The latest patch has essentially eliminated the usefullness of the famed "Loot Cave". For those who lived under a rock for the past week, the loot cave was a location in Old Russia where waves of Hive enemies would continuosly respawn as long as each wave was killed and people were far enough way to trigger them. Then after some time people would run into the cave an collect the various engrams and gear that would drop.
The reason why this cave grew to the phenominon it did is due to the underlying problems with Destiny that Bungie does not want to acknowledge. The ratio of time and energy spent grinding in strikes and in highly repetitive missions is nowhere near good enough to the amount of loot received for those activities. Rare engrams, which already have a very low chance to appear throughout a mission, just lead to a lottery system which further infuriates people. The bullet sponge bosses that take upwards of 30 minutes to an hour at times depending on difficulty do not reward players with anything and the resulting rewards from those missions more often then not do not help the player.
The end result is thousands upon thousands of players are horribly dissatisfied with the amount of loot they get [b]playing the way Bungie wants the game to be played[/b] for the time they spend trying to get it so when these type of farming opportunities arise allowing players to have a better chance at attaining things they want with a far better time spent to loot acquired ratio you understand why the loot cave became as big as it did. It wasn't just the fact that people could finally actually get stuff they wanted faster, [b]which is required for leveling past 20[/b], there were other reasons why the loot cave should come back.
During my time shooting at that cave for hours on end, I was there with usually at least 3 other people all of the time. In a game that is surprisingly anti-social for what is supposed to be a "shared world experience" not allowing people to talk to each other unless they are on a 3 max limit fireteam and only giving us 3 animations of which to interact with other people, being around other people all doing 1 activity was fun. Not only that but since public events land right in that area I have done numerous public events with other people just like the original E3 promotional material showcased. Outside of this loot cave I've been in 4 public events [b]by myself, because nobody else was around[/b]. Not only were the public events more fun but occasionally the Fallen and Hive would battle eachover in much harder waves at that location really ramping up the difficulty and making the world feel more dynamic and alive for that small instance. People won't notice this as much now that the loot cave is no more.
Bungie, even if not a single staff member looks at this thread or this post, I'll say this anyway. Bring back the loot cave. Or at least up the % that loot drops significantly elsewhere in the game. Bounties, light leveling, these events like Queen's Wrath, vendor reputation (seriously, why start us at level 0 if most vendors can't sell you anything until level 3 or 2), all they do is reinforce repetition within very little content that we as gamers have to work with. The story does a poor job entertaining us while we have to grind out kills so at the very least you can make our hours upon hours upon hours of time spent more fun. Even if you don't change the likelihood of rare, legendary, or exotic stuff appearing if you raise the overall % of loot dropping by like 500% people will at least be happy that they're getting [b]something[/b], anything for their effort.
If others agree with this sentiment or just want to talk about their stories around the loot cave, please feel free to do so. I want Bungie to know that we want this game to be better and that we want to have fun with the game, but so far they're holding us back.
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They don't need to bring back the loot cave. That's the wrong solution. The correct solution is fixing the loot system. For now, they should bring the cave back for now, but ultimately, they do need to go back and fix the loot tables. Only then, should they remove the cave