Destiny 2 Catch-All

For anyone who is at work like me and have Twitter blocked by their company firewall, these are videos of the new exotic primary-slotted grenade launcher, Witherhoard, dropping Raid/Hunt bosses in just a few seconds. Been a bit of discussion about it over on the GWJ D2 Discord channel.

Yup... that's pretty nuts.

Got to the last encounter in the new Prophecy dungeon and I'm very impressed. The encounters feel so much more interesting than Pit Of Heresy's fights, and the environments made my fireteam stop in awe several times. Hopefully we can finish it this week, but so far we're all really impressed.

Anyone interested in some Whisper runs over the next few weeks to get the gun & catalyst on PC or PS4?

Serengeti wrote:

Anyone interested in some Whisper runs over the next few weeks to get the gun & catalyst on PC or PS4?

I’m game.

Sure, why not

The Umbral Engrams able to drop during any activity, and in great quantities, is the one thing that makes this season feel far more worthwhile. Last night my buddy and I just ran the Strike playlist, working on bounties because of course you gotta work on bounties. But really, it was just a chance for us to sit down and play Strikes like we used to in Destiny 1, and I went from 992 to 1006 light in a single night. It actually felt like my time was valued and I could play the game as I want.

But I feel like there's still so much at odds in this game, with bounties themselves just kind of being an annoying.... thing. Bungie has several times stated that they want players to be comfortable playing how they want, but then they drop these bounties forcing the player to get kills with X number of weapons. Hey, if you're playing every night, that's fine, just choose the bounties you want and you'll get eight by the end of the week easily... but if you want to play other games, swap out to weapons (and load-outs) that you're less comfortable with or make no sense just so you can do this grocery list to get an engram.

What was perhaps most unusual was that the activities in Strikes to earn pinnacle engrams didn't even show up on my Destinations map until we were halfway done that night. Coincidentally, the fewer bounties we had to worry about the more fun we had.

"You're still walkin' around with Horror Story, eh?"

"Yeah man, I love this gun... too bad they're gonna make it obsolete soon."

They want me to play my way, but they also don't, and instead of resetting everything with a Destiny 3, they're going to boost everyone playing to 750 minimum on new characters, sunset gear, and then start shoving content into the vault.

I can't help but feel like Bungie needs a Destiny 3 because Destiny 2 just feels like a horde of systems all piled on top of one another, duct-taped and chewing-gummed into place. Can they increase the amount of consumables I can carry? Because every season they introduce a new one and I'm constantly running out of space. Maybe find new uses for old consumables rather than making new ones every season.

Perhaps just take a step back and rethink your progression systems altogether. Do players actually like doing bounties? My understanding is players grab them as the best source of experience and therefore the best way to rank up in the season. But is that actually fun? Is that engaging? Are players being rewarded? Maybe put more emphasis on the activities themselves, so that simply playing the activity will earn you progress towards rewards, with a series of challenges unique to each activity that will gain further rewards.

The game is half-built this way already, and I know I can go in and do plenty of activities that will still get me pinnacle gear that are more my taste, but it feels like the game is steering you towards content that's not actually rewarding, or adds in all kinds of bells and whistles that make certain challenges more of a chore.

Umbral Engrams help, but they feel like just another cluttered system on top of an already messy system that really needs to be cleaned up and slimmed down.

I still carry Horror Story as my main too, and it caps at 1060.

I'm probably going to lose Thunderlord too.

Thunderlord won't be sunset, none of the Exotics are going to go away. Sadly a lot of my favorite weapons are legendaries so I'm gonna feel it when the new year hits in the Fall.

I'm happy that Prophecy, which is now my favorite activity in D2, drops gear that can be used in the next year. Feels good to work towards getting drops that will last a while. Gnawing Hunger is such a beast that I don't see it leaving my loadout until they pry it from my cold, dead, Guardian's hands.

Gnawing Hunger is such a beast that I don't see it leaving my loadout until they pry it from my cold, dead, Guardian's hands.

Good news if you rolled it in its "reissued" form this season. Bad news if you had literally the same gun with a different season icon that you acquired anywhere from when it was introduced over a year ago up until just before the season started about a month ago. Sucks for you if you invested resources into masterworking it, or if you had become attached to specifically that instance of the gun thanks to the kill counter that is specifically a design choice to help build player investment in the game.

---

I'm generally inclined to take developers at their word when they explain design choices, and even when it's a choice that works against my interests or preferences, I'll accept it and move along.

The stated objective of gear sunsetting was to have a mechanism to gracefully and predictably phase out weapons and perks that were overpowered or that otherwise created intractable problems for balance or design. (Most notably, "pinnacle" legendaries like Mountaintop and Recluse, and damage boosting perks that force escalating power creep in new perk design if they want players to try new things.) Also, as painful as losing old favorites might be, having an expiration date on them will encourage players to try new things and keep the game fresh for themselves as the game continues to develop and offer new options.

Okay, those are reasonable goals. Probably other ways to solve those issues of balance and design, but I know enough about software development that they didn't come to this choice lightly. I like a lot of those weapons (Ironically, I'm personally most fond of one of those pinnacle legendaries that doesn't get much flack for being overpowered -- Loaded Question -- but I'll deal with losing it if that means the designers can be less encumbered by other challenging elements in the design space.)

So, we arrive at this season where we get to finally see that design choice in action, and what do we get?

A few genuinely new weapons that follow the pattern from the previous season of being cool looking and featuring some experimental new perk options. Great! Looks like we're moving things along as described! And those interesting weapons from the last couple seasons will extend out into next year, but will sunset a bit before this new batch, so we'll have time next year to use things we might have ignored over the last year if we were too attached to old favorites to give them a try. Okay, great, everything checks out so far.

Except, they do still have many of the older perks that had been discussed as potentially problematic. Odd, but whatever, maybe they've changed course on that a bit.

Oh, and what's this? A number of older, more desirable weapons (including ones that could roll some devastatingly powerful perk combinations) are now dropping as fresh this season (such as the aforementioned Gnawing Hunger, and its sibling from the Reckoning weapon set, Nightwatch, as well as a great many others from across the last three years now found in the world drop pools). Also a bit odd and unexpected, but oh well, I guess I get to keep using some my old favorites for at least another year!

Wrong.

Guess what? Those existing copies of the gun? They have the wrong season icon, so they're going to sunset after this summer. But don't worry, just reroll them! And for some (like the Reckoning weapons) they've even provided a convenient mechanism via the seasonal progression mechanics (ie, the umbral engram system) to make grinding out that roll easier than it was previously. Hm. Okay. But if I do reroll my old favorites, aren't I once again in the place where I'm not going to be interested in trying the newer things you're hoping I'll give a chance thanks to sunsetting?

Hm, yeah, and also, it's still a grind. And definitely NOT the fun kind, since I'm grinding for something that I've already have EXACTLY. Except, not exactly, since I've invested resources in masterworking the ones I've already got, and the time I've spent using them has been explicitly recorded via a kill counter to make me build an attachment beyond the fact that I like the way they feel when I use them in game. So the only thing about the whole process that will be "new" is the amount of time I'll waste regaining access to the same thing, only a version I'll have less attachment to.

So, now I'm starting to feel like maybe we've not been given the whole picture behind the design decisions that led to this sunsetting mechanic.

But, wait, maybe it's just one of those weird intractable technical problems where they would have LIKED to respect player investment in existing gear that now has new versions that will carry forward, but for annoying reasons they couldn't manage to update existing copies of weapons with the sunsetting date applied to new instances.

Except they can. Because they are going to do it for raid weapons. In fact, they had already promised that raid weapons would get expiration dates that differed from what their season icon would indicate, only they didn't implement it right for the patch that opened the season. But don't worry! They'll be fixing those before the sunsetting activates at the end of the season.

Everything else though? They've recorded the feedback, but, you know, don't hold your breath. And in the meantime, they know that if you really like those guns, you're probably already trying to reroll them anyway, so f*ck you, and f*ck the investment they made you feel in your existing gear.

Anyway, even if they eventually relent and apply the same fix to "reissued" weapons from others sources that they are going to apply to raid weapons, it is now abundantly clear that they weren't being completely honest about there choices with this system.

Yes, it IS everything they said it is -- it DOES provide a graceful and predictable mechanism to phase out overpowered weapons. But it's also everything that the community feared it would be, and that they demurred on commenting on: it's another tool to drive players into continued active "engagement" with the game with relatively low development resource cost associated with it.

Or to put it more coarsely, it's a cheap way to make us keep grinding for the same sh*t over and over again.

zeroKFE wrote:

Or to put it more coarsely, it's a cheap way to make us keep grinding for the same sh*t over and over again.

This is partially where my prior rant came from and where my friend continually jokes sarcastically. "You're not supposed to play other games! You're just supposed to play Destiny!" As someone that only grabs the bounties for the pinnacle engrams, I never realized that they're the greatest source of experience in the game, which earns you the seasonal rewards, which (if I recall) you need to purchase the season pass to enjoy anyway.

Which is weird because you're paying money for an excuse to grind more. Ideally, the view is the seasonal pass rewards you for playing the game you're already playing, that it adds value to the dedicated player. Instead, it's like Bungie is desperately trying to attach value to a system without real value.

It's weird to consider the fact that Luke Smith's inspiration in a lot of his own decisions is stuff he remembers fondly from World of Warcraft. I imagine the whole... uh... explosion thing whose name I already forget at the Tower... that was one such inspiration (I didn't play last season so all I know is Rasputin shot a thing down, I've already forgotten its name). Yet in World of Warcraft you still earned experience.

Then again, World of Warcraft is also one of those games where "it didn't begin until you hit max level" or some such, because that's where the gear grind began I believe. But you also had more difficult challenges to tackle. All of Destiny's grind seems to be focused on the easy stuff that provides no challenge.

On the other hand, I had to reach 1000 at the start of the season, and am now working to hit high enough for the dungeon and higher Nightfall difficulties, so, we'll see. My one friend feels like the Champions are a poorly executed idea, and I think I see his point. The game is continually trying to get you to swap what weapons are equipped – what gear is equipped on the whole – yet it expects you to attach mods to everything all the time so you can always be prepared. That's great if you and your friends have a set loadout with set levels that you've customized to fit your play style.

The gear grind does not encourage that play style.

If I want to play the way I find most efficient – choosing two or three armor sets with a few different weapons per slot to cover all my bases and keep swapping based on role/activity – then I'll be spending a lot of resources on infusing. The game doesn't give resources fast enough to make that sort of approach feasible. So they want you to just swap gear in and out, which means there's no point customizing any of it since you'll spend five minutes on something you're going to be swapping out in 30-60.

I mean, I've come to a point of acceptance and complacency, but the more I think about it the more this game needs that reset. Which is funny because the original Destiny was in a good spot before Destiny 2 and never felt like it needed that reset that badly. Destiny 2 is in a better spot, but I feel like it's never been in a good spot.

Are there people playing this on PS4? What about PC?

Atras wrote:

Are there people playing this on PS4? What about PC?

https://discord.gg/ucQMyss

Edit:

To be less flip, that's a dedicated Discord server for GWJ folks playing Destiny. We have large and active communities playing on both PC and Xbox. There are fewer people on the the server playing on PS4, but my understanding has always been that there was a non zero number of PS4 players who don't use the Discord server because they are happy organizing with platform tools.

Regardless of what platform you play on, though, you should join the server because beyond actively organizing playtime, we have a VERY (edit) active group of people just talking about the game in general. (This thread would be of a disgustingly silly length if we were trying to use it to actively discuss the game in the same way.)

A very VERY group of people! It's pretty much the veriest group I've ever been a part of.

And now you see just how "very" we can be.

Verily.

Meh. I'm not very.

Not sure if anyone's still playing these days, but I applied in-game to the guild (I think they're cross-platform?). I'm mickGK on XBL, enjoying the content post-Osiris via XBL Game Pass!

WizardM0de wrote:

Not sure if anyone's still playing these days, but I applied in-game to the guild (I think they're cross-platform?). I'm mickGK on XBL, enjoying the content post-Osiris via XBL Game Pass!

hey there and welcome! join the discord server as well, there's a lot of folks playing))

WizardM0de wrote:

Not sure if anyone's still playing these days, but I applied in-game to the guild (I think they're cross-platform?). I'm mickGK on XBL, enjoying the content post-Osiris via XBL Game Pass!

Ok, resubmitted the clan app - don't think I did it right the first time for some reason.

WizardM0de wrote:
WizardM0de wrote:

Not sure if anyone's still playing these days, but I applied in-game to the guild (I think they're cross-platform?). I'm mickGK on XBL, enjoying the content post-Osiris via XBL Game Pass!

Ok, resubmitted the clan app - don't think I did it right the first time for some reason.

I got your invite, but it’s for the Playstation clan. I think you’re looking for the Xbox/PC group.

https://tinyurl.com/yc2kbb9a

Um... Well then...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/VrR7Msu.png)

I had waited to buy Beyond Light because I hadn't been interested in playing Destiny 2 much this year so far, but today I hopped in and wrapped up a few things, and figured I might as well see where the story goes from here. Just a heads up that GreenManGaming is doing a fall sale at the moment and I got the expansion and season pass for about $41 and some change. Just use FALL2020 at checkout.

It's shedding, maybe? Or repairing?

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/TRatg8c.jpg)
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/KE6qE7k.jpg)

I dunno.

So I waited through the queue, and was kind of just messing around when there was an announcement that Zavala wanted everyone at the tower. There was a new mission at the tower to walk the streets of the city, which I gleefully started. At one point you find yourself on a platform looking up at the Traveler in awe...

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/aDisJ1h.jpg)

And then I continued down through the streets. I jump over a few platforms over a river and come to a door...

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/Xith2ej.jpg)

And I'm immediately greeted with... Contacting Destiny Servers...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/bY1YAiW.jpg)

And now I can't get back in. Well... I guess maybe I'll get to watch what happens on Youtube.

Edit: Got back in, the queue system is borked right now though.

The Traveler has reformed...

Darn! I missed the event. Totally forgot.

I watched a video of it and it seemed even more anticlimactic than the last event.

In Bungie's defence, they made it very clear there would not be a big end-of-season event.

Oh yeah, you only missed a whole lot of guardians sitting around. Personally I'm happy with any kind of live event, I think even small ones like these go a long way to add excitement to a game. But overall I sat around for about an hour for an "event" that was about 5 lines of dialogue and a 10 second animation.

Well guardians, how goes it? Warlock main here, enjoying the content. Stasis has left me all kinds of sad after going Devour Void for the past month, decided to comb through the vault for ideas. Found Eye of Another World and Monte Carlo and NOW WE ARE TALKING BABY. I've got staff pew pew at the same rate I had grenades, having a lot more fun!