Cryptarchs, Loot Caves and Everything Else Wrong with Destiny’s Loot System

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I woke up last Wednesday to gaming news reported as if it was an international crisis. Destiny’s “loot cave,” it seemed, had been shut down. Just what the hell a loot cave was and what it signified was something I had to find out.

After reading several reports on Kotaku, I had gathered all the information I needed. Once, throngs of Guardians stood shoulder-to-shoulder, firing blindly into a small pocket tucked underneath a hillside. It seems people would assemble here day after day to endure a repetitive chore that held no joy but promises of ample rewards.

The gathering that would form was akin to the back alley frequented by Arlen’s neighborhood residents in King of the Hill – people who dutifully showed up day after day and acknowledged each others’ presence with solemn nods. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if many a beer was cracked open with one hand while another held the controller, blasting away mindlessly into the tiny hole.

Hours after soaking up this information, I happened to take a walk down the street to where my little brother lives close by. He recently bought an Xbox One, and as much as it pained him to do so, he had to give up his prior obsessions in the process: his 360, GTA V, and Skyrim, in favor of new ones like Destiny.

When I arrived at my brother’s house, lo and behold he was there, at the hillside, blasting into the dark cave. He had a morose expression upon his face, and he looked up at me with no traces of his typical enthusiasm. “It’s just not the same,” his face seemed to say. An online companion joined him momentarily, but quickly lost interest and left the area.

What, then, drives people to this madness? What sort of game design creates a troop of mindless zombies, who would rather stare into one small crevasse than explore several planets worth of vast areas?

At the heart of this surely mentally-unhealthy behavior lies a deeply-flawed understanding of game design. Fixing all of the problems therein will take years of player feedback and careful fine-tuning. As it stands now, though, Destiny has many lessons to learn from its predecessors.

 

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My Destiny Experience, or Lack Thereof

I have never played Destiny, nor do I own a next-gen system. I am, however, intrigued by the huge waves the game generates both online and in everyday conversation.

Before the games was released, concept drawings and early-build photos tantalized Bungie fans with a rich, well-styled future universe that sufficiently separated itself from other sci-fi IPs. When the alpha hit, a small enclave of people talked about it excitedly, but in moderately-hushed tones – reluctant to define the game in any concrete way until the details were finalized.

Now, here it is, and all I hear is a lot of bitching. Sure, people can’t take their eyes away from the screen when they play, but for everything Bungie got right in terms of the running and shooting mechanics, a hundred complaints have been levied against other aspects of the game.

Case-in-point: the Cryptarch.

 

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Why People Hate the Cryptarch

While scouring tumblr, as I often do, I noticed a strikingly-designed figure that was receiving an unusual amount of contempt. Evidently, everyone hated this blue-skinned man in his handsome yellow robes. His expressionless face embodied the betrayal they felt every time their Herculean efforts were pitilessly mocked.

Upon asking my brother, he revealed that the Cryptarch was just the unfortunate messenger for the game’s cruel loot system. When people grinded upon enemy after enemy after enemy, some would drop items called engrams. These engrams could be exchanged for other items according to their rarity.

The evil part was that the rarity of the engram did not necessarily directly correspond to the rarity of the item received. Instead, a sadistic lottery system was in place – one that frequently rewarded hours worth of hard efforts with bupkis.

I can only imagine the excitement that would result from finally finding that elusive purple engram, only to be handed a useless pile of shit by the Cryptarch. I can’t decide if the fact that he doesn’t smile while he does so makes it better, or worse.

 

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Why People Loved the Loot Cave

Hence, why people flocked to the loot cave. By finding a spot where the interminable grind could be relegated to a limited area, people finally had a hope at making some real progress. According to Bungie’s take on the matter, the occurrence was nothing short of magical:

The social experience of a cave farming run is amazing: the herding to get a team of Guardians all behind the line and firing in the right direction, the rush to grab the loot, the scramble when the panic wave starts, the beckoning glow from inside the cave. The speed at which the community organized around this activity was inspiring and humbling to us.”

Even though other websites have insistently pointed out that cave farming is actually a bad in-game strategy, the immediate and tangible rewards offered at random created greater temptation than slogging through reputation-building tasks day after day. Bungie inadvertently created a legion of item drop addicts, who would rather make the game incredibly boring than seek out the challenges they have tried to offer.

 

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Fixing the System

The whole problem lies in Bungie’s inexperience with this type of game. Actually, no on can really define what genre Destiny truly lies in, despite its obvious mish-mash of other successful formulas. At its heart, the core issues that crop up all arise from the MMO-copied elements that Bungie adopted.

A leveling system in a shooting game has been refined in Call of Duty titles and games like Borderlands for several years. Bungie’s ambition to bring the focus to online co-op play only serves to entrench Destiny further into this maturing category, rather than boldly forging out new territory. I have no qualms with what Bungie was trying to do with this tact. What I do see is a lack of interest in taking cues from other, better-crafted games.

Diablo III, for instance, has spent years refining its loot system to the celebration of its long-term players. Blizzard has subsequently had a better relationship with its customers, even despite Bungie’s occult-like loyalty among Xbox players. Following some harsh pitfalls, the newest version of Diablo III‘s loot system adequately rewards players for accomplishing tough runs, with a feeling of celebration incurred at loop drops spewing from bosses.

The depth of customization helps. Character classes that play completely differently and benefit from entirely disparate sets of equipment makes finding the perfect item an adventure.

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Destiny, by contrast, still emphasizes uniformity in its current loot rewards, with no one item being more valuable to a certain player than another. As site owner Paul has mentioned before in an Insert Coin post, if Bungie truly wishes to push forward on lasting end-game content, they must do more to differentiate between items outside of Light levels as well as items like rocket launchers that are generally useful irrespective of chosen class. Destiny also fails to grant the feeling of exhuberance that most games achieve when a tough mission is completed, instead opting for downplayed texts.

Skyrim, while possessing a loot system that gets ignored at higher levels, still shows an example of how grinding can be fun. The diverse perk trees offer genuinely new elements that completely shift how mechanics work.

For instance, if you wanted to be an offensive mage, then having the impact perk coupled with silent casting would allow you to clear out a bandit camp without most enemies making it onto their feet. While this has absolutely nothing to do with loot, it does represent a great way to add depth and variety to different playthroughs – rewarding players for honing their skills by expanding the way the game is played.

As it stands now, Destiny feels more like a Candy Crush-type game. Higher level rewards and engrams are dangled in front of you like a carrot on a string. As you pursue them, even better items are revealed just outside of your grasp.

The game encourages you to keep playing, repeating similar tasks over and over again and hoping to close the distance between you and that juicy carrot. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bungie decided to sell engrams for real cash as DLC. They’d make billions.

Note: video distantly related

Jarrod Lipshy is a UGA English alum and a freelance content writer. He collects old video games, and no, he did not decide to write this article merely as an excuse for posting Cryptarch memes he found on tumblr and how dare you to accuse him of such!

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10 Comments

  1. For those of us who have yet to play Destiny (yes I live under a rock …) could you explain how this is any different from Farming for stuff on say WoW or other games that reward you with doing mindless tasks?

    Destiny seems great – but if it’s another grind type game in order to be “all powerful” then I doubt I ever pick it up.

    1. One of the biggest issues with the grind in Destiny (at least before, I don’t know if the new patch helped this) is that it didn’t reward achievement. The loot cave was systemic of an inherently broken system. The only enemies that spawned in the loot cave where level 5 grunts that were one shot before they could walk but they dropped engrams at such a high rate that it was more efficient than anything else you do since there is no difference between killing that level 5 grunt and killing a level 25 boss. It would be like farming boars in WoW to get the top level gear because the drop rate was as high as a raid boss.

      1. I’m also a bit ignorant, what is the goal of getting better loot, if you still have to replay the same sections just with high level enemies.

        Is it for new weapons, open new sections, and how does this translate to multiplayer PVP.

        1. After you hit level 20, equipment is given a “light” rating and this rating determines further level advancement. Experience is used to upgrade skills and equipment, but the equipment itself determines your level and therefore limits your ability to take on the higher level raids.

          PvP standardizes all damage, but still allows buffs to do their thing, and better equipment has better buffs so it’s still a small factor.

          1. Are higher level raids more like challenges? Or are they substantial to the game’s story?

          2. Truth be told, the game doesn’t have much in the way of story. They are just higher level challenges that supposedly give unique rewards. Unfortunately, in another questionable decision there’s no matchmaking for these raids so you need to assemble your own team to take them on in addition to beefing up your level so I can’t testify as to whether it’s worth it or not.

          3. Ok, then I’ll go read the internet lore before jumping, frankly I just had the eye on this game for the graphics but I’m not a shooter fan for that type of gameplay alone. Unless is Metroid Prime.

          4. The raid is supposed to be the “good part.” It’s where all the effort went into, from what I understand (I haven’t reached a level high enough to actually do it).

  2. This is one of the best Destiny pieces I’ve read. You must have done a
    crapload of homework having not even played it. Bungie just patched the
    Cryptarch to fix that problem, thank God, but it’s hard to imagine what
    they were thinking in the first place making it so hard to get a
    legendary engram and then having them downgrade to “rare” (read:
    “common”) items almost every time. I’ve played the game for hours daily
    since midnight release and I’ve received maybe 10 tops and all but 3 or
    4 were crap. I’ve purchased almost all of my really good gear myself
    rather than rely on looting.

    I only did the Cave of Wonders for
    an hour or so, and it was just too boring for me. When a swarm of
    high-level baddies came pouring out a nearby cave, it was my favorite
    part by far. I play games for fun and shooting fish in a barrel is not
    fun. I’m not concerned about those who chose to do so, but I’d rather do
    something fun and save up for future rewards I choose for myself than
    bore myself to death for the mere immediate random treats.

    Destiny
    is a really great game, but it could have been amazing. Bungie made
    some serious errors in judgement and this loot system is public enemy
    #1.

  3. The real problem is that there is only one type of grind in games right now. I hate grinding but I love Diablo for one reason. I can do all my grinding for loot while advancing the plot instead of stopping everything to get the gear I need. It is the biggest reason I end up almost abandoning every MMO I have ever played except Star Trek, DDO, and CoH/V.

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