Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Mr Ben]

Do you even have to ask?

 

Not even logged in for 2 weeks, as we didnt do the PNF last week, and not doing it this week either. The only new content is the raid challenge and Spicy Ramen, because the meaningful endgame rewards is all from Eververse rather than anything from actual activities.

 

Iron Banner is a waste of time this week in my opinion, as its the same system as last time, so it'll be better to wait until they fix the token/reward system next "season", as the armour is staying the same.

[Jerec]

2 hours ago, Mr Ben said:

Do you even have to ask?

 

Not even logged in for 2 weeks, as we didnt do the PNF last week, and not doing it this week either. The only new content is the raid challenge and Spicy Ramen, because the meaningful endgame rewards is all from Eververse rather than anything from actual activities.

 

Iron Banner is a waste of time this week in my opinion, as its the same system as last time, so it'll be better to wait until they fix the token/reward system next "season", as the armour is staying the same.

 

Is it still Control?

 

If its Clash I'll dust off my disk.

[lordscotland]

2 hours ago, Mr Ben said:

Do you even have to ask?

 

Not even logged in for 2 weeks, as we didnt do the PNF last week, and not doing it this week either. The only new content is the raid challenge and Spicy Ramen, because the meaningful endgame rewards is all from Eververse rather than anything from actual activities.

 

Iron Banner is a waste of time this week in my opinion, as its the same system as last time, so it'll be better to wait until they fix the token/reward system next "season", as the armour is staying the same.

I knew the system was changing, but I thought the armor was changing for the next season too?

[K]

I'm going to buck the trend, and say that after a couple of weeks off, I'm still really enjoying this game. I was never really someone who got into the groove of playing the endgame content in the first game, apart from a brief, glorious period in late 2014, when I was running the Vault of Glass on the regular. I just don't have the time or the skill to do raids or to do Trials on anything more than a very occasional basis, as I am a tired middle-aged dad now, rather than the sprightly middle-aged pre-dad I was all those (3) years ago. Staying up until 11.30pm to play a game is now the stuff of nostalgic fantasy.

 

What Destiny 2 really does brilliantly well from my perspective is to cater for the middle-aged dad lifestyle. I have a small group of friends of wildly differing skill levels and with variable time available to play, and D2's constrained progression system works perfectly for keeping us all in the same general power band. We can actually do a quest or a strike or some public events, and have real fun doing so without the one player who has two hours a week to play getting repeatedly smoked, and resurrected by the guy who has two hours a night to play. I've said this before, but if Bungie's goal was to create a kind of relaxing space pub with guns that you can relax with your friends in, then they have succeeded beyond expectations.

 

There are issues with the game. One key thing from my perspective is the weird difficulty banding - you can either do  easy PvE content like the strikes or the quests, or you can do extremely hard PvE content, like the Nightfall or the raid. There's nothing inbetween, which is a bit weird. I know heroic strikes are coming, but it would be nice to be able to do heroic story missions too (and to be able to select which one you want to do other than the weird structure of having a choice of three "memories") and heroic quests.

 

The other thing is that D2 feels quite unambitious. It seems weird to be saying that about a game of this size that was produced by hundreds of developers working flat out, cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, and contains a staggering number of different environments and enemy types, but I suspect the issue is unreasonably high expectations after Destiny 1. Because that game launched in such a state and was so clearly incomplete,  it gave the impression of being part of something much, larger - an imperfect remnant of a much grander vision. I expected that D2 would build on that, but it just consolidated what was already there - same number of planets, same number of raids, very similar numbers of strikes & crucible maps, etc. There's nothing really new, other than the tidied up systems and small things like on-map quests. It's still a massive achievement, but the lack of anything really transformative - new vehicles, space combat, new activity types - makes it feel like a more tentative step forward than I would have expected, particularly when you look at how much of a leap forward each Halo game was.

[V3zna]

31 minutes ago, K said:

What Destiny 2 really does brilliantly well from my perspective is to cater for the middle-aged dad lifestyle. I have a small group of friends of wildly differing skill levels and with variable time available to play, and D2's constrained progression system works perfectly for keeping us all in the same general power band. We can actually do a quest or a strike or some public events, and have real fun doing so without the one player who has two hours a week to play getting repeatedly smoked, and resurrected by the guy who has two hours a night to play. I've said this before, but if Bungie's goal was to create a kind of relaxing space pub with guns that you can relax with your friends in, then they have succeeded beyond expectations.

 

This is totally true and this decision has alienated the hardcore that played Destiny 1 relentlessly. There’s nothing to do for a large percentage of the player base. Bungie have catered very well to a part of their audience that wasn’t looked after in the first game but have killed it for the players that stuck with the original for several years. How that works out long term for Destiny 2 is unclear but it’s a name that is frequently popping up in the disappointment of 2017 thread at ResetEra. They will reach a point in which too much damage is done and there’ll be no coming back.

[Mr Ben]

1 hour ago, Jerec said:

 

Is it still Control?

 

If its Clash I'll dust off my disk.

It is indeed Clash.

1 hour ago, markh said:

I knew the system was changing, but I thought the armor was changing for the next season too?

Nope, as far as I'm aware all the armour is staying the same, including from the Faction Rallies (you can see in the twitch stream when they showed off next seasons Faction Rally armour that it was identical, but with a different colour/pattern) and Trials of the Nine. Not sure about the weapons, but they have added a few this week, such as a grenade launcher.

[K]

17 minutes ago, Black Cat Supremacist said:

 

This is totally true and this decision has alienated the hardcore that played Destiny 1 relentlessly. There’s nothing to do for a large percentage of the player base. Bungie have catered very well to a part of their audience that wasn’t looked after in the first game but have killed it for the players that stuck with the original for several years. How that works out long term for Destiny 2 is unclear but it’s a name that is frequently popping up in the disappointment of 2017 thread at ResetEra. They will reach a point in which too much damage is done and there’ll be no coming back.

 

I don't think the digital space pub approach is necessarily incompatible with having a really good endgame. Like, there's nothing stopping Bungie from having exotics that are exclusive to the raid, or very desirable legendaries, or even special mods that (say) can get you to 310 or 315. There's no reason they can't make Iron Banner and Trials more like the same modes in the original game, so that power levels are relevant and there's a reason to try and boost your power even further. The missteps in the endgame seem to be a separate issue to the shift towards making the game's systems a bit friendlier, and the progression a bit more constrained.

[V3zna]

11 minutes ago, K said:

 

I don't think the digital space pub approach is necessarily incompatible with having a really good endgame. Like, there's nothing stopping Bungie from having exotics that are exclusive to the raid, or very desirable legendaries, or even special mods that (say) can get you to 310 or 315. There's no reason they can't make Iron Banner and Trials more like the same modes in the original game, so that power levels are relevant and there's a reason to try and boost your power even further. The missteps in the endgame seem to be a separate issue to the shift towards making the game's systems a bit friendlier, and the progression a bit more constrained.

 

True but there’s no sign of the changes. No admission that something is in the pipeline. I still think they’ll leave it too late and the player base will have moved on permanently.

[Mr Ben]

Yeah, which is odd considering they said they could implement changes far quicker in Destiny 2 than they could in the original.

[K]

Just now, Black Cat Supremacist said:

 

True but there’s no sign of the changes. No admission that something is in the pipeline. I still think they’ll leave it too late and the player base will have moved on permanently.

 

Give 'em a chance, it's only been out a few weeks. I swore I'd given up the first game on a number of occasions before some new content or structural change lured me back in, so I'd be really surprised if the same didn't happen to the lapsed D2 players this time round.

[df0]

They’ll be back to clear the new raid. Once.

[Mr Ben]

The story content is apparently only a few hours long, and that supposedly includes the strikes, according to IGN anyway. Its the milestones to get to 330 power that will likely take the longest.

 

The raid better have Vex, and no more Cabal, thats all I can say. It being on the Leviathan however, I do not have high hopes.

[Shimmyhill]

I wonder what the playerbase is now, of course Bungo aren’t going to publish it because those that try to calculate it think it’s in an appalling state of decay but genuinely would be interested to know to see how Bungo react - the DLC announcement seems to have gone down like a lead ballon and rightfully so but there s to be a complete denial of any issues from Bungo so either the numbers are all wrong or they have made no progress in their ability to react

 

Warframe seems to be where all the ex D1 players and streamers have gone alongside Fortnite and PUBG - my list of YouTube subs was hugely dominated by Destiny videos but if I see one a day from the combined list it seems an exception and not the norm so it does seem to be in free fall across the board.

 

The really sorry state of affairs is it’s just trudging on with no changes implemented, Irob Banner wasn’t even featured on the front page of the subreddit but a thread noting that of the 80 possible Nightfall variations there have been 14 since launch, wtf is that about?

 

I really want to have a reason or urge to play the game again but it seems like it’s just stuck in a rut with the devs having no idea how to fix it - there have been more additions to Fortnite BR since Destiny 2 launch than in the game and he latest  Warframe content blows the paid for DLC for this out of the water, it’s really rather odd.

[footle]

12 minutes ago, Mr Ben said:

The story content is apparently only a few hours long, and that supposedly includes the strikes, according to IGN anyway. Its the milestones to get to 330 power that will likely take the longest.

 

The raid better have Vex, and no more Cabal, thats all I can say. It being on the Leviathan however, I do not have high hopes.

 

Great if you’re on the gimped platform where one of the strikes won’t be released for a year.

[Mr Ben]

Watching the stream, they're doing the new Mercury Public Event, and when it finishes, Deej says "this is the most rewarding public event!"

 

2 chests spawn. Two tokens and a blue pop out.

 

 

Edit: Its all still tokens. Rewards from adventures/public events the same. Didnt show heroic strikes, but I suspect its the same - blues with some more tokens.

 

They all sounded so bored during the stream, with Deej being as incompetent as ever for someone who obviously doesnt play the game at all.

[Gorf King]

My stream kept stuttering for some reason, so this isn't a setup but a genuine question: right at the start, DeeJ announced a 'new endgame rewards system', but first wanted to show us a new public event. I saw the rest of the stream, but with little gaps, yet it's just ended with nothing happening that seemed to be a reveal of a new endgame rewards system. Was it just those quests (do some Crucible or strikes etc) that give you the components for the new weapons? Can't be that, cos it's not endgame, so did I miss something?

 

It could be in next week's stream where they talk about armour and stuff, but it was a bit odd to open tonight's stream with that if it wasn't even going to be in it.

[Mr Ben]

Pretty sure that was it. It was to make you do stuff to get the parts for the weapons. I didnt see any new endgame rewards system, so it must have been the forging I guess.

 

Edit: Just re-watched that bit, and it is the weapons forging.

[Marmite]

Tried to watch the stream but it was incredibly boring. Watching someone else play a game doesn't really do it for me anyway, but this really did seem pretty tedious. I'm not seeing much new stuff to excite yet. 

 

[sbrandon111]

Is PvP back to 6v6 yet?

[Mr Ben]

It was just boring. Nothing new other than the weapon forging. The rewards were shite as usual - 2 tokens and a blue!!! Wow most rewarding Public Event ever!

 

Fuck off Deej. They all sounded bored, and the 2 sitting with Deej sounded pissed off with putting up with Deej.

 

Bit like the rest of us then.

[Gorf King]

2 hours ago, sbrandon111 said:

Is PvP back to 6v6 yet?

 

Nope.

 

2 hours ago, Marmite said:

Tried to watch the stream but it was incredibly boring. Watching someone else play a game doesn't really do it for me anyway, but this really did seem pretty tedious. I'm not seeing much new stuff to excite yet. 

 

I suspect there isn't anything. Not if the 'play two rounds of Crucible and a strike for a set perk gun' is their idea of a new endgame rewards system. Fucking hell.

 

I understand the point K was making, but at the same time I don't quite get it. You can create a game that's fun to play casually without stripping it of any depth or long-term progression. In D2 so far we saw in the first week or two (as early posts from just about everyone post-release will show) that Bungie definitely made the game more accessible and attractive - and far less obscure - from early- to mid-game. And that's obviously a good thing. But in essentially capping everyone at a certain level, in making there no depth to the loot (fixed rolls and most weapons having minimal differences and nothing terribly exciting or game-changing, raid gear and weapons not doing anything much for raid performance, the heroic versions doing nothing for power level), they've basically killed off any sense of material reward or progression from the endgame. All the (very few) rewards you get are cosmetic, and you can get better cosmetics just from doing anything at all at the most menial level that pushes you into another bright engram. 

 

And there's the rub: you can just buy these cosmetic rewards - which are all the game seems really to be about - with cash anyway. In getting rid of the attractive, materially-beneficial endgame rewards and funnelling all the rewards into bright engrams, which can be bought in loot boxes, they've made this a 'casual' game in the sense of it not rewarding the most difficult achievements the most, but rewarding the sum total of hours you put into the game - the very definition of grind, since bright engrams come equally from the most trivial contents they do the hardest - or alternatively, just letting you escape that grind by buying the gear anyway. And the gear is largely without any function.

 

Personally, I think it stinks of a complete lack of ambition and has turned a flawed but promising first game, which had some absolutely brilliant moments, into what its detractors always claimed it was: a grindy meaningless numbers game. Nope, it wasn't, but this sure feels like it is. What is the point of all these numbers, these levels, when they're of no real use? What use is raid armour when it's functionally worse than the stuff you get from a vendor? And that's leaving aside the playable content itself - a matter of taste, but for me the Leviathan raid just doesn't feel like an epic battle, a journey, something that feeds off and into a rich lore, at all. It has no real clutch moments, no 'fuck yeah' potential, no sense of real achievement. And, obviously, no real rewards worth a damn. And I don't see how the lack of all that benefits 'casual' players.

 

I'm going to be giving the new stuff a go on December 5th, but at this rate there's not a hope in hell of them getting my preorder for the next expansion. I'm hoping someone else will take the reins and produce a game that is both attractive to new players but also provides some depth and breadth in what it does, doesn't make everything about selling loot boxes and cynically ensuring no-one feels they can't spend more cash because the system's too unfriendly to causal play, and has some actual depth to the stories it tells (remember lore, Bungie? You did have some decent writers once, and at least the illusion of their being something to actually write about other than the cutscene for snarky comedy sidekick #14). I guess it's madness to expect that from Anthem, given that's published by EA, but hopefully Monster Hunter will fill a bit of a gap and prove that you can do accessible and occasional while still not insulting the playerbase by stripping out all the depth and length and stuffing everything into meaningless, nonchallenging activities whose rewards you can basically stump up cash to get anyway. 

 

Sorry about the negative opinion to anyone who gets all hot and bothered about such stuff, but unless (and I am hoping this happens) they have some surprises up their sleeve for Osiris - the new 'raid lair' being genuinely imaginative, heroic-feeling, and epically rewarding being a sure-fire way to get everyone back on board - this has to be the most disappointing sequel to a game I've ever played. It's right up there with the campaign in Halo 2, so I guess they're at least consistent.

 

(And I didn't even mention the Crucible. Because who actually cares about that any more?)

 

Get your fucking act together, Bungie.

[Broker]

3 hours ago, Mr Ben said:

Yeah, which is odd considering they said they could implement changes far quicker in Destiny 2 than they could in the original.

 

I think at this stage it’s pretty clear that was bullshit. Their response to issues is still moving at a glacial pace despite the tech and staff having mostly changed, seems like it’s just part of the studio culture. 

 

They should never have numbered the sequel and abandoned everything from the first game. Their excuse of the technology holding back progress seems to have made functionally no difference, but we’ve lost so much. I can’t think of any reason this wouldn’t have been better as a big DLC for Destiny.

[df0]

They can not charge 50 quid for this as DLC. They can charge 50 quid for this as a numbered sequel.

[Janski]

11 minutes ago, Broker said:

I think at this stage it’s pretty clear that was bullshit. Their response to issues is still moving at a glacial pace despite the tech and staff having mostly changed, seems like it’s just part of the studio culture. 

 

I was thinking this the other day as it appears not much has changed since D1. Maybe Activisions solution was to get those studios (High Moon et al)  to help Bungie out but then this DLC looks pretty slight even compared to House of Wolves and Dark Below.

[KartoffelKopf]

'Luckily' I was being made redundant when I pre-ordered D2 so only chose the standard edition. As it stands based on these reveals (which to be fair, I couldn't even be arsed to watch, I'm just going by the reactions here), I've saved myself about £40. I bought Splatoon 2 the other day and that already feels like a much better investment of that cash.

 

I didn't think I'd fall of the wagon so quickly with D2 after 1000+ hours I put in to D1 but I feel......nothing. None of this excites me and I don't miss the game at all. I miss the party chat, was fun relentlessly failing at things with the raid boys but yeah, it's all a bit shit really if the game is dull.

 

[instasis]

Apparently I only spent 120hr on D1 across all expansions and have already spent 75hr on D2. It's pretty much following the same pattern for me (because the raid and nightfall are relatively inaccessible) but in terms of logging in for a couple of hours a week it's decent. PvP feels easier to get on with buy less fun.

 

I pre-ordered the expansions. I don't really regret it, it'll be fun to go somewhere else. I think it desperately needs a new enemy race now, though. Or at least some new minions. Remember when the Taken came out and it was mixing everything up? The fight patterns are just all the same.

 

I loaded up the raid solo for a laugh last night. That was amusing for 20 minutes or so. Even managed to get two standards in the hoojamithit. No fucking clue what I was doing there though. Is there supposed to be a story reference somewhere?

 

I need to play something else now though and then come back to it in the 5th. 

 

 

[Gorf King]

13 hours ago, Mr Ben said:

Yeah, which is odd considering they said they could implement changes far quicker in Destiny 2 than they could in the original.

 

9 hours ago, Broker said:

I think at this stage it’s pretty clear that was bullshit. Their response to issues is still moving at a glacial pace despite the tech and staff having mostly changed, seems like it’s just part of the studio culture. 

 

I think it's content they said they could deliver more regularly/frequently. They probably will. You have to bear in mind that it was only year one of D1 in which there was paid DLC in addition to the September release; years two and three only had one paid release a year - and one release of raid 'content'. And in year one there were only two pieces of raid 'content', House of Wolves missing the raid altogether because they couldn't make them that quickly. They've already made it clear that, in contrast, both D2 Y1 DLCs will feature raid content, and it's clear that the way they've achieved this more regular, frequent content is by adding extra bits to the existing raid rather than having to devise entirely new ones. It wouldn't surprise me if that's what they have (or had) planned for years two and three as well - one main raid and one or two extra 'lairs' during the year.

 

I can't say I'm keen on the idea - especially because I don't happen to like Leviathan that much and would rather move on from it - but it's undeniably true that this is a way of delivering more 'raid content' on a more frequent basis. Might also explain why Leviathan feels so modular and inconclusive - because it is modular (which for me means 'bitty', unfortunately) and inconclusive. It expands through the year with each paid DLC. So I reckon we'll be getting paid DLC in years two and three as well as the bigger annual September expansion - or at least, that's what they've planned.

[K]

16 hours ago, Gorf King said:

I understand the point K was making, but at the same time I don't quite get it. You can create a game that's fun to play casually without stripping it of any depth or long-term progression. In D2 so far we saw in the first week or two (as early posts from just about everyone post-release will show) that Bungie definitely made the game more accessible and attractive - and far less obscure - from early- to mid-game. And that's obviously a good thing. But in essentially capping everyone at a certain level, in making there no depth to the loot (fixed rolls and most weapons having minimal differences and nothing terribly exciting or game-changing, raid gear and weapons not doing anything much for raid performance, the heroic versions doing nothing for power level), they've basically killed off any sense of material reward or progression from the endgame. All the (very few) rewards you get are cosmetic, and you can get better cosmetics just from doing anything at all at the most menial level that pushes you into another bright engram. 

 

 

 

I'm just talking about the game from my perspective. I acknowledge the problems with the endgame even if they don't really affect me, but I think that's a separate issue to the structural changes that make the game more playable on a casual basis. Providing more meaningful rewards for high-end players doesn't need to conflict with making the early and mid-game easier to progress through - stuff like having decent specialist raid gear, additional power levels, and exclusive weapons (provided the perks focus on PvE), etc, shouldn't really make a difference to players who don't engage with the endgame. Some stuff might - powerful mods, weapons along the lines of Vision of Confluence or the original Thorn - but it's not an insurmountable issue, and a bit of asymmetry is probably good for the game in the long run.

 

To be honest, I suspect the lacklustre endgame is probably just due to Bungie running out of time, as Nate said a while back. There's nothing that suggests that the game is inherently fucked, it'll just take a bit of time to sort out. 

[Mafro]

https://clips.twitch.tv/SpunkyPoorLegFrankerZ Incredible 

[df0]

Think of all the valuable resources we get for dismantling those. Truly, you spoil us Bungie.