this.

"But if people could easily get the gear they want, they'd stop playing" is the common response to this issue. Nonsense. Did picking up a BR in Halo make any of us say "well I've used that now, guess I don't need to play anymore". I've said this many times before: having a gun isn't fun, using it is. If we didn't need to replay certain activities countless times just to get the gear we want to use, then we wouldn't be so burned out on them and we'd have more space to actually use these fun tools and toys doing things we're still excited to do for the fun of it.

It would be even more fun to use guns if they were not acquired by RNG, because the scenario design could be such that, knowing players will have such and such a gun, you would have to really master or even abuse the mechanics of the gun to succeed.

Take a game like Megaman X. There are tons of secret areas that are only accessible by mastering the usage of special weapons. Many have secondary functions. For instance, in x4 you get a spider web that hangs in the air and can block bullets. But you can also wall jump off of it. So, there is one secret where you have to shoot webs and place them such that you can climb walls of spikes to get to the end.

Through the game, you will always get that weapon. So you can design cool things that push design to the limits and really make people utilize their tools in creative ways.

I think the same could be done for both guns and abilities in Destiny. And it would be even cooler, because you are not just USING the guns and abilities, but you are pushing them to the absolute limit! And that is a great feeling, not just of using a tool, but of creatively exploiting it. This is also why perks that simply increase damage / range / etc are boring. They don't give you a new tool to play with.

"do I enjoy leveling up in Destiny?"

Not in the current system. I preferred it at launch.

I understand that "leveling up" is generally seen as a core aspect of RPGs, and Destiny does have 1 leg deep into the RPG side of things, but I don't think I actually enjoy the dynamic it brings to this game. Leveling up often plays into the idea of building a character, increasing their skills and abilities... essentially its about becoming more than we were at the start of the game. I like all of that. But I don't think having a light level tied to our gear or our guardian is really in service of any of that.

I do.

Imagine a version of Destiny that existed without any form of rank or light levels. Our guardians could still unlock new abilities in our skill trees as we play. We could still acquire new, better gear that is more powerful or has unique perks or abilities. We could still "become more than we were" over the course of the game without having a 3 digit number assigned to all of our stuff.

This sounds awful. Needs numbers so we can analyze the stats. It's a loot game where we keep an inventory. It's not Halo or Doom. There are thousands of guns and they need to be comparable.

This leads me to ask myself:

"what does the rank and light level system really add to Destiny?"

Difficulty choice in an online only game.

"In what ways is Destiny better thanks to RNG?"

It keeps the game interesting in that you can get really fun weapon mods, and it varies rewards. I do not like random damage and defense numbers.

In decreasing the randomness of gun perks and rewards from launch to HOW and then TTK, it forced them to remove the possibility of the overpowered rolls, like a field scout outlaw crowd control Timur's Lash, making the guns largely identical and less fun. Instead of trying for that chance at a god roll and enjoying the use of your great gun, people are grinding for a guaranteed drop of a good roll for a particular type of engagement. The things like rerolling guns introduced in HOW and the guaranteed loot of TTK ruined really good random guns.

I preferred it at launch. Blues were common, purples were legitimately rare. This allowed the vendors to sell pretty damn good guns, as they were rare as fuck. Now the vendor guns suck because marks are easy to get and purples are easy to buy and acquire. Compare your Hung Jury to the alphabet soup. It's not even close. The patch guaranteeing purple engrams dropped as purple engrams was the beginning of the end of my love for Destiny's randomness.

In the end game right now, there's too much randomness in the numbers, which is why they introduced challenge mode. In my ideal destiny, there is no need for challenge mode. There is a kill Templar with no teleports exotic chest, and raid guns drop at near max light but are upgraded to maximum light using materials and experience. They are on an even light playing field.

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This sounds awful. Needs numbers so we can analyze the stats. It's a loot game where we keep an inventory. It's not Halo or Doom. There are thousands of guns and they need to be comparable.

To me that sounds awful. Comparing stats to determine which gun to use is not nearly as fun as using the gun and seeing what it can do. If you need stats to see any sort of difference, then the guns are too similar and should be made to work differently. I want to shoot stuff, not run a spreadsheet.

Bungie made Destiny the wrong genre. It should have been an RPG with heavy FPS elements right from the beginning rather than an MMO.

Imagine a version of Destiny that existed without any form of rank or light levels. Our guardians could still unlock new abilities in our skill trees as we play. We could still acquire new, better gear that is more powerful or has unique perks or abilities. We could still "become more than we were" over the course of the game without having a 3 digit number assigned to all of our stuff.

This sounds awful. Needs numbers so we can analyze the stats. It's a loot game where we keep an inventory. It's not Halo or Doom. There are thousands of guns and they need to be comparable.

Would it not still be possible to compare weapons on a granular level without having a "318" next to it? What I mean is, there are still plenty of ways to make a gun different from the others or more powerful than others without having a global light level attached to it. A 320 Black Spindle does more damage than a 320 Thousand Yard Stare, for example, because it has a higher impact rating.

This leads me to ask myself:

"what does the rank and light level system really add to Destiny?"

Difficulty choice in an online only game.

I'm not sure I agree with this one, because of the way Destiny handles power leveling. If I jump into Old Russia, I am no more effective against level 2 enemies now than I was back when I was level 8. On the flip side, levels do give them a way to "gate" certain areas, but they could still do that without a level 1-40 system or a light level system. We could still acquire guns that do more damage and armor that provides more health over the course of the game, without tying any kind of 1-40 or light level system to it.

I'd prefer it if Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay had a detailed levelling system, weapon mods, advanced conversations, an open world, and a turn based damage system.

It's not helpful though, because that kind of stuff is not good for the type of game Riddick was. It was, for better or worse, a standard FPS. I just would have liked it more as an RPG because I like RPGs.

Destiny is an MMORPG. It is not Halo. It's not Need for Speed. It's not Crash Bandicoot. Some things work in some genres, some things work in other genres.

Imagine a version of Destiny that existed without any form of rank or light levels. Our guardians could still unlock new abilities in our skill trees as we play. We could still acquire new, better gear that is more powerful or has unique perks or abilities. We could still "become more than we were" over the course of the game without having a 3 digit number assigned to all of our stuff.

This sounds awful. Needs numbers so we can analyze the stats. It's a loot game where we keep an inventory. It's not Halo or Doom. There are thousands of guns and they need to be comparable.

Would it not still be possible to compare weapons on a granular level without having a "318" next to it? What I mean is, there are still plenty of ways to make a gun different from the others or more powerful than others without having a global light level attached to it. A 320 Black Spindle does more damage than a 320 Thousand Yard Stare, for example, because it has a higher impact rating.

Yeah, it would, but you couldn't remove them entirely, however. Legendaries could do a base damage, then increase in damage as you upgrade them. You need a way to explain the damage increase and compare the damage of an un upgraded legendary to an upgraded blue. It could be done with a bar, but that requires comparisons to gear you already have. This would be fine, but not optimal.

This leads me to ask myself:

"what does the rank and light level system really add to Destiny?"

Difficulty choice in an online only game.

I'm not sure I agree with this one, because of the way Destiny handles power leveling. If I jump into Old Russia, I am no more effective against level 2 enemies now than I was back when I was level 8.

Yep. Sounds fine to me. Still very easy but fun to kill.

On the flip side, levels do give them a way to "gate" certain areas, but they could still do that without a level 1-40 system or a light level system. We could still acquire guns that do more damage and armor that provides more health over the course of the game, without tying any kind of 1-40 or light level system to it.

That's true. We could come up with a way of assigning a value to that particular gear signaling it allows you to take more damage or do more damage. Maybe we could use letters.

Imagine a version of Destiny that existed without any form of rank or light levels. Our guardians could still unlock new abilities in our skill trees as we play. We could still acquire new, better gear that is more powerful or has unique perks or abilities. We could still "become more than we were" over the course of the game without having a 3 digit number assigned to all of our stuff.

This sounds awful. Needs numbers so we can analyze the stats. It's a loot game where we keep an inventory. It's not Halo or Doom. There are thousands of guns and they need to be comparable.

Would it not still be possible to compare weapons on a granular level without having a "318" next to it? What I mean is, there are still plenty of ways to make a gun different from the others or more powerful than others without having a global light level attached to it. A 320 Black Spindle does more damage than a 320 Thousand Yard Stare, for example, because it has a higher impact rating.

Yeah, it would, but you couldn't remove them entirely, however. Legendaries could do a base damage, then increase in damage as you upgrade them. You need a way to explain the damage increase and compare the damage of an un upgraded legendary to an upgraded blue. It could be done with a bar, but that requires comparisons to gear you already have. This would be fine, but not optimal.

I guess what I'm thinking here is that we have all these stats and ways to compare weapons, but they're tough to understand when you add extra layer of light level values. I can compare 2 sniper rifles and say "well this one has higher impact, so it does more damage... except its only 305, while the other one is 312, so now I have no idea which one does more damage". It just seems like a needless complication to me.

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Not sure I follow you there. How does light level unify the PvE and PvP sides of the game?

Crucible is light level independent. It allows you to play how you want, except for special modes. They do damage based on impact alone.

In vanguard, guns do damage because of both light level and impact. The two ratings are needed to keep this aspect of the game intact.

I've been trying for months now to RNG a 1000-yd stare with ShortGaze (since I prefer that scope) and I've probably bought a dozen or more legendary special engrams and haven't even dropped one, let alone one with the scope I want. It just seems pointless when I have a gunsmith who in a real life scenario I would be like, "What would it take to modify this gun?". You could send me on a ridiculous quest, but at least I'd be guaranteed to have the equipment I want to use when I'm done.

Same thing with armor, it'd be nice to be able to adjust Intellect/Discipline/Strength rolls. Maybe instead of RNG, each item has a set amount of points on it that can be distributed by the user across all 3 (or across a max of 2 which armor currently has). This reminds me of Mass Effect where you spent points on your talent tree.

Bungie made Destiny the wrong genre. It should have been an RPG with heavy FPS elements right from the beginning rather than an MMO.

So you are saying it should never have had multiplayer or Co-op? I say this because the challenge, and I can understand why people were exited that Bungie merged MMO and FPS, is that FPS has a strong multiplayer following (which bungie knows all to well) but that does NOT mix with RPG when it comes to balancing stuff.

Destiny would 100% be a better game without Light Level and the current loot system. Bungie made arguably the best FPS ever, and nearly ruined it by making it an absolutely terrible loot game. That it's still an incredibly fun game is credit to its moment to money gameplay and despite its terrible loot mechanics. RNG sucks, running the same strikes over and over and over, no matter how fun they are, to get good drops sucks. Destiny would be a far better game if it was more straightforward.

I find it really difficult to articulate my thoughts on this matter. I'm not sure why. Partly it's because I don't actually have a better solution, but I can pretty confidently say the one they've implemented sucks.

In a lot of ways, I still wish Destiny was structured much closer to Borderlands. That's what I originally envisioned. Large interconnected areas with actual characters inhabiting them, interacting with those characters, getting quests from them. That still sounds so cool to me, and better than the way Destiny is actually structured.

Maybe that's just me though. I still really enjoy Destiny, but I've long ago accepted that it's not the game I actually wanted.

Bungie made Destiny the wrong genre. It should have been an RPG with heavy FPS elements right from the beginning rather than an MMO.

So you are saying it should never have had multiplayer or Co-op? I say this because the challenge, and I can understand why people were exited that Bungie merged MMO and FPS, is that FPS has a strong multiplayer following (which bungie knows all to well) but that does NOT mix with RPG when it comes to balancing stuff.

No actually. Ideally it would have been co-op ONLY. Mandatory. Designed from the ground up to be a group game. Competitive multiplayer would have its own set of guns that are exclusive to it. The story mode items would not cross over at all.

I hope to expound on this more later when I'm not at work, but there are two very positive things that the current system does for Destiny.

First, by setting pace for how quickly content can be consumed, it helps foster a sense of community. By slowing down the chuggings and pushing forward the sippers, Bungie is hoping we all have a chance to experience their premier 6 player coop activities.

Second, there are many of us who don't mind a bit of extra motivation to do things we thought were fun, but may have forgot about, or perhaps missed the first time.

Don't peel back too many layers. A magic trick is never as fun to watch if you fully understand how it works. =)

If you do want to truly understand and go down this rabbit hole, I recommend reading The Art of Game Design. You can find it as a PDF out there or pick it up from amazon or something. See page 102-103 for some standard enticements in game design.

I think the light level and loot system are about giving destiny meaning. Cyber made the comment Tuesday night "What made Halo 3 so popular for so long for their online multiplayer?" I think for Halo 3 that is a very carefully crafted eco-system/sandbox that people enjoy playing in. The rewards for playing multi-player Halo aren't loot or levels. They are more social and competitive in nature. Which appeals to some, but not others. Destiny is shooting for a different (more diverse) audience.

We know destiny is meant to "be a hobby". Part of the design is to entice you to play. Part of that enticement is an artificial economy, with artificial scarcity, and RNG based rewards, to make players do things an average of n times. If you're not a PvP person, destiny with no RNG would be a really short game. Different aspects of destiny appeal to different players. Look at PoE or Trials as an example. Some would rather die than play trials but love PoE. Others hate PoE but love Trials. Those are two very different games within the same game engine and universe. Bungie has done a great job of taking a common denominator (player avatars + equipment) and making a number of different sub-game types with them.

This is why they bounce back and forth between PvE and PvP centric updates. This is why they release light level stuff dropping in all areas (Trials, IB, KF, PoE, Strikes) To try and keep everyone happy doing what they want to be doing.

Through it all though, the "progression" needs to be largely tied to your avatar. That's where the MMORPG stuff comes in. Reputation, glimmer, weapons and armor, consumables. Light level, both for yourself and items, is a way to give meaning to the time you've spent playing destiny. And just like real life, spending lots of time in some areas only gets you so far, while in others it gets you way further ahead. That's part of why micro-transactions are such knee-jerk to many. It's like paying to get into a different bracket as opposed to playing to be in a different bracket here.

Interesting stuff, and I've got plenty more to say on all this, but I should also work. ;)

First, by setting pace for how quickly content can be consumed, it helps foster a sense of community. By slowing down the chuggings and pushing forward the sippers, Bungie is hoping we all have a chance to experience their premier 6 player coop activities.

This problem could have taken care of itself had the whole game been like the raids: mandatory co-op with no matchmaking. The organizing of players would have slowed down the pace at which you could play simply by virtue of having to get people to play with. The game would have had to feature a tool where you can meet players with similar skill and schedules, but nothing would have been matchmade.

destiny with no RNG would be a really short game.

Length has nothing to do with game quality. I know tons of great short games and tons of shitty long ones.

destiny with no RNG would be a really short game.

Length has nothing to do with game quality. I know tons of great short games and tons of shitty long ones.

Point on that is that destiny, as intended, is not meant to be a short game. It's elongated by the RNG and light level systems. You may have missed some of the nuances of my post there. =)

destiny with no RNG would be a really short game.

Length has nothing to do with game quality. I know tons of great short games and tons of shitty long ones.

Point on that is that destiny, as intended, is not meant to be a short game. It's elongated by the RNG and light level systems. You may have missed some of the nuances of my post there. =)

Right, but they are simply aiming to make the game way too long. There reaches a point where it becomes too much, and making your game shorter would benefit. The good developers know this. The bad ones try to elongate the game so players have a higher hours played stat. After the influx of overly long JRPGs following Final Fantasy 7, I thought that the resulting backlash over time bloat in games would take. But it hasn't.

"do I enjoy leveling up in Destiny?"

"what does the rank and light level system really add to Destiny?"

I have an entire philosophy of character levels, and I can explain why I don't like how they're used in Destiny.

In short: Levels are how RPGs can automatically adjust difficulty to individual players' skills. An average level 10 player will be in a fair fight against level 10 enemies, will likely lose to level 11 enemies, and should be able to handle level 9 enemies without fear. A great level 10 player should be able to handle level 12 enemies, and a terrible level 10 player should just barely be able to get past level 8 enemies.

It's sort of a "water finds its level" issue. The numbers let players know how challenging a particular encounter is going to be. But - of note - this only works *if you can outlevel the enemies to make the fights easier* and *if you can find enemies who outlevel you to make the fights harder*.

Destiny doesn't do this (lots of games don't actually, and I think they're all missing the value of levels as a result, but I digress). In Destiny, once you outlevel something, they all are brought up to your level, effectively. So there's a floor of enemy difficulty which prevents outleveling. Personally, I find this floor to be pretty low, but that doesn't actually matter. Once you're level 40, there is no functional difference between fighting level 1 enemies and level 30 enemies, as long as they're the same type. Similarly, the difficulty of fighting higher level enemies disappears because the areas with higher level enemies are fixed in place. If I want to play a patrol with all level 41 or higher enemies, I can't. It doesn't exist. Sure the raids have higher enemies, but once the skilled players have outgeared that, there is no further challenge. There is no endless mode. The levels no longer matter.

Destiny then takes it one step farther (ridiculously so) by adding in "light levels" which is a parallel leveling system that functions identically to character levels but is based on your gear and not your "experience". This system is broken for two main reasons: First, gear is a reward for defeating enemies, which means the bad player who is light 300 but can't defeat light level 300 enemies is never going to get the gear he needs to get up to light 320 in order to beat those enemies. Unlike experience, which can be farmed from lower level enemies, gear drops simply do not work that way. You get better gear from harder enemies. This creates the "haves" and "have nots" of Destiny, and completely defeats the gameplay value of having levels to begin with. Second, the light level system is otherwise functionally the same as the character level system, meaning that once you hit character level 40 (ostensibly "max level") you then have to start grinding your light levels up to 320 to achieve progression. It's silly. Oh, you're done leveling? Guess again!

This second tier of leveling progression is hampered in the way I previously described, which results in many players feeling stuck (forever 309, anyone?), and serves to widen the gear gap between players who are already more skilled and those who are not. The result is a blatantly unbalanced PvP game where better players also have better gear than the already worse players who also have worse gear. There is no path in Destiny for a bad player with lots of time and dedication to get better gear. Their only vector for improvement is raw FPS skill. That's totally fine as a vector for improvement, but if that's the only means you give a player, why have levels in the first place?!

What's even nuttier is that Bungie recognized that some players are stuck at lower light levels and are disadvantaged in PvP, and recognized that they weren't having fun, but instead of fixing their poor and ineffective end game light progression design, they implemented skill based matchmaking, which is absolutely contrary to the concept of having levels. The good player who earned that good gear are stuck playing against other good players, which effectively nullifies the value of having good gear. If everyone is level 320, there is no gear advantage - again, why have levels at all if this is the intent of the design? While SBMM theoretically allows truly terrible players with high light level gear to play against high skill players with low light level gear for fair fights, in practice it sucks because (a) achieving high light level as a high skill player is relatively easy and (b) it's nearly impossible for a low light player with low skill to get high light gear in the first place.

So Bungie has created a world of haves and have nots, but has then cordoned them off into two separate worlds that make the having or not having meaningless. It's poor design and implementation, and reeks of a lack of vision as to how they wanted the endgame to play.

"In what ways is Destiny better thanks to RNG?"

Now we're narrowing in on loot. Above, I discussed how "easy" it is for a high skill player to get high light level gear and thus dominate the universe. But that's not exactly true. There are precious few guaranteed drops in Destiny, and the vast majority of those are light 280, low by all standards. After that, there are no more guaranteed RNG light level drops. You can get one ToM at 310. Three swords at 310. And one quest 310 relic. Unless you really want to destroy those items, you're stuck with that if the RNG gods screw you over. Challenge modes guarantee a 320 relic, so there's that, but it's only one small slot. You rely on RNG fully for secondary weapon, helm, gloves, chest, boots, class item, and ghost light levels.

Caveat: Prior to light 290, the light level of RNG drops was skewed towards being higher than what you currently had. That was GOOD design. It gave you gear progression. Personally, though, I think it went by way too quickly. Why have 320 light levels if you're going to be light 200 already when you hit character level 40, and then increase your light by chunks of 5, 10, 15, and 20 with each new piece of gear? Why not just have 15 light levels? Or 10? The whole point of having lots of levels is to give players a much longer sense of progression, not to give them bigger numbers right away.

Speed of gains aside, leveling up to 290 was fun, consistent, and rewarding. Leveling past 290 has sucked fat donkey dick. And yes, that's a technical term.

RNG loot needs a finger on the scale towards progression. Not just to help lower skill players, but also to reward high skill players. It is not fun to bust your ass to beat a boss who by all rights should own you since you're such low level only to see him drop useless gear, just as it's not fun to run nightfalls for weeks on end only to get 13 strange coins and a handful of low light level ghost shells. I'm sorry, but Destiny's core gameplay is not fun enough to prop up the endless grind of farming which is practically required by the game. This leads to a whole different discussion I don't care to rehash here. Needless to say I don't think anyone "had fun" farming up the 10 rare materials they needed for their exotic swords, but we all did it anyway because those swords are some of the very coolest weapons in the game, and are guaranteed. Farming raids for drops is even worse: There's no guarantee you'll get the item you want, nor is there a guarantee that you'll get it at a light level that makes it usable.

Which is another BIG issue with both RNG and Levels in Destiny: Weapon power relies on both. I don't give a shit if you're the best player on earth, you will never even try to use a light level 5 gun. You simply wouldn't bother. And what's the point of having to level up guns in order to unlock perks? That's fine if everyone can get those guns and you've got a limited availability so that people are constantly working towards them, but neither of those things are the case here, and when you're playing a min/max game that requires time investment in your weapons, that's it - you're stuck thinking "this gun looks like it might be cool, but I don't have the perks unlocked and it's such low light level..." The value judgement isn't on the actual merits of the weapon design at all, but rather on how much you have to invest in order to even properly evaluate and compare the weapon to what you already have.

"But you can just use some motes of light to level it up" is the logical argument to make here. True, but if leveling the guns is so easy, I ask again: Why should you even have to level them up at all?

Leveling up should be rewarding, but not required. It should serve to find a skill-based balance point for all players relative to enemies, and in PvP it should serve as a matchmaking barometer. In casual play negate level advantages and then skill is the deciding factor. Eliminate SBMM in order to get a healthy mix of players, give players a "rematch" vote option or simply rebalance teams after every game (while you're at it, put in map voting for crying out loud). Then also feature a ranked play option where fireteams can compete against similarly ranked players on a ladder system that resets every few weeks or months. Again, no SBMM here, just match by average ladder ranking of each team's members. An ELO system is great for this (but don't hide the numbers, let players see them).

/soapbox

Crucible is light level independent. It allows you to play how you want, except for special modes. They do damage based on impact alone.

In vanguard, guns do damage because of both light level and impact. The two ratings are needed to keep this aspect of the game intact.

What I'm thinking though is that I would prefer a system where in Vanguard, impact is all. If you removed light levels from the game, you could still have some weapons do more damage than others, and that info could be more directly and accurately communicated through the weapon's stat tree. So my green hand cannon would have far lower impact than my blue HCs or purple HCs, for example.

What got me thinking about his was the point in the stream where they reintroduced some Year 1 legendaries at level 330. On the one hand, I'm excited to get to try some of these guns because I missed them the first time around. But if I put on my "skeptical" hat, it is a little too easy to for me to wonder "just what are they giving us?". Bungie is giving us the ability to grind, yet again, for weapons that many of us already have (or have had in the past). Weapons that we were able to acquire through the grace of RNG, then sunk hours into grinding to earn the materials and XP to upgrade them, only to later delete many of them because the numbers above the new enemies' heads were higher than the numbers on the gun. Now we get to do all that again... and that's a good thing? (again, I'm playing Devil's advocate a little bit here. My feelings on it are mixed).

If there were no light levels, this loop couldn't possibly exist. Bungie could still release new content and new gear to go along with it. But the new gear wouldn't automatically make the old gear obsolete. Ironically, that right there is one of the only possible arguments I can think of in favor of light levels... it gives Bungie a way to cycle old gear out of relevance in favor of new gear (It's the only reason we don't still see Ice Breakers and Gjallarhorns everywhere). Personally, I think what we have now is a bit of a case of "throwing the baby out with the bath water". I'd rather have new gear that can co-exist along side all the stuff we've already got. If an old weapon is too powerful, tweak it. It would also mean that new gear would need to be actually new, and not just the same archetypes and specs with a higher light level attached.

If there were no light levels, this loop couldn't possibly exist. Bungie could still release new content and new gear to go along with it. But the new gear wouldn't automatically make the old gear obsolete. Ironically, that right there is one of the only possible arguments I can think of in favor of light levels...

This is also an indication that the game is too long. If you can't make new guns that are demonstrably different in ways other than a bigger number, than you've done all you can with the framework you have. Those new weapons in Halo 4 and 5 that were really just old weapons added nothing. In such case, you need to design a new game because all your ideas for the old one are spent.

destiny with no RNG would be a really short game.

Length has nothing to do with game quality. I know tons of great short games and tons of shitty long ones.

Point on that is that destiny, as intended, is not meant to be a short game. It's elongated by the RNG and light level systems. You may have missed some of the nuances of my post there. =)

Right, but they are simply aiming to make the game way too long. There reaches a point where it becomes too much, and making your game shorter would benefit. The good developers know this. The bad ones try to elongate the game so players have a higher hours played stat. After the influx of overly long JRPGs following Final Fantasy 7, I thought that the resulting backlash over time bloat in games would take. But it hasn't.

I think having people play as much as possible is exactly what Bungie wants. They want an MMO-style world that contains lots of random players at any given time.

So I guess, yeah, a different game could be different. But I thought we were talking about why destiny is what it is, not what it isn't or could be.

I hope to expound on this more later when I'm not at work, but there are two very positive things that the current system does for Destiny.

First, by setting pace for how quickly content can be consumed, it helps foster a sense of community. By slowing down the chuggings and pushing forward the sippers, Bungie is hoping we all have a chance to experience their premier 6 player coop activities.

Second, there are many of us who don't mind a bit of extra motivation to do things we thought were fun, but may have forgot about, or perhaps missed the first time.

All good points. My feeling however is that these things can be accomplished without ranks or light levels. I think Bungie was really on to something with the original PoE token system: once per week, doing this activity would give you a token which you could use to buy a piece of gear from the vendor. The gear available at the vender rotates weekly. A system like that still has the timed aspect that encourages players to replay every week, and motivates players by saying "if you don't play this week, you'll miss out on your reward!". But it is completely separate from any form of level or rank motivation, AND it isn't dependent on RNG in any way. I'd love to see Bungie explore that system further.

In short: Levels are how RPGs can automatically adjust difficulty to individual players' skills.

This is only tangentially true and not the main reason.

Levels and stats are a way of indicating your avatar has gotten stronger. This made sense in tabletop games, because your character would get more skilled as he or she adventured in terms of the role playing. Because you are interacting through an abstracted system, you aren't actually improving your sword skills for example, but your character in the game world would be. Hence, levels.

In early games and most RPGs, the interaction with the game is primitive. MMO and JRPGs are very simply strategy games if you remove levels from the equation. Like, stupidly simple. Thus, because the systems are easily mastered, levels are added in to counteract that and give the illusion of difficulty and progression.

But in an FPS environment where you direct control your character, and a great deal of how you perform is up to YOU not your avatar, leveling has no place at all. Leveling was always there for an in world narrative reason, never for challenge. It became a challenge issue because early RPGs were crude, and thus the only challenge it could really provide were from over leveled enemies.

Using levels in this way is a crutch for bad design, but necessary because the games would suck otherwise. Better solution in action games is what we have had for years: selectable difficulty levels.

Avatar progression in action games is not always bad, but it must make the game more challenging rather than making it easier. The more skills you get, the tougher and more diverse the challenges you face.

destiny with no RNG would be a really short game.

Length has nothing to do with game quality. I know tons of great short games and tons of shitty long ones.

Point on that is that destiny, as intended, is not meant to be a short game. It's elongated by the RNG and light level systems. You may have missed some of the nuances of my post there. =)

Right, but they are simply aiming to make the game way too long. There reaches a point where it becomes too much, and making your game shorter would benefit. The good developers know this. The bad ones try to elongate the game so players have a higher hours played stat. After the influx of overly long JRPGs following Final Fantasy 7, I thought that the resulting backlash over time bloat in games would take. But it hasn't.

I think having people play as much as possible is exactly what Bungie wants. They want an MMO-style world that contains lots of random players at any given time.

So I guess, yeah, a different game could be different. But I thought we were talking about why destiny is what it is, not what it isn't or could be.

Personally, I'm coming at it from a different angle than Cody. I'm happy with Destiny being a game that I spend loads of time playing... I just wish there wasn't such a substantial portion of that time that felt needlessly frustrating to me. I could be totally wrong, but I don't think removing RNG or Light Levels would cause me to spend less time playing. I believe I would play just as much, but enjoy my collective time with the game even more.

destiny with no RNG would be a really short game.

Length has nothing to do with game quality. I know tons of great short games and tons of shitty long ones.

Point on that is that destiny, as intended, is not meant to be a short game. It's elongated by the RNG and light level systems. You may have missed some of the nuances of my post there. =)

Right, but they are simply aiming to make the game way too long. There reaches a point where it becomes too much, and making your game shorter would benefit. The good developers know this. The bad ones try to elongate the game so players have a higher hours played stat. After the influx of overly long JRPGs following Final Fantasy 7, I thought that the resulting backlash over time bloat in games would take. But it hasn't.

I think having people play as much as possible is exactly what Bungie wants. They want an MMO-style world that contains lots of random players at any given time.

That is a goal that sounds cool, but is impossible in practice without creating a grindy game full of 'frictions'. You simply cannot make stuff as fast as people will play it. Thus, you need to make them play it over and over.

So I guess, yeah, a different game could be different. But I thought we were talking about why destiny is what it is, not what it isn't or could be.

What it is (an MMO) is stupid. The fact that it is mostly fun is a testament to Bungie's skill at making action games despite it being a shitty genre.

In short: Levels are how RPGs can automatically adjust difficulty to individual players' skills.

This is tangental, and not the original intent of leveling.

In tabletop games, your character would, in terms of the narrative, get stronger and better over time. But you as a player aren't shooting bows or swinging swords, so levels were used as a way to indicate that. The system of interaction was abstract, such that what you as a player do has no bearing on what your avatar does.

Fast forward to early RPGs. Leveling was necessary for challenge, because without leveling they'd be dead simple strategy games. This holds true for all JRPGs and MMOs to this day. Remove leveling, and it would become instantly apparent every one of these games sucks. So leveling was necessary, or else players would master your simple shitty systems in like two seconds.

But action games like FPS have a continuity of action between the player and the avatar. YOU large determine your success in an FPS for example, by getting better at moving and aiming. Your skill, not the avatars. Thus, leveling is not needed because the progression comes from you.

This is why action games had a selectable difficulty setting, and not leveling - they were not simple shitty games.

There are games that do avatar progression well. The secret is that progression makes the game more challenging. You acquire new abilities, and so can face more challenging scenarios. This is in contrast to games with leveling, in which you are simply facing more difficult situations that are no more challenging.

I've been trying for months now to RNG a 1000-yd stare with ShortGaze (since I prefer that scope) and I've probably bought a dozen or more legendary special engrams and haven't even dropped one, let alone one with the scope I want

I'm not sure if you've figured this out. But RNG hates you. See the black hammer as an example.

Then I turn around and pull this from a blue engram.

(Longview SLR10, Army of One, Snapshot, Hidden Hand)

It just seems pointless when I have a gunsmith who in a real life scenario I would be like, "What would it take to modify this gun?". You could send me on a ridiculous quest, but at least I'd be guaranteed to have the equipment I want to use when I'm done.

I've always thought this was a major oversight on Bungie's part. At least we have the ability to purchase weapon parts now, plus you can earn rep and get the exotic quests from them. Still, It seems like such a huge missed opportunity to not allow the gun smith to make a weapon you want. Instead, you now have a better system then at launch where you can purchase an order and then wait for months for the roll you want. Just let the damn gunsmith do what a gunsmith does and build/mod the weapon for some specified amount of glimmer/marks/whatever.

Same thing with armor, it'd be nice to be able to adjust Intellect/Discipline/Strength rolls. Maybe instead of RNG, each item has a set amount of points on it that can be distributed by the user across all 3 (or across a max of 2 which armor currently has). This reminds me of Mass Effect where you spent points on your talent tree.

This would be huge. You put points into a piece of gear and you max out at some specified limit. This would also allow the freedom to choose what you want to look like without relying to heavily on RNG to give you the stats and weapon perks you want. Just allow us to build armor also. you get the stats and perks you want at some specified cost.

- RNG based Attack and Defense values need to go.

I get why these exist, but they actively discourage me from playing. Conversely, I spent 70% of year one at max level and played almost every day.

- My light level shouldn't be affected by cosmetic (Class Item/Ghost) gear.

This isn't a big deal, it just seems like a desperate attempt to keep players from being max level.

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First, by setting pace for how quickly content can be consumed, it helps foster a sense of community. By slowing down the chuggings and pushing forward the sippers, Bungie is hoping we all have a chance to experience their premier 6 player coop activities.

This problem could have taken care of itself had the whole game been like the raids: mandatory co-op with no matchmaking. The organizing of players would have slowed down the pace at which you could play simply by virtue of having to get people to play with. The game would have had to feature a tool where you can meet players with similar skill and schedules, but nothing would have been matchmade.

I think the game you're describing would have a dramatically smaller playerbase--so small it would have been a failure in terms of paying for itself.

It just seems pointless when I have a gunsmith who in a real life scenario I would be like, "What would it take to modify this gun?". You could send me on a ridiculous quest, but at least I'd be guaranteed to have the equipment I want to use when I'm done.

I've always thought this was a major oversight on Bungie's part. At least we have the ability to purchase weapon parts now, plus you can earn rep and get the exotic quests from them. Still, It seems like such a huge missed opportunity to not allow the gun smith to make a weapon you want. Instead, you now have a better system then at launch where you can purchase an order and then wait for months for the roll you want. Just let the damn gunsmith do what a gunsmith does and build/mod the weapon for some specified amount of glimmer/marks/whatever.

I've long suspected that the gunsmith was created to be more than has yet been realized.

Same thing with armor, it'd be nice to be able to adjust Intellect/Discipline/Strength rolls. Maybe instead of RNG, each item has a set amount of points on it that can be distributed by the user across all 3 (or across a max of 2 which armor currently has). This reminds me of Mass Effect where you spent points on your talent tree.

This would be huge. You put points into a piece of gear and you max out at some specified limit. This would also allow the freedom to choose what you want to look like without relying to heavily on RNG to give you the stats and weapon perks you want. Just allow us to build armor also. you get the stats and perks you want at some specified cost.

I'm not sold on that level of customization yet (I don't want Destiny to be too complicated. E.g., I hated the complexity re-rolling added to the game), but I see this as largely moot in that going forward, I'll infuse my highest light level armor into the piece that just dropped with the better mix of attributes. The effort and expense to level and unlock perks seems relatively minimal to me. In year one I'd hang on to stuff because all those green circles would remind me of all the sweat invested.

Kermit

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How do you go "in vanguard?" Do they change the stats when you enter the crucible? How are you supposed to see the difference between vanguard ratings and crucible ratings?

Do you think that having a gun's stats change depending on what you're doing is less complex?

I like aspects of all the systems currently employed in Destiny, but I would love to see them streamlined and condensed for more weight and impact, not to mention easy comprehension. So it's not necessarily Light or something else that's hurting the game specifically, it's just that there's too much at the same time. You got Levels, you got Light, you got gear Stats...and then a huge pantheon of gun variants.

Personally, I'd just have levels that define your power, with gear defined by the balance of its attributes and not restricted by levels or light. Instead of a thousand gun variants, have fewer base guns with more player customization. Then allow me to build my own spaceship and manually fly it places. Have a settings option that makes Nathan Fillion play with you...

What are we talking about again? Oh, right. Just make a multiplayer Destiny version of Fallout 4, please. :)

How do you go "in vanguard?" Do they change the stats when you enter the crucible? How are you supposed to see the difference between vanguard ratings and crucible ratings?

Do you think that having a gun's stats change depending on what you're doing is less complex?

I'm not suggesting any kind of stat change between activities. You said "In vanguard, guns do damage because of both light level and impact. The two ratings are needed to keep this aspect of the game intact." to which I am suggesting remove light level completely, and have the gun's stats accurately reflect the real difference in their damage levels. That way you could look at the impact rating on your sniper rifle and know exactly how it stacks up against your other sniper, with no other variables confusing things.

"do I enjoy leveling up in Destiny?"

No, I get minimal joy from it, mostly it's a race to the top so I can do all the things that are locked out till you are max level. You really don't get to enjoy much of the game till you hit that level.

"what does the rank and light level system really add to Destiny?">

Nothing for me, other then limiting some of my weapons and gear options.

"In what ways is Destiny better thanks to RNG?"

I think the RNG aspect really encourages you to try weapons and equipment that you otherwise wouldn't touch, just because those are your high light options. With the new infusion system, people will really chase rolls on guns, and won't feel as compelled to try other weapons just because they are higher light.

I generally don't consider the above the best approach to encourage players to try different things, I would prefer a more modular approach. With respect to exotics, RNG is nice when the field is open and any exotic drop is special, but once you have about 75% of the exotics then it starts becoming punishing as you get the same weapon or armor piece over and over and over while that last one turns into your elusive unicorn.

The weapons quests were better. I liked Bungie's thought that weapons should be tied to a story of how you got them, but nearly all of mine are random drops which makes it less impressive. And since I don't really have any design input on guns, I'm really just iterating till i get a roll i like rather then having any good story behind most of my weapons.

So why do I play this game?

Comradarie is a big part, as is the setting. I'll tolerate games i hate, like COD, just to play with my friends, but I won't solo those games.

Destiny's story is more engaging and interesting to me then the others out there. I think Warframe would come in a close second, along with the Mass Effect series. From the little we've seen it just seems smart and impressive. I like the deep philosophical questions that lie in the grimore cards. I flat out skip the cutscenes and phone messages in the Division.

From a game-play perspective I find Destiny's PVP to be pretty good. Sure, there are things I would like to see fixed, but it feels smooth and mostly fun. COD has it's share of lag, and broken weapons combos and gear, and they've moved into the Pay to Win mode with their new weapons that you can earn via RNG in game, but can pay 100$ to have now.

Division suffers from a punishing RNG with so many hidden stats and LL on top of everything else. The enemies are all the same, just with more shields, and they toss grenades like a taken captain tosses blind balls. All of NY looks the same, and I don't feel at the end of the day that I accomplished anything in the Dark Zone other then a small chance of loot.

So I guess, yeah, a different game could be different. But I thought we were talking about why destiny is what it is, not what it isn't or could be.

What it is (an MMO) is stupid. The fact that it is mostly fun is a testament to Bungie's skill at making action games despite it being a shitty genre.

I'm just going to leave this right here ;p

I thought you proposed that guns would increase in damage as time goes on.

This would be huge. You put points into a piece of gear and you max out at some specified limit. This would also allow the freedom to choose what you want to look like without relying to heavily on RNG to give you the stats and weapon perks you want. Just allow us to build armor also. you get the stats and perks you want at some specified cost.

I'm not sold on that level of customization yet (I don't want Destiny to be too complicated. E.g., I hated the complexity re-rolling added to the game), but I see this as largely moot in that going forward, I'll infuse my highest light level armor into the piece that just dropped with the better mix of attributes. The effort and expense to level and unlock perks seems relatively minimal to me. In year one I'd hang on to stuff because all those green circles would remind me of all the sweat invested.

Kermit

The thing is, if they designed the way you customize your guns correctly, the extra complexity wouldn't be that bad. The problem with re-rolling is you've lost the old version of the gun so you can't really compare them. For example, if Destiny allowed you to purchase different scopes for your gun (and/or randomly find some in the wild), then you could equip the new scope, try it out for a while, and then go back to the old scope if you liked it better. Similarly for other abilities on guns like the extra sliding distance. Sure, it's a bit more complex, but you have the ability to try out different things instead of re-rolling and hoping it's as good as you think it will be.

I'm not sold on that level of customization yet (I don't want Destiny to be too complicated. E.g., I hated the complexity re-rolling added to the game), but I see this as largely moot in that going forward, I'll infuse my highest light level armor into the piece that just dropped with the better mix of attributes.

Let them start selling armor mats for infusion then. Then it becomes much less of a hassle to deal with the current RNG.

I basically hate the double/triple RNG aspects of this game. just let me craft some Int/Dis Pulse Rifle armor on top of a base set of gear that I like the looks of. For being the last guardians of a city/species they do a complete shit job of helping those people out.

I thought you proposed that guns would increase in damage as time goes on.

I'm saying that if Bungie releases a new hand canon that is more powerful than any other hand canon, that should be communicated through the impact rating rather than through light levels.

I'm still a bit conflicted, but I think I'm leaning towards the idea of a more unified end-game; no more light level increases and such. New weapons would be on the same playing field as the existing ones.

As an example: Imagine a version of Destiny with no light levels. The Dark Below comes out in Dec 2014 as a new expansion... not much would really be any different. We'd play through the new story missions, do the new side quests, etc. Completing all of that would unlock the Crota's End raid. Except there are no light levels, so all our vanilla and VoG gear would be perfectly acceptable for the new content. Yet even without light levels, there is still room for the new gear to be powerful and worth having.

Again, my mind jumps back to the House of Wolves days when I'd upgraded all my weapons and armor to 365: I had so much more fun with the weapons sandbox back then. Some of that comes down to year 1 weapons vs year 2 weapons, but I also think it was because of the simplified playing field. All my gear was max level, so level wasn't a consideration anymore. I used different guns all the time based on their specs and perks and what suited the mood I was in. Plus I had a better understanding of what the strengths and weaknesses of each weapon really were, again because there were no differences in light level muddying the waters.

Since he's been in jail this whole time he may not have even seen the forum posts about it. :P

"do I enjoy leveling up in Destiny?"

Yes. Most people are in a race to the finish line, trying to unlock the shiniest and end-tierest gear that the game has to offer, and I think that's the absolute worst way to experience a game like Destiny. I love the journey. In fact, today was an unexpected day off from work, so I hopped on to Sammy's profile and started to play on her Level 34 Titan (with a TDYK, Found Verdict, and BTRD). I went into Crucible with her low-stat gear and had a blast leveling up to 38.9 (saving that for one final Super exploit, lol). Pretty soon I'll be working on her level 24 Warlock, too, in case I want to play Trials on her account some day.

I think the big thing, for me, is that when you're leveling up, there are always risks, and so your successes and rewards are always more satisfying. Getting a high K/D when you're not using the broken weapons or Tier-4 recharge speeds felt awesome. Think of something like Skyrim. Completing a dungeon your first few times always feels rewarding and challenging. Going back into a cave when you're a level 81 and beating everyone with a stick just isn't as fun (heck, I modded my own enemy into the game to be terrifying, extremely challenging, and rewarding, then I let it loose on Sammy, lol).

tl;dr. It's not the top-tier gear/weapons that are fun, it's managing to succeed without them. And you shouldn't rush to the Endgame content, you should work to improve yourself on everything leading up to it.

"what does the rank and light level system really add to Destiny?"

That's where it gets weird. I could understand Leveling if the game worked like Borderlands, where your level directly impacts your encounters with enemies and teammates, loot drops, and AI behaviors, but it doesn't. I think this is one aspect where Bungie may have dropped the ball.

When I first played the Destiny Alpha, and we encountered the level 21 Ogre in the Skywatch, as well as the Hive inside the Grottos, those moments were great. We could fight enemies that could tear us to shreds, and though we had zero chance to take them on directly, with a lot of ingenuity and improvisation, it was possible to kill them. When I first ran by the entrance to the Vault of Glass while I was extremely underleveled, I struggled through an encounter with a Praetorian, but I couldn't beat him. I thought about how satisfying it would be when I could crush him with a single melee, inspiring any low-ranked folks that might be with me...
But ultimately being overleveled means nothing. No matter what you do in Destiny's Y2 content, you are always on level, or underleveled. This disappointment might seem to clash with my love of leveling up, but think about it like a climb. The climb is challenging, and that's where the fun is, but if you're climbing an endless wall, it feels pointless. You need to reach a peak, so that you can say that you conquered it, and move on to the next higher peak off in the distance.

A couple of weeks back, we took a friend through level 35 PoE (his first time in PoE at all), and we were having a blast, because we weren't holed up in a corner taking pot shots at the enemies, we were all over the map, combining Supers, dividing and conquering, and even soloing certain areas. Skolas was a peak, and we had conquered it, and then surpassed it.

Skolas was satisfying when we conquered the challenge while being underleveled. It was actually fun when we could kill him without resorting to desperate/cheap tactics.

Bungie was headed in the right direction with the House of Wolves Patrol events, where really high-level enemies would drop in areas where low-level players could be. That was around the time when I started playing on Xbox, and it was something special to be a part of, watching high-level people fight enemies that I couldn't hurt, then trying to mooch off them for the Ether Chests.

Should level be tied to Gear? No. the actual gear that you wear should be for Exotic purposes, unique perks (such as Raid gear), or aesthetics. You shouldn't have to wear a specific set of gear that you don't like to play the game the way that you want to play it.

Warframe does a thing where 99.9% of customization is cosmetic, and your character itself has up to 70 points available for perks. Different perks cost different amount of points, some stack, some can cost double, and some can't be used together. You could have four people all playing as the exact same character, looking identical (or completely different) but having a completely different set of strengths and weaknesses.

Destiny could easily adopt one of the mod mechanics where each perk has pros and cons:

Want extra Special ammo? Your Primary weapon might have 30% less ammo to make room for it.

Want the "Angel of Mercy" perk? Your melee and grenade charge will drain a bit with each revive.

Are you satisfied with 65 perk points instead of 70? then equip those Blue Rarity Gauntlets that you like the look of, or Infuse them up to Legendary status.

How to keep the system from being exploited? Drain your cooldowns when you mess with it in PvP/PvE, and lock it in for Trials and Iron Banner so that you can't swap perks around until you're back in Orbit (Exotics wouldn't suffer since that perk would be tied to the Gear. Now Endgame carries a heavier price.

"In what ways is Destiny better thanks to RNG?"

Definitely in the way that you're often having to play outside of your comfort zone. Sure, the grind is there to keep you playing longer, but that can be on your terms as well. Like I said, the journey is the fun part, and lots of stuff I wouldn't have bothered with if I was just handed a Hawkmoon and full set of Legendary armor on day 1, missing out on a lot of the challenges and experiences along the way. It's nowhere near perfect, but it's been improving greatly in the sense that there are more and more specific things that you can do to get guaranteed loot (and you don't have to do them all!). Looking for a Touch of Malice? There's a specific path to get it. Want to just play the game and roll the Exotic pool? Trade in your SCs for some 3oCs and roll away. Want to get a specific PoE weapon? Run the challenge mode with some buddies...

Some folks want everything handed to them on a silver platter, and some enjoy the chase. Some enjoy the chase, but don't want the prize to randomly drop at their feet, and I can understand that. It's as if they were climbing that mountain, and suddenly the top half fell off, leaving them at the new "top". That wouldn't be satisfying, so I can understand those folks, but I don't see it that way, I'm enjoying the climb itself.

Just wanted to say that I love a lot of what you are saying, but I think you may have missed a bit of my point (or I didn't communicate it clearly enough).

Everything you are saying about the journey, about facing enemies greater than you are, about going into the crucible against better equipped players and defeating them anyway... I agree that all of that stuff is awesome. But I don't think any of it is dependent on a "leveling up" system. IMO, everything you described could be done without dealing with 1-40 ranks or the light level system. Our guardians could still grow in power, unlocking new abilities as we play. We could still gain health through better armor and do more damage through better weapons.

So I agree that everything you described is a positive, but I don't think any of those positives are due to the leveling system :)

Just wanted to say that I love a lot of what you are saying, but I think you may have missed a bit of my point (or I didn't communicate it clearly enough).

Everything you are saying about the journey, about facing enemies greater than you are, about going into the crucible against better equipped players and defeating them anyway... I agree that all of that stuff is awesome. But I don't think any of it is dependent on a "leveling up" system. IMO, everything you described could be done without dealing with 1-40 ranks or the light level system. Our guardians could still grow in power, unlocking new abilities as we play. We could still gain health through better armor and do more damage through better weapons.

So I agree that everything you described is a positive, but I don't think any of those positives are due to the leveling system :)

"do I enjoy leveling up in Destiny?"

Yes, because from 1-39, the gear that you get, combined with RNG, is often less than ideal, so you have to depend on teamwork, communication, and skill more than when you've got a fully leveled character with the top-tier loot in the game. Do I enjoy improving the Light level of each individual piece of gear? No. It's just a way to increase the grind in the game, but thankfully you don't have to be above 300 for 90% of the game, and you don't have to be above 311 for the hardest challenge in the game.

"what does the rank and light level system really add to Destiny?"

Rank adds challenge, Light Level doesn't add anything worthwhile outside of slowing the pace at which people max out, and it causes a huge chunk of the Sandbox to become less and less useful, forcing players to grind for a few specific pieces of gear.. I dun like it.

"In what ways is Destiny better thanks to RNG?"

Gives more causal folks a slightly more balanced field when playing with/against min-maxers who grind day in and day out, but a lot of that is negated thanks to the Light Level that hurts more casual players. Fortunately there are several paths that they can use to work their way up (As my short time on your account proved).

But your infusion strategy still requires RNG to even get something worth infusing/infusion material. I can wait for a higher light level item to raise the level of a weapon or armor, I can't wait for it to drop me one that actually suits my play style if it might never drop something that suits my play style.

Let them start selling armor mats for infusion then.

I'd support this.

But your infusion strategy still requires RNG to even get something worth infusing/infusion material. I can wait for a higher light level item to raise the level of a weapon or armor, I can't wait for it to drop me one that actually suits my play style if it might never drop something that suits my play style.

I guess I like some things out of my control. And even now I think the drops are frequent and varied enough that I'm making enough progress toward perfect loadouts to keep me happy. That progress is about to become even easier, but at a certain point on the easy scale I have to ask myself, will I enjoy the game as much if I can easily get exactly what I want?

I understand the frustration with RNG, but to play devil's advocate, the RNG has forced me to adjust. I experience this frequently playing on differently platforms. I'll know that X fight would be easier if only I had stuff the RNG has dropped for me on the other platform. I'm forced to look at my inventory and make do. I have a different experience than I would have, but often, in being flexible and getting out of my comfort zone, I've wrung more fun out of Destiny than I would have had otherwise.

Second, there are many of us who don't mind a bit of extra motivation to do things we thought were fun, but may have forgot about, or perhaps missed the first time.

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Of course, I can't think about leveling up and progressing in Destiny without thinking about RNG. So I ask myself:

"In what ways is Destiny better thanks to RNG?"

RNG is what prevents, or at least delays, every player from acquiring the same set of gear. It adds more variety to teamplay when variations are introduced not just by play style, but also by equipment used.

Think about how different the Skolas boss fight is between having no Gjallarhorns vs having three of them, or even two of them.

That creates two different kinds of equally memorable experiences-- one in which three Guardians talk about how hard it was and how it would have been easier if anybody had a Gjallarhorn, and another where one or two Guardians feel lucky they had a friend (or friends) who had a Gjallarhorn, who they can be jealous of because they don't have one.

(Before everybody got one, of course, at least for a few weeks.)

RNG in MMOs is like the passage of time: it stops everything from happening at once.

Yup.

Second, there are many of us who don't mind a bit of extra motivation to do things we thought were fun, but may have forgot about, or perhaps missed the first time.

So this is clearly an important point for some people here. I also enjoy having motivation to try different activities, but for me the motivation has nothing to do with ranking up or light levels. For me, the motivation is new gear: new toys to play with. Is that not the case for others? Sometimes acquiring new gear comes along side an increase in light level, but that isn't where the enjoyment comes from for me. I sometimes feel the need to increase my light level (because the activities I enjoy require it) but the process of raising my level only ever feels like a chore to me; a process I must go through in order to enjoy my favorite activities later. The gear is the draw for me.

My question is: would you still feel motivated to try these different activities if light level was out of the equation? If new gear was still given out within the frame of a weekly reset, but without the aspect of levelling up?

Just to be clear, I don't mean any of this to be argumentative in any way. Just genuinely curious to hear people's perspective on it :)

In short: Levels are how RPGs can automatically adjust difficulty to individual players' skills.

This is tangental, and not the original intent of leveling.

In tabletop games, your character would, in terms of the narrative, get stronger and better over time. But you as a player aren't shooting bows or swinging swords, so levels were used as a way to indicate that. The system of interaction was abstract, such that what you as a player do has no bearing on what your avatar does.

Fast forward to early RPGs. Leveling was necessary for challenge, because without leveling they'd be dead simple strategy games. This holds true for all JRPGs and MMOs to this day. Remove leveling, and it would become instantly apparent every one of these games sucks. So leveling was necessary, or else players would master your simple shitty systems in like two seconds.

But action games like FPS have a continuity of action between the player and the avatar. YOU large determine your success in an FPS for example, by getting better at moving and aiming. Your skill, not the avatars. Thus, leveling is not needed because the progression comes from you.

This is why action games had a selectable difficulty setting, and not leveling - they were not simple shitty games.

There are games that do avatar progression well. The secret is that progression makes the game more challenging. You acquire new abilities, and so can face more challenging scenarios. This is in contrast to games with leveling, in which you are simply facing more difficult situations that are no more challenging.

All true, but I'm referencing leveling in terms of how it applies to almost any video game that is not turn-based. Real time player skill interacts with levels in a way that creates dynamic difficulty adjustments automatically. Fighting weak enemies? You'll blow through them until you reach enemies that are high enough level to challenge you and stall your progress. Fighting hard enemies? You can back-farm a bit to level up and make the next portion of the game easier for you.

The original intent doesn't apply for exactly the reasons you described. It's fine to say leveling isn't needed (it's not), but when you have leveling, you also have the opportunity to allow dynamic difficulty scaling, which is - as far as I'm concerned - the only real reason to include leveling in a game (other than "leveling up" triggers a dopamine response and breeds addictive gameplay in your consumers).

Really, as you unlock more powers or weapons, the designer is adding complexity to the way in which the player can interact with the game. Destiny is a bit of an enigma in that regard since complexity theoretically caps out fairly early on in your character's "progression:" You have one fully unlocked subspec, three weapons, a speeder bike, and some armor. Since you're limited to a single exotic weapon and single exotic armor, you're also limiting complexity in those arenas. Because of RNG loot, however, the complexity of available choices for which weapons to bring and what armor to wear is nearly infinite, and at the same time will greatly favor some players while greatly limiting others, which seems fairly detrimental towards the overall sense of progression for both groups of players (players in the middle should still feel decently challenged and that they are decently progressing.

All of that, however, begs the question of why the game includes levels at all. The levels in the game don't serve any purpose other than, as I said, to further reward the high skill players (who don't need the help) and punish the low skill players (who do need help), and begs the question as to why levels are in the game at all.

There's the power creep problem, where to get people to try the new guns, they need to be better than the old ones, and there's the endgame loot problem.

It's endgame loot.

Bingle's created a game where they want casual players to pop in and have as much fun as the hardcore ones. One aspect of that is level advantage being turned off in crucible. By forcing people to not only complete the story first, but complete raids, or complete nightfalls, or get enough marks to buy a set of legendary weapons, no new players will jump into crucible because they'll get completely massacred.

The two damage ratings are needed for new players. By the time the damage rating no longer matters, as you're full of end game loot, you'll just be looking at impact anyway. Tons of people play the game casually and don't have this loot. They play a daily mission a couple times a week and maybe do the strikes. It can take them months to completely outfit their characters in endgame loot, and they need to have some way of determining if it's going to be good for the normal game versus if it's going to be good for crucible. OR, they won't be able to play multiplayer competitively for months. Neither of these things is good.

The other option, of course, is that if you have end game loot, don't worry about it. The RNG on that stuff is bullshit, but you don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

do I enjoy leveling up in Destiny?

Sometimes.

I do think there is actually a lot of fun playing through story missions on your way up where you don't have all your instant health regen and fanciest grenades and fastest recharges. Makes you fight harder in the way Halo 1's Legendary was tough but also a good fair challenge most of the time.

I don't so much enjoy leveling up the subclass trees where it takes well well beyond a play through of all the content to unlock the final node. For the last couple of months I've been switching my Titan's shader, emblem, and class item to unify them with whichever of the three subclasses I'm using at the time. It's fun having a blue and white Striker with a lightening Mark and a Fist of Havoc emblem... except I can't quite do it with my Defender subclass since I accidentally deleted the Defender themed Mark. So I'll probably be deleting and redoing my Titan (saving all the gear, so it'll just be the re-leveling) and it is going to take beyond forever.

what does the rank and light level system really add to Destiny?

A lot, actually.

Yes, it can and does artificially keep me from some activities. For instance, I can no longer really play Trials because all my Guardians top out around 304. Combined with the pressure to do well I just sorta refuse to force myself on others with a player avatar that is going to do some percentage less damage than I "should." Also, I just completely hated the way Crota's End and especially Skolas made the challenges hard by making it so I couldn't actually play Destiny because the only way to reliably win was to hole up in a corner since every enemy could kill me in two hit... even though I was max level at the time. Difficulty through under leveling was total crap and I will never do a challenge that forces that on me again.

That said, I really like the way that you are never over leveled in Destiny because it means you don't have to tone down your Guardian to play with friends who aren't as far along. Sure, maybe I get my next Super 30 seconds faster or something, but Destiny doesn't let me suck the fun out of other people's games by being all powerful and unkillable. I think that is important in a highly connected game and it fosters team play, especially in Story missions and Strikes. It means that players who don't play a lot or don't have a ton of time on their hands can still be matchmade with any of us high end players and not be bored to tears. Again, very important.

In what ways is Destiny better thanks to RNG?

Almost once a session I comment to someone or someone comments to me about the interesting roll they got on some gun or other. Maybe it's almost done in passing some of the time, but looking back, it's a really neat thing that happens as we agree or disagree on the potential viability of a new roll. Especially when we are able to talk about guns and perks simply by name, both understanding what the other means without having to read off the descriptions.

Now, I absolutely think that high end activities like Raids should do something like reward a full set of armor specific to that Raid as well as a full set of Raid specific weapons. Maybe only the first time per character or something to not be going bonkers with the amount of gear flowing from Raids, but spending a day like I did Vault of Glass or a few hours like Crota's End or King's Fall and only getting some shards and a shader is just stupid. That first run through a Raid would mean so much more if everybody got good rewards instead of some getting a full set of armor (me, on my first VoG run) while others get literally nothing but materials to upgrade gear that the Raid did not give them. I would love to see Raids tie even more strongly into Destiny's story and the Raid rewards be there to put a nice happy exclamation point on completing one of the game's toughest challenges.

Hopefully that helps shine a little Light on an alternative perspective... ;)

On your point of dynamic difficulty scaling.

First of all, if the designer has done his or her job, players will always be in the sweet spot because as their skill grows so do the challenges. This is why games get harder the further along you are. The difficulty selection of easy / normal / hard ensures that the player starts in an appropriate place. Having to dynamically adjust difficulty is a sign you failed as a designer.

Second of all, the Original Unreal Tournament had bots that automatically adjusted their difficulty based on how well you were doing. The game can very easily track how well you play and adjust enemy difficulty.

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Second, there are many of us who don't mind a bit of extra motivation to do things we thought were fun, but may have forgot about, or perhaps missed the first time.

So this is clearly an important point for some people here. I also enjoy having motivation to try different activities, but for me the motivation has nothing to do with ranking up or light levels. For me, the motivation is new gear: new toys to play with. Is that not the case for others? Sometimes acquiring new gear comes along side an increase in light level, but that isn't where the enjoyment comes from for me. I sometimes feel the need to increase my light level (because the activities I enjoy require it) but the process of raising my level only ever feels like a chore to me; a process I must go through in order to enjoy my favorite activities later. The gear is the draw for me.

My question is: would you still feel motivated to try these different activities if light level was out of the equation? If new gear was still given out within the frame of a weekly reset, but without the aspect of levelling up?

Just to be clear, I don't mean any of this to be argumentative in any way. Just genuinely curious to hear people's perspective on it :)

My light levels haven't changed in months. I'm not sure why you think that's a drive for most of us who play as much as you do.

Second, there are many of us who don't mind a bit of extra motivation to do things we thought were fun, but may have forgot about, or perhaps missed the first time.

So this is clearly an important point for some people here. I also enjoy having motivation to try different activities, but for me the motivation has nothing to do with ranking up or light levels. For me, the motivation is new gear: new toys to play with. Is that not the case for others? Sometimes acquiring new gear comes along side an increase in light level, but that isn't where the enjoyment comes from for me. I sometimes feel the need to increase my light level (because the activities I enjoy require it) but the process of raising my level only ever feels like a chore to me; a process I must go through in order to enjoy my favorite activities later. The gear is the draw for me.

My question is: would you still feel motivated to try these different activities if light level was out of the equation? If new gear was still given out within the frame of a weekly reset, but without the aspect of levelling up?

Just to be clear, I don't mean any of this to be argumentative in any way. Just genuinely curious to hear people's perspective on it :)

My light levels haven't changed in months. I'm not sure why you think that's a drive for most of us who play as much as you do.

Perhaps I misunderstood SquidNH3's point, and your support of it. I'm not saying that light level is what drives most of us to play... but it sounded to me like that's what Squid was saying, and what others were agreeing with. I thought Squid was making the point that increasing levels is a carrot on a stick that encourages players "do things we thought were fun, but may have forgot about, or perhaps missed the first time.". Apologies if I misunderstood the context :)

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RNG is what prevents, or at least delays, every player from acquiring the same set of gear. It adds more variety to teamplay when variations are introduced not just by play style, but also by equipment used.

Ideally this would be sorted out by the challenges requiring each player to do different things to help the team, thus necessitating different gear, or by allowing encounters to be tackled many different ways.

Think about how different the Skolas boss fight is between having no Gjallarhorns vs having three of them, or even two of them.

This is because Gjallarhorn is a badly designed exotic.

Second, there are many of us who don't mind a bit of extra motivation to do things we thought were fun, but may have forgot about, or perhaps missed the first time.

So this is clearly an important point for some people here. I also enjoy having motivation to try different activities, but for me the motivation has nothing to do with ranking up or light levels. For me, the motivation is new gear: new toys to play with. Is that not the case for others? Sometimes acquiring new gear comes along side an increase in light level, but that isn't where the enjoyment comes from for me. I sometimes feel the need to increase my light level (because the activities I enjoy require it) but the process of raising my level only ever feels like a chore to me; a process I must go through in order to enjoy my favorite activities later. The gear is the draw for me.

My question is: would you still feel motivated to try these different activities if light level was out of the equation? If new gear was still given out within the frame of a weekly reset, but without the aspect of levelling up?

Just to be clear, I don't mean any of this to be argumentative in any way. Just genuinely curious to hear people's perspective on it :)

My light levels haven't changed in months. I'm not sure why you think that's a drive for most of us who play as much as you do.

Perhaps I misunderstood SquidNH3's point, and your support of it. I'm not saying that light level is what drives most of us to play... but it sounded to me like that's what Squid was saying, and what others were agreeing with. I thought Squid was making the point that increasing levels is a carrot on a stick that encourages players "do things we thought were fun, but may have forgot about, or perhaps missed the first time.". Apologies if I misunderstood the context :)

Weird - I was pretty sure I answered this last night, but apparently I dreamed it. (Or maybe the next IB game started, and I got distracted. Totally possible. ;) )

Can't speak for anyone but me. Some of the extra motivation, for me, is gear. RNG enables me to get the same gun over and over and over again... but many of them won't be enjoyable to use. I play, I get new stuff, I try it out. Sometimes it's a disappointment. Sometimes it's my new favorite thing. Sometimes it makes me go back and re-evaluate something I got a month ago, but wasn't sure about. (I didn't like it enough to use it, but I wasn't sure I was ready to dismantle it.)

LIght levels are pretty irrelevant; a bunch of weeks doing challenge mode got all 3 characters to the 315+ range, and there is enough infusion fodder left that I can bring up a 280 weapon that makes me happy to a reasonable level.

Which sounds a lot like how it works for you... which is why I'm surprised that you misunderstood squid's post. Then I went back and read YOUR original post, and his response - and I realized the misunderstanding might come from the fact that you asked some general stuff and some specific stuff, and his answer wasn't actually tied to any of that. (At least, for me it wasn't.) squid's answer seemed to answer the vaguer, not-specifically-asked question "why is the current system still fun?" (When I read your post, that was the 'boiled-down' thrust I got from it. You were asking specifically about light levels, and gear progression, and RNG... but mostly you were asking "why do these played-out hooks still keep you playing?" And when I read squid's response, it answered that question for me. Which is where MY response came from. ;) )

So it's totally possible that you didn't mean to ask that more-general question; that you were looking for specific answers about light levels and gear progression and RNG. And it's totally possible that squid wasn't answering that more-general question, but that I just misinterpreted him. But neither of those things is relevant when you ask ME why I answered the way I did, because that's how I filtered the existing info. :)

I loved doing the Refer-a-Friend stuff with InsaneDRIVE a couple of weeks ago. It got me gear that wasn't available anywhere else, which is cool - but none of what it got me is better than what I already had, so in reality, it was meaningless. Except... it wasn't. I got to do stuff I've done before - with someone who'd never done it. Which meant seeing it through new eyes, vicariously, again. I really enjoyed it.

Last night, nico said "I need to kill Thalnok for my last calcified fragment - would you help?" I've killed him a million times. (Well, that's an exaggeration. Maybe half a million.) But I haven't killed him in a while, because I really don't think about going back to the Court of Oryx very often, and the last few times I've gone, he hasn't been the Tier 3 boss. So we beat him a couple of times. And it was pretty fun! And I got a blue engram that decrypted to an Antipodal Hindsight with Rodeo and Hidden Hand, which I'm looking forward to trying out. Bonus!

Overall, I think if I weren't playing with people who were doing this, or that, I'd have a pretty fixed Destiny schedule; a little bit of raiding, a lot of PvP. Occasional daily missions for easier PvE and marks. Because other people need other stuff, I get to go back and do stuff I'd simply not do again - and almost always, it's fun.

I can't remember the last time something felt like a grind.

but nothing would have been matchmade.

I don't like that at all. I would prefer there be a system where on each activity, even regular story missions, you could choose to do it solo, in a private fireteam, or matchmaking.

I can bring up a 280 weapon that makes me happy to a reasonable level.

So this is obviously a personal decision, but what is that level for you?

To make things easier on myself and to save time & space, I have a rule that if I get a blue item below 286, I dismantle it ASAP.

A few weeks ago I had a streak where three or four exotic engrams decrypted as 290 weapons. I was annoyed--I wanted 310. It made me wonder a few things: Why don't any drop at 300? How much of a difference does 290 vs 310 make, really? Does it only matter at the highest level activities (KF HM?)

In Vanilla Destiny I felt like I had a pretty solid idea of how levels affected my damage output and defense, but the system is much more complicated now and the details are definitely not obvious.

I can bring up a 280 weapon that makes me happy to a reasonable level.

So this is obviously a personal decision, but what is that level for you?

Above 300 keeps my level from dropping more than a point or so.

To make things easier on myself and to save time & space, I have a rule that if I get a blue item below 286, I dismantle it ASAP.

Same here. (My cutoff is 295 or so - in some categories, like boots, it's ALL blues, since I have so much super-high infusion fodder I'll never need a 300, and blues don't come above that - but it's the same concept.)

A few weeks ago I had a streak where three or four exotic engrams decrypted as 290 weapons. I was annoyed--I wanted 310. It made me wonder a few things: Why don't any drop at 300? How much of a difference does 290 vs 310 make, really? Does it only matter at the highest level activities (KF HM?)

I don't remember the breakdowns - but the exact numbers aren't totally relevant, if you assume everything is ABOUT 10% of your total light, the math will mostly work out. So 20 points on a single item works out to 2 light levels.

I don't know why Exotics don't drop at 300. I also don't think I've ever seen a 290 drop (for me) if my light was above 311 when I decrypted it.

Higher light levels help in some activities (Trials, IB, PvE), but Oryx himself, at the end of the KF HM raid, is the only thing that really NEEDS 311+. (I've seen people successfully complete at lower light levels, but I've never seen a TEAM below 311 finish. One or two can be carried, if they're good and careful. 6? Well, I'm sure it's doable. I've just never met the 6. ;) )

In Vanilla Destiny I felt like I had a pretty solid idea of how levels affected my damage output and defense, but the system is much more complicated now and the details are definitely not obvious.

I get beat by folks who are 15 levels below me in IB, regularly. I don't know if I can beat people who are 15 levels above me, because I run IB at 317-319... but it's rare when, say, a grenade stick doesn't kill someone when it should. (I had an incident last night, or maybe 2 nights ago, that pissed me off; I had dropped two tripmines near each other, and a guy beat me in a 1v1, then triggered both mines. He obviously wasn't RIGHT next to them - they do 195 damage each, or so, up close - but I saw indicators of 136 and 124... and he didn't die. Now either he was SERIOUSLY laggy (which he didn't seem to be), or he had some sort of super-armor on - it felt totally wrong. Otherwise, though, fights go as expected, usually, and differences of 10-15 levels aren't as important as skill differences.

at a certain point on the easy scale I have to ask myself, will I enjoy the game as much if I can easily get exactly what I want?

TBH you don't have to ask that question at all because it's not going to happen. Bungie will absolutely never allow us to just build the exact item we want. The closest we're likely to get is the reforging from HoW, or the "twist fate" option on exotic armor - more chances at an ideal roll, but still definitely RNG.

AND it isn't dependent on RNG in any way.

Not entirely true, at least as implemented in HoW. It's true that your ability to obtain that piece of gear was not RNG-dependent, but WHICH piece of gear was for sale was still determined by RNG.

I think in order to get what you're really looking for, the gear selection would have to be more extensive than what Variks had.

That is a goal that sounds cool, but is impossible in practice without creating a grindy game full of 'frictions'. You simply cannot make stuff as fast as people will play it. Thus, you need to make them play it over and over.

Uh, this is exactly what slycrel's original post was saying, just phrased differently.

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Competitive multiplayer would have its own set of guns that are exclusive to it. The story mode items would not cross over at all.

That seems...

Do you mean entirely different items, or just separately balanced versions, with some weapons being exclusive to a mode entirely, for balance?

Because the first seems silly.

Hopefully that helps shine a little Light on an alternative perspective... ;)

It does. Thanks :)

I can bring up a 280 weapon that makes me happy to a reasonable level.

So this is obviously a personal decision, but what is that level for you?

To make things easier on myself and to save time & space, I have a rule that if I get a blue item below 286, I dismantle it ASAP.

A few weeks ago I had a streak where three or four exotic engrams decrypted as 290 weapons. I was annoyed--I wanted 310. It made me wonder a few things: Why don't any drop at 300? How much of a difference does 290 vs 310 make, really? Does it only matter at the highest level activities (KF HM?)

I assume you weren't 311+?

I've heard people on the internet claim to get 290s when their light was this high, but I've yet to see any evidence of that happening.

I can bring up a 280 weapon that makes me happy to a reasonable level.

So this is obviously a personal decision, but what is that level for you?

To make things easier on myself and to save time & space, I have a rule that if I get a blue item below 286, I dismantle it ASAP.

A few weeks ago I had a streak where three or four exotic engrams decrypted as 290 weapons. I was annoyed--I wanted 310. It made me wonder a few things: Why don't any drop at 300? How much of a difference does 290 vs 310 make, really? Does it only matter at the highest level activities (KF HM?)

I assume you weren't 311+?

I've heard people on the internet claim to get 290s when their light was this high, but I've yet to see any evidence of that happening.

I think that there's a 75% chance that you'll get 310s up until you're 315+, after which it's 100%. Rolling four 290s would be crappy luck, but not unheard of(put into perspective, I think I got four Last Words in a row from Primary Exotic engrams).

I can bring up a 280 weapon that makes me happy to a reasonable level.

So this is obviously a personal decision, but what is that level for you?

To make things easier on myself and to save time & space, I have a rule that if I get a blue item below 286, I dismantle it ASAP.

A few weeks ago I had a streak where three or four exotic engrams decrypted as 290 weapons. I was annoyed--I wanted 310. It made me wonder a few things: Why don't any drop at 300? How much of a difference does 290 vs 310 make, really? Does it only matter at the highest level activities (KF HM?)

I assume you weren't 311+?

I've heard people on the internet claim to get 290s when their light was this high, but I've yet to see any evidence of that happening.

I think that there's a 75% chance that you'll get 310s up until you're 315+, after which it's 100%. Rolling four 290s would be crappy luck, but not unheard of(put into perspective, I think I got four Last Words in a row from Primary Exotic engrams).

I'd like to see the real numbers. I guess I'm pretty lucky. I haven't decrypted below 310 since I hit 301.

I'd like to see the real numbers. I guess I'm pretty lucky. I haven't decrypted below 310 since I hit 301.

Wow! My experience has been much different than that. The majority of my exotics have been 290's after I was 301+.

I was 310 during the time I was describing. If I had known that 311 was some magic number I would have waited to decrypt :/

Ayup. Nbd. It'll probably be irrelevant in a couple weeks.

I'd like to see the real numbers. I guess I'm pretty lucky. I haven't decrypted below 310 since I hit 301.

Wow! My experience has been much different than that. The majority of my exotics have been 290's after I was 301+.

I was 310 during the time I was describing. If I had known that 311 was some magic number I would have waited to decrypt :/

My drop rate is probably much lower. Seems like a I get one exotic every week or two.

Don't think I've ever gotten four in one week.

I'd like to see the real numbers. I guess I'm pretty lucky. I haven't decrypted below 310 since I hit 301.

Wow! My experience has been much different than that. The majority of my exotics have been 290's after I was 301+.

I was 310 during the time I was describing. If I had known that 311 was some magic number I would have waited to decrypt :/

My drop rate is probably much lower. Seems like a I get one exotic every week or two.

Don't think I've ever gotten four in one week.

I once got 2 from a single Three of Coins drop. It was awesome.

I'd like to see the real numbers. I guess I'm pretty lucky. I haven't decrypted below 310 since I hit 301.

Wow! My experience has been much different than that. The majority of my exotics have been 290's after I was 301+.

I was 310 during the time I was describing. If I had known that 311 was some magic number I would have waited to decrypt :/

I think from 300-310 it's only a 25% chance to decrypt into 310s. I'd hold off until 311+, 315 if possible. On the bright side, always makes for good infusion fodder for your other classes!

My best drop ever was Fatebringer and Vex Mythoclast in the same raid a day or two before my birthday last year. A competitor to that was Gjallarhorn on my first nightfall playthrough. Didn't really appreciate that at the time.

To be clear: I didn't get all of those in one week.

I think from 300-310 it's only a 25% chance to decrypt into 310s.

That sounds in line with my experience.

I'd like to see the real numbers. I guess I'm pretty lucky. I haven't decrypted below 310 since I hit 301.

Wow! My experience has been much different than that. The majority of my exotics have been 290's after I was 301+.

I was 310 during the time I was describing. If I had known that 311 was some magic number I would have waited to decrypt :/

I think from 300-310 it's only a 25% chance to decrypt into 310s. I'd hold off until 311+, 315 if possible. On the bright side, always makes for good infusion fodder for your other classes!

Huh - if this number is accurate, it's more evidence of my lousy luck. I don't think I EVER got a 310 when I was between 300 and 311. 100% 290 decryptions. I got my first 310 when I hit 311.

Maybe I'm misremembering. I'd still like to see Korny's source.

You're not. It's absolutely possible to get 310s when you're below 310. NONE of my characters are capable of getting higher than 308 right now, and I've gotten several 310s.

You're not. It's absolutely possible to get 310s when you're below 310. NONE of my characters are capable of getting higher than 308 right now, and I've gotten several 310s.

Huh... maybe I'm thinking of below 300 or something, because now that I think about it, I don't think I could have even GOTTEN to 310 without getting 310 exotics while below 310. (There weren't enough other sources of 310+ gear for people like me who didn't play Trials.)

I think maybe there was a hard cutoff at 301 - and I think what I'm remembering is some bitterness at learning about this hard cutoff, since I'd saved up a bunch of engrams, but burned them at 300, getting nothing but 290 gear... only to be told soon after that had I waited one more point, I'd have gotten a bunch of 310 stuff.

Goddamn steel trap is getting more and more sieve-like as the years ago on. :(

Goddamn steel trap is getting more and more sieve-like as the years ago on. :(

Heh, I was thinking the same thing about myself after reading your post.