I still think Destiny could learn a lot from Diablo 3. (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, December 27, 2017, 11:09 (2364 days ago) @ EffortlessFury

I think it'd be much harder to implement in a compelling way in a shooter, but I love Diablo 3's difficulty escalation, and I think I would love it Destiny, if they could execute it correctly.

We're all playing the same activities over and over and over again anyway, why not have a series of escalating difficulties with random modifiers to keep it at least somewhat fresh? If it's a game about numbers getting higher, why not just let that continue to ridiculous degrees?

What you're describing here is difficulty level selection. In the case of D3, the difficulty selection is real because the character level vs. monster level dynamic is a lie. So yes, Destiny could benefit from a real difficulty level selection because, just as with D3, destiny's character level vs. monster level dynamic is also a lie.

What do you mean by "a lie?" Your power vs. their power. You can change their power by changing the setting and you can change your power by acquiring and equipping different gear. Is it not better to be able to select exactly how difficult you want your game to be (proportional to your skill and in-game power level)? As long as the rewards are proportional, it all works out swimmingly IMO.

By "a lie" I mean that your level is meaningless when compared to the enemy level in diablo 3. Enemies always scale to your level, and at more difficult settings, they simply scale with a more difficult starting baseline, and possibly also on a steeper curve. But knowing that you are level 50, for example, would not let you go into a level 10 zone and lay waste in Diablo 3, because there are no level 10 zones - all zones are whatever level your character is. So the distinction of having monster levels at all is meaningless in that game. The difficulty setting is the real thing that matters, and that functions independently from monster level. Yes, it works well, but you could completely remove monster level from the game and it would be, functionally, the same game.

Destiny is similar, in that monsters are never less than your level, and - by rote of uninspired design - almost never higher than your level either. Although unlike D3, Des2ny completely lacks a difficulty setting, so I'm left thinking that monster level is supposed to matter in Destiny, but discovering that it actually doesn't. D3 is not perfect in my esteem, but it is better than destiny by miles.

AFAIK, D3 has no monster levels. So there's no "lie."

It's all under the hood, but every monster in the game scales to match your level, so there are no low level areas or high level areas. Everything is the same. I understand there's perhaps more variance since the loot 2.0 patches, but in the default game, the design docs still talked about monster level as the driving system on which all loot, available elite monster mods, and experience were derived.