#lootcave

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So as anyone who plays Destiny knows, the infamous loot cave is no more. As Bungie put it, shooting into a black hole for hours on end isn't how they wanted us to play Destiny. Perhaps this didn't occur to Bungie anyway, but it's not how we players wanted to play the game either. We were driven to farming out of necessity. 

Once you hit level 20, there's one single way to advance further: get better gear. But unfortunately there's no consistent way to do that. You can try your luck in the crucible, but performance there means nothing. You can be the top player on your team and still walk away empty handed. How about replaying all those story missions? Even on harder difficulties, they rarely yield any sort of reward at all, much less something worthwhile. That really leaves only random drops, and even there you have an abysmally low chance of getting anything good. I've probably played for over 100 hours, I've got two characters in their mid 20s, and I've probably gotten fewer than 15 purple engrams. Of them, exactly one of them has yielded a legendary item. 

That's why I, like so many others, turned to farming, at the loot cave and other spots. Why spend 10 minutes emptying clips into a bullet-sponge boss and dodging one-shot kills, when nine times out of ten you walk away empty handed? It's a total waste of time, and while that may be how Bungie wanted us to play the game, it very quickly  became nobody's idea of fun. Farming became essential, because it's the most efficient and reliable way to get what is at some point in the game, the only thing worth having: better gear. 

Now there is one other source of decent loot, but for most players, myself included, it's entirely out of reach. Raids and the Heroic/Nightfall strikes are known to give good rewards, but they also have no matchmaking system. I for one mostly play this game solo. Getting a friend or two together is one thing, but Bungie seems to assume that everyone not only has no life, but no life and 5+ friends with no lives either, who can all devote hours and hours to playing this game. I've come to accept the fact that I'm probably simply never going to see the much touted Vault of Glass, or any of the cool gear that can be gotten there. For the average player, or even the above average player, there's simply not much to do or look forward to when the game supposedly "begins" at level 20. 

Bungie has proven that they're able to quickly update the game. In a few short weeks, we've already seen content added and bugs fixed. But the most recent update clearly did more harm than good. Like it or not, in taking away the loot cave, Bungie took away the only think keeping a lot of players not just moving forward, but playing at all. But while they were quick to shut down the loot cave, the issues that sent people there in the first place remain unsolved. So essentially nothing is solved, it's just a matter of finding the next loot cave. Where ever the optimal farming spot is, that's where people will flock. 

Perhaps what's most disappointing is that in Bungie's patch notes, they acknowledge many of the frustrations players are dealing with, but unlike the loot cave and other farming spots which were shut down immediately, all we got were vague promises of changes in the future to address the other problems. Again, their poor prioritization will solve nothing and people will just find somewhere else to farm or give up entirely. What they should have done is fix the loot chances and reward system of the game first. Once people feel like playing the game the "right" way (according to Bungie at least) is rewarding, I guarantee you they won't waste their time with monotonous tasks like farming.