Ah, the infamous loot cave. It was only a matter of time before gamers found a way to bypass Destiny's notoriously unforgiving nature when it comes to dropping good gear. The process for farming at a loot cave is simple enough. Go to the cave, kill what you see, wait for more baddies to appear, continue until you're nearly out of ammo, and then go and collect the spoils. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Nearly every gaming site on the web has made reference to Destiny's little exploit at least once in the past two weeks. It has garnered so much attention that, just yesterday, Bungie patched in a quick fix for the issue. How did they fix it? They changed the respawn time for enemies in that cave from six seconds to forty seconds. So technically, you can still loot there, it'll just be a much longer and more tedious process. Congrats Bungie! You fixed it, right?
Apparently not...
Today, numerous gaming news outlets around the web are reporting the discovery of a new loot point. The farming process is nearly identical to the one we saw before, and since we know Bungie watches the news, we can be certain that it will only be a matter of time before Destiny gets another patch just like the one before, and players are left to find another exploit. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Now, I'm not a game developer, but it seems there must be a better way to encourage your players to play fair, rather than put in a quick fix, basically the equivalent to a slap on the wrist, saying "Hey, don't do that." If they continue to patch each spot on a case by case basis, their issue will never be fixed for good. Here are 3 ways that I believe Bungie could permanently fix the issue.
1) Leave the enemy respawn timer alone, and instead, set it so that loot won't drop from an enemy unless the enemy has been alive for at least 7-10 seconds. Make sure players have to let enemies get out of their cattle chute spawn zones first, then let them have it. This would discourage spawn camping for good, and if applied to every spawn point in the game, the issue would never arise again.
2) Have the cave enemies "Call for Backup". If a player or fire team is standing in the same small area for over 5 minutes, farming a cave, have the game randomly spawn 50 enemies, all level 15 or higher, all at once, to that spot. This would either: A) Chase the player(s) out of the area, or, B) (if they are truly brave) force them to fight for their lives. If they survive the onslaught and didn't run away, give them decent loot as a reward. They earned it.
3) Have the enemies at the spawn point get exponentially harder the longer a player loots the spawn point. Eventually, the player will be outmatched, and will have to move on, or die. Their choice.
Destiny is a great game. Too great of a game to be ruined by an exploit or two. I think the team at Bungie are very creative, and will probably come up with their own permanent fix for the loot caves. Bungie has already said this about the cave, “shooting at a black hole for hours on end isn't our dream for how Destiny is played. Our hope is that social engagement in public spaces is only one part of the Destiny experience.” Here’s hoping that they think of something soon.
Final Question: If you worked for Bungie, how would you fix this issue?