+1000 (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Monday, January 20, 2020, 14:30 (1776 days ago) @ Claude Errera
edited by Korny, Monday, January 20, 2020, 14:35

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!