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.