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

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Tuesday, October 14, 2014, 13:59 (3930 days ago) @ Avateur
edited by General Vagueness, Tuesday, October 14, 2014, 14:10

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.

The why is simple. They have a deal with Activision. That deal is a ten year deal. Activision doesn't play nice when DLC and things don't sell. Bungie's next ten years' worth of sales are highly dependent on hopefully getting people hooked into this game. If they can't keep players playing, there's a good chance that their ten year plan, or their profit, or whatever deals they have with Activision become very, very difficult to accomplish or maintain.

Also, comparing a game with microtransactions or fees to a game without doesn't hold up. A game that you only pay for once can still absolutely not give a damn about your time. And yes, it is a vast generalization. Yes, there are many good people working there who worked hard to make a game, who enjoyed making it, and did largely succeed. Somewhere in the past year, that five year game vision changed dramatically, and it's quite clear that whatever the intended product was before did not release in its current form.

You just said they value our time though, that our time means their money. I know that's not what you meant, but you should say what you mean, it reduces the chances of flying off the rails and making the kind of absolute statements and skewed statements you're apparently against.

I can't speak to whether or not that negatively impacted the investment system, but it would appear to since the investment system is primarily all that's left. Even in gameplay itself, rather than valuing your time, largely all you're doing is spawning at the same part of the map for every single mission, having to zoom across the entire map to get to your actual mission, and then defend your Ghost over 9000 times while enemies charge at you. Rinse and repeat. That's not showing you that your time is valuable. This is just one of many examples.

As much as it hurts to think and say this, I don't think it's a grand scheme to increase player investment, I think it's just shoddy design (although I think passing through the same areas has arguable merits to it, it helped me figure out how the worlds were laid out faster for one thing). This is borne out by the many questionable choices that have nothing to do with player investment. Heck, the other stuff in this update bears it out-- people have been saying auto rifles are OP since the beta (maybe even the alpha) and they took until now to fix (or "fix") that, whether because of technical difficulties, stubbornness, or both, but it has nothing to do with player investment systems.

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.

I didn't realize I had to acknowledge it. People do like the upgrade process. Others might be addicted to it based on common psychology and the investment system tactics Bungie has employed in this game. That's neither here nor there. People enjoy it. Check. I've personally thoroughly enjoyed finding gold chests and Dead Sleeping Ghosts and helping friends find them. I enjoy exploring. None of that is going to give you Ascendant Materials.

idea: chests with ascendant materials in them (probably very rarely)

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.

I'm defending people playing how they want to play when they aren't hurting anyone else or cheating. I'm not defending standing around doing something stupid.

Actually you are-- but you can do that; Ragashingo or anyone else doesn't have a better claim to the other side being more defensible, and to verbally attack people for it, like a few people did....

I think loot cave grinding is completely and absolutely stupid, and a total waste of time. If they want to do it, though, good for them. Not my problem. I also fully understand why they want to do it. The RNG and grind in Destiny can really, really be unforgiving and can royally suck. It's unfortunate that people felt the need to shoot into a cave. It's not a silly argument when you consider why they're doing it. But again, they weren't harming anyone, and the system itself is largely what led them to it.

To your point of "very few" calling it fun, you're probably completely right. So, if the majority of players aren't doing it, and if the people who are doing it are actually having fun, is it wrong? If the people doing it aren't having fun, what does that say about the larger investment system?

I think you're mostly right there, but there are people who get a... certain satisfaction out of shooting things that are defenseless, which I would argue isn't the healthiest thing, but doing it in a game, I wouldn't say it's wrong, exactly-- the point being there's another reason, and possibly more.

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.

Long bounties in and of themselves aren't necessarily a problem. The problem is the lack of variety in bounties. They are just about the same bounties daily, and if not, they're the same every other day. For a game this huge, that's pathetic. Many are time consuming, and when you've already done the time consuming parts endlessly, it's about as big of a waste of time and about as not-fun as shooting into a loot cave.

Again, I think it's just not doing it well. They did the same thing with Reach's challenges and Reach was much, much less focused on player investment. The fact they've scarcely improved is troubling, but it's also consistent-- Activision or anyone else didn't make this worse, it just failed to get better (and become what it arguably should've been).

So I agree, fun should be the goal. Some bounties are fun and easy to obtain during play. Get 9000 exp without dying. Sure. I have things to do all over whatever planets in Patrol. Should be fun, and I get it just by playing. Going out of my way to find Fallen and get headshots on them sucks. Old Russia sucks. I played the daylights out of it in the Beta and at launch. Nothing changed from the Beta. I hate that place.

Well that's a different problem, isn't it?

Yet it's always 200 Fallen headshots, isn't it? Where are the Hive headshots? Or the Vex precision kills? See what I mean? This isn't about fostering making you go to visit other areas. It's grinding for grinding's sake because they don't change.

There are bounties (and patrol missions) for killing Hive, Vex, and Cabal, too, and for killing high-ranking ones and even specific ones, just not for precision kills (that I've seen). The Fallen are on Earth, the Moon, and Venus, and they're near the spawn areas in all of those places; that's probably a factor.

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.

Because it's been fixed. They fixed it to something logical. They finally found a flaw so glaringly bad in their investment system that it just had to change. Now it's back to fixing loot caves and sniper platforms, you know, things that aren't really benefiting anyone (beyond I suppose making them try and find more fun ways to spend their time while battling an unforgiving RNG and trying to complete a task for the millionth time). lol

Can I take a time out and say you using "lol" like it's punctuation bothers me? I'm sorry, it's not material to anything, and it's kind of a petty gripe, and it's more my problem than anything else, but it bothers me, you sound like a 12-year-old girl, and it makes it a little harder to tell how seriously you're taking things.

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."

It sucks, but when positive threads pop up here (or at HBO), hardly anyone replies to them.

Also, Destiny has a ton of problems. Bungie is listening. They read these threads. Do you think the Cryptarch got fixed because people were focusing on all the magical happy things done right? Hell no. And even in Bungie's explanation for why it was the way it was, people over at Bungie actually thought that doing it the way they did was a good thing! Sometimes the focus on the bad will lead to a far, far superior and good game. Let's see that ten year plan actually work. Unfortunately, with all of these problems, it might not. I obviously don't know. Frankly, I don't want to see that happen. The investment system is a huge problem, and it absolutely has to be addressed.

So we come to one of the central issues that always seems to pop up with these... and I don't have anything new or insightful to say, just that the positive-supporting and negative-supporting sides sometimes get too entrenched and too quick to excuse or rationalize anything that doesn't fit their view-- which is human nature, but I think it's one of the ugliest parts of human nature. I'm inclined to say the positive-supporting side is more misguided than the negative-supporting side, but I have more problems with Destiny than they do; a few of them are objective, but mostly it's all things that are arguable-- and I say let's have the arguments, let's just be civil. This thread has mostly been civil, which is great, let's continue that way.