Will Destiny's New XP-Based Leveling System Prove to be Smoke and Mirrors?

Sep. 7, 2015

Will Destiny’s New XP-Based Leveling System Prove to be Smoke and Mirrors?

When Bungie announced a new leveling system being implemented inDestinyto allow people to reach 40 through nothing but XP grinding, the news was celebrated by fans and detractors alike.  Promises of players now being able to “max out” at 40 just by playing and earning XP seemed like a positive step forward at the time.  Yet during interviews leading up to release ofThe Taken Kingreveal videos, Bungie community manager David “Deej” Dague has made interesting comments, stressing that light level would still be “very important”.

His comment makes me wonder if Bungie’s announcement is actually just a semantic distraction from the fact that this new level system isn’t changing Destiny as much as people think.  Bungie has admitted that their light-based leveling system is confusing.  Information on the new XP-based system seems like a logical correction.  However, if light level is still “very important”, what impact will it have on on each player’s ability to prep themselves for endgame content? Assuming light level will continue to increase attack and defense ratings, and since acquisition ofgearis RNG based, players may reach level 40 but still find themselves caught in a persistent loop of running repetitive content in hopes of better drops.  Essentially, the XP-based level of 40 may be ultimately irrelevant, since without premium light-based gear, some level 40’s will be less effective than others.  I can’t help feeling suspicious that this may be part of Bungie’s same old sleight-of-hand marketing, the sort that carefully frames changes being made to the game in such a way that players assume they will be revolutionary improvements.

All of this is speculation, since no one knows how light levels will work within the new level cap. There could be other factors, like Bungie making better gear available through newbounty quests, etc, which would at least mitigate some of the random chance that has plagued the game up until now. Yet, in a worst case scenario, a level 40 player lacking gear with significant light-based stats might be the equivalent of 3 or 4 actual levels behind a friend who is pimped out to the hilt. Both players may be level 40, but in combat situations, the friend with basic gear may feel hamstrung, with lower attack and defense ratings. His or her only choice would be, again, to grind through limited content in hopes that RNG gods show mercy.

If this turns out to be the case, The Taken King will be under even more pressure to deliver extensive top-tier content, or else that same repetitious cycle will kick in again. During a coop session of Elder Scrolls Online recently, a friend and I had a long conversation about Destiny. He gave up playing after level 20, realizing he was going to be playing the same handful ofstrikesin order to acquire better loot. While he acknowledges that ESO also requires a search for better gear,he feels the two games go about this differently. In ESO the process is incidental, occurring naturally as players complete new quests in new environments. He summed it up by saying, Destiny’s entire purpose isn’t to quest and explore. It’s like a slot machine. The sole purpose for playing is to get loot, not to enjoy quests. And that’s where the game lost him.

Bungie devs do a lot of the talking in interviews about upcoming content, but most of the information I’ve heard aboutThe Taken Kingsmacks of Activision’s marketing department.  It seems cleverly crafted to be both vague and informative at once, and targets many of the loudest complaints aboutDestiny.  Yet, I can’t help feeling much of it is window dressing for a game with both potential and flaws in equal measure.

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Chris Graham

Chris Graham is a longtime video game junkie from the wilds of Eastern Canada. While he is now a fully certified “old dude gamer”, in his youth during the early eighties he spent embarrassing sums of money on quarter-munchers in some of the skeezy local arcades. He even ventured into disco roller skating rinks from time to time, since they carried upscale titles, but always swore to his friends that he was only there for the games, since, y’know, disco sucks! When he picked up his first console, the classic Atari 2600, he used a VCR to record game clips and study patterns in order to clear tough levels.

A former mobile DJ, as well as writing teacher and tutor, Chris has spent nearly 25 years crafting literary short fiction for periodicals and university journals. He became interested in writing about games and the game industry after immersing himself in social game communities. He’s written reviews and gameplay guides for both Xbox and Playstation games. His interests run the gamut, from shooters to sports and racing genres, although he spends the bulk of his time with RPGs.

Aye true the only time you will need raid gear really is to hit the currently known max of 310 which only the raid gear has and the exotic Touch of Malice. Awesome gun by the way, definitely going to be useful in the raid. Or the Black Spindle that you could of gotten yesterday from the daily heroic mission but that turned out to be a glitch. It apparently was suppose to drop at light level 290 rather then having 310 light level so they are going to fix that soon.

But yeah going to start working on an article about the raid.

Yeah i like the new system, you’re not just counting on drops from the raid, you can get them elsewhere but more likely in the raid, plus you’re not running multiple raids for upgrade materials.

BBL has a point, it’s still based heavily on RNG but you’re not restricted to running just the raid to get to the equivalent of lvl30 or 32. Think it’s a nice balance.

298 now, 2 raid items helped with that.

I much prefer the new system over the old. It was interesting to see how my light level changed throughout the raid which I started at 292 and now 300. You actually see much more progress in the system where before you basically saw just some yellowbar that really gave no idea how much stronger you were before you got some armor. And for the record the only hard gear to get before The Dark Below was The Vault of Glass gear, even to a point it was annoying. TDB they made the gear hilariously easy to get and then HoW just allowed you to make any gear to level 34 gear as long as you got the item from the level 34 Prison of Elders. Which after awhile became a rather annoying task of slogging through minions to get to a boss. So I would argue that leveling up before was easier then it is now because getting to level 32 or 34 was accomplish able in two to four weeks while getting to 30 took people a long time and hitting the cap here which so far seems to be a light level of 310, is going to take some time since the raid gear is the only gear that will give 31o light and even then it’s not guarenteed to be 310 only that it will be over 300. That’s just normal raid gear, we have yet to see the light level of the hard raid gear variant.

Also just to add if you see someone saying you need to be 290 for the raid, it’s BS. Only me and one other guy were slightly above 290 the rest were low to mid 280s and we killed the king. So yeah don’t believe that you have to be 290 to beat the raid.

UPDATE: AS of day 3, virtually everyone I cross paths with in the game world is level 40. In Bungie’s forums, no discussion of level ever takes place. It’s all about light and how much is required (290) for the raid. This pretty much closes the book on what exactly the change to XP leveling was: marketing.

I enjoy the game, but I hate Mothership Activision with a passion.

As I suspected, your level is a misleading number without effective meaning in the context of the game. The very first mission I loaded up in TTK had two options. One was level 25, which was grey, indicating “easy” (I was level 34). The other option wasn’t a level at all, but it required 250 “light” and was marked for me as “impossible”.

The only remaining question is, if I go to level 40 naturally, without grinding, will I have close to enough light to do an “impossible” mission? If I’m still in need of raid gear, then I guess we’ll have our answer.

Out of the gate, anyway, Destiny’s revamped story missions seem to suffer from some serious balance problems, putting me square in a kind of purgatory where I’m overleveled for the regular setting, but too low for anything more challenging.

Light is still important in destiny, and the new system removes the possibility of being stuck in a level for months waiting for 1 drop in a raid.

I totally agree with this. There was a definite progression on the Armor that felt MMO esque. The Weapons on the other hand…didn’t get that feeling at all….

Cas

This is basically what I was getting at. I believe you’re right, that your “XP” level won’t matter at all in the end; it will still come down to light level dictating how prepared you are for end-game.

I actually liked the light levelling system, as it was more gratifying to see your gain a piece of hard earned armour and shoot up to the next level in light than to grind and eventually see the number come up.

I imagine that light will simply mean now that your character will have bonuses based on light level including damage output, defence etc. I could easily see level being irrelevant barring the damage bonuses/penalties for high/low levels

It’ll go like everything else, the xp leveling up will be praised by some and piss off others they’ll complain, bungie will listen and change it to something new in the next dlc which in turn will be praised by the complainers and piss off the previous praisers, so then bungie will listen and in the next next dlc……..

I understand the change, not everyone wants to or has the time to get into a group so you can level to 40 by just playing the game buuuut the previous way forced you into a group which at the start kinda daunted me but i’ve met a good group of people and many others have too and for me it hasn’t been about destiny for the past 8-12 months, it’s mainly been about playing with a group of people, having a laugh, a challenge, helping others get that last bit of armour\shard to get lvl, 30,32 or 34. The light leveling made(maybe forced) that possible, instead of just grinding away by myself. when the wikichat was hopping we were running 20+ VOGs a week helping others get that gear.

Anticipation is another plus for the RNG\light based leveling, that 2-3 seconds after you killed Atheon, will it be that chest\head piece i need to get to lvl 30, ok in my case it was dejection most of the time, “aetheons ******* epilogue again!!!!”. I’m rambling now.

As for light level being important from what i understand its down to where you start leveling up from. Whatever level you are depending on the gear you got when TTK comes out, so if you maxed out already, you’ll start from 34.