Radiant Materials (Destiny)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Monday, December 15, 2014, 12:05 (3630 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Not according to the interview with Luke someone posted here recently. Luke said basically that the Radient materials were intended to help encourage people to upgrade their stuff with the Ascendant materials instead of holding on to them while trying to get raid gear. According to him Bungie found that many players were doing exactly that and it was keeping them at a low level whereas if they just upgraded their gear and waited to upgrade Raid gear later they would have leveled up already.

Of course he is going to say that. I'm sure what he says is true, but it's not the whole reason. He's not going to go out and say "This system is to keep you from leveling too quickly". It's very very obvious that Bungie intended for the Vault of Glass and reaching 30 to be much harder than it ended up being.

For some people, it may have been easy. I have only beaten the Vault twice and only finally reached level 30 yesterday, and I play a little almost every day. There's a huge population playing this game, and while you may find others on forums having similar experiences, these folks might still be outliers compared to the whole. If you have 300 people entering a race, and two of them are Olympic medalists, well you may not be able to cater to those outliers when you're designing a fulfilling track.

For example, I have a hard time relating to much of this article or your earlier inventory descriptions. I have... TWO shards at the moment, hah. This was also the first time, thanks to the DLC sucking me in, that I actually reached the Vanguard Mark cap. So a lot of what I'm reading here sounds like a completely different game than the one I'm playing. The medalists called the race fast and easy; I'm collapsing on the finish line. :)

By the time I've acquired enough marks for gear, I've also got a recommendation, or one right around the corner, so that hasn't really affected me. There's a variety of playstyles out there.

That said, I do think the weekly Mark caps should probably go away. I can understand scheduling some things to refresh like the Nightfall bonus, but funneling all those varieties of playstyles into weekly cycles on Marks doesn't make sense. I haven't thought long about it, but doing away with the caps and just increasing the prices make more sense to me. Or getting rid of Marks and just using recommendations as your sole currency. That way, whether I have a little or a lot of time, I'm still able to work towards the gear.

Going back to that racetrack metaphor, it's sort of like only allowing runners 200 meters every few minutes. It keeps the runners closer together but it frustrates the faster folk. I say let the runners go at their own pace. If the medalists complain after they finish, then let them, that's just the price of wanting to win instead of wanting to play - eventually, you do win or finish and have to go find something else to win. Those of us who simply enjoy running will keep running and enjoy the track at whatever pace. If we get ahead of others or get to the finish line, we'll just keep running because we enjoy it.

But, eh... Bungie has added and removed much in the course of these Destiny's patches - I'm personally not really worried because they seem to be constantly addressing issues, even the new ones they've intentionally or unintentionally added.