For someone that played the game for 80 hours the first week, sure. I played A LOT the first week and never got to the point where I was farming named enemies. That was a small subset of players that got to that point when they were still dropping 15-30 pC per named.
I'm mostly just saying that if they focus the Incursion's difficulty by inflating enemy health to combat a faster than expected gearing by the hard core crowd it won't be fun. Destiny had a major problem with this with Gjallahorn and they stupidly designed encounters around expecting people to have it despite it being a very rare drop that only hard core players had unless you got lucky. Same thing happened in Destiny as with the pC in The Division. Destiny had the Gjallahorn for sale week 2 and nobody had enough strange coins for it besides the people that had 100s of hours in the game already. The strong got stronger, the Gjallahorn (high pc drop rate) was never for sale again and they started designing the expansions around those strong players. It was actually toxic for the community, so many bad Destiny players because they relied on the Gjallahorn to do everything for them. I see it in The Division CM already, PUGs where people aren't even using cover, strafing around like its a FPS because they are so over geared.
Massive's hands are tied. If they make the incursion just a longer mission like they have now the hard core will steam roll it and complain. If they buff all the enemies to match the hard core then they are alienating the casual crowd and we will see a massive surge in people complaining about PC/DT drop rates, etc. They really need to make it skill based and take the primary stats out of the equation. Or take the D3 rout and make Rift like events (hopefully this is what survival mode is).
Just airing some concerns. Diablo 3 and Destiny (games I poured hundreds of hours into) have a lot in common with the arc that The Division is taking and I hope The Division doesn't falter in the same ways vanilla D3/Destiny did as well.
Very well put sir, kudos!
To the bolded part -- Massive really is in a sticky position that could make or break this game & im really, REALLY hoping they succeed with their decisions.
By the time I (seriously) played Destiny, TTK had been out for 3 or 4 months, so I was late to the party to say the least. I've had The Division since launch, so I consider this my first major endeavor with the shooter/MMO/loot based hybrid game & I can't get enough of it.
I would consider myself right in the middle of casual & the 1%. I'm not geared to the teeth just yet, but I've spent my fair share of time farming bosses to buy blueprints I otherwise wouldn't be able to obtain (so quickly). That said, IMO, I think future content should be geared towards the majority, not the minority.
My thinking on the subject is if you make it accessible (or at least doable with enough trial/error) to the masses, theoretically you should have a lager community for a longer amount of time -- rather than catering to the dedicated minority which will result in a smaller community for the game.
On the reverse side of that, history shows that the masses get bored quickly & will move onto the next big thing, while the 1% will continue to play the game for years to come.
Who do you make happy?! Like you said -- they have their hands tied. I wish them luck, I really want this game to have a bright future.
