Destinys design faults is death by a thousand cuts.

I want to start off this post (its gonna be long) to first make it clear that I absolutely love Destiny. Everytime I put this game down and eventually find myself coming back to it I'm reminded of just how perfect minor (albeit important) pockets of the game are.

The Art, the music, the controls, the surrounding lore of this vast in game universe.

It has the swagger of a game that knows it nails the fundamentals, it plays well and looks amazing at the same time. Its "game feel" is second to none for first person shooters and to have it wrapped up in a FPSRPG, a genre known to sacrifice its feel for function, is incredible.

To put it simply it FEELS GOOD to play the game and it leaves you wishing there were not 1001 other issues stopping you from enjoying the game at its purest form.

With that said lets get into it.

So I titled this post "Destinys design faults is death by a thousand cuts" and my complaints are quite literal. So many of these issues seem like minor things that just leave you scratching your head wondering why they havent been addressed but the vast quantity of these piling issues lead to massive frustration.

I'm gonna start off with a really overlooked issue just so its clear my complaints are not "give me more free stuff" and is more of a question of just the odd ineptitude of certain decisions.

Eververse

Okay so lets talk about this.

Destiny is a GaaS title, it survives by producing content that brings in regular income on a persistent basis (or should in theory) just like most F2P games like Overwatch/Dota2/Warframe/Path of Exile/ect., you get the idea.

Most of these games collect this consistent revenue through purely microtransactions with no sale of actual content (Fortnite is an obvious example of this) whereas some others collect this revenue through selling said added content (The Sims for example) with some microtransactions on the side if the game makes sense for it.

Destiny is one of the latter games, it sells its content releases and also has a very robust microtransaction shop and a game model that supports it.

So Destiny should be swimming in money then right? A popular game that has you paying for all the content AND sells you the costumes and superficial items to dress up your digital avatars with, its a easy homerun.

But with Activisions release of the franchise we know this isn't the case. Though it may be profitable we know it isn't making the money usually expected of a cash cow model like this.

So why is that? Well simply put their microtransactions make no sense to buy.

Really the ideal only question the consumer should have with regards to purchasing a microtransaction is "does this appeal to me?".

Because in reality art is subjective and when selling cosmetics its hard to have everyone agree on what is good enough to buy.

But Destiny doesnt achieve this, instead there are multitude of questions that arise that are so numerous it is almost impossible to justify spending money.

Wanting to buy the Eververse only armor sets? Good luck gambling for the specific perks you want on the armor you want from them. So not only does Destiny need to sell you on the art design of this armor for a premium cost over just wearing regular Destiny armor for free but now it also has to sell you on having you buy box after box after box looking for the correct perks for your preferred loadout. Then even if you do get the entire set with the perks you want it is still being outperformed by Raid only perks and activity specific perks that leave you constantly taking it off. Even if you dont need those raid enhanced or activity enhanced perks like Gambit armor you still might just end up taking the armor off when you simply switch to another loadout that doesnt utilize the same perks. For example, have perks all for light arms? Now you are using Rifles and those perks no longer work.

Compare this to other games that sell cosmetics like Overwatch, like Dota 2, like Path of Exile.

These games I can purchase a costume and its done, I dont need to fish in boxes for the correct perks and I dont have to worry about not using said purchased skin because its not optimal. The only question I have about whether I want to use a cosmetic armor in these games is "do I like how it looks?".

Now you might be saying well some of those games like Overwatch, like Dota are not games with persistent gear stat systems and you are right but there are plenty of games (Warframe/PoE/WoW) that are stat gear games that accomplish selling you cosmetic only items. Most of these games achieve this via a cosmetic only tab which sets the look of your character that ignores the look of your currently equipped items. And you may be saying that its not realistic to expect Destiny to be able to achieve the same thing.

But they already have.

Ornaments are this system and they need only make eververse type cosmetics global ornaments that can be outfitted on any piece of gear.

Now there might be more to this but the point remains this is a significant hurdle to them selling something as basic as cosmetic armor in a game like this which they pump a significant amount of their art assets and money into yet clearly have shown they have not fleshed out the basic necessities for accommodating said sale.

"Thats it, your done with Eververse problems right?"

No, it just keeps going.

So I'm going to condense these last points because yes I understand it could literally go forever so here are some rapid fire issues with the rest of eververse.

• Ornaments for weapons and armor that may or may not be useful

Rather than do what most games do (cosmetics limited to weapon classes for example 2 handed weapons can only use 2 handed cosmetics) they go several layers deeper and limit them to incredibly specific weapons and armor meaning that if that isn't part of your loadout (and the hundreds of items in the games library almost guarantees its not) it has no value whatsoever as a consumer even if you actually like the art and want to purchase the cosmetic. There simply is no sensible reason to purchase it because you either wont use said item or you actively limit yourself doing so.

• Ghosts that may or may not have the intrinsic perk you want

Doesnt have guiding light and cant roll it at all? Might as well not even exist.

Why is Bungie giving me reasons not to buy the cosmetics that their amazing art team slaves over?

• Sparrows that are 150 speed

Why do these even exist? Again WHY ARE YOU GIVING ME REASONS NOT TO WANT SOMETHING?

• Shaders/Transmat effects

Why are these on use? Their cost to get more is so insignificant that it doesnt even matter except to swindle new players and instead leads to people never experimenting with shaders/transmats because their "finite" usage leads people to fear wasting them and thus never using them.

Simple stuff.

In reality the Ships/Projections/Emotes are the only things that actually work within the shop and even those have their own issues.

But you know what the biggest issue of all of this is?

Obsolescence.

You see these other games sell cosmetics for 60$ and people actually buy them because they know that the purchase isn't a rental, its a purchase that they can still be using in a relevant game 10 years from now whether they pay into it or not.

The same Dota 2 skins I bought in 2013 are still usable in the game today, same goes for the WoW mount I bought in 2008, still works today in the current version of the game.

Destiny does not have this, when Destiny 2 launched all the money spent on cosmetics for your character or flair or what have you went completely in the trash and people are already preparing themselves for the same farewell to their current collection for when Destiny 3 launches.

This simply doesnt work in a model like this and you best believe it hurts Bungies ability to sell cosmetics knowing their consumers think its not a purchase but simply a rental til the next game ships.

Okay I think I bitched enough about cosmetics, but for my final word on them I want everyone to know I dont mind them. Microtransactions are just a part of gaming at this point and I've accepted that but my beef isn't that they exist in Destiny its that they are just squandered so much and it just seems like a colossal waste of Bungies time creating all these assets to fund their game only to have no one buy them because of all the things surrounding them.

So what next?

Lets talk about....

Strikes

For the majority of games like Destiny strikes would be the absolute bread and butter of its repeatable content.

Here we have small group instanced pve content in a variety of areas, against a variety of bosses/enemies, in a variety of different engagements.

So whats wrong? Why is nobody doing this content they spent all this time making?

The loot pool is incredibly limited and the content is snore levels of easy. So if its not fun, and its not rewarding, then why play it at all? Why does it even exist? And what is the solution to this if there is one at all?

The answer is Nightfall.

What? You may be saying to yourself, but yes, Nightfall.

You see there are other games that ran into this same exact issue, I'm going to use one of them as an example (since its the one I know best) and how they solved the issue.

Introducing WoW Mythic+ dungeons.

You see in WoW there too was an issue with dungeon difficulty and lack of rewards. In previous years/expansions after the initial post max level phase of dungeon grinding dungeons were all but obsolete to the majority of the playerbase. The content simply sat abandoned and wasted with no incentive at all for players to return to them.

Enter Mythic+ dungeons.

Now some super smart guy at Blizzard decided he had an idea on how to fix this issue of having so much development time and effort be completed so quickly and thrown away. His solution was an ever scaling dungeon difficultly alongside scaling rewards (capped at a certain point) with an emphasis on random selections of dungeons (so as to not have the fastest/easiest dungeons farmed each time) and to have multiple variables introduced per week to spice up the difficulty (think NF mission modifiers except you didnt select them and they changed weekly). These alternating variables made it so one week ranged might be the preferable damage dealers or Priests might be the preferable healers, either way it created new challenges for your group of players per week as you attempt to progress into the higher keys (Mythic+ dungeons were tied to keystones that chose the dungeon and the difficultly for you) for better rewards.

This worked fabulously.

Now instead of Joe Rogue hitting max level and being done with all dungeon content in a week he is instead finding reasons to be running dungeons INDEFINITELY if he so desired for better and better rewards. Even players well into Mythic Raids (the hardest content in the game and the most rewarding) had reasons to run at least a few per week.

Now how does this relate to Destiny and Nightfall?

Well, Nightfall is Mythic dungeons....or at least a form of it.

Variable modifiers, repeatable dungeons, scaling difficulty... its all there waiting to be utilized.

Instead we get nothing, complete 1 NF a week for 2 powerful pieces of gear and thats it, your done.

Its just completely wasted potential sitting in their laps and rather than work the content to fix it into being a viable way to gear your character and spend time in game they instead leave it to rot wasting their time creating another horde mode activity....

No wonder they dont want to give us any more strikes in this season pass, they think its completely wasted content since its not "repeatable" in their current iteration of it.

But lets move on, plenty more to cover and I thank anyone still bothering to stick with my rant at this point.

Lets get into my favorite part of the game and where I have easily spent the most time in game.

Crucible

Lets begin.

So first off let me say that I fucking love the Crucible, I love the dynamics of this games PvP and even with all its massive shortcomings (P2P/Matchmaking/Lack of modes) I still love the hell out of it as it offers a type of gameplay that exists nowhere else as this psuedo Halo/CoD arena shooter with Overwatch lite abilities.

That said...

Its horrible.

Lets start off with a thing most people can agree on, comp is not a fun experience. But why?

Well the issue is multifaceted, lets start with the ranking system itself. The game simply does not separate players into the correct skill tiers so players in the higher end of the skill spectrum are often placed within the low end of the skill bracket and it ends in a horrible experience for players on said lower end.

Now this happens in a lot of games.....initially.... this is due to the fact that the game simply doesnt have enough data on said player to place them accordingly in their skill bracket. In most games ranked mode where there are new seasons (as there are in Destiny) they will have placement matches at the start of every new season to determine how much different your ranking should be from the previous season if any change needs to occur at all. This means GM Overwatch players will remain in GM (or roughly around their original rating) the following season since its clear they shouldnt be playing with Bronze players based on their previous ranking.

This is not how Destinys ranking system works.

Instead a 5500 Unbroken top 500 player is sent back to the bucket bracket with every other player and the ranking bracket calibration is needed yet again to eventually get this player facing the correct skill players and no longer stomping on players that have absolutely no chance.

Its just complete nonsense and its completely counter to the point of the mode which is to have it be COMPETITIVE, I can tell you right now from personal experience that I dont enjoy going through the lower bracket and making lower skilled players get worked over and I bet they dont enjoy being worked over by a person who doesnt belong in their bracket at all either.

And this lack of a sensible system bleeds into a bunch of other issues within the mode.

Long queues/bad matchmaking connections/4man vs randoms, these issues all stem from a lack of a playerbase playing the mode but the mode is so poorly designed that it actively discourages people from playing it which as I just highlighted leads to these other issues.

Then there is the issues within the mode itself, a 4v4 mode in a game exclusively cut to groups divisible by 3, an emphasis on team play with no real communication methods available to non pre made teams, gamemodes like countdown that dont fit very well with the gameplay of Destinys crucible (this isn't CS, not all FPS modes work just by importing them).

And then there is a lack of overall rewards, what value is there in playing comp for a player who already has Not Forgotten? There is no end of season rank reward like an emblem or cosmetic armor. What about people who wont be getting any of the pinnacle weapons or comp exclusives? What are you doing to keep them playing? You need reasons for every type of player to keep playing this mode because when they dont have reasons to play they stop queuing and the whole mode suffers for the lack of a healthy playerbase.

The most frustrating thing about all of this is they've done it better before.... This is Bungie for Travelers sake, they had the first working automated online ranking system I had ever interacted with and refined it through their other releases.

Now here we are 15 years after they released a completely functional ranking system in Halo 2 and they can't even match that let alone follow along with other better versions in online gaming like the often used ELO system used in games like League/Dota/Overwatch/ect.

Okay good lord I spent enough time on that, what about the rest of crucible?

Uhh not much really to complain about here, maybe some basic features like map/mode voting, obviously better matchmaking in general but again they need the playerbase to accomplish that.

I do have a tie in complaint to my earlier bitching about Eververse, here we have a multitude of opportunities for Bungie to make an easy buck selling us stuff like taunts/player intros/victory poses and they miss out on it completely.

And again its something they've already done better elsewhere, I'm not talking about using the Trials of the Nine 20 minute intro with dances and what not but maybe instead of everyone standing around whilst you plant a flag and the game does a slow flyby of the map it instead puts you into a Gambit like room for you to taunt the opposing team in.

And how about they steal their "MVP" idea from Halo (I know thats from Halo 5 but they had a similar system in their own games I just like 5s presentation of it better for my example).

You sell people taunts and flourishes for MVP poses at the end of games and hell it even helps sell the other eververse cosmetics like armor since people will want to show off in the window with their gear as well.

Here is a fantastic example mocked up by /u/blankscientist to give you an idea of it in Destiny. It even incentivizes those "taunts/cosmetics" even more for people to purchase for their character since it is used to taunt nemesis players and you dont need to be MVP to show it off.

You get the idea.

I can speak more of issues like Iron Banana or the stagnation of balance metas but we'll move on.

So ok what else can I bitch about?

How about.....

Raids

Or more specifically, forming raids.

So guiding games eh? Thats your attempt?

Look we know what systems work, we've been using them for years now via the apps and websites, this isn't really a code that needs to be cracked. All that really needs to be done is finding a way to implement those group creation curation tools in game and you are done.

WoW (I know, I'm using it again) accomplishes this via a window in game that lets player pick specific activities to either form groups for or find groups for and has a very clean UI for giving descriptions to group creators or players looking to join a group on what the expectations of said group and who is actually applying to said group.

Data is given like what their light level is, what class they are, what spec they are.

Its simple but incredibly effective and all these websites that have cropped up over the years are some version of said window allowing group leaders the tools to curate a group themselves to complete the content and allowing players the ability to find groups for activities they want to do. Its not "automated" but it gives enough structure to allow these groups to take form and tackle content at a much faster pace than randomly messaging every max level player in the Tower.

The fact that the game doesnt have a functional tool like this in game despite its requirement (as seen by the rampancy of its usage in outside forms) is an enormous failure only compounded by the fact that they wasted so much time with the complete dumpster fire that is Guided Games instead of making a functional in game version of the tool everyone else is already using and knows works.

This post is getting entirely too long and as I continue to type I'm finding it harder and harder to keep my points coherent so for now I'll leave it on the issue that bugged me enough to start this rant in the first place.

Not fast enough updates

So we got some nerfs coming yeah? Heard we are all sorts of upset about this. Personally I dont mind as I've seen this song and dance a hundred times before, balance is a seesaw and sometimes your WAY UP and sometimes you are WAY DOWN.

But you know what makes these nerfs so hard to stomach in a game like this? The fact that we all know how long the next set of imbalances will be around.

You see in games like this quick updates are the lifeblood that keeps the game going. We need constant tweaks and changes and we pay a premium to the developer via microtransactions (or season passes) with the expectation that they happen frequently.

After all it is a "living game" and just like in life, changes come often.

But they dont in Destiny do they? We often spend 6 months staring at obvious issues and imbalances knowing something (ANYTHING!) needs to be done to rectify these issues minor and major just waiting for Bungie to even acknowledge the issue let alone issue their idea of a fix. And I'm completely open to Bungie not taking our word for it and simply trying their own idea of solutions first to these problems. The issue is that when they miss on the fix its like your life has ended, 6 months go by and this is what we get? We may not even see another pass on this issue until a sequel is released and that might involve a whole new slew of issues.

It feels awful and really highlights the compounding issue with all of Destiny, that problems pile up rather than cycle out. Because updates and changes are so infrequent it almost seems like things will never get fixed. Minor issues stick around for so long that they become major problems, systems that get submitted as drafts (Guided Games/Ranked Crucible) never see refinement and thus never work to their full potential. These systems stagnate and because they are always working on the next content release we never see real fixes or improvements despite the fact that a strike rework likely has more potential staying power as far as content goes than anything included in these DLC releases.

Thanks for reading

I might have more to add on to this later but I feel thats enough to make my point and to help foster some kind of discussion, I appreciate anyone who actually read through this colossal bitch fest. I love Destiny and hope it gets to be as good as a whole experience as its foundation has always been.

Submitted May 28, 2019 at 03:30PM by Falcker_v2 http://bit.ly/2YLGB8S