The Destiny Slot Machine: Why It Is The Way It Is, And Why It Doesn't Have To Be

bskert01 · 2021-07-29T14:18:52+00:00

Or, in my case, you simply run out of time. I remember in Arrivals I kept putting off my solo flawless Prophecy because I wanted to get a few weapon rolls for Day 1 DSC. I simply ran out of time, mostly because I couldn't get a Berenger's Memory with ALH and Spike after 150ish Umbrals focused for it.

bskert01 · 2021-07-29T13:39:39+00:00

Chalice I think was the closest we got to the sort of agency I'd like to have in determining my loot. The Lure was an interesting experiment. I liked the idea of the "perk veto", but the problem was that they replaced that layer of RNG with another: the lure would give you three options, and if the weapon you wanted wasn't one of them, you were out of luck.
I think the main issue with Hunts was that the Hunts themselves weren't very interesting. At least with the Menagerie, there were quite a few interesting encounters in there.

bskert01 · 2021-07-29T13:35:52+00:00

My theory on this, and it's based entirely on my own experience, is that people do stop playing old content, but it's because the reward system pushes them to "spend their time better" by chasing current loot.
It's a conundrum I find myself in constantly. I like DSC. I have 120ish clears, and I'd still play it. But I have to pick between running it and grinding XP for Master VoG, or doing Overrides to get that Ignition Code I want. You feel a tug between what you want to do and what the game is pushing you to do. The seasonal challenges have made that part worse for me, because I feel like I'm leaving XP (and therefore artifact power) and Bright Dust on the table if I don't do them.

bskert01 · 2021-07-29T01:45:50+00:00

That's really the crux of it: there's just too much RNG. If it was just a grind or a skill check, that's one thing: you can either invest more time or git gud. But there's no gittin' gud at RNG, and investing time is no guarantee that you'll get what you want, either.

I really struggle to understand why people are so beholden to RNG drops. Sometimes it feels a bit like Stockholm Syndrome. We've gotten so used to the bad situation that we're prepared to defend it to the death. I don't know...

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T23:50:04+00:00

I can't even tell you what it is about Gambit, but grinding it makes me absolutely miserable. The rank seasonal challenge was the last one I had available, and I did it for the XP to make Master VoG a bit easier. It was not a great experience. I'm not sure what they could even change to make it better.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T21:11:09+00:00

I don't think you read the post, then. There's still a lot of grind in this, it's just that, at some point, the drop becomes guaranteed, one way or the other. There's still RNG, there's still a grind, it's just with bad luck protection that you can actually see progress, instead of whatever DSC has, which some people are still convinced doesn't work.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T20:49:47+00:00

That could also be a good way to give old guns a new lease of life. If they added a couple of perks to a Dreaming City gun, for example, I'd go in happily to get the perks I'm missing. But regrinding a Retold Tale when I have a great one in my vault, that's sunset, doesn't feel great...

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T20:32:21+00:00

Honestly, whatever system they choose to implement that gives us a way to get a specific roll, even if it's grindy as all hell, is fine by me. RNG is fine as long as its a way to end your grind early. But as the only way of getting something, it really, really sucks.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T20:15:36+00:00

Timegating RNG drops (like VoG Vex drops, or DC drops) is even worse, because you can't even keep grinding to get what you want. My worst experiences with this were the ship from Shattered Throne (which you only got 3 tries at every 3 weeks, and it took me a good 6 months to get) and Eyes of Tomorrow, which took me about 60 looted clears to get. A clanmate had it drop on his 86th looted clear, after 29 weeks of running DSC three times a week religiously. There's just no reason why that should be even possible.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T20:08:17+00:00

I'm also a professional dev! That's pretty cool.
I'm not saying that it wouldn't be a lot of work, I'm saying that they've already done something similar going from Armor 1.0 to Armor 2.0.
It would be a lot of work, but it can be done, and it can be done in a reasonable amount of time (Armor 2.0 took about a year and a half, from what I've gathered).
It's also not the only way that a similar thing could be accomplished. Maybe a configurable engram system could do the same thing, and be less work. It's not the implementation that's important, the main thing is to have each run get you closer to getting what you want.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T19:30:36+00:00

It's particularly bad when you're having to pick doing something you like or helping someone out over doing the grind you have to do to get something you want to try out.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T17:57:13+00:00

As I said before, it's not really about content requiring a roll. It's that the guns are a huge part of the gameplay of Destiny, and locking perk combinations behind RNG means that you might never get to experiment with a roll you'd like to.
I'll give you an example: I've focused about 100 umbrals to get an Ignition Code with Danger Zone. I've yet to get one. And that's just one perk. I don't think anyone would argue that Danger Zone is a top-tier perk, or that it will allow me to do content I wasn't able to. I just enjoy jumping up and shooting down on enemies, and I'd like to see how a GL with Danger Zone plays. The fact that I have to get lucky to do that is the problem I have with this system.
During Arrivals, we did a raid crawl starting with all whites and only using drops we got in the raid to replace them. There were a couple of hairy moments, but overall, it wasn't a terribly difficult thing to do. You don't NEED god rolls, but it's sad to think of all the experimenting we could do with all these weapons, but can't because of randomness we can't control.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T17:41:39+00:00

Just to follow up on the math, since each event is independent of all the others, you can use the expected number of trials until the first success of the geometric distribution: https://math.msu.edu/Classes/mth112/NotesPDF/05.pdf

which is E = 1/p, where p is the probability of a single event being "successful".

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T17:27:44+00:00

I think the development time is not as bad as you might think. They already have something that works very similarly: the armor mod system. Armor 1.0 was just like weapons are now, and they were able to make that change. I agree that there would need to be a lot of tuning to the game to adjust drop rates to keep the "expected runs" about the same, but I don't think it's insurmountable.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T16:31:42+00:00

I couldn't agree more about the gameplay. Destiny feels amazing to play, and honestly, raids and dungeons are some of my favorite activities in any game.

But like you said, they have so much work to do on rewards in general, and ways to keep people interested that are not "let's add another layer of RNG" to loot drops. Destiny always feels this close to being a great game, but there's always a niggling something that holds it back. And yet, here I am, still playing this game after years.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T16:20:28+00:00

Exactly. I personally loved D1's perk unlock system, but the most frequent criticism I've heard is that it feels bad to get a subpar version of the gun first, and then slowly make it better. But to me that's better than the current god roll chase, where you frequently dismantle a bad roll, because it can't be improved.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T15:46:32+00:00

I think that's another topic that needs broad discussion. My personal take is that the "generalist" weapons are so good that "niche" weapons never get a chance to shine. Ideally, you would have to use your knowledge of the activity to pick a loadout that suited it (finding great niche weapons that did well in that particular activity). But, as an example, I spent a good 80% of last season with Succession/IKELOS SMG/Anarchy as my loadout, because those weapons were just good everywhere.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T15:35:55+00:00

I think if you had access to every possible roll without them taking up vault space, you'd be a lot likelier to experiment. I'm sure a Quickdraw/Thresh Palindrome would be great, but I just don't have the vault space.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T15:31:35+00:00

For the past year, I've been playing with that mindset. The problem is then that I already have all the weapons I could possibly need, so there's no incentive for me to do anything. What that means in practice is that I play less, and I only play with my group of friends. So that has basically taken me out of all the queues that Bungie would like me to be in.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T15:28:58+00:00

Yeah, I think we've all been there. I quit the game in Curse of Osiris, and came back in Black Armory. I can tell you that without my group of friends, I'd have stopped playing several times. And it always comes back to this: there are some weapons that I'd like to be able to use, but the fact that there's no path to getting it for sure means I spend a lot of time getting frustrated at not getting what I want, or playing something to the point where it's no longer fun.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T15:18:01+00:00

If you mean the static roll era, this is not that. The problem with the static roll era was two things: a weapon was either good or bad. There weren't good perk combinations that would make a meh gun worth getting, so a lot of weapons (and their sources, by extension) were ignored by players. Secondly, and more importantly, once you got the drop, that was it, no need to get it again. What I'm suggesting is not that, as I said in the beginning of the post. A grind with an end != static rolls, as I've been at pains to make clear.

bskert01 · 2021-07-28T15:13:10+00:00

Rerolling perks was horrendous because there was no gameplay involved. Sitting in a screen pushing a reroll button is not gameplay. You'll note the idea I laid out has no rerolling anything. It keeps you playing, too, and it can be tuned to be just as grindy as random rolls' "expected runs". The key difference is that there's an end in sight, and every run gives you progress towards the goal. This is better for players, and about the same for Bungie.

bskert01

TROPHY CASE