Fix it in Post (Destiny)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Tuesday, April 28, 2020, 15:20 (1673 days ago) @ Speedracer513

That said, with six years of making this "loot" game, it's kinda shocking how they missed the mark. It's all just pretty damning either way I suppose. Shame.

There is a key component here in understanding whether something is "testable," which I supposed would be obvious -- but I guess I presumed too much...

We all do it, no hard feelings. ;D

Sure, they could obviously test the "1s and 0s" of loot drops in a test environment, BUT they could not truly use that environment to actually see what the real players' actions would be in the live version in a case like this (where we're talking about top-tier loot from end-game activities). The players that are driven to farm Trials of Osiris for that pinnacle loot are not going to treat a placebo loot drop from a test realm the same way (and those players generally aren't even going to bother with playing on the test realm anyway). It's like playing poker for a material sum of real money vs playing for no money at all -- it's psychologically impossible to treat both the same.

Indeed, in this case the very root of the problem here is that in the current Trials reward system, you have no real incentive to keep going for flawless tickets throughout the weekend; you're actually incentivized to keep resetting your ticket after three wins to more efficiently farm the loot table; which results in the playlist population remaining saturated at the lower levels with players that should be in the higher levels, and thus disincentivizing your average player to even keep trying.

This is a situation which, while I believe it should have been obvious to the designers from a basic philosophical standpoint, is not something you can chalk up to "they should have used the test realm to figure this out."

Does that make sense?

So... in short, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy"? No no, I should be more blunt, YES, it does make sense. I get it, I got it, and yet I disagree. It's odd, I get the sense that we are both aiming at the same thing, but in an angle which is slightly different. You're telling me the elephant is a like rope, and I'm saying it's like a tree-trunk. Perhaps, a difference philosophical motivation? Yours in rule & scripture, and mine in the infinitude of imagination & possibilities. Yes? Eh.

Boiling this down, the (inital) question was this; How does one create the environment to test what is required for the intended result? I was even so inclined to bother giving a (brief?) answer to it for the sheer fun of it. Yet, with consideration, I must indeed ask (thanks to your post) did Bungie even need to?

Bungie should have had out from years of experience a ballpark to aim for in what sociological action was to occur with their system as it launched at the start of Season of the Worthy. And that doesn't even need a test realm! That's a thought experiment at minimum. Existing data! 6 or 7, I keep mixing it up, years of 24 hour data. The actions we the players made alone in D1 with the "Loot Cave" was enough of a hint for that. (Which I use in example since I can't seem to recall all the other instances, other then that there were instances.)

It is unfortunate, among all this supposition of what happened & what could have been done better, there is little further data to go off of. I at least can't say what they did internally, and why they tested what they did externally. All I have to go off of is what experience I have and the instinct which grew from it, which sadly doesn't seem to translate very well as some random (some times too much :P) internet poster. So I will just say this; For a digital industry where problem solving is a core aspect, PLUS the time they had to use (which I recall in years), PLUS importance of the task for the health of the game... the end result we got is as surprising as it is disappointing.

Should, would, could. My, how exhausting.