Raid Jacket & A Disloyal Company

It seems like each Raid, Bungie puts more emphasis on grinding to get to the proper level, makes the grind steeper, and gives more recognition and rewards to the teams who play Destiny all day as a profession... at the expense of those of us without so much time.

With Spire of Stars, my DBO team was the first full team of DBOers to beat that Raid Lair... and it took us something like a month longer to get ready than the Worlds First teams. We weren't slouching. We even went in a little under level. But we also have lives and responsibilities. It sucked to have to stay blind for so long... but at least we weren't really missing out on anything (except maybe a very exclusive emblem?)

That has now changed.

Now, Bungie is giving access to an awesome jacket that my team has no hope of getting. The window for beating the raid and claiming the jacket closes at least two weeks before we planned to be ready. This, to me, is beyond outrageous. Beyond saddening. I've asked before Who is Destiny Being Made For? Well... now I know that I'm not even part of the consideration any more.

Destiny 2 is better than ever. Better storylines. Better cinematics. Better worlds to explore. We got lore... entire books of it... in the actual game now, for crying out loud! But the slant of this game and its grind has shifted dramatically away from what I am able or even willing to put into it.

Tonight? I'm playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. At least Lara will actually be getting something out of her Raids. :(

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I don't care about that jacket or the emblem or anything like that, just so we get that out of the way.

But I do agree with you.

Bungie went on about how this is the hardest level cap they've ever had, that it's a long climb. Then they don't really give anyone but full time streamers enough time to actually get ready for the raid (raidy, get it?).

I don't mind them doing the World's First thing, though I do think it's encourages the sort of attitude that is actually Bungie's worst enemy. Even if you don't want to try World's First, trying to get raid worthy in a reasonable time to avoid spoilers puts quite a bit of pressure on me to level up quickly, which runs counter to the way that Bungie has even stated they've designed this expansion. It's like they want to have it both ways. It's also the sort of thing that has the entire internet bitching at them because they missed out on a handful of engrams.

This all still sort of goes back to how the soft cap is a shit system and prohibits players from doing what they want and instead forces them to pursue Bungie's checklist when they actually want to get anywhere. It's fine now when there's a good variety of new content, but how's it going to feel in a month?

P.S. Let me know how Tomb Raider is. Trying to decide between that and Spider-man for my next purchase.

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I don't care about that jacket or the emblem or anything like that, just so we get that out of the way.

But I do agree with you.

Bungie went on about how this is the hardest level cap they've ever had, that it's a long climb. Then they don't really give anyone but full time streamers enough time to actually get ready for the raid (raidy, get it?).

I don't mind them doing the World's First thing, though I do think it's encourages the sort of attitude that is actually Bungie's worst enemy. Even if you don't want to try World's First, trying to get raid worthy in a reasonable time to avoid spoilers puts quite a bit of pressure on me to level up quickly, which runs counter to the way that Bungie has even stated they've designed this expansion. It's like they want to have it both ways. It's also the sort of thing that has the entire internet bitching at them because they missed out on a handful of engrams.

This all still sort of goes back to how the soft cap is a shit system and prohibits players from doing what they want and instead forces them to pursue Bungie's checklist when they actually want to get anywhere. It's fine now when there's a good variety of new content, but how's it going to feel in a month?

P.S. Let me know how Tomb Raider is. Trying to decide between that and Spider-man for my next purchase.

Has anyone thought of this possible solution to the Raid Day 1 problem?

Why not have Raid Week (the week the raid drops) be a special event where when a Fireteam launches the Raid, it takes whichever FT Member that has the highest light level and uses it to offset everyone's LL. For example, if the Raid was a 550 raid and you had a party with:
LL 300
LL 275
LL 250

...the raid would set the team's effective LLs to:

LL 550
LL 525
LL 500

If implementable through a patch, that would be a great way to let players experience the Raid as accessible story content without having had to grind. Just make sure they've unlocked the experience through campaign completion. Then, anyone who wants to continue raiding past the first week has to complete their climb. Sure, you'll lose some people who won't bother to complete the climb past that first week, but I doubt there are many people bothering to run the Raid's regularly who wouldn't make that climb anyway.

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Somewhat unpopular opinion: Destiny has never had an appropriate delay between any content Release and the Raid becoming available. I don’t think this itself is any different. It is just that much more visible with the scope of streaming being much greater now.

And yes. It is pretty dumb. (Though I don’t care about the Jacket, just staying relatively blind. I still haven’t done either Raid Lair and am pretty blind. But it is not a fun experience when you don’t have enough people to conveniently schedule playtime with for Raids. )

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Let's make our own DBO Raider patches. Then we can slap them on whatever jacket we want!

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This is fine. Do you know how easy it is to stay blind on these raids? It's a total joke. I never set foot in the new raid lair and I have absolutely no idea what is in it. Zero clue.

Bungie shouldn't be obliged to pander to your play style and time. They should put out the stuff when they feel is best. Why make Chappy wait for Raga to be leveled up? Did he not pay for this game?

What's wrong with having a special item for guys who did it fast? Why are you calling them disloyal for this? It's just a special bonus! Come on man.

IMO the raid should be there day one if it's ready. If you aren't ready, no big deal. You don't need to race. You shouldn't be mad at the company for making a hard activity hard to get to.

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This is fine. Do you know how easy it is to stay blind on these raids? It's a total joke. I never set foot in the new raid lair and I have absolutely no idea what is in it. Zero clue.

Can you find 5 others just like you?

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IMO the raid should be there day one if it's ready. If you aren't ready, no big deal. You don't need to race. You shouldn't be mad at the company for making a hard activity hard to get to.

It isn't "hard" to get to. It takes a combination of time and luck. The way Bungie's system works, it might take 1 player 30 hours of playtime to reach the raid, and it might take another player 50 hours, even though they're both doing the exact same activities at the exact same levels.

That's problem number 1. But it isn't a new problem. What I find interesting about Raga's post here is that many people have been criticizing the way Destiny rewards player time since the very beginning of D1. Some players got to level 30 after running VoG once or twice. It took others months and dozens of VoG completions, purely due to RNG as it applies to drops.

This was taken to a new place in the Taken King, when the Light Level system was put into place. Bungie made it possible for players to start the raid, while being too weak to finish the raid. Some players got drops over the first half of the raid that brought them up to the point where they could handle the end of the raid. Others were relegated to weeks and weeks of running the first half of the raid over and over before they got the drops they needed to bring them up in level. Through no fault of their own, they were held back from an activity while others were able to move forward, all because of RNG drops and light levels.

That, IMO, is the real problem.

It's not the length of the grind up to raid level, per say (although there is certainly room to discuss or criticize the length of a grind). It's the fact that the activity is gated behind a barrier that is not overcome by completing specific goals or demonstrating a certain level of skill. It is luck (combined with time, obviously). And that is fundamentally unfriendly and unfair to the player. And the only reason it is in the game is because it is part of lottery/casino game economy that feeds compulsive loops.

I do have a question for Raga. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems to me that while others have been criticizing this particular element of Destiny since the beginning, you have often rushed to Bungie's defense on these issues. It strikes me that it isn't until Bungie externalized the rewards (ie the jacket) that this issue has bothered you. Am I wrong about that? If I'm not wrong, what is it about this specific situation that bothers you, where it hasn't bothered you before? Not criticizing your reaction here, just genuinely curious :)

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I have seen both sides with regards to raiding. I went in to the Vault of Glass the second it opened up, and I have also ended up waiting weeks before tackling Spire of Stars.

I absolutely appreciate that challenge that doing the raid right away entails. Staying up till 8am doing the Vault of Glass was one of the most memorable gaming experiences I have ever had. It was awesome. It was hard. It was frustrating. It was rewarding. It was a really great experience. So I totally get wanting to do that with future raids.

But I have also waited. It's gone well most of the time, but with Spire it did not. People were spoiled. I did not get to do it with a blind group. And it diminished the experience significantly.

Believe it or not, Vault of Glass had a non RNG way to get to 26: you can just buy legendary armor from vendors. Spire of Stars did not. Drops were the only way. I think as you point out that was the key difference. if you were not ready for VoG on week 2 when it opened, you probably could be by week 3 even with casual play.

The experiences for the hardcore players should absolutely be there, but not at the expense of those who can't or don't want to rush through the game. Especially in something like Forsaken where there feels like there is a lot to do, I personally don't want to feel a time pressure; I want to just be able to explore and learn about the new places and new facets of the game.

But the other facet of getting raid ready that matters is fun. VoG had you chasing RNG drops for armor or for Ascendant Shards. Taken King had you playing through post campaign missions. Guess which was more fun? From Taken King through CoO it never felt like preparing for the raid was a huge grind. It might take some time, but it didn't feel boring.

But with Spire and now Last Wish, it seems that the climb is simply a grind. This is a huge step backwards in my opinion.

The solutions seems pretty simple. Either:

1. When the raid launches have a normal mode and hard mode from the get go. That way hardcore players can tackle hard, and everyone else the normal mode.
2. Make the light level achievable in a reasonable amount of time by normal players. Taken King did this. You had three days to get ready for the raid, and if you played a shit ton you could do it. But everyone else could get there not that far after.

560 the way the progression system works now is just bullshit. And to top it all off, we all get spoiled when world's first beats the raid.

Look at the graph for 1/x:

[image]

Imagine the X axis is time from launch, and the Y axis is effort required to raid. This is the ideal shape. If you want to raid super quickly, you can be hardcore and put in tons of effort. But it should quickly get easier and easier to get to raid level. Everyone is happy.

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Re: Level being achievable and the deterministic pattern of Legendary Armor for VoG.

So, the thought has occurred to me that Bungie missed a great opportunity with powerful engrams (and learning from past errors) by having powerful/etc. engrams providing a dedicated growth up to a minimum Light (i.s., Raid level) by accounting for the gear in our inventories. The game knows what our best gear is for each slot, so why didn’t hey build the initial growth to account for that and always give you a boost to your lowest max slot? No more Forever 29 because Raid Boots won’t drop. And everyone has a clear path to reach the Endgame. With or without a Hard Mode you can still have challenges, etc. for your Endgame growth.

Clear and reliable growth should be the goal leading to the Endgame. Squeezing out the last legs of power and maximizing your gear should be what follows. But instead we get to claw our way up.

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I do have a question for Raga. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems to me that while others have been criticizing this particular element of Destiny since the beginning, you have often rushed to Bungie's defense on these issues. It strikes me that it isn't until Bungie externalized the rewards (ie the jacket) that this issue has bothered you. Am I wrong about that? If I'm not wrong, what is it about this specific situation that bothers you, where it hasn't bothered you before? Not criticizing your reaction here, just genuinely curious :)

Heh. I’d have to go back and see what I said in order to disagree with you on that... so lets go with it.

My impression of... um... myself is that I’ve always been for doing things that are fun and not going out of your way and stressing out in a unfun way to get to some fun you will get to sooner or later. And that was fine up until now. I don’t mind not getting something minor like an emblem. Even something like the physical Raid belts I’m cool with because I know I’m never going to rush to be World’s First. It goes against my always have fun philosophy. But it changes things when the vast majority of players are excluded from a substantial reward because the time limit is so strict that me and my group who have been playing every night and generally gaining most of the Powerful Gear opportunities are only at the level where enemies might go invincible on us by the end.

That is such a buzz kill. To play a lot. To play more than most. To know how all the new systems work and how to use them effectively... To do all that and to be far and away excluded from something cool. Not even something I would have bought... but something that I wish I had the chance to buy. Instead, it feels to me like I’m going to be excluded from things each Raid going forward unless I quit my job and become a streamer who can play all day every day.

Basically, Destiny moved from something where, sure, there might have been a reward or two I didn’t want to get, to a game where there are now major rewards that I cannot reasonably get. And that makes me sad. And mad. I mean look, there were reports of some of these World’s First teams peeing into bottles in order to not quit playing. To me, that’s absurd... yet its what was required to get one of those jackets... or nearly so.

Note... I’m not changing my philosophy... but the game and top end rewards have changed so much now I am strongly considering everything from this being my last blind Raid to deleting Destiny and writing off live-type games all together. (And I’m completely serious here.)

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I think his point is this (and if it's not, it's a point I want to make anyway):

I’ve always been for doing things that are fun and not going out of your way and stressing out in a unfun way to get to some fun you will get to sooner or later.

A blind raid isn't something you can just get to "sooner or later." It's something you have to do as quickly as possible, or the opportunity is gone. Sure, I could maybe put together a blind raid through LFG, but I don't want to play with some random dipshits--I want to play with you dipshits, and people interested in blind raiding here disappear fast as they get it done.

So look at it this way. You're disappointed that Bungie is making it really difficult to earn the privilege of buying an overpriced jacket. The rest of us have always been disappointed that Bungie is making it overly difficult to earn the privilege of playing their damn video game in the manner we wish to. In the past, it's been an issue, but it's been bearable and doable. Now, though, they've made it stupidly difficult (time consuming is a better word, probably--it's not difficult in the true sense of that word).

And to make it worse, it doesn't seem like drops even keep pace with your power level. Every drop I get is at 500, unless it's a Powerful Engram. So, even if I manage to get close to 560 in a reasonable time, who the hell knows what weapons I'll have to be using to maintain that, because every other weapon I get is apparently going to be at 500 still, rather than dropping at close to that level and maybe being viable. This soft cap shit has always been bad and dumb, but it seems especially so now.

Note... I’m not changing my philosophy... but the game and top end rewards have changed so much now I am strongly considering everything from this being my last blind Raid to deleting Destiny and writing off live-type games all together. (And I’m completely serious here.)

That's a real fucking bummer, and I hope you don't. Despite this issue, I think Destiny is really fun right now, and mostly in a pretty good spot. But I do hope that now you can empathize with what many of us have been saying for quite a while.

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Raid Jacket & A Disloyal Company (Criticism)