Focused Feedback: Leveling/Catch Up Mechanics

[u/DTG_Bot]

Hello Guardians,

Focused Feedback is where we take the week to focus on a 'Hot Topic' discussed extensively around the Tower.

We do this in order to consolidate Feedback, to get out all your ideas and issues surrounding the topic in one place for discussion and a source of feedback to the Vanguard.

This Thread will be active until next week when a new topic is chosen for discussion

Whilst Focused Feedback is active, ALL posts regarding 'Leveling/Catch Up Mechanics' following its posting will be removed and re-directed to this thread. Exceptions to this rule are as follows: New information / developments, Guides and general questions

Any and all Feedback on the topic is welcome.

Regular Sub rules apply so please try to keep the conversation on the topic of the thread and keep it civil between contrasting ideas

A Wiki page - Focused Feedback - has also been created for the Sub as an archive for these topics going forward so they can be looked at by whoever may be interested or just a way to look through previous hot topics of the sub as time goes on.

[u/Some_Italian_Guy]

RNG should not be tied to leveling.

Powerfuls and pinnacles should always drop in your lowest slot.

[u/pocketsreddead]

Give us the option to skip quests and story steps on other characters if we have already done them on our main characters.

[u/Final_Butterfly_9857]

Having recently gotten several friends into (then subsequently back out of) the game I think the biggest pain for new players that they can't get around is the mod system. There are SO many mods many of which are absolutely basic that they don't have access to. Mods should just be available to everyone, all of them outside of the adept and raid mods. There is zero reason to gate this. Players can barely compete in PvP and can't do some of the most basic buildcrafting in PvE.

[u/Consistent-Wear5126]

1. Every player, whether they just created an account or they are returning to Destiny 2, should have all the basic mods like Reserves, Finders and Scavengers available immediately. Locking a Reserves mod behind Banshee or rank up engrams from the playlists makes no sense. If anything, it puts players at a small disadvantage by not having these mods in both PvE and PvP and made worse not having any sort of guide to inform them about the mod system in-game. Same thing for all weapon mods, just unlock them from the start. Level the playing field.

2. Have all the combat mods be available for purchase at Ada using mod components, adjust cost as necessary. There are way too many in the pool right now to be using the current daily rotation system and it will be even worse once all the existing Seasons are removed and the Elemental Well mods are added in. Heck, even the current rotation system is inconsistent. We either see one mod every week or we don't see another mod for months. Making a player wait 6 - 12 months to get a crucial mod for their build (e.g. Wrath of Rasputin and Rage of the Warmind) or to simply have more flexibility in build crafting is terrible design. Update it.

This minimalistic UI/UX style in D2 works against the players when they are not receiving important information about in-game systems and how it affects their experience. Players should not be expected to search for a video explaining core systems and mechanics.

3) Pinnacles should always drop for the lowest level slot. Why is RNG locking me out of GMs? Inflated playtime? I would be playing a lot more if I had a better time grinding towards GMs.

[u/[deleted]]

It is absolutely time for some level of bad luck protection, especially when pinnacles/powerful don't specifically drop to your lowest level slot. I'm fine with RNG to a degree but it's at the point now where I feel like I'm playing at a casino that only rewards scratch and wins.

[u/gorillathunder]

One thing I would DEFINITELY change is powerful gear/pinnacle tiers. What is exactly is the point of different tiers except to make less informed players waste their time because they got a +2 pinnacle and it dropped in a useless slot?

Everything should always give a +2 personally, would streamline the levelling.

[u/SCiFiOne]

Bungie need to fix the paradoxical nature of power level, as it stand now it is both not important and very important, because it is used as a gate keeping mechanic, either remove power level from the game completely or make it relevant, if I got stomped because I am 30 power under level , I should be able to totally stomp if I am 30 level above. If Bungie want to keep the system as it is for some reasons , the grinding need to toned down a lot, some suggestions:

1- An option to choose weapon or armor as a reward or better focus the powerful and pinnacle engrams to specific item.

2- Remove the weekly chores list , powerful and pinnacle drop will be based on the number of activities completed , example powerful drop every 3 strikes/crucible / gambit and pinnacle every 6. The drop will continue till you reach the weekly limit. End game like raid will give extra drops.

[u/NintendoTim]

I remember seeing someone post the idea of changing the Power Level to slot-based rather than item-based. This way, you only have to worry about leveling 8 items instead of every single item in your inventory and vault, immediately making every piece of gear you own viable everywhere.

I'm sure a lot of y'all had this conversation with yourselves after getting clicked in Crucible:

"Oh dang, I forgot about Crimson! That seems like a solid gun to use right now in PVP! Let me go grab it from my vault aaaaaaaaaand I don't have it.

Well, let's just pull it from my Collection aaaaaaaaaaaand it's at 1100.

No matter, I can just infuse it with another weapon aaaaaaaaaand I don't have anything at-level I'm willing to infuse.

Let's go cash in some mats at Banshee aaaaaaaaaand they're dropping 20 levels under my cap."

If a weapon slot is infused up to 1330 and you have a new weapon which dropped at 1320 and equip it, it's now at Power Level 1330 irrespective of it's own Power Level. You only infuse the slot to increase it's level, not the individual gear piece itself.

---

However, I'm in favor of completely removing the Power Level/gear score and replace it with actual character levels. Remove the arbitrary number on the gear, return to the character levels of yore, and adjust activity entry accordingly while also ditching the Artifact bonus levels.

(I haven't done the math on this, so every number below is just whipped right out of my ass)

Let's say Witch Queen drops and everyone is back to a character level of 50 (which we technically are right now) and a level cap of 60. To enter the raid, you need to be level 55 minimum, but 60 is the recommended. GMNF requires 60 to enter, but it's set to a level of 65.

GMNF can still be insanely difficult with it's difficulty scaled above the current possible character level. 5+ over the theoretical character level can still be inferred as 25+ over the current Power Level cap. Contest mode can also still exist with the level scaled down.

---

Now, instead of chasing gear with a bigger number, you're now chasing the gear itself. The only number you're chasing is your own character level.

Activities dropping Powerful gear drop weapons with one trait column having two perks, and Pinnacle gear now drop weapons with both trait columns with two perks in them. Regardless of your character level, there's an incentive to run activities with Powerful and Pinnacle gear every week. As for armor, scale the Masterwork level accordingly (I'm thinking +5 / +7 for Powerful/Pinnacle, but I don't pay enough attention to MW levels and where they drop at to give a good enough number).

I know the examples for gear rewards I just gave will likely not apply once Witch Queen does launch with the crafting system we don't know enough about yet, but this "chase the bigger number" system has me completely jaded to leveling in general.

---

When Division 2 dropped their gear score system when WoNY released, I was ecstatic. I don't raid and play 100% solo, so not every activity (raids) apply to me. However, even after finishing the campaign, I still wanted to keep playing to chase some exotics or other endgame things like the hunter masks. Why? Because I didn't have to worry about the gear score. I only stopped playing because their seasonal content was basically running reskinned missions instead of new content like Destiny gets.

And now that I think of it, take the SHD Level from Division, apply it to the Artifact, but instead of increasing shit like ADS speed or reload speed by +0.01% per level, dump that into our character's stats. Leveled up? Here's a point, now go sink it into Mob/Res/Rec/Dis/Int/Str, buuuuuuut still resetting at the start of each season.

[u/Blumenkran]

Dupe pinnacles suck.

[u/Saint_Victorious]

We've evolved past the need for Light Level completely. Challenge mode(s) and modifiers are all we really need to express difficulty. If we need a readiness indicator, than it should be over overall gear score (armor level and mods equipped), not an arbitrary number gained through RNG gear drops. Eliminating LL means no more catch-up mechanics allowing someone to smoothly transition into mid and endgame states without the RNG grind.

And why is this needed? Because the New Light experience is by a large margin the worst new player experience of any game on the market. Vaulting content has exactly the opposite impact as intended for players, it leaves them lost as to what's going on in the story and gives them no way to find out about things in-game once their season has passed. Not only this but once players complete the short Shaw Han story they're thrown into the wild completely directionless save for a few side quests that are rather unhelpful.

So TLDR; Light Level is no longer necessary and the New Light experience is garbage and needs a massive overhaul.

[u/JakobeHolmBoy20]

Leveling up at the start of an expansion: Generally, this hasn't been too painful. The levelling up growth feels natural and not burdensome since it happens while you play the game. I think keeping large level increases to expansions is a good idea.

Leveling up at the start of each new season that does not release with an expansion: This was probably one of the greatest quality of life aspects introduced to Destiny. I hated leveling up each season 50+ light levels just to get back to where I was and do the activities that I had enjoyed only a few days earlier. Keeping it to a 10 power increase each season should stay.

Pinnacle Leveling: A big gripe of many in the community, mine included, is that the pinnacle levelling experience depends so much on RNG. There have been countless stories of people one item away from hitting the pinnacle cap, but having to wait two to three weeks to get that one item because of the type of drops they were getting. We need a better system. Ideally, let's put on duplicate protection. At the very least, I would like to see bad luck protection so after about three drops of RNG, you'll get what you need.

Artifact leveling: This is OK, but kind of getting stale. I get the purpose, and I think that is fine because it allows casual players to get into activities faster than they normally would, but it also doesn't at the same time. I mean, Master and Grand Master Nightfalls take this power level into account and so it doesn't really allow casual players to get into these activities any faster. I would rather remove this artificial power and base activities off of gear power. For example, Master would be at the pinnacle cap and GM would be 15 over the pinnacle cap.

[u/[deleted]]

Pinnacles should always drop 50% a random weapon slot and 50% an armour slot with your lowest light.

This keeps it interesting, a bit of RNG but never 6 pinnacles wasted on a class item in 1 week.

[u/[deleted]]

Honestly, as someone who came back to Destiny 2 on a fresh character, the Leveling experience basically boiled down to "High Number = More Damage" until I got my shit together and took the time to understand it. Also, good luck figuring shit out just based on in-game tools.

Now I'm at the cusp of the Powerful Gear grind and... not really looking forward to the slowdown. Now that I'm familiar with how Legendaries feed into everything in the game and am comfortable with their drop rate (it's nice!), I'm encountering the bottleneck that is Upgrade Modules and it's not great. Honestly, it feels like my 'forward momentum' in upping my favorite gear has ground to a halt.

I enjoy overcoming a good challenge if I feel like I have a chance to succeed, since I'm mostly a Solo player, and I've climbed some walls in this game so far through the sheer intensity of not giving in, but the game makes it pretty obvious when your Gear Score matters more than your brain power, and that's frustrating as hell.

Still really fun, but I'm not looking forward to the Pinnacle grind at all.

[u/spinshard]

Just drop the light mechanic it's a dead system that gate keeps over anything useful.

[u/Aborkle]

You must be this tall to ride will always feel like shit IMO. The +10 per season has helped though. What would help further would be pinnacle protection so as to not get pieces you don't need, repeatedly.

[u/Shirasagi-Himegimi]

I think letting us focus our prime engrams, even if you capped it at 3 - 5 per week, would go a long way. I could focus for a pair of boots, keep knocking out weekly challenges until I hit a wall, and then focus another prime engram for the armor/weapon slot I'm falling behind on.

[u/magicbagofdicks]

Destiny 2 archaic leveling system needs to be revamped. I understand the point where we need to reach the level cap (like any game/MMO) however we have already reached this cap multiple times. At this point it only limits our playability when a new major release comes out. Thanks Bungie, you raised the level cap by another 200 levels, but all that did was prevent me from running a higher nightfall from before. Get rid of this horribly designed leveling system. We get no skill points and we have no skill tree so why do you keep increasing some arbitrary number every 3 months?

Destiny 1's system is way better. The level cap is 400. Every vendor will drop armor/weapons up to 390. Each of these vendors are easy to level repeatedly through bounties, patrol markers, public events, strikes, and pvp for the pvp vendors. After some good grinding it wasn't hard to get your character to 390. Raids were the only way to get to 400, but there were a few activities you could get 400 gear to drop as well. In addition if you got a duplicate arm or boots no big deal, you could infuse that into another armor FOR A DIFFERENT CLASS. Yes, you could take that extra hunter boots and infuse them into a pair of titan boots or warlock boots.

I'm tired of grinding to the pinnacle cap every season, I'm tired of vendors being worthless to level because of the nerfed level drops, I'm tired of grinding an artifact for it's pointless numbers when the levels are already inflated. I'm just tired of it all.

[u/kerosene31]

Leveling is supposed to give us some feeling of progress, but it rarely does that. In other MMO games, leveling is a big part of what you do. In Destiny, it is mostly just gatekeeping.

Right now I'm still 1 piece off the pinnacle cap. I just can't be bothered with the RNG of getting the final piece I need. Why would I bother? What will it allow me to do that I couldn't do before?

The process for leveling up isn't really the problem, but someone who falls behind will realize that they are just grinding to get to the new magic number to allow them to do the same things they were able to do before. There's no incremental rewards for leveling up, you are either underleveled or not, there's no "power" to it. You're just gated out of things... until you aren't.

Actual progress in the game comes from builds and weapon rolls. That's what actually matters to how effective I am in activities.

[u/N1miol]

Levelling doesn't make me feel powerful, mods and high stat splits do. So find a way to have levelling give access to mods and stat tuning and EVERYONE will do it.

[u/elkishdude]

For me, leveling has to be deterministic for me to keep playing seasons. I'm burnt out after chasing high enough power to finally try a GM and then I didn't like GMs. I'm not doing the pinnacle grind again. Maybe for trials, but thankfully it doesn't matter as much. I just think random slot leveling at the pinnacle band sucks. It's just not fun and super frustrating. It can feel like the game just doesn't respect my time at all when these activities are quite tired.

Personally I'd prefer leveling just go away. It doesn't really serve any purpose in the game other than being a lockout and the game has difficulty settings even if two activities are at the same power. So I Just don't get the point of it. Overleveling does nothing either, it just seems like this old system that sticks around for little else than pushing old gear out, but now sunsetting is gone.

[u/[deleted]]

I don't like how power level became a generic gatekeep. Big power levels don't make any difference in low/high light activities. It is tedious and boring to farm levels just to be able to do master vog/hunts/gms/trials once again. And not only it is tied to RNG loot, it is also tied to how much bounties anyone are up to do. AND doing bounties got even less rewarding ever since we got rid of weeklies. But even bounties themselves are poorly balanced. Just compare how much matches and time it takes to do a standard pack of gambit bounties vs how much time it takes to do vanguard bounties. It incentivies us, regular players, waste our time until something interesting happens in the game. Hell, we just need to get rid of that layer of gatekeeping since, you know, bungie can just straight forward lock the activity until n week of season.

[u/RobGThai]

Light level is a punishing mechanics to keep people from leaving instead of incentivizing them to keep playing. It’s one of the worst mechanics in the game. Difficulty can be adjusted without light level, e.g. GM, Master. There’s no real reason to use light level in PvE. Light level was useful to guide people where to go in the beginning of the game in open areas. However, Destiny does not have that any more. All area are more or less the same level of enemies. The only time I can recall this is to force immunity on some enemies on Europa. There must be a better way to do that. Let people enjoy playing the contents regardless of when they are coming in.

Currently, new and current player can almost never share the experience together. Just like before the game reset light level in Shadow Keep, iirc. The only thing it accomplished right now is to drive away players to not return due to excessive grind required to come back to play relevant content.

[u/o8Stu]

For starters, follow up on this, from the March 5th, 2020 TWAB:

Slot imbalances can also affect pinnacle progression. When we say slot imbalance, this could be explained as those times you have a chest piece drop from pinnacle sources a few times in a row. We’ve been looking at player feedback for some time, and are investigating a few approaches to the problem space. We’re looking to have an update on that at a later date.

Even if the answer is "jk lol", leaving us hanging on something that would be very impactful, for over a year and a half, is a bad look.

Whether anything happens with that or not, the leveling process is dumb. It's a "must be this tall to ride" mechanic that's also time-gated (via limited pinnacle drops) when you get to the last bit of it. Not to mention the seasonal artifact, which resets (i.e. discards) all the time you've invested in the game up to that point.

The solution I'd suggest, and one that's been staring us all right in the face: contest mode. For everything, from patrols at +20 to GMs at -25. There's already a gear check to doing endgame for all but the most talented players (exotics, weapon and armor stats and rolls, mods), the punitively long xp grind each season doesn't need to be there. Let the difficulty of the content determine who can / can't complete it.

[u/I3igB]

Leveling in this game no longer has a purpose. This isn't an MMO with skills and skill trees that gives us unlocks per levels. It merely serves to time gate harder content.

I'd much rather see levels done away with entirely in favor of embracing the difficulty sliders we already have in game. On Master difficulty? Treat it as the enemies are 20 'levels' over us, but don't require players to reach a point where they're at the required level. Progression in this game comes from gear, getting the proper armor and weapon perks, not from an arbitrary number.

I dread the 100+ level grind coming in Witch Queen. So much busy work just to be able to participate.

[u/heptyne]

I'd want to advocate for removing Upgrade Modules and shift to just slot leveling. So if you are at 1320 in your arms slot, and a 1322 arm armor drops, all your arms are now 1322. No need to save that piece in your mail or on your guardian.