I think it depends on the story (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Friday, December 22, 2017, 08:15 (2378 days ago) @ Funkmon

I agree that the moment of elation that comes from getting a random drop that you REALLY WANTED can create a powerful memory. But I’m not sure they balance out the overall frustration that can come from an RNG-based loot system. I would gladly trade my happy memories of random drops for the countless hours I spent grinding activities in the hopes of getting something I wanted. Because for me, it’s not just an issue of the amount of time spent grinding. It’s also the fact that by the time I got some of those drops, I was too burned out on the game to fully enjoy them because I’d spent so much time grinding to get them. Thats the key point that makes activity-specific loot rewards better, IMO. You don’t have to exhaust the game just to get access to the new gear that is supposed to enhance your enjoyment of the game.

That being said, I do think that Bungie has thoroughly phoned-in the majority of the quest-specific loot in D1 and D2. Repeating activities to complete arbitrary checklists is the laziest, most thoughtless form of “weapon quest”. If they actually told a story meaningful story with these quests, the game would be so much better off (the RoI Gjallarhorn quest was leaning in the right direction). Work it into the main story, for that matter. There was plenty of room in the D2 campaign to work in plot lines that involve reclaiming long lost weapons, or building something new from scavenged technology. It’s ok if everyone ends up having all the same weapons in the end... each of us will still have a developed memory of “the story of this weapon”, and that’s great if those stories are cool.

This ties into Bungie’s larger problems with storytelling... they can’t seem to do anything meaningful in this department lately.

The other element here is that for any of this to work, the loot needs to be exciting. Again, D2 often falls short here.

So really, I think this whole issue is a bit of a confluence of several different elements within the game, all of which could stand to be implemented much better.