I agree, except for the second part. (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Thursday, May 07, 2015, 13:34 (3487 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

Look at the individual raid mechanics. They're pretty stupid easy. We clear Crota in 30 minutes, Atheon in an hour on casual play now. Once you get the mechanics, it's easy. This will continue to be difficult despite understanding the mechanics of the raid.

And the first time doing a raid with no help, how long did it take? Did you even ever DO it with no help? That's my point, and that's the experience that is so amazing. They are easy now because you know them, but figuring them out is wicked fun. PoE has none of that whatsoever.

Vault of Glass opening second is still far and above any other Destiny experience by a huge margin.

That only happens once per player though, if it even ever happens, and most of the mechanics that I wasn't told about I was able to figure out quite quickly.
It doesn't make sense to design around something that only presents once unless you're actually building a puzzle game, and Destiny is not a puzzle game, it's a shooter. (Even in the case of a puzzle game, it's best to have depth beyond one correct solution, which you've talked about at length before with Portal versus Portal 2, weakening your own point with your own words.)
This is all ignoring the fact you've only seen 2 of the 4 rooms and you don't know how many different objectives there are, what they are, or how they work.

It's not a stretch to assume that the objectives will be much simpler than the raid objectives given a) it is a matchmade activity, and b) only 3 players means fewer moving parts.

And as a counter to Cody's argument, I find the best part about the raids is the last time you play it, not the first. Each playthrough is a chance to take what you've learned and do a little better. Try new formations, new weapon and ability combos, get through faster, more efficiently, etc.

I'm with Cody on this one. The very first time clearing the raids was great. Getting through the Abyss totally unspoiled was AMAZING.

The raids, however, then got old to me very quickly. Well before I ever got the gear to get into hard modes, in fact. Part of that is because RNG based loot drops are horsecrap, and three months into CE I still had only ever gotten boots and gloves despite many full clears. I have still never gotten a full set of VoG armor. Hard modes were a nice challenge, but only the Crota fight actually had different mechanics (and it sucks being 31 while everyone else in the group has been 32 for over a month). Everything else was basically the exact same as normal, sans revives and with bigger numbers.

This is a problem with raids in MMO games in general. As "beat this once" encounters, they're super fun. As "beat this every week, multiple times, for months on end" they suck ballsack (exacerbated by the fact that very often in MMOs you can't even attempt the next raid tier until everyone is fully outfitted from the current tier). I'm glad PoE will be different each time, but I'm also afraid that instead of being truly random, it will be "pick from a set of 12 fixed challenges" which will result in what is basically a pared down raid experience with variety but not surprises. At least the loot system is different. For that I'm VERY thankful.