Destiny 2 Raid Ideation - Player Experience

I took a pretty long break from posting things here, as I needed to focus on my schoolwork. Now I'm coming back to finish what I started. Plus, I really like toying around with this overall idea.

This time I'll be focusing less on 'ideas' and more on 'feeling'. Here are the big ticket questions I'm going to consider in this post:

1. What should players expect from this raid?

2. How should encounters make players feel?

3. Does this raid work for PUGs (pick-up-groups)?

1. What should players expect from this raid?

I wanted to avoid providing my own anecdotal answer for this question, so I went to the first place I think anyone would. Google. If you search "what to expect from destiny 2 raids" — pretty on the nose, I know — the first result is a Reddit post from r/DestinyTheGame, titled:

"Raiding 101 in Destiny 2 for New Players, and surviving the LFG experience."

Conveniently, the first thing this post offers is what the experience is like. These are broken up into paragraphs, each prefaced by a certain aspect of raiding. Raids are hard, they need communication, they take time, they're rewarding, etc. Some are objective; raids are, typically, much harder than other Destiny content, barring Grandmaster Nightfalls. Some are not; raiding is not always fun (see people requirement, and LFG toxicity). So it seems the raiding experience is mainly up to the objective facts of the raid environment, and then what the player decides to make out of their attempt.

From that, I can say with confidence that a player should expect five guarantees from The Emperor's Tomb. Players should expect the raid to

• be difficult;

• take time;

• require a team;

• have thematically unique rewards;

• be LFG completable.

These are generally speaking true for all of the existing and vaulted Destiny 2 raids. I can think of few exceptions, and almost every time players only arrive at those expectations after attempting the raid or clearing it several times. For example, after clearing Eater of Worlds two or more times, most players have the expectation that an Eater of Worlds attempt will be easy, quick, and LFG completable. However, I've been involved in too many raid attempts that failed because of these expectations being wrongly attributed to the raid by inexperienced players who overestimate the ease, brevity, and simplicity of the encounters within.

So, going from this, the raid should appear more difficult and more time consuming than the majority of other Destiny 2 content, even after players have reached the power delta cap. This should not be to the point of tedium, but rather combatant difficulty, encounter difficulty (typically through combatants, and not mechanics), and raid scale. I'll define those three things here:

• Combatant difficulty - enemies in the raid should be as lethal (or more lethal) than nightfall enemies at a comparable power delta

• Encounter difficulty - encounters should preserve some level of difficulty, either in combatant challenge or mechanics execution, such that repeatedly clearing the encounter and mastering its mechanics does not completely trivialize it

• Raid scale - the raid should contain enough encounters of appropriate length such that players can expect to spend, on average, between at least 45 minutes to two hours* on a successful raid clear

* On the low end, 45 minutes is a pretty palatable time for repeated raid attempts — it's the rough average amount of time I would expect experienced raiders to spend clearing the raid. On the high end, two hours is within reason for most LFG attempts and blind attempts (both assuming post-Contest modifier).

2. How should encounters make players feel?

There are three encounters in The Emperor's Tomb, each having a specific feel and environment while building on the previous encounters' mechanics and difficulty. I haven't posted anything for encounters two or three, but I'll go into them a little here.

The goal of this raid is to be imposing and mysterious. Players should feel compelled to explore the raid space, and should be rewarded with secret chests or alternate routes.

To this end, the first encounter is an enormous labyrinth. Players have to navigate a combatant-patrolled maze of high, sheer stone walls while using their buff roles (Endurance, Agility, and Wisdom) to handle these patrols. Twists and turns will make players get lost on initial attempts, much like Gorgon's Labyrinth and Desolation, but eventually players will remember which turns to take and what landmarks (encounter spaces) mark the right pathway. This sets the raid up as vast, mysterious, and imposing. It also teaches the role mechanics to players, which sets up the foundation for encounters two and three. Since this encounter focuses primarily on traversal and combat, its length is mostly determined by the encounter space itself. Since players will be constantly moving and exploring, with plenty of enemies to kill, the encounter should avoid feeling tedious on repeated attempts after Contest where players are at or above the encounter's power level. This is in direct contrast to Crown of Sorrow's opening encounter, with hard time-gates and plenty of down-time between action when players were at or above the power level.

The second encounter takes place after a fall down through the center of the labyrinth. Players slide down a tube and land on a much lower, wide-open cavern floor with moody ambient lighting and light fog. This expands the scope of the raid greatly, as even a short fall can convey lots of distance-traveled to players. Across the flat expanse of the cave floor, players see a large, ancient looking coliseum. The distance to the coliseum isn't egregious, but it gives players enough space to breathe between encounters and serves as a small traversal section with light combat. Players could also look up, away from the coliseum, and see the outer wall of the labyrinth atop the cliff they descended.

To enter the coliseum, players reacquire roles from the same statues as in the last encounter. The coliseum is two-tiered, with a large Cabal gladiator in the middle wielding an axe and a chain. I won't go into too much detail, but this encounter will require players to split into two teams of three, each with an Endurance, Agility, and Wisdom player. This encounter is high-energy, high-danger, and players should feel that. The boss can attack both tiers of the coliseum with telegraphed attacks from his axe or chain, and damage phases can only start after a certain condition is met. Since the first encounter introduces the major mechanic of Endurance players (Vulnerable state on enemies), I want the second encounter to introduce the major role of Agility players.

The third encounter should feel like a culmination of everything before, with an additional mechanic. Players fight in a freeform arena in a grand [REDACTED] hidden behind the coliseum, against the Vex Mind controlling the Cabal simulations. This should be the payoff to the mysterious feelings brought about by the raid, the setting, and why Vex are allied with and leading Cabal forces. The new mechanic adds something for Wisdom players, and good coordination is required to succeed. Unlike the previous encounter, six players with two of each role will be able to provide support to same-role players, so the combatant challenge is raised in response to the more lax nature of a six-man environment. Leading up the the damage phase, players fight waves of combatant groups similar to the patrols in the first encounter or the packs in the second encounter. When a sufficient number of these packs have been defeated, and Wisdom players have fulfilled their new mechanic, the boss begins channeling (similar to Calus' blinding glow in Leviathan, or Valus Ca'uor's purple catcher's mitt). To begin DPS, each player must interact with their specific role's mechanic during the boss' channeling time. This is a high-intensity encounter much like the second, but with more comradery and an additional mechanic to worry about. Players should feel energized, alert, and engaged during this encounter — not stressed. To me, the flow of Deep Stone Crypt's Descent encounter is a pretty good representation of how this encounter should feel.

3. Does this raid work for PUGs (pick-up-groups)?

I think it would. Obviously I don't have access to a huge sample size to poll, or internal testers to provide feedback, or even other designers to bounce my ideas off of. Here's why I think this raid would work in an LFG environment.

Raid roles are flexible. There are three roles in total, and all three are based around a core of engaging combatants with guns. They're simple to understand, but provide interesting ways for teams to engage combatants. Since there are two of each role, outside of the second encounter players can rely on their teammates for help. In the second encounter, this is a bit more restricted, but most players would be able to perform the Endurance and Agility roles at adequate levels to clear the encounter.

There are only three encounters. This raid would be on the lower end of large-raid time commitments, and should have fewer frustrating areas as design would be focused on refining three distinct roles between three encounters.

The raid focuses on combatant difficulty over mechanical difficulty. As I mentioned earlier, the mechanics in this raid are directly tied to player roles. These roles aren't very hard to understand and can be explained with examples from traditional RPG or MMO character archetypes (Tank, DPS, Healer). This should lower the gulf of evaluation and execution for players, as they will intuitively know what their role should do and what success for their role looks like: a good Tank distracts enemies and gets up in their faces, a good DPS defeats problematic combatants and maximizes damage output, and a good Healer keeps the party alive.

NEGATIVE:

Failure in an encounter can be directly linked back to a specific role and/or player. This is a tricky one for me, and I don't think it's easy to avoid. Assigning blame for failure often comes hand in hand with toxic experiences, and frustration can cause players to lash out at their teammates. It's hard to avoid this, especially in this case where mess-ups would be relatively obvious. On the flip side, other raids didn't really handle this problem either. In Vault of Glass, if you have the aegis you're expected to use it properly. In Scourge of the Past, whoever's on map duty is expected to have the right callouts. There are plenty of examples in previous raids where players are directly responsible for specific tasks, and failure on the part of that player is obvious to the group. I think this is something that just comes with the raiding experience, and I can't conceptualize a solution that doesn't jeopardize design in some way.

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I used a splash from Deep Stone Crypt as the icon for this post because it captures something I think we all feel when we think about raiding. It's not what we feel during, necessarily, as that's often dependent on our team and how everyone's day has gone. Rather, it's that feeling we get when we tell our friend who's new to the game about this cool thing you can do when you reach max power; this cool place you can go and conquer with five others, where you can get epic loot and explore areas unlike any others in the game. It's this feeling of childlike wonder and exuberance that I find hard to capture in words. That's how that image makes me feel, when I think back on the raid reveal and going through it blind for the first time with my friends, reaching Atraks-1 and then going into space. It's an experience I've never gotten anywhere else, and I want to capture those same feelings with The Emperor's Tomb.

As always, thanks for reading. I'll try to post a write-up for encounter two soon.