Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Uncle Mike]

I'm not sure I see Masterwork guns and more ways to turn tokens into shards and shards into engrams as enough to turn the tide.

[Mr Ben]

Guaranteed exotic and 3 of coins from Xur though! Well worth the wait for this blog that.

 

No.

 

"They're Masterworks all, you cant go wrong!"

 

Except you can when its in Destiny 2.

[Mr Ben]

You may be wondering where Mark Noseworthy was, as he was specifically mentioned by Luke Smith in his twitter post. Well, it looks like he actually meant the Bungie podcast, which wasnt linked to in that large bit of news earlier. Here it is here:

 

http://downloads.bungie.net/podcasts/bng_podcast_11292017_forward_final.mp3

 

Dont expect much in this though, after the news earlier. Basically more changes are coming that are only hinted at in the blog post, and they'll probably tell us more about those in January-ish.

[Oz]

8 hours ago, Weavus said:

Whats the point in being more generous with the loot if it’s all shit? Nothing in that blog post is adressing the real issues D2 has.

 

I’m done.

did they not say that they are adjusting under-performing exotics? or did I miss read that due to the lack of commas?

[Oz]

I am amazed by the amount of changes that are coming so quickly. I think most of it is brilliant. particularly changes to vendors. I am not a fan of the random rolling of perks though. it does seem like they have given up balancing the PvP though. just saying this because instead of targeting a nerf in MIDA and high calibre, they have decided to introduce the potential for a fast super fast reloading uriels that would be even more broken. I think that is what is behind choosing Uriel as a showcase. it is signalling that they are targeting the creation of more broke ass weapons to compete with the existing broken ones, rather than continuing to nerf shit to oblivion (which I favour). 

[Oz]

generating orbs on kills will be a massive change in terms of the frequency of supers. for the better. quick question: are those still not happy with the updates not even coming back to play the new content? are you out out? 

[Uncle Mike]

I'm not out out on principle or anything. It's just that, as someone who's only ever really played Destiny to do endgame PvE content with a group of friends for cool rewards, I don't really see anything there to play and strive for.

 

I'll be back on and, I hope, do the new raid "content" if enough others are about. But I don't see a return of a hook that suggests enough people will come back frequently enough that getting a raid team together will be easy. What's to play for?

[Broker]

Did they mention if the multi kills spawn orbs thing would also be in PvP?

[Oz]

9 minutes ago, Broker said:

Did they mention if the multi kills spawn orbs thing would also be in PvP?

there are no weapon perks which only work for one and not the other I don't think. I would take this as a given. and will be super cool I think. 

[Shimmyhill]

31 minutes ago, Oz said:

I am amazed by the amount of changes that are coming so quickly. I think most of it is brilliant. particularly changes to vendors. I am not a fan of the random rolling of perks though. it does seem like they have given up balancing the PvP though. just saying this because instead of targeting a nerf in MIDA and high calibre, they have decided to introduce the potential for a fast super fast reloading uriels that would be even more broken. I think that is what is behind choosing Uriel as a showcase. it is signalling that they are targeting the creation of more broke ass weapons to compete with the existing broken ones, rather than continuing to nerf shit to oblivion (which I favour). 

 

25 minutes ago, Oz said:

generating orbs on kills will be a massive change in terms of the frequency of supers. for the better. quick question: are those still not happy with the updates not even coming back to play the new content? are you out out? 

 

PvP is dead so nothing to lose by potentially messing with the balance of weapons, they need to get players back on the main game spending money on loot so a few desperate tweaks to make it look more Destiny 1 like will not draw me back in personally esp with the new DLC looking to be poor content wise.

 

Never say never but I felt the same about The Division as I do now about Destiny 2 and I never played that again, there are so many incredible games out now it’s pretty easy to not play a mediocre one esp with all the shady micro transaction bullshit of late.

[Weavus]

40 minutes ago, Oz said:

quick question: are those still not happy with the updates not even coming back to play the new content? are you out out? 

 

I don't see much point in coming back until more fundamental changes are made which makes the game more fun for my time investment. I'd have maybe tried the DLC raid if it wasn't another visit to the Leviathan which I personally rate as the worst raid they have produced by a country mile.

 

If they ever decide to re-introduce the power fantasy/space magic in Y2/3 I'd consider giving it another go but reading the blog and podcast summary they don't have a clue whats really wrong with their game as I suspect nobody in a position of power there actually really plays it, so I don't hold much hope currently.

[instasis]

I feel more invested in getting the 1 ticket I need to build Tom Nook's chair than I do the remaining 7LL points I need to hit 305. I logged on last night, did Flashpoint (4 ether mining missions and 1 ether resupply, yay) then did a soul destroyingly boring 2 rounds in Crucible before giving up and shaking fruit from trees on my phone.

 

I am sad.

[Banjaxed]

I’ll def be back to sample the new content. Plus I’ll be playing Destiny in 4K and HDR for the first time since getting my new telly.  

[Nate Dogg III]

Well, I think it's certainly an improvement. While I agree there's nothing here that's going to fundamentally fix all the big problems, there are at least enough QoL changes here that will make things better, if nothing else, and give endgame bods something new to chase. The bigger issues were never going to be fixed this quickly. We're probably looking at next year's TTK equivalent for that.

 

They have been adamant throughout that primary/energy/power weapons is the right call. And I don't see them ever ditching the PVE/PVP balance thing, because they are just too proud/stubborn. All we can realistically expect for now is for the weapons and abilities to work a little better within that framework. There was no sandbox balance stuff in that blog; I assume we'll get that next week, and it will tell us a lot about the real extent to which the game is going to change in the short term. They may not see the weapon system as a problem in theory, but in practice it currently means MIDA/Uriels/rockets in PVP, and Nameless/something/Wardcliff in PVE, with very little variation apart from a few specific situations. And there's clearly a mismatch between ability cooldowns and their effectiveness (that orbs-on-multikill perk in particular suggests they recognise that). If they can more meaningfully balance the weapons, perks and abilities within the sandbox so that we have more options, it won't feel quite so restrictive. It's unlikely to appease the people who are against the weapon system on principle, but it's about as much as we can expect, for now at least.

 

So I'm broadly, cautiously optimistic. Things are, at least, headed in the right direction. But what I'm most positive about is the acknowledgement that they fucking suck at communicating and that they intend to be more open. Within that post are things they're only thinking about, or are in development, with a vague sort of timeline, and that's absolutely huge for Bungie. Throughout Destiny's life the biggest, most persistent problem has always been their failure to actually talk to us about what's going on in their heads, and I hope this is the start of something better.

 

 

[Broker]

I’ll be playing CoO, aiming for the new light cap, using Xur to grab the three or four exotics I don’t have and probably chasing some masterwork Weapons. I don’t know if that will last me three months though.

[V3zna]

I’ve only skim read the blog post so I apologise, but have they addressed the issue with your power level being pointless? In Destiny 1 I strived to grind my light level so that I could be at least competitive, in my own mind anyway, in things like Iron Banner. In Destiny 2 I still don’t have any reason whatsoever to take my Hunter from 297 to 305.

[Mystacon]

24 minutes ago, Nate Dogg III said:

But what I'm most positive about is the acknowledgement that they fucking suck at communicating and that they intend to be more open.

 

I may be wrong on this but I'm sure they've said the very same thing in the past.  I can't help but feel they're just telling us what we want to hear to reduce the heat, and then they'll never actually deliver on it.

 

Bit of a negative way of looking at it I'll grant you, but I guess D2 has just left me feeling a bit jaded. 

[K]

Heroic strikes were the main thing I was after, but most of the changes sound like an improvement. It'll be interesting to see what rewards you get for heroic strikes, as the way the game is set up at the moment doesn't incentivise you at all to play the strikes playlist. The strikes themselves are great - apart from Exodus Crash, which is the work of satan - but we probably need a bit more than some vanguard tokens.

[Broker]

I'm assuming the armour ornaments for the Vanguard armour will come from the playlist?

[Gorf King]

3 hours ago, Black Cat Supremacist said:

I’ve only skim read the blog post so I apologise, but have they addressed the issue with your power level being pointless?

 

Nope.

 

Oz: seriously? The 'nerf MIDA' thing again? I think you're really missing the point if you think things should be nerfed to oblivion, especially one gun, and that gun being MIDA (Uriel's is far more of an issue if you're laying the blame on specific guns). It's the basic design of the weapons and PvP combat systems - and the maps and the 4s - that promote the use of such weapons. MIDA itself was never the real issue, nor was it in D1. It's the almost total focus on dual primaries, the loss of the power fantasy and super-powerful special and heavy weapons, the nerfs to supers and abilities, and so on. Calling for yet more nerfs seems crazy. You'll just end up with a very colourless shooter - and don't forget, all this also nerfs PvE in Bungie World. And that would be a massive problem. It's faintly astonishing that people call for this to happen in the current situation, in which power levels have been substantially reduced across the board compared to D1.

 

I really, really wish that if Bungie adamantly will not separate PvE and PvP - which they clearly refuse to do - they'd just bin PvP for the sake of being able to forget 'balance' and give us back our space magic power levels again, our Black Hammers (which never affected PvP anyway), Fatebringers and the like. Get the structural issues with PvE, and the game in general, sorted out. One thing's for sure, though - they will be rejigging the sandbox. I expect HCR might get a change to it, and I definitely expect Uriel's, more than MIDA, to get a big nerf - the new 10-20% boost to one stat (big deal) in pseudo-rerollable versions will be on top of the nerf, not on top of its current state. It's your very own loadout that's going to take a hit, Oz.

 

I do agree their move to more open and detailed communication is a good one, and I hope they keep it up. That's the main positive I took from this - that you'll actually be able to get an idea of their intentions for the game. Amazing that it's taken this long to just tell players what they're actually doing. So at least we know that, for now, they're not doing anything about the lack of choice in what PvP game modes you play, the fact that there are only 4s, the absence of power levels at PvP endgame, the weapons system in general, the ammo system in general, the power and cooldown issues around supers and abilities, the repetitiveness of the small pool of modifiers in Nightfalls, the absence of raid-specific perks in raid armour, the absence of raised power levels in rewards for Prestige activities, the manifest failures of Guided Games, the removal of lore, the absence of secret quests and rewards like those we used to get in TTK and the like, and so on. The bigger structural issues that I'm sure they can't just turn around that easily or quickly. But what I was hoping for is that they'd at least acknowledge that they were looking at some of these, and they didn't.

 

Maybe that'll come later down the line. I hope it does, but as long as I and others continue to play the game, it won't. It's only because of the criticisms and what some people call saltiness of the 'moaners' that any of the improvements they've announced are even happening, and only because of the falloff in player engagement. Not playing is not so much a point of principle as the only way you can give meaningful feedback to Bungie, and it's only because of this disengagement and critical feedback that they've made any of these changes, so I'm going to continue giving it until they either make the game as good as D1 in some of these key areas, or decide they can just continue down the current road because the game's still sufficiently popular. Just like we did in The Division. Because without that you'll have a far worse game. I feel pretty sad to be missing out on (you never know) a potentially great 'raid lair', but that's the only real unknown about Osiris now. If you don't like the changes to some of the core systems, you've got to keep making that clear somehow, or they'll never get fixed.

 

I agree with Nate that the only real hope for bigger changes is another TTK expansion next September. But significant changes won't happen even then unless there's really strong feedback about the underlying core systems, both in text and in terms of player engagement. It's quite telling that Noseworthy's podcast in which he talks about the difficulty of making big changes, and of plans further down the line, he still says in summing up that 'the cake is good, we just need to improve the icing'. Personally, I don't think that's anywhere near enough. So yeah, I'm still out. Because although this blog is a step in the right direction, it'll take more than a few adjustments to the icing - a few extra ornaments, the ability to choose what armour piece you want from a selection of cosmetic armour pieces, the chance of getting a gun with 10% extra impact - to make this cake anywhere near as tasty as the ones they used to make. 

 

Of course, if people prefer the new cake, good for them. And if one of the more voracious eaters (raiders) reports that under its tasteless, dry spongey body there's a massive fondant centre made of cherries and chocolate cream (the raid is great) then I'll be asking for them to bring the dessert trolley back (reinstalling the game) and... fuck it, I'll just play the game when they make it anywhere near as good as D1 ok?

[Wickedkitten]

All they have to do to make Mida better is make Trials maps that don't have long corridors.

[Mafro]

It looks like a big list of changes but a lot of it is stuff from D1 that they decided to remove from D2 for some bizarre reason and now they're adding them back and acting like they're new features.

[Broker]

I was really hoping they’d mention bringing 6v6 back. Well I was really hoping D2 would have 12v12 or something even bigger, with larger maps and vehicles. Maybe set on a patrol map. But that’s not the way they’re going at all.

 

In my mind, another cool thing would be to have a multiplayer mode where both teams also had bots, kind of like the original Star Wars battlefront games but with both teams having four guardians as their hero type characters, backing up their team of bots and arresting the flow of the battle. Again maybe with vehicles. Basically I wanted a bit more Battlefield in my Destiny.

 

But hey, +10 reload speed will definitely help me against a premade team of four clan members. 

[footle]

2 minutes ago, Broker said:

 

 

In my mind, another cool thing would be to have a multiplayer mode where both teams also had bots, kind of like the original Star Wars battlefront games but with both teams having four guardians as their hero type characters, backing up their team of bots and arresting the flow of the battle. Again maybe with vehicles. Basically I wanted a bit more Battlefield in my Destiny.

 

Play titanfall.

[Broker]

2 minutes ago, footle said:

 

Play titanfall.

 

The first one? Or is that in 2 as well? 

[Hexx]

I only played 2 but it sounds exactly like what you want

[footle]

1 hour ago, Broker said:

 

The first one? Or is that in 2 as well? 

 

One had slightly more involved grunts, but Two is better and has a player base. Try that.

[Dave White]

im no expert but have throughly enjoyed both games up to a point. And although D2 was definitely pitched for people like me, who couldnt get a team to do raids in D1, which I clearly missed out on. However even to me its crazy what they've done to the game and trying to patch fixes is like a band aid on a punctured rubber dinghy.

 

The shooting mechanic is second to none, but its just lost its way and although one of the few I enjoyed the crucible in D2, but after rinsing Iron banner for a week to get fuck all that I wanted i just havent had any motivation to return to that or the game. Its all gone behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain for me and the magic has gone.

 

 

 

[Gorf King]

Datto's summary and analysis of the changes:

 

 

[stefcha]

I just started playing the demo, trial, whatever it is on PC... and it seems like really good fun. A lot moreso than Destiny, anyway. I only played that on PS3 though and really struggled with it when bits seemed to need more players and stuff, it was pretty lonely for what it was supposed to be. Plus I'm using this Xbox Elite pad now and it's ace, I'm trying to wean myself off of the mouse as I've got a bunch of Haloes to play through on 360...