I disagree with most of this on a base level. (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Tuesday, December 26, 2017, 17:13 (2364 days ago) @ Harmanimus

I feel sorry for you that something unrelated to an activity you are partaking in ruins the potential enjoyment of that activity. That really does sound like it would suck.

I never said that having levels makes destiny bad. It just makes the design of destiny bad. Why have these numbers that mean nothing in this game? It's pointless, and against the spirit with which those numbers were first conceived of in games of yore.

D1’s PvP engame wasn’t interesting due to any level mechanics, though. At a high level there wasn’t sufficient power variance to matter. And while I will give you that even my friend group has dropped off that aspect in D2, but that’s due to trash loot rather than anything else, design-wise, as in general Survival/Countdown are regarded much higher than Elimination from folks I have asked.

I agree that the gametypes for "competitive" mode are improved. The problem is that the overall meta game of D2 has taken a vast step backwards. This has nothing to do with levels. It's about a lack of advanced movement, a scarcity of sniper ammo rendering awareness of sniper lanes virtually moot, and weapons which do too little damage such that teamshooting is vastly superior to individual shooting and moving as a group is superior to almost all other tactics and strategy. It's repetitive, boring, doesn't reward map knowledge, flanking, or gunskill nearly as much as it rewards simply standing next to another guy, and the specs are fixed which prevents novel play. It's just not as good as D1 pvp.

And why have levels in a loot based game? Loot Tables? Easier to have a level assigned to an adversary than to hand crafter individual loot tables for every enemy. I mean, why not let level 1 Dregs have the same chance to drop an exotic as an Ultra you get stomped by until you can equip powerful enough gear? Just as a root example common to most loot-based games. There are a lot of reasons to include levels outside of forcing a certain challenge level on specific enemies. Player level gives way to power level once you hit 20 and there are other systems and activities sequentially unlocked theough progression.

Loot based games, well done, base the level of the loot on the level of the enemy who dropped said loot. Any game that had a level 1 enemy that could drop the best item in the game would be a terribly designed game.

Player level is largely meaningless except as a way of gating story missions behind mandatory exp grinds at certain points (11, 15, and 17 were the ones I hit when playing solo). But there's no real reason for them beyond that. In CoO they seem to exist simply as an excuse to give the player a bright engram and a full super bar on level up, and perhaps to block alts from using the new weapons (but why do that? What's the point?).

Power level is even more meaningless. It's completely arbitrary, can be increased through almost any means, and is neither an indicator of skill nor accomplishment. The power level barrier to entry is so trivially low that it seems to exist purely as an ego stroke to those who don't realize that the number is otherwise meaningless. There are a very small number of activities which are gated by a power level greater than 260 (prestige modes, that one legendary raid shotgun mission) but there seems to be no reason WHY they are gated by power level - they are challenging enough that players should be able to go in at any time just to see if they're capable or not yet.