The end-game content of Bungie’s Destiny can be fairly challenging. This especially goes for Destiny’s raids. Though they are smaller than the World of Warcraft raids we read about in Nardi’s book (Destiny raids cap out at 6 people), they are similar to WoW raids in that they are long missions requiring coordination and communication between teammates, and usually a few different character classes and specialties.

Destiny is a console-only game, which has the result of making it a little less social than the WoW community that Allison described. Clans (the functional equivalent of Allison’s guilds) have a little less of a presence in the game, and there is no text-based chat function. The only way to communicate with other players is by using a microphone for voice chat after players have joined a team together. As a result, it is a little more difficult to throw together a full raid team of six capable players.

Consequently, the practice of “cheesing” parts of a raid has become fairly widespread. (In video game slang, a “cheese” tends to refer to tactics that require less skill, or an overpowered character/weapon, etc.) Undermanned or under skilled fireteams will find parts of the map that enemies are unable to access, send a single skilled player ahead to take care of a certain section of a raid, or otherwise skirt aspects of the raid in different ways than were “intended” (supposedly) by the game designers at Bungie.

One of the areas in which cheesing is most common is during the “bridge” section of the Crota’s End raid. In this section, players are required to build a bridge by standing on three different areas known as pressure plates. They must kill a character known as the swordbearer, who upon death drops his sword. One player must then take the sword across the bridge in order to kill a gatekeeper who waits on the other side, and who can only take damage from a sword. This process must then be repeated one by one, until at least three players are across the bridge, where there is another set of pressure plates so that the bridge can be built for the last few players to cross. It is one of the more difficult and time-consuming parts of the raid. This video demonstrates the “legit” way to pass this section of the raid:

However, given this area’s difficulty and potential for time consumption, it is also the area that features the most drastic potential for cheesing. Players soon discovered that if a fireteam can get one player across the bridge, the rest of the players could remain on the first side. It is even possible to cross the bridge without building it; one class of player can simply jump and swing the sword in a certain way to get across. Either way, once this player is across he or she simply hides in a spot where enemies are unable to go and then waits for the rest of the team to perform the cheese. After one player has crossed, the remaining players can die, as long as one player is either playing as a class that has a perk that allows for self-resurrection after a death, or knows the way to jump “above the map.” When this happens, the enemies that are on the first side of the bridge “de-spawn,” or simply disappear, since the game interprets that there are no human players remaining on that side of the bridge. Once the enemies are gone, the player that is above the map or that is able to self-resurrect can simply revive everyone else on that side, and together they can snipe the enemies on the other side of the bridge until, eventually, the section is completed. This video demonstrates the process of “cheesing the bridge”:

This all brings me to my focus on this piece: self-constructed rules. For whatever reason, Bungie is unable (or unwilling) to fix this cheese. The practice of cheesing the bridge has become so prevalent in Destiny that many players don’t even know that there is another “legitimate” way to run this section. Even among those who do know, many still prefer to cheese this section in order to have an easier time and get to the loot quicker.

It is not even clear whether or not Bungie designed the section with a legitimate way to complete it in mind. Nevertheless, the Destiny forums on Reddit (like this one) and looking for group websites are filled with people who take pride in running the bridge legit. Players strongly advocate running it the slower way, because it’s more fun that way, and what good is getting all the loot in Destiny if you’re not going to savor your playing experience.

Perhaps Bungie was aware of the bridge cheese when they released the content, and they intended it to be a viable way to complete the section (we don’t know; they haven’t publicly said anything on the matter). Either we, we have an interesting dynamic. For many players, a new Destiny house rule is to play the bridge the long way. Whether or not the cheese is really a cheese, a house rule is required to eliminate shortcuts that have become so common. Certainly, Destiny is not the only game to have available cheeses that some people find cheapen the overall experience and try to avoid, but I think the Destiny community is unique in the prominence of cheesing tactics during the Crota’s End raid in particular.

Of course, the need for a house rule extend certain missions in the game for purposes of fun calls into question the success of Destiny’s game design, but that is a topic for a different post.