The code to stitch the map together must've been a hoot to work on too

I didn't participate, I just watched... but it gave me warm fuzzies to see people coming together to make cool tools to solve this puzzle.

The reward is almost irrelevant; it was the journey that was so amazing.

I felt the journey was wholly uninteresting. Spreadsheets, waiting for players to submit random combinations, and walking into rooms over and over and over and over? I clocked out of even caring about the possible reward almost immediately.

Okay.

I didn't.

I didn't see it as "waiting for players to submit random combinations", I saw it as "smart people figured out what was going to be needed to solve this puzzle, and created a slew of tools to make that happen." It was really cool to watch. I'm sorry you were bored, and I'm sorry you couldn't look past the minute-by-minute task list to see how a community came together to solve something that at first looked insurmountable.

::shrug::

Different strokes.

I think that’s the issue for me, though. It wasn’t insurmountable, and it didn’t take cleverness in problem solving, specific knowledge (like Binary for OP), skill, in-game coordination or teamwork, or anything that previous game events asked of players. It was more ARG and less surprise dungeon.

But at least ARGs have stages. This was one long sequence that needed to be brute-forced, and the only challenge was the number of combinations, patience, and an excel sheet to keep track of “codes” punched in, with a bonus challenge of not knowing just how long the sequence was supposed to be. It was busywork through and through. Real riveting and engaging stuff.

If you have fun watching loud people punching in formulas to figure out how long it’ll take paint to dry, then yeah, I’m glad they made an event for that subset of the fandom. But nothing was gained for the thousands of man-hours that went into solving this besides a slightly-bumped-up release for a gimmicky paid exotic that people will use for a week, then dump in the vault because their Erentils are more reliable.

I feel like I’m coming off as more annoyed than I am (I had zero expectations, and subsequently very little investment in this whole fiasco). If you had fun, that’s great, you’re not necessarily wrong or dumb for doing so. But realistically speaking, the work/reward ratio that was asked of the community was pretty ridiculous, Because Niobe Labs should have been a teaching experience for Bungie, and yet now they have another event that leaves players with an even worse taste in their mouths.

I think it’s whatevs either way. I don’t even like ARGs, and I don’t use Fusion Rifles, so this event wasn’t for me in any capacity. Hooray for the community!

So, here's my consideration, as someone who only saw one reddit thread about it, thought "that looks neat," then promptly forgot about.

What's the overall value of something like this? How much was the dev cost for this, versus something like a strike or a crucible map? It seems really silly to me to spend what seems like a good chunk of time and resources making something like this, only for that to basically disappear from the game in a few weeks (and, even if it didn't, to never be experienced again in any case), when even a single Crucible map would have been more worthwhile in terms of value to the game going forward.

I know that's not exactly a straight-forward equation, as limited time events that ostensibly bring the community together definitely have a value. I just can't really get behind something like this or Niobe Labs over something like Whisper and Zero Hour, which are cool puzzles that also end up as really cool and fun repeatable missions going forward.

I have no dog in this race, but it's really difficult for me to not be cynical about this sort of stuff. I don't want to disparage the individual developers that designed and made this thing, as I'm sure they're very proud of it and were excited to make it and though it was cool and all that, but stuff like this ends up really feeling like filler content to round out a $10 season rather than a substantial piece of content in a great game. And that's where the seasonal model is really starting to break down for me--increasingly the stuff going into the game feels like it's answering "How can we fill out a season that will go away in a few months?" instead of "what really cool thing can we put into the game?" It just sort of feels like they're going about thinks a bit backwards to me. Maybe that's what it takes to make Destiny sustainable, and that's fine, bur the seasonal activities feel completely disposable because they are by their very nature. Instead of making extremely cool things, it feels like they're throwing shit at the wall because they now it won't matter in three months when they just move on to the next half-baked thing.

I too would much prefer the sort of content brought about from Whisper of the Worm & Outbreak Prime, but those custom spaces take time. I enjoy exploring the question "What is behind that door"? Shoot, I enjoyed the Heavy Bow Quest because we got to see a little more character built into the tower. That's fun. Also... Arcstrider, but I digress.

At this point, the Dev quote bouncing around in my head is;

This isn't just about removing stuff from Destiny 2 -- but the game cannot grow infinitely forever...

Granted, this quotes context is for Gambit, but I'm starting to think this idea has gown since then. We are in the final(?) year of Destiny 2, based on what occurred with Destiny 1. Stuff is being made right now that we'll see next year(?). Bungie has more freedom, but less resources then they did. I think what was done here was an excellent attempt at finding a middle ground. Not there yet - still have to do something about us building up things into things they are not, as I heard a lot of rumblings of a secret Exotic Sword (Then how is it secret?) and what not.

Anything else.... hmm, Oh! I know. I love bees. What value does this information have? Why am I taking about it?

I'll say this; a puzzle like this probably required a lot of mathematical planning and design...but I doubt that implementation of this was overly complicated. Much of this puzzle could've been procedural generated (though the final result "baked" statically). There a limited variety of rooms that appear in the maze. It's actually a very clever use of limited resources to create a community bonding event. The experience alone is worth participation.

You'll need the solutions beforehand, though, since 2 hours only get you two lore codes from the obelisks.