Interesting point. (Destiny)

by slycrel , Wednesday, April 13, 2016, 19:37 (3090 days ago) @ Robot Chickens

So, I actively ignored the hype until the 4 minute trailer came out just before the patch. I thought it was all just going to be filler, to allow us to continue on the treadmill until substantial content came out.

Then I watched the trailer. And I started to hope, to get excited.

I'm already over it. heh. Well, I should say, I'm over the new content. I'm not quite over how this will change my destiny gameplay and approach.

Let me back up a sec though. I feel as though challenge mode ruined raids. The focus is never "let's do king's fall". It's now "let's do challenge mode X". I actually wish that challenge mode was a bit more... challenging, and came up as a separate activity. Maybe that wouldn't fix anything... but as it stands now, that's killed the "raiding experience", at least for us PS4 late nighters.

The new Prison of Elders Challenge mode is also in this direction. I feel like they have a void where the nightfall used to be and they are trying to fill it with PoE challenge mode. As has been mentioned it's a bit grind-y, even out of the gate. But meh, that's fine. I guess.

Note that I feel as though the old PoE being brought up in light level is fine. It's a footnote though as it's not different, other than the taken variation I suppose... And even that is all or nothing rather than different rounds on different strikes. I get the feeling that they wanted to have a questline into the prison to clean out the taken, then be able to do PoE as normal, but never got that far before this release. Would have been cool as a bounty-enabled destination like a few of the missions recently did rather than totally random.

Anyhow. I really like the way that I can pick and choose when I run things in Destiny. But Destiny is built around a social framework, and since I enjoy end-game types of things like IB and Trials where "light matters" and there's essentially no matchmaking, I'm pressured into a social kind of schedule.

I have no doubt that come Friday I'll be seeing 335 players on the other end of my gun in trials. It'll be like 305 vs 315s -- noticeably different because "light matters". So I'll be pressured to play more content in an order I don't want to play in to be competitive at a skill level I'm already barely at. Which is fine, I can do that... but it's not particularly an ideal experience.

Sometimes I feel like "light matters" is code for "grind harder if you want to play in a competitive environment".

Still looking forward to the new winter's run strike, surprised that I'll have to go find it myself rather than get a quest to go there. =)