[quote][b]2) Closing Time: a Case Study[/b][/quote]Our first glimpse of an exotic's inner workings came during the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIp7vZuYzoA]E3 2013 Demo[/url] when Joe Staten examined the progression tree of the exotic heavy machine gun known as [url=http://www.bungie.net/7_Destiny-Drawing-Board-Thunderlord/en/News/News?aid=11089#!]Thunderlord[/url]. While many players were very excited to see the promises that this legendary weapon had to offer, I remember myself being fairly unimpressed with its design. Don't get me wrong, Thunderlord is certainly a strong weapon of mass destruction between its overpenetrating explosive rounds and its bonus damage which builds on successive kills, it's just that I think that it would be a shame if all of Destiny's exotics were merely more damaging and deadly versions of their sub-exotic counterparts. Afterall, it's hard for your mythical weapons to stand out from the crowd if their only claim to fame is "I do a slightly better job at killing people than ordinary guns!" Was this the only viable direction for Destiny's exotics? Thankfully, it wasn't. My perception of the scope and impact of the exotic tier changed drastically when I first read GameInformer's article on Destiny in early December. The article detailed some of the more big-picture abilities of three of Destiny's exotics, in particular, the description for the exotic sniper rifle Closing Time caught my eye:[quote][url=http://www.gameinformer.com/games/destiny/b/playstation4/archive/2014/04/04/a-player-39-s-journey.aspx?PostPageIndex=6][b]Closing Time[/b] The perfect weapon for the camper on your team, this exotic sniper rifle camouflages your entire body whenever you are in zoomed view. Plus, shoot an ammo pick-up from a concealed location and the ordnance goes straight into your bags.[/url][/quote]When I first read this segment, I was rather hesitant and concerned. Cloaked sniping in Halo Reach was a huge problem, it was very easy for a player to score many kills while remaining undetected on maps like Paradiso and Hemorrhage where the kill distances were just too large for a player to quickly spot cloaked snipers before it was too late. "What the hell was Bungie thinking?" I thought to myself. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the sweeping implications that the design of Closing Time introduced. For one, putting cloaking on an exotic weapon implied that there was no generalized and easily accessible cloaking ability in Destiny like there was in Halo Reach. Afterall, who would want to use Closing Time if one could simply use the cloaking ability with any old sniper to replicate the same effect? In addition, tying cloaking to specific weapons allows Bungie to balance the ability on a case by case basis. A lot of the clunkiness and problem areas of Halo Reach's active camouflage came from trying to design a cloak that functions fairly at all ranges. Rather than going down that path again, it makes all the sense in the world to design cloaking for a close range weapon like the shotgun in a different way from cloaking for a long range weapon like the sniper. There are different visual cues and mechanics that one can utilize for each scenario to create a situation that feels fair for both the predator and the prey. In the specific case of Closing Time, there are a number of mechanics we can implement in an attempt to balance out the power generated by the in-scope cloak ability. What if there was a delay before the cloak kicked in when you first entered scope? What if the potency of the cloak "pulsed" in effectiveness, allowing players to detect the sniper if they study an area for long enough? What if the strength of the cloak drops if you look around too quickly, promoting a methodical and calculating playstyle over the standard twitch-based sniper experience? These are only a few examples, but I hope you can see how each of them tries to introduce tradeoffs to what would otherwise be an overly dominant feature. In contrast to Closing Time's first ability, its second ability which allows the user to pick up ammo remotely by shooting it seems much more simple and benign, but in my mind it's just as powerful. The typical gameplay pattern of a long-range sniper has a core weakness: eventually you will run out of ammo and you'll have to close the distance between yourself and your prey or a supply point to restock before continuing your rampage. This creates a window of opportunity in which you can be ambushed up close, leading to your ultimate demise. As you can imagine, the remote ammo pick-up ability mitigates this window of weakness by allowing the sniper to collect ammo at a safe range. Mind you, the ability itself is not without its own drawbacks, for one, the sniper must reveal his position in order to collect ammo, which gives any opponents in the area a chance to track him or her down. In addition, depending on how large of a target ammo drops are in Destiny, the act of shooting ammo to pick it up might be difficult to do in high pressure situations. Finally, if it turns out to be too strong, we could always make it so that you only pick up a fraction of the total ammo by shooting it, which should put more pressure on long-range users to conserve ammo wisely lest they be forced to close the gap to restock. There are numerous directions we can take the design of Closing Time in, but the ultimate point of these examples is that it's okay if a weapon has a powerful ability as long as we can design it in such a way so that opponents feel like they can develop an active strategy for counteracting that power. We call this notion counterplay, the point of these abilities isn't to outright award victory to the player because they have a better gun, but to change the way that players interact with each other and their environment in interesting ways that lead to a more emergent experience. Now either of these abilities would be cool on their own, but what really made the design of Closing Time resonate with me was the way that these abilities worked together to create a clear thematic role. Closing Time isn't just a sniper rifle, it is [i]*the*[/i] sniper rifle to wield if you want to become the ultimate long-range camouflaged marksman. I think it would be really cool if all exotics aspired to provide a fantasy as cohesive as that, these legendary weapons should be so unique, so dangerous, so out of the box crazy that they scream to be built around by the person who finds them. So with this presumption that Closing Time is the current golden standard towards which all exotics should strive towards, what sort of powers and abilities should we expect to see on exotics? Which ones work well to create flavorful and mechanically interesting roles, and which ones are too problematic to work? [b]Destiny Speculation: Exotic Abilities continues on the next post. [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973153]Please click this Hyperlink to continue reading![/url][/b] [spoiler][b]Table of Contents 1) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973135/0/0]Introduction[/url] 2) >> Closing Time: a Case Study << 3) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973153]A Brief Intermission and Apology[/url] 4) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973163]25 Sub-Exotic Abilities from the Alpha[/url] 5) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973166]Exotic Abilities[/url] 6) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973172]Epilogue[/url][/b][/spoiler]