On Saturday, I started a brand new character in Destiny, a video game in which players travel through space fighting against impenetrable dialogue.
By Sunday night, my newly-birthed Titan was already level 26 — a milestone that might have taken her weeks had I not had the right equipment. This is because Destiny, unlike many other games, ties your level progress to armour. Progressing past level 20 requires Light, a stat that you’ll start seeing on blue and purple gear once you get to the game’s upper echelons. The more Light you acquire, the higher level you’ll achieve.
In this case, I had earned a couple of powerful Titan armour pieces while screwing around with my main character, so as soon as I equipped it on this new alt, she leaped to level 26. It was kind of surreal and felt undeserved, like I had entered a cheat code or hacked into Bungie’s servers. Level 26 in 24 hours? Insane.
When Destiny first launched in September, this Light system felt novel and innovative, if untested. Here was a new way to approach levelling, the type of progression method we’d never seen in a big MMORPG before. Equipment was suddenly valuable not just because it could boost your armour and give you new abilities, but because it was the only way to make tangible progress in the game. Once you hit level 20, all those blue and purple engrams got a lot more exciting.
But with the release of Destiny‘s new expansion pack, The Dark Below, it’s become clear that this Light progression system has crippled the game. And although Bungie’s much-discussed shooter has a lot of big flaws — the lack of content; the joke of a story; the way it screws people who can’t play on weekends — this may be the most frustrating aspect of the game.
Let’s break it down.
The goal posts change constantly.
While plotting out The Dark Below, which raises the game’s level cap from 30 to 32, Bungie’s designers had a problem. Before the expansion pack, players could only hit level 30 by traversing Destiny‘s first raid, The Vault of Glass, where they could snag rare gear that would boost them up to the cap. But Bungie undoubtedly didn’t want to force everyone to fight through the Vault — which can be excruciating if you don’t have a good team of six — just to access the new level-30 raid and high-level story missions. They didn’t want to gate off their new content. So with The Dark Below, Bungie added new gear to standard shops in the game’s main city. With that armour, you can get all the way up to level 31.
In other words, all that old raid gear that players had been collecting and levelling was suddenly rendered obsolete. This was a painful realisation for many Destiny addicts, myself included. I had spent the past few months grinding through the Vault of Glass every week in an attempt to hit 30, yet suddenly, that gear was totally useless compared to the stuff I could buy at the goddamned store. As soon as The Dark Below launched, I felt cheated. Screwed over. I had devoted dozens and dozens of hours to Destiny and this was how it repaid me? I had completed the game’s most challenging trials, yet now, in order to make progress, I’d have to go grind marks until I could afford the store’s new gear? Come on.
So what’s to stop that from happening again? In a few months, Bungie will release Destiny‘s second expansion pack, The House of Wolves. Assuming they raise the level cap again, will all of that new Crota’s End gear become immediately worthless? Why are we wasting our time levelling up new armour if it’s just going to be “refreshed” every few months?
Granted, all of the biggest MMORPGs are regularly updated with new expansion packs and DLC that renders older gear obsolete. The key difference: in those MMORPGs, your level is independent of your gear. You can go do high-level raids and compete for elite equipment knowing that your character’s level won’t be affected by the drops you get. You can feel like you’re making progress in the game through multiple paths, not just based on what type of gear you have. And you can get new levels without replacing that one helmet you really love from Molten Core. You don’t need new gear to progress.
Perhaps most importantly, most MMORPGS don’t get paradigm-shifting expansions every three months.
With Bungie frequently moving these goal posts, it feels like Destiny is constantly taking things away from you, and that’s all tied to one systemic problem: the Light system.
All that matters is Light.
Levelling up is the most important thing you can do in Destiny, especially if you want to be competitive in the high-end raids. Enemies that are higher level than you will get bonus damage multipliers based on your level difference, so if you want to stand a chance against, say, the level-32 mobs in Crota’s End, you’ll have to be at least 30 or 31.
Because of that, the value of Destiny‘s armour is inextricably tied to its Light. No matter how much you love the ammo boost on your sweet purple chestpiece, you’ll need to swap it out as soon as you find something with higher Light, or else you won’t be able to contribute much to your raid fireteam.
This has led to three major problems. One is that every character feels exactly the same. Instead of making difficult, interesting choices about how to build your Guardian and what sort of gear to deck her out in, you get to wear whatever you’re lucky enough to find in the newest raid. The only way to differentiate characters, other than their classes, is by the guns they use, and given that Xur the weekend vendor likes to pop up and sell the same powerful weapons to everyone — hello, Ice Breaker! — there’s a lot of monotony. You only get four slots of armour, and you can only really use them for whatever gear has the highest Light.
The second problem is that it often feels pointless to put time and expensive upgrade materials into gear that you know you’ll have to replace in the near future. Say you buy a pair of gloves with 33 Light in hopes of taking it through the newest raid, Crota’s End. You could very well spend a few hours maxing out and pumping rare materials into those gloves, only to find a new 36-Light pair of gloves in just a few days. Demoralising.
The final problem? When you find a new piece of armour, you’ll have to upgrade it before it hits maximum Light, so high-level players will often find themselves losing levels when they equip more powerful gear. If I’m level 30 and I buy a bunch of 33-Light armour in hopes of hitting level 31, I’ll likely get sent back to level 28 or 29 until I level up that new high-end gear. There are few things more damaging to morale than getting a sick new piece of armour and then watching it make your character less powerful, even if it’s temporary.
So many arbitrary obstacles
When they launched The Dark Below, Bungie likely didn’t want players to hit the level cap in just a few days — after all, once you hit level 32, there’s not a whole lot left to do. So the developers implemented all sorts of arbitrary obstacles to ensure that players will keep grinding over the coming months.
First, they changed up raid gear, creating a new system for Crota’s End in which the equipment you get from the new raid can only be upgraded by materials you get there. Since you can only snag a limited amount of loot from Crota’s End on any given week before it resets — and since it takes a ton of these new “radiant” shards and energy to upgrade gear — it will take quite some time for most players to grind their way to level 32.
Bungie also introduced a messy Exotic-upgrading system that is tied to the weekend vendor, forcing players to cross their fingers every Friday in hopes that he’ll have the upgrades they need. Like with the raid, players just have to hope they get lucky every week. (You can read more about this bummer of a new system here.)
On top of that, the folks behind Destiny added yet another currency to a game that already has too many of them — this time it’s “Commendation” packages, which arrive every time you hit a new rank in Vanguard (PvE) or Crucible (PvP). To buy the newest helmets or chestpieces from the vendor, you’ll need these Commendations, and you’ll need to grind a lot to get them.
Of course, these changes all arrive on top of the arbitrary obstacles that we’re already used to, like the weekly 100-mark cap that will force most people to wait at least a couple of weeks before getting enough vendor gear to hit level 31. (See the pattern here?)
Ultimately, we wouldn’t be running into any of these issues if the loot system and levelling system were two separate entities. If gear was independent from levels, we’d have more incentives to keep playing once we hit the level cap. And if we had more incentives to keep playing, Bungie wouldn’t need to make us jump through thousands of hoops to hit the level cap in the first place. It’d all feel like way less of a grind.
Plus, armour could be more varied and way more interesting if we could evaluate it based on more than just its Light number — sort of like how we can with Destiny‘s top-tier weapons, which are great. Imagine if armour had that kind of variety? The designers could get more creative with stats and bonuses on gear, and hey, maybe they’d give us reasons to go back through the Vault of Glass again.
Weird thought: right now, no matter how much time you’ve pumped into Destiny, your character is still really just level 20. It says it right there in the menu screen. No matter how many hours you’ve spent upgrading gear and farming for materials, your character’s top level is still just tied to what he or she is wearing. All it takes is a couple of dismantles for any character to zoom right back to 20. Because of this strange, innovative, ultimately crippling Light system, our characters are only as good as the gear they’re wearing.
Comments
50 responses to “Destiny’s Biggest Flaw”
I tried starting a new character, also Titan. My main guy is a Hunter. I just couldn’t force myself to play through the story missions again. Went back to playing the Hunter pretty quickly.
Hello. My name is Monkey. I was a Destiny addict.
Thankfully most of the recent changes have made the game painful instead of fun.
This has allowed me to move on and play other awesome games.
I still run the nightfall, gambling my time for a chance at loot.
Yeh. The latest changes really highlighted the worst aspects of the game.
I will wait until the last expansion before giving the grind another shot.
Yeah, it is turning into CandyCrushHalo
This, word for word, summaries my views. I was addicted, playing every night. Challenge and fun were set aside in favour of unbalanced, difficulty and grindy. I never even got to play the raid and now that the expansion is out I don’t really see the point in doing so – or anything – related to this game.
The game wants to be a casual MMO but only caters to the hardcore/addicted audience.
I just said to my brother after we spent all weekend waiting for last night’s reset to achieve all the things that each Tuesday night brings; “I think I should start playing less”.
I said every Tuesday is the most important night of the week for me and my brother and our real life friend group that logs on every week for the activities. You grind leading up to the Tuesday night, you grind as a result of the tuesday night achievements, you spend the weekend checking Xur’s gear, buying something, and grinding that.
It’s actually gotten to the point where I am reluctant to make any other plans in my week in case the group decides “Actually, we’ll run / finish Crota’s End on Thursday night, instead of Tuesday”.
There is so much to love about this game, and my excitement for its inevitable (and hopefully rapidly approaching) sequel is very high. I’m really sure all of these missteps on what was an incredibly bold project with a lot of new and exciting ideas will culminate in a sequel that is far closer to the original vision and our original expectations.
And Bungie must be praised for trying something like this, instead of being content to stick to what they are good at, they leapt into the deep end, out of their comfort zone, to create a brand new console genre that I’m sure will be emulated for years to come. It’s not perfect, it’s not even good at times, but it is novel and just what this generation needs; new blood, new ideas, people making mistakes and dreaming too big.
But I’m just worried that as it stands, Destiny’s taking more from me than I receive from it.
Ewwww!
I’m kinda glad I just stopped playing shortly after completing the main “story”.
I was helped by the fact that my internet is a touch unreliable and when you drop out of a raid there’s no way to get back in.
You don’t have to have your connection drop too many times after 20 minutes of shooting a boring bullet sponge at the end of a raid before you just turn the game off and play something else.
Unfortunately that also stopped me from even trying to play through the Vault of Glass. I hear reports from people that it can take a few hours or more? How many people have their connections drop at some point over a 5 hour raid?
It’s not your connection that’s the issue. It’s Bungie’s servers. They’re absolute crap. Have drop outs so often it’s become unplayable. It’s practically a different error code every week, and my house mate and I can play at the same time half the time, sometimes one of us will drop while the other runs fine, and sometimes it’s unplayable just with one person playing home alone. Look online and you’ll find so many people complaining about the drop outs.
I mean I’ve gotten a nonsensical “There’s an issue with your Bungie account” error and drop mid game once. That was infuriating.
How do you figure? I connect via wi-fi and drop out from raids every now and then, it’s always a simple matter of rejoining the fire team you were part of prior to disconnecting, as long as they are not at 6, you can get back in.
I haven’t played Destiny yet (because my computer is a brick), but the light system sounds intriguing.
Would it be possible to introduce new item slots (thinking rings and amulets a la Diablo), which had the light-level-values tied to them, and have weapons/armour/etc. independent of the levelling system? So you still need to grind out high-tier amulets/rings/etc. to level up, but you can add more variety to other inventory items?
Not sure if trolling… Destiny isn’t out on pc.
To be honest, I had no idea. I don’t really play console games anymore and don’t pay attention to recent AAA titles because my PC isn’t even remotely close to being able to handle them.
Ah. I’m just platform agnostic. Doesn’t really matter to me what platform a game is on, as long as it’s not a touch game (phone/pad).
Tbh I had a great deal of fun in running through the story missions again with new characters. My main Warlock was up to 29, I did have a second Warlock to try and farm the raid but that quickly got boring so I now have a Titan and a Hunter. I didn’t get as many drops for my Titan as my Hunter, in fact I think the only armour I got was an exotic helmet from the random engram Xur sells, but for my Hunter which I got to 20 last week I had 2 pieces of legendary and one exotic piece of armour which immediately put him up to 24/25 (possibly even 26). After having a lot of fun in leveling up new characters it does feel cheap to have insta-levels if you have the right armour.
I feel that with legendary and exotic armour and weapons Bungie have taken the easy way out, simplified them to a basic level and made your progress reliant on a RNG. I would’ve much preferred to have armour or weapons that you could level up a perk tree (the existing system is crap as there’s no choice involved in how you upgrade your weapon) and have to work on crafting a rare weapon/piece of armour up to legendary and then up to exotic level. It’s just crap that someone is a higher level than you or has better weapons than you (especially in Iron Banner) just because they had better luck in engram drops. No skill involved
That isn’t true. There’s really no difference between Light level in Destiny and ilvl in WoW, and before they introduced a system to track gear a level 60 in T3 was, for all purposes, higher level than a 60 in T1 for example. That not just a WoW thing, or a Destiny thing, it’s how MMOs have always worked.
I might not like that they’re doing it in Destiny, but I do find it refreshing that they at least acknowledge that gear = level.
That said, the way perks are attached to gear, and the way you can lose levels when upgrading, is a flaw to the system, and one they’ll really have to fix if they want the game to survive, because I can’t imagine even the most gear driven of people will enjoy constantly having to relevel up and rebuy perks on their gear.
Yeah, I think the issue ultimately is that in traditional MMO’s, if you strip the characters down to just their bare stats and abilities, they still have some differentiation and sense of potency.
By making gear and level so closely aligned, they’ve created more problems than they’ve solved.
Came to say exactly this. ‘Level’ in Destiny and ‘Item Level’ in WoW are virtually interchangeable. Once you hit level cap, you’re grinding to get gear that will increase your average gear level to the point that you can enter certain content and be competitive. Newer progression content is tiered by gear, “you must be at least this tall to ride” style.
The big difference between MMOs with solid endgames (like WoW) and Destiny isn’t their gear progression, it’s that a good MMO has lots of things for you to do when you log in (crafting, managing your stuff, making money on the auction house, PVP, dungeons, questing…), multiple ways to progress toward getting the rewards you need, and randomized gear drops are predictable and also happen a lot more often. For example if you really need to get a helmet upgrade you can look it up and find that Boss X of Dungeon Y can drop it, so you can run Dungeon Y a few times and actually know that Boss X is always going to drop one of a set of items and that you always have a chance at getting it if you beat him. Can’t say that for Destiny.
I’m one Crota raid piece away from level 32, pulled the arms and chest after the refresh last night. Just need the boots or helmet. The latest hot fix allows the raid helmet to drop in normal mode as well, which is great.
While I don’t play as much as I did around launch time, I will still jump on a couple times a week to do both raids, and the other weekly events.
Anyone who had been playing the game since launch would surely understand that the Vanguard and Crucible armours have been there purely to get you high enough to participate in the raid with a fighting chance, where you can score the armour you need to hit the cap.
The exotic upgrade system was poorly thought out, why not just give all exotics an automatic boost to 36 max light/336 max damage? They did something similar in the latest hotfix where the Crota armour would drop with 26/36 light, now all existing and future pieces are 30/36.
Despite some baffling ideas and “fixes” I’m still having a good time meeting new people via lfg.com and running through shooting galleries and raids, comparing drops, figuring out new strategies and feeling envious when someone else gets what I wanted.
Er, the light levelling system is not new: Lord of the Rings Online had a similar (terrible) system and everyone hated to the point the devs said that they “… took Radiance outside, tied it up to some railroad tracks, and…well…I think you saw the end of this in Red Dead Redemption. Look for this in the future -‐ we will be removing Radiance from LotRO.”
Now admittedly not everyone played LotRO (I havent) but it would explain why the system hasnt been used since
I only got up to the “The goal posts change constantly” paragraph but im so sick of people saying that (VoG) raid gear is obsolete.
Yes it is a lower light lvl then vendor gear, but can vendor gear get “increased heavy ammo capacity” on it’s boots? No it can’t
Can vendor gear get “increased special weapon reload speed”? No it can’t
More subjective but I’ve been waiting to finally get a helmet with “melee attack speed increase” and “melee hits restore grenade energy” Whadda you know, the raid helmet (titan) has those upgrades.
I’m even ignoring the upgrades that are specific to the vex (chance of orb of light on “X” type of kill) and the upgrades specific to VoG itself.
The number of light isn’t everything, before the dlc (as a lvl 29) I would regularly drop down to lvl 26 because the armour had better upgrades when I was in the crucible.
Edit: read the next paragraph, still don’t understand the big deal of having a set of armour with max light for the raid (and only the raid because everything else is still lvl 30), and another set of armour with the upgrades you want with lower light that you spend most of your time wearing
Crucible has level advantage disabled, everything is normalized, light levels legitimately make no difference. Iron Banner being the exception.
If you are running high level hard raids light level trumps beneficial perks every time due to the modifiers on damage done and damage taken being based on comparative light levels in PVE.
Assuming the edit was referencing my comment, the disadvantage you are giving yourself by not at least being the same level as the enemies you are facing is considerable. There have been tests done with a level 29 with a fully leveled up gun and a level 30 with the same gun completely fresh from a drop, not leveled at all. The level 30 did more damage with their gun to all enemies than the 29 did. The 29 also took more damage from the enemies than the 30 did.
Here is a graph shamelessly borrowed from Reddit, both players were using the Vision of Confluence scout rifle on level 30 vex enemies.
Player Level 29
VoC 248 ATK
LvL 30 Goblin Disciple Normal Damage: 154
LvL 30 Goblin Disciple Critical Damage: 462
LvL 30 Hobgoblin Disciple Normal Damage: 154
LvL 30 Hobgoblin Disciple Critical Damage: 462
LvL 30 Minotaur Disciple Normal Damage: 154
VoC 300 ATK
LvL 30 Goblin Disciple Normal Damage: 202
LvL 30 Goblin Disciple Critical Damage: 605
LvL 30 Hobgoblin Disciple Normal Damage: 202
LvL 30 Hobgoblin Disciple Critical Damage: 605
LvL 30 Minotaur Disciple Normal Damage: 202
Player Level 30
VoC 248 ATK
LvL 30 Goblin Disciple Normal Damage: 227
LvL 30 Goblin Disciple Critical Damage: 679
LvL 30 Hobgoblin Disciple Normal Damage: 227
LvL 30 Hobgoblin Disciple Critical Damage: 679
LvL 30 Minotaur Disciple Normal Damage: 227
VoC 300 ATK
LvL 30 Goblin Disciple Normal Damage: 297
LvL 30 Goblin Disciple Critical Damage: 890
LvL 30 Hobgoblin Disciple Normal Damage: 297
LvL 30 Hobgoblin Disciple Critical Damage: 890
LvL 30 Minotaur Disciple Normal Damage: 297
From my experience a single light level is the difference between killing a dude in a single headshot and killing him with three.
Thanks for those numbers, always wondered what the differences were in practise (for some reason your edit didn’t show up as a new reply. Is it meant too?).
My edit was in response to the article itself and actually reading the next paragraph of said article.
Oh look another Destiny article…
You upgrade the gear to make it easier on yourself when tackling the higher level content – Crota’s End at 30 vs at 31 is a world of difference.
On commendations – you need, at most, 2 per character, which, if you’re levelling your rep with multiple factions, will come in the course of playing the game. I’ve been doing Heroic stories and strikes whenever I can, in pursuit of shards to upgrade my first two pieces of 33 light gear, and I’ve received 3 Vanguard commendations already across my 3 characters. Doing this also earns you marks – I did a couple of strikes in the new 26 playlist, but otherwise maxed my marks via the raid, daily/weekly heroics, and a few public events. I’m actually wondering what their use is besides ineffectually gating gear and then taking up vault space.
On the raid gear – without radiant shards, it goes to 32 light; ie. without those upgrade mats, you’ll barely hit 31 with 3 raid pieces and a maxed exotic.
On the “worthlessness of VoG gear”… I’m in two minds. On one hand, at level 30 there was nothing to do (pre-expansion) but run VoG hard mode every week, try the heroics, or start a new character – no progression beyond levelling weapons. As such, I’m happy that there’s more progression in the form of the new, easy to acquire, 33 light gear. And it’s not like if a manufacturer brings out a new phone, your time spent using the one you own is invalidated – I had a blast in the VoG. If anything, I’m sad that anyone starting post-expansion will never bother with it, outside idle curiosity, because it’s only useful for getting shards, which can be found elsewhere. I’d love to see a level 32 VoG, with an updated loot table… but Bungie’s already said that won’t happen.
On separating gear and levelling… again, two minds. I’d love to be able to choose my gear (or, hell, add a transmog system) so my appearance is independent from my level. But exotics, IB gear and shader preferences add a way to quickly differentiate people in a group, so it’s not too big a deal. You’re never in a large enough group for it to really be a problem, in my experience.
^ Take all my upmotes pls guardian
Welcome to the MMORPGS expansion console players.
Best to get use to this as we have in PC MMORPG land 😛
I think destinys biggest flaw is that it believes its own hype, it needs to be more realistic about what it can deliver to its players
This is quite literally exactly how I feel about this game. Through the raids I struggled and pushed every week to get the required gear to be level 30. I finally got it all about a week before the expansion came out.
Great, I thought. I’m in the best position possible for when I can do the new raid.
And then that gear that took me so many weeks to get is worse than something you can buy at the fucking tower.
At the fucking tower.
Feel so ripped off.
Read OS42’s comment. It’ s meant to help you with current content. Did you play Vanilla WoW? or did you quit when BC came out due that same logic? It’s progression dude.
So tired of this excuse. It’s been three months. If it was WoW you would be using old raid armour to get into the next raid in a minor content patch. A year later they raise the level cap, new zones new everything so it is more than acceptable.
Destiny is just making you re-run old content to make it into a new raid. I played the DLC for two days, half finished the raid at 30 then quit for Dragon Age. Not looking back.
And dude look – you CAN USE OLD RAID ARMOUR to get into the next raid! Have you even tried it? How is it making you re-run old content? Quit making excuses.
Wow way to miss the point. Why would you bother getting or using old raid gear if vendor/dropped legendaries will get you to 31? How about you quit trying to white-knight a game that even the Destiny Radio Podcast can’t defend. People are frustrated and your defences don’t make us any less pissed. Such a waste of money that could have been spent on FarCry 4.
Quite simply for the fact that some people do not have commendations/reputation/marks needed to buy the gear straight off the bat! And what about the elemental primaries that currently you can only get from VoG, for Nightfall and Weekly Heroics? Hmmm?
How am I trying to white-knight this game? I’ve frequently acknowledged Destiny’s flaws. It’s never exceeded my expectations because I didn’t expect the ends of the earth from Bungie, who everyone – seems yourself included – put on such a high pedestal that they expected the next greatest golden age of gaming to come from.
If you’re frustrated then hey that’s cool – go break your game disc / uninstall your game then your PS4. Don’t blame me if you can’t find some kind of joy in a video game that you expected some kind of golden age/enjoyment in.
Wow… I’m done. Just make sure you wipe your nose, you’ve got brown on you.
Yes that’s right – you’re done because you got trumped. Nice going 🙂
Oh yes exactly! I’ve seen the light! Bungie aren’t ripping us off or abusing their most loyal players! It’s value adding! I really did want the new content to be recycled locations all along! =D
Thanks for the laugh mate!
If only there had been more dialogue. As it was, the majority of your exposition comes via monologue. Everyone fucking monologues at you. The universally-regarded best scenes in the game are the ones where there is actually dialogue – characters playing off each other. The Stranger calling your ghost ‘little light’. The Queen and her brother.
Exposition is boring. Interaction is interesting. Dinklebot briefing/commentary is not interaction. I really wish Bungie understood this and wrote in more dialogue. More character interaction – yours, or others with each other. Character GROWTH. Reactions to actions. Palpable stakes.
Christ. A webcomic did a better job in one page. I want to play THIS Destiny: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/12/12
Plot Twist: What if Activision is paying Kotaku to review Destiny despite how much it’s been bashed in order to garner more attention for when they come out with Destiny 2: Bungie Strikes Back?
The worst part about destiny is everything is ‘The ___________’. It’s like fucking madlibs.
A couple of days ago I picked up GTAV and played some games online with the same bunch of guys I had been playing Destiny with. I had about a million percent more fun than Destiny had ever been. I did play destiny and I did get a fair bit of value out of it – but it is just lots of hard work. An obsession rather than enjoyment. GTA Online still has a grind, but it also has fun. Destiny seems to be lacking that.
Wow, couldn’t have said it any better.
Great article. For me, this article perfectly sums up the reasons I don’t play Destiny anymore. I pay my respect to all the players that love the “grinding”. Me? I like it to an extent, but not when I have to do the grinding on those same maps/missions over and over and over.
Also, am I mistaken? Wasn’t it Bungie themselves kept saying “Destiny is not a MMO game”? Instead they called it a “Shared-world shooter”. So maybe this is the root of all its issues: they are applying MMO rules to a game that was not designed as a MMO. (If Destiny is indeed a MMO, then I say it is a very poor one.)
Isnt this the problem with all expacs with games? Except I noticed that with warlords of draenor the top raid gear didn’t become obsolete until late 90’s or 100. Any ways LoL at Destiny and its fan base getting screwed over time and time again
A single day worth of bounties is enough xp to max out a full suit of armour. I dont see what you’re complaining about.
What’s up with today’s (17/12/14) Daily Heroic mission? I’m locked out because I don’t have the DLC. Bungie specifically said last week that DLC-only content will be part of Daily/Weekly/Nightfall only during the first week of a new DLC launch. Today is NOT part of the first week of DLC launch. Bungie flat out lied.
No, they didn’t.
I’m not great at Twitter but here is what the Community Manager actually said about that:
http://postimg.org/image/h67ij0tov/
This is what Bungie said (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/12/09/destinys-weekly-strikes-locked-behind-dark-below-dlc/):
*********
Bungie’s community manager Eric Osborne has this to say about the controversy:
“All existing strikes and maps are still accessible. Specific activities like nightfall will periodically feature expansion 1 content on the week the newest content is live. New public events, updated weapons and gear, new bounties, and of course the steady stream of updates are all available without additional cost to all players.”
*********
So only for the first week that the DLC is live. They lied.
That’s hilarious.
They really need to consult among themselves before announcing something, even funnier, it was the same dude giving both messages. That said, your link has a later date than my post, so it’s fair enough to go with that.
Logically, they should still be included, what’s the point of having the DLC if the events are not included in the weekly rotations. Why should people with the DLC be forced to do the same vanilla strikes/heroics until the game dies?
EDIT:
After some digging around, apparently the latest weekly update by Bungie confirmed they would be keeping the DLC events in the weekly rotation after all, a backflip, after a backflip, after a backflip? Would post here but Bungie’s website is blocked by my work proxy.
Lol, Bungie is so confused!
I was expecting that DLC owners will get an additional Daily/Weekly/Nightfall on top of the normal non-DLC Daily/Weekly/Nightfall. This will make it so that the DLC owners get lot more to do. Rather than what Bungie did, by keeping what you had originally for DLC buyers, and removing stuff for non buyers.
As a non-DLC owner, I would be happy to just repeat previous day’s Daily or previous week’s Weekly/Nightfall while DLC owners get more variety. It’s now become pay-to-win in that DLC buyers get to keep the loot chance the same as before, while non-DLC players miss out on the loot chance.
I refused to buy the expansion because the default game was just so fucking boring. I played the shit out of it, don’t get me wrong, but in the end it became an extremely boring game. I don’t have to go into it because you all know what I mean. The shooting is great but ra ra ra.
I am so happy I didn’t buy this expansion. The game is too fundamentally flawed to ever become good. Bungie is dead to me after this game and it’s a huge damn shame.
Is there anything about this game that isn’t basically a shitshow?
So glad I didn’t get caught up in the marketing machine on this one.
I traded it in as well, I just don’t have time for the grinding. Plus the repetitiveness was just so aggravating! They are also wanting more $$$ for more content which doesn’t mean squat when the vanilla game is boring small as bat shit. So, this game is supposed to last 10 years? They’re doing a damn fine job of spacing it out as such.