This is why personas are so troublesome (Criticism)

by kidtsunami , Atlanta, GA, Thursday, June 07, 2018, 06:52 (2395 days ago) @ dogcow

A section in this week’s THAB has me concerned with the direction Destiny is going in. Here’s what Bungie said:

Normally changing enemy Power levels requires a patch, but during development, we created unique server flags which can flip between two sets of Power levels for all Escalation Protocol enemies. These were created in the wake of the community summit, when we decided to make the activity even more difficult

If you’ll remember, Bungie invited a fair number of high end Destiny players to its offices to show off new things and get feedback on the direction the game was going. And, when Bungie first talked about Escalation Protocol they mentioned that they made it harder based on this group’s feedback but they didn’t say exactly what that meant. Well, now we know. What it meant was Bungie cranked up the later levels of EP from difficult to nearly impossible.

So, what’s the problem here? Well frankly, once again I’m feeling like the game challenges and difficulties are being over-tuned towards the ultra elite Destiny players who have time to attend multi-day community summits. To me, setting the final EP enemies at 400 always sounded like complete overkill. Especially as we got to play Warmind and found how long the road to leveling up was going to be. I feel like I’m being left out if not excluded from cool parts of Destiny 2 based on not being able to play all day long.

Another example of this is the quick release of the newest Raid Lair of that Raid Lair. By releasing the Spire of Stars within Warmind’s first week, Bugine all but ensured that the only players who could even reach its recommended power level were those players who could afford to power level all day long throughout the week. For the rest of us, even us enthusiastic players who put in several hours of play each night? We were nowhere near ready to raid by the time it went live. Once again, I feel like the game and its release schedule was over tuned to favor those players who were able to treat Destiny more as a job than as a form of entertainment.

Sounds to me like a "hardcore" mode needs to exist for the streamers who play 40-80 hours a week & a "Family Man" (DadGuy? ;) ) mode needs to exist for those of us who can only dedicate a handful of hours a week (if that, I struggle to get 2 hours a week in) to our "hobby".

Seriously. At work there's a single guy who plays & he greatly laments the loss of the grind, where as I rejoiced at the loss of the grind as I could participate in my favorite things w/o spending inordinate amounts of time preparing (grinding) for them. (Geeze, I sound like Cody... <sigh> ;) ). We are 2 very different gamers who love the same type of gameplay, but he likes the grind, I don't have time for it (grind != gameplay, grind = rewards & addiction er engagement, whatever).

Can we call what you're describing a "Grinder" not "Hardcore"? There's a difference between pulling off 2-manning Calus Prestige and just running all the raids, grinding out the light levels.