I know this post is a bit late but with SRL just around the
corner in Destiny, I felt that I needed to make a post about this.
When the Festival of the Lost trailer for Destiny first came
out, I was honestly extremely excited. Not only is Halloween one of my favorite
times of the year but also the event looked extremely fun was going to be MY
first Festival of the Lost event ever in Destiny. Destiny is a game I play
quite often and since I had not participated in the previous Festival of the
Lost event I was really looking forward to this one.
So as a first time participant in the FOTL 2016 event in
Destiny, everything was “new” to me, including all the new items and masks
introduced in the trailer such as the lost prince mask, S-35 Jealousy Sparrow as
well as the awesome new Ghost-ghost. Even the older masks from last year were
still technically ‘new’ to me.
When the Festival of the Lost trailer was first released,
there was ONE thing that stood out to me the most. All of the new items
introduced seemed really cool but this one item caught my attention instantly
and I knew I wanted it. The problem was I had no idea what was in store for me
as the item in question was in fact the Ghost Ghost.
Now since I had never participated in the previous Festival
of the Lost event in Destiny, my assumption was that these novelty Halloween
items would be available through in game activities such as Strikes, Crucible,
trials and so on. I couldn’t have been further from the truth. I would have
been ok with the drop rates being abysmal even as long I could grind it out to
eventually and get the Ghost Ghost. An event of a similar nature that I remembered
was the valentine’s day Crimson Doubles event, where there were 2 exclusive
ghosts and the drop rate was so abysmal that Bungie eventually decided to give
everyone at least ONE free ghost as long as they at least participated in the
event, which I thought was extremely cool.
This time around however, this doesn’t seem to be the case
AT ALL. In fact things couldn’t be any worse. Not only are these cool items not
available as rewards or random drops, even worse they are stored behind a pay
wall.
Now mind you this isn’t ALL the items from the event as you
can actually get a whole bunch of stuff from completing special quests. There
is actually quite a bit of stuff you CAN get absolutely for free, just for
playing the game. You can get 6 free masks, 4 shaders, 2 emblems and a limited
use broom sparrow which I think is EXTREMLY cool and Bungie should really
consider making it permanent addition to the game. So for someone like me who
has never done a festival of the lost event previously, all that stuff for free
is actually not bad. And to top it off you get the chance of getting up to 3
Free Festival of the Lost Mystery bags, which contain some of the newer masks,
consumables as well as the novelty items such as the ghost-ghsot, deviled ghost
and jealousy sparrow. Comparing it to last year, where you only got ONE free box,
this year you technically get 3 times the loot for free.
The problem with all of this is that for players who are NOT
new to the festival of the lost, there isn’t much new stuff to get for free. I
think there is only ONE new mask as part of the free quests, the rest of the
new masks come from the loot boxes and even then they are mixed in with some of
the older masks from last year which is another problem in itself.
But I think the BIGGEST problem with the Festival of the
Lost this year is that the drop rates for some of the novelty items are so
abysmal that it makes it near impossible to obtain any of the cool new items
purely from the 3 free boxes alone. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule
and maybe people even got the firewolf mask from their FIRST box which is crazy
good luck. But the majority of players have not been so lucky, with many people
having to spend upwards of $40 just to obtain everything they wanted from the
boxes. THAT to me seems a bit excessive.The abysmal drop rates made it seem as though
Bungie/Activision were really encouraging players to buy additional boxes
because they couldn’t get what they wanted.
I am just going to come out and say that I personally don’t
have a problem with micro-transactions in Destiny as most of the items
available for purchase are purely cosmetic. That isn’t to say that there ISN’T
a problem concerning micro-transactions. I really don’t mind if people spend
money for ingame cosmetic items because at the end of the day that money is
just going to the devs to help support the game even more. My problem is when
we are essentially paying FOR RNG and you are basically playing the slot
machine with your hard earned money. I understand having RNG as part of natural
gameplay but implementing it into a paying experience of the game is scummy
move. Add to that, the actual drop rates for the items and you now have an
extremely toxic system in place.
When Bungie first introduced treasure boxes to the Eververse
Store it seemed ok and I mentioned in one of my other posts that as long as the
items available were mostly cosmetic and that players could obtain these boxes
with natural gameplay it wouldn’t be a problem and that was the case with the
April Update. You could earn 3 Treasure boxes on a weekly basis without having
to spend a single cent on the Store. Now if you WISHED to get additonal boxes
at a faster rate and buy them, that was totally up to you, but at least there
were multiple ways in which you could also obtain these items ingame in recurring
weekly events. This was NOT the case with the Festival of the Lost Mystery
boxes where you can only earn a total of 3, IF you had three characters. The
quest didn’t even reset on the second week of the event, which wouldn’t be bad
if the drop rates for the novelty items wasn’t so bad to being with.
I wouldn’t have minded the same drop rates if at LEAST the
items were rewards for activities in Destiny. Activities such as how we
obtained the trials emblem or the candlelight Shader. I think those items were
placed in extremely well. I would have no problem trying to grind out the
activities in order to get the item I wanted, but the way it was implemented
all but guaranteed that I would have to pay for the items I wanted.
I think going forward Bungie as well as Activision really
need to re-evaluate how these future events will be implemented. The trailer
made it seem like I would be able to do multiple quests to get various items
when in fact there were really only 2 quests that I could do only a total of 3
times(once on each character), which is absolutely strange considering Bungie
made this a 2 WEEK event. The quests only took me about an hour on each
character, that’s a total of 3 hours of gameplay, and then what? What if I
didn’t get the items I wanted from those 3 boxes? I now have to pay for them?
Fine but EVEN AFTER paying, I’m not guaranteed to get the items? I think that’s
taking it a bit far.
I ended up opening 4 Festival of the Lost boxes on the first
week, my three free ones from the quest, as well as one more that I bought with
my free silver from Taken King. And while I did get luckier than most in those
4 FOTL boxes that I opened, I still didn’t get the one item I really wanted.
Part of me wanted to spend a bit more on boxes JUST to see if I can get it and
the other part of me wanted to boycott the whole thing. Below is a video of me
opening my 4 boxes.
Let me know your thoughts on the Festival of the Lost 2016
for Destiny, if you guys spent silver, or got anything cool or didn’t get some
of the items you wanted. Also what can Bungie do differently for future events
such as the Sparrow Racing League coming up soon.
