Halo was my first console game, my first fps, and my first game with a game pad. I managed to beat the game on legendary whilst still being bad at aiming. I learnt: advanced cowering techniques, fight avoidance, AI manipulation, and how to carry a sniper rifle to the end of the level to kill those two red elites in the long corridor without cover. And it got easier as my skills improved and I could actually do some ballsy fighting.

The things we should be doing to progress in Destiny should be:

• learning the strengths of our weapons and gear
  
• using them to our advantage
  
• good use of environment
  
• using strats that tilt the combat in our favour
  
• coordinating well with other Guardians

We shouldn't be collecting shit or putting in hours to progress.

If Bungie needs to time gate then let them time gate at the server. If the game is two weeks into a season then your characters get the drops commensurate with that stage of the season. If you spent that two weeks enjoying the game then great. If you spent it doing something else then that is fine, you wont be punished for it (your drops will be waiting in your inventory). Your loss was in missing out on two weeks of fun in Destiny with your mates.

The game gets time gated but you don't have to pay the price.

I hate the idea that we have to earn our progress. Because at first glance it doesn't seem unreasonable. Who wants to be a "welfare check freeloader"? But then I remember that I already have a full time job, and family, and commitments. The amount of hours that I once put into the game were coming close to a full time job. And I wasn't being paid to do those hours! If Bungie wants me to put in those hours and if they don't want to pay me in fun then they had better pay me in money. And I mean more than minimal wage. Given that I already have a job, I think that Bungie would have to offer at least £60 per hour to even tempt me now. (And I'd still have to clear it with my current employer. :-)

Of course that's not going to happen and there was a time when I worked those hours for free. But I looked in a mirror and saw MUG stamped on my forehead so those days are gone forever.

That's where I stand when people talk of earning progress. It puts me in the world of money and work and in that world my work costs money.

Think about it: if you have put hours or weeks into "earning" those raid boot then you have sold your time cheap. Maybe your current employer should ask you if you'll work for him for a pair of pretend boots. Boots that will make it easier for you to earn a better pair of pretend boots. ;-)

Anyway, moving on...

even if Bungie did just time gate at the server, how could you ensure that you get the specific gear that you want?

I think that this could tie into another problem, a problem with raids and randoms, a problem with players without mics.

I'm generally averse to social engineering attempts but something needs to be done about the lack of mic usage in the Destiny population. This needs to be tackled on a broad front but one possible thing that might help would be the creation of tasks that require guardian cooperation and specifically the cooperation of guardians who can talk to each other in real time.

This goes back to my idea of tower gear.

Tower Gear

• you perform activities in the Tower or that launch from the Tower
  
• those activities require guardians who talk in real time to each other
  
• you earn credits that let you buy specific gear with specific perks
  
• you get one piece of Tower Gear per season and per DLC

You can buy (any?) piece of gear and specify (any?) perks or damage type. Each piece of gear/perk has its price.

Asking people to buy stuff feels as hypocritical as Sideshow Bob using a TV to decry the evils of TV. In my defence I would say that:

• there is no RNG so no unlimited sink of time
  
• you need good teams to enjoy raids and anything that encourages mic use in a cooperative environment could help create a climate where good teams could form. I think this would tilt the balance from work to fun and I don't feel bad about asking people to invest time in fun.

I still feel dirty for suggesting that people earn their stuff. Destiny infects your thinking. You always come back to thinking of making people pay for playing the game.

To get back on thread topic...

maybe the mistake of requiring shards was caused by infected thinking. Bungie wanted progression to be easy but their thinking had been infected by the idea that the player must pay in blood to progress. Even when they didn't want to - they still injected grind because the game wont let go of your thinking. It infects everybody. Try suggesting a new gameplay feature that doesn't have some form of grind or cost built into it :-)

They need to have a good balance on time put in vs rewards. They can keep their math, but how it is perceived by the player can be changed. Some perceptions are more "grind-y" than others. Legendary engrams dropping less frequently but being more of a sure thing are an example of this.

There's got to be a progression path or it feels worthless to put in the effort as a player.

I'm currently stuck at lvl 31 due to waiting for drops. I'm okay (ish) with this as I've not put in the time (or same class characters I guess?) that other players have. However, the price of this is that people are moving onto hard mode and me being artificially restrained from it. That pain point can cut both ways. On the one hand, this makes me want to play more and get the gear to move forward with fellow players. On the other, I'm barred from doing so other than once a week at this point "for the greater good". The early treadmill formula, which was good early on, is now working against me in (uh, likely?) unintended ways. This is why everyone was pissed about the VoG drops being truly random -- the more you geared up, the greater the chance of getting items you didn't need.

Balance in progression is a hard thing in game design, even harder when it's an MMO (because everyone has to move together or the system itself needs to compensate). I think bungie is being intentional here with their system, and rightly so... I think they are just pushing a little too much towards diminishing returns on time spent. It's a fine line between making something a challenge and making it too big a grind. Altering the perception is the best they can do without significant rework. I hope some of the groundwork is being laid for that rework with house of wolves, but in the meantime we will continue to see these quick fix types of changes.

A better solution would have been to simply get rid of upgrading armor and weapons altogether, or to make upgrades only things like sights, additional ammo packs, etc, which can be purchased from the gunsmith. Having upgrades primarily be increased damaged is really lazy and uninspired design.

I would much rather see items that you can get that add features to guns. Put something on to make your gun arc damage for example. Or maybe super secret modules add cool abilities that we haven't yet seen. The modules themselves could follow the rare / uncommon / legendary / exotic categorization, and a gun could perhaps only have one exotic module on at a time. Once on, they stay on, unless you pay the gunsmith to remove them.

There would be a lot more variety to top-tier weapons and armour if Crota dropped pieces that powered-up your weapons, rather than set weapons themselves.

An Arc-damage The Devil You Know? TAKE MY GLIMMER.

• how many legendaries should have dropped for you
  
• how many exotics
  
• how much good gear
  
• how much upgrade currency

The problem with Bungie's "solution" here is that even with the split currencies (ascendant materials/radiant materials) I STILL don't want to waste resources upgrading gear that isn't top-level raid gear. If all they required was ascendant materials, that would be one thing. But upgrading armor also uses glimmer and natural materials (spirit bloom, relic iron, etc), none of which I want to waste on anything other than max-level armor.

That, and the stats on the raid gear is random. If I get a piece of raid gear with +str on it, as a hunter that is garbage, so I will save my materials for a better one. To compound that, you can get differing values of the same stat, so you might find gear with +int later that's better than the +int gear you have now.

I was under the impression that Raid Armor/Weapons were given a different upgrade material to encourage people to use their Ascendant Shards/Energy on their current, non-raid, gear. At least that's what I recall reading/hearing from Bungie and I believe that was typed/spoken in truth, especially since I experienced that specific problem.

A better solution would have been to simply get rid of upgrading armor and weapons altogether, or to make upgrades only things like sights, additional ammo packs, etc, which can be purchased from the gunsmith. Having upgrades primarily be increased damaged is really lazy and uninspired design.

I would much rather see items that you can get that add features to guns. Put something on to make your gun arc damage for example. Or maybe super secret modules add cool abilities that we haven't yet seen. The modules themselves could follow the rare / uncommon / legendary / exotic categorization, and a gun could perhaps only have one exotic module on at a time. Once on, they stay on, unless you pay the gunsmith to remove them.

As far as House of Wolves goes, I'm afraid my pessimistic side kicks in a little bit.

You are just being realistic. I can guarantee 100% the story will still be bad, and there will be a severe lack of new content. I can guarantee more needless grind to make up for said lack of content. I can all but guarantee the raid having tons of bugs.

The "comet" or Destiny 2 is where Bungie will actually have a chance to improve I think. If those continue the same way as things are going now, then the series is hosed.

• set milestones and the dates when they could be reached
  
• do a get datetime whenever the game pings the servers
  
• allocate loot corresponding to milestone reached

Then people could play the game as much or as little as they like. You wouldn't have to grind, you could take time out and when you return you get a nice surprise waiting for you.

The problem with Bungie's "solution" here is that even with the split currencies (ascendant materials/radiant materials) I STILL don't want to waste resources upgrading gear that isn't top-level raid gear. If all they required was ascendant materials, that would be one thing. But upgrading armor also uses glimmer and natural materials (spirit bloom, relic iron, etc), none of which I want to waste on anything other than max-level armor.

Yup, that's an 'error' I made. I upgraded thinking that I would have plenty of mats for my raid gear & ended up needing to grind planetary mats for it. That was annoying.

I was under the impression that Raid Armor/Weapons were given a different upgrade material to encourage people to use their Ascendant Shards/Energy on their current, non-raid, gear. At least that's what I recall reading/hearing from Bungie and I believe that was typed/spoken in truth, especially since I experienced that specific problem.

Back with the VoG I held off of going to level 29 with my gear because I was waiting for RNG to grant me the final pieces I needed and I didn't want to 'waste' my current shards on gear I was going to junk when I got the right drop. That held me back as I was unable to run Hard Mode & get more drops. This new way I was able to upgrade all my non-Crota-Raid gear without fear of using up all of my Ascendant Shards. The flip side is that it is now harder to upgrade your Raid gear.

Bungie fixed two problems & I fear created another (which *I* believe was the mistake). 1- removed reasons to not upgrade non-raid gear. 2- improved chances at getting the drops you need in the raid. The unfortunate result (mistake) of these two fixes is that you now have the gear you need, but not the mats to upgrade it which drives people to grind for the mats (there are outliers like Slycrel, who have the opposite problem, mats but not all the gear you need).

I don't think Bungie is the devil coming up with devious new ways to make people grind. Perhaps I'm cutting them too much slack and being too much of a fanboi, but I think they're just making legitimate mistakes and are learning painful lessons (for both them and us) as they level up in this new little genre.

The problem with Bungie's "solution" here is that even with the split currencies (ascendant materials/radiant materials) I STILL don't want to waste resources upgrading gear that isn't top-level raid gear. If all they required was ascendant materials, that would be one thing. But upgrading armor also uses glimmer and natural materials (spirit bloom, relic iron, etc), none of which I want to waste on anything other than max-level armor.

Back with the VoG I held off of going to level 29 with my gear because I was waiting for RNG to grant me the final pieces I needed and I didn't want to 'waste' my current shards on gear I was going to junk when I got the right drop. That held me back as I was unable to run Hard Mode & get more drops. This new way I was able to upgrade all my non-Crota-Raid gear without fear of using up all of my Ascendant Shards. The flip side is that it is now harder to upgrade your Raid gear.

Bungie fixed two problems & I fear created another (which *I* believe was the mistake). 1- removed reasons to not upgrade non-raid gear. 2- improved chances at getting the drops you need in the raid. The unfortunate result (mistake) of these two fixes is that you now have the gear you need, but not the mats to upgrade it which drives people to grind for the mats (there are outliers like Slycrel, who have the opposite problem, mats but not all the gear you need).

I don't think Bungie is the devil coming up with devious new ways to make people grind. Perhaps I'm cutting them too much slack and being too much of a fanboi, but I think they're just making legitimate mistakes and are learning painful lessons (for both them and us) as they level up in this new little genre.

It might be that they're not addressing that problem at all. I kinda read it as they were more concerned with the way a raid or high level engram gives you this great piece of new armor that you can't yet use. What if they're fine with the currencies but will make changes so that HoW raid armor starts at a light level equal to any vendor or Crota armor you have? I'd like that because I wouldn't lose levels by immediately equipping the new armor I was just awarded.

If they would just move exotic weapons' "exotic upgrade" to the first circle or better yet make it an inherent part of the gun that would remove a lot of the fuss about needing to relevel it since it would already start with a damage number a few ahead of you full upgraded previous generation of the same gun.

Some may not agree, but I'm happy to level armor and weapons with the current currency systems if the big hurdles to equipping them in the first place are reduced or removed.

That would certainly be an improvement. And you make a good point that we might be misinterpreting Smith's words completely (which is part of why I wish we could hear him speak about this in greater detail).

If they would just move exotic weapons' "exotic upgrade" to the first circle or better yet make it an inherent part of the gun that would remove a lot of the fuss about needing to relevel it since it would already start with a damage number a few ahead of you full upgraded previous generation of the same gun.

Some may not agree, but I'm happy to level armor and weapons with the current currency systems if the big hurdles to equipping them in the first place are reduced or removed.

I think, perhaps, the triple negative is confusing everyone - including myself - about what I said there. I literally now find myself unsure of what point any person not me is trying to make and whether I agree or disagree with them. I'm equally sure it's not important enought to straighten out.

Thank you for making me laugh aloud. :) I too feel like people are not having the same conversation with each other here, hah. All I've gotten for sure is material for a meme: "Bungie makes decisions; makes fans angry. Bungie acknowledges errors; makes fans angry." ;)

This is about where I REALLY start to miss the old Bungie Podcast, where we'd get to hear Bungie talk in-depth about some of their decisions and thought process.

The problem, as I see it, is that we have Luke Smith coming out and making what is a perfectly reasonable statement if taken on it's own.

"We did some stuff, and we're not happy with how it turned out. Won't make that mistake again".

Where it gets tricky (and where I think some of us get frustrated) is when we start trying to understand why Bungie created these systems in the first place. Put another way:

"what did Bungie think would happen when they added Radiant materials?"

This is a point of frustration because to some of us, there is only 1 possible reason for them to exist: to slow/gate progression. So when a Bungie employee comes out saying "we didn't mean to slow progression, it didn't work out the way we wanted", it's confusing.

I love it when guys like Smith reach out and share some insight with us, I just wish we could be given a more complete picture.

As far as House of Wolves goes, I'm afraid my pessimistic side kicks in a little bit. Let's look at Destiny's progression system. In the early game, upgrading armor is gated by materials (harmonic essences, plasteel plating, wire). By the time we climbed up to the mid 20s, we all had so much of this stuff that it had lost all value. I've got somewhere around 2500 harmonic essences in my vault right now.

So Bungie felt like they needed to add another currency to keep our progression slow. Ascendant materials come into play, giving us another (rarer) currency to grind for. But once again, the grind is drawn out so long that we acquire these materials faster than we acquire new ways to level up. I've now got about 150 pieces of ascendant energy, and that number continues to climb every week.

So once again, Bungie makes the same decision. "We don't want people to use ascendant materials to hit 32, because people have too much of it already. They'll hit 32 too fast". So they add ANOTHER currency.

This is where I get a bit frustrated by the claim that Radiant materials didn't work the way they'd hoped. They are another level of the exact same system of escalating currencies that has been in place since day 1. There should be zero surprises about how they turned out.