Applied to Destiny (Off-Topic)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Tuesday, February 11, 2014, 00:07 (3788 days ago) @ Cody Miller

The idea is that getting good at a game shouldn't mean that you have to basically play an alternative version of the game that isn't as good as the real one.

If you look at Diablo 3, a game about completing quests, fighting monsters, building your character, and finding loot - what are the good players doing? They are farming gold to buy items from the auction house. See what I mean? At that level, what you have to do sucks.

This is what happens when you weave a meaningful investment system into your game. Players go from playing your game, to playing your investment system…

I think it's also possible to just choose not play a game like that. When I play Skyrim, I'm having fun most of the time, but sometimes when my character becomes too powerful and I've beaten all the main quests, I'll start to realize I'm just doing things effortlessly, by the book, and not really enjoying it. So when that happens, I switch gears and run off into the wilderness and end up with a horde of Mammoths chasing me into a castle! Since the actual gameplay is fun and the world is responsive and interesting, I can hop off the investment system whenever I want. It's just a guide.

It looks that way to me, but hopefully the actual gameplay of Destiny is fun. That's the important part, right? This investment system is just a tool to move you along when you need it. I agree that sometimes it seems like there's lot of people playing games out there, grinding, and not enjoying themselves. Sometimes that's the games fault. Sometimes it's just people getting addicted to crap and forgetting why they got into the game in the first place.

Destiny looks like you're in an open-world, online, Halo campaign with some RPG elements added in. If the campaign part is hilariously fun, then that loot and menu screen in Destiny will be more like finding ammo or switching a pistol for a plasma rifle before you rush into the next wave of Covenant.

Maybe what I'm saying is: a game with an investment system isn't inherently bad and can actually benefit from it if it's as fun as a game like Halo where I'm still playing the same 10 levels and having a blast a decade later. In fact, in that case I wouldn't mind a little system that gives me some dynamic objectives and things to do to keep me creative and inspire me to keep playing the game a different way down the line. Maybe it's only troubling when the core game IS the investment system.