Concrete paths. (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Friday, September 04, 2015, 01:11 (3466 days ago) @ narcogen
edited by General Vagueness, Friday, September 04, 2015, 01:41

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.

Not having guns that are that much better than everything else would be a start, but I know people might perceive them that way anyway, and if you make everything too similar it gets bland. Still, I think it would help for them to focus more on things that are subjectively better and downplay things that are objectively better. I would even go so far as to say they should leave things alone that are seen as overpowered if they aren't actually overpowered.

That brings me to the other issue, which is that people don't necessarily chase something because it's seen as the best. How many people have gone through dozens of ranks with Dead Orbit to get a shader? How many of those people like the fact it worked that way? I'm guessing not many.

As for reductionism and min/maxing, it happens. Trying to prevent it in a stat-based game (unless it's designed against that from the beginning) is futile. Putting up barriers to it prevents some casual players from doing it but I think it mostly just makes the people that want to do it more frustrated. (I think they should go further and expose all the workings so everyone can see how to do it if they choose, rather than have people picking apart the game and getting a questionable amount of benefit out of it and then starting over with the next update.)

The bottom line is I don't think having a path to any given piece of gear would be bad-- it could still be a long one, and then could amend the path or the gear (or both) if and when something ends up overpowered.

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.

Don't you think it's telling that so many players wanted to short-circuit the reward system and were mad when the apparent way to do that was taken away? Part of the problem was the difficulty and lack of options in getting good gear in vanilla Destiny (and the lack of interest in running the same 5 or 6 strikes and the same raid over and over), but it also went to a deeper element of this type of game. It connects to another issue that keeps coming up, people that keep playing even though they're not happy.

The people that keep playing when they're not having fun are largely playing to get something. Almost all of them do get some enjoyment out of the game, and most of them are aware on some level that whatever their goal is it won't feel worth the grind in the end, but they're driven by the desire (a pretty basic human desire I might add) to have something for themselves.

That's where the path to get gear you want comes in. It might reduce the number of people playing or the amount of time they play, but overall they'd resent the game less. I think that's a worthwhile trade.
I realize a path to every single piece of gear isn't feasible, and even a path to every piece of legendary gear or even all of the current crop of them might not be feasible, but they could do better than what they have. I think they should at least have a path for a lot more exotics than they do, including armor.

(As for me, I play because it's fun, but I recognize what makes the game frustrating for other people, and made the game frustrating for me when I was at a low level.)