Echo Chamber (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Wednesday, December 03, 2014, 14:32 (3645 days ago) @ iconicbanana

And DeeJ, if you stuck around, please. Remember we invest a lot in this. It's our freetime. We value it.

Does this sound kind of backwards to anyone else? I mean, I value my free time too, but it sounds like you take it very seriously, which to me mostly runs counter to the point of free time. I don't play Destiny to rank up, I play Destiny to shoot things and stab things. I do want upgrades, and I do put some conscious effort into them, that does affect my play style, but mostly I do bounties or go to whatever has extra XP that day because I don't have anything better to do, so I might as well go with the game's suggestion. It's the same reason I did challenges in Reach and Halo 4 even after I'd unlocked everything (or almost everything) I wanted. I get that in the same way that some people find it very hard to "turn their brain off" to enjoy a dumb action movie, some people are drawn to goals and adopt them without prodding, and then feel an understandable stress when they have difficulty reaching them. I have some of that myself, I had to cultivate that to make it through school and college, so I'd say it's a healthy thing. I think, though, that making the effort to ignore the feeling that you should be doing or accomplishing more is worth it when it comes to video games and indeed most hobbies. If you can't do that, if you can't get to where you're just enjoying it in the moment, I don't think Destiny (or possibly RPGs in general) is going to give you as much enjoyment as other games-- which is fine.