Thursday, August 13, 2015

Bungie's Big Mistake by making Legendary weapons obsolete

The upcoming DLC for Destiny, The Taken King does not allow you to upgrade existing Legendary weapons and that sucks. It demonstrates developer Bungie's contempt for gamers. (See Game Informer report, August 4, 2015.) Along with the nerfing of favorite weapons like the Gjallarhorn, this last disrespect could be the "nail in the coffin" for Destiny's projected ten year run.

To demonstrate Bungie's contempt for you the gamer, I pose this question in the spirit of the late President Ronald Reagan to the fans of Destiny.

"ARE YOU BETTER OFF BY HAVING YOUR FAVORITE WEAPON MADE OBSOLETE THAN WHEN YOU OBTAINED IT?"

Of course, the answer is "no." Let me explain. Let's say you obtain that hard to get hand cannon Fatebringer from the difficult raid, "Vault of Glass." It is possibly the best hand cannon and one of the best weapons in the game because it has explosive rounds, the perk Firefly and Arc damage. You ascend it in late May to the maximum attack rating of 365 due to that month's DLC, "The House of Wolves." You begin to use it and start to rock your enemies. Your Destiny gaming is easier and more fun. That's assuming you like your gun to do damage and not be a BB gun.

Flash forward to September's release of the DLC "The Taken King." Just four months or even less, your beloved Fatebringer is now obsolete. All that hard work to obtain this magnificent weapon is now wasted. And I mean hard work. You must reach level 20 to use it, must obtain the weapon as a RNG drop, level it up AND obtain the difficult to get Etheric Light to get this gun to the maximum level.

All of these changes to weaken favorite weapons are designed to get you to try the new weapons from the upcoming DLC.

“I definitely feel like some of our players are ready to play with some new toys,” says (Bungie) creative director Luke Smith. “And we’ve built a whole bunch of new toys. There are definitely some weapons that you are going to find better versions of – there’s going to be something that replaces that sniper rifle that you love.” Game Informer article, August 4, 2015.

And how do you get to those new weapons? Buy the DLC for a whopping forty bucks or more depending on what version of the game you get. Look, I get the idea to make a buck but it's way too early to make favorite weapons obsolete. At this time, the game is not even a year old. We're a long way from Destiny Two so why weaken Destiny One weapons roughly every three months? Yeah, it's a way to milk every last buck from the gamer but it does not benefit them. And let me respond to Luke Smith. Those great weapons he talks about in The Taken King will probably not be available right away. I'm guessing from older DLCs, you will have to get those from complicated Raids and difficult tasks such as playing The Prison of Elders on harder levels I also question whether the new primary weapons will have elemental damage right away. If not, the Destiny player is in a weaker position at the start of The Taken King because his powerful gun from the Destiny One is now obsolete. It's going to be more pain and suffering.

Finally let me answer those who support the changes. If you read articles about the obsolescence of Destiny year one weapons, you get this feeling that some of them are for it. Here's David Thier of Forbes writing if is for the best. Okay, my fellow gamers, those that support it are usually the guys who write for the organizations that support big business, the gaming industry or depend on their survival to the success of Destiny. I, my fellow gamers, do none of that. I'm a gamer. So, I've got no financial motive for supporting Bungie's decision to weaken or nerf favorite weapons or criticizing it. Let me make this clear. I do not support Bungie's garbage. And as I have demonstrated, making your favorite Legendary Destiny wepons obsolete stinks.

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