On content and why we're drowning in it. (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Sunday, March 22, 2015, 23:33 (3781 days ago) @ Cody Miller

You want me to throw money on this franchise Bungie? Pull another Forge World reveal on us.

It is 100% the fault of the investment system and how the game was designed around awards.

With Halo, you never burned out, because you only played when you wanted to, for the sake of just playing. In a sense there was nothing to get burned out on; you simply played when you wanted to, and didn't when you didn't.

Destiny is so reward focused, that it essentially mandates certain activities if you want to succeed and get to the parts you do want. So at times you are playing not because you enjoy the experience, but because you need the reward. As you progress more, this happens more. Thus, there is a clash, and you burn out.

I couldn't disagree more.

As someone who played very little competitive multiplayer post Halo 2, I'd admit it is true that Halo's campaign material was very replayable. Even then, however, you come to its end. Even if you play slowly, even if you replay the entire game or isolated levels, even if you intentionally vary your own style of play, you come to a point of diminishing returns.

I tended to play a campaign on Heroic, then replay it on Legendary, then go back and perhaps noodle around on Normal looking for things I'd missed, or things to do differently, and then replay favorite levels on Heroic for fun. All in all that's probably fewer hours played than I'd get from RPGs like Mass Effect that I've replayed each campaign multiple times and each pass takes 30 hours or so.

Then you wait three years for new content.

Yes, the reason to repeat missions in Destiny is for the chance of reward, not purely just the sake of play, but I'd say that burnout is what happens when the potential reward is the only reason. I'm not a huge fan of the Omnigul strike, and I don't have the best (or the worst) luck with Nightfall loot, but I did have some fun running the strike last week because I was playing with friends in a way that was never possible in Halo-- and that, for me, trumps just about everything.

I got new missions and a new raid after a few months, and there is still more on the way. If this were a Halo title, I'd be done with it already and playing something else. I'm still playing Destiny and the biggest complaint about it is that people are still playing Destiny but have already played everything too much because they play even more than me.

That is not a criticism. That is the ultimate confirmation that Bungie has made the right decisions, not the wrong ones, and that the investment hooks work so well that people keep playing beyond the point where they should but are unable or unwilling to stop.

I'm also at a point of wanting new content again, and hopefully it's just around the corner, because if this were a Halo game, I'd already be at the point of wishing there was some new level to play that would be years away.