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Official Destiny 2 Thread - Blad's Best Friend Club, update: significant layoffs hit Bungie, including composer Michael Salvatori

NeoJoe

By NeoJoe
in The Spawn Point

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  • 3 weeks later...
TwinIon

TwinIon

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Posted

So I've definitely hit the real endgame of D2, and it's kind of a bummer. I certainly can't complain about how many hours I've been able to put into the game. I've put more time into Destiny 2 this year than I have any game for a long time. There are a lot of issues with the game, but overall I have really enjoyed my time with it. I really like Europa, the new raid, and I've enjoyed tackling content at higher difficulties.

 

In particular I've really liked doing the Grandmaster Nightfalls. So much of Destiny quickly becomes about how fast you can do content over and over again, but GMs really feel like a place where your gear and your build and your teamwork matter. Far more than any other part of the game, it feels like it's what you've been building towards.

 

The bummer of it all is that it's very much a case of climbing the mountain because it's there. There's very little reason to do GMs when the same rewards are available at lower levels where they're much easier to farm. I complete one for the Conqueror title, but there's no real point in running it over and over again. It's strange that it feels like the whole game is built towards preparing you for non-existent content.

 

The only other part of the game that felt like that was day one raiding. By day 2 the challenge was making sure teammates knew the mechanics, the enemies hardly posed a threat then, and are a complete joke now. I think it's good to make raid content accessible to more people, but I also wish there was a raid mode that required the same thoughtful playing that a GM does. At first I was carefully crafting my mods and loadout for each encounter, but now I really just make sure I have the right guns.

 

 

I'm very guilty of looking back at my time in WoW with overstated nostalgia, but while I was raiding then it felt much different. I suppose I never was quite as well geared in WoW as I am now in Destiny, and I imagine that if vanilla WoW came out now I might rail against the slow drip of progression. Still, when I think back I remember upgrades feeling so much more impactful. Getting my mana regen up so I could keep up with healing on a raid boss was hard, and it was almost never enough. Even when my guild could regularly complete the raids, they were still clearly the endgame, the pinnacle of difficulty and loot.

 

Perhaps this is me wishing for Destiny to be a game it never promised to be. I wanted it to be a game where I had to min-max my stats and find the right gun with the right mods and where my time spent would be rewarded, but very little of that actually matters. It's a game where they want you to be able to get into almost everything very easily. There's a lot to do, checklist after checklist of triumphs and light levels and weapon rolls to chase down, but there's almost no content that actually asks you to have done all that.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
SoberChef

SoberChef

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One thing that I feel has just become "accepted" is that the mid-tier nightfall (currently 1250 LL) STILL does not have matchmaking. What I find fascinating is that I am locked out of Master Nightfalls until I hit 1275, like it cannot even be accessible to me. Why then, is there not a system in place, that once you are of light level, you are able to unlock matchmaking for that level of NF? I understand the 1280/1300 requires A LOT of communication, load management, etc. However at 1250, it's rather manageable and most would come to quickly understand the nuances of how to prep for such an event.

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TwinIon

TwinIon

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20 hours ago, SoberChef said:

One thing that I feel has just become "accepted" is that the mid-tier nightfall (currently 1250 LL) STILL does not have matchmaking. What I find fascinating is that I am locked out of Master Nightfalls until I hit 1275, like it cannot even be accessible to me. Why then, is there not a system in place, that once you are of light level, you are able to unlock matchmaking for that level of NF? I understand the 1280/1300 requires A LOT of communication, load management, etc. However at 1250, it's rather manageable and most would come to quickly understand the nuances of how to prep for such an event.

It might be nice if there was something not tied to LL that allowed you to get matchmaking for basically any activity. I do think that even a 1250 could be a problem for matchmaking, and I can imagine you might often get whole fireteams that were unprepared or underleveled or something. Still, the game tracks a million things. To take it to an extreme, I got Conqueror this season. Surely you could match me with other Conquerors in a 1250 and there wouldn't be a problem. Same thing with the raid. I have the seal, I've run it maybe 20 times. Put me in a matchmade group of folks who have done the same and there would be no problems.

 

Of course, requiring Conqueror or Descendent to get matchmaking would be silly, but it does seem like there should be some way to earn the right to get matchmaking. Next time I need to grind pinnacles it's kinda silly I'll need to do the whole discord song and dance for stuff the game could easily assume that I'm prepared for.

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The Dude

The Dude

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Really looking forward to VoGs return but man D2 has so many issues that I have no clue how I'm 2000+ in it. I can't get over how badly bungie has borked sunsetting so far,  just awful. They just do enough to keep stringing me along but they really have went down since going f2p and losing their VV and HM help. D1 was just a much more memorable game for me, they did so much right in d1 and really fucked d2 over in so many ways .

 

The weapons are all so samey, so tired of it. Mainly I log in to run DSC , trying for a better Posterity and still haven't gotten eyes after so many runs. 

 

But so much feels so useless at the moment, amazing how other games know how to introduce new loot steadily compared to Bungie. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
TwinIon

TwinIon

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As someone who defended sunsetting as a concept, I'm glad to see them abandon it as implemented. They never should have devalued playable activities to worthlessness, and they should have been implementing more weapons to replace what was sunset. I'm surprised they reversed course so soon.

 

I feel like the change to the level grind is a band-aid to a larger issue. Last season I hit the level cap and played all the high end PvE content, and it's just not fun to grind to be able to do those exact same activities. With the release of Beyond Light, at least I felt like I was leveling for the raid. Grinding levels to play the same nightfalls I was playing before is a bummer. Still, I'd rather grind 50 levels of powerfuls than 10 levels worth of pinnacles. The RNG of doing a thing like a master nightfall / master hunt only to get a reward in your highest level slot is horrible. Hell, I'd take a 100 level power grind with RNG protection over the 10 level pinnacle we have now.

 

Ultimately though, the problem is less about how the grind works than what you're working towards. Working towards doing the same things you were already doing is a bad deal. It always feels better to be working towards something you couldn't do if you don't grind those levels. In WoW that always meant a new area, new dungeons, new raids. The comparative trickle of new content in Destiny will always be the fundamental issue the game has. I know they really don't like gating content too much, but there's something primal about powering up in order to earn the new thing.

 

After playing around in a 12 man raid this weekend, I also felt very acutely how much Destiny needs to evolve some of it's activities. Throwing more players and chaos is an easy way to make something feel more epic, and the technology is obviously there. There's still so much to like about the fundamentals of Destiny. I just want them to do a bit more with it.

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Spawn_of_Apathy

Spawn_of_Apathy

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19 hours ago, TwinIon said:

As someone who defended sunsetting as a concept, I'm glad to see them abandon it as implemented. They never should have devalued playable activities to worthlessness, and they should have been implementing more weapons to replace what was sunset. I'm surprised they reversed course so soon.

 

I feel like the change to the level grind is a band-aid to a larger issue. Last season I hit the level cap and played all the high end PvE content, and it's just not fun to grind to be able to do those exact same activities. With the release of Beyond Light, at least I felt like I was leveling for the raid. Grinding levels to play the same nightfalls I was playing before is a bummer. Still, I'd rather grind 50 levels of powerfuls than 10 levels worth of pinnacles. The RNG of doing a thing like a master nightfall / master hunt only to get a reward in your highest level slot is horrible. Hell, I'd take a 100 level power grind with RNG protection over the 10 level pinnacle we have now.

 

Ultimately though, the problem is less about how the grind works than what you're working towards. Working towards doing the same things you were already doing is a bad deal. It always feels better to be working towards something you couldn't do if you don't grind those levels. In WoW that always meant a new area, new dungeons, new raids. The comparative trickle of new content in Destiny will always be the fundamental issue the game has. I know they really don't like gating content too much, but there's something primal about powering up in order to earn the new thing.

 

After playing around in a 12 man raid this weekend, I also felt very acutely how much Destiny needs to evolve some of it's activities. Throwing more players and chaos is an easy way to make something feel more epic, and the technology is obviously there. There's still so much to like about the fundamentals of Destiny. I just want them to do a bit more with it.


I’m not too surprised they killed sunsetting this soon. It was very unpopular. Probably the most unpopular thing they’ve done. But more than that, sunsetting already severed a purpose by removing recluse, mountaintop, and maybe a couple other standout weapons. I think they would have wanted to go one more season so it would also remove weapons that create Warmind cells, but it sounds like they’re going to have a nerf for that coming soon. 
 

one problem Bungie ran into a couple years ago in regards to power grinding was when Black Armory released. Everyone was too below the recommended power and the activity was impossible unless you grinded your power up. But only way to do that was to go back to grinding the same strikes, bounties, crucible maps, public events as before. It just wasn’t a fun way to start a season. 
 

the higher power level is for pinnacle activities, which they don’t often make new activities just for that. They spend most of their time/effort making content that the broader player base, even the new light players can take part in and enjoy. 
 

The tricky thing for Bungie is they want to have rewards for their hardest content, but most of their customers/players will never play that content or give up. While some don’t see a problem there, it doesn’t stop the greater masses from wanting those rewards. And it can often look like pinnacle activities gatekeep for other pinnacle activities. Like seemingly needing Anarchy, Divinity, or when Mountaintop and Recluse were the pair to have. And Bungie knows more aggressive attempts to push their wider audience into these pinnacle activities, like Grand Master Knightfalls would alienate those more casual players and likely piss them off to leave. The percentage of people who’ve even completed a raid is still very low. 

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  • 2 months later...
Nokt

Nokt

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, Brick said:

You say that now, but then Witch Queen will come out and suck you right back in. 

While I've done more raiding recently than I ever have, PvP was a big reason I liked Destiny as much as I did.

Stasis has ruined it for me.

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Spawn_of_Apathy

Spawn_of_Apathy

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On 5/5/2021 at 5:12 PM, Remarkableriots said:

I didn't get very far this last season. 


we’re around the time I usually get burned out and it feels like the less interesting season is released. This year it seems to be season 2, but we got a late start to the seasons, normally we’d already be in season three and I just wouldn’t care. I’d disappear from the game for a couple months and be ready to go back for the fourth season and then into the next big DLC. 

 

This year hasn’t been as bad. I also haven’t been playing every day this season. Most just on Tuesdays (solo) and Fridays (with my friends in Gambit). If the seasonal activity doesn’t suck next season I may avoid complete burnout altogether this year. 

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TwinIon

TwinIon

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I'm glad a new season is coming, but I'm disappointed how little content there seems to be. I feel like with all the focus on "core activities" there shouldn't be a season that goes buy without a new Strike and maps for Gambit/Crucible. Last season we got three new strikes.

 

I played VoG a couple times back in the day, but I hardly remember it, so that'll be a mostly new experience, even if it's largely the same.

 

This last season I finished collecting all the exotics in the game, and if I'm geared up well enough to do GM nightfalls, I don't really feel like grinding for mildly better rolls on stuff I already have, so I expect my playtime will fall off considerably. I still enjoy my time in Destiny, but there's not much else for me to work towards at this point.

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