Iron Banner Musings

Hmmm. From where I'm standing Iron banner is minimally different than regular control. Another lame Bungie event.

I get what Bungie is saying though, in that going in at level 25 shouldn't completely preclude you from winning. Why not simply match you up with players +/- 1 level to yourself? That way it's mostly fair, and the higher your level, the better the possible rewards would be. Iron Banner should drop armor capable of getting you to 30, and winning should grant you a higher chance at a drop, so if you do well it's possible to move up.

That's just if I were in charge.

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How would matching owe to your level help? Wouldn't that just mean it will always feel the same no matter what? Weapons? But everyone would have similar defense stats assuming they upgraded.

I'd rather the strong crush the weak. Let the people who want balance play normal Crucible and let the Iron Banner truly be a special event.

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How would matching owe to your level help? Wouldn't that just mean it will always feel the same no matter what? Weapons? But everyone would have similar defense stats assuming they upgraded.

Well considering that there appears to be no coherent matchmaking based on skill, does that really matter? The fact is, most people playing Iron Banner or even regular Crucible are going to come up against similar people with similarly upgraded defense stats. The difference is that not everyone is going to be able to beat the Raid or get its goodies. Give the people who aren't going to get the Raid stuff a decent chance to get to 30.

I'd rather the strong crush the weak. Let the people who want balance play normal Crucible and let the Iron Banner truly be a special event.

That's cool and all, but as someone who basically dominates every game he plays, I'm in no way, shape, or form impressed with Iron Banner and there's no incentive to play it. And yes, I dominate Iron Banner just like regular Crucible. It's not a special event. At all. Regular Crucible is more competitive, even if Iron Banner is minimally different from Control. Bungie, for once, doesn't seem to know what it's doing with multiplayer in a game, and that's sad.

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How would matching owe to your level help? Wouldn't that just mean it will always feel the same no matter what? Weapons? But everyone would have similar defense stats assuming they upgraded.

Well considering that there appears to be no coherent matchmaking based on skill, does that really matter?

Without some kind of visual ranking system who's to say how good or bad the matchmaking is? I win roughly half the matches I play so from my perspective it does seem to be working... Maybe, as stated below, you're just so good you only win and thus can't tell?

The fact is, most people playing Iron Banner or even regular Crucible are going to come up against similar people with similarly upgraded defense stats. The difference is that not everyone is going to be able to beat the Raid or get its goodies. Give the people who aren't going to get the Raid stuff a decent chance to get to 30.

I think that'll happen. Heck, The Dark Below is said to bring new weapons and armor. Maybe some level 30, no "Raid of Doom Required" armor? I do fail to see what that has to do with how the Iron Banner pays though.

I'd rather the strong crush the weak. Let the people who want balance play normal Crucible and let the Iron Banner truly be a special event.

That's cool and all, but as someone who basically dominates every game he plays, I'm in no way, shape, or form impressed with Iron Banner and there's no incentive to play it. And yes, I dominate Iron Banner just like regular Crucible. It's not a special event. At all. Regular Crucible is more competitive, even if Iron Banner is minimally different from Control. Bungie, for once, doesn't seem to know what it's doing with multiplayer in a game, and that's sad.

Maybe you misread me? I said Bungie should make it a special event because right now it really isn't. The whole point of this topic is that Iron Banner isn't different enough but should be...

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Without some kind of visual ranking system who's to say how good or bad the matchmaking is? I win roughly half the matches I play so from my perspective it does seem to be working... Maybe, as stated below, you're just so good you only win and thus can't tell?

I never had that problem in Halo 2 or 3 when it came to getting matched up based on skill, and I'd like to not very humbly say that I was damn good at both those games (not Schooly or Nart levels of good, mind you, but yeah). It's not just winning that I'm talking about. I mean I'm MVP endlessly, and I do a very good job of getting a high amount of kills without dying. I'm not feeling anything matching me up against people who just slaughter me or give me a run for my money. I can't be that good. I mean damn, I wasn't in Halo.

I think that'll happen. Heck, The Dark Below is said to bring new weapons and armor. Maybe some level 30, no "Raid of Doom Required" armor? I do fail to see what that has to do with how the Iron Banner pays though.

Cody's suggestion of matching up based on maybe rank and skill, and providing people with the ability to maybe get up there with the people who are beating the Raid and getting the super gear. Make it a truly competitive playlist that also takes into account the crazy stats and things of high end armor, while also paying out with some high end armor to help people get over that hump.

Maybe you misread me? I said Bungie should make it a special event because right now it really isn't. The whole point of this topic is that Iron Banner isn't different enough but should be...

Yeah I did misread it. Sorry! I thought you were saying that it already was a special event and should stay that way. So yeah, we agree on it pretty solidly I'd say. I think Iron Banner should have rewards worthy of it, and I think Bungie should stop pretending it's a competitive playlist and actually make it one. And hopefully there's a way to make the matchmaking system actually make things more competitive involving levels and skill.

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That's just if I were in charge.

I imagine it would be something like this.

[image]

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That's just if I were in charge.

I imagine it would be something like this.

More like Arcade Games and Daiquiris for everyone!

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It's kind of weird how all of these problems that Destiny has actually have really simple solutions. Why are all the players able to find these one or two step fixes for the game but Bungie completely missed?

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It's kind of weird how all of these problems that Destiny has actually have really simple solutions. Why are all the players able to find these one or two step fixes for the game but Bungie completely missed?

Solutions on message boards always look great. They've never seen the harsh light of a playtest.

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It's kind of weird how all of these problems that Destiny has actually have really simple solutions. Why are all the players able to find these one or two step fixes for the game but Bungie completely missed?

Solutions on message boards always look great. They've never seen the harsh light of a playtest.

The masses just did a playtest, and Bungie's way didn't work.

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It's kind of weird how all of these problems that Destiny has actually have really simple solutions. Why are all the players able to find these one or two step fixes for the game but Bungie completely missed?

Solutions on message boards always look great. They've never seen the harsh light of a playtest.

The masses just did a playtest, and Bungie's way didn't work.

Masses are really good at finding (though maybe not identifying the root) of actual problems.

Playtesters are awful at suggesting solutions.

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It's kind of weird how all of these problems that Destiny has actually have really simple solutions. Why are all the players able to find these one or two step fixes for the game but Bungie completely missed?

Solutions on message boards always look great. They've never seen the harsh light of a playtest.

That thing where Iron Banner is identical to the Beta and yet not much changed between the Beta result and the post-launch result.

And to kanbo, that thing where Salvage is a sometimes-weekend-only playlist yet should be permanent and has Bounties showing up constantly when the playlist isn't around. And the big vehicle playlist has less vehicles than the normal playlists. But yeah, forums and easy solutions and we're way stupid and clueless compared to Bungie. High five.

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It's kind of weird how all of these problems that Destiny has actually have really simple solutions. Why are all the players able to find these one or two step fixes for the game but Bungie completely missed?

Solutions on message boards always look great. They've never seen the harsh light of a playtest.

That thing where Iron Banner is identical to the Beta and yet not much changed between the Beta result and the post-launch result.

And to kanbo, that thing where Salvage is a sometimes-weekend-only playlist yet should be permanent and has Bounties showing up constantly when the playlist isn't around. And the big vehicle playlist has less vehicles than the normal playlists. But yeah, forums and easy solutions and we're way stupid and clueless compared to Bungie. High five.

Uh huh. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed did we?

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Woke up just fine. Just highly rejecting the Bungie apologist approach to defending what was pointed out during the Beta and what hasn't worked in general. Bungie had a plan. Somewhere in the past year, that plan greatly changed prior to launch. Making excuses and justifications for a lot of it just doesn't work.

Cody stated a problem and even provided a solution. The response he got from those two was highly dismissive and acting like he just came in and said, "This is stupid I hate it F U Bungie" and provided no solution (regardless of how "simple" it may have been). Sure, maybe Bungie thought of all this. Maybe Bungie doesn't have an easy fix. Who knows what's going on! I don't. That doesn't detract from some fairly obvious problems in Crucible, yet still get rolled out every other week or so (except for Salvage bounties, which just appear to be around regardless).

Dunno. Saw dismissiveness and apologist statements, countered by pointing out obvious design and gameplay decisions that, believe it or not, are simple to address.

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That's right. I said it. I don't think his name has been thrown around much lately after he left Bungie and then came back to do 'secret thing'.

He was the creative director next to Tiny Joe for the entirety of the Halo franchise under Bungie. His vision was a key element in what made that game what it was.

I can feel his lack of presence with Destiny.

I just can't shake the feeling that the people Bungie has now in the places of authority that used to be filled by the Joes and Frankies and Marcuses don't know that the shoes their filling come with a lot of expectations. I can't even bring Jason Jones into this because for all intents and purposes that man doesn't exist outside the walls of Bungie.

This weekly update was so overtly condescending that I don't even know how to react aside from shock and anger. What Destiny is, and some on DBO will deny this, is frankly kind of insulting to the consumer. All the talk about 'we didn't explain to the player enough' is complete bullshit. No, Bungie.

You said X. We got Y. I paid 60 bucks for X and you keep telling me that X is actually what I got. I'm sorry but I'm not stupid.

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This weekly update was so overtly condescending that I don't even know how to react aside from shock and anger.

I'm still enjoying the hell out of Destiny, even with a solid 60+ hours put into it...

BUT this week's BWU just made me angry. The tone was condescending, the explanation nonsensical, and the mail sack was (once again) full of filler nonsense instead of actually answering any important questions.

Oh, and the comment regarding quitters was utter rubbish -you do still get rep for losing. But not Iron Banner rep. And Iron Banner being a limited time event, a game you know you're not getting rep for is inherently a waste of your time

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This weekly update was so overtly condescending that I don't even know how to react aside from shock and anger.

I'm still enjoying the hell out of Destiny, even with a solid 60+ hours put into it...

BUT this week's BWU just made me angry. The tone was condescending, the explanation nonsensical, and the mail sack was (once again) full of filler nonsense instead of actually answering any important questions.

Oh, and the comment regarding quitters was utter rubbish -you do still get rep for losing. But not Iron Banner rep. And Iron Banner being a limited time event, a game you know you're not getting rep for is inherently a waste of your time

Huh. I thought this was one of the better responses Bungie has given us on something in recent memory. Better guns and armor matter, just not like people thought they would (as time-to-kill can apparently only increases where people were expecting to blow lesser players away in an instant) and not nearly as much as people thought they would (since supposedly right now a level 1 player would be at the same disadvantage as a level 23 player when facing off against someone fully upgraded at level 30). I think Bungie did the right thing by clearly explaining the current rules and by saying that the Iron Banner would "... very likely play by different rules the next time..."

What Bungie did wrong, I think, was not laying this stuff out ahead of time. A simple explanation of "for this first round of the Iron Banner we're keeping some limits in place in order to promote competitive play for players of all levels. Let us know how this feels as we'll be listening and will likely tweak the rules for future iterations of the Iron Banner based on your feedback." Even such a simple statement with no details would have prepared people for what was coming. Instead they said nothing.

Bungie needs to learn to step out ahead of problems like this instead of waiting to explain things after the fact. Really, I think this is true of a lot of their communications like the "Only Four Worlds" issue and the "Raid vs Raids" issue. Presumably they knew how many worlds would ship long before it slipped out that it would only be four. They could have played it up as a positive with: "four giant areas each bigger and far more varied than ODST's Mombasa Streets!" Same thing with confusion about the number of Raids shipping with the game. Instead of having confusion where some Bungie people said "raid" during interviews and some said "raids" they could have just told us that Destiny will ship with one great, challenging raid called the Vault of Glass with more to come. Bungie got around to addressing both these issues, but like with this Iron Banner uproar, they only did so after their community starting buzzing with confusion in the information vacuum they left for us.

So yeah, I don't see the condensation that you do, at least not this time around, but I do think Bungie has an overarching communications problem that needs to be addressed...

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Problem for me is that they did explain it, but only after a long, rambling story-time in which it's played like it even came as a surprise to Deej.

"Wow, sorry guys, I totally didnt expect this either".

The explanation is sound even if some people don't like the reasoning behind it, but they should have led with it, not buried it under condescending filler.

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I was glad to see that Deej was also surprised that level 14s could get kills in IB, but the design person he interviewed basically said that IB is minimally different from normal crucible.

How minimally different? Based on my weekend play, it's different in that level 2 players have access to it. And the level 2 in question, using only the starting guns from the very first mission, was one of the top players on his team. It was disgusting to see this level 2 guy ripping level 28s to shreds with his garbage gear. IB was supposed to be a place to flex your sweet gear muscles, but instead it seemed to be just the same as normal crucible.

Here's the permalink:
http://www.bungie.net/en/Legend/PGCR/2/4611686018429510740/2305843009215449228/478622046?_

The display is weird: Tuxco_KILLS was level 3 during the game, and Shopdog74 was level 2. I get shopdog leveling up to 3 at the end of the match, but Tuxco leveling to 7 seems... excessive.

In the interview, they claim that skill is 80% of it and gear is 20%, but in a toe to toe fight these level 2 and 3 guys beat me *every time*. For the record, I'm a very good PvPer. You can check my profile history, but I'm routinely at the top of my team with a good K/D.

I was fully expecting IB to play like when you encounter a higher level monster in a zone. Anything more than 4 levels higher than you is just ?? and you can't hurt it. Anyone who is low level should be playing normal crucible, not IB. IB was billed as "bring your best, because it matters" but it's really "bring your worst, and we'll make it so it's not that bad."

I mean, what's the point of having a PvP event that's supposed to enable gear advantages and then rubberband it so that your gear is brought up to a similar zone? You have a balanced PvP area already in the crucible. Give me a wholly unbalanced one in IB.

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Woke up just fine. Just highly rejecting the Bungie apologist approach to defending what was pointed out during the Beta and what hasn't worked in general. Bungie had a plan. Somewhere in the past year, that plan greatly changed prior to launch. Making excuses and justifications for a lot of it just doesn't work.

Cody stated a problem and even provided a solution. The response he got from those two was highly dismissive and acting like he just came in and said, "This is stupid I hate it F U Bungie" and provided no solution (regardless of how "simple" it may have been). Sure, maybe Bungie thought of all this. Maybe Bungie doesn't have an easy fix. Who knows what's going on! I don't. That doesn't detract from some fairly obvious problems in Crucible, yet still get rolled out every other week or so (except for Salvage bounties, which just appear to be around regardless).

Dunno. Saw dismissiveness and apologist statements, countered by pointing out obvious design and gameplay decisions that, believe it or not, are simple to address.

Dismisiive yes, apoligist, no.

Actually, wasn't even commenting on Cody's fixes (I don't actually have the numbers to know if it's a valid solution or not) just the idea that the "easy" fixes that get thrown around are generally worth a damn.

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It's kind of weird how all of these problems that Destiny has actually have really simple solutions. Why are all the players able to find these one or two step fixes for the game but Bungie completely missed?

Solutions on message boards always look great. They've never seen the harsh light of a playtest.

That thing where Iron Banner is identical to the Beta and yet not much changed between the Beta result and the post-launch result.

And to kanbo, that thing where Salvage is a sometimes-weekend-only playlist yet should be permanent and has Bounties showing up constantly when the playlist isn't around. And the big vehicle playlist has less vehicles than the normal playlists. But yeah, forums and easy solutions and we're way stupid and clueless compared to Bungie. High five.

Ohh, I got some heat here!

Not saying Bungie didn't miss some totally obvious stuff in different places in the game, and I"m not saying there are times when totally obvious stuff slips.

But when I'm making my own games, I have a golden rule.

Playtesters are great at finding problems, but really shitty at solving them. They generally tell you the most obvious solution, which is the first one you tried (since it's the most obvious!), which you discarded.

Not to say you never get good ones, but in my experience, 50% of feedback solutions are things I've tried, 25% wouldn't work, and 10% more seem like a good idea, but don't work for various reasons.

This is less a "Hey bungie knows best, we should listen." more just a general guide on why I kind of caution on when people say "Here's how to fix x" then a bunch of people say "That's such a good idea, that will totally fix it."

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In "Theory" it works every time….
In reality there are always complications.

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I posted this in the comments section of the weekly update. Seems to have resonated a bit with some of the readers:

"First of all, thanks for the update :)

Regarding the Iron Banner:

It does seem like there was a bit of a disconnect between the design team and the marketing team here. It clearly does not work the way anyone (some Bungie staff included) expected it to. I understand the desire to level the playing field to a certain degree, but as it stands I don't feel there's an appreciable difference between the Iron Banner and the standard Cruicible.

Which brings me to a larger concern I have with the special events we've seen so far:

What is the point?

Please understand, I don't mean this in a snarky or condescending way. Quite sincerely, what is the point of these events if not to offer new & different experiences?
During the Queen's event, we were given specific missions and bounties, neither of which offered anything new. We were initially able to unlock and upgrade Legendary gear at an accelerated rate, but that was nerfed. All we had left was earning Rep to buy gear from the Queen's emissary, none of which was unique or special enough to be worth the time.

Now we have the Iron Banner, which for all intents and purposes plays almost identically to standard crucible. With the lack of a unique experience, the only reason to play is to earn Iron Banner rep and buy the exclusive gear... but once again, none of it is special enough to be worth the time?

I love Destiny, and I love the idea of having special timed events. But I want these events to matter. If they don't offer substantially unique experiences or have truly worthwhile payoffs, I feel there is no point in participating. As it stands, I feel my time is better spent grinding the regularly available dailies and weeklies, and buying from Xur and the regular vendors. I would love it if future events offered genuinely exciting content; stuff that is substantially different from the usual day to day activities.

Thanks for your time!"

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