I seriously don't get some of this (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, October 14, 2014, 00:57 (3931 days ago) @ Avateur

Now you're just guessing at motives. Might there be some truth there? Sure. But I'm tired of the "all Bungie wants is for you to suffer" pessimism game. :/

I am guessing at motives, but the motives are largely clear in the grand scheme of their design philosophy for Destiny. Bungie does not view your time as valuable in this game. They want it extended out as much as possible to keep you playing, preferably for the next ten years. Hence the purpose of the investment system. Once people find ways to make the system work in their favor and make it easier for themselves, it begs the question of why you even need that system. So things that make the system easier for the player will get abolished as quickly as possible.

Ok. Now walk me through the why? Is Bungie collecting money from you each month? Are they showing you ads? Do they think making you unhappy will get you to buy future content? Are they just plain mean? Of course not. None of those. The "they don't value your time" argument has a leg to stand on for games with ongoing fees, but it loses a lot of credibility when talking about Destiny. Furthermore, the statement is a vast generalization. These are people you're talking about here who (presumably) like making games, who tried very hard to make a good game, and who largely succeeded. It doesn't seem right to claim they don't value our time when they've worked many many hours to entertain us.

There's no point to an investment system if you don't make sure its sanctity is upheld. The Raid gives out super good loot? The Raid is super hard? People found a way to make it super easy to get the super good loot and to beat the super hard Raid? That's unacceptable.

And what about the other side? That the Raid was made hard to foster teamwork and provide players a great time? I'd be hard pressed to find someone who played the Raid and didn't like it! Why does it have to be the investment system Bungie is protecting and not the intended challenge and the teamwork and the fun the Raid is supposed to deliver?

Queen's Wrath only gives out two Legendary types of armor. Once those and other Legendary armor are obtained, people need to upgrade that armor with Ascendant material. People can continue getting endless amounts of said material via bounties that provide missions for more armor to turn into the items they need to upgrade their current armor? Without actually doing much real work for those items? That's unacceptable.

We very likely disagree on this, but I've found the upgrade process generally fun. Activating a piece of loot's key perks is a lot of fun and makes me appreciate my weapon or piece of armor more. I've also spent a lot of enjoyable hours playing with other DBOers as we Patrol finding chests and upgrade materials along the way. That's the side you don't seem to want to acknowledge, that people might like the upgrade process.

That said, I don't so much enjoy the last three upgrades on the high level gear. The "Damage, Damage, Damage (or Defense)" upgrades. I'd rather each new upgrade option be meaningful and alter the weapon's feel and abilities rather than making it a few percent easier to survive during high level content. The nerfing (heck, removal) of the big draw of the Queen's Wrath missions is harder to defend, but if Bungie didn't do it to promote what it sees as a better player experience then once again I ask why did they do it.

The RNG and grind can be so unforgiving or drawn out that people are willing to spend hours shooting into a cave repetitively even though it's okay for Bungie to offer bounties demanding 200 Fallen headshots that are obnoxiously time consuming and take forever (as just one of many ridiculous bounty examples)? That's bypassing a system of making it not easy to obtain random drops and things. That's unacceptable.

Let me get this part out of the way first: You are defending people shooting into a cave. Arguments don't get much more silly than that. No matter the rest of it you are throwing your implied support behind an activity that very few would call fun. I feel pretty strongly about not spending my time doing things that aren't fun so I find any support of the loot cave ridiculous. Ok, now beyond that (because to be fair that's not all you were addressing), I see two actual issues: The length of time required to get good item drops and the length of time some bounties take.

On the first issue, I do think loot and reputation earning is a bit too slow. The timings worked fine for me but I was able to put a ton of hours into Destiny. Far more than the stated average of three hours per day. I think if I'd stuck to one character and the average play time I'd still wish for a faster upgrade cycle. That said, I think both the levels 1- 20 Subclass upgrade timing and the rate of engram drops are acceptable. Subclass upgrades come at something around once per hour starting faster and ending probably a little slower. Loot drops probably come out to two every twenty minutes or so once you near level 20. The main change I would make is to let players earn reputation and marks from the beginning and raise the Crucible / Vanguard mark limit to 200 if not infinity. That way players would be able to buy high level gear much sooner and much more consistently after hitting level 20 and would be always be rewarded for the time they put into any given activity.

On the second issue, long bounties, I don't see an inherent problem with long bounties like you seem to. I see bounties as guides to help me decide what to do without being absolutes that dictate things to me. A good bounty to me is one that entices without become a burden. Taking a couple of days to complete some bounties is just fine. I rarely finish the "complete three public events" bounties in one day for instance, but since public events just kinda happen naturally while I play I don't mind that bounty. The one you mentioned, getting 200 fallen headshots, also seems fine to me. It also might extend across play sessions, but headshotting Fallen isn't some unusual, out of the way thing for Destiny players. I suppose I see bounties as rotating prompts to try playing in different locations or in slightly different ways. Fun should be the goal, not completing a bounty you don't want to.

I also think it's interesting you did not mention Bungie changing the engram decryption process for the better. Where does that fit in with the "they don't value your time" argument? Getting low level gear from high level engrams was a pretty big flaw that is now fixed, after all.

I'm sure you get my point, and Cody's.

To an extent, sure. With my replies above I was mainly trying to highlight the way you focused on the negative without mentioning the positives, but yes, there is definitely the case to be made that investment systems done poorly can harm a game. I think Destiny's is pretty good though, especially from level 1 - 20 where it pretty well follows you up through the story progression. It is not without its flaws, namely the lull in new content you can play in the lower 20s, the way the Raid only unlocks past that lull, the way the game makes buying vender gear take twice as long as it needs to by not letting you earn rep and marks for a long time, and the slog seen at the end of the upgrade trees for high level gear.

What I dislike is the focus on the negatives without mention of the positives, the way detractors of investment systems often seem to veer into conspiracy land with claims leaning towards something like "they want to make the game worse so you'll spend more money," and of course I think there's no place for absolute statements like "Once again, investment systems ultimately ruin everything."