Destiny, Social Gaming, Shared World, and Numbers

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, June 10, 2013, 20:41 (4194 days ago)

Think back. What's the default for 'social' games? Obviously games where you played with other people. But a long time ago that was only possible in person. So, the 'social' games of the past were the Street fighters, where you duked it out right next to someone, or the Streets of Rages where you and a friend beat up punks together, or the Mario Kart 64s where you and 3 others raced and battled for hours. That's the starting point: gaming with other people who are actually near you.

So why is everything being called social now, when it's LESS social than the default of actually having people in your presence? Destiny is being sold as a social, shared world game, yet the manner of its interaction, over the internet, is decidedly less social than playing with actual people. This is a necessity; we've already been told Destiny is an always connected experience. It's either internet or no play. So with that, do you really think 4 people are going to physically go to the same place with their 4 PS4s and their 4 monitors, and run that through the same internet connection? No, you're just going to sit alone and play with them virtually. Key word alone. Why are we calling that social? When UT and Q3 came out and made online multiplayer big, why weren't they called 'social games'?

Ask yourself, if the players you see on the screen were replaced with perfect bots who could play like your friends, and maybe even voice chat like them, would that make a difference? For Destiny, or other MMO games, the answer is no, since the virtual avatars are your only link. But in Mario Kart? No way. You can't punch a bot in the arm after being cheap with 3 red shells.

The standard for these sorts of shared worlds are MMOs like WOW, but isn't it Ironic that WoW has a reputation for breeding anti social dweebs who live in their parent's basement? Why is it that this is the conception of hardcore wow players? If the game were so social, wouldn't the hardcore players be suave, charismatic, organized, well versed in reading humans, etc? Of course not, because WoW is not a social game.

I see absolutely nothing in Destiny that would improve upon the lack of real social interaction with games like WoW, except for the fact that console gamers are probably more casual and would have other interests besides playing Destiny all day. Which leads us to…

The idea of having a shared world, AND the player becoming a legend is incompatible. Bungie describes Destiny as a shared world shooter, and also tells us our mission as a guardian is important and we can become legend.

So let's say the world is shared. You go through the wall, and find someone else has already take out all the enemies and gotten the loot. Drat, nothing to do! In fact, while you weren't playing someone went and did it all, and now they are the hero. And so in games like this, most people inevitably do NOT play a hero. They play the peon. Look at EVE or the old star wars galaxies. Most people in EVE just mine shit and work for a corporation; very few people get to be big players (heroes). Same in Star Wars galaxies. Most people made livings doing boring things, and becoming a jedi was outrageously hard that few people managed.

But who the fuck wants to play the peon? We want to be heroes! Okay, so the world isn't completely shared. It looks like Destiny will feature instances, as well as 'public events' (having this appear on screen breaks the immersion pretty hard by the way Bungie). So, everybody can do the event / quests / whatever. But if that's the case, and everyone can be the hero, then really nobody is a hero. Legend implies someone exceptional, but if everybody else is doing the same stuff you are, then nobody is really legendary is it? Oh you killed that huge monster? Congrats, so did everybody else.

So you either have the shared world, and make people play peons, or you let everybody do the content, in which case nobody's really legendary. Sounds like someone thought this through well!

Stats are another thing that bug me. You can increase your Stats in destiny, level up your guns, and your numbers. I'm sure your luck stat increases your chance of a critical hit - nevermind that critical hits are stupid in a game based on your skill at shooting. Anyway, RPGs made numbers go up for two reasons. The first, is that back in the day that's all games could really do. They certainly couldn't replace the DM. They still can't - AI will never be good enough. But numbers computers could simulate. So, RPGs became about numbers.

We are at the point now, that numbers going up is included in RPGs for the simple fact that they would be fucking stupid without them. See, most RPGs, even Action RPGS, are dreadfully simple in their strategy and very easy to master. Attack, heal. Got it? You win. Nobody would play these fucking games if they could master them in 30 minutes, so the solution is to make the enemies harder. So now, you have to level yourself up to compensate. That's what makes the games hard. Not the strategy of the battles, but the grinding to level up. Oh, attacking and healing won't beat these guys. Level up until it will. The optimal strategy in these games is very easy to figure out, even the ones that appear to have complex systems. Numbers are there to mask this.

But god dammit Bungie, the first person shooter isn't a shitty genre like JRPGs. You can't master the FPS in 30 minutes! The demands on the player are much more varied, and much more deep. YOU DON'T NEED NUMBERS. Leveling up weapons can be done right (vanquish), but that's because it's a stretegic decision with no right or wrong answer, and because the upgrades are fixed, and because the single player progression is linear. None of that is true for destiny.

So why does Destiny have numbers and loot? My guess is that many enemies will probably be only affected, or much more vulnerable to the advanced abilities of certain weapons, necessitating you to get them before you can fight them. Why would Bungie want to do that?

That's easy: I can play content faster than Bungie can create it. How many people finished Halo in under 15 hours? Do you think Halo took 15 hours to make? In a shared world like destiny, it's not going to be very populated if after the first two weeks folks blow though everything. Bungie can't make new content that fast. So, the sensible thing is to increase the amount of time needed to complete the content.

I don't know if they plan to do this, but I don't see how they couldn't simply because folks can play faster than they can make, and the game relies on people being in the world. Again this is speculation, but if anybody else can think of a legitimate reason why stats go up and guns get more powerful, I'd like to hear.

All and all, I fail to see how Destiny solves any of these problems in ways traditional large scale multiplayer games do not, and bullet sponge raid bosses are really dumb.