^^yup^^ (Destiny)

by Vortech , A Fourth Wheel, Tuesday, August 25, 2020, 11:42 (1495 days ago) @ ManKitten

That sort of proves his point a bit.

No one runs Menagerie anymore because it’s not relevant anymore for the investment side of the game. No matter how fun an activity is, most people won’t play it if it’s not giving out current gear. If the investment side of the game wasn’t there (or even if it was more forgiving and old activities didn’t cap out and always gave current or Powerful gear), that wouldn’t be the case. Bungie uses the investment system to drive players to new activities, instead of focusing on just making fun activities or letting players just play the things they enjoy.

The focus of the game is no longer "to have fun." The goal is "get the best gear" and when we get that gratification, our brain tricks into thinking it's fun. Getting the reward is fun...how we got it has taken a back seat.

I played some Crucible a couple weeks ago with some fellow forum goers. We did Iron Banner. I was light level 1000. I got destroyed. Someone asked me why I "quit" playing Destiny, and my answer was, I didn't quit, the game just outpaced me.

Crucible has never been fun for me. I do enjoy strikes, missions, open roaming and other light lifting activities. But my character is now so weak, those things are all I can do. And while it's relaxing, it's not "fun". And there really is no way for me to rank up my character unless I grind which is very "not fun"

The focus of the game is no longer "to have fun." The concept of [paraphrase] "make 30 seconds of fun, then do it again" is waaaaay far off in the rear view mirror.

OK, but IB is one of only 2 Crucible modes where power level matters (and both of those are limited time options). If you have never enjoyed Crucible, It's not surprising you didn't like the mode designed to benefit people who focus on it. (Even those of us who do like Crucible have real issues with Iron Banner…)

I don't understand the phrase "The focus of the game is no longer 'to have fun.' ". The GAME never had that focus. Players can have a focus to have fun. The game can have a focus to provide fun. I'm not just being pedantic here, it's always weird to have people come in and tell me that I'm not having fun with Destiny. I was tricked into believing a lie, gullible old me. That is still my focus and if I'm not having fun I do something else. There's no longer any gear reason for anyone I know to run Scourge, but we still do it a lot because it's a fun thing to do and can be done in a reasonable amount of time (and with a more flexible number of people then other raids). Other raids are still fun, but have organizational barriers (requires exactly 6 people - no more and no less, or take WAY too long)

Has destiny changed the game to not be "to provide fun" I don't know. Seems fairly subjective. I can say I feel pretty strongly that they listen to the wrong people about what the game should be. I think a lot of decisions were made to appease streamers who have a different idea of what "fun" is and that it gets conflated with the needs of their business — needs the vast majority of people do not have. I think internally there are too many people who want to recapture the fun times they had playing World of Warcraft, both because I don't find that sort of game fun, and because I think a lot of these things can't be brought over piecemeal and retro-fitted into Destiny.. I can't think of what has changed to make me doubt their motives rather then their competence, or strategy. And I would only play for as long as I find it fun

How much fun I find it goes in waves, and some of that is because the game is so large and opaque that sometimes the fun gets hidden from me so it just seems like the overly-familiar parts are what it has to offer. I end up doing exotic quests month after everyone else because I didn't;t understand what it was while it was contemporary, or even worse I'll miss it and it goes away (bye bye, felwinter's lie) Sometimes fun for me does mean trying to get a new weapon to play with or a new gear piece that will look cool or provide an exotic-level benefit (but chasing armor stat rolls or random-drop mods cross over the line into not fun for me). Given that, I see value in pruning Destiny 2. Especially since they don't want to make a Destiny 3, and so the infinite version would eventually collapse under weight if it just kept growing. But I also think they are pruning back too much. I don't think they are going to be able to add enough to make up for the loss and provide enough for the average person, but we'll see. As it is it's going to be tough to see so much good stuff go away after a season of re-run content so I'd love to be surprised with an unexpected bounty of unannounced content.

I like Strikes and missions too, but really only a couple times with missions and strikes becomes a gamble - will I get one I like, or not, and matchmaking makes your teammates a gamble too. If that was all I liked in the game I would not feel like it had outpaced me, but that I long since used it up. I'm interested in when you say you can't level up. Nightfalls and dungeons provide pinnacle drops and feel to me like they are similar to Strikes/story missions. The weekly powerful drops come from just doing 3 strikes in a week (if that's too many I dare say you don't like strikes anymore either) (I never do daily story because of what I said above, but it offers something similar I think?) plus along the way you'll see prime engrams from that and just being part of the clan means Hawthorne will hand out powerful drops that all will get you high enough for nightfalls and dungeons.

I guess all of this is to ask, what changed that makes you say the game is "no longer" made with a goal of people — or even you — having fun