Wild speculation (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, February 15, 2017, 19:49 (2634 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Ok, so from the looks of things:

During the livestream, Bungie said 2 contradictory things about Rangefinder's new ADS stat. They said:

"We have decreased ADS time... by 25%".

They then went on to say:

"we are pushing you into a position where you WANT to aim that gun, now rangefinder still boosts your range but you pay for it a little bit by having to slowly move into ADS."

The first statement lines up with what actually happens in the game since the patch. The second statement matches what was released in the patch notes. Also, the second statement makes sense from a logical point of view, within the context of the discussion. They were saying that they wanted to add a slight trade-off to the rangefinder perk. Speeding up the ADS time certainly wouldn't do that. Slowing down the ADS time does.

So, I think it is reasonable to assume that the designers' intention was to have ADS take a tiny bit longer with the rangefinder perk activated. Meaning the change that actually shipped in the game is a mistake.

Then there is the question of "how did this happen?". There are a few possible explanations I can think of, all of them pure speculation, none of them fully satisfying. And on a certain level, none of that matters. It appears to be a mistake. If that is the case, it will get fixed. The community in general is quick to overreact to this kind of thing, but that's what happens when the trust between community and developer isn't as strong as it maybe could be. Bungie's communication has been hit and miss, as has their balancing efforts with the game itself. I think that is the bigger issue. It takes them months to release balance tweaks (not a criticism, just a fact), so Destiny players get a bit steamed when an update finally does come out, only to introduce new problems, sometimes through changes that weren't even intentional.

I just think this whole attitude is baked into the culture of the larger Destiny community at this point in time. Some players love the game as it is. Others decided it wasn't for them and stopped playing a long time ago. But there is a very large chunk of players that lie somewhere in the middle. Players that love parts of the game and/or see a larger, greater potential in what the game could be... and they're waiting. They had problems with vanilla Destiny, but The Dark Below was coming soon, and that would fix all their problems... ok, that didn't pan out. TDB was rushed too, but that's ok because House of Wolves won't be out for a long time so Bungie will have time to make it everything we hope it will be... ok, that didn't pan out either. Etc, etc, etc.