Kotaku: Destiny's new exotic system is a total mess.

B

BY2K

Membero Americo
http://kotaku.com/destinys-new-exot...m_source=Kotaku_Twitter&utm_medium=Socialflow

To use this [Exotic Upgrade] system, you need to take your old exotics to Xur, the vendor that appears in the Tower from Friday-Sunday morning. At Xur, you can swap one of your old exotics for a new and improved item with the same name and features but different base values—new exotic weapons will now go up to 331 attack; new armor will now go up to 36 light. You can only do this swapping at Xur, and you can only swap the items that he has available on any given weekend.

This introduces a number of problems.

Problem 1 - Since Xur's inventory of Exotic upgrades rotates every week, you're stuck waiting for him to have the specific items you need on any given Friday—and if you can't play Destiny on the one weekend he has your upgrade, you're shit out of luck. It's a slot machine. There is no way to alleviate this problem short of getting lucky or just tracking down another new exotic, which really just means MORE GRINDING.

Problem 2 - Buffing up your old exotics requires a ridiculous amount of glimmer—over 7,000 per item—suddenly turning it from a currency that was almost useless to a valuable commodity. What does that mean? MORE GRINDING.

Problem 3 - This is the worst one: when you swap an old exotic to a new one, it resets the whole item's progress. You lose all of your boosts and upgrades. You'll have to grind for experience, get a bunch of glimmer to make up for the 7,000+ you just spent, and upgrade the whole damn thing again. It doesn't matter how much time and energy you put into your old exotics. In other words—wait for it—it's time for MORE GRINDING.
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As someone who didn't spend a whole lot of time on Destiny (I'm still only Level 26 with one exotic), it seems I'm the one getting the best deal out of this, as people who already did all this grinding will just have to do it all over again.
 
G

Gunslinger

Member
That whole game is a mess. Horrible Hub game. Yes its a hub game and not a MMO. Can't call it a MMO when most essential MMO features (chat, trade, auction house, crafting system, Seamless world) are missing. heck even swtor with a similar budget as destiny did a better job on creating a MMO,
 
C

Cake Boss

Banned
I traded the game in after I grinded to get note of lights to purchase a 2nd exotic item only to realize that I can't equip 2 exotic armors at the same time.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
Good lord that sounds horrific. I'm astounded that I ragequit before even finding like half of the problems in this game. Borderlands 2 already has a bit too much RNG grinding. Seems Destiny decided that wasn't remotely enough grinding.

Menome said:
The gameplay. For all its faults, there's a damn solid base game underneath.
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The actual part where your gun shoots bullets was okay, not so much the part where there are supposed to be enjoyable well designed situations in which to shoot those bullets, which is by far the more important part.
 
G

-griffy-

Banned
The entire design of Destiny is so transparently built around artificially lengthening playtime, and everything in the expansion only reinforces that.
 
T

tbm24

Member
The 2nd complaint is odd to me. Getting glimmer isn't hard and is a byproduct of everything else you do. They even say it was useless(it wasn't) and now they are upset it has a more specific use than it already did?
 
W

w00zey

Member
but but but :( I can't stop playing...doing the weekly heroic strike last night coop was a lot of fun. For all its faults I still find a lot of enjoyment in the moment to moment playing.

It shouldn't cost you 7k glimmer to exchange. I don't care about the shard to exchange but the 7k on top is kinda shitty, even though it is easy to accumulate.
 
M

Moofers

Member
I'm level 15 and not motivated to play much more of this. Its actually been pretty fun, but knowing that once I hit 20 there's a brick wall in front of me has really demotivated me. I'm strongly considering selling it. I just don't like the VS enough to grind out games for new gear and I know I'll get sick of playing the same missions over and over.

Its really devalued quickly. Last I checked GameStop is only giving like $18 for it. Some stores are selling it for $30-$40 which takes the used market down considerably. I'm tempted to keep it just to get to level 20 but I worry that by the time I do it'll be worth about $5.
 
K

Kade

Member
-griffy- said:
The entire design of Destiny is so transparently built around artificially lengthening playtime, and everything in the expansion only reinforces that.
Click to expand...

It's pretty rough. I've played free mobile games more generous and respectful of my time than Destiny. My friends don't play anymore and don't care about the DLC despite all owning it so I have no reason to continue anymore.
 
G

-griffy-

Banned
w00zey said:
but but but :( I can't stop playing...doing the weekly heroic strike last night coop was a lot of fun. For all its faults I still find a lot of enjoyment in the moment to moment playing.

It shouldn't cost you 7k glimmer to exchange. I don't care about the shard to exchange but the 7k on top is kinda shitty, even though it is easy to accumulate.
Click to expand...

It's a silly problem when your cap is only 25,000 glimmer. It just means you can only have enough resources on hand to upgrade three items before grinding/farming the same content again.
 
H

Hero of Canton

Member
It's been quite clearly designed to encourage more grinding because there isn't enough content to maintain interest otherwise - even with the DLC, though in practice that adds very little. If you could get new Exotics and reach Lv.32 easily then people would just stop playing and obviously Bungie and Activision wants people to stick with it. So it tries to push the patience of its playerbase as far as it possibly can.

Most people I know who are still playing are doing so grudgingly. They know it's a grind, they know there's not enough to the game, but the gunplay and the loot loop has them hooked. For now I'm glad I'm off the treadmill and can focus on other games for a bit.

Tl;dr - Bungie knows exactly what it's doing. It might not be to everyone's taste, but it's not an accident nor 'bad' design from either the publisher or the developer's standpoint.
 
V

VoltySquirrel

Member
tbm24 said:
The 2nd complaint is odd to me. Getting glimmer isn't hard and is a byproduct of everything else you do. They even say it was useless(it wasn't) and now they are upset it has a more specific use than it already did?
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Here's the problem with making it worth something now:
A) You don't really get that much glimmer from doing any given event. At best you might get 10k glimmer if you do everything you can daily/weekly wise in a week. (Going based off memory. Stopped playing a few weeks ago.)
B) Even if you have a stockpile now, that will run out with all the Exotic upgrading. After that point, you now have to go week by week.
 
I

Insaniac

Member
Menome said:
The gameplay. For all its faults, there's a damn solid base game underneath.
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And then they go ahead and make the gunplay worthless by having bullet-sponge bosses that essentially force you to find the best way to cheese them, rather than have an engaging and interesting boss battle.
 
G

-griffy-

Banned
You know what, it's not an expansion. I shouldn't have called it that in my post. Warlords of Draenor is an expansion. Dragonborn is an expansion. The Dark Below is DLC.
 
L

Live Free or Die

Banned
How about in the next patch Bungie just puts everyone to max level with the best weapon and armor? Hows that? People more and more want to be handed things in games and not work for them.
 
H

Hero_of_the_Day

Member
You can only trade in what he has that week? Aren't there exotics that he'll never have? So those are officially useless now?

Also, the article mentions that the new armor has more light, is that it, though? Surely there are stat boosts to go with that, right?

SteveWinwood said:
is there no like person to person trading?
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Nope. Which is pretty shitty since you can get items that aren't for your class.
 
A

Altima

Member
I don't know why they want me to grind that much.

All I want to do are raid, weekly and nightfall. Sometimes I want to hang out in mission and explore mode a bit but most of time I do not want to do it.
 
B

boon

Member
7,000 glimmer is not a ridiculous amount. Playing the game is not much of a grind if you enjoy it. Just saying.
 
D

Dunlop

Member
roblem 1 - Since Xur's inventory of Exotic upgrades rotates every week, you're stuck waiting for him to have the specific items you need on any given Friday—and if you can't play Destiny on the one weekend he has your upgrade, you're shit out of luck.
Click to expand...

I had no idea about this point..holy shit
 
H

hastethedav

Member
It's a shame how badly this game was stripped and designed overall because the shooting felt great as well as the rest of the gameplay.

Part of me misses playing it but then I realize that I can't keep doing the same thing over and over in that "world" they built.

Hope destiny 2 fixes stuff and stops trying to rob consumers blind
 
T

tbm24

Member
VoltySquirrel said:
Here's the problem with making it worth something now:
A) You don't really get that much glimmer from doing any given event. At best you might get 10k glimmer if you do everything you can daily/weekly wise in a week. (Going based off memory. Stopped playing a few weeks ago.)
B) Even if you have a stockpile now, that will run out with all the Exotic upgrading. After that point, you now have to go week by week.
Click to expand...

There are multiple ways to accumulate glimmer besides rewards for events. That and the game is very generous in dropping the various items that give bonus glimmer depending on the enemy type. I only see this as unfortunate for someone who was planning on upgrading all their exotics all at once.
 
C

CookedChocobo

Member
yeah, I started to upgrade all my exotics then stopped because you eventually need a break from that shit (especially if you have more than one 20+ character). I'm fucking sick of the repetitive grinding already.
 
M

Mass Effect

Member
boon said:
7,000 glimmer is not a ridiculous amount. Playing the game is not much of a grind if you enjoy it. Just saying.
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It isn't. The problem is that the cap is stupidly low. Only 25,000 shared across 3 different characters? Ridiculous.

And the grind killed my enjoyment of the game, despite liking it from a gameplay (shooting and powers) perspective. That and the repetitive missions.
 
C

ChoklitCow

Member
Real Hero said:
How does this game exist? Especially from bungie, everything about it is strange.
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I'd say its similar to games like Diablo 3 and PoE it is the grind addiction that keeps people entertained. People enjoy this game. People are adamantly addicted to this game. Good for them!

For me though, the issue isn't the three criticisms mentioned in the Kotaku article. It is the overwhelmingly small amount of content the game has. If there was something else to actually do in the game, the grinding for weapons wouldn't be too bad. It would be like any other MMO.

Problem with Destiny is that there isn't much to take your mind off the fact that you are grinding. Even grinding requires grinding.
 
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