Mastery vs Progression (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Sunday, December 24, 2017, 06:28 (2367 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I can see why they divorced power and perks from endgame activities (Why reward stuff that makes the raid easier after you've already shown you can do the raid?

Because that's the downhill side of the difficulty curve. It gives everyone the experience that Cody talks about mastery giving them-- that after playing a thing a lot, it becomes easier.

In the mastery version, the activity becomes easier because you actively participate in making yourself better at it.

In the progression model, the activity becomes easier because completing it grants you an item that makes the tasks required to get it easier (weapons with oracle perks like VoC).

Sheesh I miss VoC. :(

Of course both models work together, but I'd argue that regardless of how or why the activity becomes easier, and starts out as a thing that takes hours and ends up as something you speedrun, there's a limit to how many times people are willing to do a thing and be able to enjoy it.

For some it's mastering it. For some it's the power fantasy of running through it with a superweapon that makes what was once hard easy-- a fantasy in which it's not the player that achieves mastery, but the character. For others it's collecting all the bling.