Put your spinfoil hats on and get ready for a trip (if you wouldn't enjoy a fun lil conspiracy, feel free to click away now before proceeding further):
[u]The Case for why Root of Nightmares was meant to be a Dungeon[/u]
The planets encounter is the best encounter in this raid, and is also the most different (arguably out of place) from the remainder of the raid, let's talk about why, using just a few core Destiny raid encounter design principles. The list below is not extensive.
1. Seeing things that other players can't, and communicating this with your team.
Planets: In the planets encounter, you cannot see the other half of planets' alignments. This requires you to communicate with an ally to determine which planet on the other side of the map you'll switch with and vice versa.
Example Encounters: Other examples of this include the scanner communicating with others throughout DSC, figuring out where to cleanse during Riven, determining the oracle order in Atheon, determining which plate to go to on warpriest, sisters, Oryx, etc.
2. Coordinating with teammates temporally
Planets: When you shift a planet has to take place at the same time that your partner is shifting theirs. You cannot work in isolation to move one planet at a time during separate planetary shifts, and must work together in sync to create spaces for the planets to go to.
Example Encounters: As before, lots of examples of this exist in Destiny raids. The plates you stand on for various reasons in Shuro Chi damage the player, requiring everyone to hop on at similar times. Gambit teams coordinating with the team on the ground to pull them during sanctified mind when they're full up on motes.
3. Coordinating with teammates spatially
Planets: 4 out of the 6 players are each responsible for a unique starting plate, and its mirror on the other side of the map. Each of these players man their position and role, working with their partner to ensure smooth encounter completion.
Example Encounters: Incredibly common too: splitting up into two teams of 3 with rotating roles in totems, 3 teams of 2 for warpriest, designating plates in oryx, splitting up into two teams for morgoth, the relay encounter in garden, literally any tether in garden, etc. etc.
4. Real-time decision making as a group
Planets: Just before starting a damage phase, it must be coordinated who will dunk the corresponding planet on which of the three plates in the middle. You can designate someone to always dunk a light planet and someone else to always dunk a dark, but the odd-one-out always require some on-the-spot decision making and coordination so teams don't double up on dunks or leave a plate open.
Example Encounters: Deciding who will dunk in which receptacle during Descent or Taniks, and who will grab which nukes. Who will cover which plates during the puzzle portion of Shuro Chi, which door everyone will hide in during Kali. Some of these can be premeditated, but they are all open-ended questions requiring quick, coordinated responses from the team.
How the seed mechanic central to remaining 3 encounters (same size as a dungeon) does not achieve any of the above:
1. You do not need to say anything at all during these encounters. One person can run each type of seed and that's it. Literally no need to mic up or type in chat ever.
2. It does not matter when the seed runner does their job relative to anything else going on (they just have to do it fast enough), it's a completely isolated mechanic temporally.
3. Outside of the forced splitting of players in the second encounter, there is no spatial coordination required by anyone not running a seed. You can be anywhere on the map killing enemies and be effective.
4. There are no moments that requires the team to reconvene and get on the same page for something. The one mechanic that might qualify is when you opt to grab a refuge buff and prevent nezarec's wipe mechanic, but that mechanic is skipped entirely in most cases with people just running their seeds fast enough.
3 out of the 4 encounters of RoN do not have the makings of Destiny 2 raid encounters, and they are also the 3 encounters that share a mechanic. 3 is also commonly the number of encounters in a dungeon. Seed running is also painfully (painfully) similar to circuit making in SotW, a dungeon. Coincidence? I think not.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk
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1 ReplyI just think they wanted to make a casual raid, in response to Vows complexity backlash It's just like Crota, Crota is arguably the most powerful antagonist in lore, almost single handedly wiped out all guardians and feasted on the Light, but his raid was a joke because of complaints of VOGs difficulty, and the thousand cheeses made it even easier than designed Now Final Shapes raid will be influenced by RONs criticism, there might be 100 symbols each person has to input in 5 seconds , or wipe, and that will just be the non looted entrance