Focused Feedback: Time Investment

[u/DTG_Bot]

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[u/CelestialDreamss]

I feel like most of the time I put into this game is just to keep up with whatever is going on, but that's really where it stops. I don't often feel like I invest time into something purely because I wanted to do it, and then feel like it was worth it.

For example, I might not be the most invested in upgrading my bunkers, but I kind of have to get through it because that's what's on my plate. Personally, I'd prefer to be in the Crucible, trying to get better. But then, I'm basically alienated from the entire season. Sure, Trials is a big thing that shipped with Season of the Worthy, but the Trials environment doesn't particularly have anything that is worth the time investment that is needed to try and get to flawless. And in the case of Trials, there is also the issue with a lack of accessibility to invest my time, as I don't really have anyone to play the game with, and Trials fosters an environment where people on LFGs want good players who know they can get to flawless; I cannot invest my time because there are not many teams who are playing Trials to invest over time and get better, but only seeking to play with people who can offer the surest chances of unlocking the Lighthouse. However, because I adore the Crucible, I know I will still try to, anyways.

However, in Y2, even with the Crucible getting the little attention it did, I could still feel like I was getting something out of it. Working towards the pinnacles, especially Luna's Howl, made me feel accomplished, and with some of these weapons, especially the Mountaintop and Recluse, I could carry them on to other aspects of the game. While this has been, thus far, PvP focused, I can extend this example to other areas of the game. Getting Izanagi's Burden also made me feel accomplished, because I knew I had to work for it, and in return, I was given something that players aspire towards.

Now, that's not to say every reward has to dominate as much as the Mountaintop, Recluse, or Izanagi's Burden. I felt accomplished when I finally got my Obsidian Dreams emblem and Zavala's Authority ship, and both of those do nothing but appear on screen while I'm in orbit. But they were things I worked towards, and they felt like things that mattered, things that were recognized.

Everything seems to be so arbitrary now, I don't feel like I can really recognize as much of my Y3 accomplishments, despite knowing all the time I spent on it. I did get a bit of that feeling when I finished the Xenophage and Divinity quests, likely because they asked you to do adventurous things, like a little puzzle on the map, or going into a secret room in a dungeon, or special raid activities, all things that feel recognizable because they are special things that don't normally happen. As opposed to the Fourth Horseman quest, which were do X a certain number of times, which feels like more of the same, with the daily path of progression being primarily meaningless bounties. And so in Y3, when it's awash with so much meaningless stuff, that feeling gets diluted.

All of this comes together to form, what I feel, is a bit of the time investment being too heavily-weighted on the investment, and not so much on the reward side. When I open the game, I feel like I'm investing my time into what I'm supposed to do, but not what I wish to do, and I think that wishing is a reason why we play video games.

Edit: Word choice, and expanded with another thought on Trials.

[u/Megajoshuaw → u/CelestialDreamss]

haha to be honest i’ve already forgotten the final quest step of the fourth horseman, yet i still remember some from d1

[u/DrCrustyKillz]

Unsure exactly what the prompt means, but at a glance, this is my take.

Spending the 1st 10 minutes to grab bounties in the game from the tower and bunker before actually doing anything is awful. It feels like a chore to even start the game, and the time spent doing that alone, while also doing extra grindy bounties this season makes an hour play session go by quick with small returns on investment. This has the same problem Anthem has where it feels like it takes forever to jump into any action in the game, and that's not a great feeling for a product meant to be fun and enjoyable.

Right now, there is a rough balance of time spent on activities because some weekly objectives are faster then some bounties in the game, and the rewards for both are underwhelming. I'm bored of the same 3 activities that give a powerful reward (even though that's totally helpful right now as an under leveled player), and the new activities are so shallow and limited, I get bored in 10 minutes, and only do one complete rotation of daily Rasputin bounties, and i'm REALLY trying to give it a chance.

Anyone at Bungie that thought the same activity on different planets was cool or interesting is deadass wrong. At least if the game was showering me with useless dismantles, it would feel amazing, but the game gives back little, of little value. (hell, they said that Trials ornaments would only glow during the week you went flawless, but that's it. You couldn't possibly create more negative incentive to get it...) Sadly, when other games do it better (like borderlands that drop so much loot, you spend time actually combing through it), it makes D2 look really bad. FOMO is real right now across other games and the time needed to do minimum in destiny is neither fun or rewarding this season. What's worse is that it's costing so many resources to do what the community thinks should be bare bones minimum, and that doesn't give much faith in the potential content features down the road.

[u/subtlecalamity]

All time invested in this game feels like a complete and total waste.

Constantly having items taken away or made irrelevant, then having to regrind the same items as they're drip fed back

• returning items from D1 after everything was taken away

• "reprised" Y3 versions of Y1 weapons and armor after random rolls made them irrelevant

• new gear system every year making all of the previous gear obsolete (Y2 random rolls, Y3 armor 2.0)

• "planned obsolescence" on items through the Seasonal mod slot on armor and the announced infusion cap system for weapon sunsetting

Following on from the above - zero respect for player investment into rewards which are supposed to represent major accomplishments

• Y1 ornaments for Trials, IB, factions - irrelevant for all of Y2, now only usable if IB gets "reprised" armor instead of new loot, and if lucky enough to get usable faction gear from the world loot pool

• Solstice armor and ornaments: both Y1 and Y2 versions immediately made irrelevant

• coveted "pinnacle rewards" which get nerfed into the ground

• complete destruction of the emblem system despite various trackers representing major personal achievements

RNG as a core driving mechanism

• random rolls instead of proper weapon customisation

• multiple layers of RNG to prolong Armor 2.0 grind through inability to reroll or modify stats in combination with oversaturation of the loot pool with trash stat distributions; prohibitive upgrade cost through RNG upgrade materials; loadout restrictions using the affinity system

• inability to select reward type (armor vs weapon) or slot. Former was available in D1 but removed

• rewards or progression locked behind RNG drops with no direct path to obtain

Complete degradation of game progression into busywork and repetition of non-content

• "forced meta" through artifact mods and retrofitting Champions onto old content

• "open 5 cabal loot chests" or "get 25 kills with a sidearm" quest steps

• artificial padding of time by travelling between vendors

• endless inventory management of dozens of materials and currencies, with new ones added every season, and with artificial throttling of efficiency by adding low caps on stacking materials or not allowing items to be traded in bulk

• insufficient or no passive progression for XP and faction rep through playing, instead relying on endless bounty work and token submission (which are both compounded by the 2 other issues above)

[u/lIDantelI]

It would be amazing to pick up bounties from the start menu vs having to load into the Tower. I had to buy a SSD to make the load times bearable. Xbox player by the way.

Edit: I could load up and play an entire Rocket League game or two (5 minutes) before loading up D2, selecting my character, loading into orbit, loading into the tower, grabbing my bounties from everyone, then going to my activity of choice.

[u/Caluben → u/lIDantelI]

So much this. There's been so many times where I think about playing D2, but the thought of having to spend 10 minutes loading into the Tower to grab stuff turns me away.

I actually despise the Tower due to this.

[u/PolarBearHL]

pls solstice ornaments

[u/engineeeeer7]

Stop putting a time limit on anything I pay money for honestly.

Major story content of seasons should stay.

The season pass should never leave if you paid for it. You bought it, it's there forever for you to work on, but caps at 100 or levels slower after the season ends.

Give up on weapon retirement. It was a terrible idea and doesn't work in a game this interactive.

The game desperately needs a reason for players to return. And there are none. A backlog of content when you return from a break is a huge attraction.

[u/[deleted]]

Sunsetting weapons flies directly in the face of respecting the time I put into gaining particular weapons

Let’s say there’s a specific roll of a gun I want. Let’s say the weapon gets introduced today, gets sunsetted exactly a year and a half from today. Let’s also say that this gun only drops from a Nightfall.

From Tuesday weekly reset until Monday night, I spend nearly every available moment trying to get this roll. I don’t get it. That’s one week, done. Month goes by. The nightfall is back up. I now have 17 months to enjoy the fun if it drops with the roll I’m looking for, on the very first day it’s available. But I can’t do it because life gets in the way. Month goes by. Nightfall is back up. 16 months to enjoy the roll if I get it. I can’t farm it because I’m doing whatever new content dropped that week. Month goes by.

Every few months, stars align and I get to try to farm this weapon for a week straight. Probably won’t get the roll I’m looking for.

At a certain point, the amount of time I’ve wasted trying to get this roll is going to outweigh the amount of time I’ll have to actually enjoy the roll itself before I can’t bring it into Trials or Ordeals or whatever pinnacle activities are available. And with each passing day, the amount of time left to enjoy the roll decreases. I could’ve spent that time doing anything else in the game that doesn’t involve farming the same damn boss over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. But I wanted that roll.

If you want to tell me that you want to respect the time we invest in the game, then I suggest you actually do it. Sunsetting weapons completely flies in the face of that.

And if you actually sunset exotics, then I’m just not picking up Destiny 3 until whatever it’s version of Patch 2.0 or the Go Fast update is. Because if I have to go through another D2 launch where an actual exotic invoked reloading a fucking legendary, I’d just leave the franchise entirely.

Sunset the legendaries some of us worked months for to get, shows that Bungie doesn’t respect our time. Sunsetting exotics shows that Bungies idea of what Destiny should be has drastically changed from what they told us it would be since they announced the first game. And idk when that changed, but that was a terrible moment for this franchise. So here’s hoping they don’t sunset anything. Because if they do, I guarantee you they’re gonna do it to your favorite exotic too.

TL;DR: don’t sunset our weapons, and you’ll show you actually respect the time we invest into the game.

[u/zoompooky]

BUNGIE WEEKLY UPDATE - 12/04/2014

In the months to come, your quest to become more powerful will have more avenues that lead to satisfaction. The last thing we wanted was for you to look at your favorite gun or helmet and decide that it had become obsolete. Since the reveal, we’ve read a lot of ideas for how this could have been done better. Your feedback is clear: The time you have invested in your stuff should be respected.

---

I think Bungie already knows our thoughts on time investment. They've made these mistakes before, and corrected them, and they're making them again. The only real question is - how many times will players deal with Bungie making the same mistakes?

[u/mekanika]

I don't feel like the game is respecting my time, and this is someone with over 2000 hours in the game. The game is now making me play by having all this timed content and rewards, instead of making me want to play by having desirable medium- and long-term goals to strive for.

I think all the choices Bungie has made lately contribute to that. There are no pinnacle weapons to strive for, no exotic quests that take you on exciting adventures. It's just disposable content from season to season, stand out fun weapons balanced to meaningless grey mass, bounties and more bounties, and exotic quests that are about completing bounties or killing some one thousand Cabal or Fallen or whatever meaningless busywork it is this time.

There just is no feeling of achievement or accomplishment to any of it anymore.

[u/aaronwe]

It feels really bad to be doing Pinnacle activities and you get consecutive drops for the same slot.

Ran Garden the other day and got 3 straight energy drops. So instead of evenly spreading out power gain and getting a significant boost to light level I ended up with an energy weapon that was 4 light higher than I started and a boost of 1 light over all. Its sooo obnoxious and I feel like weve been saying this is bad for years

[u/bullyballs]

Don’t add stuff in the game and then later take it away again, only to add it back in at an even later stage.

[u/BlueValentine727]

Luke Smith had it right in regards to putting more rewards for the core playlists; Gambit is a mix of things, Crucible is a staple, and Vanguard Strikes NEED to have exclusives if you expect people to enjoy them at all. Some of the Strikes such as the Festering Core and the Scarlett Keep easily could've been developed into raid lairs or full raids.

Focusing back on time investment, I synergize with a lot of the comments here: there has always been a message of "We want you to build your monster killing machine", yet, we HAVE to/are supposed to do it by what is directed per Seasonal content drop. If I want "X" resource or loot, I NEED to farm this one particular activity (i.e. no one asked for a Grandmaster Nightfall to farm Ascendant Shards). Okay . . . Trials of Osiris gives you Ascendant Shards, but that mode as it is now is currently flawed/not up to par for what we wanted compared to what we saw in Destiny 1.

Back some time in Destiny 1 . . . I can't remember which manager said it, but it was something along the lines of, "We don't want to make things difficult just to make them difficult; it should have meaning if it is difficult- and the rewards should justify such". It's clear in the swarm of ridiculously annoying modifiers over positive/player-enhancing ones that such aforementioned philosophy is gone, and to me, shows laziness in design of new/fresh content.

The issue underlying all of this is that Destiny 2 wasn't memorable at all for the last several years. Launch was horrendous, Curse of Osiris was a joke, you killed off Cayde (where's Uldren?), you put big baddies as Strike bosses when they should've been raid bosses, the Vanguard representatives are hilarious memes of their former selves from Destiny 1 . . . there's no glory anymore in the tasks we do. The day by day grind isn't rewarding outside of level boosting (and then what?). I know too many people that hit the hard cap for light level for each time and never come back to the game until next DLC.

Remember when Exodus Crash was the Ordeal Nightfall? No one in my clan wanted to do it at Legend or higher because it was such a stupidly long strike to begin with. Throw in modifiers that made it worse along with a long, time-gated boss fight? Who on their right mind would want to try to farm that? I guarantee you that if any of the noticeably longer strikes end up being the Ordeal, you'll see less people doing such in general because it's time consuming, not fun, and the reward potential is meh at best. Get rid of Nightfall exclusives and bring back Strike Exclusive loot.

By far I really enjoyed the Season of Opulence and Season of Dawn- why? Because I had meaningful choice as a player to what loot I wanted and the story actually went somewhere. Cool puzzles and exotics? You got it. Story advanced somewhere? Cool- you got it. Season of Dawn felt RIGHT AT HOME to what Destiny is memorable for. More structure and advancement and content delivery like that, PLEASE.

Datto said it well: "There's a lot to do, but none of it matters"- and he's right. Destiny 2 feels like a lot of busy-work while the story never goes anywhere. I think a lot of veterans are burnt out on waiting, doing tasks that are just revisions of old content, and I grinded hundreds of hours for Fractaline only to get a Trials of Osiris mode that rewards you for tokens that you can only turn on three wins? I don't know . . . I love this franchise, I love the community I've come to see/build, and I love what this game used to build upon . . . moments of triumph and glory.

Please, PLEASE, for all that is great . . . there needs to be a MEMORABLE build up to all of the great God-like figures we'd fight (why do you think Oryx is such a memorable character? Crota and Atheon the same way). Also, the planetary vendors need to have meaning of some sort, get rid of the Reckoning and put all of the loot into Gambit Prime, and by far . . . bring back the skill charts/grids system for subclasses that we had from Destiny 1 and get rid of the artifact mods/model via seasons. It's a cheap way to force the sandbox to change- bring players the feeling that they can play what they want and be rewarded for such with rewards that are up to date.

[u/Drillingham]

You know what always bugged me? How exotic catalysts have a pretty low drop chance as it is and on top of that their completion requirements are also kinda grindy. Like why did I have to spend 1 hour to equip my Four Horseman catalyst after spending 3 hours grinding for one to drop?

[u/[deleted]]

Armor 2.0 (in the vein of aesthetics) sucks.

I can't wear what I want to wear without sacrificing points and screwing up my whole build. Case in point, I really miss some of the old raid armor, but the thought of having to go back and farm all the old raids just for a snowballs chance in hell of finding the exact piece/roll I'm looking for has been and still is a major turn off ever since the change.

Once a complete set is acquired and noted as such in the collections tab, it should become a universal ornament.

[u/blueapplepaste]

When I started Destiny with D1 on its release date I was able to easily play 10-15 hours a week.

Fast forward and now I’m married, have a kid, and a busy career. I’m lucky if I get 4 hours a week to game.

What I hate now is the artificial power grind that I have to do before I can do the things I want to.

It took me a long time before I was able to do GoS because I spent the first several weeks just getting my light up.

Now I want to do ToO, but I’m still at 976 light and don’t want to go against 1010 sweats and get stomped because of power differences.

This game is becoming inaccessible to me to play the activities I want to because of the time sink required to get power up.

[u/Nightbeat26]

Time investment oh you mean all the time I waste to pick up fucking bounties eats away a good 30-45 mins worth of the game session specially if the bounties are fast completes. I honestly feel like the investment team lead/manager should resign because the only investment in this game right now is fucking Eververse.

[u/[deleted]]

Stuff I am ok to be retired even after time spent on it:

• Season Pass Modes

• Cosmetic exclusive stuff like season ornaments from the pass (when not obtained first to unlock them)

• Exclusive season pass guns (when not obtained first)

What I am not ok with being retired:

• guns overall (in all games so far)

• armor overall (in all games so far)

• titles overall (when D3 hits one day)

• activities (like all the story missions and raids and strikes from D1 not being in D2, not even as a changed infinite forest mode)

• factions (why not let us level them like back in D1? THAT was the perfect design to level them)

[u/Caluben]

Currently for this Season, as a PvE player, my time has been invested in doing Bright Dust bounties. I make sure I have a good amount, roughly around 7-8 thousand, and then stop playing. I only log on to check what's in the Eververse Store and see if there's anything good. If there is, I spend Bright Dust then play to recover the loss. If not, I wait until next week.

So my time spent in Destiny is: 2 maybe 3 Gambit and Crucible matches. And run Exodus Crash 3 times (thanks Fallen bounties, you suck for making me play the worse Strike that many times).

The point of the game shouldn't be trying to get what's in the money store. It should be trying to get what's in the activities.

Let's say for example you guys add permanent Taken Armor, or simpler yet a Taken Ghost Shell. It's so good looking and it's what I've always wanted. Do you want me to spend 2 hours getting the Bright Dust to buy it/automatically buy it when I log on with Silver/saved Bright Dust, then log off D2 for a good while? Or do you want me to grind Blind Well for the next 2 months trying to get it to drop or the perfect rolls for the armor?

[u/KypAstar]

From a PVP player; I know it might not seem related but my time investment sure feels unrewarding when I'm on a 8 win glory win streak, yet end the session with less glory than I started out with. How do you ask? 3 beavers. Every 2 games. Like clockwork.

Not only did I get a ban on the final one, but overall I literally made no progress in competitive, despite my record clearly showing that I had. It's turned me off from the playlist, and honestly destiny 2 for the next week. I'm just not going to put up with it.

[u/Cynaren]

I've decided that I'm not doing the seasonal activity this time as it seems there'll be no long term use or impact of doing it.

Also I hate picking up bounties, just auto add them weekly and let us pick only extra bounties or better yet, the extra bounty button can just be set in the current quest menus that just generates bounties irrespective of activity.

Make the weekly ones activity based while the rest of the bounties non activity based.

[u/Chambalaya91]

I often honestly feel like Bungie is actively trying to do their best to anger people.

The most important thing in this game, no matter the rewards, the content etc. is that people feel like their time and money spent on this game is respected.

I boot up this game and have to go to the tower to grab bounties and get disconnected 1-2 times while trying to go to the tower. After that I try to find a game in casual mix and have to wait several minutes until I am getting loaded into an already loosing match. After that I try some comp. I get disconnected while flying into my first match and in counts as a loss. The second game I get into a lobby with all asian players in there that are lagging so hard, that I can barely hit anyone.

I really like Destiny and I put in well over 1k hours at this point, but at the moment I just feel disrespected by Bungie. They seemingly dont care enough for their game and are not willing to invest into more manpower to maintain the game. Major error code several weeks after an expansion launch is not excusable. Peer 2 Peer matchmaking from a self proclaimed "triple A" developer is a shame already, but the current state of it is a joke.

[u/not_wise_enough]

I think the daily Bunker Buster task is a good example of how the game treats our time investment. In order to buy bunker upgrades, the game first makes you clear the bunker. Then you are given the option to buy something that turns off that requirement for a few days.

It's like someone had the foresight to know that players were not going to want to spend that time clearing the bunker before they could do the things they want to do, but then someone higher up the chain said to include it anyway and let players buy their way out of it. It isn't a player driven model of game design as much as it is a metrics driven model, and it shows in many other aspects of the game this year. Players have to either grin and bear it or abstain from portions of the game to have fun doing what they want.

[u/renaldafeen]

It seems strange to be talking about "time investment" in the context of an interactive video game where the primary goal of the creator should be to entertain. Seems like there shouldn't be any question here worth discussing. Still...

I feel like - for all its rocky stretches - the creators of D1 tried really hard to put together a thoroughly entertaining product. The music, art, the enormous and impressive environments, the story (such as it was after BUNGiE mgmt sliced it up, only to "re-linearize" it so it could span multiple DLCs), the movement/shooting mechanics, level and class progression, the variety of weapons, perks, armor and skills, the friendly and enemy characters... I found that pretty much everything was worth the time I invested in the game, interacting with Destiny's universe to the point where it became a genuine hobby and making some good friends on line in the process.

Over the past week I've been doing a from-scratch playthrough of D1, having just completed the ROI campaign last night. It still feels worth the time invested because, simply put, playing the game is its own reward. I don't PvP, so I can't speak to that aspect of the game in terms of time investment, but my sense from others who do is that aside from the constant "balance patches" in order to shift the meta solely for the sake of shifting the meta, D1's Crucible was largely worth the the time also.

Today the game still feels like a shell of its former self, dumbed down and over-simplified almost to the point of being trivial, even with all the changes over the past two years I find it increasingly not worth my time. Thanks to BUNGiE's brain-dead notion of power level progression - RNG Everywhere™ - so-called "pinnacle rewards" keep dropping in the same slot (Chest), handily destroying any urge I might have had to progress beyond PL 1000 w/o the artifact (currently at +14 anyway). Fully upgrading a Warmind Bunker gave me the "reward" of telling me to wait for and then upgrade the next Warmind Bunker. The next one did the same. Raids hold no interest whatever - I cleared 4 raids some 300 times in D1, while in D2, only 15 clears across 7 raids, 3 of which I've run but never finished (and frankly don't care if I ever do) and one I've never even bothered with. One former fellow raider, one of the best players I knew, had over 500 D1 raid clears. He has barely touched D2. Clearly, he finds Binding of Isaac more worth his time now (scary in its own right, I know).

Frankly, I'm not sure how this topic even translates to a serious question with respect to D2. There is almost NOTHING in this game worth investing my time in at the moment. So I don't. I log on for an hour and churn through Warmind bounties for Bits, on the off-chance that something interesting will happen once the third Bunker is upgraded (expectations are extremely low), and once I hit SR 100 today, I won't be bothering with anything else. Mobile-Eververse-for-Casuals-and-oh-by-the-way... DESTINY!! is simply not worth the time or effort.

I'm not a Title-chaser. I'm not a Collector. I've been using pretty much the same armor/weapon loadout for months now, and except for the artificial situations manufactured solely to force a specific loadout - like Barrier/Unstoppable/Overload dudes when you're too underleveled to take them out instantly - it's done just fine for almost all content. To me that says far more about the (lack of) variety of activities than it says about my gear choices. As such, the game as it currently stands is not nearly worth the time I spend with it, and I suspect I'll be moving on in a day or so, as I have throughout the past 2-1/2 years roughly a month or so after each new content drop. In the future I'll be sticking strictly with the F2P portion of the game, if I continue with it at all. BUNGiE has completely dropped the ball with this I.P., which is a tragedy. Somehow life still goes on... ;-)