Destiny 2: Lightfall

[sbrandon111]

I guess I’m just in the minority as I still enjoy playing D2. If I stop enjoying it then I’ll stop playing. Thankfully there still seems to be enough people playing to keep matchmaking pretty quick.

[sbrandon111]

18 minutes ago, Mr Ben said:

Except now, they dont 1 shot kill you, because a rocket is coming at you and kills you and anyone close to you as well.

Yeah, a lot less frequently than getting sniped from across the map. What I meant was that anything with the potential to one hit kill should be limited in use. Rockets, Fusions, Sniper head shots, all one hit kills. Snipers are still an option in D2. I don’t use them because I’ve always been rubbish with them, handy in PvE though.

I don’t see how Bungie can make everyone happy now. If they leave the load outs as they are, the Players that liked the D1 style wont be happy. If they change it back then the players that like the current set up won’t be happy. 

I guess if you want the D1 setup then play D1 crucible?

[Oz]

Maybe they could create an 'old school' playlist with a locked loadout where you pick a sniper or shotgun for the energy slot and it's 6v6 etc. 

[sbrandon111]

13 minutes ago, Oz said:

Maybe they could create a 'old school' playlist with a lock loadout where you pick a sniper for or shotgun for the energy slot and it's 6v6 etc. 

Yeah that would be pretty good actually

 

On another note, i had to make a new discord. Whats the RLLMUK destiny group?

 

[Oz]

2 hours ago, sbrandon111 said:

Yeah that would be pretty good actually

 

On another note, i had to make a new discord. Whats the RLLMUK destiny group?

 

sent you an invite. welcome back to the club.

[Shimmyhill]

5 hours ago, sbrandon111 said:

Yeah, a lot less frequently than getting sniped from across the map. What I meant was that anything with the potential to one hit kill should be limited in use. Rockets, Fusions, Sniper head shots, all one hit kills. Snipers are still an option in D2. I don’t use them because I’ve always been rubbish with them, handy in PvE though.

I don’t see how Bungie can make everyone happy now. If they leave the load outs as they are, the Players that liked the D1 style wont be happy. If they change it back then the players that like the current set up won’t be happy. 

I guess if you want the D1 setup then play D1 crucible?

 

The problem is no one plays it anymore, the pool is so small and anyone who loved D1 crucible is long gone so no doubt the skill level is much lower - it’s always amusing that people whine about snipers, shotguns and blinking but love the static game play it is now as it is a slow dull war of attrition.

 

D1 crucible was fairly ruined by the end, bungo can’t do anything to get players back now - PvP is dead as there are vastly better games with huge player bases that will never go back esp as said games are evolving more every week than D2 will in a year - it’s a farce all of their own doing.

[Oz]

I wouldn't say it is static. I feel it requires less good aiming and reflexes and more anticipating, coordinating and outsmarting opponents. rather than outshooting. I agree that makes it indeed less interesting to watch in a stream. and harder for quick players to dominate games. how was D1 ruined by the end? I missed the last DLC.

 

 

[sbrandon111]

7 hours ago, Shimmyhill said:

 

The problem is no one plays it anymore, the pool is so small and anyone who loved D1 crucible is long gone so no doubt the skill level is much lower - it’s always amusing that people whine about snipers, shotguns and blinking but love the static game play it is now as it is a slow dull war of attrition.

 

D1 crucible was fairly ruined by the end, bungo can’t do anything to get players back now - PvP is dead as there are vastly better games with huge player bases that will never go back esp as said games are evolving more every week than D2 will in a year - it’s a farce all of their own doing.

I do miss firing up D1 and jumping in to strikes or patrols will fellow mukkers. I met some great guys playing that game and it showed the best of the social side of gaming. Dance party’s after opening the strike chest were always awesome. Even pvp was relatively free from the griefing that happens in other games.

You have a good point about snipers / shottys, I don’t miss them because I never used them so I’m not really in a position to say if it’s better without them now.

[Harsin]

Basically throughout the life of D1, Bungie could never find a way to satisfactorily balance snipers and shotguns in PVE. This is because having the same loadout between is PVP and PVE is a really bad idea and there’s a reason almost nobody does it. So you ended up with a situation where shotguns were simultaneously insanely OP in PVP whilst being a bit weedy in PVE. Eventually Bungie semi-crumbled and balanced the same guns differently for the two activities. At the end of its life D1 PVP was ludicrously unbalanced, massive explosions and  space magic constantly but at least it was entertaining to play/watch.Then D2 rolled around and they took a sledgehammer to crack a nut and just removed the secondary specialist weapon slot. Apparently there was a lot of pushback from other departments (according to the guy responsible on a podcast). He was also the person responsible for pushing things like slower recharge of abilities and moving from 6v6 to 4v4. One of the staged goals of these changes was driving up streaming views. Bet he's looking forward to his next appraisal.

[RubberJohnny]

It's because of eSports, these studios want this extra revenue stream of millions of dollars from sponsorships and setting up a league and being able to sell team skins and all this. They just don't seem to realise the games which get that do so because they're accessible to a very wide audience, so there's this trend of them fucking their multiplayer to bend it into a competitive format.

 

You saw the same thing from Halo 5, doubling down on eSports to the point there wasn't even a casual mode at launch, everything required you to be working on your K/D, "wanting to have fun relaxing after work? This is work! Digital sports!"

[Uncle Mike]

Well, another week, another set of drops. Obviously, there's not much to work for now (especially given no-one's really playing) but I'm still making pretty good progress in the Masterworks grind.

 

Primaries: Nameless Midnight, Origin Story

Energy slot: Uriel's Gift (Arc), Positive Outlook (Solar), Valakadyn (Void), Conspirator (Void), Black Scorpion-4sr (Solar)

Heavy: Curtain Call (Void), Classical-42 (Arc), Hawthorne's Field Forged Shotgun (Solar)

 

My (Void) Sins of the Past is next, I think, followed by Better Devils and (Arc) Annual Skate. That's got to be me set for any eventuality.

 

Plus, since the Armour got added, I've had Retro-Grade Arms and Terra Concord legs drop as Masterworks. So that's 2 out of 5 (Although I don't see MW Armour being such a need in PvE?)

 

I think I'm 3 Paradox Amplifiers away from completing all of Fanboy Vance's weapons as well. Do you get anything for that?

[Don Wiskerando]

I'm done with the game now.  I have all of the exotic armour but haven't had a single drop of the exotic weapons from CoS.  My hunter has had the same arms drop from every exotic engram for the last six weeks.  The system is fucking broken and it's not fun anymore.

[Uncle Mike]

I don't really get any Exotics either. And when I do, it's either Khepri's Horn, Saint-14 or Aeon Safe. I did get Telesto recently. I assume I'll now get it a heap more.

 

Whoever does the R in RNG at Bungie needs to have a look at themselves in the mirror. It's the same all over - same Strikes, same Crucible maps, same drops.

[K]

You always get clustering with true randomness, but even then, it seems strange how often the Pyramidion comes up in the strike playlist. I had it four times out of five a while back. It's a great level - one of the best strikes ever - but wears a little thin playing it over and over.

[Broker]

27 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

I think I'm 3 Paradox Amplifiers away from completing all of Fanboy Vance's weapons as well. Do you get anything for that?

 

Exotic Ghost shell

[Uncle Mike]

Ha. Just looked on destinysets.com to see how far off all the Exotics I was. Turns out at least some of my dupe problem is that I'm only waiting on three weapons. I already have all the Titan Exotics. Just need Sunshot, The Colony and Jade Rabbit. (And to finish off Acrius, but I need people for that!)

[sbrandon111]

I'm back on the PS4 now (and PC). I'm looking to get the raid done too. Who is in charge of the renegades clan? I have someone looking to join but he's not active in the forum although he has played with most of us in the past. 

[K]

Gorf King is in charge of the clan, but I think he threw the keys into the sea, in slow motion, along with his gun and badge, before walking away to a maudlin reprise of the main theme.

[Uncle Mike]

Gorf King owns it, but @K, @markh and I are the only admins left still playing, I think.

[lordscotland]

To be honest I think at this point, if you play (and there’s room - I’m not going into the whole kicking people thing) you’re in.

 

i’ll have a look when I get home if I can remember how, although I’ve not played for a week myself.

[sbrandon111]

8 minutes ago, markh said:

To be honest I think at this point, if you play (and there’s room - I’m not going into the whole kicking people thing) you’re in.

 

i’ll have a look when I get home if I can remember how, although I’ve not played for a week myself.

Awesome, his PSN is Norrie-Helen, i'm sure you will have played with him at some point during D1. I'll get him to reapply tonight, we will be on doing some strikes.

[Uncle Mike]

Crucible clan engrams is there now for anyone to grab. I'm quite happy about it, because getting it earned me a Masterworks Better Devils from an end-of-game drop.

[Uncle Mike]

The update this week is intriguing. (And getting better for language since Deej started doing less)

 

Changes to Nightfalls include scoring, different modifiers, challenges, auras and more.

 

New Raid modes to make things difficult with modifiers and fixed & curated loadouts.

 

https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/46627

 

There's a lot of change coming.

[Oz]

so Activition did a bit of fact checking in their quarterly investor call. some of the things I found interesting:

1) CoO sold better than the Dark Below (maybe affected by being sold as a bundle when the game launched)

2) They made more money from eversee than they did in actually selling said expansion (maybe affected by Os' purchase habits)

3) The player base did not grow as much as Activision expected in comparison with D1. This one is interesting because it may explain why on average the player population may have finished all content significantly sooner than Bungie expected. In particular, if they were expecting more casual players to be playing or new players to come into the game, then their estimates about when the average player would be done would have been wildly incorrect. If I were on Activision's executive team the main thing I would be asking myself is what is the actual growth potential of this game. Maybe nearly everyone who would be interested has played it. Wake up and smell the sci-fi magical space flowers.   

4) Player engagement is indeed below Activision's expectations.The hardcore D1 hardcore community chewed through the content (and apparently bought a lot of silver), then got annoyed about not having anything to do, then stopped playing and instead occupied their time on posting negative comments on reddit.  However, Activision sounded super dismissive about this (when asked about it by an analyst). They basically said "look these people bitch and moan, then Bungie changes some shit, then they come back and thank us for it... we have seen this before and we will see it again" they seem to perceive the community as Bungie's abused wife. "can't find a better game".

[Uncle Mike]

9 minutes ago, Oz said:

4) Player engagement is indeed below Activision's expectations.The hardcore D1 hardcore community chewed through the content (and apparently bought a lot of silver), then got annoyed about not having anything to do, then stopped playing and instead occupied their time on posting negative comments on reddit.  However, Activision sounded super dismissive about this (when asked about it by an analyst). They basically said "look these people bitch and moan, then Bungie changes some shit, then they come back and thank us for it... we have seen this before and we will see it again" they seem to perceive the community as Bungie's abused wife. "can't find a better game".

 

I'm not quite sure that's how they would have meant things, but the amount of daily traffic in people wanting to spend hours talking about D2 on the Bungie and reddit areas (and yet not playing it) would suggest there's a fair bit of demand pent-up that positive changes could release.

[Oz]

5 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

 

I'm not quite sure that's how they would have meant things, but the amount of daily traffic in people wanting to spend hours talking about D2 on the Bungie and reddit areas (and yet not playing it) would suggest there's a fair bit of demand pent-up that positive changes could release.

yeh they just said something like "this community is very engaged and vocal. but respond positively to changes when Bungie makes them. we have seen this before". I took some liberties in interpreting that. but mostly Mike thanks for getting to item 4!

[Mr Ben]

17 minutes ago, Oz said:

so Activition did a bit of fact checking in their quarterly investor call. some of the things I found interesting:

1) CoO sold better than the Dark Below (maybe affected by being sold as a bundle when the game launched)

2) They made more money from eversee than they did in actually selling said expansion (maybe affected by Os' purchase habits)

3) The player base did not grow as much as Activision expected in comparison with D1. This one is interesting because it may explain why on average the player population may have finished all content significantly sooner than Bungie expected. In particular, if they were expecting more casual players to be playing or new players to come into the game, then their estimates about when the average player would be done would have been wildly incorrect. If I were on Activision's executive team the main thing I would be asking myself is what is the actual growth potential of this game. Maybe nearly everyone who would be interested has played it. Wake up and smell the sci-fi magical space flowers.   

4) Player engagement is indeed below Activision's expectations.The hardcore D1 hardcore community chewed through the content (and apparently bought a lot of silver), then got annoyed about not having anything to do, then stopped playing and instead occupied their time on posting negative comments on reddit.  However, Activision sounded super dismissive about this (when asked about it by an analyst). They basically said "look these people bitch and moan, then Bungie changes some shit, then they come back and thank us for it... we have seen this before and we will see it again" they seem to perceive the community as Bungie's abused wife. "can't find a better game".

 

I dont think they'll "see it again" after all the shit they went through in Destiny 1, only to have it happen in 2 as well. There are other games out there now as well, which werent really there before (The Division was, but it was terrible when D1 was the main game, that is not the case anymore - its supposedly brilliant), plus having to wait for the game to get back to where it was in Destiny 1 is simply not good enough.

 

Bungie also decided the other day that not enough time had gone by without shooting themselves in the foot again, and have now made it so you cant post on their forums unless you own Destiny 2 and played up to the farm...

Their forums needed cleaning up, but I feel hiring more mods would be better than this.

[Uncle Mike]

Anyway, here's the bits of the TWAB that sounded interesting.

 

On Nightfalls, it seems (if I've read it right) that you'll first do it on Normal to play for a high score. Getting a high score gives you a Challenge card, which unlocks modifiers to make things more difficult. There's score thresholds, so only getting over increasingly hard challenges is the way to get the full modifier set?

 

Quote

• Scoring is team-based and the sum of individual performances. A team should be able to focus on what works best, not feeling put out by who stole whose kill.
• Scoring is primarily driven by kills and secondarily by orb generation. We want you to find what works best for clearing strikes instead of telling you which weapons to use, but we want coordinated use of Supers and other team support mechanics to contribute to high scores. We’re interested in restoring special point awards based on medals, but we want your input to understand the basic meta first.
• Score bleeds over time. We are watching this closely — score decay can feel bad, but all else being equal, a team that clears faster than another team should score higher. Score decay achieves this in the most transparent fashion.
• Scoring cuts off after time thresholds. At 15 minutes, new points earned are reduced by 50%. At 18 minutes, you stop earning new points and it’s a race to finish the run and post your score. We want time to matter (see above), but we also want to avoid some of the problems we saw with Prison of Elders, where a “high score” might involve punishing respawning combatants (and yourself) for a few hours until the novelty wore off. A good Nightfall clear shouldn’t feel like a slog.

 

Challenge cards might (in the example they put up) strip you of 10 points of Light, and apply an elemental Burn (to both incoming and outgoing damage) in exchange for a score multiplier.

 

Getting good scores unlocks an emblem which applies an aura. The aura then gives you and your fireteam +25% on token drops at the end of that Strike (these seem to be per Strike, so you'd get one for Inverted Spire that week, and chase one for Pyramidion the week after.)

 

 

Then Raids get a new mode, Curated Loadouts. I got a little confused here, but I think the essence is that the Prestige Raid stays for the base Leviathan Raid. However, there won't be Prestige modes for any other Raids in the future. (I suspect this is them trying to avoid the Trophy problem from when they launched CoO.)

 

So every week, all Raids will be available on Normal. I guess the base Raid will also always be available on its existing Prestige mode (this is me making things up a little.) Then one Raid per week will be selected for a Curated Loadout, with a modifier and a fixed selection of guns you can use. They've given some hypothetical examples:

 

Quote

Raid Activity: Eater of Worlds

Modifier: Marksman. Precision damage is increased. Landing a precision shot grants one ammo directly to the magazine.

• Required Loadout:
• Kinetic: Hand Cannon
• Energy: Scout Rifle
• Power: Linear Fusion

Raid Activity: Expansion 2 Raid Lair

Modifier: Gladiator. Your melee damage is increased and melee kills grant bonus Super.

Required Loadout:

• Kinetic: Sidearm
• Energy: Submachine gun
• Power: Shotgun

Raid Activity: Eater of Worlds

Modifier: Conduit. Each kill you get before reloading or swapping weapons gives you increasingly more ability energy.

Required Loadout:

• Kinetic: Auto Rifle 
• Energy: Riskrunner
• Power: Grenade Launcher

 

Eater of Worlds gets no additional changes in curated Prestige mode, but the Leviathan Raid's curated mode uses Prestige, not Normal as its base.

[Uncle Mike]

2 minutes ago, Mr Ben said:

 

 

Bungie also decided the other day that not enough time had gone by without shooting themselves in the foot again, and have now made it so you cant post on their forums unless you own Destiny 2 and played up to the farm...

Their forums needed cleaning up, but I feel hiring more mods would be better than this.

 

I don't think I have an issue with that, really.

 

You can't give feedback unless you've actually played the game. You get to the Farm in like, two missions? And in the US, they have a free trial that gets you that far.

[Uncle Mike]

In other news, they've also fixed the Lost Sectors issue, and are taking away the 5 minute cooldown from next week when Crimson Days starts.