I have heard this story, below, over and over again, to show Sociallism. I think it complements what OP is trying to show.... (infer that dollars or grades = loot) An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich; a great equalizer. The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all). After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the third test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, all failed and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.

[quote]I have spent a great deal of time researching this topic, playing destiny, and researching user experience. However, translating the ideas I'm going to talk about here will be a little hard, so I hope you stick with me. First we'll show this from an economic stance, but we'll get to Destiny. I will use myself as the example here, but I'd like you to fill this in yourself so that you can really see my point. How much is my time worth? A rough estimate is $27/ hour. Alright, and how much time do you waste in a week? I'd say that I spend about 20 hours per week that I could be spending with my family, sleeping, learning, or working on myself. How much is that per year? $28k. Well dang, why would I be wasting that much value? That right there is an example of what occurs when you have something to strive for (Found in capitalism). You can tell yourself that you are wasting time that you could be making yourself better with. That time could be used to make you more valuable to yourself and those you care about (Friends and family). This is where things in Destiny come in. Why would you spend hours every week to play VoG? To get a weapon with set a role? To get that missing armor piece with the perfect role? Why would you want that when you could guarantee that you got the perfect role every time you got the armor piece and increase the rate at which the weapons drop? The answer is because you are making yourself more valuable. By getting the perfect role and weapon when others can't shows that you are willing to put the time in and that you are competent. Your friends will enjoy playing with you more, randoms in the tower will want to play with you more, and opponents in the crucible could be worried to face you. That feeling is what we are all here for. The feeling of striving to be powerful, even if only in small ways. Now, lets say that it doesn't matter how much time you waste OR how much time you put into your work. You worked 20 hours on something that should have taken 60 hours or more? You still get paid. You worked 80 hours on something to make it better than anyone else's? You only get what they got. (This is an example of socialism) Destiny 2 shows an example of socialism, where it doesn't really matter where you are or what you're doing. The loot will come either through that engram that a dreg dropped or through Hawthorne when a clanmate puts in his 80 hours to complete the raids week after week. Did you earn your loot then? No, not the same way your clanmate did. So when your clanmate sees you in the future, will he doubt how you got that armor and weapon? Yes. Is that loot worth your time then? No. Will you put more time in the future to get better loot? Not when I can just wait for it come. Here is the moral of the story. In an ideal world we won't all get that perfect role on a gun, that awesome rare OP exotic, or even complete a raid. The rule will be that the square root of all of the players will have half of the loot. That's okay, because each of us will be treated like how much time we put in and still feel like there is something awesome for us to get that's just around the corner. Those who put in 60 hours a week should get the best loot in the game. They've earned it. Those of us who only play 3 hours will have fun, get some loot and see all of the cool things to work on over the next year while we spend the rest of our time trying to better ourselves in other ways. I hope this strikes the right tone. Please, let me know what you guys think. :)[/quote] Too valuable to read all of this

$27 an hours s a bit rich, what about all the kids that are waiting for their tooth to fall out and the tooth fairy to visit before they get an income?

I find it really hard to follow your arguments. You have a general idea that D2 is less rewarding than D1, because everyone can get cool stuff without any effort/little effort. This is what being brought up almost in every thread on this forum. But I just don't get the correlation between these things: [quote]Well dang, why would I be wasting that much value... ...That time could be used to make you more valuable to yourself and those you care about (Friends and family). This is where things in Destiny come in. Why would you spend hours every week to play VoG?... ...The answer is because you are making yourself more valuable. By getting the perfect role and weapon when others can't shows that you are willing to put the time in and that you are competent... ...Destiny 2 shows an example of socialism, where it doesn't really matter where you are or what you're doing. The loot will come either through that engram that a dreg dropped or through Hawthorne when a clanmate puts in his 80 hours to complete the raids week after week. Did you earn your loot then? No, not the same way your clanmate did. So when your clanmate sees you in the future, will he doubt how you got that armor and weapon? Yes. Is that loot worth your time then? No. [/quote] First things first, if you spend your free time to make yourself a better person i.e. improve your skills that can help you do your job better, or learn new things like playing an ukulele, so that everyone wants to hang out with you, you don't get a magic aura around your head that screams "i've spent a lot of time doing some stuff". You just do your job better and/or play your ukulele. People that you work with respect you for you are doing, and people you hang out like you because you are fun/interesting person. Rewards that you earn != your in game skill. I don't get these analogies with capitalism and socialism in regards to making yourself more valuable player. Just like irl you don't judje a person solely by his income, you don't judje a player in the game solely by his gear. You judje them by how skillful they are, and in this case it shouldn't be relevant what gear they have. If you put 60 hours into the game every week, you may have more polished skills than a person who plays half an hour every two days. But guess what? Some players can get carried through the raid/trials and get all the shiny exotic stuff, but they still are going to suck at the game and their value as a player would be low. If you want to be more valuable, then hone your skills, and play the game. If you want shiny stuff that indicates that you are infinitely better than other players in this game, then I'm really sorry, but there is no reliable way to tell this, so you get same shiny stuff that everyone gets. In my book, the only value a player holds is his skill. Skill != shiny exotic gear. Game should focus on increasing skillcap, not on giving op stuff to scrubs who got carried and can "FEEL POWERFUL" because of that. I don't get this complain "I don't feel powerful as a guardian", "my titan doesn't feel powerful enough". Get better, your power is in your hands, given that the game provides depth. Because that's what developers should focus on [i]depth, balance, diversity[/i]. Because that's what would allow better players to distinguish themselves from worse players. That is what sets the skillcap. The only way to be powerful is to be a better player. [i]Outaim[/i] [i]outsmart[/i] and [i]outplay[/i] your opponents, utilize your knowledge of the game and teamwork to overcome challenges that game throws at you. Exotics should provide an alternative playstyle, alter your perks and skills, give you more ways to play the game. Sure, devs can make them hard to get, but if only a few people can get them, what diversity are we talking about? If we are using them only as a novelty item, that show's off our commitment to the game, then, i don't know what's the point. I sure don't need no shiny stuff to show others that I play the game. I want to beat their ass in crucible and beat their scores in nightfall. That would be enough for me to play the game on a daily basis. If you play the game in anticipation that it would allow you to show off some rare stuff to other players, and you don't play the game for the gameplay and for sake of playing, well it's you who doesn't value your own time. You'd better be with your friends and family, or learn how to play damn ukulele. Cheers.

Destiny 1 was equality of opportunity. Destiny 2 is equality of outcome. The former being that you have the opportunity to gain things of value in game provided you worked hard towards acquiring them. These things that you work for are unique and in many instances directly display their superiority to the items gained by players who don’t put enough work in to get superior armor and firepower. The latter being that regardless of how much work you put into the game you will always be rewarded the same as everyone else because everyone can only be given things that are identical to what everyone else has. That’s my take on all of this.

“ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED????”

that's pretty -blam!-ing stupid. Games are meant to based on skill not time invested. you know what i love when i get home from work, having another job that's a video game....

"I don't even have time to explain why I don't have time to explain"

I see what you're getting at, but even loot in D1 didn't exactly reward loot based on time played. A guy could play for a year and never see a Gally drop, then plays crucible and watches the guy on the bottom of the leader board get it. Technically it did I guess, because the more you actually played the higher your RNG chances were. I still think loot should be powerful and rare. That would make it valuable and rewarding.

You cannot compare playing a video game to getting paid. Work is work and free time is free time.

I agree with your sentiment, to reward those who grind. But im guessing that the percentage of the people that can grind for 80 hrs is a small minority of all destiny players. Bungie decided to make the majority, whom i’m guessing are more casual players, happy by implementing the current loot/rewards system as it stands today.

this is an existential nightmare

You mean roll not role. Also, you're implying a system with random rolls which would completely go against everything you said (which is logically sound) the moment someone gets the roll the first time he completes an activity while another spends 80 hours not getting it. Also, you don't understand the difference between socialism and communism. What you described is communism. A socialist system implemented in d2 is the clan engrams you get when your clan achieves something. Your 80 hours played to have a chance at something knowing that many have only played half an hour and already have what you're seeking is communism.

Lol. There are so many inaccuracies, assumptions, and unexplained data in this post.

The analogy is a bit far fetched, but I understand your point and it makes sense.

Bungie do not give af about player time. This was first shown in tdb with old items being irrelevant and relevelibg exotics. After promising to value player time in the future they bumped it back with HoW. Then removed it again for ttk Then brought some stuff back for roi and let us take ttk stuff up Then removed it all in d2