And I'm not sure I should speak for Squid, but when he said "a pinnacle drop every 3 games", I took that to mean "4 pinnacle drops in 12 games" - which is the same number as you have, and as I have.

Yes, that's what I meant.

If they are too general, they might as well not exist.

Let's do this!

I hate bounties in Destiny more than just about anything else in the game. They're chores and nothing more.

The thing I like about bounties is that they occasionally prompt me into trying something new or different. It has happened that I've dusted off an Arc Pulse Rifle from my vault to finish a bounty, and been like, "Oh, that is a cool weapon." But the annoyances you are describing are indeed real. It's one of the central conundrums of a game like Destiny: how do you get people to engage with new and different things without treating that like a chore, or ruining the experience of other players?

How about you sunset gear so that you’re required to try new things every season? No? :-p

If they are too general, they might as well not exist.

Let's do this!

I hate bounties in Destiny more than just about anything else in the game. They're chores and nothing more.

The thing I like about bounties is that they occasionally prompt me into trying something new or different. It has happened that I've dusted off an Arc Pulse Rifle from my vault to finish a bounty, and been like, "Oh, that is a cool weapon." But the annoyances you are describing are indeed real. It's one of the central conundrums of a game like Destiny: how do you get people to engage with new and different things without treating that like a chore, or ruining the experience of other players?

Honestly? You don’t. You just let people play the game. If players want to use the exact same loadout forever, just let them. The folks that like trying different things will just do so without being pushed into it.

I think we're on the same page. To go back to IB, I don't see anything lost with 1x "kills dudes, use supers, get precision shots, get assists, capture zones, more progress being lower light level" rather than 4x "kill dudes," "kill dudes with ability," "dudes with assists," etc. I sort of get it (although I don't like bounties in general) for things like dailies, but for IB it just sucks all the fun. By the time I'm done, I'm back to a feeling of buyer's remorse.

I just wish it were more general so I could enjoy playing the game with friends, rather than be distracted (and annoyed) by having to play someone else's idea of fun for IB.

I have yet to hear a reasonable argument as to why the specificity of these bounties equals more fun. I get where Squid is coming from, but that's a choice. I have no choice.

I thought about this a little bit. I hear the 'I don't feel like I have a choice' - but I'm not sure how a general bounty gives you more choice than you have now (do it, or don't do it).

I looked up the bounties available this year. There are 6 of them, with 4 rotating in randomly each IB.

Oath of the Pack - defeat opponents while assisted by teammates
Around the Fire - capture zones
Maneuver Warfare - defeat opponents while your team has zone advantage
An Arsenal of Tricks - defeat opponents with ability final blows
The Rout - defeat opponents (bonus for being underleveled)
Victory Banners complete matches (bonus for wins)

With the exception of An Arsenal of Tricks (which I always finish last) and Maneuver Warfare (which is less in your control than any other bounty), these are all things that you should/would be doing anyway. They don't require a change in playstyle, they're just goals of the game. (Actually, I take that back; you mentioned you had struggled with the Oath of the Pack one, so you're getting your kills solo. I guess Bungie is trying to discourage lone-wolf behavior with that one, which may or may not be a good thing.)

When this was being discussed last night, I thought you meant there should be a more general "do any of these things, earn progress" bounty - and I guess I was assuming that you'd need 4 of them (since Bungie wants to give you up to 4 pinnacles for participating in IB). Your wording above makes me wonder if you meant there should only be 1 (so either the play requirement- and the reward pool - is being reduced by 75%, or the 1 would require 10 or so games, but give 4 pinnacles? I'm not sure what you envision).

If you meant that there should be 1 bounty, that gives 4 rewards, and has a 4x increase in requirements (though without specificity), I guess I'd say "that's not like any bounty Bungie has ever created for any game mode in Destiny in its 7 years of existence, and they don't see a compelling reason to make a change like this". Also, you'd make people with limited time pretty unhappy; you got to 95% on that megabounty, but couldn't finish before reset? NO REWARDS FOR YOU! In the current system, if you finish 95% of the available bounties, you get 3 rewards.

If you meant that there should be four identical bounties, all requiring roughly the same input as current bounties, but all four allowing any of the activities on the current bounties to satisfy... yeah, at that point, they could just say "Play 12 games of IB, earn 4 rewards" and call it a day. Of course, then you'd have IB filled with people jumping off the map (like we do now in Trials, only way, way worse), and I'm glad we don't have that.

In the end, they have refined the IB bounty system to reward activities that generally benefit your team, while not being specific enough (except for Arsenal of Tricks) to penalize people with out-of-the-mainstream playstyles - and they've calibrated them to require roughly the same amount of gameplay as other end-game activities, without actively encouraging behavior that hurts other players. You will never nail everyone with a single system... but when I think about this one, it's pretty close to what I would consider optimal for their goals (get players in for a dozen games in a week).

This doesn't for a second invalidate your feelings that you're being forced to play a certain way to get your goodies, and I know how bad that makes you feel. I simply don't know how they'd change it that wouldn't make it actively worse for most people.