Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Nate Dogg III]

They can quite easily give us stuff to do outside of milestones without too much actual dev effort. I really like the Flashpoint idea because, as bored as I am of public events, it guarantees that on a Tuesday or Wednesday you are all but guaranteed to find large numbers of players in the same area, all looking to tear through the same activity as efficiently as possible. So take that line of thinking and build on it. On, like, Thursday, have x3 exotic drop rates in Quickplay. On Friday you could have a x5 chance of powerful-gear drops in heroic strikes. Hell, even something like double gunsmith mats and shards from dismantling on, like, Sunday would sometimes be incentive enough. Just boost a stat a day and give me something to do, basically, that isn't a milestone. It's something mobile games do really well and I don't understand why console games haven't borrowed it. 

 

Then there are the weird decisions they've made with the things they've added in. Infinite Forest could have been a replayable, randomly generated Horde mode with increasingly powerful rewards. If Escalation Protocol was set on Crucible maps rather than chucked out in the open world where everyone just gets annoyed by it, with different enemy combinations, it could be the most replayable thing in the game.

[Gorf King]

7 minutes ago, Flub said:

It's not just about the journey to max power. It's about what you do to keep those players playing (And potentially spending) once they get there. What are you guys planning on doing once you all hit max power?

 

Beat all the content I guess, and get all the gear you want with all those lovely perks.Then do the time-limited events for their goodies, and for the crack, when they appear. That's what we did in D1, plus there were all sorts of chasuble things if you wanted - grinding for a god roll gun, or for a full T12 set, or a few of them. The boxes you got for cosmetic rewards in D1 weekly/daily events were another thing that kept going on forever if you liked. But none of those are 'endgame' - it's only that which needed (and used to give) max light to beat, and its that which was the main focus and draw of the game - those raids, man. There was nothing quite like them in D1.

 

An alternative activity (which you can do without premades to an extent) is Escalation Protocol. They just need to make it easier to form bigger teams for that. Though I suspect people will probably find out that this, too, comes to require co-ordination and comms as you go up the waves. Regardless, just doing the early stages with randoms has been pretty good fun today (you need to do 10 levels for the first step of this week's Nascent Dawn quest). It, and the more challenging modifiers of Heroic Strikes, has been my favourite thing about Warmind so far. They just need to tier difficulty a bit better, make rewards reflect that difficulty, and apply the sort of improvements to loot that they've already done with things like Graviton, and you have the basis for proper improvements. But they really need to apply that to the real endgame (basically, raids at this point, which still give largely junk rewards apart from power and are really oddly pitched for difficulty), add a few more EP-like non-raid activities, and we have a game on our hands.

[Broker]

I think I'm burned out again. I don't think that the weapon balance has really changed much outside of a few exotics, I certainly don't feel like the movement is much faster, and the loadout is still the dull double primaries which destroys the fun of Destiny. I'll probably give IB a go but I expect it will just make me sad that 6v6 is once a month, and I can't imagine making regular Crucible feel even more shit is what they were hoping for from that change. 

 

EP seems fun, but it's going to be weeks until I can try it just doing the milestones you can solo. Raids still aren't my kind of thing, nobody I know is around for Nightfall so it's just the few other milestones. There's still no meaningful endgame content with matchmaking, still no meaningful endgame content for a solo player and so ultimately I'm still getting the message constantly that the game isn't really for me. The grind is slow as fuck so there's no fun in levelling up and they've still got the same shit system where I'm hoping for the right piece or weapon. Still only one exotic catalyst.

 

Every time I come back it's for slightly less time, and every time it's more disappointing. I can't see myself being willing to buy anything in September to fix all this stupid shit that they never should have messed up. 

[Qazimod]

30 minutes ago, Nate Dogg III said:

(snip)

 

EP might be a bit of a mess, but I'd rather have something that was a mess (EP) than nothing at all (Infinite Forest.) I mean, if you completed Osiris and then the Infinite Forest was unlocked as a map location you could visit with fireteams - a location that maybe randomised geometry and enemies but had a defined structure of "spawn point-enemies-boss-chest" - even that would be something.

 

Then again, I can see how EP is annoying when it's part of Mars... again, it might work better as a separate event on the map.  

[Gorf King]

The movement really isn't any faster, and yeah, the weapon slot system is still the same, and I think hugely inferior to D1's. The latter's changing in September though - albeit not back to D1's, but to a new system that summiteers are saying 'should make everyone happy'.

 

Challenge accepted!

 

Edit: EP is really enormous fun - the sword bits in particular have the real Destiny/Dark Below feel - but yeah, it does interfere with PEs. And people just kick them off a lot because it keeps being made a goal of those quest steps, so you get them started when folk know they'll never get past completing wave 1 (and often don't even try beyond that, just pulling a new one again).

 

Edit edit: Step 2 of this week's Nascent Dawn is three strikes, again, again - and I've just done the three heroics for the engram. Oh my, Bungie. 

[K]

I really like the double primary setup, you can make some pretty cool builds. That Titan exotic that looks like Robocop's legs, paired with Riskrunner and Antiope-D, is incredible - because it reloads your weapons every time you put them away, you can put up pretty much a constant stream of SMG fire, and it's more versatile than you'd think if you have a decent sniper for distance work.

 

The Infinite Forest definitely feels like a missed opportunity - it looks lovely, and is a fun challenge to push through on heroic adventures, but there's not much in the way of infiniteness.

[Mafro]

Not bad today. Finished off the Flashpoint and got Eternal Warrior and The Colony from Cayde. Used the LFG thing in the companion app for the Nightfall and got up to 355 with the rewards from that.

 

Is there still an active rllmuk PS4 clan?

[pinholestar]

Cleared all 7 waves of Escalation Protocol just now. We had a full instance of 9 people (half by accident than design, it seemed) who were all 365+. It’s tough, required a certain degree of silent co-ordination & the final wave took us 3 or 4 attempts but it’s eminently doable at those levels & tremendous fun. Dropped an emblem, a shader & a cloak at a powerful gear level.

[Flub]

I can't see how to unlock Nightfalls. I've done the "Do two regular strikes" for Zavala and he's supposed to have another quest for me but nothing is showing. Any ideas? Is there matchmaking for the Nightfalls these days?

[gonk]

1 minute ago, Flub said:

I can't see how to unlock Nightfalls. I've done the "Do two regular strikes" for Zavala and he's supposed to have another quest for me but nothing is showing. Any ideas? Is there matchmaking for the Nightfalls these days?

 

Isn’t there some weird glitch where you have go to orbit, then have to return to Zavala?

[Flub]

Just now, gonk said:

 

Isn’t there some weird glitch where you have go to orbit, then have to return to Zavala?

 

Wouldn't shock me I'll try later after the BFV reveal

 

I can see regular strikes being added to my fucking around schedule. They're nice and relaxing.

[Gorf King]

This week, TWAB concentrates on the call for Protocol to facilitate larger teams, and the forthcoming start to the exotic armour rework.

 

On the former, the tl;dr is that it was designed for 3 players at max power, and to be challenging to them even then, so wait and see what that feels like before you start banging on about needing to bring more players in; but also, the feedback on wanting to get bigger teams in world instances is noted. Full version:

 

Spoiler

 

What were the design goals for Escalation Protocol?

 

Jacob: Escalation Protocol was designed to be a high-difficulty endgame activity for a max-level, three-player fireteam. Other players in the world can contribute to make it easier, but they shouldn’t be required as long as your team is highly skilled and coordinated. We have received a lot of feedback since the original launch of Destiny 2 that players felt like reaching max Power was not satisfying. There weren’t enough activities that required and rewarded that level of commitment. Escalation Protocol was designed to fill that gap.

 

So this activity was not specifically designed for nine players?

 

Other than Raid Activities, all PvE activities and private spaces are optimized for three players to allow for multiple types of activities in the space. So no, it wasn’t designed for it, but it’s not a surprise that it’s easier with nine players, given how under-leveled most of us are right now. We knew that players would use the same creative workarounds to get nine players into a space similar to Court of Oryx, but we did not specifically tune the difficulty around requiring that many players.

 

Any plans to enable larger fireteams in the future?

 

We’ve had a lot of conversations here about what to do to answer the community’s feedback. We’re going to continue to monitor as more players progress up to max Power and are able to attempt Escalation Protocol at the difficulty it was designed for and we’ll determine what, if any action, is necessary. We also hear players are really enjoying large groups of players fighting against enemies, so we’ll use that feedback to inform our future plans.

 

 

The May 29th start to the exotic armour changes comprises:

 

Spoiler

 

Titan

 

Synthoceps

Mechanical Changes—Previously, the perk adjusted your melee damage depending on the number of enemies surrounding you. Now it grants a flat bonus to melee and Super damage when you’re surrounded by three or more enemies. The buff is retained for a short duration after you are no longer surrounded.

Although Synthoceps has gotten a fair bit of love in the Crucible, players are often focused on the increased lunge rate. The outgoing damage bonus was hard to appreciate and plan around with it being so variable in nature. With this change, you will be able to feel the impact more often in all scenarios, particularly in PvE.

 

Lion Rampant

Mechanical Changes—You can hipfire while Lift is active without interrupting it, and your aerial hipfire doesn't have an aerial accuracy penalty.

The Lion Rampant was focused around Lift and how it impacts your playstyle and tactics, so we decided to push further in that direction, emphasizing fast moving aerial assault.

 

Hunter

 

The Dragon’s Shadow

Mechanical Changes—Dodging reloads all weapons simultaneously. The effects of Wraithmetal Mail now also include a bonus to mobility.

Although the Dragon’s Shadow does have a small following, we wanted to make it more useful in a general sense under even neutral conditions, while keeping in the theme of a fast-moving ninja.

 

Mechaneer’s Tricksleeves

Mechanical Changes—Swapping to a sidearm while critically wounded greatly increases its damage.

We went for the fantasy of a holdout weapon; the pistol tucked into your sleeve that you pull out in an emergency to save you. These changes should let you turn around a fight more easily.

 

Warlock

 

Lunafaction Boots

Mechanical Changes—Rift reload is automatic instead of being activated on entry/exit. Empowering Rift makes weapons more effective at extended ranges.

Players having to dip in and out of the Rift to reload their weapons was not consistent with other Rift effects, particularly with the overshield effect on Healing Rift. It’s been made automatic to be easier to understand and use. As this is a more offensive choice in terms of Rift Exotics, we also wanted to further reward players who want to double down with Empowering Rift instead of playing it safe with Healing Rift. 

 

Sunbracers

Mechanical Changes—Original effect replaced with: Increases the duration of Solar Grenades. Solar melee kills grant unlimited Solar Grenade energy for a brief time.

While effective under some circumstances in terms of things like flat damage output with your Solar Grenade, Sunbracers didn’t feel flashy enough for gloves where your hands are perpetually on fire. So, while retaining the original flavor of “The Solar Grenade Exotic Armor,” we’ve scaled up the potential output significantly to give the player a strong taste of power on a more frequent basis.

 

 

Not quite at the same level, unfortunately, as the buffs to some of the exotic weapons. Those fucking Hunter ones man, sear.gif man. 

[Thor]

Aye. "let me just get out my sidearm"... said no one ever. 

[Scruff]

Wow. That's like having a dirty, flash car sat on your drive and thinking 'yeah, what this car really needs is one of it's doors polished'.

 

I continue to be amazed at the ineptitude of Bongo.

[Nate Dogg III]

Sunbracers sound nice I suppose, and the Lunafaction buff is cool as dipping in and out never felt quite right, you were never sure if you’d done it properly. 

 

EP thing is not surprising and gently disappointing, but at least they’ve acknowledged it. 

[K]

The exotic armour stuff is pretty underwhelming, from a titan perspective at least. When you heard about the exotic tweaks, the reaction was "holy shit, I've got to try that out" rather than "that sounds quite nice", and it's a bit of a shame they haven't sustained that feeling.

 

In future, I really hope they'll focus at least a bit on synergies with weapons in the same way that Actium War Rig works beautifully with Sweet Business, or Peacekeeper Legs (or whatever it's called) with Riskrunner. I guess they do that a little bit with Tricksleeves and the sidearm, but for that to really work they need to bring back Trespasser.

[Nate Dogg III]

Long but quite instructive vid of what Escalation Protocol looks like with three (I assume) max-power players.

 

 

The final few levels look like a right slog and the successful strat for the final wave is basically the Templar cheese strat from all those years ago. I assume that's why it's an in-world activity rather than its own separate thing, they expect that passing players will come in and help out on the final few waves. Still looks to me like the kind of thing you'd want six for, though.

 

[pinholestar]

I cleared all 7 waves with 9 people the other day & I really struggle to imagine ever being able to do it as a team of 3, max light or no. As that video shows, it would be insanely difficult/reliant on cheese strategies to the point where I just wouldn’t bother. Not for the first time, Bungie are being a little economical with the truth, I feel. They didn’t think & test the whole thing through properly, have overtuned the difficulty & when prompted for an explanation have come out with a pretty disingenuous one, in my opinion.

[Gorf King]

I haven't seen anyone in a 3, at max light, beating the 7th wave without exploits/cheesing. Apparently Bungie cranked up the difficulty further at the request of summit streamers to whom it was shown the other month (the streamers were all provided with max power characters and I understand never made it past the fourth wave or something like that, but asked for it to be super-hard). You can't help feeling that this satisfies the need of streamers to have an audience that needs to turn to their channels to provide guides etc - and, of course, they've all been doing it mob-handed.

 

I dunno, I haven't properly tried the new raid lair yet - I'd like to have a go in the next few days, ideally, before it becomes even harder to get a properly blind raid team together - but with the new lair and wave 7 EP being the only stuff I'm really interested in, and the whole point of churning out those milestones every week for more power, I can feel the enthusiasm for this season/DLC waning a bit already. And some of the vanilla D2 disenchantment towards Bungie is seeping in quite strongly. It's great to have stuff to aim for, and I absolutely don't mind a grind, but there's something well off about how endgame's been pitched here. It shouldn't just be about making enemies insanely durable bullet sponges set way above max level, and making it take ages to reach that inadequate level. All feels like spreading some pretty thin content out as far as possible by putting it behind a series of chores and deliberately restricting the ability of players to access and legitimately beat it. 

 

Also, the exotic armour reveal has slightly dampened spirits that were lifted somewhat by what Bungie had done for some exotic weapons. Feels like lip service, tinkering at the margins with stuff that really needs radical overhaul. I'm a bit less optimistic for the September release now they seem to be back to their usual business again.

[Larsen B]

I've got a PC key from the Humble Bundle for D2 if anyone wants it.

 

You have to join the Positivity Club though.

[Qazimod]

10 hours ago, Gorf King said:

The May 29th start to the exotic armour changes comprises:

 

  Hide contents

 

Titan

 

Synthoceps

Mechanical Changes—Previously, the perk adjusted your melee damage depending on the number of enemies surrounding you. Now it grants a flat bonus to melee and Super damage when you’re surrounded by three or more enemies. The buff is retained for a short duration after you are no longer surrounded.

Although Synthoceps has gotten a fair bit of love in the Crucible, players are often focused on the increased lunge rate. The outgoing damage bonus was hard to appreciate and plan around with it being so variable in nature. With this change, you will be able to feel the impact more often in all scenarios, particularly in PvE.

 

Lion Rampant

Mechanical Changes—You can hipfire while Lift is active without interrupting it, and your aerial hipfire doesn't have an aerial accuracy penalty.

The Lion Rampant was focused around Lift and how it impacts your playstyle and tactics, so we decided to push further in that direction, emphasizing fast moving aerial assault.

 

Hunter

 

The Dragon’s Shadow

Mechanical Changes—Dodging reloads all weapons simultaneously. The effects of Wraithmetal Mail now also include a bonus to mobility.

Although the Dragon’s Shadow does have a small following, we wanted to make it more useful in a general sense under even neutral conditions, while keeping in the theme of a fast-moving ninja.

 

Mechaneer’s Tricksleeves

Mechanical Changes—Swapping to a sidearm while critically wounded greatly increases its damage.

We went for the fantasy of a holdout weapon; the pistol tucked into your sleeve that you pull out in an emergency to save you. These changes should let you turn around a fight more easily.

 

Warlock

 

Lunafaction Boots

Mechanical Changes—Rift reload is automatic instead of being activated on entry/exit. Empowering Rift makes weapons more effective at extended ranges.

Players having to dip in and out of the Rift to reload their weapons was not consistent with other Rift effects, particularly with the overshield effect on Healing Rift. It’s been made automatic to be easier to understand and use. As this is a more offensive choice in terms of Rift Exotics, we also wanted to further reward players who want to double down with Empowering Rift instead of playing it safe with Healing Rift. 

 

Sunbracers

Mechanical Changes—Original effect replaced with: Increases the duration of Solar Grenades. Solar melee kills grant unlimited Solar Grenade energy for a brief time.

While effective under some circumstances in terms of things like flat damage output with your Solar Grenade, Sunbracers didn’t feel flashy enough for gloves where your hands are perpetually on fire. So, while retaining the original flavor of “The Solar Grenade Exotic Armor,” we’ve scaled up the potential output significantly to give the player a strong taste of power on a more frequent basis.

 

 

 

I think Synthoceps have been my main piece of exotic armour since I got hold of them, so yay.

[Nate Dogg III]

1 hour ago, Gorf King said:

I haven't seen anyone in a 3, at max light, beating the 7th wave without exploits/cheesing. Apparently Bungie cranked up the difficulty further at the request of summit streamers to whom it was shown the other month (the streamers were all provided with max power characters and I understand never made it past the fourth wave or something like that, but asked for it to be super-hard). You can't help feeling that this satisfies the need of streamers to have an audience that needs to turn to their channels to provide guides etc - and, of course, they've all been doing it mob-handed.

 

Not sure that's quite right. From what I've read they were all at end-of-campaign levels of power (340 I think). And it's not that they asked for it to be super-hard so much as they asked for it not to become irrelevant too quickly. You could certainly extrapolate 'make it harder' from that, I suppose, but personally I'd take that as being more about rewards than difficulty (and they've whiffed on that too, of course). 

 

I'm also sceptical, given the pace we know Bungie moves at, that feedback given a few weeks before the expansion dropped would be something they'd be able to react to. There's a broader discussion to be had about catering to the streamer and #content creator audience – which is a bit grubby but, given the state of the game, is probably something I'd be recommending too – but I don't quite buy the line of thinking that the reason Escalation Protocol is so difficult is that Datto wants to make a video about it, or Goth has a few empty hours in his Wednesday stream schedule. I think it was always supposed to be like this, and Bungie got it wrong.

[Gorf King]

Yeah, when I check again, they were 350LL, not max - it was the reveal streamers who were max light, not the summit people. But they did have gear you could only have got from beating wave 7 to start off with - Datto mentions he used the new shotgun - and obviously that makes it easier.

 

They definitely asked for it to be made more difficult though. In Bungie's reveal stream they said "at the summit, they were finding it difficult, but the feedback we got was that they would prefer it if it was even more difficult. And we were really close to being locked down but we managed to squeeze in one final change specifically based on the community feedback from the summit to make it even more difficult. [...] Now it'll be even harder - it's what people asked for." Datto said in his stream coverage that he welcomed enemies in public areas being super hard again, and the Destiny Community Podcast went on about this too. So yeah, I do think they asked for it to be super hard, this isn't just my inferring it unreasonably from what they said.

[Gorf King]

Anyway, Cozmo's replied in one of the reddit threads on the subject.

 

This is as expected, but a bit of a shame as leaving it just as difficult but facilitating bigger fireteams, or fireteam hookups, would have been a far more interesting and exciting prospect. Maybe some day in the future we'll get open world activities allowing more than three players to formally group up.

 

I like the form that slowly grows out of chaos in EPs. Just did two with a small number of randoms (four or five of us in total) and we got the wave 4 bosses almost down each time, but just lacked a bit of oomph and co-ordination to progress any further. The feeling of coming together in a relatively large group is something that Destiny 2 lacks outside of raids (and I guess IB now). Nine-person open world stuff would be genuinely liberating in terms of what you could do with encounter design.

[Qazimod]

Head to Giant's Scar. Pretty sure I already have VW, but not at that power level, and I've got shards to spare...

[Siri]

6 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

Head to Giant's Scar. Pretty sure I already have VW, but not at that power level, and I've got shards to spare...

I can buy Sanguine Alchemy, to ensure that when I pop the fated Engram, it's not Sanguine Alchemy. GOOD SHIT.

Honestly though, I pretty much have no need for Fated stuff any more, the only ones left in my collection are practically duds and most of my Exotic Engrams come from the most excellent, constant raids the Positivity Club have on PC. Regarding Escalation Protocol, I don't really mind it being a long-tail activity to achieve - like Heroic Strikes though, it's a bit stingy for the challenge it presents currently. I can see the PC group cracking it next week after another round of BPL Milestones (We effectively took a team of six, and got overwhelmed at Level 7 where the designer of the activity must have just shrugged his shoulders and decided the spawns was all boss-scale yellow bars).

[Gorf King]

I guess the metrics for quitting sealed the deal.

 

[Lyrical Donut]

11 minutes ago, Gorf King said:

I guess the metrics for quitting sealed the deal.

 

 

I spawned into that strike in the heroic playlist at least twice in the first week at the boss. All by myself. The strike itself is all fine and dandy, but then you get to the boss .

[Gorf King]

Aye, I agree. It's by far the worst boss fight in all of Destiny though. I don't think, apart from in premades in the early days (I do believe I did it with you in week one), I've ever been in a team that hasn't just quit out at the start with a wave and a vomit ("not sarcastic"). That last section is just execrable. 

[Qazimod]

Removing it seems a bit drastic - there’s stuff in there I don’t mind (e.g. everything that isn’t the boss encounter) - but I guess rebalancing it is too much work...