Upgrading Faction Gear - Am I Being Trolled? (Small Rant)

Small rant - just have to get it off my chest.

Most people seem to be annoyed/frustrated/pissed about the way upgrading gear has been handled with the arrival of The Dark Below; I am certainly one of those people. However, I have refrained from being vocal about it until last night.

I am a Dead Orbit guy; I have a set of maxed armour from them which max out at 27 light. I first thought that it was all basically redundant now, which was frustrating in itself. But upon checking the DO vendor, it turns out they have the exact same gear, but with higher stats (33 light). Yay! Except I would have to level it all up again...which is stupid, no? E.g. The exact same chest piece has the exact same perks, but just with slightly higher numbers. It's not even justifiable by being a completely different piece of armour. Even the exotics have some silly requirement to get have a not-so-Exotic Shard.

People will say "just get it and level it up". My question is "why?". Why is it like this? Why is this game so openly dismissive of the time spent working on our gear? The arrival of the expansion has suddenly made large swathes of gear sub-optimal, with only kooky, cumbersome and laborious means to upgrade them (except VoG gear...which can't be upgraded...because reasons).

Not to harp on, but I frequently feel like Destiny is trolling me every time I put it in. It's become almost a job to "play"; so much so that lately I've found myself spending way more time in GTAV and even Battlefield 4 (seriously, wtf???!!!!!!)

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I suspect that they have some target to meet each month either in hours played or numbers of players or proportion of total players playing all games, whatever.

All those hours you put into your old gear helped them meet their targets for the last three months that are now past.

Unfortunately that means nothing for the months to come. The hours you spent last month don't count for this month or next month or the months after that.

An alternate (or complimentary) explanation is that if you level everything up really quickly then you might be satisfied and would have the time/energy to try out other games. They could tempt you away from Destiny.

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I suspect that they have some target to meet each month either in hours played or numbers of players or proportion of total players playing all games, whatever.

All those hours you put into your old gear helped them meet their targets for the last three months that are now past.

Unfortunately that means nothing for the months to come. The hours you spent last month don't count for this month or next month or the months after that.

An alternate (or complimentary) explanation is that if you level everything up really quickly then you might be satisfied and would have the time/energy to try out other games. They could tempt you away from Destiny.

Indeed this is a possible reason to try to keep people hooked. However I imagine that the way they're going about this is flawed in the fact that surely a large number of people are beginning to be put off completely by the incessant grind and some of the more recent design choices. As I mentioned, I'm spending more time on other, older games simply because Destiny is getting exhausting, which is sad.

I would be interested to know what the number of unique players is looking like over time.

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so I'm not sure how you could tell why they were going down.

Even a sharp drop coincident with a new popular game release wouldn't tell you why players left.

A sharp drop with no obvious reason? Nah, I still think that would be like trying to read tea leaves.

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Indeed this is a possible reason to try to keep people hooked. However I imagine that the way they're going about this is flawed in the fact that surely a large number of people are beginning to be put off completely by the incessant grind and some of the more recent design choices. As I mentioned, I'm spending more time on other, older games simply because Destiny is getting exhausting, which is sad.

Sad, but completely foreseeable. I saw it coming 4 years ago! Right now I'm pretty much only playing:

1. Raid on Tuesday reset
2. Nightfall on Tuesday reset
3. Friday to buy from Xur

From nearly everyday, to two days. I figure when I get the gear and shards I can just turn in a bunch of bounties to get the gear leveled to 32.

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levels 31, 20, and 9.

Are you doing some kind of, create character, level up, raid, discard character ploy?

Or did you just give up on the lower light alts?

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levels 31, 20, and 9.

Are you doing some kind of, create character, level up, raid, discard character ploy?

Or did you just give up on the lower light alts?

Naw. The level 31 hunter is the main hunter. I'll give my gear and weapons to the level 20 to do the raid and nightfall / heroic again. The level 9 character is one I might get to 20 to do the same thing, if I can find the time or inclination to do it.

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what do you think of my vault replacement idea?

I suppose it could be expanded to cover gear as well, maybe via a dropdown that has:

primary
secondary
heavy
helmet
guantlets
chest armor
leg armor

The Unassigned matrix would hold all available items that are appropriate for the class and light level of your current character so if you had three Hunters then all, character appropriate, Hunter armor pieces would be available to select.

Note

Altering one character's gear doesn't change what the alts have equipped.

Even Better

All alts could have Achlyophage Symbiote equipped as only one alt is active at a time. Indeed all could have the best armour equipped "at the same time" and then you would need to do no further work unless you get a better piece of armour at some time in the future. It would take some make-work out of your day.

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I think a better solution is to simply allow rewards from activities three times per week per account, rather than once per week per character. Same effect as now essentially, but now you don't have to have two other characters of the same class. I could just have one Hunter and do the stuff three times and not have to worry about switching. I think it's silly the system encourages creating three basically identical characters.

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you could allocate your three goes whatever way you want.

But for people who want to roll three characters (masochists?) they could at least swap weapons easily or have all characters equipped with the best weapons with least effort.

And yet, they could still also have different loadouts that work best with their character class.

For Example: all three could share one copy of Gjallarhorn and whatever else the player thinks is awesome but could also have a Hunter that specializes in hand canons and some other class that has an auto rifle focus.

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One checkpoint per character is easy. In a sense it is just THE checkpoint. There is no questions of, "which checkpoint do you mean?"

Does it matter? Do you just finish one Raid then move on to the next?

Or would you like the flexibility of being able to have concurrent checkpoints? Perhaps do a stage to try something out and immediately have two more attempts at it as opposed to having to wait until the first raid was completely finished before being able to attempt that stage again.

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I think a better solution is to simply allow rewards from activities three times per week per account, rather than once per week per character. Same effect as now essentially, but now you don't have to have two other characters of the same class. I could just have one Hunter and do the stuff three times and not have to worry about switching. I think it's silly the system encourages creating three basically identical characters.

Wouldn't it be better to change the system so that it encourages having 3 different characters?

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I think a better solution is to simply allow rewards from activities three times per week per account, rather than once per week per character. Same effect as now essentially, but now you don't have to have two other characters of the same class. I could just have one Hunter and do the stuff three times and not have to worry about switching. I think it's silly the system encourages creating three basically identical characters.

Wouldn't it be better to change the system so that it encourages having 3 different characters?

That would either require the removal of class specific armor, or decoupling the level progression from light on armor.

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aren't the differences between the classes the best encouragements to do that?

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It's something I'm thinking about. It'd require some pretty major changes, to be sure. At the very least, I think it needs changing so that having 3 different characters is viewed as no less optimal than having 3 of the same class. But personally I'd favour tipping it towards 3 different classes.

aren't the differences between the classes the best encouragements to do that?

Obviously not enough right now. The urge to get to Max level, and the burden of investing XP & shards into armour sets, is too much.

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maybe raids drop decoherent engrams that are decoded at reset and stack if picked up using different classes. I imagine this works a bit like quantum entanglement only different. ;-)

For example in the first week:

alt0 picks up a chest engram and a guantlet engram
alt1 picks up a chest engram
alt2 picks up a leg engram

say 0 and 1 are diff classes

If, on the reset, the player cashes in the chest engrams then they decode into class specific engrams but because two diff classes are involved their stats are nudged up slightly.

The player can hold the other engrams until they can compound with other engrams of the same type.

You know, I feel dirty even suggesting this. :-)

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Small rant - just have to get it off my chest.

Most people seem to be annoyed/frustrated/pissed about the way upgrading gear has been handled with the arrival of The Dark Below; I am certainly one of those people. However, I have refrained from being vocal about it until last night.

I am a Dead Orbit guy; I have a set of maxed armour from them which max out at 27 light. I first thought that it was all basically redundant now, which was frustrating in itself. But upon checking the DO vendor, it turns out they have the exact same gear, but with higher stats (33 light). Yay! Except I would have to level it all up again...which is stupid, no? E.g. The exact same chest piece has the exact same perks, but just with slightly higher numbers. It's not even justifiable by being a completely different piece of armour. Even the exotics have some silly requirement to get have a not-so-Exotic Shard.

People will say "just get it and level it up". My question is "why?". Why is it like this? Why is this game so openly dismissive of the time spent working on our gear? The arrival of the expansion has suddenly made large swathes of gear sub-optimal, with only kooky, cumbersome and laborious means to upgrade them (except VoG gear...which can't be upgraded...because reasons).

Not to harp on, but I frequently feel like Destiny is trolling me every time I put it in. It's become almost a job to "play"; so much so that lately I've found myself spending way more time in GTAV and even Battlefield 4 (seriously, wtf???!!!!!!)

I think this clicked for me when Luke Smith was on TTL Party Chat and kept referencing "seasons".

I interpreted that as the Vault of Glass' exclusive reign being season one. Season one's primary goals: Reach level 30, complete the Vault of Glass on Hard, get the Mythoclast.

So the arrival of Crota's End would begin season two. Season's two primary goals: Reach level 32, complete Crota's End on Hard, get the Necrochasm.

We can extrapolate from there. This is the game that Destiny is.

This is why I changed my focus from having one character of each class to having multiple Warlocks. I want to have an easier time completing this season's goals quickly. I don't think I'd have enough time to get 3 characters to 32 before the next DLC. I have fun playing Destiny and I want to have plenty of time to enjoy this season's spoils before they're made void.

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This is why I changed my focus from having one character of each class to having multiple Warlocks. I want to have an easier time completing this season's goals quickly. I don't think I'd have enough time to get 3 characters to 32 before the next DLC. I have fun playing Destiny and I want to have plenty of time to enjoy this season's spoils before they're made void.

^^Sure, but running 3 of the same class in order to play the game and enjoy it's spoils is a complete round-about way of doing things. Surely this points to something being wrong with the way the game currently works? For arguments sake, what if they made it so you couldn't exchange mats etc between characters - as if they were all completely separate?

At any rate, I have one alt that I've barely touched. I simply don't have the drive to go through the "story" missions and sit through the "rich cinematic storytelling" again.

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Funny thing is, I originally deleted my first Warlock to make that 2nd Hunter so I could level up my gear faster. I figured I had saved up enough Hunter raid gear (with all sorts of ability modifier combos) to ride the Destiny train for a while, and that I needed to get a Warlock up and running again for the new content.

Today I regret deleting my alt Hunter, but it was nice having a third class to play as again.

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I found that I was more aggressive as a Hunter. I think I got more kills in Strikes. I'm not sure why, was it chasing those chains of woe? It's not like I was using my supers more.

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We can extrapolate from there. This is the game that Destiny is.

As well as the story and how it's going to tell it. Dark Below continues the shitty tradition of bad storytelling. I won't lie, the story was what drew me to Destiny in the first place after being put off initially. After seeing the Alpha, I knew there was a good game under there, and was excited for the world and story.

Bungie did not deliver here, and completely dropped the ball.

There's not a whole lot left anymore.

House of Wolves is guaranteed more of the same. The only thing that can possibly improve things is a complete shift in Destiny 2.

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Having to re-level that same shit, all while Dailies/Weeklies/DLC1-missions are of a higher level (for max reward at least...which you need in this game), is a joke. The higher-light-level (I'm avoiding using the word "new" here) gear may start at 30, but like you said they should also come with better ability modifiers (Intellect, etc). Hell, they could have even gone with different modifier pairings (how about buffing all three abilities?). A game can't get anymore grindier.

Oh wait, and then you have your exotic armor...fucking hell. I can either wait for these damn things to drop again, or I can spend an arm and a leg paying Xur to 'upgrade' my existing gear (which I'll then have to save up on glimmer to upgrade myself)...except I'm stuck with whatever ability modifiers that troll felt like rolling that week. So far, almost all of my level-30 exotics have had better modifiers.

I can't justify my free time in this game if in 3+ months all of that time spent leveling the same exact bullshit up becomes void and I have to rinse-repeat. Oh look, we're making another left turn! At least now we have higher levels so we can make left turns faster!

Destiny (especially its tech) is cool, but its investment system can kiss my ass. In other news, I just bought a 3rd property in GTA Online...time to start grinding to get some of that cash back so I can fill it with new pimped-out rides.

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Destiny (especially its tech) is cool, but its investment system can kiss my ass. In other news, I just bought a 3rd property in GTA Online...time to start grinding to get some of that cash back so I can fill it with new pimped-out rides.

GTA is probably an unfair comparison as it doesn't implement levelling like Destiny - higher levels in GTA online pretty much just dictate the gear you have access to but do not directly influence the damage output of said gear.

The GTAV grind is all about money, which you can go about getting whichever way you like. You want to buy a sweet ride? Go get the money for it. You want to upgrade/mod it? Get the money for it. You want a 10-car garage/ a better machine gun/ RPG/ jet/ whatever? Get the money for those things. However, you don't "need" those things; you can still clock a guy in the head with a crappy pistol and he'll go down.

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Yeah, I wasn't really trying to compare the two, just...wanted to poke fun at myself for bitching about the grind in one game when I'm about to go trade it for another type of grind in another game I guess.

But yeah, the simplified economy system in GTA5 means that ANY type of grind you may find yourself in will ultimately get you to where you want to go. I was never able to get into GTA5's death match modes (although I did like MP3's) but with GTA's investment system I don't have to worry about putting time in that one mode to advance my character's standing or progression towards the 'loot' I so desire.

And soon there will be heists...GTA's raid equivalent. Awww yess

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Upgrading Faction Gear - Am I Being Trolled? (Small Rant) (Destiny)

For some reason Bungie needs your time

For some reason Bungie needs your time

Those figures generally go down over time

For some reason Bungie needs your time

I see you have three Hunters

I see you have three Hunters

so if you're rolling multiple characters...

better solution

Yes that would be good

How to you handle checkpoints?

better solution

better solution

How would that work?

Not sure...

I'm not really pro social engineering but...