Some thoughts, then some questions for all you DBOers (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Thursday, March 31, 2016, 16:51 (3253 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

"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