The effects of Player Level in the Iron Banner (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Monday, March 23, 2015, 20:25 (3781 days ago) @ RC

This sniper rifle is a two shot kill in the body and a one shot headshot, which means it's the same as every other sniper rifle in IB in terms of damage.

You've described the situation in such warped terms that... wow.

Efrideet's Spear + final round = 1 shot kill on their toe.

EDIT:
1. You're wrong.
2. Why do think it should be different?

Okay, you're describing an extremely specific situation where you've also wasted spent two shots elsewhere, so in reality this is a three shot kill.

It's a counter-example. You calling it a 'three shot kill' still leaves that status unaffected.

'Number of shots to kill' on it's own is just such a warped, narrow, way of looking at it so as to be pointless.

You are completely missing my point. Take any gun at 300 attack power in iron banner, and it is just as effective as a 331 version of that gun. You're comparing apples and oranges instead of looking at the actual issue I have here, which is that Iron banner is supposed to let your gear matter, but - as the OP said - the degree of change from one tier of gear to another is too small to be significant for most players. And number of shots to kill isn't "warped." There's no incentive to get a 331 weapon if you have a 300 weapon that you really like, because similar weapons take a similar number of shots to kill. There's no advantage bestowed by having a 331 weapon. If you have a 300 Efreet's Spear that has your beloved final round perk, guess what? It's a 1-shot kill with that final round in today's level 32 iron banner, and I don't think it should be. Below max level weapons should not be as effective in Iron Banner as max level weapons.

so 1: You're ignoring the intent of the post, which is normal bullet damage for a 300 attack sniper is effectively the same as a 331 attack sniper. A 300 Efreet's spear with final round would 1-shot with that last round just as well as a 331 version.

2: Because Bungie has stated that in the Iron Banner your gear matters. But that doesn't seem to be the case. A 300 weapon is equally effective to a 331 weapon as far as I can tell.

Right, it was designed in the way that gear close to the maximum would behave similarly. Gear still very much matters outside that narrow range at the very top. Light level affects the damage grenade, melee and supers do. I've tried dropping to 29 and suddenly my grenades didn't quite kill when I expected them to.

Try a 242 Attack rare-tier weapon next time you're in IB.

Again, you're missing the point. There should be a noticeable difference between level 32 and level 31, not just level 32 and level 29 and greater. It doesn't have to be massive, but you should notice a difference when you play at level 32 from when you play at 31. This far into the expansion, anyone who has been playing for a month or longer should easily be able to field at least 300 weapons, which pretty much negates the level differences of Iron Banner, making it basically the same as Control in the regular Crucible in terms of gameplay. You're saying "gear close to maximum" but that actually means "brand new and never upgraded exotics and raid weapons, as well as old pre-expansion weapons that are fully upgraded." Those guns simply should not be as competitive as post-expansion weapons that are fully upgraded to 331.

Personally, I'd like to see almost the opposite of what it is now: A steeper initial curve, that wasn't so bad later on. Maybe an inverted parabolic curve, where the difference between a 32 and 31 is big enough to require an extra shot from a 31 to kill a 32, and then the difference becomes less the further you go down, maxing out around 5 levels of difference, such that a level 20 and a level 27 are basically the same effectiveness against a level 32, but still quite a bit less effective than a 30 would be.

That would cause lower level players to, I think, feel less excluded from the event, and would still provide ample incentive to higher players to always bring their max level gear, and would also make max level players feel more powerful than they do now.