But the new info is still pretty terrible?... (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, December 04, 2014, 14:37 (3461 days ago) @ iconicbanana

I think what I see as artificial inflation, you see as a difficulty curve?

Maybe. I think Destiny's real problem is that there aren't enough really well designed missions in the game. Most of them are decent enough, but there is an overall lack of variety that makes many of them less enjoyable to replay.

Jason Jones has talked about his big regret with Halo; that players replayed those missions over and over and over, for nothing (other than the fun of the gameplay). He wanted Destiny to capture that same enjoyment, but to give the player rewards/stuff to do/goals to work towards while we replay the missions over and over.

Where things went a bit wrong, IMO, is that the average Destiny mission is extremely weak compared to the average Halo mission. They are not as inherently replayable.

So what happens? People ARE replaying the missions like crazy, but why? The answer is of course: Loot. As soon as this dynamic is in place, anything that appears to harm, hinder, or add frustration to the acquisition of loot is seen as a big problem to the player. It's somewhat telling that a new expansion is on the way, and all anyone is talking about is the new gear (and of course the Raid). The new missions themselves are barely a blip on the radar.

I suspect that when Jones was cooking all of this up all those years ago, he was imagining a situation where the new missions would be what we were all excited for, while the loot was just the icing on the cake.