Seeing the direction the game has taken in the last few weeks, I’ve decided it’s time to move on. The Polygon and Kotaku articles capture a lot of what I’ve been feeling but there’s more to why I’m leaving and seeing friends do the same:
1. The more dedicated you are, the more you get screwed
The Polygon article’s money quote is spot on:
“The system actually punishes players proportionately to their dedication to the game, and it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen a major game developer do to its community.”
If you ran the raid 20+ times like I did and finally got level 30 gear, you saw it immediately obsoleted by level 31 vendor gear that required no skill to get. You could grind simple bounties or lose dozens of Crucible matches to buy better gear than you earn by mastering the Vault. A slap in the face.
If you grinded to max five exotic weapons, you saw that work erased by the new upgrade system. (And yes, if you wanted your exotics to matter, upgrading again was necessary.)
People who say obsoleted gear is a feature of MMOs like WoW are mistaken. When WoW releases new content – in large expansions on 12-18 month cycles – they make the previous top-tier gear important for getting the new top-tier gear. You’re earning the ability to beat the next adventure.
You don’t need any of the level 30 armor or weapons to reach 31 – they’re actually a detriment because you could have saved your upgrade materials for 31 gear. Casuals get a nearly free ticket and dedicated players see their work washed away within weeks.
DeeJ wrote, “Your feedback is clear: The time you have invested in your stuff should be respected.” I no longer trust Bungie will do that.
2. There’s too little payoff
When I finally, finally hit 30 on my warlock, here’s what happened: my light number ticked from 29 to 30. No dramatic visuals, no cutscenes, no public announcement or rewards. I danced with myself in the Tower for 20 seconds and that was that.
It was a microcosm of a larger problem. Because your hard-earned gear and weapons are quickly obsoleted, there’s no meaningful period to enjoy your work. There’s little time to feel like a rockstar or to help lower-level guardians who can level nearly as fast solo. Destiny wants you to be a legend but I think it makes you feel ordinary.
Raid exploits made this worse. Have a Vex Mythoclast? You’re either a Vault of Glass badass ora Joey who watched some warlock cheese Atheon off a ledge. There’s no way to distinguish.
We’re seeing the same with Crota’s End. In a raid intended for top-level six-man teams, you can solo the maze and easily cheese both the bridge and Crota. You get no rewards for killing a level 32 deathsinger boss but can get an exotic within ten seconds of starting the raid after killing zero adds. What?
3. Just too much repetition
Any prolonged challenge requires some degree of repetition, whether it’s practice or grinding. I’m up for that. But there’s a line where repetition becomes tedium. For me, Destiny has crossed that line.
The DLC was a chance to introduce meaningful new missions, new enemies, new game mechanics, new storylines. The raid was fun the first times through but Omnigul is just another high-level wizard. The might/hand/eyes/gums of Crota are all enemies we’ve killed hundreds of times over. There’s no personality to them, no backstory. They’re not the Elusive Man or Flood or GLaDOS. They’re just angry pixels.
When the community complained about the farming of materials for hours on end, Bungie let materials be bought at a loose rate… and introduced four new scarce currencies and made glimmer much more expensive. It feels like a shell game.
A repetitive game that obsoletes your repetitive efforts within weeks is a recipe for disillusionment. Look at Reddit and these forums. One week after seeing their raid gear become useless and seeing weeks of the same cycle ahead, more players than usual are saying enough is enough. Among those staying, more than a few say they love and hate the game simultaneously. It’s what drug addicts say.
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