Concrete paths. (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, September 03, 2015, 23:21 (3466 days ago) @ RaichuKFM

You really have to make it clearer what you mean, though, I think. Boy do I have that problem...

But, well, there's some broad categories that might work to the end I think you want, or something similar(-ish), and I'll take the liberty of listing some that seem a little more obvious to me:

• Adding a concrete path to any gear in the game, either supplanting or in addition to random drops, that is reasonably feasible for any player; either endgame content does not drop anything noncosmetic, or it does have drops, but nothing is endgame-exclusive (like, say, Praedyth's Revenge) or mostly/functionally endgame exclusive (such as Etheric Light). Some things are difficult to attain (like, say, Thorn is now) but you can't be entirely screwed out of an item just by bad luck, and it's easier to get to the level you want to be to do any given activity than it is now. The carrot to drive player investment is much as it is now, but rather more savory, and I'd imagine less prone to trap people in an addictive game they don't really like.

This is the same drum Cody's been banging, and I really hope Bungie does not cave to this because it's pretty antithetical to what I think they want for the Destiny experience.

The problem is that balancing weapons and gear is exceedingly difficult, and even more difficult than that is creating a perception of balance. Player bases tend to get polarized; the idea that this weapon or that helmet is something that everybody needs to have spreads like wildfire. When all the gear has a concrete path, things get reductionist. Everybody needs to have this gun and the others are crap; people do the thing to get that gun. Everybody has that gun. The gun everybody wanted is now passe because everybody has it. It's so good it makes the game boring, but everything else is worse and not worth playing for.

Look at the loot cave. The loot cave was actually NOT a better way of getting loot than just about any activity in the game. A lot of the glorious screenshots of loot on the ground consisted mostly of ammo drops-- drops you needed to collect in order to keep shooting the loot cave. Bungie's problem was not so much that it had inadvertently created a mechanic that allowed players to shortcircuit the game's reward system as much as it created a situation that allowed players to believe that they had shortcircuited it-- and that was enough.