wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 12, 2015 12:37:35 GMT -5
I rarely take a stand on this sort of thing...but I completely disagree that chasing loot is not healthy. It totes is... Given the right loot system loot hunting is a fantastic end game. Here are some things that Destiny could implement to emulate/improve upon other games with... Bosses having specific drops: We already have this implemented with one miniboss and one raid boss (Blades of Crota for Husk/Crota for Crux of Crota). Every exotic should have an extremely low chance of dropping from a specific boss. If you play a little they you get a chance to get it from normal play and from Xur. If you are dedicated to the game as your recreational activity of choice..they you will be duly rewarded for your dedicated by being able to grind out the gun you really really want to play with. You can see this in Diablo/Borderlands. The ability to Reroll legendary items: Turn that dud legendary into a beast. Give me something else to do with my motes and shards and coins. Transmogrification: Give me the ability to wear that sweet dead orbit armor with the stats of my raid armor using the following equation: (Item for stats + transmog material+ item for appearance). Let the trasmog material items be rare and specific drops from specific enemies. One of my favorite memories in any game was having the best gun in Trickster Online (a long time ago lol) and transmoging it onto a level 1 water gun. If there is anything FPS brodudes have learned by switching from general FPS games to Destiny.... looking awesome feels awesome. Exotic variation: Getting loot is FUN. One of the problems with getting cool loot is having it and then immediately being done with it. I recently cleared out my vault. There were 4 last words in there. You know what would be cool? Having exotic weapons have one "variable" slot. That slot could be any perk in the game...so it would be very Get to to drop and you might get a last word with firefly...SWEET. This makes it so mch more cool when you compare guns with your friends. Get a Truth with Scattershot! Now...all of these things I have mentioned have been implimented in RPGs that I have played that actually had a fantastic end game loot system. getting amazing loot and "Perfect" drops SHOULD be fun, challenging, and achievable if you put your mind to it. I am not saying looting chasing is not healthy. I am saying that chasing-loot-for-the-sake-of-loot-and-not-having-fun-while-doing-it is not healthy. Examples: 1) The old material farming, which is boring as hell but if you want to level up the awesome gears you just got you'll have to do it; 2) Cheese the final boss in raid (e.g.: various Atheon and Crota glitches) just to get drops. (In the interest of game time, which is a precious commodity nowadays, I am OK with cheese through the middle parts to get to the final fight, especially if the cheese themselves are fun. That said, never a big fan of the Templar nade cheese, but can live with it);
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 12:44:52 GMT -5
But Destiny made it's own grave with how it decided to do things, with dumb random loot stuff. The game forces a person to put in so much ridiculous time, that anytime you get a chance to save time....everyone jumps at it.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 12:56:53 GMT -5
On a related note, for the bros on XONE: With HoW still months out and Destiny is getting uninteresting by the week until then, maybe we should find another game that we can play together? I like our group dynamics and it will be great if we can transfer that to other games. I was thinking Evolve that there was no interest. How about Borderlands? Another game to consider: "The Division", but it is still a long way away, probably won't be released until Q4 or even later. Dying Light?
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wittyscorpion
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All warfare is based on deception.
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 12, 2015 13:02:35 GMT -5
Heard some good things about Dying Light, especially for coop. But I am never a big fan of zombies.
Who is getting it?
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 12, 2015 13:08:10 GMT -5
You can doooo eeet! I rather like my spear, though I may choose to reroll my own spear. I rolled it to arc, but I don't know if the mods are good. And I could use a void sniper so I may buy another one... assuming it's for sale again and I get high enough to buy it. ;3
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hebbnh
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Post by hebbnh on Feb 12, 2015 13:31:51 GMT -5
On a related note, for the bros on XONE: With HoW still months out and Destiny is getting uninteresting by the week until then, maybe we should find another game that we can play together? I like our group dynamics and it will be great if we can transfer that to other games. I was thinking Evolve that there was no interest. How about Borderlands? Another game to consider: "The Division", but it is still a long way away, probably won't be released until Q4 or even later. I dunno about new games, but if we're talking older stuff, how about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? LOL. I also have Battlefield 4 for the XONE that I haven't played in a year. Evolve looks pretty cool, but honestly the whole mega pre-order/DLC/bonus stuff fiasco totally turned me away from it. Maybe I'll reconsider if other bros have high opinions of it, but as you said, nobody seemed to show that much interest lately.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 13:31:56 GMT -5
Nowadays I am getting my "challenging" fix from Halo. Getting my ass kicked as always and loving it. Just hope that the upcoming patch can finally "fix" the game (it is already working pretty well for me personally, but lots of players are still having matchmaking problems), so they can focusing on putting "ranked play" into all playlists next. As it stands today I constantly get matched to players way out of my league, that's no fun . I am seriously missing the fun I had during Halo 5 beta, when I was accurately matched with "my kind of players". I am planning to get back to CoD:AW someday. It is as "challenging" as Halo to me in terms of me getting pwned, however when compared with Halo it does not give me an awesome feeling when I kill somebody. In Halo, I feel that I really earned each kill; While in CoDAW I just feel that I got lucky. From Destiny I am getting fun from the following: 1) Still enjoy the core shooting loop, so goof around (say No Land Beyond) once in a while to get some quick bounties done can still be quite enjoyable; 2) Co-op on Raid / NF / Weekly; 3) Solo NF/Weekly once per week. In some way having the fear of death does make the experience more thrilling than co-op. If I am not doing it for the solo purpose of loot, I don't care that much if I reset, but still annoying as hell to keep me deviating from taking methodical and disciplined approach or otherwise face serious consequences; I didn't think Halo is out yet? I heard fall of '15. I am planning on playing that.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 13:33:40 GMT -5
On a related note, for the bros on XONE: With HoW still months out and Destiny is getting uninteresting by the week until then, maybe we should find another game that we can play together? I like our group dynamics and it will be great if we can transfer that to other games. I was thinking Evolve that there was no interest. How about Borderlands? Another game to consider: "The Division", but it is still a long way away, probably won't be released until Q4 or even later. I dunno about new games, but if we're talking older stuff, how about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? LOL. I also have Battlefield 4 for the XONE that I haven't played in a year. Evolve looks pretty cool, but honestly the whole mega pre-order/DLC/bonus stuff fiasco totally turned me away from it. Maybe I'll reconsider if other bros have high opinions of it, but as you said, nobody seemed to show that much interest lately. If you guys are going to play CoD, why not go the new one? This below might be a fun FPS'er
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hebbnh
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Post by hebbnh on Feb 12, 2015 13:52:47 GMT -5
If you guys are going to play CoD, why not go the new one? Because I'm not going to shell out $60 for a game that I've thought looked like garbage from the first reveal, that I have no interest in and would never play on my own, and that this board almost universally agrees has the worst lag/connection issues in the history of the series. I'd just end up fuming the whole time due to BS lag-related deaths, and it wouldn't be fun for anyone. Trust me. I watched your experiment laggy death vid you posted earlier in the CoD forum, and I'm not going to subject myself to that. I'd break too many things. LOL.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 12, 2015 13:53:03 GMT -5
By playing Halo right now, I mean the worst launch of the video game history - Halo MCC . There is still hope though, because 343i is working on a big patch to address the breaking issues. Halo 5 won't be out until Q4, which I am pretty excited about. Talking about Halo 5: I strongly recommend everybody to watch this YouTube playlist, not because it shows cool stuff about Halo (because most of you don't care about the game), but for giving gamers a taste of how games are made in general from software development point of view. The perspective is interesting. Also interesting: 343i actually hired a group of pro players in house to help them make the game. I would like to see how that could turn out.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 12, 2015 14:15:18 GMT -5
tl;dr For all intents and purposes you've already beaten Destiny. You're at the end of the end game. But the very system you say is digging the game's own grave is actually what has kept you playing for hundreds more hours than you would have without it...
I think playing only for loot if not having fun is definitely bad, but having loot in the game merely becomes an excuse to keep playing. I don't think it was a mistake at all. I think it has added literally hundreds of hours to what is otherwise a fairly blah single player/coop game. Think about if you didn't have the loot and Destiny just played out like Halo. You just had your loadout weapons and whatever was laying around or dropped on a given mission. We'd all have played through it and gotten bored a long... LONG time ago. But, what has really kept us around? It's not like those missions ever change. We're just redoing them... again and again and again... Throw a couple different skulls... I mean modifiers on them and repeat. Hell even that is drolled out over weeks and days since you can never just pick the skulls you like.
The loot and progression add replayability to the game. We will get to the end eventually. You're going to run out of loot. It is unfortunate that the grind is rather unfair due to RNG. Some guy may pick up a rare drop at the very first chance and loads of other people go week after week after week. Thing is, the game isn't about a handful of items. It's about a whole range of available loot. And that's exciting at first. You never know what you'll get, but anything will be great! Slowly that anything becomes just a few things, then only a couple, and everything else is repeats and duplicates. That's an entirely intentional part of the design. You slowly get a diminishing return on your investment. You have to, because you have to hand out rewards like candy early on to get people going and keep casual players coming back. But you have to tease the hardcore players. If you let them grab the carrot too fast what the hell are they going to do with the other 300 hours they would have played your game? There has to always be some little something, just out of reach to keep people motivated, even if it's a game they really do like and enjoy playing. Because that reward structure is at the heart of the game, and we expect it now.
So yeah, eventually it gets old, people burn out, and the really end game stuff becomes tedious and less fun. But that doesn't mean it's poorly designed. That's just how the end game IS for a loot driven game. The whole point is to create an ecosystem that keeps as many people playing as possible from casuals all the way up to hardcore players. Many of the hardcore players will exhaust most of the loot, but hopefully enough keep playing long enough that they will be enticed back in with the next DLC. And then the cycle repeats. Bungie didn't invent this. It's been going on in MMO's for decades. You see it in Diablo.
I will agree that it results in an unfair amount of grinding as some people get lucky and others get very unlucky. I think a fair amount of randomness should definitely be kept intact, but some amount of smoothing such as was used in the CE loot tables should probably be applied across the board as the current loot system doesn't perform well at the very end game with few items left to acquire. Hopefully we will see changes in that regard at some point.
The time investment system is absolutely working as intended, though. Because of that diversity of players the game must support people who play the game 3 hours a week all the way up to 8 hours a day. If you want absolutely everything then yes... there WILL be a massive time investment. Because Bungie has to look at this from the reverse perspective. They aren't forcing anyone to play the game that much, but some players, given half a chance... WILL. But if you can get absolutely everything with minimal time investment what then? What will the hardcore players do? They'll bitch and moan and whine that the game is too easy that they did everything you could do in less than 100 hours and they'll move on. That's not what Bungie wants. They want Destiny to be an MMO-like shooter. And you have to incentivise the hard core players to keep them happy... or rather to keep as many of them content as possible for the longest amount of time. They will run out of loot, and faster than the developer thinks. The community will consume any loot or content at a pace about 1000 times faster than Bungie can generate it. So you make it grindy and make it take longer and longer and longer the further you get. It's not Destiny's grave... it's what has kept everyone, including you, playing all this time. It has turned a 15 to 30 hour game into a hundreds of hours game. It just kinda sucks at the end of the end game.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 14:22:22 GMT -5
If you guys are going to play CoD, why not go the new one? Because I'm not going to shell out $60 for a game that I've thought looked like garbage from the first reveal, that I have no interest in and would never play on my own, and that this board almost universally agrees has the worst lag/connection issues in the history of the series. I'd just end up fuming the whole time due to BS lag-related deaths, and it wouldn't be fun for anyone. Trust me. I watched your experiment laggy death vid you posted earlier in the CoD forum, and I'm not going to subject myself to that. I'd break too many things. LOL. hahaha...fair enough. Definitely a love/hate thing with the game. IF you can get the right connections and games going (I'm quickly learning ways to it), and IF you can learn to deal with the blinding initial exo boosts...the game plays very fast and fun. There is literally no tactical loitering at all in modes like Dom, and even in TDM. This is the most anti-tactical loitering game ever made. That's not a bad thing. I'm learning how to get around the connection stuff. How to avoid the sbmm, how to deal with it's sticky group host leader situation. I just put a new post up on the other board. Here's the deal. If you are all solo, all the time, you'll probably love it. If you play grouped up, with people distant from you, and those people with high KD's...pucker up :-( You really have to pay attention to what you are using and how you play. What kind of shocked me was this. I tried going back to play BO2, and even AW without the jumping/boosting/dashing/flying (AW has a non-exo mode)...it was VERY hard to play. I felt like I had a ball and chain on me. Hated it. Hated how I couldn't get to where I wanted in seconds. I didn't have fun. It's a game you really have to learn how to play. Even the exo-boosting fast jumps. It took me a while to nail this down, how to hit people. Plus learning how to use laser-sight to track people without ADS'ing. There's a ton of complexity to it, much much deeper than destiny.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 14:38:04 GMT -5
tl;dr For all intents and purposes you've already beaten Destiny. You're at the end of the end game. But the very system you say is digging the game's own grave is actually what has kept you playing for hundreds more hours than you would have without it... I think playing only for loot if not having fun is definitely bad, but having loot in the game merely becomes an excuse to keep playing. I don't think it was a mistake at all. I think it has added literally hundreds of hours to what is otherwise a fairly blah single player/coop game. Think about if you didn't have the loot and Destiny just played out like Halo. You just had your loadout weapons and whatever was laying around or dropped on a given mission. We'd all have played through it and gotten bored a long... LONG time ago. But, what has really kept us around? It's not like those missions ever change. We're just redoing them... again and again and again... Throw a couple different skulls... I mean modifiers on them and repeat. Hell even that is drolled out over weeks and days since you can never just pick the skulls you like. The loot and progression add replayability to the game. Disagree with you there. You are kind of taking the Witty approach, which is anyone playing for a goal/loot, they aren't playing the right way. Don't agree with that. But what kept me around wasn't just the loot (yes, that played a part, I need goals)..the bigger factor was the raids. I like them. And when the new DLC came out (which I had already paid for), I wanted to try the CRota raid badly, as the VoG was so much fun. And yes, to do Crota, that meant grinding hard to get what I needed, so I could keep up with everyone. So that kept me going. Saying nothing new here, but the Crota raid has been a bit of a disappointment. Some elements are fun, some issues, overall, not as good as VoG. I also don't like the piecemeal approach of the whole way the Raids have gpne. Everyone just parcels them up as pieces, and just knocks off checkpoints here and there. "I got this checkpoint" . "I did this solo, you still need part 3, I got part 2, etc..." It becomes glorified small strikes. There's something to be said about 'GAME FLOW'. That epic feeling you get as you start at the beginning, progress through, working, moving on...and then getting to a final climatic end. That ain't Crota. It's a CheckPoint-Fest.
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hebbnh
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Post by hebbnh on Feb 12, 2015 14:41:13 GMT -5
Yeah, from everything I've seen, heard, and read, including what you just said IW, I can tell it's just not for me. I tactically loiter way too much, LOL. THebb and I are the MW2 sniper or LMG douches who run scavenger and claymores and literally don't move for a whole game except to put down YET ANOTHER claymore after the same person has blown themself up 5 times in the same spot. We're goofy like that. Not all the time, mind you, but a decent amount. I was generally either full stealth tac-knife/run and gunning OR sitting in one place piling up kills for 10 minutes, without a whole lot in between.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 14:43:08 GMT -5
Yeah, from everything I've seen, heard, and read, including what you just said IW, I can tell it's just not for me. I tactically loiter way too much, LOL. THebb and I are the MW2 sniper or LMG douches who run scavenger and claymores and literally don't move for a whole game except to put down YET ANOTHER claymore after the same person has blown themself up 5 times in the same spot. We're goofy like that. Not all the time, mind you, but a decent amount. I was generally either full stealth tac-knife/run and gunning OR sitting in one place piling up kills for 10 minutes, without a whole lot in between. oh ok. Yeah, AW is probably not going to be for you then lol Stay away from it.
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Dumien
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Post by Dumien on Feb 12, 2015 14:48:22 GMT -5
The limitations on raids per week are also a bit annoying. They are personally my favorite part of Destiny too...(even if I'm not in love with Crota's fight on Hard Mode) I understand why they do it...but there should be some incentive for a player who has already run the raid to run it again to help their friends (other than getting high off of friendship). The boss exotic drop idea could solve this....
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 12, 2015 14:51:26 GMT -5
I don't thing playing for a goal is wrongheaded. I think it's what the game is based on. The game is very much dangling carrots in front of you to keep you playing and interested, while hopefully having fun in the process. Plus getting those rewards is also fun. It's at the very core of what makes Destiny great because it keeps us coming back to stuff that is still fun. It adds a lot to the game.
It just breaks down a bit at the end of the end game, and becomes tedious. (The loot aspect that is...) It's still worked as intended for getting thousands of players to play for hundreds of hours each, for creating a whole community, for keeping us here in this game. But there's some sucky parts. Hopefully Bungie will mitigate those. I think that was the intention with Xur. Sure you still have to get lucky that he sells what you want, but it vastly increases your odds of getting something since he is guaranteed to have items. But just like the chests and everything else the more items you acquire the fewer you have to collect, and thus it gets harder and harder for you to achieve your goals.
Basically the RNG is just a bit too random. Hopefully it gets patched eventually. Not completely, just a bit.
I can't speak to CE game flow. I've yet to have a chance to even run it... still haven't done NF or weekly this week. Just can't right now. RL=bitch...
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 12, 2015 14:58:06 GMT -5
Long story short and debate on finer points aside, we all agree on 2 things: 1) The process of getting to the loot drops need to be fun, ideally with high replayability; 2) The loot drops need to be great enough to worth the effort (of getting a group of 6 people together for 2+ hours); I can also add a third thing, which is probably subject to debate: 3) Ideally, the game should provide reasons for players to keep going for loot drops; (e.g: Dumien's idea of having a random perk every time) Needless to say #3 needs to be built on top of 1 & 2, not the other way around. (Destiny had 3) before, with tedious mat farming, poor drop rates, and lack of duplicate loot detection. That's the wrong way to keep players playing, and hopefully Bungie have leant that by now) CE is lacking in all three and that's why the player engagement is on significant decline: 1) the process is not as fun as it can be, 2) the loot drops is not great, and 3) once you get the loot, there is no incentive to come back (Do I really need 5th copy of Fang of Ir Yut? It was exciting when I got it the first time, it is just purely annoying when I am getting it for the 5th time). If HoW and the subsequent "major content release" don't reverse that trend (I can go so far as saying it needs to do much better than the stock game), then Destiny will be history a year from now.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 12, 2015 15:07:52 GMT -5
The limitations on raids per week are also a bit annoying. They are personally my favorite part of Destiny too...(even if I'm not in love with Crota's fight on Hard Mode) I understand why they do it...but there should be some incentive for a player who has already run the raid to run it again to help their friends (other than getting high off of friendship). The boss exotic drop idea could solve this.... Yeah I definitely agree you should get something. Even if it's just some secondary currency, you shouldn't just get nothing for it. Though I think part of the reason they don't incentivise replaying it too heavily is they don't want to encourage raid farming. The raids are static and unchanging, so people can definitely burn out on them. But people already do play them extra times to help friends and such, or even just for fun.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 15:20:48 GMT -5
It's at the very core of what makes Destiny great because it keeps us coming back to stuff that is still fun. It adds a lot to the game. It's still worked as intended for getting thousands of players to play for hundreds of hours each, for creating a whole community, for keeping us here in this game. .. I guess we will disagree here. I don't think 'greatness' in a game is defined by how many hours a game can get it's players playing. Take "Last of Us". I did played it on my PS3(well, I gave it to my son, it's the only game I played on it). This game was awesome. And it didn't require people to grind a bazillion hours. Take the Legend of Zelda 64, going old school. Great game, with a beginning and an end. GTA V...maybe one of the greatest games ever played. Then of course CoD. I kept playing those over and over for year. And what was being used to bait me? Nothing. I played solely because I was having fun. I find nothing great about a gaming company who's main goal is to find unique/clever/silly/dumb ways to keep baiting me into playing week after week, until I get to the point of being annoyed. That's the thing, to use this analogy. It's not hard to get a alcoholic to drink another drink, while he's drunk at the bar. That's essentially how I view Bungie's method of doing things. I was addicted. Wrapped up and obsessed in keeping up so i could do the next raid, etc... Keeping me going wasn't a hard task to do. It's sloppy at best, how they do it. If anything, the baiting the game does so that you can do the next thing...is a poorly disguised ploy to cover up the game's many warts * * NOt trying to harsh on the game to much. Just trying to play the other side, and keep things in perspective. Not be a nutrider.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 12, 2015 15:30:31 GMT -5
To be fair to Bungie, they no longer "bait" you into playing the game even when you don't enjoy it, because you simply feel "obligated" to play (again, like the old days when you have to farm for mats): 1) They eliminated the need for mat farming; 2) They increased the drop rate in CE, as well as added duplicate detection, so people can easily get to level 32, and the weapons they care about (which is not a big deal if they can't, because they are not must have and will become obsolete in the near future anyway); 3) They are talking about removing the need of having to re-upgrade exotics; I welcome these changes. By taking the need of I-have-to-play-or-otherwise-I-am-behind-my-friends-and-I-curse-while-doing-it mentality, they are forcing themselves to come with better ways to keep players engaged, or risk becoming irrelevant soon. We will see what they can do with HoW and beyond. Nowadays my Destiny game play is limited to NF/Weekly/Raid with friends, <=1 NF solo, and <=2 Weekly solo. After that I am playing other games instead. That's healthy enough
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 15:37:08 GMT -5
To be fair to Bungie, they no longer "bait" you into playing the game even when you don't enjoy it, but still feel "obligated" to play (again, like the old days when you have to farm for mats): 1) They eliminated the need for mat farming; 2) They increased the drop rate in CE, as well as added duplicate detection, so people can easily get to level 32; 3) They are talking about removing the need of having to re-upgrade exotics; I welcome these changes. By taking the need of I-have-to-play-or-otherwise-I-am-behind-my-friends-and-I-curse-while-doing-it mentality, they are forcing themselves to come with better ways to keep players engaged, or risk becoming irrelevant soon. We will see what they can do with HoW and beyond. Good points. What I mean by baiting Witty, is this. You get invested into a game. You log in hours to get to a certain point, so you can 'PLAY' the game. You do that, and feel good like at the end of VoG. Mission accomplished. But then you already have the DLC already paid for. It arrives. To do this DLC though, you then find out you have to log in massive amounts of time (Eris level 4, re-level Exotics, etc..)...just to get to use the end game of the DLC. Most people who are at that point, bought the DLC...they are going to feel a need to grind on. Finish. Most will do it. Like getting an alcoholic to drink another, it's no measure of greatness getting me to continue playing. All players have that "I went this far, need to finish attitude". Why do you think you hear the word 'grind' so much with this game? Honestly, I've never heard grind used so much until Destiny game out. I'm nitpicking here. I love Destiny. My point here is don't think this 'WE PLAYED SO MANY HOURS' is a measure of 'greatness'. A 'great' Destiny game would have made me play maybe 12 hours to get to where I needed to do the Hard Crota stuff....and then the next 72 hours of gaming I did...I played because I kept having a blast. Even you said yourself, you were surprised at how many people have slowed down, once getting all they needed. That is a sign of exactly what I am saying above.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 12, 2015 15:45:01 GMT -5
Well, when a new DLC comes it should be OK to have a need to grind, because ideally the newly added content are fun so you don't mind playing them over and over for a while.
That said: I also don't think that grind is a necessity and players have no choice but have to get onto it (if they don't want to). Sure, if you don't grind as hard as your friends you will have a harder time to get into the supposedly cool part of the new content initially, but it turns out not to be a big deal. Take CE for example: for players who played hard in December (including us), most of them got bored by end of Jan, which is at least 3 months away from next DLC. So looking back really no need to rush.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 12, 2015 16:05:54 GMT -5
I don't just mean that getting hours out of players is the end all, be all of greatness. Bungie isn't tricking us into it. Destiny isn't just another cow clicker. It has solid fundamental mechanics. But there is no Eartly way Bungie could have created enough content to keep us all playing with those delightful mechanics all this time without an ace up it's sleeve. With Halo that ace was competitive multiplayer. They expanded on that with firefight and challenges and even a progression system.
Destiny embraced the loot aspects of RPGs. It's a great reward mechanic. It keeps people playing Diablo and Borderlands games long after they beat the game. And it works for Destiny in exactly the same way. It's at the core of the game because the end game does not come at or anywhere near the actual end of the game. I'm not even sure you would get to level 20 by the last mission playing Destiny strait through, with no repeats or farming, ect. But that doesn't mean that the loot and progression are the only reason to play the game. The reason to play is for fun. But the rewards are the excuse to play... or rather replay the game. It's to the point that I don't even think of it as replaying things. I just think, "hey I want to go play Destiny... now what's next on my todo list?". I'm actually just repeating stuff I've done over and over 90% of the time, but I don't care. It's still fun.
And the game has gotten more fun as I've gotten better at it. But let's face it. If the loot and progression ended with The Black Garden I would have blown through it and stopped playing a long time ago. It would be something I'd fire up once every now and then to play a mission coop with my brother... like I did with Halo. The loot and progression helped turn a little shooter with a weak story and soso multiplayer into a massive game. It didn't make the game great... but it helped.
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Post by TheHawkNY on Feb 12, 2015 16:17:51 GMT -5
There's a problem in that a lot of players are at a point where normal legendary weapons and armor are irrelevant. You have your Exotics, your Raid drops, and your Iron Banner rewards, the Murmur and then what? How many of the legendary items that you have that don't fit into those categories do you care about at all? Once you hit 32, that armor becomes completely worthless. And personally, in terms of weapons, I have only 3 normal legendaries that I care about at all - a fusion rifle that has perks I don't care about but does void damage, and an LMG and Launcher that each have Surplus. That's all each of them has, a single characteristic that I care about. If I woke up tomorrow and there was a glitch and the other 25 normal legendary weapons I have suddenly disappeared, my response would be pretty much just "meh."
No one cares about vanguard or crucible marks anymore, they just spend them on materials. There's a pretty simple solution: refresh the perks on the weapons of the faction vendors every 24 hours. Give us a chance to purchase a weapon we actually want to use.
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markopolo
True Bro
Once a LMG Camper, Then a Voidlock, Now a Lexington 25-8-366 Runner
Posts: 5,567
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Post by markopolo on Feb 12, 2015 16:21:42 GMT -5
Give us a chance to purchase a weapon we actually want to use. Or design a weapon we want to use Let us buy the VG weapon we want, blank and upgradable as is for 150 marks and a commendation: want 3rd eye... 200 spinmetal please. want field scout... 200 relic iron please. want solar damage? 400 helium por favor Same thing with the VG armour... make both totally customizable to how you want it for stat rolls etc etc 200 helium for +100 discipline (you get the idea)
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mannon
True Bro
wordy bastard PSN:mannonc Steam:mannonc XB:BADmannon
Posts: 15,371
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Post by mannon on Feb 12, 2015 16:25:43 GMT -5
There are already lots of suggestions on Reddit to let us reroll normal vendor items like you can IB weapons. Usually the suggested price is a commendation.
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wittyscorpion
True Brorange
All warfare is based on deception.
Posts: 8,598
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 12, 2015 16:29:51 GMT -5
The loot system was keeping players playing: yes
The loot system is still keeping some players playing: yes, but the number is on sharper and sharper decline
The loot system will keep players playing: highly questionable, if the content themselves don't get a significant step up in quality and replayability (in aspects of challenging, need for teamwork, fun for co-op, etc). In particular, Destiny disappoints in the PvP department. We argued in the other email thread, but there is no denying that for one reason or another people just don't play it much. At least from my perspective the majority of my friends would rather do boring bounties then jumping into Crucible. That's sad for a game made by the developer who created Halo.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 12, 2015 16:34:25 GMT -5
I don't just mean that getting hours out of players is the end all, be all of greatness. Bungie isn't tricking us into it. Destiny isn't just another cow clicker. It has solid fundamental mechanics. But there is no Eartly way Bungie could have created enough content to keep us all playing with those delightful mechanics all this time without an ace up it's sleeve. With Halo that ace was competitive multiplayer. They expanded on that with firefight and challenges and even a progression system. Destiny embraced the loot aspects of RPGs. It's a great reward mechanic. It keeps people playing Diablo and Borderlands games long after they beat the game. And it works for Destiny in exactly the same way. It's at the core of the game because the end game does not come at or anywhere near the actual end of the game. I'm not even sure you would get to level 20 by the last mission playing Destiny strait through, with no repeats or farming, ect. But that doesn't mean that the loot and progression are the only reason to play the game. The reason to play is for fun. But the rewards are the excuse to play... or rather replay the game. It's to the point that I don't even think of it as replaying things. I just think, "hey I want to go play Destiny... now what's next on my todo list?". I'm actually just repeating stuff I've done over and over 90% of the time, but I don't care. It's still fun. And the game has gotten more fun as I've gotten better at it. But let's face it. If the loot and progression ended with The Black Garden I would have blown through it and stopped playing a long time ago. It would be something I'd fire up once every now and then to play a mission coop with my brother... like I did with Halo. The loot and progression helped turn a little shooter with a weak story and soso multiplayer into a massive game. It didn't make the game great... but it helped. Isn't that kind of my point though? Take away the baiting (RNG Loot system) and for most all players, the game was just repetition. Remove the bait, there is nothing there. People stop. That's not a measure of greatness. That's just covering up flaws with ridiculous time demands, knowing full well players will try to finish as they are close to being done. Again...I love the game. But I done with doing the "Warmind" Mission solo for the 39th time, to get a bounty done, so I do x, y and z, so I can then have this, for a Raid. I like to compare the above to GTA V. I would like to see Destiny move in this direction for the next DLC or at worst, next version. You want an open word? There you go. You didn't need anything to lure you into playing GTA V. Story line? Loot? End game perks? All there, but didn't need a single one them. Take away them all? Wouldn't even matter, people still got lost in just playing the game, AND....every experience was unique and different doing so. A person could just play it over and over and never even worry about a "To do list" either. I probably blew an uncountable number of hours just messing around with stealing a dumb jet from a police compound. Just watched a video the other day, people spending hours driving dump trucks into a tunnel, to block a train. Another thing with GTA V. You want to talk fun? I put in massive amounts of time on the game, finished the game, and still messed around with it even recently. But most of all, I was playing a few months ago, I actually stumbled onto two areas of the world (island) that I didn't even know existed. Never even knew they were there. That was awesome. One was a nudist camp I somehow missed in a story mission, up in a valley up in a mountain range. Nudists, with guns, who shot back at you. Dicks swinging in the wind while they did so. When was the last time you had an environment surprise like that in Destiny? Tons of fun with this.
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Post by TheHawkNY on Feb 12, 2015 16:41:13 GMT -5
Give us a chance to purchase a weapon we actually want to use. Or design a weapon we want to use Let us buy the VG weapon we want, blank and upgradable as is for 150 marks and a commendation: want 3rd eye... 200 spinmetal please. want field scout... 200 relic iron please. want solar damage? 400 helium por favor Same thing with the VG armour... make both totally customizable to how you want it for stat rolls etc etc 200 helium for +100 discipline (you get the idea) I forgot to mention, part of the reason for my recommendation is that it would be extremely simple to implement. They already have the code to change the perks (it used to change back and forth between two sets of perks every 48 hours, I believe), they already have the code done for the random perks, there's no new UI or anything, just have it change along with the other vendor refreshes daily.
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