Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Broker]

It's the average power of your best gear minus mods. It's the same level blue items will be dropping at.

[Mr Ben]

For those farming tokens for your faction of choice (Dead Orbit, FWC or New Monarchy), the below video is currently the most efficient (boring, but efficient) method of obtaining said tokens in as fast a time possible:

 

Currently doing it on my Warlock as Hideo refuses to give me the Warlock bond after 26 rank ups () and got 120 tokens (6 rank ups) in the space of around 20 minutes.

 

Edit: No bond, and only getting shaders past 30 rank ups. Oh well.

[Shimmyhill]

Farming faction tokens is pointless as there is a limit to how many rank ups you can do (60 I think) so you're just wasting your life and cutting off a source of engrams later on in the game.

[Mr Ben]

That's completely false. There is no limit, only a soft cap at 30 (after that you get shaders only). It doesnt affect anything else, later or otherwise.

 

The above video is for those who have limited time to get the most out of the factions, as after Tuesday reset you wont be able to obtain any more, only hand them in.

[HarryBizzle]

Man, this week's Flashpoint is a bit of a chore. Io is totally dead, (probably because it's a crap location), so there's hardly anyone doing public events.

[Janski]

Yup and triggering the Heroic version of those drilling events is a pain if there aren't many other players about.

[Shimmyhill]

8 minutes ago, Mr Ben said:

That's completely false. There is no limit, only a soft cap at 30 (after that you get shaders only). It doesnt affect anything else, later or otherwise.

 

The above video is for those who have limited time to get the most out of the factions, as after Tuesday reset you wont be able to obtain any more, only hand them in.

 

Ahh, is just what I heard on a youtube vid where a guy got 1000 in under an hour on titan, looked equally boring as the one above

[Broker]

2 minutes ago, HarryBizzle said:

Man, this week's Flashpoint is a bit of a chore. Io is totally dead, (probably because it's a crap location), so there's hardly anyone doing public events.

 

The one near the NPC on the planet seems pretty active generally, but I think the flashpoint planets are generally busier closer to the weekly reset on Tues and Weds.

[Oz]

10 minutes ago, Mr Ben said:

That's completely false. There is no limit, only a soft cap at 30 (after that you get shaders only). It doesnt affect anything else, later or otherwise.

 

The above video is for those who have limited time to get the most out of the factions, as after Tuesday reset you wont be able to obtain any more, only hand them in.

Ben what's the reward for getting to 30? is there any? I seem to have gotten most of the items that can drop. 

 

[Lyrical Donut]

13 minutes ago, Mr Ben said:

 

The above video is for those who have limited time to get the most out of the factions, as after Tuesday reset you wont be able to obtain any more, only hand them in.

 

What if your remaining tokens are taken away from you (ala Raid keys reset). Hardly time well spent if so. Faction rallies will be back.

[Mr Ben]

No reward. I wanted the warlock bond but never got one, only repeat items. Only getting shaders now post 30 rank ups (I only know the level as DIM (Destiny Item Manager) now shows it at the bottom of each character. Got all the rest of the armour and weapons from New Monarchy though at least once.

 

Just want the auto rifle, boots and helm from FWC on the hunter, and the chest and legs from Dead Orbit on my titan.

 

Tokens wont be removed, as next week you can hand them in during victory week, but you can no longer earn any more. What we dont know is if the armour will be different next time (it likely will be) and there will be new weapons added (they're already in the database).

[HarryBizzle]

When will the factions next be back?

[Mr Ben]

We dont know. Its possible it'll be a monthly event, but its equally possible to be every other month. We'll have to wait and see.

[HarryBizzle]

1 hour ago, Janski said:

Yup and triggering the Heroic version of those drilling events is a pain if there aren't many other players about.

 

Yeah, and the gear you get from the non-heroics is rubbish. I'm currently at 224 and the progression has really dried up a fair bit. Got a luminous engram waiting but I'm gonna keep it for as long as possible.

 

 

Anyway, re:Crucible - what were Bungie thinking? Every match is an ordeal! Takes bloody ages. I just played a game of Survival and it must have gone on for 15+ minutes, easily! We played 7 bloody rounds of the thing!

 

 

[Shimmyhill]

I hate Crucible on this one as the fun is gone and every game is sweaty if you want to win and that’s fine if you treat it as practice for Trials but I’m talking about the quick play mode let alone competitive - if anything competitive is more fun as it doesn’t have the worst game mode ever conceived in the history of gaming - supremacy, kill confirmed can be a good mode but not so much when both teams of 4 stand together and range kill each other so no chance of picking up engrams until someone goes rogue and then it’s a case of hunting the other 3 as a team of 4.

 

No point talking about control as it’s dead as a mode with 4 players and zones given to you at the start so what we have is two terrible modes and clash that’s ok and no way to select them so like me today if you play 5 games 3 of them can be in supremacy so that’s about as much fun as repeatedly running into a wall - at least the wall isn’t a laggy pile of shit tho I guess!

[macosx]

I’m absolutely loving Crucible this time around, and I bloody despised it in Destiny 1. In that I felt I was missing some grand trick as I couldn’t hit a barn door in it, and any skill I had in FPS was suddenly robbed, and every one on one battle I lost. 

 

I was so dreading playing Crucible in 2 , but I don’t know whether I’ve managed to get decent weapons but I’m doing alright . Mida and Uriel's Gift and a sword do the job, and swap out to Vigilance Wing on some maps with long lanes.

 

Control is my least favourite mode  but I like the risk / reward of supremacy in the battle for  crests. I’ve spent more time in Crucible than the main game. Nice drop of two exotics in two subsequent matches to end the night

 

 

[HarryBizzle]

The game modes aren't too bad but the core gameplay just isn't as fun as Halo 5's multiplayer or Titanfall 2. The latter is very different but if I'm going to be playing PvP that's going to win every time.

 

But the duration of each round is bonkers and the whole thing just feels like a chore. I almost wonder if it's just so you don't have loot dropping at a much higher rate than anything you could be doing in PvE.

[instasis]

I play the game pretty casually - barely touch it in the week, pump a few hours in at the weekend. I do some strikes, take on the challenges that are mode specific and jump into crucible occasionally.

 

My Titan pinged 260 last night after 17 hours - almost every session has seen me slowly climbing up the light level. I've not done any adventures, haven't even unlocked Cade's Patrols yet with this character. I think I mistakenly cashed in EDZ tokens I'd earned with my other character before I realised they were shared but that's the only boost I've given it until last night when I farmed 200 FWC tokens from IO. Progress to this point has felt easier than D1, by far.

 

And I've still got so much to do. I've done one memory from Ikora, need to do all the adventures, have some planet specific missions to push on with, the Nightfall to team up with people and crack and the Raid to try to get on. I've not done any weapon quests (I have one, forcing me to do the raid, but nothing about The Rat King?).

 

I think, as a casual player, they've done an awesome job.

[Hexx]

11 hours ago, HarryBizzle said:

Anyway, re:Crucible - what were Bungie thinking? Every match is an ordeal! Takes bloody ages. I just played a game of Survival and it must have gone on for 15+ minutes, easily! We played 7 bloody rounds of the thing!

 

I've no idea they've totally borked the best game mode (control), effectively removed their most distinctive feature (space magic) and done nothing to fix their worst issue (red bar twunts)

 

 

[Harsin]

When most games come down to the timer running out something’s wrong.

[Hexx]

21 minutes ago, Captain LeChuck said:

Eh? What makes you say that?

 

The massive cool downs on everything, even fully specced that basically make most abilities moot as a game play feature, and then that energy weapons can shut supers down easily?

[instasis]

10 minutes ago, Captain LeChuck said:

Siren's Song, on Titan. It's a really good one with some of the best visual design I've seen in an FPS.

 

I'm really looking forward to digging into them. What I like about it is that I can just pick and choose between new experiences, stories, smashing stuff in the face etc etc. I'm actually looking forward to clearing all the Lost Sectors and supply caches - it's cool chillout gaming - I did one yesterday on Io which was up above the Rupture, it was bonkers!

 

Amusingly, if I then get a challenge that says 'clear out a Lost Sector here' and I've already done it, it makes it harder to find it because of the way the maps are drawn. No idea why they put them all on there, really.

[K]

After some initial misgivings, I’m really enjoying the Crucible this time round. I still miss the 6-person teams, but it doesn’t make as big a difference in practice as I thought it might – I had some great, close, games last night, as well as some painful drubbings, but it all felt fair.

 

Generally speaking, I’m really impressed with Destiny 2 so far. Rather than the bitty, arbitrary feel of the first game, it seems like there’s an actual unifying design behind the whole thing this time round. I know some people don’t like the slower progression, but playing with some of my friends who play much less frequently than me, it’s great to see them making meaningful progress. Things like smart loot

 

I still have a handful of beefs. Other than the general easiness, the main one is the inflexible team sizes – we had five players on the other night, which is a painful number in that there’s nothing you can do together. You have to split up, which seems crazy. You would have thought you could have a five-player patrol at least – doing public events together would be a great way to boost the light level of lower-ranked players.

 

The other one is with how shite the Exodus Black strike is. It seems bizarrely sub-standard given how good the other ones are. There were a few strikes in D1 I wasn’t massively keen on, like the Psion Flayers, but there weren’t any I thought were genuinely poor. Exodus Black, and the climax in particular, just feels like it hasn’t been playtested enough. The boss has way too much health, disappears annoyingly, and sometimes is quite difficult to find. On a couple of occasions, it’s felt like the scripting has broken because there’s nothing happening – the boss will be hiding somewhere, and there’ll be a couple of random adds preventing the next wave from starting. It’s really not fun at all.

[instasis]

7 minutes ago, K said:

The other one is with how shite the Exodus Black strike is. It seems bizarrely sub-standard given how good the other ones are. There were a few strikes in D1 I wasn’t massively keen on, like the Psion Flayers, but there weren’t any I thought were genuinely poor. Exodus Black, and the climax in particular, just feels like it hasn’t been playtested enough. The boss has way too much health, disappears annoyingly, and sometimes is quite difficult to find. On a couple of occasions, it’s felt like the scripting has broken because there’s nothing happening – the boss will be hiding somewhere, and there’ll be a couple of random adds preventing the next wave from starting. It’s really not fun at all.

 

I'm generally disappointed with the strikes overall. I mean, they're alright for a bit of structured play but between seasoned players racing ahead and doing them as quickly as possible (which is dull if it's only my first or second time through) and the designers getting far to over excited with the whole "THE FLOOR IS LAVA" concept and using it in 3 of them that I can think of as I type this, meh.

[HarryBizzle]

I don’t quite understand the point of rushing through the Strikes. I’ve done Brachus Zahn twice and the second time was ruined by the other two players just running through everything.

 

The gear you get is mostly rubbish so if that’s all you’re interested in you can probably do two or three Heroic public events in the same amount of time.

[Kevvy Metal]

11 hours ago, Shimmyhill said:

I hate Crucible on this one as the fun is gone and every game is sweaty if you want to win and that’s fine if you treat it as practice for Trials but I’m talking about the quick play mode let alone competitive - if anything competitive is more fun as it doesn’t have the worst game mode ever conceived in the history of gaming - supremacy, kill confirmed can be a good mode but not so much when both teams of 4 stand together and range kill each other so no chance of picking up engrams until someone goes rogue and then it’s a case of hunting the other 3 as a team of 4.

 

No point talking about control as it’s dead as a mode with 4 players and zones given to you at the start so what we have is two terrible modes and clash that’s ok and no way to select them so like me today if you play 5 games 3 of them can be in supremacy so that’s about as much fun as repeatedly running into a wall - at least the wall isn’t a laggy pile of shit tho I guess!

 

I'm pretty sure if you cry about it more the gods will hear and let you win some games.  

PvP is far better in this game, and far more of a tight team game, much like the Halo games of old. It feels great being on a Fireteam with guys I know and feeling quite dominant of the game, because we work together. 

[K]

11 minutes ago, Pelekophoros said:

 

I'm generally disappointed with the strikes overall. I mean, they're alright for a bit of structured play but between seasoned players racing ahead and doing them as quickly as possible (which is dull if it's only my first or second time through) and the designers getting far to over excited with the whole "THE FLOOR IS LAVA" concept and using it in 3 of them that I can think of as I type this, meh.

 

I'd say the standard is pretty good. The Pyramidion and the Inverted Spire are both fantastic, and the one in the Titan arcology is very cool too. The Arms Dealer isn't great, admittedly. I agree that the shift towards having more environmental hazards is a mixed bag - the jumping / laser puzzles in the Pyramidion are ace, but dying on a boss battle because you fell off a platform is really annoying.

[Dave White]

11 hours ago, macosx said:

I’m absolutely loving Crucible this time around, and I bloody despised it in Destiny 1. In that I felt I was missing some grand trick as I couldn’t hit a barn door in it, and any skill I had in FPS was suddenly robbed, and every one on one battle I lost. 

 

I was so dreading playing Crucible in 2 , but I don’t know whether I’ve managed to get decent weapons but I’m doing alright . Mida and Uriel's Gift and a sword do the job, and swap out to Vigilance Wing on some maps with long lanes.

 

Control is my least favourite mode  but I like the risk / reward of supremacy in the battle for  crests. I’ve spent more time in Crucible than the main game. Nice drop of two exotics in two subsequent matches to end the night

 

 

 

have to buddy up man, want to do the trials next weekend if you're up for it?

[instasis]

 

20 minutes ago, K said:

 

I'd say the standard is pretty good. The Pyramidion and the Inverted Spire are both fantastic, and the one in the Titan arcology is very cool too. The Arms Dealer isn't great, admittedly. I agree that the shift towards having more environmental hazards is a mixed bag - the jumping / laser puzzles in the Pyramidion are ace, but dying on a boss battle because you fell off a platform is really annoying.

 

I love Pyramidion. Not had a good run on Titan yet (only had 2 goes at it, one was hilariously broken as I think everyone was joining and in progress session with no idea what to shoot and the second I had to drop off because my tea was ready). The other 3 I'm less keen on, for floor and lava related reasons.

 

It's all good, though, because I just bugger off on Public Events and smash other things in the face!

[Gorf King]

In contrast to K, D2 feels to me almost like three separate games stitched together, two of which are half-finished. The campaign and immediate post-level 20 progression feels like Destiny, but much improved. The pubic events are beefier, lost sectors (though not as involving as I'd hoped) and adventures are a welcome addition, and the whole thing feels better designed and easier to navigate for people new to the series or playing casually.

 

The PvP, on the other hand, has become a far less colourful affair for me, far more sober and more like other online shooters. Some players will like this focus on sticking together and team shooting with primaries, but compared to the maverick insanity of D1's best 6s I find it far less engaging. There's certainly far less scope for doing crazy comebacks, clutch plays, madcap super dashes and the like. Like Kevvy says, it is more like Halo. Heresy though it may be, I always preferred Destiny's PvP (flaky connections and lag aside), so this feels a lot less enjoyable to play and, ironically in view of Bungie's e-sport aspirations, less enjoyable watch to me. And the games seem to just go on forever. I especially dislike the fact that you can't simply select the mode you want to play, with just two massive pools of players all queuing for a random, albeit tiny, selection of game types.

 

The raid, the more familiar you get with it, feels less Destiny somehow too. The aesthetic is straight out of WoW and the gameplay feels like a collection of themed mini games with no real connection to the rest of the game. There's no journey and nothing coherent even in lore to tie it into the game proper (I really, really miss the grimoire, all those little stories and philosophies) - there's no momentum or consequence to it at all. The loot and loot systems I'll say no more of. Leviathan's like some insane day trip you took, while doing the other type of tripping, to a theme park run by a nutter, that you can barely remember the day after as you have the worst come down in history. It's ok to play, but despite its length it just feels so lacking in consequence or payoff.

 

The sense I get that these are almost like separate games to each other is heightened by the fact that you can't move from one mode to another in the same team - the glue that always bound Destiny 1's separate parts together. You have to lose two players to go from the raid to PvP, lose one to go from PvP to PvE, or gain two to raid, etc. Gone are the days of doing some post- or pre-raid Control in the same group, and the game just feels fragmented somehow.

 

There are some big improvements in Destiny 2 (and some big unimprovements), but for all the talk of how there's been an emphasis on making it more accessible to causal players it doesn't really feel that way to me - the raid still requires lots of teamwork and communication, and Crucible requires more of that than ever. And for all the talk of the story being better, I think that only applies to the 8-12 hour campaign. After that, certainly in the end game, it really makes less sense than it did in D1. And it just doesn't hang together as a coherent whole, the endgame stuff feeling stranded out there in in some fevered funfair hallucination, now totally at odds with the quite sober, sweaty Crucible part of the game and inaccessible to the same teams.

 

Behind all this schizophrenia lies the nagging feeling that the bittiness and lack of basic features (inc proper PvP mode selection), along with the oddly truncated and 'out there' end game, is a deliberate design choice. To borrow a phrase used by others, it's minimum viable product, with the intention of releasing additional features down the line to open up the various modes and glue them together somehow, as well as providing more incentive and longevity for stuff like raids, challenges, strikes and the like, and more variety and agency in PvP choices. The same thing could be said of vanilla D1, but there I think it was less deliberate and more the result of a fucked-up late development process. Here, the feeling nags that it's part of a planned strategy to hold stuff back, enabling Bungie to drip feed new content and improvements and avoid the 'droughts' of D1. And that thought doesn't sit well with me.

 

GOTY though.