Things That Phantasy Star Online Had That Destiny 2 Still Inexplicably Doesn't Have

Bungie won't admit it, but Destiny is obviously a direct sequel to Sonic Team's 2000 Dreamcast hit, Phantasy Star Online (see reddit user KytorIndustries' conclusive infographic from 2014). So, with Destiny 2 out, it's important to look back at the features of Destiny's predecessor that still, for no reason at all, aren't in Destiny.

Feed-able, Evolve-able Shoulder-Bots

Destiny had a good start with retaining the shoulder bots from PSO, but they were heavily simplified. You couldn't feed them any of your unwanted trash items, and they almost never evolved into something different. There was that one time they all evolved from Peter Dinklage into Nolan North, but that only happened once.

In Phantasy Star Online, your shoulder-bot could evolve at least twice, and if you fed it the exact right things on the exact right character, they'd evolve into rare forms. And if you messed up by feeding it just one wrong item, you'd have to completely start over on a new one! How does Destiny not have this yet? Okay, maybe not the last part, but the rest of it, for sure.

Look at those cute li’l guys! They’d look cooler if I hadn’t accidentally fed them a monomate

Body Proportion Sliders

Phantasy Star Online (2000) had more body-type inclusivity in its character creation than Destiny (2014). I could be the tall, skinny, effeminate elf-boy in high heels that I'd always dreamed of being, or I could be the average height, average weight, boring man (that just now at the age of 27 worked up the courage to wear a single decorative ring) that I actually am.

In Destiny, all I can be is very fit and very boring. Everyone has the same body, which I guess makes sense in a sci-fi world that you just know has been through at least one or two troublesome eugenics phases in its lifetime, but come on.

I don’t have a joke for this. This was just really great.

Dual Wielding

What kind of self-respecting power fantasy doesn't have dual wielding? Like, what's even the point? One handcannon? One sword? Why even bother?

Chairs

No one likes sitting on the ground. It's a fact. It's hard and it's not ergonomic and there are bugs there. PSO had floating chairs that ballooned out from your character's behind like a comfortable airbag protecting you from a butt-on collision with the nasty ground. Somehow, this hasn’t become an industry standard.

Groundbreaking.

Enemy-Specific Rare Drops & Rare Enemies

Okay, this one is sort of real. Certain rare weapons in PSO would only drop from particular creatures, so you could essentially focus-farm for specific loot by doing missions that contained a lot of the enemy type that you needed.

It's nice to just be able to do whatever you want and have the same loot drops in Destiny, I guess, but unique enemy drop tables allow for a lot of minor goals to work toward, which helped give each play session at endgame a greater, more specific purpose.

On top of that, there were rare versions of enemies that then on top of that had a chance to drop even rarer loot! Cascades of delicious RNG fountains all the way down!

Here, I'll even help you out on this one: so you've got Hobgoblins in Destiny, right? Well, okay, so just put in a 1-in-1,000 chance that a Hobgoblin will instead spawn as a Cobgoblin; instead of a creative and clever sci-fi interpretation of a classic fantasy monster that pays tasteful homage to the roots of the genre itself, it'll be a big ear of corn. And it'll have a 1-in-100 chance of dropping a really good corn gun or something.

That one's free, Bungie. But I am available for paid consultation.

I am also available for art commissions

A Completely Unexplained Type-ID System that Determines What Drops Your Character Gets

When you created a character in Phantasy Star Online, your character would be randomly assigned a color-based Type-ID. This would put a cool little colored emblem on your character and would do apparently nothing else.

Oh, wait, actually it wasn't random at all, it was based on your character's name, and it had a huge effect on the types of equipment that would drop for your character.

So despite how pumped I was that my magic-wielding Fomar character got the "Skyly" Type-ID (who doesn't love sky blue, come on), it turned out that my sweet blue emblem was the reason that I found almost exclusively swords that I couldn't use on that character.

It was fun because there was no way to know that it did anything unless you read about it online, and it was unchangeable once your character was made. It encouraged trading with other people because everyone got different drops that their character couldn’t use! I cannot fathom why Destiny would fail to include such a scrutable, intuitive, and player-friendly system.

So, Bungie, we get it. You want to stand out from your predecessors and do new things. That makes sense. But there's no reason to abandon so many great features from the game that you definitely, definitely based your game on, despite the fact that you told my friend who visited your office otherwise.

Except, maybe, the Type-IDs. You can abandon that one.

Cognitive Dissonance & Discovery in the Information Age

With Destiny 2’s recent release, I’m reminded of the infamous “Loot Cave” from the original Destiny. For those who managed to avoid the tales of this most bountiful cornucopia, the loot cave was a particular cave in Destiny that spawned enemies indefinitely. These enemies also dropped loot... indefinitely.

As soon as this was discovered by the community, the cave became incredibly popular— people would spend hours standing still and shooting into the cave. It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t immersive, it wasn’t fun, but it was efficient. And that’s all that mattered.

Loot cave image from Polygon.com.

Despite what every person who argues about video games online would like to think, gamers have a wide variety of tastes when it comes to games. Even those who enjoy the same genre have different reasons for it— different motivations from which they derive their enjoyment.

Quantic Foundry has an excellent survey, the Gamer Motivation Profile, that goes into this in detail, asking questions about your habits in the games you play and using those answers to derive an estimation of the motivations behind your preferences.

How do these motivations relate to Destiny’s loot cave? The loot cave serves as the perfect example of these motivations being, for a portion of players, completely overridden.

Especially in online games, this phenomenon is not a new one. Regardless of one’s strongest motivating factor in a game, many find themselves pulled in by the siren’s call of the great and powerful human motivation: efficiency. Look through the forums of any MMO and you’ll find the woes of people who feel “forced” to do an activity that doesn’t align with their motivations because it’s a more efficient way to progress.

The drive for efficiency is incredibly powerful. As evidenced in Destiny’s loot cave, it’s even powerful enough to drive players away from the aspects of a game that they enjoy in favor of a mindless grind.

On a personal level, the drive for efficiency has led me to sabotage my own enjoyment of many games. My most driving motivation is discovery. Quantic Foundry describes discovery best in their survey:

“Gamers who score high on Discovery are constantly asking “What if?” For them, game worlds are fascinating contraptions to open up and tinker with. In an MMO, they might swim out to the edge of the ocean to see what happens. In MineCraft, they might experiment with whether crafting outcomes differ by the time of day or proximity to zombies.”

That pretty much describes me to a T— I’m not as original as I thought I was! But, as you can probably imagine, the drive for efficiency is often at odds with the meandering curiosity of a discovery-motivated player.

My gamer motivation profile. Primary motivations on the left, secondary on the right

Even when I manage to resist the urge to shoot into the loot cave for hours, this clash between motivations creates an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. I know that what I enjoy most isn’t what’s most efficient for progress, but... look at how much more rewarded I’d be by the game if I did that boring thing instead?

Cognitive dissonance— what essentially amounts to a mind-battle between competing thoughts— is really unpleasant. It’s why “just don’t shoot into the loot cave and do what’s fun for you” doesn’t work. If I’m not giving in to the efficiency motivation, I’m feeling guilty about it.

When I was thinking about why this problem has become so much more prevalent for me than it used to be, I came to a realization: as with all bad things, the internet makes it worse. All games are now surrounded by an active fan community and, often, a fan wiki containing all the information you could ever need about the game.

I’m reminded of the time that I found my first rapier weapon in Dark Souls. I was so excited that rapiers existed (I don’t know why I’m so into rapiers) that I wanted to know if there were more! So, unwisely, I went to the wiki. I promised myself I wouldn’t look at where to get them— only whether or not more existed at all.

Unfortunately, just looking was enough. I saw that there are only five “thrusting sword” weapons in the game. That’s not necessarily a bad thing on its own, but now that I knew, the game world felt... smaller. And as a discoverer, that’s the last thing that you want.

With information just a couple clicks away, it’s really difficult to resist the temptation to look things up or check out the forums/subreddit and see the community’s tips. Because of this, discovery in games has become a more difficult motivation to realize without complications.

The image that broke me, via darksouls.wikidot.com. Still got them all, though.

Online games these days seem to even be designed around expecting people to gather information and read up on strategies. Unless you’re in a cutting edge raid group pushing for a first clear, MMO raid parties expect you to know the strats before you’ve even faced the encounter for the first time. It’s almost impossible to be both casual and want to go in blind to difficult group content.

It leads me to the question: can an un-wiki-able game be created to force discovery without cognitive dissonance?

The rise of roguelikes and procedural generation in general certainly helps— and I’m only just now realizing that this is probably why I’ve gravitated toward those kinds of games so much. But even then, the moment you introduce multiplayer, you introduce the social pressure to keep up with your friends and the community.

So, what can be done? Is this a design problem that’s unique to our age of instant information? Or is discovery now a motivation that simply requires a degree of self-control to enjoy? Either way, it’s interesting to think about how the environment surrounding games impacts the way that they are enjoyed and, consequently, the way they are designed to accommodate for that environment.

Music!

Since my contract ended with Demiurge, I've decided to dedicate myself to something I've wanted to do for a long while: finish an album of songs! So, while I continue to look for the rare gem that is a game design job in the Boston area, I'll be spending much of my time working on music!

I now have a Soundcloud, on which I'll eventually be posting the finished tracks. Until then, on the rare occasion that I feel capable of sharing works in progress without my face melting off from shame, I'll be doing that as well!

Demiurge!!

I'm excited to say that I've landed a position at Demiurge Studios! For the next six months or so, I'll be doing design on Marvel Puzzle Quest! Check out my Portfolio if you'd like to see my personal work.

Back to Boston!

After finishing up at the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy, I'm excited to announce that I'll be moving back to Massachusetts, as I have managed to land myself a Design Internship at Turbine! I'll be working on The Lord of the Rings Online. It's always been my dream to work on MMOs, so I can barely contain myself.

See you in Middle-Earth!

The Calm Before

Finally! After nine long months, my colleagues and I at the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy have finished and released our game, The Calm Before. A lot of love, tears, and caffeine went into this game, and I'm extremely proud of what we managed to accomplished. I'm even more proud of what we learned along the way.

If you'd like to see and download the game (it's free!), please check out our website: thecalmbeforegame.com!

Denius-Sams Gaming Academy!

I'm happy to announce that I was selected to be one of the 20 inaugural participants in the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy under Warren Spector! I still can't really believe that I was selected, and I can't wait to do amazing things with these people.

Since I'll likely be spending most of my team working with the DSGA team, it's likely that I won't be able to post much of what I'm working on (NDAs and such). I apologize in advance for the lack of updates!