A thing I noticed about the new power level progression (Destiny)

by FyreWulff, Tuesday, November 12, 2019, 22:28 (1629 days ago)
edited by FyreWulff, Tuesday, November 12, 2019, 22:34

While pinnacle rewards absolutely need some tweaking (there should be heavy weighting towards getting a pinnacle in a slot with the lowest power so that it has a solid upwards progression), I did notice something about the new Powerful vs Pinnacle system.

In the previous year's system, we had the soft and hard cap, and only Powerfuls would advance your Light Level between the soft cap and hard cap. But in order to maximize your gains, you had to do every single powerful drop every week, even below cap, so the gameplay loop never really changed from when you hit the soft cap. It was the same chore list.

In the new Pinnacle system, only Pinnacles advance you from 950 to 960 base light. While Pinnacles are definitely a help BEFORE 950, I did notice something: once you hit 950, your chore list drops, because Powerfuls (and Primes) max out at 950. It's now safe to ignore the Powerfuls outside of wanting some infusion fuel. The tradeoff is that your smaller chore list is definitely more difficult activities, but it's finally more of a true endgame for non-raiders.

And of course, the artifact power increases prevent "forever 29" by slowly pushing you up even past 960 even if you don't persue pinnacles. Pinnacles just get you higher power, faster, and will leave you sitting at max base light when the next season rolls around.

This combined with the fact that the season pass leveling actually has a DOWNWARDS curve from the XP boosters means the farther into the season you go you start leveling faster, and it feels like they're zeroing in on something that rewards early grinding but eases up on the gas pedal as you put more time into it.