That's just your opinion man (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Friday, August 22, 2014, 09:34 (3753 days ago) @ kapowaz

It's a matter of perspective, friend. I've come to value anticipation almost as much as the experience, and understand how much rarity makes the dessert sweeter. There are 14 year olds who are going to have much more time to play the game than I ever will. Sucks to be me. I have friends I'd like to play with on the west coast who get online about the time I want to go to bed. Sucks to be me. You're conflating frequency, accessibility, and opportunity with quality, and I think that's the wrong paradigm for raids.

I hear you, and I do understand that the experience still has to be good for those who can play it, but I'm concerned that a whole category (and potentially, a very large category) of player — for whatever reason (and really, the reason isn't that important if it's out of their hands) — simply won't get to play it at all.

Probably this article was posted already earlier in the month, but it stands re-reading in light of this thread as I think it neatly encapsulates a lot of the reasons why I think this was potentially a misstep by Bungie. The one line that resonates most strongly with me is this one:

If Bungie’s reasoning is that Destiny’s raid content is only playable using voice, then maybe it’s the wrong content for the game.

They knew, going in, what their constraints would be, so it seems like a risky decision. If it does indeed turn out that it's something that only a fraction of the user base can enjoy, then that means that for every DLC, expansion or whatever they eventually release for the game, there's a portion some people will be paying for but can't get any value out of. If you were in charge of the team that builds DLC, you might ultimately start questioning the logic of committing development and art resources to building content that only 10% of your players got to see. And that'd be a real shame.

What makes Raids special might depend on precisely what they require of people who play them. Word of their awesomeness spreads, and Bungie yet again changes the way people play games. It's a better experience than what they're used to, but it requires more of them. That's generally how things work in life.