I saved the European Aerial Zone for last, and for good reason. The past week I’ve been grinding out my Solstice of Heroes armor in Destiny, and there’s been something meditative about the pure grind of it: do a bunch of strikes, do a bunch of gambit matches, do a bunch of patrols, etc. The last one, however, has been causing me a headache, and not just because it’s been taking longer than usual. The European Aerial Zone is a real tragedy for this game because it’s one of the most unique activities we’ve had in a while, but it’s utterly crippled by quest design.
The vexing part of the European Aerial Zone is that it’s actually pretty fun. I’ll admit that I don’t quite understand Bungie’s pathological need to attach timers to platforming activities, but aside from that the whole thing plays out like an interesting combination of traversal and combat: it can be tough to grok in the first few rounds as you find yourself ramming into dead ends and chasing what feel like phantom map markers, but after a little bit you learn the ins and outs of one of the most open areas that Bungie has ever made, hopping onto rooftops and skating through holes in walls to nab a quick kill before blasting out of there. Even the final bosses are sort of interesting if a bit spongey, at times.
And then there’s the problem. The problem is that this activity mostly serves to augment Solstice of Heroes, and in that regard, it’s attached to one particularly grindy objective: kill 100 mini-bosses. In any match, you can expect your team to kill somewhere between 5-8 mini-bosses. The problem is that you only get credit for bosses you actually shoot at, and the bosses are designed to be spread out to encourage players to split up and take down different ones. So you might only get 3-4 per match, maybe up to 5-6 if you’re hoofing it. And that makes this one hell of a grind.
The effect that these mechanics have on the activity is complete. It’s no longer a team activity: I find myself cursing my fireteam for reaching bosses before me when I should have been celebrating them. Players will leave after the mini-boss phase, making the next two phases of the match nearly impossible, or at least incredibly boring. It means when I mess up a jump I’m furious not just because I’m going to miss a shot at a boss, but because my teammate will get it instead. I’ve gotten in on the action of being a terrible teammate: I spent one match doing a cheese to inflate my numbers, but that meant the other Guardian was left to fend with three angry bosses on their own, without me being able to explain what I was doing.
This is a bad spot to be in. It also means I won’t touch this thing once I’ve finished the objective, because it’s hard to see what makes it fun in the face of what makes it makes it awful. This feels like a lack of communication: that whoever was designing the challenges didn’t quite align the objectives with the activity, and things got out of hand.
I’ve written about this before, but this is a problem that shows up time and time again in Destiny 2: when mission objectives appear to run counter to the actual act of playing a given activity. When Lumina first dropped, it required you to kill an invading Guardian within ten seconds and before they killed any of your teammates. Everyone wanted to do this, and so Gambit was basically broken for a week or so as everyone gave up on banking motes in favor of watching for invaders and, if they were nice, invading themselves and presenting meaty targets. A neat experiment, but not a fun game mode. Recent Iron banners have similarly been turned upside down by people trying to grind out grenade kills, and so on.
Of all Bungie’s balancing acts, this is maybe the hardest one. The team basically has to make quests challenging and special without compromising the experience for other players. They also have to guard against AFK players without making things too onerous for legitimate players. It’s bound to be a continual process as the game continues, but unfortunately this is an example
