Xbox One

Guardian Down – How a quest for awesome loot broke my addiction to Destiny


Everything was going along great right up until my face smashed into a wall made of PvP and I fell into the meat grinder.

Just as I was getting to a point where I thought I could be satisfied enough with my progress in Destiny that I could spend a bit less time obsessing over it, I received an exotic bounty. I had heard of these from others and I’d read briefly elsewhere that this was how a person without dozens of strange coins or a deep, personal relationship with the Cryptarch gets an exotic weapon. It was enough to make me think that there must be some kind of psychic joy algorithm built into Destiny to make sure that I never stop being engaged with this digital crack. The people at Bungie must be joymancers.

I’ve previously written that I think effort in Destiny deserved reward. I’ve also said, among any number of articles, that I’m rubbish at PvP and I will avoid it when at all possible. There are notable exceptions where I find PvP entertaining, but Destiny’s Crucible is not among them. So I’ve been spending my time running strikes and doing Vanguard bounties as well as the PvE bounties for the Queen’s Wrath event. It was, at times, a bit on the grindy side. 200 headshots against Fallen? Yeah, that took some time since I didn’t want to stand around at yet another spawn generator. So after several hours of completing bounties on a Saturday morning, the skies parted and the angels played some harp-based covers of Slayer as I saw before me a choice of three exotic bounties.

Like anyone probably would, I turned to Google to help me find out what each one did. I was aware that they all end up awarding an exotic weapon and that only one such weapon could be equipped at a time, so I wanted to pick one that I’d actually use on a regular basis. It happened that the bounty for the hand cannon, Thorn, was among my options so I snagged it. First up, do the strike on the moon. Easy enough at level 26. Second, kill 500 Hive on the moon. 500? Are you serious? There aren’t 500 Hive on the moon, if you’re curious. Instead, I cleared the tunnels under the moon over and over again for hours. It was boring, but I really wanted an exotic hand cannon and I was willing to put in the effort to get the reward. And then part three happened: gain 500 points in the Crucible with void damage. What?

My initial reaction was a blunt “fuck you”. Then I went and found an in-depth guide to these things for an explanation of what that bounty even meant. For each kill I scored with a void damage weapon, I got 5 points toward the 500. For each death, by any means, I would lose 2 points. As an avid avoider of all things PvP, I started to yell (at great length) at my television in protest. Eventually I relented and queued up for the Crucible. I have no particular skill in these things and I do not enjoy any part of doing them. So after an hour of very unpleasant grinding, I came out with a grand total of 0/500 toward that quest. Yep, a big fat 0 to show for an hour of grinding is not my idea of a good time. In fact, this was pretty much my Clockwork Orange moment with Destiny.

There’s a certain disconnect here between the rest of the bounty system and these exotics. All other bounties are clearly either PvP or PvE, and that’s great. It presents options for players so they can continue to enjoy the game however they want. I would think that creating a clear delineation between exotics focused on these two distinct play styles would be an obvious win for everyone. For me, not having that choice has become a deal-breaker.

I feel like Bungie is telling me that if I’m not a skilled PvP player, I’m not worthy of their exotic weapon. I know that I’m not being singled out and I am aware that I can simply grind endlessly for engrams and hope for more strange coins with which to just buy an exotic weapon, but doing an actual quest line seemed a tad more epic. Apparently it’s just too epic for me. I now see Bungie not as a group of joymancers, but more like agents of Sithrak. (The linked comic itself is not visually NSFW, but the ads on the page may be. Oh, and almost any other comic that Oglaf does will be hilarious, but full of cocks. You have been super warned.) As a result of all of the frustration I feel over having this desirable carrot dangled just out of reach, this Guardian is down and I don’t see an automatic respawn in my immediate future. I will probably still play casually, but obsessive marathon playing of Destiny is over.


4 Comments on Guardian Down – How a quest for awesome loot broke my addiction to Destiny

  1. MayenneV

    You should try the Pocket Infinity Exotic. The only realy bummer is Dismantling 10 Rare or Higher Fusion Rifles. What I did is I had to stalk the Gunshop Vendor for 4 days every 5 hours until he sold them. Same with Crucible, I used to hate it. The First week I got the game, I got creamed really good. As in my first five cruicible matches ended with me always the bottom guy. The second week, I improved, made sure I wasn’t the lowest guy. By the Third week, got the Notorious Trophy and match in match out was the Enforcer, killed Enforcers and got steaks. Another Plus side is I got a lot of friends in the process for the Raid. Practice makes Perfect Bro. Rome wasn’t built in a Day. Come Back and FINISH THE FIGHT

    • I’m actually working on Toland’s Legacy (to get Bad Juju) at the moment. I’m just doing it one or two days a week instead of mainlining Destiny in every minute of my free time. I’ve got three more strikes to go and then it’s off to do the Crucible grind. I don’t mind that I need to get points, just so long as I don’t lose ground for doing poorly like I did while trying to get Thorn. I should be able to start this weekend, so hopefully I’ll have a cool looking pulse rifle to pass off to my warlock in a week or two.
      As for practice, I’ve been playing FPS PvP stuff since Doom on my dial-up. I don’t know if more practice is going to help me unless I go back to playing Unreal Tournament and start fragging guys with my flak cannon.

  2. Anthony

    I’m late to this party, but – in case you’re still having issues with PvP:

    It does suck losing ground for deaths, so a couple ways to minimize PvP deaths…

    1) crouch and camp — yes camp. Normally frowned upon, but the frowners aren’t losing ground by running out and getting offed.

    2) use an auto rifle or pulse etc until heavy ammo is available, then use a void rocket launcher while crouching and camping (best applied to Control maps where you have a vantage point over a control point

    3) Just buy the exotics if you really are still having a bad time in PvP. Strange coin isn’t that difficult to come by. You get 1 a day just for doing your first public event. You can almost always come by a public event while doing the 6 patrols on x planet bounty that comes every day as well. Two birds, 1 stone. You can also get plenty of strange coin from the weekly heroics on lvl 30 and also maybe the nightfall. Xur is available on weekends and I’ve never had an issue randomly getting 20+ strange coins in a week – and if your schedule for playing is lighter – 2 weeks should be no problem at all, then.

    That said – it’s not necessarily a bad thing to fall out of love with this game as it IS very addicting

    • The biggest problem I have with PvP (apart from that nasty dying business) is that it’s just not a compelling way for me to spend my time. I don’t enjoy it and thus have no motivation to improve. That said, I am working on a second Bad Juju (since Xur hasn’t been forthcoming with an upgrade option) so I can shard the original. I have plenty of epics at this point and hopefully more to come. (Super Good Advice was super easy to acquire in one sitting.) Looking forward to blasting Valus’ head off tonight in the nightfall.
      The only thing I haven’t really gotten to in game is the raids. They sound interesting, but I don’t personally have a group of five other people with similar schedules who also play Destiny and specifically on Xbox One.
      Still, it’s a fun game to play casually. I’m not at all disappointed that I found a point of frustration that caused me to be less obsessive about playing and let me explore other quality games.

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