ArkkAngel007
Member
Here are my issues with this, most stemming from that I don't devote more than the bare Daily, Weekly, Nightfall, and Normal Raid cycle if I can even manage that much. For example, today was the first time I've touched the game in a month and only completed a Daily, Weekly, and that Sword of Crota mission for the 60th time for the bounties.
I do understand the need to give players some longevity beyond the content provided by the game. However, it seems the people who've played the longest are being not only punished the worst, but making those of us who haven't been as active or getting poor hands consistently be given less incentive to pursue further time and money to the game. At the same time, it's making it far more difficult for new players to jump in when it comes to the new vendor system.
In my eyes, what makes the game is the social aspects of running Raids/Strikes and being able to clearly set certain goals with leveling and bounties and knowing that you as a player can see the end of that road to achieve them despite the varying grinds. Alongside the fun gunplay of course . While Bungie has made some changes to boost those elements, I feel like they are passing over that in favor of artificially extending the game where that extension hasn't really been proven to be needed, unlike the extension of gameplay and missions that players are actually calling for that have only been marginally addressed.
That's discounting that with every 'fix', 3 more things seem to break in the game in the pursuit of the 'true' experience.
Tl;dr: There are plenty of bottlenecks for the average to moderately enthusiast player in Destiny to allow for suitable progression in gear.
- Difficult to obtain (personally, RNG graced players) AssMats are now essentially a waste and will continue to be increasingly difficult to obtain when in competiton with other materials.
- Speaking of difficult to obtain, let's talk about marks. Vanguard marks aren't too much of an issue as there are a myriad of ways to obtain them, but the cap is so low for both in the inventory and in weekly earnings that marks are lost constantly, while the selection is incredibly small and serves little more than to collect a tiny boost in weekly AssMats (1.5 weeks really due to the caps). Crucible marks on the other hand, which is where the majority of mark-traded gear lies, are terribly difficult on their own to obtain in my experience. Whereas you can reach a VG mark cap in 2-3 days even with modest play, Crucible can take up most of a week at best if you're not rolling with a domination team winning every single match. So on top of all this, suddenly we have to rely on reputation levels as well that we already grinded out to have the 'privilage' to even use our marks to obtain another item that isn't in proportion to the grind to regain the privilage to have a chance to purchase each individual weapon.
- Glimmer is unnecessarily capped and comes in at a bare trickle in comparison to it's varied applications. Generally it isn't much of a problem aside from the few synth shopping sprees for Raid, but the additional Exotic changes tip that out of balance.
- Btw, back to AssMats, it's so nice that all of those that could have went to Legendary items were basically wasted. Even more so when taking into account...
- ...the upgrading of stock Exotics. As noted by others, why couldn't there be another upgrade path at maybe a .75 or .5 experience gain nerf if the threat of maxed out weapons to the game's longevity is so terrible. Which speaks horribly for the game itself if that is such a major problem in Bungie's eyes. And a question about exotic shards; with this upgrade, will I have to spend ANOTHER exotic shard to finish upgrading it along with all the glimmer on top of the 7000 to upgrade+what was wasted on the weapon in the original upgrade path?
- Finally, with new exotics and legendaries, where are we supposed to put them? The vault caps are atrociously low given how the Tower has an abundance of Vault Terminals.
I do understand the need to give players some longevity beyond the content provided by the game. However, it seems the people who've played the longest are being not only punished the worst, but making those of us who haven't been as active or getting poor hands consistently be given less incentive to pursue further time and money to the game. At the same time, it's making it far more difficult for new players to jump in when it comes to the new vendor system.
In my eyes, what makes the game is the social aspects of running Raids/Strikes and being able to clearly set certain goals with leveling and bounties and knowing that you as a player can see the end of that road to achieve them despite the varying grinds. Alongside the fun gunplay of course . While Bungie has made some changes to boost those elements, I feel like they are passing over that in favor of artificially extending the game where that extension hasn't really been proven to be needed, unlike the extension of gameplay and missions that players are actually calling for that have only been marginally addressed.
That's discounting that with every 'fix', 3 more things seem to break in the game in the pursuit of the 'true' experience.
Tl;dr: There are plenty of bottlenecks for the average to moderately enthusiast player in Destiny to allow for suitable progression in gear.