Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Max Damage]

I'm new to the Destiny franchise, getting my feet wet with the D2 demo. Would it be a good idea to blast through the Destiny collection first and then move onto Destiny 2? I'm not bothered about joining a clan or grouping up, can I enjoy the games mainly from a single player standpoint with occasional sessions with a couple of friends? Is there an actual campaign to complete giving a sense of completion? How does the games deal with a group of players with mismatched levels?

 

 

 

 

[instasis]

19 minutes ago, K said:

I'd say playing through the expansion story and then stopping is doing it wrong (in Destiny generally, not just this expansion). The expansion seems more focused on the sandbox, the game systems and the progression, rather than on new content, and so far at least, seems to be pretty successful.

 

Yeah, I know Destiny well enough, but given this is a pile of new content to repeatedly play throug having already repeatedly played through all the previous content, its terribly uninspiring.

 

Spoiler

One of the 3 adventures takes you back down the second half of one of the 4 missions you've got to play. One of the 4 missions takes you back to the EDZ and features a rehash of an event you've already done hundreds of times and a cave you've already been through loads.

 

If the most compelling reason to play the end game is to figure out if they fixed it, that's not success. 

[BubbleFish]

26 minutes ago, Thor said:

Glad it wasn't just me. I noticed the framerate felt "off". 

Its also crap on the Pro. Like you, I'm also glad it isn't my machine (or my imagination)

[V3zna]

Frame rate on PC is fine but there’s been some seriously lengthy loading times over the last few nights. I’ve waited several minutes to get into the tower at random times.

[Hexx]

12 hours ago, pinholestar said:

It seems odd that they’ve re-engineered the grind to require those activities to make any serious progress but haven’t adjusted their difficulty in response.

 

Presumably they can't - as increasing the raid power/level requirements, takes it away from people that haven't bought expacs

[K]

People without the new expansion still get access to a lot of the new stuff though, like the tuned exotics, masterworks, crucible maps, and the increased power cap.

[Siri]

27 minutes ago, Black Cat Supremacist said:

Frame rate on PC is fine but there’s been some seriously lengthy loading times over the last few nights. I’ve waited several minutes to get into the tower at random times.

 

Regarding this, that's just the matchmaking service that Bungie provides being trash, same with the original Destiny's tower 'loading' times on console.

 

You'll usually notice the second it lets you on the tower, that 20 other guardians also transmat in  it's just their servers creating a new instance or something.

[V3zna]

45 minutes ago, Siri said:

 

Regarding this, that's just the matchmaking service that Bungie provides being trash, same with the original Destiny's tower 'loading' times on console.

 

You'll usually notice the second it lets you on the tower, that 20 other guardians also transmat in  it's just their servers creating a new instance or something.

 

That’s exactly what happens. As soon as I get in you just hear a load of the transmat noises as multiple guardians all arrive at the same time. 

[Qazimod]

3 hours ago, K said:

I'd say playing through the expansion story and then stopping is doing it wrong (in Destiny generally, not just this expansion). The expansion seems more focused on the sandbox, the game systems and the progression, rather than on new content, and so far at least, seems to be pretty successful.

 

Destiny's story missions are Street Fighter Arcade Mode - that thing you play through once before (hopefully) losing hours to all of the other stuff.

[Mr Ben]

Played some crucible last night, and while its still not up to snuff (I'm still unsure if 6v6 will change it enough), I did notice one thing that seemed to counter the team shoot meta.

 

Or rather, one gun - Graviton Lance. Seemed pretty ridiculous in the one match where someone was using it, as it countered people grouping up and team shooting quite effectively. Wonder if Sunshot will work the same.

[5R7]

just got this on PC, humble bundle for less than £9 seemed reasonable to have a blast at!

anything i should know going in?... besides having to know my battle.net info... which i haven't used in years and cant remember lol

[Gorf King]

4 hours ago, K said:

Had a quick go on the Crucible last night. They really need to make the 6v6 mode a permanent fixture, it's clearly better than the standard 4v4 setup. I did have fun though, and Crimson seems to be extremely well-suited to PvP as well as PvE, to the extent that I fear it's going to get nerfed, even under Bungie's new regime where fun is temporarily permitted under certain strict conditions. That gun is flipping nuts - it reminds me a lot of Bad Juju, in that it has two seriously useful perks and would still be a great gun even without them.

 

Do you need to complete the story to unlock exotic masterwork cores? I haven't had any drop at all so far.

 

They seem to be able to drop anywhere but are obviously quite rare. Funnily enough, I got the catalyst for Crimson last night in some random mission and just started using it today. Unlike some, this really isn't going to take long to upgrade because it seems sticky as hell - feels like it's difficult to miss those headshots, and you don't really want to use anything else once you're using it. The orb generation's obviously the most useful thing, and that's unlocked from the start, but when upgraded the range, which is already pretty immense, looks insane:

 

 

You can just move forward squeezing the trigger ADS, never reloading and regenerating health all the while. Like some bastard offspring of Red Death and Black Hammer, it genuinely feels like an exotic from Destiny 1, which is an extraordinarily rare thing in D2 and has made me almost uncomfortably happy. So yes, it may well get a nerf at some point if people start moaning about it in PvP.

 

I also tried Crucible last night, and confirmed that I absolutely hate it - it's just so dourly teamshotty, absolutely no fun at all. And so balance is restored.

[metallicfrodo]

3 hours ago, K said:

I noticed that too. It's particularly obvious on the loading bit just after the title screen, with the little gyrating icon in the bottom right. Also, is it  just me, or does it take much longer to load your character after the title screen now?

Play on Xbone and the load times seem to have tripled.

[Mr Ben]

Load times were a bit ridiculous last night on PS4 mind, so I think its this dlc.

[Broker]

How do nightfall strikes work now? There’s no timer and points? Does a completion count for the weekly emblem regardless of score?

[KartoffelKopf]

They've removed the timer. There's still points and you get emblems for beating various scores. After you beat normal NF once you get a scorecard that allows you to add modifiers, elemental burns and LL handicaps to a Prestige run, which adds score multipliers. It's actually a pretty fun system if you want to go high score hunting and mess with the difficulty levels. Can't remember the actual limits but you  can run a prestige NF with 350 enemies and then give yourself something like a -25 handicap and that triples your score. It's fucking chaos though obvs.

 

You get an engram for beating normal mode regardless of score.

 

There is also NF specific loot. Mostly ships and sparrows (whoop-de-fucking-do) but a few good weapons on some of them, not this week though.

[K]

How does the new Nightfall work with the Rat King quest? I still haven't done it, and have the item stinking up my inventory.

[Gorf King]

It's kind of pointless now, because all you have to do is complete a (normal) Nightfall. With people who also have the quest or the gun itself.

[Pungee]

Is the original Leviathan now even easier with the increased level cap? If anyone on PS4 pulled back into this with Warmind (like me) and fancies a crack at getting the first raid done now we're even stronger, let me know. I never got around to finishing it and would love to finally see (and beat) Calus.

[instasis]

Yay the final boss had a floor is lava sequence yay.

[K]

Something is seriously up with the loading times, it took 1 minute 45 seconds to get from the ‘press X to start’ screen to the character select. It was only another ten seconds from there to orbit, but that is still ages. 

[mechamonkey]

Lots of stuff being unearthed in /r/raidsecrets at the moment, looks like Outbreak Prime 2 is on \o/

[Nate Dogg III]

Two heroic strikes, neither the milestone nor the quest thingy I have on at the moment advanced. Given the fact bosses take like 15 minutes because I’m so underlevelled I am quite annoyed. I mean come on. 

[pinholestar]

Running the raid is definitely the way to go if you want to bump up your power level. Same as it ever was really but as everyone’s now overlevelled it’s a walk in the park. Dogs get melted in about 10 seconds, although they’ve prevented you from one-phasing Calus, which is a bit cheeky of them. Up to 355 now, which hopefully will be enough to have a crack at the new raid lair tomorrow.

 

@Nate Dogg III I had that issue as well. Incredibly annoying considering the length of time it takes to run heroic strikes now.

[Thor]

Well bloody hell. I actually had some fun on this tonight. Teamed up with Gorf King and Ben to do the nightfall. Dare I say it, but it was almost like old times. 

[mechamonkey]

53 minutes ago, Nate Dogg III said:

Two heroic strikes, neither the milestone nor the quest thingy I have on at the moment advanced. Given the fact bosses take like 15 minutes because I’m so underlevelled I am quite annoyed. I mean come on. 

 

Did you have the IKELOS weapon equipped? I ask this because I did 5 without it and I felt pretty bloody silly.

[Nate Dogg III]

I definitely had it equipped. I’ve been using it all day, it’s a good gun. 

 

Thinking about it, both strikes were in progress, I wasn’t in from the start, which I assume was the problem. I could not give a single fuck about that — if I get matched into one by your matchmaking and clear it, it’s a clear. 

[mechamonkey]

1 minute ago, Nate Dogg III said:

I definitely had it equipped. I’ve been using it all day, it’s a good gun. 

 

Thinking about it, both strikes were in progress, I wasn’t in from the start, which I assume was the problem. I could not give a single fuck about that — if I get matched into one by your matchmaking and clear it, it’s a clear. 

I have definately joined in progress ones since and got advancement on Warmind's Glory

[TheMagicMoose]

3 hours ago, Nate Dogg III said:

Two heroic strikes, neither the milestone nor the quest thingy I have on at the moment advanced. Given the fact bosses take like 15 minutes because I’m so underlevelled I am quite annoyed. I mean come on. 

Heroic Strikes are bugged at the moment.

 
https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/9/17336078/destiny-2-warmind-bug-heroic-strike-glory-milestone

They've offered some workarounds. But probably best to wait for a fix.

[K]

I noticed last night that both the Rat King and Acrius (ie the raid exotic) quest items had disappeared from my inventory. Rat King makes sense as Bungie have disabled it, but not sure about Acrius.