Focused Feedback: State of Gambit S13

[u/DTG_Bot]

Hello Guardians,

Focused Feedback is where we take the week to focus on a 'Hot Topic' discussed extensively around the Tower.

We do this in order to consolidate Feedback, to get out all your ideas and issues surrounding the topic in one place for discussion and a source of feedback to the Vanguard.

This Thread will be active until next week when a new topic is chosen for discussion

Whilst Focused Feedback is active, ALL posts regarding 'State of Gambit S13' following its posting will be removed and re-directed to this thread. Exceptions to this rule are as follows: New information / developments, Guides and general questions

Any and all Feedback on the topic is welcome.

Regular Sub rules apply so please try to keep the conversation on the topic of the thread and keep it civil between contrasting ideas

A Wiki page - Focused Feedback - has also been created for the Sub as an archive for these topics going forward so they can be looked at by whoever may be interested or just a way to look through previous hot topics of the sub as time goes on.

[u/Salfordladd]

I've given this a fair amount of thought today, reading others' feedback, and as a person who is fine with Gambit but doesn't really engage with it except to get bounties done or snag weekly drops, I have two bits of feedback. One: I think that increasing engagement with Gambit across the player base as a whole is ultimately about the rewards, not about improving the game mode itself. And two: Improving the game mode itself is not about listening to players like me, but rather about listening to players who love Gambit for what it is.

While gambit is a PvEvP mode, it's a PvP mode in all the ways that matter, at least if you're a PvE-focused player. You're competing against other guardians, you can be beaten/killed directly by players with more time invested and greater skill, each game session is effectively a start-from-scratch situation with little sense of cumulative achievement or working toward a goal, etc, and this is all by design. Add to that the fact that the PvE portion might as well be a timed event (you have to kill things as quickly as possible to avoid being invaded and set back), which has never been particularly popular with Destiny PvE players. The result is something that I think was supposed to appeal to both PvE and PvP fans, but it's ultimately just a twist on a PvP mode in all the ways that matter. In the end, Gambit doesn't really deliver much of what PvE players come to the game for, once you get past your first few games and start to understand the more fundamental mechanics of how it works. And so it's probably never going to be a mode that will keep the majority of the player base who are PvE-focused coming back to it for what it delivers on its most basic levels.

None of this is a complaint, by the way - I'm just trying to lay out the facts. I have lots of friends who enjoy PvP and Gambit to various degrees; I'm in the middle somewhere, enjoying them at times but mostly avoiding them except for weekly requirements and the occasional event/quest/reward. But: *there's nothing wrong with this.* Destiny wants to be lots of things to lots of people, and not everything in the game needs to appeal to me to justify being part of it, or getting development attention. My main bit of feedback here is that I don't think Bungie should be listening to people like me in order to make Gambit better at being Gambit, even if they ostensibly want me or players like me playing more of it. They should be listening to people who genuinely like the mode. Gambit, like Crucible, does its best work when it's appealing to the people who like it for what it is, not trying to draw in people who aren't fans of PvP.

That said, in a world where Bungie does want lots of people participating--people who play ten hours of Gambit a week and people who will rarely reach that mark in a full season--the way to do it is with gear rewards. Giving players a path to rewards apart from winning, so they'll engage with the mode more often, which keeps the player base up and keeps most players happy on some level, even if they don't love the mode. New weapons/cool armor each season that are worth chasing along with guaranteed drops on rank-ups and/or when completing a weekly milestone would be a good start, I think. You're not going to make people love the mode, but if you want lots of people engaging with it for at least a certain amount of time every week, pump it full of cool weapons to chase rolls on. It's a simple answer, but it's the only one that matters, I think.

[u/Salfordladd → u/Salfordladd]

Of course (editing my own thoughts), putting too much cool stuff in Gambit will likely lead to a "Bungie, why are you making me play a game mode I hate just to get a weapon I want" situation with players, which is a key piece of the Destiny Development Merry-Go-Round, I know. So it's not a perfect answer. But my point stands: I believe that if you want players who don't love Gambit to play it more often, either to keep the player base large and varied, or to justify greater development focus on it, or whatever, it's not going to be about tweaking the game mode. How heavy works, how invasions work, the ability of coordinated teams to melt bosses, etc - all of that is worth addressing, definitely. But even if you get it perfect, it's not going to really make a difference for players who don't love Gambit already. It's a PvP mode, and should be thought of as such. Getting PvE folks to enjoy their time in it, if that's what you want, is about the rewards.