I think in general, his view is a very negative outlook on the game, emphasising the negative attributes and neglecting the positive of many of Bungie's design decisions. This is a perspective that overall, is a little narrow, and I personally think one that could be harmful for Bungie to pursue. Particualrly as it neglects to acknowledge any of the benefits of the design decisions that lead to these issues. Because that's the thing, for example it's a shame I don't feel more powerup when I level up, but at the same time, I'm glad of the fact that I'm not leaving my friends behind when I do, his post doesn't acknowledge these, any many other benefits of Bungie's design decisions. I do have some similar thoughts however, but I think his suggestions that balance doesn't matter, as if Destiny
On Balance
One thing to remember, is that balance and fairness, aren't the same thing. One of the problems that the original Destiny had, was that it had only a very small number of weapons that felt unbalanced, and that created a tremendous problem. It meant that the game lacked variety, and ways to play it. In year one, if you weren't using the Thorn, people didn't want you on their trials team, if you weren't using the Ghalahorn, people didn't want you in the Raid. The issue here is not that the game was unbalanced, but that the game was unfair.
A big issue with weapons like the Thorn, is that they caused the game to feel unfair. Yes, technically everyone in the game had the same tools available to them, yes, everyone could grind it out and use the Thorn, but if you tried to use anything else in PvP, the game felt unfair. That sense of lack of fairness existed to a lesser extent in PvE, as you were at a significant disadvantage to your peers if you didn't have the right weapons. It wasn't explicitly unbalanced, it was unfair, and that absolutely affects the user experience.
While balance might be a bad thing for PvE, it's been a good thing for PvP. Destiny 2's Crucible still has its share of issues, but it's been a better experience than Destiny 1's thus far, one that feels fairer, more rewarding, and between the competitive and regular playlist, one that feels more compelling to particulate in. A big part of that has been the fact that it consistently feels fairer than the original. The one-shot snipers and shotguns are gone, meaning players can better understand why they died, and learn what they can do to prevent that from happening next time, and the toned down supers and absurdly overpowered exotics also contribute it being a better experience.
Back onto the topic of fairness and balance not being the same thing - you can create a game that's unbalanced, but one that feels fair so long as you ensure that the player can easily attribute their actions to their outcome. For instance, Fortnite and Player Unknown Battlegrounds are inherently unbalanced games. The encounters depend on whether the player has the right items, but at the same time, failure doesn't feel like it's something that was outside of the players control. Even though there's variance applied to attaining a sniper rifle, there are actionable behaviours that player can pursue to create a deliberate strategy to enable them to perform better.
If the player ends the game with simply a pistol, failing to find anything, they can attribute that outcome to their prior decisions. Everything from where they choose to land, to where they loot, who they choose to shoot, the player can mostly trace the outcome of the match back to their own decision. Despite being unbalanced, the game possesses a sense of agency that still enables it to feel fair, and that's why it remains fun. Because when you end a game, you think about means in which you could have done better, not the fact that the guy only killed you because the game didn't give you the right stuff.
With Destiny 1, it didn't work that way. Why were you struggling on the raid? Well, you hadn't dropped the Ghallahorn. What actionable behaviour could you do to adjust that? Well, nothing. The game was unbalanced, and that felt unfair because the issue was not attributable to any of the players decisions, or anything the player was presently able to action on.
In theory, a potential answer then, is to allow gear to be overpowered, but at the same time, to make that equipment accessible. Destiny 1's problem was that a very small body of gear was overpowered, much of which had to be dropped at complete random, meaning that it was easy for the game, and in particular, PvP, to feel unfair because there was nothing tangible that the player could accessibly action on, to get better at the game.
This doesn't mean that balance doesn't matter. This doesn't mean that being able to use a variety of weapons in PvP doesn't matter, and it doesn't mean that Destiny 1 and its experience should be held on a pedestal compared to Destiny 2.
On Power Level
I think the authors' perspective is very narrow here. I think some of the argument is valid, but in general he only emphasises the disadvantages of the power system, and excludes all of the benefits. One of the most crucial benefits of the fact that in general, power level doesn't mean all that much is exclusivity. As someone who's played a tremendous number of MMOs, where your level and minute details of your equipment absolutely matter, it's easy to understand the disadvantages (and advantages) of those systems.
Significantly, on the one hand, an impactful, progressive power escalation of the player helps make the player feel powerful, but it also, typically creates a multiplayer culture where the community is segregated into many distinct compartments. Games with progressive power levels have to have tremendous concern with players at all levels of power, because they want all players, to have meaningful content to engage with.
As an example, a game I used to play was called Wakfu. It featured 200 levels that the player could progress to, and as a consequence of that, players that were level 200, had no real incentive to play with players that were 160, or 80. It took time to progress, and the developers placed emphasis on the impact of your progression, with a significant, and meaningful escalation of your abilities and power. The issue here, is that you can't just leave the players that are level 80, 120, 180 with nothing to do. The developers had to provide content for all of them.
That particular game, features more than 60 dungeons (equivocal to strikes) for players to engage with, with different dungeons being the point of focus for players at different levels. Problematically, Destiny can't facilitate that, if you want to make level 305 feel like it really means something, then you're going to need to add content to players that are 305. If it's just the same raid with higher difficulty modifiers, players are going to complain that they have nothing to do, as soon as they beat it. If you add a new raid, or new body of content exclusively for these players, then well, that's simply a tremendous amount of work that I don't think Bungie are obligated to provide. I don't think anyone can say that Destiny short changed them, even if they now feel they have nothing to do.
You could make power have a greater impact on damage, even if it didn't grant access to new content, but then you'd be likely to split community, between those that were at the right power level, and those that weren't there, deemed useless because they weren't 305. I don't think Bungie want that, it just isn't that type of game. They don't want to sacrifice the inclusivity that the game currently features, and I think that's only likely to be spun into a bad thing by the most hardcore of players.
On Loot and Rewards
I feel that the sense of loot and rewards, is the real problem. I agree, and I have said this weeks ago, that there's no sense of reward description engrams and packages when all they provide you are duplicates which offer no variance.
Bungie want players to integrate this game into their daily lives, everything else about its design, the daily challenges, the milestones, suggests that Bungie want players to come back and play the game, every day. However, why come back tomorrow when the rewards you attain are likely to be the same as the rewards you attained today? The loot system is in disagreement with many of Destiny's other systems, and this is the problem that sits at the heart of the game, not all of this other nonsense.
Reflecting back on my remarks about balanced and fairness, Bungie need to drastically enhance the sense of reward that players get from the game (engrams, packages etc), while at the same time, retaining a sense of fairness where the players feel as though their are actionable behaviours that they can pursue to obtain each particular thing. The idea the author suggests of being able to combine weapons, is a decent suggestion, as it enables players to pursue something specific, and gives players a clear means of doing so, however there are also many others. Being able to reroll individual perks with legendary marks could achieve something similar.
At the same time, I think could be valuable to make exotics, feel more exotic. By the same logic suggested above, provided that players can perform clear actions to pursue a particular item, the game can retain a sense of fairness, while at the same time, being unbalanced. That's the same sense of balance that many competitive shooters have. No one playing Uncharted 4 thinks the AK-47 is as viable as the FAL, or Mettler, but the game doesn't feel broken because there are many alternatives to the better weapons (variety) and all of the weapons are readily available to select (accessibility). With variety and accessibility you can create a competitive environment that feels fair, even if it's unbalanced (MOBAs are another good example of this).
Just my thoughts as a player of the game. I'm not a game designer.
