*IMO* Bungie really misplayed the RPG elements of Destiny (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Thursday, March 12, 2015, 22:29 (3768 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Whenever I hear talk about how a major game developer could have done something "easier" to make it more simplistic, I think of the Scenarios:

• The developers are truly idiots and didn't even think of doing it that way
  
• The developers had originally done it that way and but had to change it to create other effects
  
• It's impossible to make a game as complicated as Destiny with simple game mechanics as that

Maybe if they are started out doing something like that, they could have kept it going like that, but I highly doubt it. Games evolve, especially when new features keep getting added.

I spent 13 years of my life making video games. I know what goes into them, and I know that lots of times coders want to show off their super complex maths to the point where, if no one reigns them in, the game suffers.

• I don't think the developers at Bungie are idiots, but it's pretty clear to me that this was an ambitious undertaking for them and they got in over their heads. Destiny 2 should be much better, but Destiny 1 has missed the mark in a number of ways, several enumerated in this thread.
  
• This is possible. They clearly went through some major overhauls, but their systems design seems cumbersome and obtuse, even to them (hence the heavy ammo bug taking so long to fix). It's clear that they didn't design the game to be particularly fluid or to have a quick patch turnaround time. Compare to Mass Effect 3's weekly balance changes or CoD's "as needed" system and Destiny is patching at a snail's pace. It's surprising, because the Halo games' PvP were so great, but then again - part of the balance there was the limited supply of powerful and available weapons. In a game where you bring your own gun, balance is totally different.
  
• Patently false. The more complicated your game overall, the simpler you need your core mechanics to be. Simple fundamental systems allow for greater interaction and complexity without generating the kind of weird and obtuse number schema that Destiny currently employs. It also allows your players to more easily grasp what you're doing, because not all of them have a PhD in Statistical Analysis.

So I'm going to go with option B. It's clear to me that the ground layer systems for armor, damage, and level interact in wonky ways, and that's a bad fundamental design - hence my agreement that Bungie misplayed the RPG elements in Destiny. They missed the mark.