Super weapons break the game (Destiny)

by yakaman, Sunday, May 31, 2015, 13:41 (3466 days ago) @ Cody Miller

House of Wolves is largely better than Dark Below, except possibly for the end game.

The story missions are getting better all the time, but still have plenty of room to grow.

I find it amusing that the new go to end game activity is PvP related. From what I've played, Trials of Osiris is not only a blast, but easily the best and most fun way to earn good gear and etheric light. The elimination game type is tough and tense, but in a good way.

Here you actually have a cool boss mechanic, which can be defeated and bypassed not by cheese, but by 3 players with Gjallarhorns (or 4th Horsemans and Thunderlords with arc burn). When you can just shoot the boss with everything you've got and he dies in 45 seconds, you have failed. You have to deal with and figure out Atheon's mechanics. You have to deal with and figure out Crota's mechanics. But Skolas? Nope, just shoot him a lot. It's so massively disappointing that concentrating your fire in an intense burst is enough to take out the Arena's toughest boss.

Likewise, the treasure keys are a huge mess. Final bosses should drop treasure keys 100% of the time on 34 and 35. It's utterly baffling why this isn't the case. Finding keys in the wild should be a bonus. What did I get for beating Skolas the first week? Absolutely nothing because I didn't have a key. The gear is also bad. The Queen's gear is just legendary gear. I have awesome legendary gear already, and not only that, but the perks don't all have tradeoffs on them. Can you get elemental primaries from PoE? If not, it's a big waste of time since it sure isn't that fun for its own sake. That's the irony. What good is your end game, if the best part of it is PvP where elemental damage doesn't matter? The elemental primaries were good before because the rock in PvE. But do you think I'm going to want to play PoE 9 times a week? No thanks.

Huge miss for the PvP end game, huge hit for the PvP end game, and a steadily rising quality to the story missions.

The story stuff barely registered with me. I actually had to think hard about what HoW story even was. We've been marinating in the nonexistent for so long that the barely existent seems glorious. Yikes.

Gear, loot, drop, gear, loot, drop, RNG, RNG, loot, gear. This is all we talk about.

First, I hate ToO with every fiber of my being. I understand that the best of the best will enjoy this; after the top of the mountain, everyone needs to move to the next peak. However, Destiny's Crucible offering already catered to the hardcore. There is essentially nothing to do in Crucible except kill other players in the same 3 or 4 ways.

So, Bungie...doubled down? They distilled the kill/die experience into it's purest form; literally kill or die and the round is over in 20 seconds. It's slayer porn, basically. Don't have an uber-primary? Good fucking luck to you. Thorn, Mythoclast...Mythoclast, Thorn. Sniper. Holy balls, somebody please stab my eyes out.

It's a funny choice for Bungie - I was hoping that they might have invested some time into opening up Crucible in other ways, though I must admit, I have no ideas what those other ways might be. Maybe Crucible is just limited to what it is?

Regarding PoE...I appreciate the effort, but it just doesn't add anything new. The PoE designers hands are tied in some ways; Ghallerhorns and Horseman and whatever else are a given. They exist, and people pursue them with abandon. Why? Because they are simply better than anything else. Forget strategy, forget skill, forget perseverance. Just load your super weapon and pull the trigger.

I think this may be why I'm having a hard time enjoying PoE. I love killing bad guys, and I love to survive. But it's hard to feel good about my effort when I can watch people breeze through shit just because they have these few be-all-end-all weapons. Here is an opportunity missed - I would have loved a survival mode in which Guardians just survived as long as possible. But they couldn't do that because they had to have a specific end to the event. Why? So they could give loot. Because people will not play without the promise of loot? Why did I play ODST: Firefight for so long?

Weird. We're in a weird place with Destiny. Or, maybe just I am.

I guess I'd say that PoE is good in principle and in (general) execution, but is undercut (IMO) because of super weapons. In many ways, ToO is the same. I'm having a hard time trying to understand my motivation for playing. If super weapons are the key to success, and they are randomly given, what is my motivation again?