Super weapons break the game (Destiny)

by yakaman, Sunday, May 31, 2015, 19:31 (3466 days ago) @ Kermit

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?

I hear you, brother. Because I have a few of those superweapons on one platform but not the other, I see a bit of both sides (although the Lighthouse is out of my reach without a truckload of luck).

It's disheartening to hear how easy this bounty or this boss is to some. It's a presumption to think it's easy for everyone. I'd like to get better at Crucible, but I don't know if it's possible, and the weapon differential makes it even less possible.

I'm all for winners and losers because without them you don't have meaningful competition. I just wish I didn't feel that the path to being a winner is getting steeper all the time.

I like HoWs quite a bit, but whenever I play on the PS4 in particular, I feel disadvantaged. It's good that I have friends there who don't seem to care (yet) that my skills or weapons (except for Thunderlord) are subpar. One drawback of all the high-stakes three-man activities is that I'm hesitant to join scheduled events now in that it feels like there's no room for a weak link.

I hope it came through that I think HoW is a good effort. I've (in general) been enjoying Crucible over the last couple of months. I guess I'm wondering if this (i.e. super weapon domination) is a core characteristic of games that include loot as a reward system. If you include loot, you have to include some stuff that make people feel awesome to get, and it has to be gated, so that not everyone gets it.

And once you've set a bar, there's no going backwards. An epic gun cannot be rolled back or taken back; it can be nerfed but that causes issues of its own. So how can you keep upping the stakes to keep people playing? It makes me wonder if Cody isn't right about RNG loot: bad in principle.

None of this matters drastically - I've certainly gotten my money's worth out of Destiny. 6+ months is a pretty good run.