Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Oz]

3 minutes ago, Broker said:

 

 Probably because I don't raid.

you should raid really. 

[Shimmyhill]

1 hour ago, Scruff said:

 

Obviously they give a fuck but they're incredibly shit with customer feedback and information. A lot of these arguments wouldn't have happened with the original because it was the first go in a new direction and they'd be forgiven for making mistakes but they've done that, they've released an expansion that was great and had meaningfull endgame content, QOL fixes and (some) good loot and they seem to have thrown the baby out with the bath water in making the sequel (and it was the same core group of developers, not the live team so changing devs can't be the excuse).

 

Can you imagine if EA were launching Battlefront 2 with less content than the first, after the first was utterly pillared for being a shell of a game? The comparison may be a touch hyperbolic* because D2 has plenty of good things about it but instead of building a roof on what they'd learned with the original, they seems to have gone back to the foundations again and it's quite mystifying.

 

 

*only a touch because in December we'll have the first DLC and at that point (2 weeks after) we got a second raid in D1, which all signs point to not happening this time so yes, D2 by Dec will have less content than D1.

 

There is more content than vanilla Destiny but it’s spread thinner with less choice over what you do - there is less to do but vastly more importantly there is less reason to do it.

 

 

[Scruff]

Yeah, I'd agree with that totally.

 

*edit* D2 doesn't have snidey slidey shotgunners though so that's bonus

[Gorf King]

@Broker I don't think you were told you were an idiot for not wanting a complete reboot, though I think most of us wanted that. I do think, though, that you sometimes have an odd attitude to some people 'entitled whiners', given you said of The Taken King - by far the best expansion with the greatest amount of unfolding content, secrets, QoL improvements and reasons to keep playing - 'I'll be watching D2 intently, but I already spent £40 on a Destiny update with no real content, I'm not giving them another £25 for fixing their own fuck ups.' So it seems a bit odd seeing you now frequently chastise people as whiners for saying there's not enough depth/interest in the end game of D2, and protesting that Bungie will be working on more content. You seemed to do a fair amount of complaining about content in D1, except you didn't actually play all the content in that, and didn't play the best and most engrossing parts at all.

 

In my opinion, they made a better job of early-mid game content for a lot of solo players in D2, which I think almost everyone would agree with. Almost all of us were super enthusiastic about what they'd done with the game, and welcomed that, until we reached endgame. That's when the issues started to become clear. If you've not done any raiding yet, and not even done any Nightfalls, you'll not have experienced that, but you will probably feel the same way as those who have if and when you do them. And if you don't or can't do endgame, I don't see why people criticising aspects of the endgame should affect you. As I've said before, it's not a zero-sum game. You can have a great early game, great midgame, and great endgame. A great game demands all of that; they're not mutually exclusive. I think the loss of class/ability/perk customisation is an issue, along with the loss of depth to the story/lore (i.e removal of grimoire), the relative lack of loot (and customisation or rolls) making the drops less interesting and eventually altogether pointless. I also think the raid's not as good as the others simply to play, and I know a fair number of people feel the same about Crucible in its current state - some things in PvP are better than in year three of D1, but there's just not the excitement, or the variety, of play / playstyles available. And the rewards system for Iron Banner presents the worst kind of grind available, where you could literally play for a hundred hours in the week and not get any of the armour pieces.

 

This is why places like reddit seem so salty. The DTG subreddit used to be packed with the most helpful advice, most interesting breakdown of class setups and gun comparisons, the most detailed expositions of lore, of almost any game. You used to check in during some periods (like TTK) just to see what new secret might have been discovered, the classic TTK example being the hidden Black Spindle mission (although there were many others). You could write guides to this stuff, as it had some depth and complexity and challenge (and not just in the raids). And then you could marvel at the different ways some people approached beating this challenging content - and everyone wanted to, because of the potency and attractiveness of its rewards. The subreddit was full of stuff like that, and was a really interesting place to visit and read. But there's simply nothing much for them to talk about now apart from the lack of things to talk about, or the latest exploit/patch/non-patch. So that's where the perceived saltiness comes from - a vacuum of anything much else to discuss.

 

I don't think criticising any of those things I mentioned above is whinging, and I don't think improving them would negatively impact anyone who doesn't or can't do stuff like the raids, or even Nightfalls. What improvements would do is maintain the player base's interest better, so that if and when you do end up doing raids and the like, at least there'll be a thriving community for you to join in with, to help you out. If things go on like this and you do end up fancying a raid and able to do it, you'll more likely find fewer people still active to join in with. So it'd ultimately become a problem for you, too.

 

Because of all this I'm expecting a decent showing from Bungie in the Seasons reveal tonight/tomorrow morning. I think they know they have to offer something more, and that some changes have to be made to end game replayability, rewards, and the underuse of systems like mods in adding interest and depth to the game. I think they know they'll lose a significant proportion of their longer-term players unless they add some deeper interest, rewards and attractiveness to the content, or at least acknowledge that they have to do this and have a rolling plan for doing so. So I reckon they'll tease this in the Seasons reveal, and we'll just have to wait and see if the tease has any substance.

 

There's also a BBC Newsbeat film about Bungie on BBC Click tomorrow: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41667810/how-the-makers-of-destiny-2-learnt-from-their-mistakes. I don't expect that to say much of substance, but Jason Jones does say in the excerpted text that they're already 'starting in a small way to look at what's beyond Destiny'. So maybe they're starting to think beyond its limitations already. Or they've realised that they want more limitations - that the massive MMO-like, RPG-like shooter they envisaged as Destiny really isn't the sort of thing they want to manage after all. Maybe they'll just go back to just making a campaign shooter with some traditional PvP as the online component. You have to feel, with Destiny 2 so far and all its simplifications of systems and toning down of D1's 'imbalance' and excess, that this is almost the rollback they've tried to make here, in part. It does feel a bit conflicted, does Destiny 2. So I'd be interested to know (hint, @Nate Dogg III) what their long-term plans really are at this point.

 

Hopefully, the Seasons reveal won't be so shallow as to provide no real ideas.

[Novelty Bobble]

Destiny 2 is is my first Destiny experience. I've had it for four weeks and my addiction has got to the point where I'm considering selling the disc (yes, I know buying physical probably makes me 100 years old or something).

 

Is this how this normally goes? 

[Scruff]

Be glad you weren't around for D1 at its height. 

 

I think Lyrical needed a dialysis machine to extract pure Destiny out of his body, he played it so much and when shimmyhill came home from work he tried sliding into the kitchen through the catflap before hiding around the corner and jumping out at his kids making a gun shape with his hands.

 

It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times.

 

Any idea what time the Twitch stuff on season 2 is @Gorf King? 

[Weavus]

"Season 2: Pulse Grenade Nerf" twitch stream starts at 12:30am (finishes 1:30am)

 

https://go.twitch.tv/twitchconcoolcat

 

Expect to be dazzled when it turns out seasons just means resetting the clan rank to 0 and changing the weather at the farm.

[K]

One thing I don't get is why they got rid of the quest structure altogether in D2. The introduction of the quest menu in the Taken King was one of the best improvements, as it gave you much more of an overarching  structure than just doing the weekly events, and gave you a reason to do particular activities that wasn't just ticking up a particular milestone.

[Gorf King]

12 minutes ago, K said:

One thing I don't get is why they got rid of the quest structure altogether in D2. The introduction of the quest menu in the Taken King was one of the best improvements, as it gave you much more of an overarching  structure than just doing the weekly events, and gave you a reason to do particular activities that wasn't just ticking up a particular milestone.

 

Yeah, it was much better. But was it too RPG? Maybe. It does feel like they've rolled all of that back - the quest structures, the customisations, the depth and variations of loot, the builds, the lore/grimoire. Whether you like some or all of that being gone, there's no doubt it all shares a common theme - the RPG. And it seems to me they've actively attempted to pare all that away from the core shooter. Some will like that, I think it's to the game's detriment as something that holds long-term replayability and interest. Maybe, as I say, they're eyeing up just going back to a simple campaign/online PvP/throwaway co-op game, much like almost everything else on the market. Think that'd be a shame, but it seems the direction of travel at the moment.

[K]

1 minute ago, Gorf King said:

 

Yeah, it was much better. But was it too RPG? Maybe. It does feel like they've rolled all of that back - the quest structures, the customisations, the depth and variations of loot, the builds, the lore/grimoire. Whether you like some or all of that being gone, there's no doubt it all shares a common theme - the RPG. And it seems to me they've actively attempted to pare all that back. Soon will like that, I think its to the game's detriment as something that holds long-term deployability and interest. Maybe, as I say, they're eyeing up just going back to a simple campaign/online PvP/throwaway co-op game, much like almost everything else in the market. Think that'd be a shame, but it seems the direction of travel at the moment.

 

Weirdly, I thought the direction of travel before launch was to make the game more like an RPG, with sidequests dotted around the landscape and NPCs to get quests from. And those things did end up in the game, so it seems odd that they've removed most of the things that would give the sidequests and NPCs a purpose. 

[Gorf King]

Maybe in the DLC some of them will give another quest, and they'll add another subclass tree or something. Maybe it's the MVP theory again.

 

When they announced there'd be a reset D2 sequel I voiced concern about the amount of time they'd had to develop a full sequel, as opposed to an expansion. It was only about 2 years, after all, and in that time a lot of resources were spent improving and adding content to D1. I'm really not sure that's at all long enough to do 'a better D1' properly. My remaining hopes are pinned on this being true, and the current release being a deliberately shallow, pared-back introduction to a game whose expansions will not just add content, but deepen the existing game structure and mechanisms so that it fleshes out into the fully-formed product over the course of the year. I'm sure that seems an odd thing to hope - that the game is being sold to me in pieces - but I'd much rather that then the expansions just contain extra missions and quests of the same depth as the current ones, with a couple of new Crucible maps and a strike, but no significant changes to the way it's all structured and tiered/rewarded. I'd also not give a shit about them spending time of lots of voiced cutscenes this time around. Just give us more depth and replayability, and that'll be job done.

 

Oh, and minor thought - if ever there was a Destiny episode in which collecting dead Ghosts would be both appropriate, and also provide the opportunity for lots of lore-based stories about all the dead Guardians to illuminate recent events in the world, this would have been it. Give us back some grimoire, Bungie. The game just feels lifeless without it, populated solely by the endless inane chatter of resident zany wackmeisters Cayde, Failsafe, Asher Mir, and our own relentlessly chipper 'Oh, that looks like a weird alien thing wonder why they left that there?' lore-substitute Ghost. Too much 'comic' relief, nothing of substance to be relieved from. Just a giant robot frog getting pissed up in a Disneyland Roman Empire theme park. God, I wish Savathûn had sent more than just a gammy eye to keep us on our toes.

 

Let's hope there's a bit more to Osiris than the Vex just wanting to play us at Wheel of Fortune or something. The Crystal Maze, maybe.

[Gorf King]

Here's a decent (if obvious) idea that the guy behind the suggested vendor rework system came up with for putting the grimoire into the game rather than deleting it altogether. Spoilered for size:

 

Spoiler

 

 

As usual, his mockups do a decent job of conveying how it'd work. Just like the old grimoire, each milestone reached would unlock more backstory, thus providing a little more encouragement to replay content.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Wickedkitten]

I just couldn't help myself after hearing that Trials was going to be cancelled for a fucking fortnight so I had to go back and reinstall Destiny didn't I

 

 

Mayhem Rumble makes me cry. Why the fuck can't we just have all of the old crucible modes dammit

 

 

[Shimmyhill]

17 minutes ago, Wickedkitten said:

I just couldn't help myself after hearing that Trials was going to be cancelled for a fucking fortnight so I had to go back and reinstall Destiny didn't I

 

 

Mayhem Rumble makes me cry. Why the fuck can't we just have all of the old crucible modes dammit

 

 

 

Literally the only aspect of D2 PvP that’s better than D1 PvP is that there is no mayhem!  

[Varnsen]

1 hour ago, Gorf King said:

Maybe in the DLC some of them will give another quest, and they'll add another subclass tree or something. Maybe it's the MVP theory again.

 

When they announced there'd be a reset D2 sequel I voiced concern about the amount of time they'd had to develop a full sequel, as opposed to an expansion. It was only about 2 years, after all, and in that time a lot of resources were spent improving and adding content to D1. I'm really not sure that's at all long enough to do 'a better D1' properly. My remaining hopes are pinned on this being true, and the current release being a deliberately shallow, pared-back introduction to a game whose expansions will not just add content, but deepen the existing game structure and mechanisms so that it fleshes out into the fully-formed product over the course of the year. I'm sure that seems an odd thing to hope - that the game is being sold to me in pieces - but I'd much rather that then the expansions just contain extra missions and quests of the same depth as the current ones, with a couple of new Crucible maps and a strike, but no significant changes to the way it's all structured and tiered/rewarded. I'd also not give a shit about them spending time of lots of voiced cutscenes this time around. Just give us more depth and replayability, and that'll be job done.

 

 

I seem to remember reading that apparently the D1 tools at Bungie were a complete nightmare, things like it taking 24 hours to load up one of the zones to work on it for the artists, things like that. Basically, their tech was not scaling well and inhibiting their ability to make new content easily. Perhaps that's partly behind the full sequel decision and they have better tools to work on the sandbox. 
 

Citation needed but I can't remember at all where I read/heard that. 

 

"People who worked on this project say that one of Bungie’s fundamental issues over the past few years has been the game’s engine, which the studio built from scratch alongside Destiny. Four sources pointed to Destiny’s technology—the tools they use to design levels, render graphics, and create content—as an inhibiting factor in the game’s development.
 

“Let’s say a designer wants to go in and move a resource node two inches,” said one person familiar with the engine. “They go into the editor. First they have to load their map overnight. It takes eight hours to input their map overnight. They get [into the office] in the morning. If their importer didn’t fail, they open the map. It takes about 20 minutes to open. They go in and they move that node two feet. And then they’d do a 15-20 minute compile. Just to do a half-second change.”

 

https://kotaku.com/the-messy-true-story-behind-the-making-of-destiny-1737556731

Edited October 20, 2017 by Varnsen
It was in that big Kotaku article about D1. 

[Wickedkitten]

9 minutes ago, Shimmyhill said:

 

Literally the only aspect of D2 PvP that’s better than D1 PvP is that there is no mayhem!  

 

You merely adopted mayhem, I was born in it

[Oz]

Nvidia is taking their sweet time with those game ready drivers. worried that they are cutting it quite fine for you to have time to download them @clippa 

[Shimmyhill]

9 minutes ago, Oz said:

Nvidia is taking their sweet time with those game ready drivers. worried that they are cutting it quite fine for you to have time to download them @clippa 

 

They have until Christmas  

[Mr Ben]

This is the video I commented about last night @Gorf King and @Weavus Its quite short, at just over a minute, and sums up Crucible quite nicely.

Dat D2 crucible music

[Scruff]

 

Love it  

[Mr Ben]

Not even done that as I have everything he has.

 

I tried to find a group for a raid last night, and the LFG site was pretty dead (like 3 people looking for groups in both normal and prestige), which was quite odd. First time I couldnt get a group for a raid. Never had that in D1 ever.

[Shimmyhill]

2 hours ago, Mr Ben said:

This is the video I commented about last night @Gorf King and @Weavus Its quite short, at just over a minute, and sums up Crucible quite niceley.

Dat D2 crucible music

 

Yes!

 

That is exactly it, I wish I could have explained it as well as that video but from the beta onwards it’s been that.

[DC Lemon]

Crucible in D2 is that rarest and most beautiful of things. An online shooter that doesn't make me angry. So chill. I love it.

 

Sometimes I have to ask Shaxx to tone it down a bit, though. No need to get overexcited, let's just calmly make our way to that uncontested zone over there and smoke a spliff while capturing it. It's all cool.

 

[Gorf King]

Summary of The Seasons of Destiny @ CoolCat Theatre @ TwitchCon. I can't be bothered to edit it, so here are my unedited live notes.

 

“The torch has been passed from the team that made Destiny 2 to the team that was sustain Destiny 2,” said DeeJ at the outset of the session, introducing the two members of the live team who will be taking a lot of the lead here. They seem a bit nervous. ”We’re not going to talk about the expansions, but we are going to heap some more promises on top of that,” says DeeJ after his 10 minutes of intro. The live team reps squirm a bit, but it’s barely perceptible - they were readied for this. And so to Seasons.

 

‘We want to tell you what to expect in Seasons in advance of it happening,” they say. D1 has four seasons planned so far. Each will have a different theme, as well as sandbox tuning, new features, and more content. Sounded promising, but then the stream died, and we probably missed a bit of something.

 

When we got back, we heard that in Season 2, we’ll get The Dawning again (a.k.a. Christmas), something to do with refugees or something according to DeeJ. What this seems to amount to is Ice Hockey in the Tower, the inclusion of snowballs in the world, and their use in Strikes. There’ll be some Dawning armour and shaders. 

 

Now on to rituals. These include things like Iron Banner. The team learned from the first IB, so in future you’ll be able to purchase the offered weapons (not armour) directly rather than rely on RNG. Also, the token economy is not always the best way to handle things, so you can unlock Season 2 gear and ornaments via gameplay targets. So in Season 2 (not the next IB, which is the last one in Season 1) you’ll need to complete particular objectives to attain rewards such as ornaments on IB armour. Similar considerations will apply to Trials rewards in future Seasons. In both IB and Trials, future Seasons will offer different weapons and armour to previous Seasons - so they’re a ‘get this item now or never’ deal per Season.

 

Factions in Season 2 will expand the rewards offered, but it wasn’t really clear how except to show some new Season 2 armour and weapons that come from rep packages. 

 

Clarion calls are a new feature. These will be particular activities you need to do, and will debut before the end of S1 and allow you to earn double XP (and hence double bright engrams) if you complete them with clanmates. Bright Engrams themselves will be refreshed at the end of S1, so new emotes will be offered and others, like Spicy Ramen, retired: Mic Drop is a new emote, for example. It's hilarious, lol. There followed a conversation about what inspires the sorts of emotes you get in loot boxes bright engrams, and a bit about the ‘thematic core’ of Season 2. (Apparently, it’s Christmas - sorry, Holidays.)

 

They then showed some new ships (with new transmat effects), armour, sparrows, and ghosts which you will only be able to get in S2 bright engrams. Seems we’re reaching the bottom of the barrel here - though to be fair, some of the ghosts are pretty damn nice. Pity there’s not a Dinklebot variant that makes him not be such an annoyingly flippant cunt 100% of the time.

 

There will also be shaders added, but unlike the previous items, existing examples won’t be taken away: the pool will simply be expanded. Finding space for all these extra shaders is ‘on the radar, but there are no promises’. 

 

There’ll be another Crucible map in Season 2. 

 

Clan changes: there’ll be reset of clan rank each Season. If your clan is at rank 6 by the end of S1 (can’t be difficult - most will get this after 6 weeks), you’ll get a new clan staff option for S2. The clan engrams will also be updated, so they'll include new stuff that isn’t in game yet (obviously). The clan rank perks will target the particular types of bad guys focused on in that Season.

 

So there’s the new Seasonal content - nothing earth-shattering, nothing much about underlying reward or progression mechanics. They mentioned sandbox tuning twice but didn’t end up saying anything at all about it (RIP Hunters). Bungie will be doing three Twitch streams in November, so maybe we’ll learn more then. But there isn’t much to report from this one apart from the tragic loss of Spicy Ramen and its replacement with

 

*thunk*

[Weavus]

What a pathetic qvc channel stream. They really have no clue how to communicate, everything they do is so tone deaf. I’m going to avoid reddit for a while as that is going to be one hot salty mess after that shitshow.

[Gorf King]

12 hours ago, Weavus said:

https://go.twitch.tv/twitchconcoolcat

 

Expect to be dazzled when it turns out seasons just means resetting the clan rank to 0 and changing the weather at the farm.

 

Got half of it right anyway.

[legaldinho]

6 hours ago, Shimmyhill said:

 

Yes!

 

That is exactly it, I wish I could have explained it as well as that video but from the beta onwards it’s been that.

That video is obviously a parody /joke, but I can't believe that at least two poster's think it's"spot on" or describes the crucible. You gotta wonder, with fans like these, does bungie need enemies. 

 

Personally really enjoying the crucible, still exploring classes and guns. My problem is that the game is not balanced enough (eg last hope is peerless for CQC). I never pulled off no scope multikills in D1 like shimmy and le chuck obvs, so what do I know, right?

[Janski]

Bah, I was hoping for some news about Festival of the Lost in the coming weeks.

 

Seems like it ain't gonna happen this year

[Hexx]

The push for more cosmetics! More ships! More sparrows! Limited time only! Seems very odd given then lack of decent collections tab or bank space

[Weavus]

1 hour ago, Hexx said:

The push for more cosmetics! More ships! More sparrows! Limited time only! Seems very obvious given the $$$ involved

 

Fixed that for you. Who needs an endgame when you can have ice hockey and snowballs. That kind of frivolous shit might fly in Y2/3 but to admit spending time on that right now instead of putting every man hour into the course correcting a game direction a large proportion of your core fan base dislikes is mind blowing.