Polygon: The Taken King still hasn't gotten raid loot right (Destiny)

by slycrel , Thursday, October 01, 2015, 21:03 (3437 days ago) @ Avateur

I think what we have now is much much better.

It's still early yet, and there's still more to discover. I'm interested in seeing what happens going forward.

I don't think there is a system that will
A) Reward players with exactly what they want every time
and
B) Give players incentive to run some of the missions/events/raids over and over.

If you got all the things on the first try, you'd likely never return. Destiny is a game -- it's about playing, not about loot. Loot supports playing, but I think sometimes players get too OCD and start flipping that around, playing the game to get loot drops, and turn it into a CCG or something. The article writer seems to be in this camp. If he doesn't have access to all the things, something is wrong.

Look at the black spindle run for example. It's a tough things and I ran it a number of times before completing it. It has a guaranteed reward of a black spindle. It also has a "maybe" reward with the ship that can drop.

The extra drop of the ship incentivizes players to continue to run this even if they didn't get it the first time. If it weren't for this I know at least one person I ran this with wouldn't have been there -- they had already gotten the black spindle and they were running for the ship. (And were pretty pissed when the other guy and I got both the spindle and the ship but they didn't. RNG is RNG...)

Point is, they want to give people incentive to continue to run. 290 is minimum for the raid. 300 is baseline (for oryx, I think earlier fights are 290). 310 is max and makes things easier. Once you hit 300, everything above that is gravy. It keeps progression meaningful, but not strictly necessary.

Now all that said, I think that what they are doing is great... but they are failing on selling it a bit tot he playerbase. If the line is 300 and everything above is gravy, then they should make that more clear. That's not particularly intuitive. Especially when you have fights that are 260+ light (I'm looking at you final phobos fight) that seem near impossible solo when you are 290+. If the highest possible light level is 310, players will think they need to move to that number.