Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Shimmyhill]

6 hours ago, Oz said:

has anyone seen a good list of what all the medals mean in PvP? There is no way to view this on Bungie's website is there?

 

In Destiny you could see them on the companion app, prolly not in the new app and unless the cry babies city enough it won’t get added back but if they do expect it in 2019.

[Weavus]

Quote

Season 2 Faction Rally Rewards

 

With the release of Curse of Osiris, each Faction has received 5 new weapons. These weapons become available over the course of the season, and cannot be earned through Faction Engrams immediately.

In the first Faction Rally of Season 2 (this week), there is a new Auto Rifle available as the Winner’s Offering. No new Faction Weapons are available through Faction Engrams.

In the second Faction Rally of the season, the Winner’s Offering is updated to a new weapon. Additionally, the previous Winner’s offering (Auto Rifles) and an additional weapon are added to Faction Engram rewards.

The final Faction Rally of the season will follow this functionality: The Winners Offering will be updated to a final weapon that has yet to be featured. The previous Winner’s Offering will be added to the Faction Engram rewards, alongside an additional weapon. This brings the total to four weapons within the Faction Engram, and a final Winner’s Offering for factions to compete for over the course of the event.

 

Err so whats the point in any players taking part before the final rally of the season?

 

At this point the self harm must be intentional, there is no way they can be making these kinds of game mechanic decisions otherwise right?!?

[Nate Dogg III]

This and the lost sector cooldown are the last straw for me I think. Faction Rally, by its very design, encourages farming. The winner is the faction with either the most players, or the most efficient farmers, and unless you’re a dumb emo kid who picks dead orbit your only option is to be a super efficient farmer. I get that they wanted to stop exploits but limiting it to two sectors per ten minutes, with a ten-minute cooldown in between, doesn’t punish people using exploits. It punishes basically everyone. It’s so fucking dumb. 

 

Then they structure the loot in such a way that there is no material point in me playing Faction Rally once I’ve got a single weapon to drop. Just put the game down and come back next month. 

 

For the first time I am honestly completely at a loss to explain what’s going on over there. I can normally at least understand the line of thinking behind what they do, even if I rarely agree with it. But this just has me stumped. It’s baffling. 

[Oz]

[Janski]

After last week's update I was thinking they were trying to get back on course, but even when you expect nothing Bungie still somehow manage to disappoint.

[Broker]

I hate that their solution to people not liking constant RNG bullshit is slightly less RNG bullshit. I’d quite like a purple arc mod for my cape, and thanks to Bungie I no longer have to just roll random armour mods and hope that’s what I get, I can now also check back once a week and hope that what I want is included in the random shit that’s being sold! How hard would it be to just let me choose which fucking mod I need? Why am I constantly at the mercy of random chance for literally every little thing? It’s so fucking annoying.

[Uncle Mike]

13 hours ago, Nate Dogg III said:

I get that they wanted to stop exploits but limiting it to two sectors per ten minutes, with a ten-minute cooldown in between, doesn’t punish people using exploits. It punishes basically everyone. It’s so fucking dumb.

 

The hidden cooldown is just so strict. Like, Trostland may be a bit of an outlier, but I easily cleared all three of its Lost Sectors in well under 10 minutes without really trying to be efficient. And that third clear dropped nothing. And the bloody milestone for Faction Rallies is to destroy stuff in Lost Sectors, so of course that's what I'm going to be doing! I suppose I should be grateful they still let it count towards the milestone, lol.

 

And to not tell you in-game at all that the cooldown exists, when it's been triggered, and when it expires is awful. Like the chest cooldown and all that other hidden "don't play our game too much" crap.

 

If you want to hold back the exploiters and so on (although I don't really get why they feel they need to - you don't get anything of note from cashing in 100 levels with Dead Orbit) then set a per-sector cooldown. Stop me redoing the same one over and over again. Make me move around. Don't set milestones that reward me for doing one activity a large number of times. If that milestone was "do 3 Lost Sectors, clear 3 Public Events, pick up 5 chests and 5 local materials" or something, you'd naturally do different things, because doing different things is more fun!

 

I think I've been one of the more positive people in here recently, but I do get frustrated at this stuff. I was doing the new Raid lair for the first time this week, and that was great fun. Then this is so broken.

[K]

It seems mad that they've put this hidden cooldown in now after they got all that flak for having the same thing on Cayde's chests. I would hazard a guess that this event's been in the pipe for a while and nobody got round to amending the cooldown after they rebalanced the other stuff, but like Nate, I just don't understand why you'd structure the event like this in the first place. It seems like they're putting speed cameras on a racing track - it's a very simple event where you have to collect as many things as possible, which they've hobbled for no reason by putting a limit on how many things you can collect at any given time. It's kind of thing an algorithm might have designed after being poorly instructed, rather than something a human would create.

 

Given that they've just had the lengthy mayhem event that seemed pretty popular, I would have thought the lesson Bungie would have taken away is that letting the player off the leash is more fun than reining them in.

[RubberJohnny]

Isn't the problem that they've got microtransactions and need to control the rate of the freebies to hit their targets for paid ones, but every other bit of progression ties into the same overarching currency and progression systems, so they need to control all those too to control the economy? Chests, XP, Tokens, Glimmer, etc.

Really a better system would be isolating them - turning the Bright Engrams back to cosmetic-only so they're no longer integral, taking out a lot of the conversions or ways of earning them and making them like in Overwatch where they're finite rewards for completing your weekly bounties, then everything else can be uncapped. It might cause another shit-show because the playerbase are used to being able to earn Bright Engrams at a steady rate based on playtime, and you'd be taking that away - it's arguably less generous on the freebie front, even though uncapping everything would probably be more well-received (in that I've heard very few complaints about Overwatchs systems).

[Hexx]

So they 

• Massively extend the time it takes to earn tokens by putting a hidden throttle in
• Only give out old rewards when you turn those tokens in despite it being a "new season" (to be fair I expect the "show contents" of Engrams didn't show new stuff)
• Then they will...sell you a single new Auto Rifle - and maybe not the one you wanted, depending on which faction wins

[K]

I don't think the faction event has anything to do with the microtransactions, it's a completely different pool of gear. And the bright / exalted engrams are all cosmetic anyway, aren't they? It's all shaders, skins, sparrows, emotes, low-power armour gear, etc. There's some tiny gameplay element to the ghosts, but it's hardly transformative.

[RubberJohnny]

No, I mean the Lost Sector and public event cooldowns they added, I wasn't talking about the Faction Rally - they're not related other than being in the same update.

 

Lost Sectors and Public Events get you Tokens, which get you Legendary Engrams from Vendors, and Legendary items can be dismantled into Bright Dust for getting freebie Microtransactions, which can also be earned via XP. So setting the correct rate that you earn the Freebies requires they cap every other progression mechanic in the game - Tokens, XP, Chests, etc, even though such caps are incredibly unpopular with the playerbase.

 

EDIT: yes, whoops, missed that it was just stuff from engrams.

[Nate Dogg III]

That line about speed cameras on a racetrack is so perfect, K, that I might steal it. 

[Nate Dogg III]

1 minute ago, RubberJohnny said:

No, I mean the Lost Sector and public event cooldowns they added, I wasn't talking about the Faction Rally - they're not related other than being in the same update.

 

Lost Sectors and Public Events get you Tokens, which get you Legendary Engrams from Vendors, and Legendary items can be dismantled into Bright Dust for getting freebie Microtransactions, which can also be earned via XP. So setting the correct rate that you earn the Freebies requires they cap every other progression mechanic in the game, even though such caps are incredibly unpopular with the playerbase.

 

No, that's not how it works. Nothing you earn from tokens can be turned into bright dust. Only Eververse items can, and they're only earned by levelling up or buying silver. So unless they're also throttling XP again, this isn't tied into monetisation at all. 

 

Instead it's about punishing everyone for the actions of a few, and designing against an event that by its very nature encourages you to repeat a certain activity over and over. It's about spectacularly poor design, in this instance, rather than money.

[Uncle Mike]

12 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

Isn't the problem that they've got microtransactions and need to control the rate of the freebies to hit their targets for paid ones, but every other bit of progression ties into the same overarching currency and progression systems, so they need to control all those too to control the economy? Chests, XP, Tokens, Glimmer, etc.

Really a better system would be isolating them - turning the Bright Engrams back to cosmetic-only so they're no longer integral, taking out a lot of the conversions or ways of earning them and making them like in Overwatch where they're finite rewards for completing your weekly bounties, then everything else can be uncapped. It might cause another shit-show because the playerbase are used to being able to earn Bright Engrams at a steady rate based on playtime, and you'd be taking that away - it's arguably less generous on the freebie front, even though uncapping everything would probably be more well-received (in that I've heard very few complaints about Overwatchs systems).

 

I'm not really sure the Bright Engram stuff is at all relevant to the Faction Rally issue. They're entirely separate loot pools. The Bright Engram loot pool is already essentially cosmetic-only in any case. (There's Ghosts from Bright Engrams which can give you 10% XP boosts in certain activities, or can have planetary materials show on your radar, and blue mods, but nothing that's realistically something you'd consider paying money for gameplay. The money is in the sweet cosmetic emotes and ships etc.)

 

People's issue with the microtransaction economy is magnified, I think, not because they're drifting into Pay-to-win, but because people see the lack of exciting loot at the end of gameplay activities, and do see attractive cosmetics at the end of buyable loot boxes. It's not the same issue as why they'd apply cooldowns onto repeatable activities.

 

I think the cooldowns are Bungie's hamfisted effort at stopping mega-grinders churn out *something* that more normal players can't. But it just doesn't make sense to me.

[Harsin]

Thing is, they already added a cap to the number of faction engrams you can earn from the event anyway. So even if someone spent every waking hour grinding they could only earn a set number of rewards anyway. The whole thing is utterly baffling. 

[Uncle Mike]

11 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

No, I mean the Lost Sector and public event cooldowns they added, I wasn't talking about the Faction Rally - they're not related other than being in the same update.

 

Lost Sectors and Public Events get you Tokens, which get you Legendary Engrams from Vendors, and Legendary items can be dismantled into Bright Dust for getting freebie Microtransactions, which can also be earned via XP. So setting the correct rate that you earn the Freebies requires they cap every other progression mechanic in the game, even though such caps are incredibly unpopular with the playerbase.

 

There's two misunderstandings there. Firstly, the Lost Sector cooldowns are definitely related to the Faction Rally. During the Faction Rally, there's objects to shoot in the Lost Sectors that give you tokens for the Faction vendor. People found some crazy farming loops for that last time round because the sectors are instanced, and repopulate when you walk out. So you could go in, shoot just the objects, leave and do it all again. (My reaction to this is "so what?" they're not really getting anything.) But it's this "problem" Bungie are trying to solve.

 

And then, as Nate said, none of this plays into the microtransaction stuff at all. I can't use these resources to replace my need to buy things.

[K]

30 minutes ago, Nate Dogg III said:

That line about speed cameras on a racetrack is so perfect, K, that I might steal it. 

 

I'll tee up my lawyers, so we can start negotiations immediately.

[Digfox]

23 hours ago, Harsin said:

I'd absolutely love to read a tell-all book on whatever the hell is going on behind the scenes at Bungie, I suspect all these issues are emblematic of a complete clusterfuck at the place internally. I know changes and fixes take time, but they seem far slower at it than almost anyone else. I don't know if the glacial pace they move is a result of an engine that's still as bobbins as it was in Destiny 1 despite assurances they'd fixed it, that they've ballooned in size too far too fast or just a symptom of internal strife.

 

Isn't it just that most of their resources are likely working on future projects; so D2 expansion for later this year, and D3 next year (assuming they return to the original schedule)? And this leaves a skeleton team to maintain the game - hence the slow updates or lack of major changes and content.

 

Maybe #controversialopiniontime but a lot these so called GaaS seem to me to be GaaP with a roadmap for DLC content. And it seems that's farmed out to satellite studios or made in advance. Other AAA games seem similar, i.e. The Division got a lot of praise recently for it's 1.8 update but in reality was lots of new recursive game modes and a new area likely taken from the cancelled Year 2 content they abandoned. It's clear that Massive and other Ubisoft studios are very likely working on the sequel and the new Avatar games.

 

 

[Shimmyhill]

Everything they are doing is for push to pay reasons, it’s that simple.

[Mr Ben]

I dont think it is. I think the company has had issues internally since development started on Destiny 2. Communication between each department is clearly not happening in the way it should be within a company, and a lot of the problems with the game are due to that. We all (should know by now) that Activision is not the issue, and its all on Bungie.

 

At this point, it's looking like Destiny 1 will be the best of the series, and its success wont be repeated.

[Harsin]

Latest clusterfuck starting to get games media attention.

 

https://www.destructoid.com/bungie-has-absolutely-bungled-their-communication-efforts-the-season-concept-and-the-new-faction-rally-483201.phtml

http://www.pcgamer.com/destiny-2-faction-rally-tokens-are-being-throttled-in-yet-another-baffling-misstep/

[Oz]

28 minutes ago, Mr Ben said:

At this point, it's looking like Destiny 1 will be the best of the series, and its success wont be repeated.

But Ben D1 was a fucking train-wreck of a game. prob one of the weirdest and most incomplete game releases of all time.  then DLC for that was all made of things which were cut from the main game. and a but of patchwork over systems they had created which did  not work and infuriated people. communications around that game were equally terrible at the start. the raids they released were broken for ages. the multiplayer had crazy lag. there wasn't enough loot. there weren't enough planets. they just ended up in a great place with it. who's to say that does not happen again with this? 

[Harsin]

I think last time the game had a quite publicised troubled development and people were somewhat sympathetic (well by the internet's standard) as it was very ambitious project. I'd also argue that Destiny year 1 never quite reached the current lows we're seeing now as it always had a compelling endgame and loot pool. People were willing to ride along with Bungie as they fixed the game and brought it closer to its potential. I think that's why even during the low points, stuff like Trials still managed to have a higher player count than D2 rapidly dwindling numbers.

 

I don't think people can be bothered to go through the same shit again. I think customers expected a game that would build upon the state of the Destiny as it left off in year 3, not for them to revert right back to square 1 and for Bungie to have to sloooooowly fix the game yet again. At the time Destiny came out, the next-gen (at the time) console release schedule was pretty bareen. Now people are leaving in droves for the Warframe, The Division (I feel like I'm in bizarro world mentioning that game  as something to tempt people away from a Destiny sequel, but here we are), Monster Hunter, Fortnite, PUBG...etc. I wonder how many will come back for The Taken King equivalent this time around?

[df0]

5 minutes ago, Oz said:

But Ben D1 was a fucking train-wreck of a game. prob one of the weirdest and most incomplete game releases of all time.  then DLC for that was all made of things which were cut from the main game. and a but of patchwork over systems they had created which did  not work and infuriated people. communications around that game were equally terrible at the start. the raids they released were broken for ages. the multiplayer had crazy lag. there wasn't enough loot. there weren't enough planets. they just ended up in a great place with it. who's to say that does not happen again with this? 

It should already have happened. Bungie should have learnt from Destiny 2. Bungie should have taken all the potential of Destiny 1 and combine it with the feedback both positive and negative from the community to deliver something special. 

 

Instead we get less of everything. I can not remember the last time I lost interest in a game this fast.

[Shimmyhill]

20 minutes ago, Oz said:

But Ben D1 was a fucking train-wreck of a game. prob one of the weirdest and most incomplete game releases of all time.  then DLC for that was all made of things which were cut from the main game. and a but of patchwork over systems they had created which did  not work and infuriated people. communications around that game were equally terrible at the start. the raids they released were broken for ages. the multiplayer had crazy lag. there wasn't enough loot. there weren't enough planets. they just ended up in a great place with it. who's to say that does not happen again with this? 

 

There was always stuff to do in Destiny even in the dark days plus it had the best Raid straight away and PvP that was fun, exciting and different from anything else so even between farming materials you could get on with your raid squad and have fun whilst chatting shit.

 

Reasons to play, loot to unlock and no push to pay for cosmetics made the worst Destiny was far better than Destiny 2 is at end game. I could fire up Destiny now and put in another 140 hours in (same time in total on Destiny 2) and still not have every weapon and armour combo but none of it behind a paywall just a fun grind. 

 

 

[Gorf King]

8 hours ago, Oz said:

But Ben D1 was a fucking train-wreck of a game. prob one of the weirdest and most incomplete game releases of all time.  then DLC for that was all made of things which were cut from the main game. and a but of patchwork over systems they had created which did  not work and infuriated people. communications around that game were equally terrible at the start. the raids they released were broken for ages. the multiplayer had crazy lag. there wasn't enough loot. there weren't enough planets. they just ended up in a great place with it. who's to say that does not happen again with this? 

 

Because in vanilla D2, unlike in vanilla D1, the fundamental economies of the game are inherently designed around pay-to-gamble loot boxes giving out cosmetic rewards, and the biggest visual/audio cues in the game come from giving the bright engrams that allow a free ticket to those rewards. Which are limited in game by shady means to stop people grinding a frickin supposed RPG (the alternative being to pay, as you know). So there's that - a game designed fundamentally around buyable lootbox content and disincentives to grind. 

 

In vanilla D1, despite there being 'not enough loot', the loot from the first raid included Fatebringer, Vision of Confluence, Vex Mythoclast. And that raid was Vault of Glass, not Game Show with Mr Drunk Toad. Remember exciting drops, powerful raid rewards? Mr Drunk Toad does. There's little to no end game incentive in vanilla D2 compared to vanilla D1.

 

Then there's the nerfing of abilities and supers. You don't feel like the superhero anywhere near as much in D2. 'Balance,' they say. Speaking of which, that Crucible really isn't doing the business. Because most fans of D1 find it dull as ditchwater to play. Slog through some team shooting and get a few tokens. No moments that thrill or make you laugh or rage out loud. Because 'balance', because it'll make the game even more popular with streamers. Yup, tell that to all the luminaries of D1's Crucible who made their names (and livelihoods) on the game. You'll find them all streaming PUBG, Fortnite, Overwatch - almost anything else. Because they say almost to a man/woman they just don't enjoy D2's PvP, as it's dull as ditchwater.

 

God knows where you'll find the lore video makers. Because god knows where you'll find the lore, because it was removed. You'll get some snarky lines aimed at 12-year-olds from Ghost instead. Here, have a little flavour:

 

 

Books of Sorrow it ain't. (And yeah, the written stuff, such as it is, is similarly bereft of any ambition.)

 

Along with lore, the ability to actually customise your class setups was also removed. And non-static weapon and armour perks and rolls. 'Far too complex for our audience,' said Bungie. Ok then. Guess we're not the audience any more.

 

But the main difference in all of this isn't the above on its own. It's that it's deliberate and, tellingly, the improvements Bungie are promising are to do with rowing back a little bit from the above principles, and putting a little bit of D1 back into the game. But not enough to alter the fundamentals of D2, which are: Eververse, mainly (was solely) 4v4 lowish TTK team shooting, weakened abilities and reduced power, the double-primary weapon system, and so on.

 

The other thing that's thrown me out of the game in the longer term is that, as others have observed above, Bungie have alienated many of their core audience by their communication. In my case, I simply don't believe them any more. I could accept the patchiness of D1 for its many highs, its ambition, and the fact that it almost always seemed to get better. This was their first stab at a complex, ambitious new venture. But they're not freshers any more and this isn't their debut. All this stuff, I believe, is deliberate. And even when they row some of it back, this is what they say:

 

Quote

We recognize that the scales are tipped too far towards Tess at the moment, and Eververse was never intended to be a substitute for end game content and rewards. 

 

Never intended to be a substitute for end game content and rewards? Pull the other one, Chris. Next you'll be telling us that BRIGHT ENGRAM notification that blocks out everything else you're doing when one drops, which comes with a fanfare greater than any token which might drop from your hardest raid encounter, whether it's said endgame activity or (more likely) grinding out another public event for more hobbled XP, was a mistake inserted by the office junior - along with the numerous XP and drop blocks that encourage buying the things instead of grinding them; along with the majority of rewards being put behind Eververse instead of endgame activities. Nah Bungie - even when you try to put things slightly right, you do it oh so wrong. By lying about your intentions. Eververse was intended to be exactly as big a deal as it is.

 

Destiny 1 was fundamentally different from D2 in all the ways above, and you don't just undo or fix them. They're part of its DNA, which was lab-designed to be what it is. I don't buy that they arrived at any of this by accident or in patch-up of an underdeveloped product - it would have been easier, less work, to just continue the D1 economies and mechanics than change them this fundamentally. Just keep sixes and abilities and cooldowns. Just keep dead ghosts and lore. Just keep boss drops and raid perks and levels. Just keep primary/secondary/heavy. But all these systems were deliberately rewritten, to make 'balanced' PvP; to encourage and promote Eververse purchases; to not 'confuse' the audience with perks and abilities and rolls and customisation - to make it largely a cosmetic rewards game instead. It's not an accident, it's a miscalculation, and was very much intended. The fact that they can't even speak frankly about that says more about the Bungie of D2 than any thousand words DeeJ wrote ever could.

 

I haven't posted in this thread for what feels like ages and had no intention to do so now, but reading again the argument that this game is flawed just like vanilla D1 was flawed prompted me to, because I consider it quite objectionable. I honestly don't think anyone who went in full-scale to vanilla D1 and saw it through, who did all that blind raiding and grinding, discovered those hidden quests, earned all those rewards, read all that lore, could possibly think that. D1 was a very flawed product, and so is D2 - that much is true. But it is flawed in entirely different ways, ways which you do not so readily fix. The new raid lair looks (as I said the night of release) a real - albeit brief - improvement on the Leviathan affair (except in rewards and material progression, of course, which Bungie again accidentally left out of the game), but it's a lone reminder of what they're capable of in a sea of Eververse grinding and faction events that might give you one gun you don't really want per month and then thanks, see you for the next DLC, don't forget to pre-order the Autumn paid expansion - it'll be just like TTK, I promise. It's like a dim echo of the journey through Vault of Glass. But outside, what's changed? Tess is still there and might even have a new, useless set of non-functional mods for you if you're lucky. And here's another faction rally with flavourless guns no more powerful than the last lot for you to very slowly inch towards. There's always these genuinely cool-looking emotes, shaders and sparrows though, so if you go back to Tess and give her the right sort of encouragement, you might just get lucky.

 

Sorry, but I think comparing this title to D1 is a joke. It's made a lot of money off D1's successes, but it really doesn't deserve to have. Bungie must return to making straight shooters again, I think, because they've shown they can't see online RPGs through to proper fruition - Blizzard they are never going to be. And they've shown they can't be trusted to do so either. I think that's the saddest thing about all this.

[Mr Ben]

4 hours ago, Oz said:

But Ben D1 was a fucking train-wreck of a game. prob one of the weirdest and most incomplete game releases of all time.  then DLC for that was all made of things which were cut from the main game. and a but of patchwork over systems they had created which did  not work and infuriated people. communications around that game were equally terrible at the start. the raids they released were broken for ages. the multiplayer had crazy lag. there wasn't enough loot. there weren't enough planets. they just ended up in a great place with it. who's to say that does not happen again with this? 

Gorf's explained it in better detail than I could, but I never felt D1 was anywhere near what you call a train-wreck, and nowhere near as big of a shit show as Destiny 2 is. Which raids were broken for ages? Both the Vault and Crota had bugs/issues, but nothing totally game breaking. Crucible was a blast in Destiny. In Destiny 2, its total shit, a thing you do to get your milestone engrams and GTFO as quick as you can, because you dont want to be there as its so boring to play.

 

Destiny 2 as good as Destiny 1? Dont make me fucking laugh!

[Janski]

They've at least acknowledged the faction rally lockout isn't working as intended, it's too penalising (obvs) and it's going to be fixed in a future update.

 

Presumably right after they sort Prometheus Lens and Three of coins...

[Broker]

And as usual, after the actual event is over. Meanwhile, modern developers of games like Fortnite get patches out within days of issues being reported.