This is a terrible analogy. (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Monday, November 12, 2018, 09:26 (2273 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

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.

Yeah, my line is in a different place. What you're describing is experimentation, and the best blind teams I've played with took an almost scientific approach, and often there were clues, especially on the wipe screen and kill feed. For Last Wish we had some very good guessers, and we always made progress before too long. (Several people on the team stayed ahead of me almost always in terms of figuring it out--my contribution was mainly in echoing approval of a strategy. That said, it was great fun, and I think some of our strats are better than Chappy-approved strats!).

About the Riven fight, I actually like the complexity, and I'm so glad to have figured out the hard (non-cheese) way to beat her, whether I get to successfully execute that strategy or not. Then again, I'm a fan of King's Fall, which seems rare (if the difficulty of recruiting for a raid is any indication). It was the most epic (dare I say Tolkienesque) raid pre-Last Wish, and the hardest part of it is finding a team with the time to do it in one sitting.

I completely agree about mastering execution--that's a different kind of pleasure, and as I've said before, it's the closest I'll ever get to playing team sports. The puzzle element often remains past knowing the how, and can be reintroduced anytime a new player joins or doesn't have the preferred loadout. I love that improvisation, the changing of armor or perks, the adjusting of positions--it's all part of what makes it fun. And I think I might have a preternatural tolerance for what some people call beating their head against the wall. I don't mind failing too much, especially if every third or fourth try I can detect a few inches of progress. Victory is all the sweeter, when it comes. For me the stress of that situation is worrying about other people's frustration--not so much my own.