I had fun writing this on reddit, where it will quickly disappear. I sometime have these relapses of the “ranting” days.
The news is that the last patch added what seems to be a good piece of content. But they, of course, made it pretty inaccessible since it doesn’t have matchmaking, it’s level gated so you need to grind the season to access it, and it will also be removed in September. I mean… wow again.
A proletarian Revolution: Luke Smith and the worship of the Ivory Tower. Catering only raiders, while ignoring and opposing the majority of players.
(The obvious irony in this post doesn’t obscure the problems I want to emphasize. The hyperbole is there, but I do believe these are real and important issues the game has. And so it is a suggestion to steer the game in a better direction.)
Luke Smith worships the Ivory Tower of the pampered aristocrats. This much is plain evident.
The new dungeon is the perfect emblem and proof. Like a carrot being dangled in front of players to tell them they aren’t good enough and that this game is made for elitists, high-end gamers, streamers and big youtubers who gratify their work through flattery, spewing back their marketing points like well-trained monkeys.
The dungeon symbolic choices:
- No matchmaking
- Level gated
- Going away in less than 3 months
This proves a deliberate attempt to block many of their players to access a good, and because it’s good it’s also very rare, piece of content. Because a good piece of content, in their philosophy, is not for everyone. It needs exclusivity, like a luxury car or expensive jewelry.
If it’s good then it’s meant to be a privilege, and a privilege isn’t for everyone.
All the design “progression”, in the way it’s tiered between powerful and pinnacle rewards is a way to separate players as if they belong to social classes.
Destiny 2 is the PERFECT metaphor of society where wealth is hoarded by a pampered high-end elite, while the great majority suffers. All quality content has arbitrary blocks slapped on to prevent the access to a majority of those players, matchmaking being the most obvious example.
Even the idea of cutting content, this September, to slice in half the strike playlist is a slap in the face for those players that now will have to grind a playlist with half the variety. So that you will feel, greater than before, the deep rift between the most soulless and monotonous grind, and the quality content only reserved for raiders.
Destiny 2 is built on player’s envy. You are the low wage, abused worker who grinds all his life only for the illusory, cynical hope to eventually join the higher ranks. Envying those rich celebrities who have access to all privileges.
With every piece of content, they reinforce the idea:
- The content is a souless, pointless, repetitive, unfun grind? Then it’s for everyone, easily accessible, and if it requires a group it has matchmaking.
- The content has handcrafted quality, inventiveness, novelty? Then it is made for the elite, it won’t have matchmaking, and it will have all sort of requirements to weed out the unworthy who think they deserve something.
The Menagerie, that as a mix of the two was an anomaly, will be erased this September. Like an heresy that contaminated the law of privilege and that now needs to be disown.
This determines even its future. Either D2 will have its revolution, or it will rot. Same as decadent elites always rot. Slowly.
A revolution in 3 steps (I know it won’t happen, reason never wins against rhetoric, and positive changes are always sabotaged):
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Make all acquired loot permanently stored in the collections, storing for each item acquired also one random roll that can be manually updated in case the players finds a better roll. This allows ALL discovered items to be reacquired whenever needed. Solving inventory hell with a simple change, and already making the game 50% better with a single change.
-
Enable matchmaking for ALL activities requiring groups. Make ALL matchmaking optional instead of mandatory. (this will allow players to play strikes solo, if they want)
-
Stop the removal of content, and replace this ill-advised idea by allocating good engineers to rewrite Destiny 2 bloated and archaic filesystem, so that it can be streamed, delivering on-demand ALL the content, only taking space on the drive when you’re actively playing that content. (many players don’t know, but for example World of Warcraft can be fully played with a client as small as 10Gb)
A couple of reader suggestion, if you made this far:
