Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Gorf King]

1 hour ago, Kryptonian said:

I was talking about this to @Mystacon - is that right then with the patch? I was thinking it just varied as i’ve had 300, 298 & 296 off him

 

I think Ben's right. I just handed in enough tokens for two ranks, and got 298 drops where everything yesterday was 300. It'll come as no surprise that the IB rewards were exact duplicates of what I got yesterday, except lower levelled. So no progress at all toward that armour set.

 

The reward system in this game really isn't working. It's an exercise in frustration rather than reward, and forces loads of unnecessary grind just to get items that aren't duplicates - the odds of getting the same items over and over seem weighted in favour of doing so, instead of against. Seems to have gone completely against the 'smart loot' system they'd devised by year three of D1. I can only imagine that's deliberate, but it's the wrong way to go about encouraging people to revisit content over and over. I can't think of a worse system than one of tokens that you turn in for unwanted items.

[Nate Dogg III]

3 hours ago, PeteBrant said:

Combined with uriels and a sword 

 

Get 'im, boys!

[Harsin]

I just want that goddam Viking helmet, is that too much to ask

[Gorf King]

12 minutes ago, Gorf King said:

I think Ben's right. I just handed in enough tokens for two ranks, and got 298 drops where everything yesterday was 300. It'll come as no surprise that the IB rewards were exact duplicates of what I got yesterday, except lower levelled. So no progress at all toward that armour set.

 

The reward system in this game really isn't working. It's an exercise in frustration rather than reward, and forces loads of unnecessary grind just to get items that aren't duplicates - the odds of getting the same items over and over seem weighted in favour of doing so, instead of against. Seems to have gone completely against the 'smart loot' system they'd devised by year three of D1. I can only imagine that's deliberate, but it's the wrong way to go about encouraging people to revisit content over and over. I can't think of a worse system than one of tokens that you turn in for unwanted items.

 

Seems it's not quite as straightforward as that. Reddit reckons Saladin is now on a timer like most of the other vendors, so if you time it right you get 300s, and if you don't you get under-level rewards. So maybe you'll get lucky.

 

Baffling design decision #34. It's beginning of remind me of that first big patch in The Division, where Massive nerfed crafting and drops to make people have to grind the same content more often for the same outcome.

[Broker]

The idea that you’re getting random items but you’re more likely to get the same ones you already have than the ones you’re missing is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. 

[Gorf King]

The suspicion that it's happening or the reality of its happening? Loot tables that look at what you already have before giving you your next item aren't new, even in Destiny. And I know of few players who have amassed hundreds of exotics who don't seem to get the same items over and over again - tens of times over - while not getting one example of a thing that someone else gets over and over to the exclusion of... etc. So it does seem somewhat weighted, going not on my sole experience but on that of many people I've played with.

 

Whether there's any maths behind it or not, D2 certainly doesn't do what 'smart loot' did in the later years of D1. That definitely, by design, tried to give you something you didn't already have. For example, in the remixed 390 raids. They have undoubtedly, and deliberately, removed that from D2. And that's exactly the sort of thing that promotes frustration in the aid of what I'd call bad 'grind'. Anyone who regularly failed to get that helmet from VoG will know what that is, and it's something Bungie learned from later in D1's life. Seems they've forgotten that lesson.

[dreamylittledream]

2 hours ago, Broker said:

 

I’m mostly playing solo. Me and three randoms best a team of four people in the same clan earlier today, they were impressively terrible for people assumedly communicating with each other. It is doable, but I don’t know how much of it is me adapting my experience/strategies from other FPS games. It’s insane how many people when you flank them in this will carry on idiotically firing at the rest of your team while you kill them.

 

 

I can not understand how people are using swords in PvP! Every attempt involves me getting gunned down before I’m close to people, then after an evening getting annoyed and switching back to my rocket launcher. I’m also having much better luck with golden gun and dawnblade than the melee focused supers.

 

Yeah I had a game where me and 3 randoms trounced a clan last night so communication clearly isn't everything.

 

Swords are great in PvP - a bit of flanking or sneaking around the back works a treat and if you are 1 v1 or 1 v 2 the number of people who seem to freeze when you charge them with a sword continues to amaze (or those that jump and forget that I can slash in the air too lol).

 

FWIW I'm enjoying the PvP in D2 more than in D1 or that probably has a lot to do with the fact I appear no longer appear to be completely useless at it - generally rock Nameless (I much prefer it to Mida too), Perseverance or Martyrs Wake (I like both of these and Valkydan better than Uriel myself - Uriel always feels a tad jumpy) and a sword and I generally manage to finish in the top 2 which in D1 for me would have been a miracle.  I don't agree you completely have to stick to your team like glue - bit of mobility and hit and run seems to work for me as much as rolling as a 4 piece and long distance shoot outs (which does get dull quickly).

 

But I do agree Control is a shadow of its previous self and I much prefer Supremacy and Clash in this format.  And I do badly miss the Mayhem modes from D1 which were always a riot.  I'll shed no tears for the demise of Salvage or Rift mind.

[instasis]

I did some Iron Banner and it gave me two helmets the same as the one I was already wearing. Which was nice.

[Broker]

19 minutes ago, Gorf King said:

The suspicion that it's happening or the reality of its happening? Loot tables that look at what you already have before giving you your next item aren't new, even in Destiny. And I know of few players who have amassed hundreds of exotics who don't seem to get the same items over and over again - tens of times over - while not getting one example of a thing that someone else gets over and over to the exclusion of... etc. So it does seem somewhat weighted, going not on my sole experience but on that of many people I've played with.

 

@Weavus seems to think that there's evidence that it's specifically slanted against you getting things you've not had yet.

 

19 minutes ago, dreamylittledream said:

But I do agree Control is a shadow of its previous self and I much prefer Supremacy and Clash in this format.  And I do badly miss the Mayhem modes from D1 which were always a riot.  I'll shed no tears for the demise of Salvage or Rift mind.

 

Was that the basketball one? That was awesome, I miss that.

[Mr Ben]

Iron Banner, along with Crucible in general, is no fun, and to have that coupled with the way loot is now distributed throughout all activities, via gambling tokens no less, is a massive dissapointment. Destiny 2 seems to have been created by people who had nothing to do with any of Destiny 1's improvements, and also paid no attention to them either. Its quite baffling. Why they decided to go with 4v4 for everything, when they could have had quickplay for 6v6 and competitve for 4v4 is anyones guess. I dont think anyone asked for sweaty Trials in all pvp modes.

 

Might fire up Destiny 1, as its not going anywhere (yet - I wonder how long it'll be before they shut the servers down...), and its pvp was far more entertaining. Or just play one of the other games I've had sitting on my shelf for ages - Hello Yakuza Kiwami.

[Gorf King]

Just now, Broker said:

@Weavus seems to think that there's evidence that it's specifically slanted against you getting things you've not had yet.

 

It might be. What we call RNG isn't always purely random, especially in Destiny. I don't know if it is, but it certainly feels that way, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was. The important thing is how it feels though - unrewarding. That's not a good feeling. They've got to learn from that - and I think they will, as it's a turnoff to players. Starting the game off that way is a bad way to start, though, given that we thought they'd learnt that lesson already years ago, and fixed it with the incarnation of smart loot in D1 that tries to give you meaningful rewards. It's another step backwards.

[Nate Dogg III]

A cynic would point out that turning a dial towards dupes is an easy way of getting people to keep playing your game when you realise at the 11th hour that your endgame isn't going to keep people on the hook by itself.

[Nate Dogg III]

I think that depends on your definition of fucked up, really. The token system is a brilliant way of bridging the gap between the early and midgame. At the point at which you hit level 20 you suddenly have these guaranteed, repeatable ways of getting legendary gear. The problems of it only become clear once you hit the endgame. I think it's increasingly clear that Bungie's priority with D2 was to get more of the people who quit D1 in the midgame to the level cap, and to get new players on board who can just play the game and understand it. The endlessly replayable endgame wasn't their focus in the base game. I'm sure it will be in the expansions, but it's a hell of a gamble. We couldn't even get a raid group together last night.

[Gorf King]

As I keep saying though, they could have done both. There's nothing mutually exclusive about a decent, satisfying early-midgame and a decent, satisfying endgame. They're not rivals to each other; they should be bedfellows. In a great game they would be. Unfortunately, in its present state, D2 isn't a great game. It hasn't got the legs.

[Nate Dogg III]

4 minutes ago, Gorf King said:

As I keep saying though, they could have done both. There's nothing mutually exclusive about a decent, satisfying early-midgame and a decent. satisfying endgame. They're not rivals to each other; they should be bedfellows. In a great game they would be. Unfortunately, in its present state, D2 isn't a great game. It hasn't got the legs.

 

Oh yes, absolutely. I am assuming that, Bungie being Bungie, they just ran out of time, and prioritised the thing they felt needed to come first, and that's the on-ramp. They'll sort out the other stuff later on.

 

It's funny, really. They chose to do a sequel over another expansion because they saw what happened with WOW, where players just came back for each expansion, burned through the new content and fucked off again, the userbase dwindling a little each time, and decided hitting the reset button was the smarter thing to do. It actually feels closer to WOW in that sense than ever. We had more players than we needed for a raid on reset night (and normally the night after) for, I reckon, most of year one, at least until House Of Wolves. 

[Lyrical Donut]

8 minutes ago, Captain LeChuck said:

Yep. I remember there were several active raid threads in the online folder for VoG and Crota, and loads of teams on my friends list raiding every tuesday.  Now?  Lolwut.

 

Fake edit: As Gorf King rightly says: It hasn't got the legs. It's completely run out of steam. 

 

Those VoG/Crota runs that would reward people with mostly shards every week? It literally took people months to get the armour they wanted, or a particular weapon they were after. Some never did get the stuff they wanted and moved on to other things. Back then raids were all shiny and new, of course.

 

I do think some of you are looking back on D1 with rose tinted glasses. I'm sure we'll see some tweaking here and there with D2, too.

[Gorf King]

1 minute ago, Lyrical Donut said:

 

Those VoG/Crota runs that would reward people with mostly shards every week? It literally took people months to get the armour they wanted, or a particular weapon they were after. Some never did get the stuff they wanted and moved on to other things. Back then raids were all shiny and new, of course.

 

I do think some of you are looking back on D1 with rose tinted glasses. I'm sure we'll see some tweaking here and there with D2, too.

 

Not for me. I'm playing D1 right now, and it feels more rewarding to play in both PvE and PvP than D2. And that's with no new content and everything stale - if Iron Banner was on in this Tower, I'd probably be all over it.

 

Each to their own, of course - some people might prefer D2's endgame - but it's definitely not a case of rose-tinteds; it's how I actually feel. I totally accept that vanilla D1 had its flaws and VoG's loot could be cruel as hell, but you'd expect Bungie to have avoided those flaws in a sequel, since they acknowledged and fixed them in D1 (look at the 390 raids) - not made them worse. D3's endgame is a less satisfying grind than VoG ever was imo. And VoG was also, imo, just so much better to play. I'd still play it today if we had a team. In vanilla, base D1 we also had 6s, and Rumble, and decent Nightfalls (something that D2 has got spot on imo), and great rewards and exotics to be lusted after.

 

Of course D2 will improve and fix some of the issues it currently has, but to have started off with them into first place is a let-down, given they were already basically fixed in D1. The core gunplay is still great, and I think they're onto a winner with the Nightfall formula - itself a take on what they'd evolved strikes into in D1, and the Black Spindle quest (whatever happened to these great hidden quests, these secrets to be worked out?) - but beyond that, D2 doesn't feel anywhere near as compelling as D1 at this stage of its life. It might to some, but it doesn't to me. I think Iron Banner, which feels just the same as all the other PvP game modes, has put the tin hat on it. The game needs a lot more work. It needs to get its identity back somehow.

[DonRumsfeld]

I’ve said it before, but my biggest problem is the lack of a journey in the raid.  If you think of all the others you’re progressing along it to a final conclusion.   This feels small in comparison, which is an even bigger shame considering the size of the space of the Leviathan. 

 

The other raids action all essentially took place in rooms just like this one;  think Warpriest, Crota, Golgy, Atheon, Aksis, Splicer priest... However those all took you on a journey between encounters, Hive tombships, VoG’s descent, Siege Engine, wall of dicks, etc.  This just has you looping back to the room you started in to get to the next encounter.

 

The really maddening thing is that there is that space for a journey, the underbelly is massive, but there’s really no reason to go there apart from some tokens. 

[Shimmyhill]

For me what sums up the failings of Destiny 2 is that 100 hours in I think I have every exotic across my 2 characters, maybe missing some minor armour ones but noting that’s ever come up as ‘this is the one to be using’ and yet 1600 hours into destiny still no Sexy Myth and I’d much rather run VoG than anything in D2 and I’d jump back into PvP with the clan but nealy had a breakdown after a morning on D2 IB!!!!

 

I got to the point that I declared to my fire team that if the exotic I got was another Stupid lion grande launcher I would uninstall the game there and then - it would have been my 10th but as it was it was the fourth tractor cannon thing so it lived to fight another day - part of me is disappointed, I binned off The Division at the point I realised I was playing due to addiction over enjoyment and I’m not so sure D2 hasn’t hit that point  

[Jerec]

10 hours ago, Captain LeChuck said:

It's put me off altogether. I'm looking forward to halloween, and the DLC in December. But Bungie has fucked my interest in the game until then.  Compare that to Destiny 1, when COD Advanced Warfare came out the November after D1 launched, I was excited to play it (lol), but the pull of Destiny was too much, I ended up putting D1 back on to get some bounties done, get some progression, and I was loving it. Adoring it. And that was November!  We're not even halfway through October, and my interest in the game has dropped off a cliff. 

 

Bungie, clearly, has fucked up. 

 

Can't agree more pal.

 

Not played D2 since Fifa 18 and I wanted to sneak in some games, but everything I'm reading just makes me not want to ever play it again!

 

Elite has more draw to me at the mo then Destiny 2, and thats heart breaking for me to type! 

[Oz]

In other news John Carpenter continues to be a fucking legend.

https://kotaku.com/john-carpenter-is-dedicating-his-life-to-destiny-2-1819375700

[BubbleFish]

On the subject of rewards/ drops, I've slowly made my way to 296. Why? I've had 3 Legendary helmets and 1 exotic helmet drop; dragging my average down. That's it after playing daily since launch. Something is clearly fucked.

[Jerec]

2 minutes ago, BubbleFish said:

On the subject of rewards/ drops, I've slowly made my way to 296. Why? I've had 3 Legendary helmets and I exotic helmet drop; dragging my average down. That's it after playing daily since launch. Something is clearly fucked.

 

Oh we know...We know...

[Shimmyhill]

Ooooo look number 10....

 

[Hexx]

Grenade Launchers are fine if you have swarms of adds to take down and things are on CD (which is pretty likely :P)

 

But against harder enemies they fall so far behind

 

 

Kotaku have an interesting look at PvP - what works, what doesn't, what could change. It's even handed I think and talks of pros/cons.

 

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/10/11/top-players-weigh-in-on-the-good-and-bad-of-destiny-2-pvp

[Kryptonian]

I can’t believe how many exotics some of you guys (like @Shimmyhill) are getting! What are they from? And straight up exotic engrams or some from legendaries or what?

[Shimmyhill]

24 minutes ago, Kryptonian said:

I can’t believe how many exotics some of you guys (like @Shimmyhill) are getting! What are they from? And straight up exotic engrams or some from legendaries or what?

 

From anything, been quiet this morning with only 3 so far....

[Oz]

35 minutes ago, Kryptonian said:

I can’t believe how many exotics some of you guys (like @Shimmyhill) are getting! What are they from? And straight up exotic engrams or some from legendaries or what?

fucking gunsmith gave him that this morning. so yeh. he has been lucky. 

[Oz]

I feel like D1 was a game I played and liked despite the grind and all the bollocks it made you do. and that people seem to have loved in retrospective.

 

I loved it despite the fact that you had to play it every day to keep up. despite the fact that there was always a better roll of that weapon you did not have. despite the fact that after you finally got the weapon you wanted you had to collect resources on earth for hours to level it up. and once you had fully upgraded it they nerfed it.

 

I liked it despite the fact that everyone in your fireteam would get that weapon from the raid except you and then you did not have time to try again on two other characters. there was also no certain way for you to also get that gun if you really wanted it. other than replaying the same content to roll the dice again. all that bollocks 'end game' in my view was not compatible with real life of the majority of people. and it had to go. it was stupid. 

 

I almost feel like D2 is what I would have designed coming out of the first one. so I am alone here in a corner it seems 100% happy with literally everything they've done. including 4 player PvP. I hated getting shot by random people and not knowing what the fuck was going on. or matches with six hunters running about with shotguns. I like that with 8 people in the match I understand better where everyone is and can play more defensively. time to kill is lower so quick twitch playing is discouraged in favour or coordination and tactics. 

[Jerec]

6 minutes ago, Oz said:

quick twitch playing is discouraged in favour or coordination and tactics. 

 

Not in my fireteams...