Let's talk PvP Weapon Balance (Destiny)

by Blackt1g3r , Login is from an untrusted domain in MN, Monday, June 20, 2016, 19:41 (3020 days ago) @ unoudid

First off. Let me state that I strongly feel that PvP and PvE should be completely divorced from each other. That way they can balance the weapons individually.

Interestingly, Elite: Dangerous does this with their CQC multiplayer mode (as opposed to killing other players in open play). I find CQC fun, but it's sort of game-breaking because of the split. There are special weapons, ships, and equipment that don't exist in the main game even if they are clearly superior to the weapons and ships that are. It also has a special progression mode that is completely different from the main game. In order to encourage players to participate in this mode you can earn money, but to keep players in the main game from being annoyed they made it so the monetary rewards are extremely low until you've sunk in a lot of hours to rank up and "prestige" (seems similar to how crucible rewards were historically low). They also reward players with a special location that you can only visit when you fully rank up once in that mode (similar to the lighthouse but not as cool - it does give easy access to all weapons, ships and equipment in the game but there are other places that do the same thing). In theory, CQC is a "sport" within the real game world, but the connection is very tenuous so it barely feels like the rest of the game. Finally, because everything is balanced differently in this mode it feels a little wrong. The ships fly a bit differently, and the weapons behave differently. It's not good for newer players because when they switch between this mode and the open play mode they have to re-learn some thing which are often subtle differences.

I think Destiny would have similar issues. One of the design goals of Bungie seems to be that they want you to have to earn things so you feel like they are "your weapons" (ignoring whether that works as intended or not). How would you do that in a separate Crucible mode? Bungie's current approach is to share weapons between modes and try to make them feel similar in the two modes. An alternative would be to make the crucible have a fixed set of weapons and ignore the idea of progression entirely. You could have special "Crucible" weapons that you don't get to use in the main game but you unlock by playing the crucible. The main problem with those approaches is they are game-breaking. If your guardian is "training" to fight in the Crucible, then why wouldn't they use those same weapons in the rest of the game?