I use this same "formula" for most games I purchase as a measure of if they are worth it or not.
I'm scared to look how much I played, but would wager it's cents on the dollar as well. Exceptional value proposition. Right up there with Dark Souls, Skyrim and other shooter.
This is a great perspective and it's nice to see other fixtures here that share it.
It's a simple formula indeed:
(Price of Entry) / (Hours of Enjoyment) = Value in dollars per hour
Destiny has already skyrocketed to pretty elite company in my gaming log, in terms of this value determination. It's why I can find myself agreeing with complaints about repetition in the
lack of variety sense- I am thirsty for more stuff- but not as much as most people in the
so much grind sense. In other words, the complaints are often conflated (so little content/so much grinding), but they're wholly distinct. The way I play, the degree of grind is actually not of particular concern to me... because just about everything you can do in the game is inadvertently "grinding" at something or other, and I'm having fun while doing it. The way some people talk, it's really as though they'd prefer they were
done with Destiny already, as though that'd make the experience markedly better for them. In other words, rather than having a "next goal" in terms of vertical progression, however arbitrary, all the requirements were loosened to the point where they'd, right now, already completely accomplished everything possible and had nothing left to do, at which point they'd presumably stop playing (or, perhaps more likely, just shift their complaints to "there's nothing left for me to do" more rapidly).
This isn't to defend design decisions that evoke the sensation of punishing effort/time invested such as the exotic upgrade scheme, so much as it's a perspective on the nature of grinding altogether. The amount of time I can play a game and still
want to keep playing it- the span of time in which I'm still having fun with the product I paid for- is one of the surest indicators to me of its quality. While there are absolutely other factors, and very short experiences can undoubtedly be fantastic games, by and large these will be priced to match and the formula holds true. How much or how little repetition I'm expected to do to progress actually becomes a little irrelevant; it has far more to do with how consistently I'm able to have fun. And beneath the surface, a
lot of people who play videogames, which are almost universally designed to be replayable in some way, agree with this even if they don't realize it.
This is why, while I can respect an enormous number of complaints and acknowledgement of the game's many flaws, any rant that starts with "I've played for 500 hours and here's why Destiny is broken and Bungie owes me an explanation and needs to change course, and don't tell me that because I've played this many hours I must have enjoyed it" will lose me 100%. It doesn't matter to me how pertinent the complaints that follow will be, it's just conceding the argument up front. They're telling me that they've thrown the "formula" above into the garbage altogether. Screw hours of enjoyment- they kept playing for
some other reason, and a game designer can't factor that into design and expect to come out the other end with something fun to experience.
I hope I expressed that well enough. I personally don't want there to be more grinding, as in and of itself vertical progression does nothing for me. Hopefully that point didn't get mixed up in there.
Without question. As I said, these issues are pretty much indisputable. As I always say, the most amazing thing about Destiny is its potential. Think of all of our main issues - story, some basic gameplay/UI stuff (e.g., more vault space, accepting missions through app, better loot system, more varied locations, better clan/communication system, better matchmaking). These are EASILY fixed in updates/sequels down the road. Destiny 2 should be the game of forever, really.
This is a good outlook. While I wouldn't characterize anything you put here as "gameplay" (they're all pretty textbook quality of life features, except for more varied locations which is purely content), they do represent concretely fixable flaws.
My one concern about the future of the franchise is that its level of success will indicate that a completely revamped story presentation and substantial improvements to narrative quality shouldn't be a primary concern. While critical reception that mocks your plotline is certainly a cause for alarm... money talks louder. Sadly, my hopes for a compelling storyline at any point in the entire span of the Destiny franchise are pretty sunken beneath the waves. But again, I always feel compelled to mention that the narrative in the Halo games really didn't ever strike me as anything special. I could absolutely see it reaching that level with future installments.
