I feel like this is one of Bungie’s most common issues. Power is meaningless. It’s a sliding scale of damage taken and damage dealt. Sure to some degree, this matters. But when it’s the sole means of difficulty (like the -50 vanguard alert) it really is just a boring experience.
Memories are made when an activity presents a unique combat experience, and is ALSO managed appropriately with our power scaling giving us a big dopamine payout for overcoming it.
Bungie has made some decently cool boss fights (OG Ghaul) who just get absolutely obliterated in seconds completely DEFLATING the hype around fighting them. On other ends, it’s just bullet sponge city while the boss sits in one spot spraying infinitely at you and then going randomly immune after a certain amount of damage taken.
OG legendary Savathun was probably the most satisfyingly executed here, as well as Witness being a close second.
Activities and bosses need to keep me busy with mechanics, offer a notable threat with a healthy combination of ad density and damage taken, and allow me to feel like I need to properly execute a damage phase or damage mechanic while juggling some degree of survivability in that process.
Nothing is more boring than a mechanically uninteresting encounter cranked to a huge delta and the only reason I’m not clearing it is because the massive tipping of Damage dealt/taken forcing me to sit behind a box and plink away and not move an inch because red bars are 1 shotting me.
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2 RepliesI can agree that making an encounter a -50 power delta is not the way to make something fun. HOWEVER, I heavily disagree that restrictive mechanics make an activity fun. Something such as the retaliator enemies that rotate immunity shields is a perfect example. Immunity shields without any good explanation are just annoying artificial ways to make things more difficult. Nobody could provide an answer as to WHY retaliator enemies have a rotating immunity shield if they tried. The only reason at all, is to be irritating and slow the player down. A GOOD example of mechanics is the Cabal Walker in the lawless frontier where you place bombs on the shield generators before you can damage the boss normally. Simple, logical, mechanics that make the encounter more difficult without just throwing an immunity shield on something and calling it a day.