The Taken King expansion for Destiny brought with it a sleuth of new content for players to enjoy, but why must some of that content be blocked by time? What I mean here, is not the time scheduled of release of content in the Taken King, such as the raid not becoming available until the Friday the DLC launched. This kind of waiting allows players to prepare for the difficulties of the end game content, by grabbing weapons and armor with strong perks, and time to complete the previous content so they do not have to make a choice on what content to pursue. The type of waiting I want to discuss is the waiting for content in the game to be triggered, and why the trend of this waiting time needs to be fixed in the next expansion for Destiny.
Public Events
Public events have been around since Destiny was released one year ago. They occur on each of the destinations, except for the Dreadnaught, and involve taking down a mini-boss enemy, or small groups of an enemy depending on what planet you are on. They were designed to need a small group of people to complete if you are the same level as the event, but higher level guardians and well-equipped ones have no issues soloing these events. Initially, thought to be random and triggered by a certain amount of guardians being in the area, these events are actually on a schedule. If you wanted to do a public event for quest purposes, potential rewards, or grimoire it was a simple matter of checking destinypublicevents.com to find the next event in the cycle.
Off-Public Events
I am calling this next section of events off-public events because they still happen on patrol, but are on no set schedule and are similar to regular public events. In this category I would include, the Blades of Crota event from The Dark Below DLC, the Pack of Wolves prowling event from the House of Wolves DLC, and Taken Forces Corrupting the Area from the Taken King expansion. The completion of these events is often linked to bounties, grimoire, and the potential for some decent loot. The problem with these events is, there is simply nothing to do while you wait for them to spawn. You wander around the patrol area aimlessly killing the few enemies that spawn to pass the time, Sometimes you wait just a couple minutes, and sometimes you seem to wait for more than 15 minutes to get the event you are waiting for.
Bounties/Quests
As I said earlier, this will not include the timed release of content but will include bounties/quests that have timing gates built into the quest-line. The first instance of this happening with Destiny was in The Dark Below DLC, in which in the small bounty based quest-line from Eris after the main story was complete. A part of this bounty-line included buying an item from Xur, a vendor in Destiny that only is available from Friday mornings until Sunday mornings. Depending on when you reached this bounty in the chain, you may have to wait several days for the chance to complete it. This trend continued with the House of Wolves DLC and the Elder Cipher bounty-line to get one of three new exotic weapons introduced. One part of the bounty-line included waiting, simply waiting, for the next part to be available. To make this section worse, the time was completely random, waiting times ranged from just ten minutes to three days. Lastly, in The Taken King, there are several quests that involve waiting. The three quests for the exotic swords all require you to wait until Armsday (Wednesday) as a part of their quest line. The Chaperone quest, requires you to wait until the next weekly reset (Tuesday), as the final part of the quest-line. The quest for The First Curse exotic handcannon also is time gated requiring you to wait until Armsday, just like the exotic sword quests.
The Problem
Dedicated players, although they will be annoyed by having to wait for their rewards, will complete the quest-lines regardless of the waiting time. However, for those people that can only play maybe an hour a day or less on average, having to wait for these events to spawn, or having to wait potentially a whole week for the next step in your quest-line to be available can be quite aggravating. These waiting times may lead to players thinking the game is boring, or cause them to simply stop playing while they wait for the quest-line to be available. This cannot be a strategy going forward as Bungie continues to look to attract new players to the game. These players need to be excited about the experience and the gameplay, not forced to simply pass the time while waiting for the rewards of that gameplay.
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