I completely agree. But... (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, December 07, 2020, 10:34 (1454 days ago) @ squidnh3

Destiny is a chaotic shitshow that’s based around making players feel cool when they do stuff, is not a game built around tightly designed ability interaction. It’s a game filled with instant win buttons, and we should stop pretending otherwise, even if it had achieved some semblance of “balance.” Each class having an equal distribution of instant win abilities isn’t the same thing as it being well considered or well designed for competitive play. I’m not even arguing that should be the goal. But damn near no ability in the game is high-risk, high-reward. At best they’re medium-risk, high-reward, and most are low-risk, high-reward.

This is always an interesting conversation to have, but I feel like it's worth acknowledging that in actuality, there's still a massive gap between low level and high level play in Destiny. I've always felt like I'm somewhere in the middle of possible skill level, as I play games in Trials where we instantly 5-0 teams, and then we run into teams that instantly 5-0 us.

So yeah, when two teams of relatively equal skill sometimes it feels like just random crap is happening, but at the end of the day I know there's something (what it was, maybe I don't know) that I could have done better to win, because I've played players that did it.

The comparison I always come back to is Mario Kart. MK does several things to make races between players of vaguely similar skill levels a bit closer than a purely skill-based competition would be. There’s the lopsided power up system (better power ups given to drivers that are further behind), and aggressive rubber banding for the AI drivers. But there is a point when the skill gap between players gets wide enough that these mechanics actually start to backfire against the weaker player. A rookie driver might not find the steady stream of speed-boosting power ups all that helpful, as they may lack the skills to properly control their kart while moving faster. They might boost off a ledge or into a wall, or into one of the countless bananas being left behind by the drivers up front. Similarly, rubber-banding AI drivers will be pulled towards the human driver up front, meaning they’ll pull further and further ahead of the rookie driver in the rear.

I think Destiny is a lot like that. All these supers and 1-hit abilities serve to give players of all levels opportunities to do something that makes them feel awesome, but when the skill gap between teams hits a certain point, all those supers and abilities snowball in favour of the stronger team, and lead to an absolute blowout.