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Mini Rant: Big Problem! No two guns are ever the same. (Destiny)

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Sunday, July 26, 2015, 03:07 (3645 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I get why Destiny bombard you with so much choice. It's all purposeful and manipulative.

There's a principle, where the more choice someone has, the less satisfied they ultimately are. Imagine you can choose from two Vacuum cleaners. You look at them, decide which is better, and buy the better one. You might down the line have second thoughts, but when you think back, you can clearly see you made the better choice.

But if you have a hundred Vacuum cleaners to choose from, you have second thoughts, but then go over the endless combinations of attachments and models from the other 99. You can no longer tell with certainty that 'this one I got is the best', because there is so much choice, and so many factors, you are always left with that nagging and uncertainty.

Thus, Destiny WANTS you to agonize over whether your rolls are as good as they can be, by bombarding you with meaningless choice to create uncertainty in your mind.

The more you examine the game, the more deliberately hostile you see the design ultimately is.

You can look at anything negatively if you want to.

The way I look at it is, Bungie is deliberately frustrating those who want to min/max the game-- to determine THE best weapon and armor combinations, to prevent the game from collapsing down into those options and nothing else. (Hence the upcoming nerfs, although at least the game doesn't collapse to Thorn/Gyllenhall for everyone, because not everyone has them.)

I agree Bungie is trying to create doubt, because doubt is the only thing that leaves you open to trying new weapons. The alternative is nothing but an escalator where you only know things are better because they have bigger numbers. Destiny does that too, but such changes have to be restricted to major updates, like the moves from max attack 300, then to 331, and now to 365. Within those ranges, though, there have to be doubts that lead you to evaluate new items, and that's where the perks come in.


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