+1 (Destiny)

by DiscipleN2k , Edmond, OK, Monday, September 17, 2018, 12:49 (2263 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY
edited by DiscipleN2k, Monday, September 17, 2018, 13:25

One thought that sticks out in my mind when I think about this topic is the idea that there are different kinds of grinds, and they lead to very different experiences for me.

Unlocking my Whisper catalyst was a sort of Grind. It involved completing a very difficult mission, then completing a harder version of that mission, then going back in every weekend to beat it again and/or collect materials from hidden chests.

I loved every minute of it.

First of all, I loved the mission itself. I've probably run through it between 20-30 times at this point, and most of those runs were done helping other players beat the normal mode, which didn't count towards my catalyst progression.

On top of that, I knew exactly what I was working towards, and I could track my precise progress the whole time.

Finally, this "grind" was not locking me out of other activities that I might have wanted to do. There were no power-level gains involved. It was all about taking this awesome weapon that I love to use, and making it a little more powerful. This entire quest, IMO, is Destiny's "power fantasy" at its absolute best.

I would put "grinds" like the Ace of Spades quest in a similar boat. It has nothing to do with power level. It's all about chasing a specific reward that expands your power "outward" rather than "straight up". Same with Sleeper, Polaris Lance... even the new subclass missions.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the Dreaming City, in no small part because I'm chasing the Reverie Dawn armour, based purely on the asthetic. I'm constantly repeating the same patrols and public events, looking for chests and high value targets... just enjoying the atmosphere and the scenerie and the fun combat, all while working towards this goal of a complete set of armour. There are some bumps in this road (like getting my 6th pair of Titan boots before getting a single helmet), but that's a minor annoyance in an experience that I'm generally loving.

But then there's another kind of grind: what I would call a "vertical" grind. This is typically where power level comes into play, and certain activities are locked behind a power-level barrier. This is the kind of grind that I'm generally not a fan of (although it very much depends on the details). But regardless, I think it can be helpful to keep in mind the idea that there are different types of grinds when we talk about this stuff, because simply saying "I want more grind" or "there's too much grind" is actually quite vague.

Your idea of our power expanding outward vs upward is spot on. I love this game. I love nearly every activity in the game. I'm even starting to hate Crucible a little less. But I'm not a fan of chasing that vertical power grind.

I enjoy the gunplay and movement abilities enough to not mind grinding patrols for bounties, and I like most of the story missions and strikes enough that I don't mind running those a few times a week to knock out that milestone (though I could stand to see "Savathun's Song a bit less). But even if it seems like I dump a ridiculous amount of time into this game, my time isn't limitless. In order to play the content I enjoy most, I have to do a stupid amount of optimization to make sure that the time I spend in game is pushing that vertical power climb in the most efficient way possible.

(This part is dumb. You may want to skip from here...

Right now my daily/weekly grind involves running to the tower to talk to every vendor to collect bounties, knocking out crucible (if there's still a powerful reward on the table), then Gambit (again, if there's a powerful reward), if there are no more powerful engrams to be gained from them, all PvP bounties that will expire in the next 12 hours are dumped so that I've got room to collect wanted bounties (starting with any on Tangled Shore) and patrol bounties from Spider. I complete patrol bounties while bouncing between public events (occasionally ducking into a lost sector to nab an escapee), and returning to Spider every time I max out my Ghost Fragments stack so I can collect ALL of the wanted bounties. When the Tangled Shore bounties are done and local Prisoners are detained, I move to the flashpoint map.

On the flashpoint map, I collect my three bounties there (these are mostly important for the Ikora bounty, but planetary mats are at a premium now and the XP pushes gets me bright engrams which work toward completing this seaon's collect-a-thon), then jump into the daily heroic (unless a PE is about to start within running distance to any fast travel point), then back to doing patrols while bouncing between PEs and dipping into Lost Sectors to claim more runaway prisoners for Spider. When your flashpoint milestone is done, it's on to strikes...but only after hitting EVERY OTHER PLANET to collect their bounties as they can be completed during strikes that occur on that planet. Fun, right?!

Strikes are pretty straight forward as long as I keep an eye out for any weird loadout requirements for bounties, and check the roster to make sure at least one of the other players I'm matched with has the same elemental subclass, because it's really fun to keep players from earning progress on their milestones because neither of the players you matched them with are running arc subclasses during arc singe week.

Once things are handled in the real world, it's on to the Dreaming City. Petra needs me to complete two days worth of patrols and spend an hour running from bubble to bubble in the Well before she'll give me the gear I need to kill the thing she wants me to kill.

And this whole list doesn't even take into account that I now have to try and make sure to do the things that give me the less powerful powerful engrams before doing the things that give me more powerful powerful engrams because I didn't realize that was a thing until a few days ago because WHY THE FUCK WOULD BUNGIE DO THAT AND NOT TELL PEOPLE?!?!

...to here)

And while all of this sounds like a ridiculous slog, I actually enjoy all of these activities individually. But rather than have my checklist that has to be run in such a way that every thing I'm doing is making progress on at least three items on the list if I have any hope of completing said list, do you know what I'd rather do? I'd rather sign onto Destiny (appearing ONline), see what my friends are doing and play with them. Maybe every fifth engram gives me an item that is my current power level +1. It'll be a slow climb, but I'll get there by just playing and enjoying the game with friends.

On the other side of that, I love chasing new weapons and gear to expand my power. Everything that went into getting the Whisper and Polaris Lance and the Ace of Spades (even if they did try really hard to make me hate Gambit) made me appreciate those weapons that much more. This is the kind of stuff I want to do to expand my power. I mean, I've already killed a Hive god, the Hive god's dad, then the Worm god that created the Hive god. My power can't go upward much more before I'm using entire galaxies for platforming. I don't need more power. I need better tools to channel that power.

-Disciple