If you are telling me my commitment to figuring out a game’s challenges myself is what’s inhibiting my enjoyment of said game, I would simply say the game is broken by its design. Your suggestion is quite frankly insane to me and against the basic fun of discovery that games even provide.

I’m saying there are many different kinds or layers of discovery. You’re focusing on just 1 specific avenue.

To explain further: my first trip to paris wasn’t ruined by the fact that the city had been “spoiled” for me by movies, books, and television. In fact, I went out of my way to learn as much as I could about the different destinations, galleries, landmarks and locations ahead of time, so that I could make the most out of my time there. If I’d gone “blind”, I’d have missed most of my favourite parts.

And that's totally a valid experience. But I do sympathize with Cody.

Have you ever been to an Escape Room? Have you ever done the same room twice? I know I wouldn't; the point is the process of discovery. Once you know how to do it, there's no reason to do it again unless it changes significantly.

Now, while Destiny does provide some level of change up (which is why it is totally replayable), the elements of a Raid that are synonymous with an Escape Room are not really changed. If Cody's main draw to these activities are those elements, then Destiny does cater to that demographic poorly.

Honestly, I'd wait until we're a month or even two months into the expansion to release the raid. Let people grind for a good while to get ready and let there be a race to solve the Raid, not a race to see who can put more of their life on hold in the week after release.

The whole POINT of an escape room is the puzzle; there's nothing else.

That is super-far from the case with Destiny's raids - in fact, I'd say that they're getting more and more distant from that point. There has ALWAYS been a second, critically important piece: execution.

Once you understand the mechanics of an escape room, there's zero barrier to completion - a child can do it, given the instructions. This is NOT the case with a raid. Knowing what to do is 1/10th of the battle; doing it is the other 9/10ths.

Cruel's saying that Cody's focusing on that first 1/10th, and acting like the raid is pointless if that's been spoiled. But the joy in mastering the mechanics, gelling with your team, figuring out how to work like a well-oiled machine... that's pretty damned satisfying. And given how difficult it is to stay blind, and how poorly the puzzles are solved via anything other than brute force... it's the part we should be focusing on.

World of Warcraft has had both discovery and execution as well; it just does it better than Destiny does. I already noted that Destiny has aspects beyond the ones it shares with Escape Rooms, the point I'm making is that some people value that first experience of discovery over the execution, and that's perfectly valid. You're prioritizing the execution over discovery, which is also valid.

You're not reading my message, I guess. Or Cruel's.

I don't prioritize execution over discovery, in general - I'm saying that given the fact that discovery is no longer as good as it once was, it makes SENSE to look for the places where you CAN have fun - ie, execution. Or, put another way, the fact that Cody can't enjoy discovery isn't as big a loss as it would have been in earlier iterations, because discovery's not as good as it was.

Cody's argument is that Bungie could make it easier for both camps to be happy relatively simply and I'd agree. There's no reason the Raid has to drop so close to the expansion other than wanting to get people who are on the fence to buy it more quickly.

No, that's not Cody's argument at all. That's your argument. (Or maybe it's not. It's an argument that hasn't been voiced before this post of yours, so I don't know WHO subscribes to it.) Cody's argument was that discovery was everything, and since he can't have that, there's nothing worth having.

Cody's argument is that Bungie could make it easier for both camps to be happy relatively simply and I'd agree. There's no reason the Raid has to drop so close to the expansion other than wanting to get people who are on the fence to buy it more quickly.

Yes this is all I want.

Day 1 hardcore folks can do the raid. A week later, so can casuals. Why is that so hard? Again, 1/x where the x axis is time to raid and the y axis is difficulty in doing that.

I guess you could view replaying an encounter multiple times until someone actually notices the thing you're missing as brute force, but that feels pretty reductive to me.

That’s basically how I view it. Yes, you need to notice the right things... but that is in and of itself just a case of repeated trial and error. There’s an “infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters” nature to the whole endeavour. I’ve never felt clever for figuring out a raid mechanic. I just feel like my team tried enough things that didn’t work that we eventually found the things that do.

It’s like “hey, there are some plates in here. Does standing on them kill us or progress the encounter?”. It’s impossible to know until you try it and see what happens. There are no clues that could lead you to the correct decision. It’s nothing but trial and error.

And a certain amount of that, I’m totally cool with. I like it to a point. But for my taste, Destiny raids crossed way beyond the point where this element of the raids was remotely enjoyable for me. It’s like “can we just skip the next 4 hours of stumbling through all this trial and error and get to the part where we’re working to master our execution, rather than figuring out the rules?” And I know that’s my own personal line and everyone will have their own line in a different place. For what little it’s worth, I’m just saying that I’d be far more interested in the “figuring out the mechanics” aspect of Destiny’s raids if they weren’t such a rats nest of random and arbitrary hoops to jump through that often feel utterly disconnected from any combat-based logic.

And given how difficult it is to stay blind, and how poorly the puzzles are solved via anything other than brute force... it's the part we should be focusing on.

I just about replied to Cruel's post, but I was too lazy, but this thought is making me post something.

I very strongly disagree with this sentiment. I have now done four raids blind (King's Fall, Leviathan, Eater of Worlds, and Last Wish), and I cannot remember brute force ever being the method for our progression.

Yes, sometimes there is some trial and error, but there has always (so far as I can remember) been a sense of logical problem-solving. I have no doubt that it is entirely possible to brute force a Destiny raid--at the end of the day, if you just try enough shit, shoot or stand on enough glowy things, pick up enough relics, etc, you will be able to get through it.

But there is always a way to actually solve the puzzle. It's less brute force and more actually noticing the correct things. That is why I love blind raiding so much. It's all about actually figuring out what the elements at play actually are, how those elements are interacting.

I guess you could view replaying an encounter multiple times until someone actually notices the thing you're missing as brute force, but that feels pretty reductive to me.

I do think you're both right, in that raiding non-blind is not some awful thing. They're still incredibly fun and challenging, even when you know exactly what to do. I wouldn't ever just skip a raid because I couldn't do it blind. But to say they just require (or even just encourage) brute forcing is just wrong, in my opinion.

Okay - Brute Force was the wrong description.

I guess I feel like this raid is overly-complicated. I mean, all of the pieces are doable... but they seem fiddly, to me. I miss King's Fall. :)

Cruel's saying that Cody's focusing on that first 1/10th, and acting like the raid is pointless if that's been spoiled. But the joy in mastering the mechanics, gelling with your team, figuring out how to work like a well-oiled machine... that's pretty damned satisfying. And given how difficult it is to stay blind, and how poorly the puzzles are solved via anything other than brute force... it's the part we should be focusing on.

Ok, so why haven't we been playing Spire of Stars over and over?

……………

Because the execution's not that fun.