Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Broker]

8 minutes ago, KartoffelKopf said:

@Broker

 

We know FotL and PoE aren’t returning as Bungie have confirmed as such. The rest is basically everything from the first game and I suspect that’s just leftover code as it’s pretty clear this is just a souped version of the D1 engine.  

 

The one thing they have confirmed is The Dawning (Christmassy stuff) which isn’t in that list so I wouldn’t put too much faith in it at all. 

 

New stuff sounds likely though. One of the planets is confirmed as the new area of the DLC 

 

FOTL will probably return next year. I can’t really square PoE stuff being added in updates but not being part of future content, seems more likely to me that it’s coming back but they lied and said it wasn’t to protect their surprise, much like them lying about the farm being the only social space.

 

It’s hard to tell for sure but these sound to me like brand new voice lines referencing PoE, which seems like a weird thing to pay money to record if you have “no plans for it to return” as they said. I’m sure some of this stuff will be leftovers/get scrapped but some of it is definitely brand new recorded voice lines referring to this stuff.

[macosx]

In more mundane news I reached 305 finally! Pleased, after giving up on D1 unhappy. Still playing and loving it.

[Gorf King]

21 minutes ago, Bojangle said:

Apparently Bungie/Activision are perma banning people if they’re running certain programs alongside the game, probably worth a heads up.

 

 

Stated as false by Bungie:

 

 

Mysterious.

[instasis]

8 hours ago, Gorf King said:

As predicted, this week's Nightfall is an absolute doodle. We didn't manage to get the Dream Team together tonight (RIP Weavus), so to kill time we decided to two-man the normal mode and offer it as a series of guided games to get some Oathkeeper ticks for the clan - which mean nothing currently, but you never know what bone Bungie might throw as encouragement at the end of the season to get more clans to participate. Maybe a nice tassle on the banner or something.

 

Anyway, it's totally simple to two-man it first time with tons of time to spare it even if you play as sloppy as sloppy can be. So I'm absolutely certain this will be by far the easiest Prestige with a full team. If you're after that trophy, now's the week to get it. And in the unlikely event that many people still have the Rat King quest to do, this is the place to do it: there's no way you're not going to finish the normal with more than 5 minutes remaining.

 

I've got to do the rat king quest! God I'm so far behind.

[Gorf King]

Good thing about it is, you could do it with just about anyone, not just people who also have the quest open at that stage: if you go with a couple of double-pulse-spamming Titans they won't need to fire their primaries at all, so could have Rat King equipped for the whole run with no real penalty. Or... they could actually use the gun to shoot at things.

 

...nah, that's just silly.

[Mr. Gerbik]

17 hours ago, Broker said:

After three years and four expansions! You’ve played over 250 hours of a game over two months and not quite got everything. Other than D1, what kind of games offer that much value?!

First things that come to mind that I've played waaaaaay more of than a measly 250 hours:

-Morrowind

-Street Fighter

-Dark Souls (not even counting the sequels)

-Halo: Combat Evolved

-Hitman: Blood Money

-Titan Quest (and various other ARPGs, every single one offering more versatile character builds and interesting loot than both Destiny games put together)

 

And I'm sure WoW, CS, DOTA, and LoL players would like a word too.

 

Not saying that 250 hours isn't terrific value for money, but let's keep it real

[legaldinho]

15 hours ago, Shimmyhill said:

 

Destiny 2 has far more in common with The Division than Destiny;  shite end game + woeful PvP = playerbase freefall

 

1 hour ago, macosx said:

In more mundane news I reached 305 finally! Pleased, after giving up on D1 unhappy. Still playing and loving it.

 

Some contrasting views here

 

I can see D2's flaws but overall a tremendous effort compared to vanilla D1, by any objective measure. Some friends of mine who were lost in D1 seem happy with progression in D2, playing maybe 8-10 hours a week at most. 

 

I expect D2 sales are above D1, not below. I expect, crucially, that the expansion retention rate will be substantially higher. Lot of moaners on Reddit and forums, but in the end these guys will come back. It's the casuals they needed to win over.

[Bojangle]

1 hour ago, Gorf King said:

 

Stated as false by Bungie:

 

 

Mysterious.

Ah, in that case I'll remove the post.

[legaldinho]

1 hour ago, Pelekophoros said:

 

I've got to do the rat king quest! God I'm so far behind.

Drop me a msg if you wanna do it. Should be easy.

[Shimmyhill]

58 minutes ago, legaldinho said:

 

 

Some contrasting views here

 

I can see D2's flaws but overall a tremendous effort compared to vanilla D1, by any objective measure. Some friends of mine who were lost in D1 seem happy with progression in D2, playing maybe 8-10 hours a week at most. 

 

I expect D2 sales are above D1, not below. I expect, crucially, that the expansion retention rate will be substantially higher. Lot of moaners on Reddit and forums, but in the end these guys will come back. It's the casuals they needed to win over.

 

They have won the casuals over and people who play on their own but killed the playerbase who rinsed Destiny 1 - time will tell if that’s a good long term plan.

 

Destiny 2 was great until the end game, vanilla Destiny was objectively better at end game - mad to even suggest otherwise when you had VOG to run and a reason to do it!

[auntyclimax]

1 hour ago, legaldinho said:

Drop me a msg if you wanna do it. Should be easy.

 

I need this, too... (302)

[Deeptone]

3 hours ago, Pelekophoros said:

 

I've got to do the rat king quest! God I'm so far behind.

 

I believe it was Gorf who ran me through the nightfall last night (thanks again) and can confirm it is easy as they two manned it while I ran around at the back flinging grenades at random walls.

 

I need to do the whole rat king quest from the first step.  Shouldn't take long if you are in the same boat, and anyone else. Drop me a message to sort out a time.

 

[Oz]

I need rat king too. 

[Oz]

most improved (other than obvious frame rate) is volumetric lights and god rays. this game looks so good on PC.

 

[legaldinho]

3 hours ago, Shimmyhill said:

 

They have won the casuals over and people who play on their own but killed the playerbase who rinsed Destiny 1 - time will tell if that’s a good long term plan.

 

Destiny 2 was great until the end game, vanilla Destiny was objectively better at end game - mad to even suggest otherwise when you had VOG to run and a reason to do it!

Revisionist history - loads of people moaning at the time about the grind, about drops from VoG and elsewhere. Problem persisted for a long time - remember forever 29? 

 

Only difference is, those complaints emanated from the 10-20% of the player base who stuck around. The vast majority just didn't bother. 

 

The rose-tinted view of vanilla Destiny's endgame is objectively a nonsense. The real complaint is this: the incentive for continual grinding (random rolls and random drops of overpowered weapons) is gone. There is no fatebringer, no gjallahorn, no CB rifled rangefinder grasps, no god roll luna etc.

 

On the PvP front, it's similar with the addition of the balancing of the sandbox towards primary weapon fights instead of OHK abilities and guns.

 

I get the complaints, but they are not about endgame really, they are about the game full stop. Its design, its ethos, and its mechanics.

 

I haven't done the endgame. No raid. No prestige raid. No prestige nf. No flawless run. I suspect a lot of those complaining haven't either. The point is they feel they are not required to, so why should they? I view this as a positive, I want to just play the game. I like doing it. If I wanted to do a raid badly I could make it happen. For others though, the fact that they don't have to do something, they aren't compelled to, for example, run VoG three times before reset, means they should not play VoG at all. What's the point? (Before anyone says the leviathan isn't a patch on VoG, well, that's sort of my point. You're criticising the raid then, and that's fine. The endgame criticism implies, however, that even if the leviathan was the best ever raid, the fact that you don't have to do it/ don't need to chase drops from it in and of itself makes it worse.

 

I think that point of view is misconceived but I respect it.  Anyway, rant over. Hope half of that makes sense.

[Len]

8 hours ago, Pelekophoros said:

 

I've got to do the rat king quest! God I'm so far behind.

 

I wouldn't worry, me to. Been sat in my inventory for ages. Think it might be on second part but no idea tbh.

[legaldinho]

Listening to this week's destiny massive breakdowns podcast - they rather destroy the "information" doing the rounds recently that the player base has fallen by 78%. Turns out, unsurprisingly, the entire thing is suspect, comparing unlike with unlike. 

[Oz]

 

[Shimmyhill]

12 minutes ago, legaldinho said:

Listening to this week's destiny massive breakdowns podcast - they rather destroy the "information" doing the rounds recently that the player base has fallen by 78%. Turns out, unsurprisingly, the entire thing is suspect, comparing unlike with unlike. 

 

Yeah, they don’t know the stats either so...

 

What is obvious is that less people are playing it for less time, in my 400+ member group people have been able to get in the main group such is the drop off  

[Broker]

That tells you nothing, other than that the people you’ve been playing with don’t like it. All of the reports like that are coming from people who loved the awful grind at the end of D1, like all the endless complaining on reddit and all the people who don’t like it here and their friends. You have no idea whatsoever if those people have been replaced by new players, you just don’t want them to have been because you hate the game so much.

[Shimmyhill]

Indeed but time to get into IB games, empty towers and lack of people doing guided games or even lfg games all added to the stats that no doubt Bungie forced down all paints a picture.

 

All the people in telling it’s all fine all seem to be D1 detractors who are oblivious to how big the community was and how anti the community is currently - as a solo game it’s a great ride but play it as intended in a fireteam and come back, in the long term solo players are not what Destiny need so I assume they are worried.

[Mr Ben]

And now we wont know because Destiny Tracker has removed the only way to tell. A cynic would think they didnt want their reputation with Bungie harmed by having that information freely available, so decided to simply remove it.

 

Its pretty obvious the game has lost a large percentage of its playerbase. You only have to check your friends list, clan roster and even the LFG sites that used to have thousands of users logged in at one time.

 

There may well be players replacing these people, but Bungie is losing its core audience (albeit in the short term - December better have something good besides the campaign, or the same thing will happen then). New players probably wont care who Osiris is, or who Oryx was, the Darkness or any of that. I've heard many people saying these people arent sticking around, so wont be buying any DLC/expansions, so Bungie may have lost the other player type they were chasing, the casual, as well.

[Gorf King]

42 minutes ago, Broker said:

That tells you nothing, other than that the people you’ve been playing with don’t like it. All of the reports like that are coming from people who loved the awful grind at the end of D1, like all the endless complaining on reddit and all the people who don’t like it here and their friends.

 

So according to you, all the comments about player numbers dropping are from people who loved D1, all the people who don't like it here, and all their friends. Seems a pretty big number.

 

I don't get why you (and others making opposing arguments) are so vitriolic in your language. People 'hate' Destiny 2. The endgame of D1 (did you play that endgame at all?) was an 'awful grind'. It's a shame when criticism of the game, which is quite possible to make even if you enjoy many aspects of it, seems to get so deeply mired in these binary pro- and anti- camps. Seems a feature of the forum in recent times though, and maybe the internet in general. 

 

Fact of the matter is, we don't have access to useful comparative figures for D1 and D2. Fact is, ultimately the number of days spent on Destiny doesn't matter if D2 makes more money. It may be that, as I suspect, Bungie are moving this even further away from the RPG/MMO systems of D1 that never quite got developed enough to make D1 an RPG/MMO, and further toward it being more a straight shooter. It may be that this will make the game more profitable for them. But there's certainly a lot less depth in the customisation and loot aspects and a lot more emphasis on slimming down the depth and length of those offerings, making most of the endgame rewards cosmetic, and making getting those grindy as all fuckery due to the RNG or else asking you to pay extra for loot boxes to increase your chances (one of the less savoury aspects on non-vanilla D1 developments as the game went along). You might like that, others might not. But it's really weird hearing about these 'moaners' all the time from someone who used the D1 thread to complain about the lack of content that game allegedly provided - even after it had been out for years.

 

Similarly, the game is obviously not dead and some of the hyperbole about its demise is absurd. Simple fact is, we can't tell yet what Bungie's plans are for the franchise. Those who liked the RPG/customisation stuff, along with those who liked the mad powers and sixes of Crucible, the lore, and a few other aspects of the game that held their interest for longer than a simple shooter would, might be a bit concerned with what they've seen so far. Those who couldn't be bothered with any of that, who never read any grimoire, didn't like how differently PvP played from other shooters, or couldn't/wouldn't actually play endgame at all because it was too much time or hassle, or too difficult to arrange, they might be far happier with D2 as it stands. I think Bungie's really big problem is in trying to satisfy both camps. I don't think you actually can, which I think has always been Destiny's problem. And that's why in both Destiny threads on here you've always had a lot of people complaining about the game. It's just that they seem to take turns in wanting the game to go more in their own favoured direction.

 

I do think Bungie should stop trying to do everything half-assedly though, and either make a great pure shooter without any 'grind' at all, or go all in and try to deepen the content and make a shooter that is also genuinely an online multiplayer RPG. Separating out PVP from PvE, although it goes against their principles, would help that as it would take care of one aspect of the supposed 'balance' issue. Because I'd really love to see endgame PvE rewards that actually thrill and are game changers, like we do in MMOs and did to an extent in D1. If Bungie are worried that this will alienate more casual players, who might not be able to beat the hardest endgame, then fine. Just take away the illusion of endgame altogether, and make this a level playing field all the way regardless of what you've achieved or the hours you've put in. No need for power levels or the almost meaningless grind that you do every day - just make everything there for everyone, Halo style. At the moment, it feels like the numbers really are arbitrary and there only for the most empty of reasons - grind (albeit 'casual' grind) and window dressing. They don't really affect anything in the long run.

 

That's just one example of how I don't think D2 so far adds up. It's a criticism, but not a statement of 'hate' for the game. It's also not just about wanting 'more grind'. It's about wanting something that feels meaningful, and it doesn't preclude playing the bits of the game that I like, because I do still do that - we offered several guided games of the NF last night mainly because we enjoyed it, and we'll be prestiging it when we can get the three of us together. There were no tangible rewards in it at all. But do I think there should be? Yes, I do. Because otherwise people might not want to make the effort of offering guided games, because it's easier to just do the NF with your mates. If Bungie want this sort of activity to succeed, they must know they'll need to offer better incentives than a one-off emblem and then nothing. So again, I don't hate the NFs - I think they're generally great - and I won't stop doing them (or taking the extra step to offer them as a guide) because they reward nil. But at the same time, I know the numbers of guides are tiny, and this is easily quantified by the time you spend if you're a seeker. It's simply not working, and that's nothing to do with my hating the game, or relying on anecdotal evidence. It simply isn't attracting enough proper guides to make guided games work.

 

That's criticism made because I want the game to succeed, not because I want it to fail. You can characterise it as moaning all you like, but you're dead wrong if you do.

 

Tl;dr - wrong.

[legaldinho]

46 minutes ago, Shimmyhill said:

 

Yeah, they don’t know the stats either so...

 

What is obvious is that less people are playing it for less time, in my 400+ member group people have been able to get in the main group such is the drop off  

Aye I agree, true for me too. But we're hardcore players who no life's the original, it's kinda on us. 

 

That podcast, finished it now, pretty much says everything I tried to say in my posts better, I recommend it generally anyway for gun chat.

[Broker]

39 minutes ago, Shimmyhill said:

Indeed but time to get into IB games, empty towers and lack of people doing guided games or even lfg games all added to the stats that no doubt Bungie forced down all paints a picture.

 

Much like the terrible lag that only you seem to see, I’m not struggling to get crucible/IB games or seeing empty towers, so that’s probably just your terrible internet connection again.

[Shimmyhill]

4 minutes ago, Broker said:

 

Much like the terrible lag that only you seem to see, I’m not struggling to get crucible/IB games or seeing empty towers, so that’s probably just your terrible internet connection again.

 

Lol there have been plenty of posts in this very thread with vids but whatever, you clearly have your own opinion and it’s the only and right one.

 

In age old FPS tradition is offer you out on a 1v1 PvP match to settle it but you can’t in destiny 2, progress baby  

[Deeptone]

Just made a topic in online for anyone who needs Rat King.

[Gorf King]

12 hours ago, Gorf King said:

 

Stated as false by Bungie:

 

 

Mysterious.

 

 

[p1nseeker]

Anyone around now and wanna try for prestige nightfall (ps4)?

[PaB]

7 hours ago, clippa said:

 

 

When do I get to do a strike? I liked doing that in the beta.

 

What did they do to the golden gun? It was great, now you get like 2 shots or something and it's over, waste of time. Will probably stay with dancing stick prick instead.

 

Towards the end of the story

 

Nothing, Golden gun has two modes once you unlock everything - 6 shot and 3 shot.