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10/28/2025 11:12:32 PM
17
A game that punishes you for succeeding
never ever seen these kind of systems in a shooter
your reward for leveling up is a consistently worse experience with less and less fun, the game acts as if playing this game is some kind of ultimate privilege and that the worst parts of it are to be treasured and endless time wasted on the most tedious and annoying experiences to be found in any game
rpg mechanics that utterly defeat the benefit of leveling
you never feel stronger
this is just an unbelievably blunt hamster wheel chasing metrics above anything and utterly disconnected from the actual play experience. Just a bunch of novice anvil level adjustments to make sure players have to constantly grind. There is no art whatsoever to this design. Nobody at bungie in touch with what creates the addictive experience. This team just tears away basically all of the dopamine by punishing you for success on every level.
it's not like other games couldn't put this crap on their games, but nobody wants to because it simply isn't fun for most players and a tiny slice of players can't carry your bad design.
amazing that a team with this low level of design skill is in charge of this massive billion dollar franchise
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Edited by Hawpy: 10/29/2025 8:49:21 PMThe game is in a really sad place right now. I got to 550 last week and also got to Guardian Rank 11. In past seasons, that made me happy and I got some satisfaction out of being the highest level and rank. This time, it just felt hollow, and I was questioning why I even bothered to do it. I went through my friends list the other day and realised that about two thirds of the people on it hadn't played in over a year. Fireteam Finder for Raids was almost entirely dead and it was even a struggle to find people for the Ultimate Conquests. The original level grind burnt out so many people, who are now not around to see the totally over-corrected climb. Levelling as a whole has been caught between two ideas; 1) enforce caps/deficits so rewarding content never becomes too easy, and 2) level up so you feel more powerful as you go. These are at odds with each other, and the game getting harder as you increase your level just seems backwards. It's still pretty straightforward to get A Grades on Ultimate, but I miss not having to think about what the exact specifics of any given build are. Part of this is just the nostalgia from a younger me talking, but in D1 you could just sit in the Strikes playlist and use only your weapons and not get bored. Speaking of, I think a huge L right now is the Quickplay playlists being totally useless. I would be much happier to use a playlist that has every Strike/Solo Ops in it than the same 3-5 on a daily basis, but the level cap means it's never going to reward me at all. Unless I'm missing something, it's not even possible to score highly enough to get the bonus drops when your level is meant for Ultimate.
