Oh please... (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Thursday, August 21, 2014, 12:16 (3754 days ago) @ Ragashingo

All of the above have to be very carefully considered, though, because the flip side to more free-flowing communication is the risk that antisocial players will abuse those tools. But just because there is a risk of abuse doesn't mean there's no happy medium, and throwing your hands up and saying just let players communicate outside of the game is a cop-out, because you sure as hell aren't preventing abusive behaviour if it's completely outside your control.

They are preventing it where it matters. In game. Yes, it's a gamble to have Raids without matchmaking, but it has nothing to do with Bungie's ability to prevent abusive behavior.... where exactly? Are Bungie now the decency police patroling every Destiny fan community looking abuse? I get what you're saying, but you've also crossed well over into silliness there...

My hope is that Raids are actually as challenging as Bungie says. If they aren't then no matchmaking begins to look like a mistake. But if they are, and if they require people to set up their Guardians to help out in specific role, then matchmaking where you get a random person who is unprepared or who has duplicated a role begins to make less and less sense.

Disclaimer: didn't read whole thread.

Regarding the happy medium, maybe Destiny won't hit that, but let's just consider that Bungie themselves unleashed many of the demons we've come to expect from matchmaking and perhaps now they're being aggressive in the other direction regarding communication with strangers. Perhaps this is all the result of asking one question over and over: what is fun?

-Fun is not some dudebro singing or playing music.

-Fun is not being abused for your skill level or your gamertag or your gender or your accent or what have you.

-Fun is not very often the result of voice chat with people you don't know.

On the other hand...

-Fun is playing and communicating in-game with people you actually know.

-Fun is playing with friends to tackle a challenge that requires coordination.

-Fun is when a game provides events (and I don't mean public events explicitly--I mean experiences that make it worth the effort to plan and schedule an activity with others).

Having some barriers that prevent any random person from ruining your game experience seems to be what this is all about. Leveraging human networks as they actually exist in the non-game world seems like a decent approach to foster the kind of experiences Bungie wants us to have.

Adjustments can be made, and it sounds like they will. Let's see how it works.