No, not really. (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, August 31, 2017, 18:27 (2439 days ago) @ DiscipleN2k

Before: Collect a ton of engrams, decrypt first engram, equip new item so your new power level is used to determine the level of the next decrypted item, decrypt next engram...

Now: Pick up engram, stop what you're doing and go back to the Cryptarch so your new item will be used to determine the power level of your next engram, return to activity, pick up an engram, stop what you're doing and go back to the Cryptarch...

One step forward, two steps back.

-Disciple

If you ask me, the minor tedium of swapping gear was absolutely NOT the main focus of the problem with the previous system.

It was that the previous system actively discouraged you from playing with any loadout OTHER than the one with the highest light, and if you didn't swap gear before decoding, the game actively punished you for doing so.

If you did an activity underleveled and received an engram and then decoded without switching, your reward was an item leveled to the gear you were wearing, not your highest level achieved.

So if you either were intentionally making the game harder, or at the very least engaging with Destiny's design concept on a basic level by availing yourself of the great variety of weapons and gear-- the game would artificially slow your progress by providing you with gear that was less likely to provide you with any advancement.

What I know I asked for and mentioned more than once during D1's run, was for a system that works the way this one does-- by rolling gear at a light level comparable to your maximum theoretical level. The fair way to do this is for that light level to be calculated at the time the loot drops.

Bungie's entire task with the progression system is how to maintain player engagement, make you feel like you're... well, progressing, and to ensure that the fat part of the curve for players is moving along at a reasonable pace-- not so slow that it is frustrating, not so quickly that you run out of any interesting content to play or progression to make too soon before there's more available.

Rolling the light level of gear at drop, rather than decode, stops players from essentially being able to farm engrams in a single activity and then bootstrap themselves directly to max light.

So players on the back part of the progression curve, who used gear below their max level or did not always switch to max light gear before decoding are going to advance faster-- they are not going to be punished for not intentionally trying to min-max the system. So players will not be punished for not doing something tedious.

If, on the other hand, you HAVE been doing exactly that-- always switching to max light gear, encoding one engram at a time, tediously equipping new gear as you go-- then your progression IS going to be capped unless you're willing to do even MORE tedium by returning to the Cryptarch every time you get an engram, because you're more interested in watching the number go up as much as possible with as little time played as possible.

Given that you can now go from location to activity without orbit, apparently, probably even doing that is going to be too easy, and people will do exactly that and then complain about "having" to do it, and grouse about the good old days when you could bootstrap your light level by treating the Cryptarch's table like a changing booth.

In fact, trying to prevent this kind of runaway levelling is probably what is behind some of the randommness in decrypting-- not everything decodes at the max margin over current light level. When there was no infusion mechanic, your advancement would be limited by the fact that not every item dropped would be for your class. While every item would roll within a certain margin of your current light level, that meant that you could get rolls that didn't increase your max light level because it rolled lower than the particular piece of gear you had in a particular slot.

By rolling light level when engrams drop, it ensures that for Destiny players, there is a direct correlation between the light level of an activity (in comparison to your own max light level) and your prospects for drops that increase light level. Not the number of engrams you collect. And once you reach max light... well, it doesn't matter anymore then when the number is rolled then, does it?