Fix it in Post (Destiny)

by Speedracer513 , Dallas, Texas, Tuesday, April 28, 2020, 08:49 (1458 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

The idea that they have a test realm, but they couldn't test something is... well, aforementioned. Pure Glmmer. White Green & Blue kit. Detestation materials or bright dust of different amounts. All that is needed is something to fill in the slot. Shoot, it could be be nothing! Placeholder pink, purple, and green cards with a "Thank you" on it. It's a place to TEST! But you can't test something in it!?!?

Oh! They couldn't test the loot system of the loot game! SURE.

That said, with six years of making this "loot" game, it's kinda shocking how they missed the mark. It's all just pretty damning either way I suppose. Shame.

There is a key component here in understanding whether something is "testable," which I supposed would be obvious -- but I guess I presumed too much...

Sure, they could obviously test the "1s and 0s" of loot drops in a test environment, BUT they could not truly use that environment to actually see what the real players' actions would be in the live version in a case like this (where we're talking about top-tier loot from end-game activities). The players that are driven to farm Trials of Osiris for that pinnacle loot are not going to treat a placebo loot drop from a test realm the same way (and those players generally aren't even going to bother with playing on the test realm anyway). It's like playing poker for a material sum of real money vs playing for no money at all -- it's psychologically impossible to treat both the same.

Indeed, in this case the very root of the problem here is that in the current Trials reward system, you have no real incentive to keep going for flawless tickets throughout the weekend; you're actually incentivized to keep resetting your ticket after three wins to more efficiently farm the loot table; which results in the playlist population remaining saturated at the lower levels with players that should be in the higher levels, and thus disincentivizing your average player to even keep trying.

This is a situation which, while I believe it should have been obvious to the designers from a basic philosophical standpoint, is not something you can chalk up to "they should have used the test realm to figure this out."

Does that make sense?