Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Gorf King]

Let's just do that all night now, it's more fun than the other stuff we've been talking about.

 

Whether we wanted it or not, we've stepped into a war with the Monsters on Monster Hunter World. So let's get to taking out their Monsters, one by one. Zorah Magdaros. From what I can gather he commands the Great Girros from a large pile of monster dung outside of that swamp thing with poison in it. He's well protected by large scales, but with the right team, we can punch through those defences, take this beast out, and break their grip on Monster Hunter World.

 

That's got me in the mood now.

[Phelan]

Posted this over at Bungie:

 

Hey Bungie,
Not sure if I have ever posted here before but I felt that I should. I notched up around 250 hours on Destiny 1 and probably around 200 hours on Destiny 2 currently.
I’m in a fun clan full of good mates and we don’t really raid but we have fun every week doing teamwork for strikes, crucible and raids.
However, three of us who play every week and do the Nightfall every week just gave this week’s NIghtfall a try and we got to the room with two ogres and two Shreikers with 20 seconds to spare. We found a lot of anomalies but the sheer volume of enemies, level of them, the damage they did along with the time made it not only near impossible but also not fun. It’s a game. It’s meant to be fun but you have stripped away every second of enjoyment from this week’s Nightfall. Running to get energy is downright hellish when you have Knight’s and Ogres with massive splash damage or the massive amount of shots being fired at you.
I have no doubt people will be able to complete it, however, three players with a lot of experience and who play every week struggled to get anywhere near the end game of it.
I’m not angry but -blam!- I’m disappointed.

[Gorf King]

How many times did you run it? It's supposed to be something you practice, refine, get better at. FWIW it's exactly the same strike and modifiers as we had five weeks ago, and (you knew this was coming) that was perfectly doable, although the Prestige mode was a bit of a cunt. But it was one of those where we had to have a few goes at the PNF version to whittle our time down, and we didn't have much time left even when we did eventually nail it. It's probably very close to the top end of the difficulty range for Nightfalls.

 

I'd have to agree though that the NFs are quite uneven in difficulty (and this is even more evident in the PNFs). It's just that we've had a run of quite mild ones before this, with the one the week before last being ridiculously easy, and the one before that being almost as ridiculously easy. So it's easy to go a bit soft and then get brought up short when one of the harder ones rolls round again.

[Weavus]

13 minutes ago, Gorf King said:

So it's easy to go a bit soft and then get brought up short when one of the harder ones rolls round again.

 

Especially if like me its the only couple of hours you pick up a controller a week  The first week after torrent went away was painful. 

[Mr Ben]

If you thought the stream was bad news, you probably wont want to read IGN's hands on:

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2017/11/15/destiny-2-the-curse-of-osiris-story-feels-a-little-flat

 

Quote

Finally, when asked about the Crucible and the community outcry for adjustments, or the recent stories about decline in player base, Bungie simply said the claim “doesn’t corroborate what we have data-wise.” The DLC left me more worried that Destiny 2 is going to continue to struggle as I watch my friends, favorite streamers, and co-workers play less and less as the sandbox is left desperately needing adjustments. If you were looking for Curse of Osiris to rectify all of your Destiny 2 concerns,it sounds like we’ll just have to wait to see which feedback they decide to address by launch or in a future livestream.

Oh dear...

[Shimmyhill]

People still play this  

[Phelan]

8 hours ago, Gorf King said:

How many times did you run it? It's supposed to be something you practice, refine, get better at. FWIW it's exactly the same strike and modifiers as we had five weeks ago, and (you knew this was coming) that was perfectly doable, although the Prestige mode was a bit of a cunt. But it was one of those where we had to have a few goes at the PNF version to whittle our time down, and we didn't have much time left even when we did eventually nail it. It's probably very close to the top end of the difficulty range for Nightfalls.

 

I'd have to agree though that the NFs are quite uneven in difficulty (and this is even more evident in the PNFs). It's just that we've had a run of quite mild ones before this, with the one the week before last being ridiculously easy, and the one before that being almost as ridiculously easy. So it's easy to go a bit soft and then get brought up short when one of the harder ones rolls round again.

Last time we did it with 8 seconds to spare. Same team as last time and we got slaughtered. The running to get health back is the dumbest feature added to gaming. 

[PaB]

45 minutes ago, Phelan said:

Last time we did it with 8 seconds to spare. Same team as last time and we got slaughtered. The running to get health back is the dumbest feature added to gaming. 

Yeah as Gorf says its definitely one of those Nighfalls that you get better and better at. I actually quite like that one as the sense of achievement was pretty good. But it is entirely possible to get it done with 3 minutes to spare; I think if you really got everything down it's possible to prestige it.

[Broker]

The problem with momentum is that you just need to run until the regen starts. It seems like it’s designed to encourage you to stay mobile but it only really does that for the ten seconds until regen kicks in.

[p1nseeker]

Also there is a cheese to get maximum time pretty easily so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Gorf King]

8 hours ago, Broker said:

The problem with momentum is that you just need to run until the regen starts. It seems like it’s designed to encourage you to stay mobile but it only really does that for the ten seconds until regen kicks in.

 

The thing about Momentum is that if you're a Hunter, it's actually a buff. Hence I don't really mind it as I'm used to regenerating health even more slowly than when the mod is on.

 

Also, I heard that the Hunter survival boots give you free time added on over the max, and also guarantee better drops from the Prestige inc. Fatebringer. Good job Bungie haven't fixed them yet.

[Mr Ben]

Destiny 2 playerbase drops by about 70% after about a month

 

Bungie uses Clarion Call (10 am on Friday 17th until Monday 20th at 10 am)

 

I suspect it'll not be very effective

[Nate Dogg III]

It’s a double XP weekend with a fancy name in a game in which XP, for most players, is essentially meaningless. I really don’t understand. 

[instasis]

BRIGHT ENGRAMS

 

In other news, I cracked on with some POWERFUL GEAR stuff and my engram drops have increased from 284 to 288 which is impressive, and I now have my first bits of lvl300 Legendary gear and a max LL of 296 on my main. Thanks for the help guys.

[Broker]

It’s anazing how slow Bungie are to respond to things. I really believed that a big part of the transition to D2 was about sorting out their pipeline so that they could respond more swiftly to the community but since release there’s been no meaningful changes whatsoever. It’s really noticeable playing PUBG and Fortnite how frequently changes appear and how quickly they’re deployed. I know they’re early access games, but it just reminds you that it is possible to get changes out for a game relatively quickly, and in response to your community. I still really like most of the changes made to D2, but seeing the community drop off a cliff while Bungie just watches is so sad.

[Mr Ben]

6 hours ago, Nate Dogg III said:

It’s a double XP weekend with a fancy name in a game in which XP, for most players, is essentially meaningless. I really don’t understand. 

Thats the thing. Its only for Bright Engrams, but to top it off reddit users have found, after investigation, that there's an XP cooldown that seems to halve your XP gains after a period of time, which makes this Clarion Call thing even worse. You're penalised in the game for grinding anything, whether it be chests, and now, XP as well.

[Qazimod]

"How can we get people to keep playing our game..."

 

"...but, y'know, not too much..."

[Broker]

It’s insane that the chest thing was there at all, especially when one of their new activities is a set of chests. But the fact that after two months they’ve not patched it is absolutely ridiculous.

[Mr Ben]

Its not been patched because it was intended from the start. Probably to slow progression, though why is anyone's guess as the chests dont actually do much to help you progress in terms of power level.

 

The reason for an XP cooldown being present is obvious. Eververse wants your money. They are hardly going to allow you to grind your way to getting all the emotes, shaders and everything else you can get from Bright Engrams without paying a penny.

 

Clarion Call should have been something else rather than gaining XP as a result (as they obviously wont remove these cooldowns). Something like increased chance of legendary, and maybe even exotic drops from activities (and it would have to be a pretty significant increase, and include *all* activities, not just public events and strikes) would have been a good incentive to get people to play for the weekend.

[Broker]

Has anyone felt any need to buy bright engrams though? You get tonnes of them just from doing the weekly milestones, I’ve got all the exotic emotes and sparrows (I now have three sparrows with the random instant summon perk), two of the three exotic ships etc. You can easily get the armour set because there’s a piece sold each week. It really doesn’t feel like it incentivises buying silver, you can easily get everything without buying any if you play the game. 

[instasis]

Given the Eververse stuff is entirely (and rightly) cosmetic, I barely think about it except when I cash one in. It's a nice reward for doing stuff, but I couldn't give two shits about a silly dance.

 

I do like the neon emotes though. 

[Shimmyhill]

33 minutes ago, Pelekophoros said:

Given the Eververse stuff is entirely (and rightly) cosmetic, I barely think about it except when I cash one in. It's a nice reward for doing stuff, but I couldn't give two shits about a silly dance.

 

I do like the neon emotes though. 

 

Other than mods...

 

Bungo should be getting far more grief for their micro transactions on this than they do, if it was EA it would have been a melt down as while they are generally cosmetic that is a huge part of this game and it’s deliberalty held back to push you into purchasing and during the great content drought of ‘17 their “fix” is to give you an XP boost that pushes you to more micro transactions...

[instasis]

I don't even really know what the mods do, though, and everything else appears to be colours or things that change loading screens (ships). Where as BF2 had you paying for actual in game stuff you can win with.

[RubberJohnny]

The post you originally responded to pointed out Bungie have added BF2's credit limiter system to stop people from getting XP/chests so that they buy loot boxes, which makes things like their new event pointless.

 

Everyone is affected by that if they never buy lootboxes, that's what the conversation was about. How do you miss that and say "well I don't buy lootboxes so am not affected"?

[instasis]

9 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

The post you originally responded to pointed out Bungie have added BF2's credit limiter system to stop people from getting XP/chests so that they buy loot boxes, which makes things like their new event pointless.

 

Everyone is affected by that if they never buy lootboxes, that's what the conversation was about. How do you miss that and say "well I don't buy lootboxes so am not affected"?

 

Conversation Point 1: Double Xp weekend is pointless because it has no meaning to anyone

Conversation Point 2 (mine): BRIGHT ENGRAMS

Conversation Points XYZ: Omg the XP 'credit' is limited

Conversation Point 3: Eververse wants your money hence the credit limit system

Conversation Point 4: Has anyone ever felt the need to buy the loot boxes, the game gives you loads of the shit for free

Conversation Point 5 (mine): No, I barely think about them, they're just cosmetic

Conversation point 6: What about mods, Bungie should get more shit for this like EA

Conversation Point 7 (mine): I don't know what mods do, but BF2 loot boxes consist of game winning items [you have to pay for]

 

What is it you think I'm missing? It's a very straight forward flow in the conversation. I agree the event is pointless btw.

 

EDIT: I guess, to go into intricate detail as is the way on the internet because ARGUMENT, while D2 may have the credit limit system in it, it does not have the basic P2W baked into it in the same way that BF2 reportedly has, so you can't really compare the two directly. IMHO and all that, don't feel particularly strongly about it though so feel free to get enraged without engaging me.

[Mr Ben]

Clarion Call, Well rested bonus, 2xEXP tokens from Eververse. How much did the bar move with 16000 XP?

You'd be forgiven for thinking it didnt move.

 

Taken from Reddit

[Gorf King]

The Nightfall continues to play on repeat, this week seeing the third showing for The Pyramidion with Torrent and Zero Hour. A Prestige Nightfall so easy that we once completed it with over eight minutes to spare, only to realise when the aura didn't drop that we'd accidentally done the normal Nightfall instead. With hindsight, it did seem odd that we'd got half way through it with more time than you start out with. But hey, Vex do funny things to time. Coulda been legit.

 

So although it's not quite that easy, it really is quite easy. Especially for you double-pulse-throwing Titans RIP come December 5th. And it's FUN! Might actually log in tonight. Maybe.

 

The pattern so far:

 

05/09 The Arms Dealer - Prism/Killing Time

12/09 The Inverted Spire - Prism/Rings (Prism was substituted in for the planned Momentum which was withdrawn due to brokenness)

19/09 Exodus Crash - Attrition/Anomalies (Prestige bugged)

26/09 The Pyramidion - Torrent/Zero Hour

03/10 Savathûn's Song - Momentum/Anomalies

10/10 The Inverted Spire - Attrition/Killing Time

17/10 The Pyramidion - Torrent/Zero Hour (substituted for Exodus Crash - Prism/Rings because this strike was bugged again) (identical to week 4)

24/10 The Arms Dealer - Torrent/Zero Hour (aka easiest NF ever)

31/10 The Arms Dealer - Prism/Killing Time (identical to week 1)

07/11 The Inverted Spire - Momentum/Rings (what week 2 should have been)

14/11 Savathûn's Song - Momentum/Anomalies (identical to week 5)

21/11 The Pyramidion - Torrent/Zero Hour (identical to weeks 4 and 7)

 

Oh, and Iron Banner is live. It's Clash. Raid encounter is dogs. Errrr... yeah? No. But really, it's all about the fact that this week you can buy the Spicy Ramen emote from Eververse. Endgame innit.

[df0]

I have so little faith in the franchise and its direction that I'd not be surprised if Activision Blizzard announces an in-game collectible card game just because Hearthstone is popular. Find cards in chests, find cards by killing bosses, find rare cards in packs bought from Tess.

Obviously accompanied by not enough storage space.

[mechamonkey]

The raid challenge this week is Calus 
 

Spoiler

Activate all 4 DPS platforms at once in the throne room so expect it to take more damage phases

 

[Nate Dogg III]

That's actually quite a good idea for a challenge. Still not playing it tho amirite lads