Cross-saves! (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Friday, June 07, 2019, 10:39 (2007 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

In Bungie’s new model, Forsaken is a paid add-on. It is arguably the best combination of story missions/destinations/patrol activities/side quests in the franchise to date. But looking forward, it’s silly to require a new player to buy that expansion and play through all that content (plus all the content before it) just to catch up to their friends who have been playing the entire time. It’s a huge barrier, and a barrier that gets bigger the longer D2 is around and the more stuff gets added.

Catch up.

This thing is solely a problem because of the power system and leveling. Without that, you wouldn't need to 'catch up'. You could just hop right in.

Wrong again :)

As the game is built right now, you’re locked behind story progression just as much power level. Even if you stripped out power levels, you’d still need to complete all the campaign to “unlock” each location. Think back to the end of the Forsaken campaign, and all the little steps you need to complete to unlock the Dreaming City. The game right now if full of those sorts of little grinds. Many (but not all) of those grinds were cool the first time through, but forcing a new player to go through all of that now just because they want to play the Menagerie is crazy. So I’m all for a system that opens things up for new players to jump in, or existing players to come and go more freely.

To me, evidence that MMO is simply a bad genre with insurmountable problems.

There was an interesting retrospective of Everquest on Arstechicna. The game is actually still running. But there are basically no new players. If you buy the game and start now, nobody will play with you as you progress and level up, and playing alone is not really an option. So it's essentially 'impossible' for a new player to even start at this point.