Destiny's newest Crucible (PvP) event, the Iron Banner, went live yesterday, introducing Guardians to a brand new PvP experience — one in which the auto balancing has been removed and your gear means everything.
It's a pretty neat concept considering the gear you've spent weeks farming usually means nothing in the Crucible. New gameplay experience aside, it also offers people who prefer PvP over PvE a chance to earn some Legendary equipment. By participating — well, winning — in the Iron Banner playlist, you can earn Iron Banner reputation. Once you achieve a certain rank in the Iron Banner faction, you are free to purchase Legendary gear with Crucible marks (for insanely cheap).
Here's the problem though, the only way to earn Iron Banner reputation — aside from completig these awfully hard bounties — is to win. Winning gets you 25 Iron Banner rep (before the percentage increase from gear); losing gets you nothing (although, you still earn regular Crucible marks and reptuation).
First off, I have no problem with a system or event that only rewards winning. In fact, I've already complained that Crucible rewards should be better for the top players. The problem is, Destiny doesn't have any sort leave penalty. You are free to quit games at any time without any sort of reprocussion.
Taking a system that rewards winning only and combining it with another system that has no sort of penalty for leavers/quitters essentially incentivizes players to leave if they see that they aren't winning. Why waste your time in a loss when you can simply join a new game? It's a fair question, one that Bungie apparently didn't ask themselves when designing the PvP system in Destiny.
Yes, there's a chance that your team could come back, but is the risk worth your time? With only a week to grind Iron Banner reputation to rank 3, every minute counts.
I think the attached image of this article, shared by Redditor "Smoke_n_Mirrors," perfectly depicts what's wrong with the current system in place.
Surely, it doesn't take a genius to think of a solution to the problem. Any sort of deserter penalty — be it reputation loss or some sort of wait before you can join the next game — would hopefully incentivize players to stay in their match until complete. Again, though, this is just another example of how Bungie has overlooked what should be a fairly simple design decision.
