But to Cody's point, Bungie baked this form of "reward" system right into the game. The first 20-30 hours are a constant stream of new gear, new missions unlocked, level up, more new gear, new planet, upgraded gear, new powers to use... And then it just stops. Worse, it doesn't stop in a way that feels satisfying (because the story and missions themselves aren't particularly satisfying). The only way to continue the positive feedback loop is to continue leveling up, but that stops. So you focus on getting all the guns, but then you either succeed or get too frustrated to care about the few that you're still missing. So what's left? Upgrading all your stuff.

Now, the REAL reason I keep playing is that I adore the combat in Destiny, the Raids are spectacular, and the strikes are mostly a lot of fun. There is plenty of end game fun to be had here. I just feel that the "investment system" ends up being more of a detriment in the long run.

Whatever terrible lesson it offers, it rings true. I value what is valuable, and what is valuable is that which is not freely given.

My point, was that leveling up a weapon fully is practically freely given, since it requires nothing of any difficulty whatsoever. You are also correct about the fun. Being proud of any sort of video game related display (except in rare circumstances, such as AGDQ) is pretty silly since it is generally meaningless, and often a detriment to your life if the activity is demanding enough. But, I think being proud of a flawless raider is much more justified than being proud of leveling up a weapon. Not that I would say I'm PROUD of having flawless raider; it was simply fun to do, which is why I'm doing it again on the Crota raid even though I will get no reward at all.

I have fun when I obtain a new weapon and I get to feel and investigate the way it changes and improves as it levels up. For instance, I really enjoyed playing with my new Suros Regime over the last week and figuring out what the heck its Exotic Upgrade actually did and didn't do. Working on my first Gjallarhorn now. :)

I disagree about as hard as you can, and in fact take a great disdain toward that viewpoint and games that foster it.

Don't like this. Not one bit. No sir, I don't like it at all. I can't even think of a gameplay concept or viewpoint I disdain. I'm not a fan of old school RPGs with chibi graphics and scrolling maps with random encounters. I don't think quick paced platformers or FPSes have any real place on touchscreen devices. But disdain goes so much farther than I feel and seeing you express it makes me feel sad... Mostly for you. :(

Whatever terrible lesson it offers, it rings true. I value what is valuable, and what is valuable is that which is not freely given.

My point, was that leveling up a weapon fully is practically freely given, since it requires nothing of any difficulty whatsoever. You are also correct about the fun. Being proud of any sort of video game related display (except in rare circumstances, such as AGDQ) is pretty silly since it is generally meaningless, and often a detriment to your life if the activity is demanding enough. But, I think being proud of a flawless raider is much more justified than being proud of leveling up a weapon. Not that I would say I'm PROUD of having flawless raider; it was simply fun to do.

I played Halo levels hundreds of times, as did many here. I had fun trying new things, different approaches. This is no different to me except that every week or so I've gotten new toys to play with. One key point: except when I feel underleveled for an activity I want to do (which is less and less), I don't care when I level up. It's gravy. Tasty gravy.

Whatever terrible lesson it offers, it rings true. I value what is valuable, and what is valuable is that which is not freely given.

My point, was that leveling up a weapon fully is practically freely given, since it requires nothing of any difficulty whatsoever. You are also correct about the fun. Being proud of any sort of video game related display (except in rare circumstances, such as AGDQ) is pretty silly since it is generally meaningless, and often a detriment to your life if the activity is demanding enough. But, I think being proud of a flawless raider is much more justified than being proud of leveling up a weapon. Not that I would say I'm PROUD of having flawless raider; it was simply fun to do, which is why I'm doing it again on the Crota raid even though I will get no reward at all.

I ENJOY watching a weapon improve from the time I get it to the time it's encircled by a yellow border. I don't consider the process a grind - I consider it a labor of love. Or at least like. (It's a digital representation of an object, not a real object, after all.)

I did too, back when you could level up your guns during the course of normal play through the game. When and if you reach the end game, where everything is a repeat and the object IS ONLY to get more stuff and level it up, it will grow tiresome.

Give us weapons and armor that don't need work to be their best, and we won't value them. You call it grinding, I call it pride through investment.

I disagree about as hard as you can, and in fact take a great disdain toward that viewpoint and games that foster it. What a terrible lesson for life when you are proud of a non-accomplishment as trivial as leveling a gun up by doing many many easy things over and over.

I guess being a flawless raider is not trivial. Here's news: it's all trivial. It's a f*cking game. You may have shown some skill and dedication to have achieved that milestone, but even I could get it if I raided every night. It has no effect on your life.

Because it is a game, people have fun with it in different ways. This is one truth that you never seem to grok. Claude doesn't need my defense, but I bet his experience isn't much different than mine. Although I haven't completed everything on hard or gotten every trophy, I think I've experienced most of what the game has to offer at least once. I go back because it's fun. As I'm having fun, if a perk unlocks on a new weapon, and I'm having more fun shooting stuff because of it, that's not a grind. I'm not obsessed with leveling up, but leveling up a bonus that adds to the fun for me. Whatever terrible lesson it offers, it rings true. I value what is valuable, and what is valuable is that which is not freely given.

but I see no real reason preventing Bungie from remixing existing geometry to create new encounters.

That's probably the most realistic substantial thing they could do.

They're also quite good at it.

**Looks longingly at Two Betrayals**

I think they did a pretty good job with the Dark Below DLC when they re-used the Blast area from the opposite perspective. At first I thought it was a completely new playspace. I'd never noticed that huge building in the distance. (The building reminded me of ONI Alpha Site.)

I ENJOY watching a weapon improve from the time I get it to the time it's encircled by a yellow border. I don't consider the process a grind - I consider it a labor of love. Or at least like. (It's a digital representation of an object, not a real object, after all.)

I did too, back when you could level up your guns during the course of normal play through the game. When and if you reach the end game, where everything is a repeat and the object IS ONLY to get more stuff and level it up, it will grow tiresome.

Give us weapons and armor that don't need work to be their best, and we won't value them. You call it grinding, I call it pride through investment.

I disagree about as hard as you can, and in fact take a great disdain toward that viewpoint and games that foster it. What a terrible lesson for life when you are proud of a non-accomplishment as trivial as leveling a gun up by doing many many easy things over and over.

Add in a non-random way to acquire any of the weapons and armor, and I've just improved upon one of Destiny's biggest failings. I don't give two shits if people don't play for 3 hours per day anymore because they don't have to grind. That's the entire point.

Give a man a free lunch and he'll figure out a way
To steal more than he can eat 'cause he doesn't have to pay

(Lyrics belong to the Rainmakers, but the basic idea is much older - whether it's true for you or not, it's true for the majority of us. Give us weapons and armor that don't need work to be their best, and we won't value them. You call it grinding, I call it pride through investment.)

I ENJOY watching a weapon improve from the time I get it to the time it's encircled by a yellow border. I don't consider the process a grind - I consider it a labor of love. Or at least like. (It's a digital representation of an object, not a real object, after all.)

Eliminate attack values for weapons. All perks activated when you get the gun. What matters now are the weapon stats, and the perks (as in crucible currently). The fact that certain awesome perks are only available on rares (for instance shoot to loot) makes this even more amazing, as now you'd actually have a possible reason to use a blue. Of course, using a legendary grants you another perk, and an exotic grants exotic perks, so they are still "better".

For armor eliminate light and defense. Again, only the perks matter. How leveling would work past 20 I don't know yet.

This eliminates the frustration of leveling gear, encourages a wider variety of gear usage, more experimentation, and no fear of gear becoming obsolete. I would go so far as to completely eliminate random perks as well and have each weapon have predefined perks, as that way it would be easier to plan and balance all the weapons with each other, as well as give new weapons in DLC enough value to warrant acquisition.

Add in a non-random way to acquire any of the weapons and armor, and I've just improved upon one of Destiny's biggest failings. I don't give two shits if people don't play for 3 hours per day anymore because they don't have to grind. That's the entire point.

Looking through the database, it's clear that they had unique items in place for each at one point (see here and here), but common sense prevailed and everyone is happier for it.

I've been Glimmer & Ascendant Energy poor ever since HoW came out. I've actually started doing the daily missions again in hopes of getting some more ascendant energy, but it seems all I get are shards. ASCENDANT FREAKIN SHARDS! I don't have any armor that needs ascendant shards. I have lots of weapons that need ascendant energy tho' (because the raid just feels like giving me armor & mats).

So, what would I like to see? Either put all those shards to use or let me exchange them for energy.

An exchange would be great. I do feel like the balance between shards and energy is off. Or maybe too balanced is more like it. I seem to get roughly the same amount of each, but I don't have nearly as many armor pieces to upgrade as I do weapons, so I have a huge surplus of shards. I feel like I'm probably not unusual in that respect.

Aside from that, I would love to see Bungie continue to add more "quality of life" improvements. New bounties (or even better, Eris-style quest lines) from tower vendors would be great. Also near the top of my list would be more ways to earn Glimmer and materials. Grinding for glimmer has become a real problem in this game. We can buy materials using marks now, which is great, except that I now use ALL my marks buying materials to upgrade my gear. I've complained before that the vendors don't seem to sell much gear worth buying, but even if they did I would never have enough marks because this game requires an insane amount of materials to upgrade our stuff.

I've been Glimmer & Ascendant Energy poor ever since HoW came out. I've actually started doing the daily missions again in hopes of getting some more ascendant energy, but it seems all I get are shards. ASCENDANT FREAKIN SHARDS! I don't have any armor that needs ascendant shards. I have lots of weapons that need ascendant energy tho' (because the raid just feels like giving me armor & mats).

So, what would I like to see? Either put all those shards to use or let me exchange them for energy.

They're also quite good at it.

**Looks longingly at Two Betrayals**

You ain't kidding. I'm always confused when people write things about Halo: CE, and mention "re-used level geometry" being detrimental to the game. When I first played through those levels, I remember being impressed. I was excited to see how the areas had changed, and what new encounters there would be.

Would the game have been more interesting with entirely new areas in each level? Perhaps, but I definitely never thought "Oh, this place again? Meh" when playing Two Betrayals.

Agreed. If you had literally played through Attack on the Control Room backwards then sure, it would have been silly. But with some paths blocked off, with different encounters in every single combat space, at a different time of day, with different music? It's also the first time you get a Banshee without tricks, isn't it? That alone lets you explore the level in a completely different way!

Destiny, does some of this. Patrolling the Hellmouth is different from the Sword of Crota mission is different than running a Heroic level Strike trying to survive against the Wizards of Doom in the Crota sword room! But it also falls down on this sometimes like how in the open world spaces there is often only one set of enemies that drops off at any given location and it doesn't change with missions or time of day or storyline progress or anything...

2. I harp on it from time to time, but I wish Bungie would place much more strict filters on the Crucible's join in progress. Getting joined into a terrible losing game with a large score spread I have no hope of overcoming or a game that is almost over because of time or score is just so crappy an experience. This weekend I got joined into a very close winning game where the score was like 19,000 to 19,000. I was in the match all of a minute before it ended and even though I won I didn't feel happy. I clicked on the Crucible to play Crucible... not to drop into a game then immediately go back to the menus and wait for another game.

Nico and I did a strike this weekend, and our random third dropped as we began. We didn't mind - Sepiks is totally doable with two at level 26. (Hell, it's doable with one, but two is more fun.)

We work our way through, kill sepiks... and in the 28 seconds between when he explodes and we get kicked back to the stats screen, someone joins. :)

He gets a strike completion (with whatever drops during a normal ROC strike) without even being able to fire at a single enemy. :)

I sort of hope he had the Walking Tall bounty in his inventory... :)

They're also quite good at it.

**Looks longingly at Two Betrayals**

You ain't kidding. I'm always confused when people write things about Halo: CE, and mention "re-used level geometry" being detrimental to the game. When I first played through those levels, I remember being impressed. I was excited to see how the areas had changed, and what new encounters there would be.

Would the game have been more interesting with entirely new areas in each level? Perhaps, but I definitely never thought "Oh, this place again? Meh" when playing Two Betrayals.

My addition: make each wave that spawn progressively higher level, and make it never ending. Each wave could be on a timer though. Clear a wave in under 2 minutes and you get the next wave. Don't clear it and the event ends. You would be limited in the number of waves by your level, but as the levels get raised you get at least one more wave.

This would be a nice addition for those of us who would like some kind of firefight mode.