Marks are capped as are the weekly or daily activities. Loot cave was the cherry on top. (As Bungie would say)

If your step 1 is "Earn 150 marks," then your step 2 is easily achieved in as few as 8 days (the 100 marks/week cap makes me sad).
If your step 1 is "win the lottery" then your step 2 will likely never happen. This doesn't mean that no one has ever won the lottery, but it certainly isn't the most pragmatic option.

I agree with your statement, with the exception of Gjallarhorn and the like (not that I've heard of anyone who actually got one from the great and holy loot cave).

The loot cave certainly FELT good, it sure FELT great seeing that dry and barren floor turned into a shiny disco floor of loot, but it was boring, and in reality I think you were better off earning marks & getting guaranteed weapons. Unfortunately, there's just some weapons that are only obtainable by random chance (purchasing from Xûr is random chance too as his offerings are random) and at this point I would probably shoot a cave for a few hours if it meant I would get a sweet sweet Gjallarhorn (again, not that I've ever heard of someone getting a sweet sweet Gjallarhorn from the loot cave, tho' I DID get an exotic from a Legendary engram dropped by a knight in the rocketyard). I wonder how long it would take to get 10k kills in the loot cave, hmm.

<Hangs head>

Getting loot is a two step process. Set a goal. Achieve it.

If your step 1 is "Earn 150 marks," then your step 2 is easily achieved in as few as 8 days (the 100 marks/week cap makes me sad).
If your step 1 is "win the lottery" then your step 2 will likely never happen. This doesn't mean that no one has ever won the lottery, but it certainly isn't the most pragmatic option.

Tomb Raider 2013 suffered huge development challenges and didn't start to come together for years

I just recently learned that myself, and it blew my mind. At no point when playing Tomb Raider did I feel like it was a game that was hastily thrown together after a period of failure.

BTW, said game is free to download on the 360 RIGHT NOW.

That you've chosen to speak out means that what I'm doing really bothers you. I am sorry for that. I am always worried that I'm going to go too far. That I'm going to nag too much. That I'm going to make everyone else mad at me like I've apparently done with you. We've never really spoken or engaged much that I can recall but it does sadden me if I alienate anyone by my actions. :(

Nah, not me personally. I just thought Cody was genuinely making a joke. I may have also been in a bad mood this morning. I blame DST.

I think I have the same right to criticize as you and Cody do.

Absolutely.

What is this exclusion zone thing that people keep mentioning. I know where it is but why has exclusion zone farming become a thing?

Because that level happens to have a very high concentration of majors in a small space, and crucially it's in a place which is easy to repeat by dying and starting back at a checkpoint. Majors not only give more glimmer, but also drop the glimmer consumables in the first place, allowing you to continue the process without running out.

Halo almost didn't have system-link multiplayer... and of course changed from real time tactical to 3rd person open world to FPS...
Halo 2 was a train wreck of a development process that saw the end of the game lopped off.
Tomb Raider 2013 suffered huge development challenges and didn't start to come together for years
Aquaria started as an RPG and, if I read between the lines right, the lead developer nearly committed suicide making it and his artist friend will now no longer work with him because of that.
Toy Story was actually cancelled briefly because Disney, of all companies, didn't know how to make a good animated movie
A Bug's Life was Pixar's Halo 2 in that it very nearly broke people and friendships
The iPhone 4 suffered from the "You're holding it wrong" antenna / signal strength issue
Destiny's engineering, we now know, took some two years longer than Bungie hoped and did cut into gameplay / world development time.

So when someone says they have an easy fix or they could do something better if they had the money I have to be highly skeptical. I think the reality is doing complex things really well is really hard no matter how many people you have or what level of talent you possess, or how much money you can throw at the problem.

Nevertheless, patrolling became much more time intensive once the loot cave was gone. And foraging around the edges of the divide was a drag.

Heh, I have a friend who played the demo for two months and whose absolutely favorite activity is farming in the Divide. He was ticked when they effectively lowered the value of spinmetal by removing the ability to convert spinmetal into marks.

Here's another thought: consider that it might be likely that the best way to enjoy Destiny is not to try to get everything you can as soon as possible. It's no biggie to have a character miss an activity before the next reset. I have three 30+ characters and five characters total. At some point I anticipate having six high-ranked characters, one of each class on the two platforms. I have a few (bendable) rules regarding Destiny that keep it fun. Everybody seems to do most of these, but it seems like some are unique among DBOers.

1) Avoid patrols activities unless there are two or more applicable bounties.

2) In non-raid contexts, use consumables until I'm out (except black wax, which has other uses presently).

3) Pick up materials as I need them, but don't actively seek them unless I'm close the having what I need for an upgrade. Buy whatever I'm running low on.

4) Don't do the same high-level activity more than once a day. This is why I don't like running multiple nightfalls on co-op night.

5) Try to take alternating days off. (I usually fail at this one, but there are days when I just try to get the gold event package for a few characters.)

6) Experiment with different guns and subclasses.

7) Try to get better at crucible. :)

I may burn out using this approach, but so far it's working pretty well.

Kermit

Personally, statements like that do not come off to me as "I can make a better game than Bungie".

I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth (but here I go, lol), but to me Cody's complaints almost always boil down to an question of "how could a game developed over so much time, by such a huge and experienced team, suffer from so many problems which to us seem instantly apparent" (Cody, please jump in if I'm off the mark here).

Now personally, I sometimes agree, sometimes not. As I have pointed out in the past, the existence of a problem is not proof that Bungie isn't aware of it. Destiny is easily one of the most systemically complicated games I've ever played. For every problem we see, who knows how many we DON'T see because Bungie fixed them before they got out the door. I can't begin to imagine the logistical nightmare that developing and testing a game like Destiny must be.

Still, we're the hardcore fans, and we like to do some armchair game designing (as the hardcore fans are want to do). The community has made countless valid criticisms and suggestions in the hope of improving Destiny, and Bungie, much to their credit, is doing the best they can to listen to our concerns and slowly reshape the game with our suggestions in mind. Still, it is important that we as a community try to avoid jumping to conclusions while making suggestions or pointing out flaws. Again, just because there is a problem in Destiny doesn't mean Bungie isn't aware of it :)

then the loot cave would have been a bad idea though still better than normal patrolling.

I wouldn't argue with that.

What is this exclusion zone thing that people keep mentioning. I know where it is but why has exclusion zone farming become a thing?

so could not possibly be the least efficient way to play Destiny.

Though I grant you that you get less spin metal. To make up the deficiit you would have to do some some normal patrolling that was less efficient in terms of:

• loot
  
• killing
  
• high level enemies moving against each other
  
• public event guaranteed gold tiers
  
• cryptarch ranking
  
• grimoire ranking
  
• weapon parts

.

You can pick up some spin metal whilst doing missions near the loot cave but you would get more spin metal foraging around the edges of the divide.

Nevertheless, patrolling became much more time intensive once the loot cave was gone. And foraging around the edges of the divide was a drag.

Have you played Destiny without patrolling?

Generally speaking, I almost never play patrol mode. I used to do it to farm materials, and I still chase down the occasional public event, but that's about it. I'll grant you that the loot cave was more efficient than any other form of playing patrol mode, but that's not saying much in the context of the whole game. When I'm not raiding, I'm playing to upgrade gear & earn new gear. So I need to complete bounties, earn glimmer, find materials, and kill lots of stuff at the same time. The high-level strikes are by far the best way to do all of this at the same time (they didn't give materials back in the loot cave days, but even so). I run strikes with weapon XP and glimmer boosters enabled while completing as many bounties simultaneously as I can. By the end of the average ROC strike I've found 8-10 engrams (mostly blue), plus the XP, marks, and drops at the end of the mission. The average strike takes me about 10-15 minutes. Plus now we have the ROC strikes, which give me a purple engram every 2-3 missions. When you add the fact that we can now buy materials with marks, there is almost no reason to ever go on patrol with a high level character, except for the fun of it :)

But it looks like I'm not the only one ticked off. And the Destiny subreddit has generally been very pro-Destiny (the times that I've read it).

I think Bungie should have just let it die. There is no benefit for Bungie to revisit the debacle and I had forgotten about it myself.

But when they claim that higher level enemies dropped better loot back in the cave days... well I just thought: bullshit.

Though I grant you that you get less spin metal. To make up the deficiit you would have to do some some normal patrolling that was less efficient in terms of:

• loot
  
• killing
  
• high level enemies moving against each other
  
• public event guaranteed gold tiers
  
• cryptarch ranking
  
• grimoire ranking
  
• weapon parts

.

You can pick up some spin metal whilst doing missions near the loot cave but you would get more spin metal foraging around the edges of the divide.

Nevertheless, patrolling became much more time intensive once the loot cave was gone. And foraging around the edges of the divide was a drag.

Have you played Destiny without patrolling?

Yes, you had the nightfall and weekly heroic and VoG, but Bungie only permits you to receive loot from those once per week. So when you're done that, the loot cave becomes your best source of loot due to the incredible number of enemies that would spawn. There's no way you could match that same volume of kills/engrams doing anything else in the game.

The fact that Yakaman has had back luck with decoding engrams into exotics doesn't change that.