Glaive-a-Rant (Destiny)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Wednesday, April 27, 2022, 11:55 (944 days ago) @ bluerunner
edited by INSANEdrive, Wednesday, April 27, 2022, 12:25

Y'all ready for some Light Reading? ;D

Heh ha, get it, because the Traveler and... anyway. (lol it's so dumb. lol)

(Do not adjust your set. This video is indeed at a crisp 240 potato quality.)

Reading this TWAB was a sea of highs and lows. And while on the glance of it, I could out line each thing and speak of my guesses of praise and questions of how all these changes will play out, well... I've played this game along enough to just shut up and wait for the dance.

We don't see the whole picture, even as I do my best to guess the whole picture. The recent patch notes where skip grenades were nerfed into seeming oblivion highlight as much. If anything, this youtuber intro (TDT), is pretty spot on (silliness and all) for how I responded to some of the "proposed" changes.

But I, in my emotional slosh, once again find myself tapping these keys in reckless indulgence. I apparently simply must rant some more about the gosh darned Glaive. Yes, the one I just recently wrote "Approx. 2,915 Words" about already! After what has been posted, I simply can't let this slide by with out my "pithy little" response.

As a quick refresher, in my "dissertation", I note on how the Glaive is the worst weapon Destiny has ever seen. How my biggest issue with the Glaive is it not being up to, even in relative par, with any other established or added weapon gameplay in Destiny. It is not Destiny Grade. In any other game, it would likely be just "fine". Maybe. But not in Destiny. Not this late into the game lifespan, not by a long shot.

But in between the lines of my disappointment mentioned in my "dissertation", I also made mention of something (quite loudly) that I must admit I was uncertain about. Something I figured was true, as it seemed to be the case based on how the Glaive plays, and the kit allowed to it at launch. A logical conclusion. No longer am I uncertain. No longer need I be a green-blooded hobgoblin to bring about a basis in my conclusion. This TWAB makes my suspicions all the more real. And it boils me. It boils me that... this darn thing is the sun-setting of weapons. A self inflicted wound. A shot in the foot.

And look, it's not all as encompassingly damming as true sunsetting was for all parts of the game, but it's still going to be obnoxious to see a bounty requiring this version of a Glaive. This thing is just so many shades of disappointing and red flags, it could have its own talk show.

So what is it this time? What is it this time where I suddenly "simply must" write more of my wasted echos in displeasure about the Glaive? What is it this time which brings me here to waste more time screaming my textual noise down this black hole. Is it because cussing on the internet is the other way to cruse control into cool? :P

If only! Simply put: "Designed" ineptitude. Not even half baked. At least with cookie dough, the risk of salmonella is worth licking the spoon. Instead, it's because of the "Design" they have outlined (or is it retconned), that has caused my inner designer to protest.

And so here I am.

Let's talk about DESIGN! Because apparently my posts have to be about the journey, not just the destination. I asked my self; What does it mean when something is put into focus as "well designed"? Often, as adages go, it's said that if you don't notice it, then it's well designed. While true enough, it's more complicated then that, of course. So really, what does it mean for something to be "well designed"? To keep this on track, I mean this on a functional basis.

Does innovation make something well designed? It CAN! If the principles our objective reality are understood well enough, some things can be made quite beautifully from simple engineering alone. See this toaster for example, or the James Webb Space Telescope. Here is a link to a recent post simply because it's SO FLIPP'N COOL! (Literately!) AAHHHH! These are the things they have to think about to get it right! :D!!!

How about something far more simple then? Is the "subject to be designed" understandable? Unobtrusive? Honest? Does such attributes make something well designed? Yeah. I'd think so. The less you have to think to make use of something, the better. And if done well enough, something well designed is long lasting as well. Has been worth the effort of being made. This might shock you all, but the guy who endlessly rants about the vault and the "loot loop" likes efficiency. It's... it's nice. (Some day I hope to get that way with these darn walls of text.)

How about thorough design? Does being thorough down to the last detail make something well designed? Not necessarily, but I think it nothing short of a fluke if someone is able to create the type of metrics I've mentioned about with out it! After that, I think the Aesthetics of such a thing will organically be there, more often then not.

And in Aesthetics, there are the principles of creating a brand. The look of Destiny is a brand. The look of Borderlands is a brand. One of the key jobs of a... art lead... I think, I'm blanking out on the proper title, is making sure that everyone follows the "art bible" so that nothing sticks out of the visual "brand". Or even, if you are a gameplay designer, the "gameplay brand".

SO anyway...

Glaives.

Bungie had full control on all aspects of creating and implementing. All the planning and testing. All sorts of engineering calls. And short of some arbitrary deadline, nothing outside of Bungie demanded a new weapon, let alone a melee "based" one. And yet, we get this sort of shit where "Oh hey, by the way, that melee weapon? The one with melee in the title? Well, the melee doesn't count (perks) for the weapon, that would be too OP"

THEN WHY THE SAM HILL IS THIS IN THE GAME! DID YOU NOT THINK ABOUT THIS WHEN YOU WERE FREEK'N MAKING IT!

YOU. HAD. FULL. CONTROL. NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS!

That was a preview.

SO... let's hit this part of the TWAB line by line.

We've noticed that several aspects of how Glaives interact with weapon and armor perks don't match player expectations, and want to take some time to clarify the intent, the changes included in Season 17, and the logic we'll use for future changes.

Ok, so by all odds, I'm WAY over analyzing here. BUUUuuuuUT... YOU'VE NOTICED?!?!?! Did you not EXPECT this? You didn't EXPECT folks would EXPECT the MELEE WEAPON to...uh, how do I put this? Oh, yeah, MELEE WEAPON! Like... a GLAIVE?! I mean HOW NAIVE ARE WE, Bungo! Fucks sake.

...heh heh heh, It's so fucking ridiculous... look, I don't want to dig into this too much, as, it may be just the safest phrase to use. Outrage is too easy on the net, and I'm trying to be fair here, but darn all! This just not a good look. Because to me, based on what I see, it looks like incompetence (not on you dmg04). Back once again, and all far too soon.

A Glaive melee is a basic melee attack, not a weapon attack, doesn't consume ammo and deals Kinetic damage. So, it's more like an unpowered punch than a Sword swing.

I need to quote for a moment (which may look familiar to those of you brave or masochistic enough to read my nonsense,) something I said in my "dissertation" before this Big 'Ol TWAB Update was made live.

I said:

Basically, as far as I can tell, you made a melee weapon as if it's a gun! But... it's-not-a-gun! (uh oh.)

IT'S A MELEE WEAPON! FIRST! The emphasis should Be on the Melee! It's a Glaive! That's not a gun! IT'S A MELEE WEAPON! THAT'S A THING!

YOU HAD FRESH OPTIONS BEFORE YOU! AND INSTEAD OF EXPLOITING THESE OPTIONS...!!!!!!

!!!YOU FELL BACK ON TURNING THIS THING INTO A GUN THAT -JUST- STABS!!!

JUST. STABS!

FOR FUCKS SAKE! IF THAT'S THE BEST YOU CAN DO, YOU COULD HAVE ADDED THIS TO Monte Carlo LIKE THE COMMUNITY HAS BEEN ASKING FOR SINCE... LIKE... FOREVER!-AND-SAVE'D-YOUR-SELF A-WHOLE-freek'n-YEAR!-OF DEV TIME!

SO, well... now THAT's been more-or-less confirmed. And come to find out, the STABBY part doesn't even MATTER! HOLY CRAP LOL! It defies all other conventions this game has been built upon. So Great job thur Bungo. Not only is it a lousy all around weapon, neither a true glaive nor magical NRS-2 in any fun sense of shooting, but the only real feature of this weapon is the big-'ol set of lies built into its form. I just can't seem to get over it. This thing is a Meme, as I've mentioned, but it turns out its the meme of expectation versus reality. The main reason you'd want to use the melee weapon in Destiny, with the perk pool and all that, isn't even there. And... it's just SO STUPID, I can hardly stand it!

Again, this could have been fixed in the planning stages. To me, in part, the answer is not only right in FRONT of you, but it's in the lore too. No thinking required, you just had to implement it.

Moving to the next paragraph now.

Allowing buffs to weapon damage to apply to Glaive melees would be too powerful for something without an ammo limitation, particularly in PvP where even a small damage buff would allow for incredibly fast two hit kills. Also, in general we'd prefer to increase Glaive melee damage directly (as we're doing, in fact!) instead of effectively making weapon damage perks mandatory on Glaives.

BULL. SHIT. ... I mean, no, you're right. Bungie is 100% correct. No ammo (and no cool down) means there needs to be a limit somewhere. But the way that was chosen to limit the Glaive was... dumb. As now it exists outside the bounds of all other established weapon play in Destiny where PERKS MATTER. As the weapon designers for DESTINY, YOU SHOULD, YOU DO, know this. So that in part is why my overall stance here is basically, y'all, TOUGH SHIT.

Check it.

In the "Dev Insights", (which I am grateful for, don't let my displeasure of the choices made stop you from being awesome) it is said:

"It's kind of amazing to think how meany development hours went into this, and designed an dedicated just of the Glaive for almost a year. Like, six months animated time, a ton of engineering support...

... and it's so different then we thought it was going to be from the outside..."

LET ME STOP YOU THERE. Does no one see the red flags in this? It's not the only ones, I'll be speaking of more in a moment, just... "...and it's so different then we thought it was going to be from the outside..." in particular is as much a gift as it is a curse.

Discovery and features can be BUILT from such fortuitous aims. And I myself have first hand known surprise by my own creation. It can be a magical thing. But, it's not a crutch for actual KNOWING what you are doing. Luck and happenstance can only take one so far. Much like a "Fantasia" Mickey, if you don't know what you're doing, you can find you self suddenly under a freek'n flood made by our own lack of command in the craft.

So I have to ask what I expect will go unanswered; WHAT WAS THE FREEK'N GOAL IN THE FIRST PLACE?! Was there even any?!

To me it seems like it was "Need new weapon to sell shit" and "Is this cool" instead of "Here is a gameplay hole we need to patch up in the sandbox". Something MEASURABLE to aim towards. BUNGIE is supposed to be a AAA, AAAA studio, not a bunch of causal chucklefucks leaving their design choices to a dart board.

Which, it seems, is what we got in some capacity. "Threw stuff at the wall to see what sticks". SooOOoo... was the Glaive created because they freek'n can?! I mean, obviously not, right? RIGHT?! What kind of LEAD would go for this?! IT screams RED FLAG RED FLAG.

If there wasn't a goal in the first place, and it now just fills up space, doesn't add anything to the body of work, then all that has been made is a cancer. Right?! Does that make sense? I don't think that too far a hyperbole to say, Bungie added a cancer to their own freek'n game. And, for once, I agree with Luke Smith on this one, FUCK CANCER.

So that's part one of this thought, BECAUSE OF COURSE I HAVE A PART ONE to a thought! THIS RANTING GRAVY TRAIN DOESN'T STOP! (Ugh. help me... lol.)

"When we first running play-tests with it, they were WAY too strong. And that's a good thing, that's a good problem to have."

"You need to know how it's going to break things, in addition to how it's working"

YES! True and VERY TRUE. And this (all this) is why "Allowing buffs to weapon damage to apply to Glaive melees would be too powerful..." and so on is, even with it being true, steaming BULL. All of this should have been taken into account in the design and creation of this weapon. All those questions should have been asked and accounted for, FOR THE MELEE WEAPON.

If making the melee weapon work LIKE EVERY OTHER WEAPON was out of the cards, then what do you do to make sure the weapon belongs in the SYSTEM YOU HAVE BUILT! And apparently no one asked that question, or at least not enough. It feels like an oh-shit after thought. It feels like someone is throwing BULL SHIT, and is hoping no one will notice.

And the red flags just keep on coming, and BOY is this next one the KING of all the RED FLAGS.

Glaives already have a long lunge distance, and increasing this at all results in unreliable behavior over the network, so no melee lunge distance buffs apply to Glaive melees.

No no, not that part...

Our intent is:

• Glaive melees should activate perks that trigger off base melee damage or kills (for example, ammo refill from Grave Robber, weapon damage buff 5x stacks on Swashbuckler, ammo refill from Sealed Ahamkara Grasps).
  
• Glaive melees should not activate perks that trigger off powered melee damage or kills, or require expending subclass melee energy (such as Combination Blow or Assassin's Cowl).
  
• Glaive melees should benefit from melee damage buffs (such as Winter's Guile or Wormgod Caress).
  
• Glaive melees should not benefit from weapon damage buffs (such as Rampage, Kill Clip, Swashbuckler).
  
• Glaive projectiles should benefit from weapon damage buffs.

...THIS PART. Ho-ly. Shit. If your game plan looks like it could have been legal text with all the if's, but's, and side effects include clauses of an NDA, HOLY SHIT RED FLAG!

DOES ANY OF THIS LOOK LIKE SOMETHING THAT WAS WELL DESIGNED TO YOU?!

Is this... freaking list understandable? Unobtrusive? Honest? Is this a thorough design that takes into account the established metrics of Destines game play structure for weapons? I fucking think not!

SIGH! Less is more. Less is more! Y'ALL are supposed to be THE FREAKING PROS for goodness sake. ME! An Idiot sitting here in my falling apart desk chair, typing away on my schizophrenic computer, should not be preaching simple design 101 concepts to folks who are making more cheese then Wisconsin will consume in a day. Fucking fuck.

I JUST WANT PEOPLE TO BE GOOD AT THEIR JOBS! THAT SHOULD NOT BE SO HARD TO ASK FOR!

These aren't new concepts I'm spittn' here.

TL;DR

To re-phrase RvB Tucker quote and say in the biggest boldest way I can format it...

"It's fuckin' glaive, dude. Not a fighter jet."

If there was anything that is just the purest expression of the pure failure that was all parts in the creation of this weapon, its in this quoted part of the TWAB here. Geeze alive, Mary and marmalade, what a fucking joke.

And then they go into balancing patches for the Glaive, but... ha ha. Nah. It all just feels like Glaives are in the "we'll get back to this when we have time" dev conveyor belt now. It's gonna be what it's gonna be. And what it's going to be is, this "Hybrid" Glaive weapon, the first person melee weapon, "should not benefit from weapon damage buffs". But only the melee part. Of the first person melee weapon. The Glaive. The melee weapon only gets half of the weapon buffed, because this first person melee weapon is clearly a gun! :D

Great job there folks.

And since weapon design is apparently "throw shit around and see what sticks", here's some shit;

• Separate the perk pools. 3rd line is dedicated for Melee, 4th line dedicated for projectile or shield.
  • Why? Because the emphasis should be more on melee then anything else... for some reason.
    
  • Just as swords have their own perks, why don't Glaives also have this for melee? I mean, goodness. Duh.
    • You could have built it this way, and you didn't.
• Custom Glaive melee "finishers". Triggered only when holding a Glaive.
  • Because... uh... DUH! Do you not like money?!
    
  • You had all the engineering support and you didn't even SHIP with this. IT'S SO OBVIOUS, IT HURTS!
    
  • It would be as if an extension of the whole weapon play, and you didn't even get this right. Fuck.
• This one is more of a stretch goal idea, but as I mention above, was looking Bungie in the face through lore. Right now, with Glaives, the melee of the weapon (that doesn't matter) overrides the ability to "expend subclass melee energy". Not only do I think this wrong, but a (yet another of many) huge missed opportunity. If you could channel light/dark into this weapon, how would that effect the wielding of it? This thing could have been so cool in all the right ways, instead of just cool in idea alone.
  
• Go ahead. Make me shut up. First person Arc-Strider "Staff" Glaive.

Finish this on a high note; "Glaive melees should benefit from melee damage buffs (such as Winter's Guile or Wormgod Caress)" does sound interesting, but it's not enough to counteract the glaring flaws. But I guess we'll see.