Interesting (Destiny)

by Durandal, Wednesday, March 11, 2015, 23:33 (3781 days ago) @ JComboBox

Some notes and quotes:

"Smashing pots was the most efficient way to get loot"…
"Bag full of legendaries wouldn't result in a legendary"
"150 drops before he got a quiver… for his barbarian"

<We've seen these same things both early on (with purples) and currently (other class drops) in Destiny>

"The low loot drop rate was to pace rewards so high man hours would still have content to grind for."
"Randomness was considered what was important for fun. What they determined was replay ability was key, and randomness was just a stand in."
"Online guides and forums circumvent the need for players to experiment or get out of their comfort zone and explore the aspects of the systems."
"Short, low level beta to avoid spoilers prevented any testing of the above systems, had lots of bugs with raid bosses." <Boy Bungie is suffering from the same issue>

"Peaks and valleys in player power are how players feel rewarded."
"They had to drop fewer items and make each more significant to the player." <Bungie seemed to focus on this as well>
"Items need to have clear differences and clear power relative to each other." <Again Bungie has pretty good differentiation>
"Any bonus that improves killing is better then other support abilities." <Exotics and some legendaries suffer from this>

"Legendaries were piles of stats not fantasies" <Bungie seems to half get this. All exotics have interesting stories behind them, but we don't really explore these fantasies much and many exotics are outclassed by lower level items.>

Blizzard's Changes:
Drops for your class only.
Identify how the stats relate in the overall distribution for this item (low or high roll)
Power items have powerful, almost game breaking effects that change the way the class plays.
Trading ruins the loot reward loop
Game needs to be about killing demons, not shopping for loot. <how does Zur fit into this?>
Variety is the most efficient way to play the game. <Bungie's method for forcing variety needs help. Random bounties and weekly missions are not a good substitute>
Gear, not level, is how peaks and valleys are created in power. <Bungie uses this pretty closely>

So overall, Bungie committed some of the same errors, but avoided some as well.