gamedevelopment: What Destiny's Failures Can Teach Us About Game Design

[pokoko]

Augen said:

pokoko said:
"Having progression tied to blind luck is incredibly frustrating for players, and is simply an example of bad game design."

Someone needs to tell Blizzard or that "World of Warcraft" project of theirs will be doooomed.

I barely played wow five years ago, but I do remember people mentioning "drop rates" so while it was sort of random, there was a mathematical percentage tied to "do this, get that".

Complete blind luck would be without any mechanism behind the reward.

I don't quite understand what you're saying.  That's what a drop rate means.  Any game like Destiny or WoW has to have a loot table with drop rates or it would never drop at all.  It has to be the same mechanism.  A loot table is the only way "luck" can work in programming.  Back when I first started raiding in WoW, I badly needed a dagger from Ragnaros that had like a 5% drop rate at the time.  I finally saw a Perdition's Blade drop but, since I was bidding for it with like 5 other Rogues, my real drop rate was more like 1%.  I never did get the blade and we eventually loved on to tougher content when it was released.

This is a mechanism MMO gamers are well versed in.  Destiny tried to bring this to console FPS gamers but I think that's a much more "I want this right now" crowd.  However, saying it's bad game design when it's the system of choice for tens of millions of people is kind of silly.