Bungie Axes Destiny's "Loot Cave" In Latest Hotfix

[Remus]

How dare players have fun in their games, no you MUST play how Bungie wants or they'll patch what your doing out! Seriously Bungie I don't even play your boring game and I find that stupid, especially considering what others are saying.

Fun? Shooting at the same spot for hours is FUN? Boy I must really be playing my games wrong then. Instead of working quests and bounties, playing PvP, ya know, variety, I should instead be beating my head against a wall until the knocking becomes a soft, wet squishy noise. This sounds like Bungie's attempting to increase loot rewards across the board, thus eliminating the need of a loot cave. This sounds like a much-needed improvement to me, as I haven't enjoyed camping loot in games since sitting for hours in old sebilis waiting on a fungal tunic, which was.....wow, 14 years ago.

 

[Freyar]

The whole problem with Destiny is that Bungie wants people to respect the reward loop they have in the game, but it's just not good enough.

Play a Crucible match, get top marks, find out you get nothing and the guy who caused the losing team to lose just got a Rare or Legendary.

Go to the Cryptarch when you finally get a legendary engram, find yourself with a low-level blue (one you can't even swap out with your equipped ones because they're based on level 16, rather than 20.)

Get a legendary item from an engram from the Cryptarch only to find out that it's for another class entirely.

Finish a strike to get.. well.. plasteel plating?
----

In the end, almost every weapon or piece of armor I'm getting, I'm breaking up for materials because there's simply nothing better to do with them, and that is where the problem lies. The limited inventory space makes it even easier to say "shard it" because you can't keep something you like the look of since you don't have the space.

For the Queen's Wrath crap, I got the same helmet THREE TIMES in a row. I've got an exotic helmet so I didn't even really have a reason to use the first one. At least the silver lining (for all that work which included headshots with a handcannon in PvP..) was to get ascendent material for other items. Only wait.. now you can't. No materials, they might give you what? Glimmer?

If you want me to respect your reward loop, you MUST respect my time, and Destiny doesn't do that at all.

 

[Cabisco]

I mean I guess I should go back to just doing strikes with my frie... oh, I've disconnected for the billionth time... GG Bungie.

 

[Creator002]

"Isn't our dream for how Destiny is played."
Thanks for telling me how to have fun, Bungie.
It's almost as if they want you to do mind numbing, time consuming grinding. I guess they just want to extend the gameplay time between "expansion packs."[footnote]Which doesn't make it right and, I think, is the wrong way to go if they're sticking to that.[/footnote]

 

[Zack Rymski]

The loot cave wasn't the problem Bungie, it was the way you idiots designed the game! I'm not going to spend days doing the same strike to get no gear when I can spend 12 hours at the loot cave and get all the gear I need. Until you fix the engram system I'm not gonna waste my time on your "finished" game. It's completely unacceptable that from a legendary engram we can get uncommons and rares, what were you guys thinking? You can even get gear your toon can't even WEAR!!!!!!!!!! I'm so glad I just borrowed the game from my roommate. And to think Bungie was supposed to be the chosen one, that could do no harm.

 

[Aussie502]

Destiny feels worse than Diablo 3's loot 1.0 and it doesn't even have an AH. Bungie needs to look at what Blizzard did. To their credit they made Diablo 3 orders of magnitude better with the new loot system.

 

[Sarge034]

"But shooting at a black hole for hours on end isn't our dream for how Destiny is played," - Bungie

I'm sorry, was I shooting at the story? Or perhaps just the same damn areas over and over and over... How bout you fix the server stability before you go tweaking stuff that ISN'T breaking your game?

 

[Fasckira]

Got my first purple engram last night and it decoded into a purple item - whether its down to their tweaking or chance I do not know, but Im happy.

In general though, I've hit level 23 now but theres just so much repetition now. The Queens stuff can sod off too, I was expecting so much more from it. Looking forward to Shadows of Mordor now!

 

[LostCrusader]

I'm not seeing the problem, leveling your gear is not bad at all if you do bounties. And as far as making it harder to farm, the queen bounty missions give a guaranteed legendary if you have the bounty item so big woop.

 

[FFMaster]

I can just imagine how the discussion went down at Bungie HQ

Dev : So apparently a lot of our players are simply shooting into a cave to farm the engrams to get the loot, strikes aren't being run as much because its just not worth it.

Producer : Why are they doing this, why aren't they doing the high level content or the strikes we made for them?

Dev : Well because of the loot system, it doesn't matter what level the enemies are its a random chance of a drop

Producer : But if you complete strikes you get a guaranteed item!

Dev : Yeah true but the reward is not worth the time, farming is quicker due to the way the loot system works. We need to overhaul the loot system, or at least make strikes more time efficient. Maybe lower the health of hte bosses a bit, make them drop a guarentted engram? Talking of engrams we also need to talk about the Cryptarch randomness.

Producer : Yes the randomness of the Cryptarch was a great idea I agree, but I have a better idea, change the spawn time so they can't farm the cave

Dev : Thats not what i mea.... doesn't matter, but anyway that only solves the symptom , not the problem, we need to sort out the loot system from the ground up.

Producer : But if they have no cave to farm from they will have to run the strikes again, it solves the problem!

Dev : Well that still takes a lot more time than farming in patrol mode

Producer : Well look at that next, make the drop rates lower or something. We want them to run the strikes as that was my magical vision. Now send in the story department, the ending of this story for the dlc is too concrete and complete. I don't want it to end properly we need ambiguity, easier to sell the future stories if we never finished the previous ones.

 

[Quellist]

I'm so glad I never got this game...an FPS with all the worst parts of an MMO...loot grinding especially.

This is so different from the experience Bungie promised

 

[Grumman]

Fun? Shooting at the same spot for hours is FUN?

Shooting at the same spot is to /enable/ fun. I don't play Destiny, but I do play Borderlands 2, and it suffers from a similar problem. Duping an item is not fun, but it's less /unfun/ than grinding the same boss a hundred times before you're allowed to try out the unique gun you're interested in.

 

[Riff Moonraker]

honestly I'm more pissed off about this:

Queen's Wrath Event

Material rewards for dismantling Queen's Wrath gear will no longer provide ascendant materials, but missions will continue to drop Legendary items

Getting Ascendant Shards from duplicate Legendarys I got out of the grind-fest that is queen's daily missions was the only way I was upgrading gear more than once per week.

Edit:

I don't think Bungie have ever made a game with loot mechanics and it shows.

Destiny is the first Bungie game with loot mechanics, and while I understand giving them the befit of the doubt, they also decided to lock story and lore in the Grimoire on a website not accessible in game. Destiny is built on a massive pile of questionable design decisions.

Yep, my clanmates and I went ballistic over this yesterday. Now, all the extra damn legendaries you are going to have in your stock from doing Queens Wrath missions can be dismantled, and instead of at least giving you a few ascendant shards, you get the basic material like you dismantled an uncommon, and +28 Glimmer. Wow. They carpet bombed the problem, instead of using fine tuned surgery. What Bungie SHOULD have done was reduced the count to 1 Ascendant Shard for each piece you dismantle, plus the reg. material, and give you a little more Glimmer than usual. But noooooo... they just nerfed the hell out of them outright. /facepalm

Bungie has basically created an MMO, and they dont want you to farm or grind. Its baffling.

 

[Sanunes]

Shooting at the same spot is to /enable/ fun. I don't play Destiny, but I do play Borderlands 2, and it suffers from a similar problem. Duping an item is not fun, but it's less /unfun/ than grinding the same boss a hundred times before you're allowed to try out the unique gun you're interested in.

The big difference between the loot system in Borderlands versus Destiny is that you need the Purple items in Destiny for they increase your level, with Borderlands the Orange items might have some interesting effects, but they aren't a required part of gameplay.

 

[Buckets]

The random strike thing is a bloody joke too, I ended up doing Nexus about 4 times in a row. Think they need to sort that out. It can't be that hard to implement tracking where you have already been and not bloody send you there again straight away.

 

[Halon Chocolate]

Awww, I liked the Loot Cave. I didn't have the patience to stay there for hours on end, but it was one way to pad out Cryptarch levels and roll for gear.

What I'll probably miss most from that, though, would be the unofficial social hub status that area gained as a result. Joining an instance where a group of three, maybe four, folks would already be gathered there, running up that hill and simply joining the firing line with people with the same end goal in mind. One or two might wave, you might wave back, farming commences.

Occasionally, a WarSat will fall from the sky, or the "enemy moves". In those instances, the group breaks from the cave and see the field turn into chaos as firefights ring out all over. Squads of Fallen and Hive join the fray, Wards of Dawns are dropped, Nova Bombs launched, Bladedancers wink in and out of existence. All throughout, gunfire and explosions rip across the croppings of rock and snow. Finally, when the enemy is driven back, those who haven't left the fray turn to look at one another for a brief instant, share a brief nod, and reform the line to return to shooting at that cave. Truly, the epitome of unspoken bonding.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. I don't mind Strikes, but funny stuff like Loot Cave can't be made on purpose.

 

[RedDeadFred]

While I do believe that shooting into a dark hole for multiple hours is not good gameplay and probably should be removed, there's probably a REASON the players were doing it. I have not played the game myself so I can only bring up what others have said. If people would rather shoot into a dark hole for hours on end than play the same, grindy, missions over and over, you've probably fucked up your game in some big way.

 

[Rattja]

This is all a bit confusing to me, as it seems like there is this magic amount of loot drops everyone seem to want but nobody knows what is.
I am not exactly sure what an engram is, but I am guessing it is somewhat like an epic item in WoW or a legendary/set in diablo, it does not really matter. Give the players too many of these and everyone and their dog will run around with full gear and complain it's too easy. Give too few and they will complain it takes too long.

I keep seeing a lot of complains, telling them to fix it, but what exactly do you guys want? Do you even know?

Also, it may be just me and what I am used to, but something with a "legendary" status is not something I feel should drop a few times per hour, it's something that should take days, weeks, if not months to get. If it is a thing essential for progress it should not really be called legendary in the first place, but hey that's just my opinion.

 

[Riff Moonraker]

As of yesterday, and the changes Bungie made:

I never did the loot cave, so that doesnt bother me. However, I understand where people are coming from doing this, and the Nexus event over and over.

The Queens Wrath nerf was outright brutal. Is it possible we were getting TOO many ascendant shards? Maybe. Should they have cut them out completely? NO! Instead of carpet bombing the event like they did, they should have reduced the shards to one. Every legendary you dismantled should have given you a little higher glimmer, and a single Ascendant Shard. Instead, you get pretty much what you get if you dismantled an UNCOMMON or RARE. No, no, NO, Bungie.

The Queens Wrath nerf royally pissed me and a bunch of my clanmates off, to be sure, but there was some good that came out of it as well. The changes to the drops have already been felt, at least for me. As of yesterday morning, before the update, I had a total of around 15 legendary engram drops.

Here are the results:

First legendary engram... EXOTIC HELM! For a frakking Warlock. I am a Hunter.

Legendary engrams #2 through #14(ish)... all Rares, except for one Uncommon.

Yesterday morning, pre-patch, Legendary #15... Legendary CLASS ITEM! Wait, what is this?? For a Warlock??? AGAIN!???!?? /sigh

I come home last night, there is the update. When I went to bed last night, I had gotten (via upgrading the cryptarch to level 8, and leveling up Vanguard to 3) three legendary engrams. The first gave me an Exotic, which turned out to be the Ice Breaker sniper rifle, and let me tell you... all of a sudden, all the other engram troubles washed away. I was sooo happy. Then the other two netted me a legendary pulse rifle, and a legendary rocket launcher. So that DEFINITELY seems to have improved.

This morning, before work, I got on to find the Agent of Nine (he is in the flight hanger area now, folks... at the bar looking place all the way in the back) and I wasnt happy with the Hunter helm. Its ok, but its not the Mask of the Third Man, which is what I want, and I didnt have the coins for it at the time. So I didnt get that, but I went for it on the exotic helm engram.

Results... Exotic helm... for a titan. ROFL.

So there have been some improvements at least, but the Queens Wrath thing needs to be addressed by Bungie. Their forums are stirred up something fierce as of last night.