With the Iron Banner event wrapping up in Destiny tomorrow, Bungie, in last week's update, addressed the criticism they received for the temporary Crucible playlist.
Most of the criticism with the Iron Banner stemmed from a statement in which Bungie proclaimed that "gear means everything" in the Iron Banner. Basically, if you spent hours farming the best gear in the game, you would dominate the Iron Banner which removes the automatic balancing of the regular Crucible. Of course, when videos started rolling in of lower level characters killing level 20-somethings, some began to question the system.
"If you were expecting to vaporize a crowd of noobs with a single burst from your SUROS Regime, I can see how you’d be disappointed," started senior designer Derek Carroll. "Imagine going into the Iron Banner as a mid-20s player totally unable to participate in the fun. We didn’t want players to have to complete the Vault of Glass in order to compete."
Just a quick side note, I've been vaporized by the SUROS Regime on many occassion in the Iron Banner, so there is a noticable difference.
"The way we pitched Iron Banner did make it sound like a 'no-holds-barred' playlist," he continued. "In reality, we delivered what we felt would be a competitive experience for everyone, not just players at the level cap. The reaction from players seems to be: 'No, we want it to be bad for lower-level players. That’s the point!'"
In the end, Carroll acknowledged that power does matter, but so does skill.
"Our solution to add power back into the mix and keep the Crucible from turning into a ghost town is to scale it down to a reasonable level, and clamp damage on the “overkill” end," he explained.
"A decked-out endgame Guardian can’t defeat a low-level guardian with one shot from an Auto-Rifle. In fact, “time-to-kill” is the same when you’re using higher-level gear against lower-level gear. The opposite is not true, so an enemy with average weapons is going to have a harder time taking you out."
Carroll even challenged players to go out and test this by grabbing some guns they outgrew on Venus, or even starting a new Guardian and jumping into the Iron Banner.
According to Carroll, your skill will take you "80% of the way to victory." That last 20% "will be a much harder climb without the gear you've been relying on," he added. For those wondering, Carroll assured that having higher Defense will reduce the damage you take from lower level players, while having a lot of Attack on your weapons will neutralize the advantage a higher level player migh thave against you.
While the Crucible, according to Carroll, is intended to be "a fun, competitive" experience for players of all skills, the Iron Banner "skews towards the 'hardcore.'" It's not necessarily only for those who complete Vault of Glass, though.
"We still find matches based on skill, not character level, so if you find yourself in a game with players with much better gear than you, you should feel good about that. Lord Saladin thinks you can take them," Carroll concluded.
The Iron Banner began last week in Destiny and is set to conclude tomorrow, October 14; although, Bungie did make it clear that Lord Saladin will return to the Tower, so expect the Iron Banner to return at some point in the future — hopefully with some different systems in place.
