Underhated: Escalation Tokens

So I’m a little surprised this aspect of the update has ducked discussion, but I feel the single aspect of this update I actually feel the strongest about is the tokens.

Let’s do some background: I’m a regular on legendaries, I LOVE high end, easily matchmade PvE content. In Destiny 2, GM Nightfalls were my bread and butter, and I was excited to see what looks like The Division’s answer to that popular activity.

I could take or leave the prototype system. Far as I can tell, the community sentiment is so overwhelmingly negative, it’s a matter of time until some other fix or rework arrives, at some point, so I’m happy to see how that plays out into the future. But the TOKENS…

Why is there a price of admission for the activity itself?

What does this do for Escalation? A few thoughts:

ONE: Punishment for failure. According to the game timer, the devs anticipate attempts of a high level escalation could take as long as an hour. Losing one hour of your life is PLENTY punishment for failing an activity. As a reminder, the activity is the opportunity to even roll for a reward, not the prize itself. There should be no punishment for attempts.

TWO: Unnecessary stakes. I’ve read the posts about hardcore character issues. Disconnects, server lag, woefully bad teammates, and any of them can lead to a massive, permanent loss (your character). The token system replicates this frustration, but for every run of the activity above level zero. If I get an important phone call, or my power goes out, or anything else, I don’t just lose my time, I lose a chance to even begin another attempt. I didn’t sign up for these stakes. That’s why I don’t run a HC character.

THREE: Matchmaking. I’m nervous to bring other people along into higher level runs, because they could cost me my tokens as well as my time. I’m happy to run a legendary with basically anyone, but now I have to figure out how to organically find teammates who are down for the same level of challenge and commitment that I am, or I’m down a considerable amount of tokens. Again, unnecessary stakes.

And there’s more flavors of the above to explore, but I’ve made my point. Why so may barriers to the challenge itself? Isn’t escalation supposed to be the vast playground for our new powerful toys? (or even our old, optimized builds?) Why are we locking the gates? Let us play!