Forbes article on destiny Weapons update

[Sennex 1,903]

You can read it for yourself here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2015/07/17/nerfing-gjallarhorn-and-thorn-is-the-exact-wrong-move-for-destiny/

 

The article makes a number of preliminary points which have already been stated repeatedly on this forum since the "Weapon Balancing" preview was released:

 

1) Bungie's annoying habit of removing any advantage the player base finds, in an attempt to force players to play Destiny "like it was meant to be played".

 

2) The fact that guns like icebreaker and Gjallarhorn wouldn't be as crucial to the game if most of Bungie's bosses weren't just bullet-spongy one-trick-ponies.

 

But one thing in the article stood out to me, and I think it speaks to a lot of our frustrations:

 

"I remember a GDC talk by Blizzard’s Rob Pardo where he outlined a concept any MMO designer should be familiar with. “Always balance up,” he said, talking about both World of Warcraft and Diablo 2 (this was a while ago). If you find something in your game that feels overpowered, that’s good. Players will enjoy it. The solution is never to remove that feeling of power, but to power up other things in the game to meet it."

 

What Bungie could have done, and should have done, was to follow this simple rule of thumb from WoW and Diablo. Instead of nerfing the players' best PvE weapons since we're "using them too much", why not instead boost the damage output on the lesser used guns? Maybe players would choose to use our exotic slot on Lord of Wolves over Gjallarhorn on a Solar Burn strike if Lord of Wolves was buffed into a comparable weapon? Or maybe we would use a new TTK exotic over icebreaker if the new exotic had comparably advantageous perks.

What Bungie has done is the exact opposite of this MMO rule of thumb - and it has lead to a ton of frustrated responses.

 

Bungie - instead of trying to get players to use other guns by nerfing the weapons they've come to know and love, why not improve the large amount of shitty, "immediately-shard", guns in this game so players will have other options.

 

Bungie: The update is not set to launch until September. Plenty of time to listen to player feedback on the projected changes, revisit your course of action, and change the direction you're steering Destiny. I would strongly recommend you listen to the playerbase and the advice of your peer developers in the MMO world.

[Diddums 4,346]

They're bang on the money tbh. It also helps create that awesome feeling of being OP against lower level stuff, it was great soloing the old raids in WoW.

I've gotta admit, for a dev which has such a strong history in gaming what with Halo and all, they do make some questionable decisions.

[techno 3,511]

Totally agree I've watched many videos on this and the only one I watched who was against nerfing ghorn was the guy no one likes to hear, Bungie said they nerfed it because people were being discriminated against for not having it now if it's less powerful it will definitely become more of a requirement.

I'm sick of Bungie wanting us to play like they want not like we want and people moaning "oh it's not a challenge " well no one forces you to play that way use your imagination ffs.