THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING ALL ALONG! I haven't once defended putting the entire team up there. I've been saying it's a solo-sniper platform. I've been saying make it so the relic bearer CAN'T get up there, so it's NOT a possible strategy; either he can't jump up, or if the relic gets up there, it respawns -- anything to keep the team HAVING to stay down to take care of the relics. We tried it once, to see if it was even a possibility, and that plan is just crap. One, it's too much of a pain to put everybody on one platform and just continue to cleanse from the oracles; two, everyone bunched together makes it almost impossible to deal damage to the Templar, since everyone has to stand in the same spot, and he's going to be firing on EVERYONE at once... It's a bad idea. I've BEEN saying it's a spot for one sniper. I've been saying it's been a place to use your sniper and defend the left third of the map, the same as any other person on the left flank. The difference is, it's a sniper perch where I've given myself an advantage (is that some crime?) by going to sniper range on a platform where snipers spawn that gives THEM sniper range advantage. I'm not cheating the game; I'm not being cheap, exploiting some flaw in the game; I'm not cheesing the fight by going somewhere that I have perfect defense, offense, and control of the situation (like the Valus Ta'aurc cheese spot). What I found from our practices was that the platform was almost useless until the hobgoblins show up. I've held the entire left half by ground, confluxes and oracles, fanatics and praetorians, goblins, harpies, and hobgoblins alike. It's not all that crazy when your team is actually organized, when each member of your team CAN hold a spot by themselves while everyone else is somewhere else for whatever reason. I'm good with my scout rifle even in close-ish ranges, and can use it from the ground... but as a sniper, I prefer to be at long range, where I'm most effective and my enemy is not. That's not an exploit, that's combat. I fight at long range so I have the advantage, and the enemy has a disadvantage because it fights at short range. Can you tell me that's cheating in a game that uses guns? I have been given the specific ability to fight at long range with my scout rifle and sniper rifle -- should I not be trying to find a way to use them? I'm just going up to the snipers to defend our team against that half of them, to snipe down on the horde of harpies most of our team has to ignore to fight the boss, and to get shots off from a distance where I can actually see through my scope. I can be shot at (and often am, harpies like me because I'm their biggest threat), I still have to worry about the boss targeting me, I have to worry about protecting confluxes and killing oracles. I have to worry about the bubble going up from the Templar because I'm stuck where I can't gain cover. The difference is, I'm at a range where I don't have to worry about enemies sneaking up behind me, a smart choice for a sniper. The difference is, I save my teammates more than they save me. The difference is I get more kills than them, so they aren't even worrying about most of the threats because I'm a good sniper. And yet, instead of Bungie coming up with a decent fix to prevent teams from going up there, I've been proposing my own ideas of what would've been better, and why it's a problem Bungie did what they did. And all this time, you've been ignoring my ideas effectiveness in solving the problem without taking away sniping as a viable option. You haven't been trying to fix these ideas, make them better into a real suggestion, a balancing suggestion, but rather just fight the idea you thought I was defending when I was saying how to fix it. They've proven they don't know how to balance a game. Drastic, sweeping changes and suddenly (weeks later) calling something a bug and saying they want to fix it, even though it was how the original teams made it through normal and hard mode. They learned the predictability, they used it to organize a strategy to fight back, and now predictability is being called a bug. Fighting the game tactically is being called a bug. Using guns that worked in beta "as intended" suddenly aren't as intended. They don't know what they're doing, as far as balancing a game. The analogies have all been made - a kid who doesn't want to share, a young Dungeon Master who gets angry when his players solves his puzzles too easily... And they all are true and make sense. You don't see such sweeping changes and players being punished for playing the game they're given anywhere else. It's understandable that Bungie wants this to take more effort, be longer, and so on, to draw out the experience and make their ten-year-plan work. But that doesn't mean they know how to balance a game that's already released. These constant changes of this magnitude, this game may as well be a beta. But it's bearable. MMOs release in Open Beta all the time. They know the game needs tweaks to get it just right. In an open beta, such sweeping changes are expected and welcome... when you use the right wording as to why. "This method is a bit cheap, and we weren't aware Atheon could be pushed around." "Having too many players up there breaks the balance of the fight." "Enemies are intended to respawn less frequently. Six seconds was an old timer, and we saw it just didn't work out by having too many players run around. The idea is cool and all, but unfortunately this was a spawn location we had missed when we decided 20 seconds was a much better timer to provide the right number of enemy challenge while still providing frequent spawns." No, we get, "This isn't how you're supposed to play. You're playing our game wrong." We get stuff taken away, instead of being rewarded for doing something the Devs hadn't figured out. We're being punished for sniping during a boss fight, organizing teams to travel through time, working together to push a boss over a deep pit. Instead of making it so the whole team can't be up on sniper platforms, they took it away outright. Instead of providing more challenge to the whole past/future warp system, they're making it random so nobody knows what's going to happen to them. Instead of rewarding players for the teamwork in the manner of taking the boss take a little damage and teleporting back up (telling players "you can do it, if you want... it's just not a smart idea on this guy, he can teleport back up"), they're just making him unable to go over the ledge itself... Instead of giving a perk to the Pocket Infinity that makes it feel like an exotic, they took the one thing about it that made it feel special and replaced it with a perk that literally does nothing; I actually tried to get it nerfed, but this isn't even a Nerf gun at this point, this is more like a drawing of a Nerf gun. Instead of making the pvp change to the Vex Mythoclast, the ultimate reward in hard raid, from the beginning, they decided making it useless as a gun was a better idea by cutting its damage in half (and we still have yet to see how this fix to their nerf will go... but the fact they have to fix a nerf shows they overdid it). Auto rifles were badass... as they probably should be; they're what most people think of as an assault weapon, using to shoot other people. Just because they wanted more people to use other guns, they thought a nerf was a smart idea... but that's not going to change people's opinions about auto rifles. The most it does is make the people who used other guns from the start better off. Maybe that's a good thing, but it doesn't solve their "problem". This is feedback. This is where we're supposed to tell Bungie how we feel about these things. I'm not defending a cheatsy strategy that's actually rather crap since it weakens the players. I'm defending the right for players to look at the game, figure it out, and know what they're doing. Like if you have a sniper, you play with your sniper, you're known as the sniper, you're expected to provide sniper support... then you should be figuring out how to snipe. I'm not defending players trying to find the easiest (read: one) way to get through the game. I'm defending players trying to find the best ways they can tackle problems in the way they want to, providing many different ways to take it on, all of them the "best" by opinion. I'm NOT defending Bungie.

A Sad truth but thats how they want their experience. They are robbing themselves of the experience of fighting it fair and square. But humans cut corners all the time in every aspect of life to get what they want. There will ALWAYS be a loot cave, there will ALWAYS be something to exploit and get people something or somewhere they shouldn't. But not everyone wants to do what they are doing necessarily. I personally enjoy ducking and dodging and shotgunning harpies as they flank the team and titan smashing any Minotaurs that make it past the shield bearer. But I also like to snipe and not worry about whats behind me. Thats the glory of having a diversely designed map, the OPTION to change tactic which has unfortunately been truncated hastily. Then again... I haven't raided on Hard mode yet. My patience will be tested then...