Raid Difficulty is... Troubling (Destiny)

by digital_ronin, Tuesday, September 18, 2018, 14:21 (2046 days ago) @ EffortlessFury
edited by digital_ronin, Tuesday, September 18, 2018, 14:29

For all the wonderful things in Forsaken, I'm a little worried about the nature of the raids. Raids were one of my favorite activities in Destiny 1. In Destiny 2, they are starting to lose me.

The artificial difficulty based on light level is one problem. The fact that the people who actually cleared the raid used the prime engram exploit, the one thing Bungie was "punishing" people over, is quite telling. I've only gotten one Eater of Worlds clear due to a dwindling player population. Just a month after launch, when those still playing in my clan were high enough level to clear the raid, there weren't many people left interested in playing. It makes me wonder who the audience of this game really is? Is it an enthusiast like me or the hard core, content creators, and twitch viewers?

Then there are the more unforgiving mechanics. A system the enforces mistake free play rather than exciting strategies or creative problem solving. The token revive system would force wipes due to circumstance ("Sorry, I know I'm right next to you, but I can't revive you again.") Combined with really tight timing in places like the Spire of Stars (which I still haven't cleared) and my clan went from running sherpa raids in D1 to having set raid groups. They regrettably didn't want to allow new people in because it was just a pain trying to take a weak player through the raid and were lucky to have consistent clears themselves.

Raids are one of the unique things to Destiny. To slowly alienate a large portion of the enthusiast community to appease the content creators is a self defeating strategy. Eventually the casuals will leave, then the enthusiasts, and then content creators complain and leave because they have no audience.

There is nothing wrong with having difficult endgame content, but it must be approachable. Most enthusiasts aren't trying to be world's first, but they do want to get a raid clear and make it a fun part of their weekly ritual. It's the whole idea of having a normal raid for the enthusiast community and a prestiege for the hard core community. Remember when you got a raid down and you could chat about other things and joke instead of telling people to be quiet to hear the call outs?