 Hey everyone, my last video was about matchmaking and social systems in Destiny 2. I went through all the long running problems that arise from their bad matchmaking and briefly mentioned how few Destiny and Destiny 2 players have completed a raid. Since that recording I've done some of the last wish raid and did a bit more googling on exactly how many players have completed end game activities and all that brought me to this question. Why does so few players raid in Destiny? Now there are some answers that seem obvious that we'll briefly touch on but there's also the less obvious reasons that point to flaws in the design of the gameplay itself in other areas. Destiny 2's raids are the very best content that Bungie has ever created as a studio and I stand by my assertion that they are the very best co-op content ever to appear on console. And that means that every time a player leaves without raiding they fail to get full value from their purchase and Bungie fail to put their best foot forward for their customers. I'm gonna fix this problem for Bungie. First things first. Before we get to the less obvious problems and fixes I think we should probably start with the most glaring and easily fixed issues standing between players and the raids. The complete lack of any in-game LFG as well as no way for players to really meet each other within the game. The tower has always been called Destiny's social space but let's be honest here man, there is zero socialization going on. When a player entered one of the capital cities in WoW they are completely flooded with area and trade chat. Players would go to the capital cities to hang out. Was some of that chat toxic? Yes. Was much of it actually fine? Yes. That's the nature of socializing with other people. Bungie has no text chat in social spaces. The extent of being social is emoting at someone or jumping up and down or kicking a ball at them for a few seconds. What this means is that there is almost nowhere to meet a player that you might get along with. Let's go to the console market instead. Elder Scrolls Online has a local chat feature in the cities. When you get near players you can hear them talking. This means that players can actually meet like-minded people. The only thing that pushes you to meet people in Destiny 2 is their gameplay but that's a piss poor way to meet others. Just because someone is good at shooting things doesn't mean I'll get along with them. Simply adding text and offed out area chat to the tower would go a long way towards letting people meet inside the game. A text chat would probably be best because then Bungie can have filters to cut down a toxic behavior and have a written record they can use to punish people who are reported for bad behavior. Either way, the lack of any way to meet people in the game is one of the main reasons the game feels like a solo experience with human-controlled NPCs running around. Seeing a player on the patrol map doesn't feel like you met someone. The Xbox or PS4 messaging systems are clunky. They require backing out several menus, correctly finding that person and spelling their name right, then going through a couple more menus and sending the message. And then, if you get messages, you're only notified that you received a message. They've got to back out a couple of menus to even read it. Sending people random party invites isn't a solution either because I don't have my headset on most of the time and I'm not interested in speaking to someone until I know they are in a douche. Are there risks and difficult design decisions to be made? Yes, of course. Playing with other people is always a small risk, but Destiny wants to get all of its cool gameplay behind grouping with five others. All the lack of social features in the game is done is abdicate any responsibility on the studio's part. They've just let others deal with any negatives, presumably so they can say, Oh, you had a shitty interaction? That's a shame. Good thing it had nothing to do with us. It's a cop-out. And in my opinion, the sole reason there aren't any actual social features in the game. But let's move beyond these features, okay? Do they make it easier to meet people? Absolutely. Are they slightly risky for Bungie? Sure, I guess. They want to have an all-ages rating and almost certainly are nervous about exposing young kids to the voices of strangers. Fine. Even though the lack of those features is one of the reasons social engagement is dismally low, there is at least a compelling argument for their exclusion. What can't be argued with is that the lack of an in-game LFG is completely inexcusable. There is literally zero compelling argument against it. Having to have an impossible-to-miss menu option for finding a group is the main social failure of the game. Right now, the Destiny 2 LFG is spread across multiple different websites of varying quality and population. If a player doesn't know they exist, they are totally fucked and will never play any end-game activity. If they only know about the Bungie app, their options are severely limited. Destiny's LFG is on Bungie.net, Destiny LFG, The 100.io, and several other smaller sites. There are at least five different places I know of that players are posting looking for others. It is insanely inefficient and just absurdly stupid. Making an in-game LFG right on the director that players could post detailed group listings on would immediately bring the entire player population onto one list where everyone can see it. Players who hadn't rated would see that floating there every single day and eventually the odds of them clicking it and signing up for a game are very high. Players of magnitude higher than them leaving the game, googling for Destiny LFG sites, picking one, creating an account, verifying that account, figure out how the site works, scrolling through the listings, signing up for a listing, and then not getting an invite and getting pissed off and giving up. A robust, fully functioning LFG would considerably lower the barrier for entry. That simple, tried and tested feature would immediately raise the percentage of people who have tried to raid. And the better the feature, the more successful it would be. It should filter for mics. If a mic isn't working, you can't sign up for a game that requires mics in the listing. It can draw from the platforms to make sure the ages line up with listings requirements. It would allow for a detailed notes section. It's a tool that allows players to find each other without actually having to leave the game. It is totally fucking mind-blowing that it's not in the game already. Completely inexcusable and probably the single most important factor in the dismal rates of people who have even tried to raid. The continued obstinance of Bungie and failing to deliver this feature is drastically hurting their franchise. It's another example of Bungie not wanting the responsibility of player interaction. They like to harp on how social the game is, push players to get a fireteam, but then abdicate any responsibility for providing players with a platform for grouping within the game itself. That's the main reason so few people have tried raids, but it isn't the reason so few people have completed raids. That comes down to the game design itself. A third way. Alright, that's the stuff that's completely easy to see and fix. I remain totally salty and annoyed that Bungie refuses to do anything about the total lack of social features in their supposedly social game, but it is what it is. But there's something that contributes even more to the lack of raid completions across the franchise. And that's the fact that raiding is, functionally, a completely different game. Players who raid aren't playing Destiny 2 or Destiny, but a little harder. They are playing, quote unquote, Destiny Raids, an entirely different game that expects completely different things from a player and has a very high bar for entry. Let's begin by imagining a player who never played Destiny 1 and has never played any kind of MMO that has raids in it. We don't need to stretch our imagination for this. Destiny is and always has been first and foremost a big budget, AAA FPS game with a huge marketing campaign aimed at regular casual consumers. Now, this person, let's say their main FPS experience is Call of Duty campaigns. That player can turn on Destiny 2, boot it up to play that campaign and have no issues at all. Are there some different mechanics? Sure, a couple I suppose. The player needs to learn to use their super and... Yeah, that's actually basically it. The experience of playing Destiny or Destiny 2 is easily familiar to anyone who has played another FPS campaign. As that player goes through the campaign, the open world stuff and even the strikes, they are almost never asked to do anything they haven't done in another FPS game before. You shoot ads, you throw grenades, you shoot bosses. That's it. Now, let's say that player very much loves the gunplay of Destiny. The mechanics and look is won them over and they decided like to see the raids everyone's talking so much about. And so he goes on LFG and gets into a group for the last wish. He's heard you get your third super from the first boss. How much different can it be? And then the person who posted the group starts talking. Okay, see those symbols? All right, we're gonna split into three groups of two. Each group is gonna have to find and run to a plate with those symbols. Then you stand on the plate, but only one third of the plate. And as those black things spawn, you run to the other third. Then after a while, the boss might come and try to shoot you. You just shoot her and stay on the correct third of your plate. All right, then after a while, a knight is gonna spawn. Kill that knight. Once that knight's killed, make sure everyone else has killed their knight. If they haven't, go help them. After that, we all run to the middle and shoot the boss. But after a while, the boss will do this thing. You'll know because the bottom left of your screen, there'll be a small little text notice about preparing some weapon or whatever. Well, once that happens, you keep shooting her for a bit, but there'll be six doors that open. You're going to go into the bottom middle door. No, the bottom middle door. Except about 30% of the time, there'll only be two doors in the bottom. If that happens, you're going to go into the top right door. And then once in a while, there'll only be one door in the bottom. If that happens, you go into the second to last door on the top right. But don't worry, that only happens every so often. Then after that, we jump out and do the same thing three more times. Then we repeat. Simple. Oh, and don't die or step on the incorrect symbol plate or fail to kill your knight or go into the incorrect door because if you do, you basically waste five other people's time and efforts. So be perfect, okay? Cool. You're going to be the kissing snake symbol. Don't fuck it up, asshole. Now, I'm not saying the raid encounters are too hard. In fact, the only thing too hard is that the light level is annoyingly high right now. So there's always someone in the group who gets killed by thralls. That's not the problem. The problem is Bungie does nothing to prepare players for what they're going to encounter in the raids. And this has only gotten worse over time. You see, vanilla Destiny players' first two raids were Vault of Glass and Crota. Those raids were immeasurably mechanically simpler than everything that has come since. And that's understandable because people like me who've been raiding since vanilla Destiny need to continually have the difficulty and complexity amped up to prevent us from getting bored. Just shooting the Templar after someone bops him with a shield isn't enough anymore. But if someone's first raid was King's Fall, that is a much more difficult nut to crack. Vault of Glass was simple enough mechanically so that even though it was considerably more complex in the regular gameplay, it was still in the ballpark. If someone's first raid experience is Cali in The Last Wish, they have had absolutely no introduction to any of these mechanics beyond occasionally being asked to stand on a plate to begin an encounter. And even that, only once or twice in their gameplay. You can literally play Destiny 2 for hundreds of hours without encountering any of the mechanics you'll need to be familiar with in the raids. Every raid from King's Fall on has been far too hard for someone who has never raided before. And again, it's understandable and necessary that the raids continue getting more complex. Still, this problem has now existed for several years and Bungie has failed to address it so I'm gonna fix the problem for them. How to prepare players for raiding. Because Destiny's best content is their raids and very few people raid, Bungie has a serious problem that needs fixing. Luckily, a relatively simple couple of changes can completely solve the issue and ensure that every player is exposed to raid mechanics slowly in a lower stress environment. I've been thinking about this for a couple of years now and I've come up with several different ways it could be tackled. I originally wanted Bungie to include raid-type mechanics within the campaign but decided against that because I believe that Bungie rightly doesn't want to risk making it too hard for any player to complete. Bungie needs to make certain that even an eight-year-old who gets the game for Christmas can have a good time with the campaign. I moved on to wanting a completely different three-man activity that would be in-between raids and strikes in mechanical difficulty. But after seeing just how much Bungie struggles to provide value, I quickly abandoned that idea as impractical and impossible. It was only in the last couple of months that it came up with the perfect solution. It doesn't require an entirely new mode. It doesn't require making campaign missions or strikes considerably more complex and it reuses existing assets. It's basically an idea Taylor made for Bungie. The one-man raid. As we've gone over, Bungie currently devotes a significant amount of resources developing their raids only to see a tiny fraction of players even try them, much less complete them. I have to imagine that's very frustrating and must have led them to consider making the raids much easier. But of course, that would never fly because experienced raiders would lose their shit if the next one was as simple as Crota's End. So the quite obvious solution? There should be five versions of each raid that unlock over time. Currently, we've only had three. We would have normal, hard, and challenge mode in D1. In D2, we just get normal and hard. But my idea goes like this and we'll use the last wish as an example, but this works for any raid. Bungie would release the raid just as they do now. For two weeks only, the normal version of the raid would be available, but at week three, there would be a new node to land on, the solo raid encounter. This version of the raid would keep as many mechanics as possible but be able to be played solo and provide normal, weekly milestone rewards, not raid rewards. So on the third Tuesday after the last wish released, a milestone would be to defeat Callie. This new solo Callie would have players enter and see only one symbol floating above her head. There'd be a brief tool tip explaining exactly what's required. Activate corresponding plate. That's enough. No other information is needed. Players know to kill things and they know not to stand on bombs. They'd summon the knight, kill it, and damage boss and center would flash on screen. Players would damage the boss until she did her white mechanic, at which point a door would open and the player would go in and repeat three times until she died. You've now taught in a low stress, solo environment, all of the mechanics needed to not feel like a lead in weight on a raid team. Each week, another encounter would open up like this. After each boss was defeated, there would be a simplified, match made three man version of the raid. Every boss would have less phases than normal but require more mechanics than the solo version. Mechanics that were particularly hard would be pulled out but either way, players are now actually completing raid mechanics in a low stress environment and because they are so cool, you would instantly explode the amount of players who want to do the real thing and get the rewards. Some raid encounters would be easier than others but almost every single raid encounter in Destiny 2 could be adjusted like this. Argos could be almost exactly the same except the skulls could be used one at a time instead of three at a time to bring down the shield. Calus could have the player transported into the void where they'd see one symbol on Calus's forehead before needing to shoot skulls and a scion. Then they'd be transported out and would have to melee the scion that corresponded to the symbol they saw before going to the plates and doing damage. Baths could require players to rotate through all four plates with each rotation alone stopping the chain before doing the damage phase exactly as it is. Gardens could have players alternate between shooting the flower with a prism and then having to go down and sneak to that flower to get the spores for the buff needed to kill a single dog. Gauntlet could just require the platforming and killing ads parts. I could do this for almost every raid encounter in the franchise's history and over time, as more and more players became familiar with these mechanics in a low stress, solo or three man environment, they could start making their way into the game in other places and the raids themselves could get even more complex. Finally, with players properly trained and comfortable, the only mechanics they will not have been exposed to are those that rely on team communication. And that's the experience players would still need to master in the six man raids. Not only does this add value to tens of thousands of players who don't raid, not only does it make use of all the content Bungie has created for as many people as possible, it fully trains the players on every mechanic needed in a raid other than team communication. But if players only had to learn communication and one or two other mechanics instead of basically learning everything new with a group of five strangers who will fail the encounter if they mess up, I'm confident thousands more players would feel comfortable signing up to raid groups. Years ago, when players saw videos of Vault of Glass, they almost certainly thought to themselves, oh, I can do that. Players who maybe aren't super confident and have watched tutorials of Shiro or Kali, those encounters are like nothing they've ever tried in a shooter. They are almost certainly alienating significant portions of the player base because Bungie has done nothing to prepare them for what to expect inside their six man, several hour long, high pressure raid environments. It's an unfair ask of players who've never raided before. This one new activity that uses nothing other than existing raid assets and mechanics not only gives solo players a cool new activity, it could feature different modifiers and become another excellent end game addition for everyone, experienced raiders and not. And after this change, the only reason people wouldn't raid would be because they either didn't like it or the lack of end game social features. Not because the mechanics themselves are so foreign and off-putting and the amount of people who are totally unprepared in LFG groups would go down making the LFG raid experience smoother and more enjoyable. Sailing because players just can't get their heads around mechanics is frustrating. And that happens because for newer raiders it takes a long time for these things to become intuitive. People who've raided can walk into a new raid and instantly get an idea of what's expected of them. Players who've never done a raid are coming in completely blind with no experience that's even remotely related anywhere else in the game. This is a win, win, win. Raiders get another fun activity and more players in LFG. Bungie gets happier solo players and less wasted resources and solo players who don't want to raid get to explore and play the game's best content in a low stress solo environment. And I'm positive it can't be all that hard to implement considering the vast majority of encounters would only need very small changes, if any at all. Bungie really needs to think long and hard about how to get more people into their raids and not to toot my own horn here. I don't think they'll come up with a better idea than this. What do you guys think? All right, I'll see you next time. Bye.