It's having to focus on this step... (Destiny)

by Malagate , Sea of Tranquility, Friday, December 27, 2019, 05:43 (1802 days ago) @ nico

...that makes it frustrating, because you're not playing your best -- you're trying to focus on getting a rocket, and then a kill (or a double if you're lucky,) rather than playing optimally and helping your team win.

Situations like this always remind me of Chris Butcher's criticism of Gears of War's achievements back in the day. Same exact reasoning. Over-focus on personal achievement which exists tangential to the actual gameplay. I wonder what happened.

If the step was get two kills, I could see incorporating that into a couple IB games that I'm going to be playing anyway. but ten is just a little too much.

This isn't the first time Bungie has had quest steps like this, and it used to make me sad that I was gimping my team and frustrated that I was progressing so slowly.

Not anymore -- now, I just turn off the sound, turn on Netflix, and go with the flow.

They are encouraging people to divest their interest (I think I've used that right), when they should be doing the opposite. These objectives absolutely must align with the normal flow of gameplay.

[snip]

Speaking of negative feedback, there's a thread on Reddit right now with like 1.8k replies that articulates some of the concerns I've had with D2 in recent months, specifically how logging in with a million flashing icons (of things to do) would give me anxiety rather than make me relaxed and enjoy the game.

I still want Evil Otto back.

I've learned to ignore them and focus instead of what makes me happy with Destiny, which is playing with friends.

Same here. There's so much that I love about how the game feels, looks, and sounds (I will forever maintain that the sound design is perpetually underrated); but the thing that keeps me coming back is the people. I'm not sure what drove the change to lock IB engrams behind a quest (probably the permanent nature of mods in armor 2.0), but it absolutely kills my motivation to play Iron Banner. Once I get past the quest, I resent it and want to do something else.

My suggestion would be to rework the IB quests so that they focus on the kind of gameplay Bungie actually wants to encourage. The Iron Banner Control variant is already geared towards a team running together to overwhelm each point and locking down the map, so a Rocket Launcher Kills wicket should be something like "Score 5 kills with a Rocket Launcher while near teammates", or "while The Hunt is On".