@ev77: Again, team whipping mechanics are part of the raid concept. If you could bumble your way through the way you can most of the rest of the game, it would't be the very challenging and demanding experience so many people enjoy. If you're taking your time and working through why you failed you can improve your strategy and come out on top. That process and the problem solving that comes with it are only possible because of the harsh penalties. The process and the sense of accomplishment that comes from succeeding are what makes Destiny special.
I feel there is still a very large gap between bumbling your way through and getting artificially wiped after every mistake. For example, take the "dunk the ball" section they did in part 1. Here are some changes that could be made to not be such shit design and still require the execution/communication.
Revive tokens gone. At the very least if you HAVE to force a X number of revives quota you do it globally; not per person.
Instead of instantly wiping the party after X seconds when a projection is spawn; give all the players a debuff that slowly drains their health until they die in the same amount of time.
Instead of the party wiping when both runners die, they just have to get revived and you try again (maybe take this as an opportunity to make the running even the slightest bit fun or challenging). Maybe I am wrong about this, but it seemed like if both runners die it did indeed wipe the group.
And I could go on about little details that could be done to make the whole experience more rewarding and smart but I digress. Regardless, I'm a firm believer in giving players a chance to pull victory from the jaws of defeat if they get their shit together after having a mess up. Not just saying "1 strike and you're out" and wiping the whole party forcing them to try again. If anything, this allows the task to be more challenging as a certain number of screw ups would be allowed and expected so long as the team could pull it all back together again.
@ev77: what you describe as "shit design" are a number of mechanics in line with traditional raid design. From what I understand, WoW 6 man raids are just dungeons+, not raids. If you want that experience in Destiny you can play the Nightfall, which is pretty great.
Now the raid is and should be a totally different thing. It is in WoW and other MMOs. Everyone needs to execute almost flawlessly to succeed. Follow a set of specific "nonsensical" steps while making use of all the tools at your disposal and a lot of team coordination to succeed. This is what raids are. You might not be into raids, which is fine. Doesn't make them shit.
Sure, I'll give you WoW raids then; but I still stand behind it being shit design. As TwoLines mentioned just below, there is nothing fun in illogical trial and error design. It doesn't make you feel smart or rewarding, because you are just throwing shit at the wall watching to see what sticks. Even then little things in the raid are designed poorly. When they get to the pools they get a buff called "Psyonic Protection", yet all it really does it protect you from the dirty water of the bathhouse. Sure, it is super easy to figure out; but it is still bad design. There is no reason they couldn't put some kind of bath/water/etc hint into the name.
I have no problem with requiring high levels of coordination and execution to complete a task. Where I diverge from destiny's designers is in their insistence of having everything be black-or-white. Either you flawlessly execute everything and pass; or you fail, the whole party wipes, and you try again from the start. That is just lazy design to artificially extend the length and difficulty of your tasks.
@neonbear: I've done this raid four times now, the last of which was completed in just over an hour. This is a bad raid. It's perfectly acceptable to love Destiny and dislike this raid. The vast majority of people claiming this is a "good" raid are doing so because they've completed it and want to feel good about their accomplishment. Some raid designer at Destiny got lost up his own ass turning this raid into a joyless team-building communication exercise, and I'm elated to see it trashed on a highly visible stream in the hopes that Bungie will get the hint and stop trying to arbitrarily increase raid complexity with each release. This is absolutely not how you create an endgame activity that is welcoming and accessible to new, casual players, and the results of those poor design choices are exactly the responses we're seeing here.
I personally don't think ''creating an endgame activity that is welcoming and accessible to new, casual players'' should be anywhere near the top of the list of priorities when designing a raid. Let's face it, 95% of the PvE content in Destiny was designed specifically for more casual players. Story missions, strikes, patrols, public events, side missions, quests, this new faction event, they're all incredibly easy and can be completed by anyone. You can hit max level in a few weeks without touching the raid or Nightfall.
Now for people looking for a bit more meat out of their loot shooter experience, this raid is the best out of the 5 Destiny raids. It is towering above the shitshow that was King's Fall. It's still the kind of content that you can't find in any other game out there and I hope Bungie doesn't compromise on any of it in the future.
If you or anyone finds this thing too demanding there is still 95% of the game you can play without worrying about communication or any of that stuff. But raids like this and the new Nightfall, to a lesser extent, are what make Destiny special for a lot of people, myself included.
After watching part 1 (will probably watch part 2 over the course of next week) all I could see was really shitty design. It isn't even about being "welcoming" or "accessible", but it was just shitty design that followed no logic and had very, very poor feedback. Bungie's basic design of making things "hard" is just "do something exactly perfect or you all die, wipe, and have to try it all over again" is a bullshit system. Putting in "revive tokens" is a bullshit way to once again force wipes to arbitrarily make it harder. Having you run the same loop 3 times before slightly changing it up a 4th time and making any small mistake force a wipe and reset (kudos for whoever talked the small amount of sanity into it not being a wipe because 1 person failed to get the ball dunked) is bad design.
I could go on and on, but the basic point is that Bungie's design is shit. As someone who did a whole lot of the smaller party raids in WoW (the 6ish party raids) blind with a group of friends this looks tedious and bullshit. Good design lets players turn things around, good design hints and provides subtle feedback on what to do/not do, good design encourages players to stick it out, good design this raid is not.
So just to get it out of the way first, I also don't understand the jump from matchmaking to all this Silicon Valley, Uber/Facebook political nonsense (which isn't to say I disagree with with your hinted-at view points, just that I don't think they were necessary in fleshing out the OP).
Matchmaking in Overwatch (especially the ranked MM) is something that has really turned me off from the game. It's just one of the most poorly done systems I've had the displeasure of being forced to use in quite some time. They just make so many poor assumptions, draw so many bone-headed lines in the sand, and it just reeks of a team that has no clue what they are doing. Which is surprising coming from a company that has had MM in their pedigree for quite some time (with SC, WoW, HoTS, HS, etc) where you would think they would have learned some lessons and applied them here. For instance:
1) Having a difference of just 1 point, 1 point in team average ELO makes one team an "underdog". That is just insanse IMO; I mean the balls on the devs to assume their rating system is so infallible that 1 point means the team has a low enough chance of winning to give them a "boost" for it. Just. Boggles. My. Mind.
2) How can we still have ranked games where a whole team is penalized for 1 person rage quitting. Especially when all maps have an automatic "reset" (switching sides, etc) point where you could easily insert a new person to keep the game competitive and fun.
3) ELO works best in 1v1 games, which is why it is used in chess; but the more players you allow to "group" the worse your system is going to be at judging all of them. Not even LoL lets you group with more than 1 other person because it skews the MM too far. No clue why blizzard thought they could do better and just allow any number of players to group together.
4) Smurfing is something very common, but judging from other players streams (and my own experiences) blizzard seems to have completely forgotten about it when dealing with their ELO systems in this game.
5) And just all the other small things that can be done to abuse the system (like a player leaving early causing the game to end and no one gets anything).
And here's the thing I disagree with the OP on; MM is not a zero-sum game. You can have plenty of fun in a losing game so long as it is competitive and close. Where MM fails is when you have one team get steamrolled by the other team, or teams that are totally imbalanced w/in the team but not compared to each other (so each team has a "godly" player that does most of the carrying and a "newb" who is constantly dying and dragging the team down). There is plenty of room between those two areas where plenty of fun and competition can be had w/o someone getting to have a good time at another players expense.
Never said I thought they weren't interested in them; clearly they have some interest or they wouldn't bring up an email that was sent to them about it.
To quote myself though:
"And they don't usually bother to ever get into any sort of political or social or drama topics otherwise. They focus on the, you know, games. The second I feel they start getting way too off topic, way too often, and delving way to into the political/social/drama topics I will leave the site and find another"
So far (IMO, and based mostly off their video content) they seem to understand this is a website about games; and while they all have their own interests they normally don't focus on them and instead just use them to enhance the "games" aspect of the site (see ' Homefront review). If they want to talk about political/social/drama topics they are free to do so; I'm just letting them know that the less of that content there is the better (IMO) and if it gets too overbearing I will simply stop subscribing and leave the site. Because, again, I'm here for the GAMES.
You'll also notice I haven't posted on other videos/content that involve some political topics (like the Stellaris quicklook) where they had all kinds of jokes/talks about the kind of democracy (or whatever it was) they were creating; because it clearly made sense, added to the experience, and they didn't focus on it.
OTOH I did post about the pharah skin issue because it was a complete non-starter as a topic in the first place, didn't add anything to the experience, they did focus on it, and they (well really just Austin) even had some rather (IMO) poor views of how they thought it should be "handled".
@amyggen: I think you are misunderstanding my position. So I'll try to make it a little more clear. First off:
I specifically come (and subscribe) to this site because they regularly talk about wrestling (which I don't care about), games, pc games, and have the occasional whatever. They have a "hang-out" vibe to all their content I can get behind where nothing seems forced, they don't seem intent on push views or "clicks" or whatever and just talk about stuff that interests them. And they don't usually bother to ever get into any sort of political or social or drama topics otherwise. They focus on the, you know, games. The second I feel they start getting way too off topic, way too often, and delving way to into the political/social/drama topics I will leave the site and find another (like I've already had to do a half-dozen times). So I am just giving the crew my .02 on what content I like; not unlike all the people who are asking for Brad/Dan hitman series or any of the other content that the community has "asked for" (and gotten delivered on).
Secondly, everyone is free to say whatever they want, whenever they want. So if the majority decides they want social/drama content and they start producing it I will simply leave (as stated). But likewise, I'm free to voice my concerns to NOT have that social/drama content (or more realistically just keep it toned down).
Thirdly, just because I believe in someone's ability to say something; doesn't mean I have to agree or even believe in what they are saying. I think 95% of the "issues" brought up in games are exactly NAN on a scale of 1-10. 4.9% of the "issues" brought up are basically non-issues. Of the .1% left .09% of those could actually be issues and of the .01% left; they only become "big" issues because people just won't leave them the hell alone (so they are in fact just "issues" that people continue to pour gas on until they become big issues).
So yea, say whatever you want but don't expect me to bother discussing it; I'm on a games site for the GAMES, if I wanted to talk social or political issues there are better forums for that.
I guess we'll agree to disagree. At least I've left feedback, it's all I can do.
If it continues to be as frequent as it's becoming, I'll have to unsubscribe, a huge shame but so be it.
Same, I subscribe and basically exclusively come to this site because they don't normally give any special time to this sort of crap. I don't listen to a lot of podcasts (I prefer all the videos) so I don't know how prevailent this is in those; but so far they have done a good job of keeping the focus on games and, for lack of a better term, "friends hanging out" conversations in all their video content.
What real world harm comes as a result of "cultural appropriation" in video games?
What harm comes of discussing it?
None, when "discussing it" is what actually happens. Most people instead use this idea of "just discussing it" to instead passively aggressively force their agenda on others. Just like how they "just discussed" the whole Tracer-butt-pose issue. A non-issue brought up for "discussion" by a small minority of players who have nothing better to do with their time than complain on social media about their latest "discussion". Games are inherently a creative process, and it's an insult so many people think they should be dictating how that process should go; and it's a bigger insult the studios are even giving in to it.
And for every person "offended" by the alt skins writing in about how they feel; I can guarantee you there are 10 other people who saw the skin and said "Awesome, this skin is sweet and I totally love it plays off this <Culture/pop/religious/whatever> reference (Of which I'm a fan/group/whatever).
"The lasting appeal of any multiplayer-focused game is heavily determined by its progression system..."
RIP Dota, Counter-Strike, and Star Craft.
I don't care about Battlefront, Battlefield, or basically any DICE shooter, but man that's a strange sentiment. Perhaps Dan means to qualify that statement by "any MP-focused game that I don't enjoy playing that much." Which is a perfectly fine position - but the core gameplay loop should be enough to sustain MP. If it's the progression that's interesting/appealing, then it might as well be single-player!
Here, here. I'm so tired of modern FPSes with their hugely bloated, grindy, progression systems were you have to spend hours and hours getting to the weapons you want, and then more hours grinding out the attachments and things you want to put on them.
It was especially bad in the battlefield (3-4) games, and often the progressions made absolutely no sense. Combined with the fact that battlefront did very little to combat any of the core problems most people have with battlefield games and it's hard to see this game as little more than a cash grab by activision/disney riding off the wave of star wars movie hype in December.
ev77's comments