As I mentioned when the game came out (and independent from the fact that I'm playing a free copy), I like Destiny more than the average Metacritic score of 76 suggests I should. A lot of people who criticized the game now find that in spite of their reservations, they are still playing. Basically if you plotted the imaginary curve of how much somebody likes Destiny over time, it didn't start out all that strong, but lost a lot less over the subsequent weeks than other games. Weeks later it is still a perfectly viable option for me to start the game and play a bit. And I believe that one factor in this is the loot system of Destiny.

We are all used to the MMORPG loot system of games like World of Warcraft or similar games: Specific loot drops from specific boss monsters. It isn't certain that you'll get the sword of uberness you wanted if you kill a boss, but it is certain that you won't that particular item anywhere else. There is actually software out there that looks at your current gear and tells you where to go next. That can be problematic if the activity you are supposed to do is one you either dislike or are for other reasons unable to do. That can lead for example to people quitting guilds, because the game basically tells them they need a different set of friends to get better gear. That isn't ideal from a social networking point of view.

Now Destiny isn't great with social networking features. But it never tells you what exactly you have to do next. Loot in Destiny is perfectly random. You might get that sword of uberness by doing a raid, but you might also get that exact same item while doing patrol mission from some low-level mob. Of course drop probabilities aren't the same, and the system can be exploited by setting up situations where you just try to kill a massive number of low-level mobs in the shortest time possible (aka the now defunct loot cave). But the overall result is that you never feel that the activity you are currently doing doesn't have a chance to improve your gear. You can choose your activity in function of how much time you have available, whether friends are online, and how fit or tired you are feeling, and you will always have some chance of finding that legendary engram which improves your "light" (aka gearscore). You can do harder content when you feel like it and the situation allows it, and you'll be rewarded better for that harder content. But if for some reason you're just doing something easier you aren't totally excluded from any chance of getting an upgrade.

While such a system isn't necessarily easy to balance (how much faster can you kill lower-level mobs compared to what lower level of drop chance?) I do think there is a good concept here which could help other MMORPGs. Look at your character and a map of WoW and you'll find that in the large majority of locations there is absolutely nothing for your character, no reason to be there at all. In Destiny, which has far fewer zones and locations, there isn't a single one where I shouldn't be right now. There is some progress to be had for my level 23 character even if he is just doing patrol missions on Earth killing level 2 mobs for some random bounty, or re-doing story missions at some level of my choice. Of course it helps that in Destiny a level 2 mob can still hurt a level 23 player, and the player still needs to aim right to kill it. But what really makes a difference is that I feel I have the choice of what I want to do, and it isn't the game that is telling me what I should do.