Destiny [PS3,X360,PS4,XO]

[Rangers]

You are equating grinding and absolute luck with toughness. Starving you out of content and endlessly asking you to grind or hope to get something is not "tough" . My problem is not that I want weapons and loots, my problem is that I want to play the damn game with friends which it won't let me because of the light crap.

So once again you are essentially asking to be immediately leapfrogged to the head of the line, because the reason you cant "play with friends" is simply they are higher level. As I explained in my last post about the 31 vendor armor, on top of that you are already being allowed to skip a large part of the grind that others had to go through...

I will respond to the rest of your post later.

 

[NRP]

According to www.destinystatus.com, I have about 512 hours invested in the game, and I don't have a decent armory. Only noteworthy weapons I have are Gjallarhorn and Black Hammer (and I only got them relatively recently).

Lack of access to good weapons has been the biggest disappointment to me. In fact, it really pisses me off when I think about it.

 

[orangpelupa]

i dont mind if they do that if they also update the VoG stuff to Lv.31. Its weird now seeing VoG stuff is lower level than stuff you can buy from Tower.

hmm.. It will be more palatable if bungie care to explain it a bit why VoG still lvl 30 while tower lvl31.
something like

Speaker: Thank you guardian for murdering Atheon and its cronies. Now we have the technologies of Vault of Glass in our hand.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Exotics can easily be bought from Xur. one doesn't have to wait for drops for exotics. Every two weeks, you can buy stuff fro him. The only exotic that I 'got" is Hawkmoon. Bought 4 more and got one from bounty. Got another bounty going.

EDIT; just checked the website NRP listed, I have only 126 or so hours into Destiny and have enough legendaries, exotics and stuff. And I have been very casual about it, just playing fo fun and not aiming for specific stuff. On the contrary, my friends who play according to specific targets in mind are swimming in stuff. Most of them practically have everything except a rare gun here or there.

 

[djskribbles]

Man the crota raid is too easy now with 31s and 32s.
Did the bridge part for the first time and it was a cake walk.
Can't wait for hard mode. I've got everything out of the crota raid, except for the ship. Just needed the fusion rifle for weapons, and I got that tonight.

For all the complaining I did with VoG and how long it took me to hit level 30, I have to say that the new raid rewards gear a little too often. I could have leveled up 4 characters to 32 if I wanted to. Plus I've got at least 2x of all of the raid weapons, with exception of the fusion rifle. By comparison, I still don't have the vex mythoclast, praedyth's timepiece or praetorian foil; and it took me forever to get 1 full set of raid gear.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

cool stuff I didn't know. Looks like a LOT of the myths and stories in there, never told, never hinted at...or maybe they just made a vast universe of stories to be told slowly.

 

[orangpelupa]

that video moves between what he interpreted and what destiny really gives at rapid pace about nearing halfway.

 

[-tkf-]

With all the double jumping and boosting I do wish the FOV was a bit wider, it's quite easy to lose track of players you are already aware of that are near you if they jump and hover. Why do console games severely restrict FOV I'll never understand.


Yea that's what I've been doing. I've 100+ got marks in both crucible and vanguard.
Just waiting for the reputation to build up, short of like 600 or so for each. And it's taken an awful lot of grinding and dedication to do it in a relatively short time by consistently managing to complete both crucible and vanguard bounties, That plus an exotic purchase from Xur should be enough to bump me up a level or two. Once I get to 28 I will be doing VOG with some of my friends and hope to hit 30, then I can play Crota.

it's easier to get Crucible reputation and marks up for me at least as the bounties pay more on average and some of them are quite easy and fast to achieve.

@NRP
It's Truth.
It's ok, My friend has a Legendary (can't remember the name) which is just as good with same damage, almost similar features (both track targets, his rockets explode into a cluster while mine will explode if they detect anything on their way), same magazine size.

Then you are doing just fine, the game has,for several reasons, a natural speed limiter. And compared to many other XP/Grind based games the speed that you can level with is pretty high. One of the good things is that the limit makes it easier to catch up since your friends can't leapfrog you with weeks extensive play. I think they hit a very fair balance on the lvling curve. Actually, i think that if they had spend the same time on content as they must have done on everything regarding, mats, xp, gear etc, then the game would have been epic

 

[orangpelupa]

the random logic in TDB is much better.
in vanilla destiny, Xur is my only source of exotics. Legendary engrams also almost never dropped, even if i got it.. it will spawn as shards or energy.

in TDB, i got lots of exotics, legendary stuff, etc. Heck the drop in Atheon also much easier after TDB come. last week i got gjalarhorn again and the previous week i got 2 exotics in 1 time (all is duplicate, sharded for exotic core).

 

[orangpelupa]

@NRP
im
22DAYS
4HOURS
7

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's not to add more grind...it's because you couldn't just buy 31 vendor gear before, It was at best 29 gear.

So yes it's to add more grind, but only because they already cut a whole lot more grind out. Somebody like me who played from the beginning, ground a lot to hit 30, which was only possible through Vault of Glass gear. You being a latecomer, can now just waltz in and buy 31 gear from the store. Kind of unfair.

You're describing an online tweak, that always happens with online games, and it doesn't actually affect you. It's not like weapon nerfing where an update changes the game for you. You're experience is exactly the same, no changes, but the developers decided they had the balance wrong and tweaked it.

Effectively, as happens with many products and services, later versions are better. Things are learnt from the first release and improved. You can't begrudge people getting a better service/product by waiting - that's ridiculous. As an early adopter, you get to experience the thing first and get longer enjoyment from it. You also get more bugs and problems and design flaws. The grind you had was too much, and it should have been lower, potentially. Or, it was just right and you got exactly as much enjoyment as you should have working towards that loot, but for new players, because they are limited in what they can play with their friends, that level of grind was too much.

It interesting psychology here. You felt a sense of accomplishment accumulating the virtual wealth from your hard work. That pride in your achievement is now threatened by people getting wealth with less effort. Your issue isn't in any way about enjoying the game, but about materialistic jealousy over virtual items. That materialistic psychology is no doubt part of the appeal of loot-based games, but it is a bit ridiculous when people starting wishing less fun onto people to protect their sense of wealth.

Did you enjoy the game getting your loot and feel proud of getting it? Yes. Then keep that! That's not gone. There's no reason to stop new players teaming up with existing friends (actually part of the growth of the game, peer recommendation!) to preserve the sense of materialistic superiority of veterans, is there?

 

[orangpelupa]

Btw the many loot in destiny is just a "filler". usually i just wear this stuff
- Vex Mytho or VoC (yes its still 300 but its still awesome)
- Murmur (its free from Eris bounty)
- Corrective Measure or Gjallahorn.

people say Timur's Lash is awesome and i must play IB or i will be sorry. But whatever man, im already confortable with my gears...

 

[nightshade]

So once again you are essentially asking to be immediately leapfrogged to the head of the line, because the reason you cant "play with friends" is simply they are higher level. As I explained in my last post about the 31 vendor armor, on top of that you are already being allowed to skip a large part of the grind that others had to go through...

I will respond to the rest of your post later.

Look at WoW, players spent countless hours on the base game leveling up and everything, then the various expansions came out. But if someone wanted to get into WoW today, right now, with the new expansion they still can because it's easier for them to get to a point where they can play the new expansion and have fun, with your reasoning they should not be able to even play the expansion until they've spent as much time or close to the time as the people who've been playing WoW for the past decade.

 

[Xalion]

Look at WoW, players spent countless hours on the base game leveling up and everything, then the various expansions came out. But if someone wanted to get into WoW today, right now, with the new expansion they still can because it's easier for them to get to a point where they can play the new expansion and have fun, with your reasoning they should not be able to even play the expansion until they've spent as much time or close to the time as the people who've been playing WoW for the past decade.

The big difference between MMOs like WoW and Destiny is the time between gear resets. WoW has averaged about 2 years before they "reset" content such that new players can catch up easily. Other MMOs that I can think of have been between the 1 and 2 year mark. Destiny is every 3 months. The time frame is so small that it removes almost all incentive to continue to try to play the team based content. After all, why bother to get together a dedicated group of players week in and week out when in a few weeks you can do better solo - with far less time invested. The time curve is short enough that my friends list just about emptied out after the last DLC as people realized that every 3 months people would end up with better gear then them just for paying $20. It removed all sense of accomplishment.

Compare that to WoW. Molten Core came out with the game. About 3 months later, Azuregos and Kazzak were released - but no gear reset. Blackwing lair was 6 months in and built off of previous content. AQ was about a year after launch, and Naxxramas was 18 months. The first gear reset in WoW was the Burning Crusade just over 2 years after launch. WoW has continued with that pattern, with frequent content releases every 3-6 months and major resets only 2 years. I think it is hugely disingenuous to say that Destiny is like WoW because it has a gear reset. They are nothing alike. WoW used a pattern of building off of previous content to keep it relevant until a major release years down the road. Destiny makes all previous content irrelevant every 3 months. Very different reward systems. The second is far less appealing to many of us.

 

[orangpelupa]

but the progression in Destiny is also faster than WoW (i dont know WoW but its like any other MMORPG right?)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

After all, why bother to get together a dedicated group of players week in and week out when in a few weeks you can do better solo - with far less time invested...

What you describe sounds to me like a basically broken game mechanic. You should be playing because you enjoy it. You should be playing as a team because it's more fun than playing solo. If the purpose of playing is to get loot and solo loot is less investment than team loot, so everyone solos...the game is basically 'Loot Collector'. "Collect as much loot as you can. Find the most economical way to get lots of loot in a little amount of time."

Halo never had teams joining up for loot, but for fun! And it kept going for ages because it provided a fundamentally fun team-experience for its players. Maybe the loot was intended as a way to add long-term value and interest to the Halo experience, but it sounds to me like it's backfired. The game should be awesome without the loot as a team game, with the loot as icing. People should be having great fun regardless of what loot and level they have, having awesome shared experiences.

 

[orangpelupa]

played iron banner.

i wonder, how the heck to win in this game mode playing solo (with random teammate and enemies from matchmaking)?

EDIT:
the game end leaderboard:
http://imgur.com/qld23Gb

never wins.

 

[NRP]

As much as I desire IB, I feel pretty confident with my BH/Gjallarhorn combo + whatever primary I feel like (usually Badger CCL).

 

[Rangers]

You're describing an online tweak, that always happens with online games, and it doesn't actually affect you. It's not like weapon nerfing where an update changes the game for you. You're experience is exactly the same, no changes, but the developers decided they had the balance wrong and tweaked it.

Nah, it's just that (again as I understand, since this is my only MMORPG-like experience) that this is common to MMORPG's such as WoW. With each expansion, the devs provide a way for lapsed players, or new players, to fairly easily "catch up" to endgame level, without so much grinding. I guess this is obviously to make the game more approachable to newbies, and in the end the real goal is of course to increase sales. Otherwise players might go "well I'd like to get into Wow/Destiny again with that new expansion, but it will just take too much time commitment to get to the fun stuff".

In Destiny this was done by offering 31 gear for sale with TDB. And they then gated that a bit with commendations and required rank, but not too much.

Effectively, as happens with many products and services, later versions are better. Things are learnt from the first release and improved. You can't begrudge people getting a better service/product by waiting - that's ridiculous. As an early adopter, you get to experience the thing first and get longer enjoyment from it. You also get more bugs and problems and design flaws. The grind you had was too much, and it should have been lower, potentially. Or, it was just right and you got exactly as much enjoyment as you should have working towards that loot, but for new players, because they are limited in what they can play with their friends, that level of grind was too much.

It interesting psychology here. You felt a sense of accomplishment accumulating the virtual wealth from your hard work. That pride in your achievement is now threatened by people getting wealth with less effort. Your issue isn't in any way about enjoying the game, but about materialistic jealousy over virtual items. That materialistic psychology is no doubt part of the appeal of loot-based games, but it is a bit ridiculous when people starting wishing less fun onto people to protect their sense of wealth.

Did you enjoy the game getting your loot and feel proud of getting it? Yes. Then keep that! That's not gone. There's no reason to stop new players teaming up with existing friends (actually part of the growth of the game, peer recommendation!) to preserve the sense of materialistic superiority of veterans, is there?

Yeah, of course I understand all that. I can see both sides. It doesn't really bother me. I guess I just hope they dont make it too easy for newbies to reach the highest levels in the game. It's a fine line.

It's similar to the complaints many had that Bungie didn't "respect their investment" with regards to exotics, etc, with TDB.

About Nightshade teaming up with his high level friends, well I just dont think he can reasonably expect the game to just let him jump right to the highest levels. That's ridiculous, and really would make a mockery of others efforts. He's getting shortcuts (31 vendor armor) already (which he probably doesn't realize he is receiving shortcuts at all, having no prior frame of reference). I guess it's a matter of degree.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's certainly a quandary for game designers. In the case that friends recommend a levelling-based game to someone and that someone wants to play with them and buys the game, what are the options?

If you have high-level only areas, the noob can't join. I suppose the best compromise is to make the areas he can play in enjoyable for the veterans, maybe scaling down their gear so they aren't OP and rewarding something reasonably useful for their level.

I don't think it's a high priority concern for developers though, given the number of games that just through the noobs in amongst the vets as cannon-fodder until they grind some gear to be able to hold their own!