There is one way that this is like an ARG, in that if you missed out on the window of time when it was happening all you can do is read recaps of the solve, and that's not nearly as fun as following along live or participating. I struggle with the idea of a great game that has no ability to be shared with others but it can create some great bonds through a shared and unique experience. I have been to weddings of people I met through ILB, and I know people from across the country (and parts of Europe) that I feel as drawn to visit with when travel brings us near as family. I hope that others are finding that despite the massive scale of these Destiny Puzzles.

As for non-players being disappointed with the reward, well, that's the other way this is like an ARG. Toward the end there are always people who take the solution handed to them and then feel like they wasted their time. I remember going to get the DVD reward from ILB and not a single person I talked to in the line had any idea why they were there, really. They read on a gaming news website that if they showed up at some place at some time and said some phrase they would get some thing related to Halo 2. Most thought it was a copy of the beta. (Actually every week I would meet some guy who thought he was going to get an early beta) For me it cuts the other way. I'm annoyed when I think about all the DVDs that got thrown away by people who had no context for what they were given and all the players who lived too far away to get a copy for themselves it's sad. Be careful critiquing the food at a party you crashed, is my point.

People who didn't play should have no expectation of feeling fulfilled by something like this and the work that went into is seems non-fungible to the work of making a multiplayer map. And even if it were, not everything needs to be for everyone. I'd love to know how the people playing felt about it. I do worry that it was so big nobody felt like they were really getting their hands around it.

* for one thing, ILB was trying to be an ARG and this is just trying to be a puzzle. There was no alternate reality the players were existing in. Nothing wrong with that, but it will make any comparison fail.

I went into it not knowing anything about it, and wasted some time before I realized this was truly an infinite forest. Not as cool as the Siva Engine puzzle, but cool nonetheless.

Apparently 'The Corridors of Time' are not completely Infinite
I guess the entire puzzle/activity is going away "FOREVER!!1!" in 7 days?

You have seven days before the Corridors of Time close.

Cheers again, to everyone who kicked ass on the puzzle. This last week will be one that I'll never forget. pic.twitter.com/RA294cVvS7

— dmg04 (@A_dmg04) January 21, 2020

There is an in-game Emblem, 19 Lore pages (+ Triumph points), and an amazing/haunting audio cutscene at the end of the journey.

Is it reasonable to experience this in a single 2 hour session? I've been away since uhhh mid-december and wouldn't mind checking this out before it goes poof.

In light of their move to more ephemeral content, I can say that so far, having largely missed out on this season, that, I'm not all that fussed. It further discourages the obsessive collector in me and I'm just looking forward to what events I DO get to check out.

Thought lets be honest, lets add SRL permanently to D2...

I went into it not knowing anything about it, and wasted some time before I realized this was truly an infinite forest. Not as cool as the Siva Engine puzzle, but cool nonetheless.

Apparently 'The Corridors of Time' are not completely Infinite
I guess the entire puzzle/activity is going away "FOREVER!!1!" in 7 days?

You have seven days before the Corridors of Time close.

Cheers again, to everyone who kicked ass on the puzzle. This last week will be one that I'll never forget. pic.twitter.com/RA294cVvS7

— dmg04 (@A_dmg04) January 21, 2020

There is an in-game Emblem, 19 Lore pages (+ Triumph points), and an amazing/haunting audio cutscene at the end of the journey.

And to jump off from increased value with clever use if resources in the context of producing a Strike or Crucible map: Testing. The only things you need to test for are catastrophic failures and function, really, no? None of the rooms require puzzles or combat. The rooms themselves would already be used in the story missions so unless you want complaints about more Infinite Forest most everything here was previously taken care of. I’d imagine the puzzle planning was the most time intensive part, and that is far different than making a Crucible map. (Though give me a teleport-complex as a Crucible map for shiggles and I’d probably play it.)

Exactly. There's both functional testing and user experience testing for new activities.

Though while the Corridors of Time does have combat, it is isolated to each node. So yes, the implementation likely took a fraction of the time it takes to create "legit" content.

I didn't participate, I just watched... but it gave me warm fuzzies to see people coming together to make cool tools to solve this puzzle.

The reward is almost irrelevant; it was the journey that was so amazing.

So why are people complaining about the reward then? Could it have to do with the fact the game itself is so heavily focused on ‘rewards’ and not experiences? The problem laid bare.

Or maybe it's just that not everyone shares my views on what's important and what's not? I dunno.

I didn't participate, I just watched... but it gave me warm fuzzies to see people coming together to make cool tools to solve this puzzle.

The reward is almost irrelevant; it was the journey that was so amazing.

So why are people complaining about the reward then? Could it have to do with the fact the game itself is so heavily focused on ‘rewards’ and not experiences? The problem laid bare.

So, here's my consideration, as someone who only saw one reddit thread about it, thought "that looks neat," then promptly forgot about.

What's the overall value of something like this? How much was the dev cost for this, versus something like a strike or a crucible map? It seems really silly to me to spend what seems like a good chunk of time and resources making something like this, only for that to basically disappear from the game in a few weeks (and, even if it didn't, to never be experienced again in any case), when even a single Crucible map would have been more worthwhile in terms of value to the game going forward.

I know that's not exactly a straight-forward equation, as limited time events that ostensibly bring the community together definitely have a value. I just can't really get behind something like this or Niobe Labs over something like Whisper and Zero Hour, which are cool puzzles that also end up as really cool and fun repeatable missions going forward.

I have no dog in this race, but it's really difficult for me to not be cynical about this sort of stuff. I don't want to disparage the individual developers that designed and made this thing, as I'm sure they're very proud of it and were excited to make it and though it was cool and all that, but stuff like this ends up really feeling like filler content to round out a $10 season rather than a substantial piece of content in a great game. And that's where the seasonal model is really starting to break down for me--increasingly the stuff going into the game feels like it's answering "How can we fill out a season that will go away in a few months?" instead of "what really cool thing can we put into the game?" It just sort of feels like they're going about thinks a bit backwards to me. Maybe that's what it takes to make Destiny sustainable, and that's fine, bur the seasonal activities feel completely disposable because they are by their very nature. Instead of making extremely cool things, it feels like they're throwing shit at the wall because they now it won't matter in three months when they just move on to the next half-baked thing.

I too would much prefer the sort of content brought about from Whisper of the Worm & Outbreak Prime, but those custom spaces take time. I enjoy exploring the question "What is behind that door"? Shoot, I enjoyed the Heavy Bow Quest because we got to see a little more character built into the tower. That's fun. Also... Arcstrider, but I digress.

At this point, the Dev quote bouncing around in my head is;

This isn't just about removing stuff from Destiny 2 -- but the game cannot grow infinitely forever...

Granted, this quotes context is for Gambit, but I'm starting to think this idea has gown since then. We are in the final(?) year of Destiny 2, based on what occurred with Destiny 1. Stuff is being made right now that we'll see next year(?). Bungie has more freedom, but less resources then they did. I think what was done here was an excellent attempt at finding a middle ground. Not there yet - still have to do something about us building up things into things they are not, as I heard a lot of rumblings of a secret Exotic Sword (Then how is it secret?) and what not.

Anything else.... hmm, Oh! I know. I love bees. What value does this information have? Why am I taking about it?

But at least ARGs have stages. This was one long sequence that needed to be brute-forced, and the only challenge was the number of combinations, patience, and an excel sheet to keep track of “codes” punched in, with a bonus challenge of not knowing just how long the sequence was supposed to be. It was busywork through and through. Real riveting and engaging stuff.

If you think this is true, you don't have a solid understanding of how the puzzle works and how it is solved.

What's the overall value of something like this? How much was the dev cost for this, versus something like a strike or a crucible map? It seems really silly to me to spend what seems like a good chunk of time and resources making something like this, only for that to basically disappear from the game in a few weeks (and, even if it didn't, to never be experienced again in any case), when even a single Crucible map would have been more worthwhile in terms of value to the game going forward.

I know that's not exactly a straight-forward equation, as limited time events that ostensibly bring the community together definitely have a value. I just can't really get behind something like this or Niobe Labs over something like Whisper and Zero Hour, which are cool puzzles that also end up as really cool and fun repeatable missions going forward.

I have no dog in this race, but it's really difficult for me to not be cynical about this sort of stuff. I don't want to disparage the individual developers that designed and made this thing, as I'm sure they're very proud of it and were excited to make it and though it was cool and all that, but stuff like this ends up really feeling like filler content to round out a $10 season rather than a substantial piece of content in a great game. And that's where the seasonal model is really starting to break down for me--increasingly the stuff going into the game feels like it's answering "How can we fill out a season that will go away in a few months?" instead of "what really cool thing can we put into the game?" It just sort of feels like they're going about thinks a bit backwards to me. Maybe that's what it takes to make Destiny sustainable, and that's fine, bur the seasonal activities feel completely disposable because they are by their very nature. Instead of making extremely cool things, it feels like they're throwing shit at the wall because they now it won't matter in three months when they just move on to the next half-baked thing.

I didn't participate, I just watched... but it gave me warm fuzzies to see people coming together to make cool tools to solve this puzzle.

The reward is almost irrelevant; it was the journey that was so amazing.

I felt the journey was wholly uninteresting. Spreadsheets, waiting for players to submit random combinations, and walking into rooms over and over and over and over? I clocked out of even caring about the possible reward almost immediately.

Okay.

I didn't.

I didn't see it as "waiting for players to submit random combinations", I saw it as "smart people figured out what was going to be needed to solve this puzzle, and created a slew of tools to make that happen." It was really cool to watch. I'm sorry you were bored, and I'm sorry you couldn't look past the minute-by-minute task list to see how a community came together to solve something that at first looked insurmountable.

::shrug::

Different strokes.

I think that’s the issue for me, though. It wasn’t insurmountable, and it didn’t take cleverness in problem solving, specific knowledge (like Binary for OP), skill, in-game coordination or teamwork, or anything that previous game events asked of players. It was more ARG and less surprise dungeon.

But at least ARGs have stages. This was one long sequence that needed to be brute-forced, and the only challenge was the number of combinations, patience, and an excel sheet to keep track of “codes” punched in, with a bonus challenge of not knowing just how long the sequence was supposed to be. It was busywork through and through. Real riveting and engaging stuff.

If you have fun watching loud people punching in formulas to figure out how long it’ll take paint to dry, then yeah, I’m glad they made an event for that subset of the fandom. But nothing was gained for the thousands of man-hours that went into solving this besides a slightly-bumped-up release for a gimmicky paid exotic that people will use for a week, then dump in the vault because their Erentils are more reliable.

I feel like I’m coming off as more annoyed than I am (I had zero expectations, and subsequently very little investment in this whole fiasco). If you had fun, that’s great, you’re not necessarily wrong or dumb for doing so. But realistically speaking, the work/reward ratio that was asked of the community was pretty ridiculous, Because Niobe Labs should have been a teaching experience for Bungie, and yet now they have another event that leaves players with an even worse taste in their mouths.

I think it’s whatevs either way. I don’t even like ARGs, and I don’t use Fusion Rifles, so this event wasn’t for me in any capacity. Hooray for the community!