The Casual, The Not-So, and The Ace of Spades

They changed the Ace of Spades quest to make the initial step easier, and Reddit was up in arms because it was seen as the beginning of making the game casual again. Judging from the rest of what we've seen of the end game, I don't think that's the case. I think the Ace of Spades quest is directly linked to the end of the campaign, but the first step was very difficult, and not casual friendly. I think they are trying to make the game appeal to both camps, the casual and the not-so, and so they made the first step less skill-based, and more grind-based.

Vanilla Destiny 2 was Destiny redesigned for casuals, and the hardcore players ended up not liking it. Forsaken pretty much rolls back all of the changes, from fixed weapon rolls and fixed gun slots, to prime engrams and ways to level up. But what’s really interesting about Forsaken’s design is that it keeps a lot of the elements that made Destiny 2 causal-friendly. There are weekly milestones that don’t take a lot of time to complete, and the daily milestones carry and then reset, so if you don’t get to them, you get another chance. There is a ton to do. The hardcore player can play for days, and the causal player can hop on and play for a couple of hours. The end game activities are accessible no matter how much time you put in.

And they didn’t make the first step of Ace of Spades that casual-friendly. You still needed to play Gambit, and play a lot of gambit. The new quest step actually feels more in line with the following quest steps: hand cannon kills in strikes, hand cannon kills in Crucible. The original first step was hard, and was poorly worded.

Cayde’s death is the central plot point in the Forsaken story line, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that the developers assume that most people who play Forsaken, whether hardcore or casual, will play through the story line. Cayde’s Will is the first end game quest after you complete the story line, and from my experience, the first step in the quest was hard enough that you didn’t see most people running around with the gun. You’d see people flying in Cayde’s ship, so you know they completed the story, but you’d only see a couple of people using the Ace of Spades.

Of the people I know who play, only two have gotten it. One is very hardcore, but the other is more casual; still on the hardcore side, I’d say, but not overly so. And I got to listen to him as he played trying to get the original first step completed, and it wasn’t pretty. It sounded frustrating. I don’t think the developers wanted that, a frustrating negative experience. The quest was intended to introduce you to the end game activities of Gambit, Strikes, and Crucible, but most people were dropping out at Gambit, and probably not with the best impression of the mode.

The alarm bells sounded among the hardcore of Reddit when the change was implemented, warning that the slide to catering to the casual has begun, which is a little selfish with Forsaken only being a few weeks old, and Forsaken was probably the biggest concession to the hardcore the game had ever seen. One step towards making something a little easier is not a concession to the casual, it’s fine-tuning something that’s already something of a masterpiece, a game unlike I’ve ever seen before, with an engaging, dynamic end game that appeals to both camps.