Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Kryptonian]

Ooh, someone has made a break through but only about 30 mins to go until Bungie open it anyway.

[Lyrical Donut]

1 hour ago, Flub said:

 

The fuck is this shit?

 

A miserable pile of secrets

[Flub]

I'm watching that Gladd fella try and try and try to get past level 7. Is this what passes for content in Destiny these days? Imagine if he manages it and it goes onto level 8.

[Nate Dogg III]

It’s what passes for content in Destiny this day. I doubt they’ll be trying it again. 

[lewismistreated]

5 hours ago, Mr Ben said:

Never say that. Osiris was utter drivel. Worst Destiny content by a country mile, raid lair could not save it. Its proper shite.

 

I would never take that over anything that has come since that, and neither should anyone paying for content. There's a reason the majority of the playerbase quit the game, and Osiris was the icing on the already shitty cake. If those people hadnt quit, you'd still be playing Destiny 2 as it was at launch, and there'd be no mysteries, no secrets, no powerful weapons, just boring content with shit-tier writing, and you'd still be shooting double primaries with all the "good" guns in one slot.

 

Highlighted the important part there.

 

I would take a couple of C-tier story missions and a few new exotics over Black Armory. Every time. Black Armory, day one, asked me to continue grinding out existing weekly content in order to see one or two glorified Horde modes, and some other stuff around the periphery. And as Bungie still - still!! - have not come up with a good answer to get more individual players into accessing new raids, I have no desire to engage in any of this. 

 

I was on board with them trying new things. Probably shouldn't have spent money on it before seeing what that looked like exactly, but fuck me I guess. But I really hope they change course at least somewhat for the two remaining releases.

[K]

2 hours ago, Mafro said:

 

They could maybe internally playtest their content better to prevent stuff like this.

 

This is pure speculation, but I would imagine it’s very hard to playtest puzzles that are supposed to be solved by a whole community working together. How do you simulate thousands of people working on a puzzle across the internet? These kinds of thing generally seem to be solved much more quickly than people anticipate, so I guess the temptation is to make it harder than you feel it should be. 

[Phelan]

I'm sorry but that puzzle is an utter load of shit.

 

Why would you lock content behind something so damned complex? Encryption and codes with no feedback and total trial and error. It's a fucking game not the enigma fucking code!?!?!

Maybe they have teamed up with the NSA and are just using Destiny players to decrypt codes from spies or something cause whoever at Bungie thought any of that was a good idea is a fucking moron.

[Gorf King]

4 hours ago, lewismistreated said:

And as Bungie still - still!! - have not come up with a good answer to get more individual players into accessing new raids, I have no desire to engage in any of this. 

 

Quite apart from any other (often valid) criticisms levelled at Bungie over accessibility, this one I fear will never be solved. Not unless they make raids far simpler affairs that don't require good planning, comms and teamwork. I'm assuming here that by getting more individual players into accessing new raids you mean matchmaking. Given how often people play so uncoordinatedly in many activities - even things as simple as Gambit - when they're matchmade and not communicating, I'm not sure how they can ever get those people into raids without making raids little more than strikes.

 

Having said that, I do think more should be done to bring what would be essentially LFG within the game itself. But I'm not sure all that many people would engage with it if it involved actually working things out with other people - otherwise they might as well just use an external LFG site anyway (or Bungie's own clan/looking for fireteam app stuff). Before D2 launched I thought their guided games initiative might provide a bridge between LFG and matchmaking, but I'll willingly admit that was, and remains, a complete failure for anything other than basic Nightfalls.

 

So I'm not saying Bungie are perfect in what they've tried to do, but I do recognise that they've tried (and failed) to do something. And I'm not really sure exactly what the solution is, to be honest, because unless you massively simplify the content and demands of raids you will, ultimately, have to have some sort of LFG arrangement at the very least. Maybe that's what you want as an answer. But simply matchmaking people into challenging content isn't, and I sometimes struggle with what can be done that's more demanding than the latter yet less demanding than the former to accommodate people, without completely changing the nature of the raids and making them less challenging themselves.

[Mr Ben]

The Black Armoury key mould is bugged and you cant get another one for a different character from Ada after picking one up already (if you delete it, only that character can re-obtain it from her). Clearly a bug, but considering one of the quest chains is to do Shattered Throne (which is this week) so its a time gated quest, a fair few people on reddit and bungies forums are a bit pissed, as the rare bounty (another part of the quest chain) wont drop for some of our characters (my Titan for example) so were trying on another character.

 

This forge/event/quest seems to be plagued with issues at this point. Not a good week for Bungie.

[Nate Dogg III]

Weirdest thing about watching all that awful Destiny stuff over the last couple of days is that it made me want to... play... Destiny. So I did. I did my first Forge over the Christmas break but haven't been back since, and I'm now in this weird place of trying to work out the flow of all the Ada / Black Armoury stuff while everyone else is doing the last part of it.

I saw something somewhere about being able to take any kind of frame to the final forge that unlocked yesterday. Does that mean I don't have to go through the apparently miserable process of unlocking the other forges one by one, and can just go to that one instead? And do they all have the same power-level requirements? I'm 615 in heels, which is enough to do the first forge if I get a decent group. 

[tnman]

37 minutes ago, Nate Dogg III said:

And do they all have the same power-level requirements? I'm 615 in heels, which is enough to do the first forge if I get a decent group. 

 

I'm sure I read this morning that the final forge is 650.

[Gorf King]

Yeah, it's definitely tougher than the others. Though ironically the boss is the easiest of all, simply because of its nature. But getting to the boss, the adds present more of a challenge, which you can feel immediately even at 650.

 

You're right that any weapon can be forged at Bergusia, but I dunno if you can just waltz in without doing the other forges first, because I've only done Bergusia on my main, and he's already done the previous ones. It is slightly ironic that you can now just waltz in if you have done the others, given that they had a string of grinding requirements behind them.

[Uncle Mike]

Did anyone solve the puzzles in the end?

[Gorf King]

Nope, it's still ongoing.

 

Given how we love all the puzzling aspect of raids and hidden dungeons/quests and the like, it's been a real surprise to see how badly these 'puzzles' have been designed. Some of the solutions feel almost arbitrary. There's been some criticism of making the forges quite grindy, but I really didn't think they'd slip up on something like this. The surprise quests and events have often been Destiny's saving grace, but this time around this one feels feel quite the opposite. I hope it doesn't put them off creating this sort of cryptic content. I just hope they identify the actual flaws in this particular event.

[Hexx]

Doing The Last Wish tonight with chums. 1st time and blind. Exciting

 

[Gorf King]

Good man for trying it blind. You'll love it - it's a great raid with a real sense of adventure and discovery. Just make sure you set aside plenty of time; maybe a few days to work out encounter four...

[Uncle Mike]

Good luck, @Hexx!

[Hexx]

55 minutes ago, Gorf King said:

Good man for trying it blind. You'll love it - it's a great raid with a real sense of adventure and discovery. Just make sure you set aside plenty of time; maybe a few days to work out encounter four...

 

We've got 2-3 hours tonight. I'm sure we'll being fine

 

[Nate Dogg III]

 

Speaking for us all, there.

[RubberJohnny]

I can't believe people spent £30 on this pass, it looks like the meagre-st, lowest effort content, even aside from the bullshit puzzles.

[Nate Dogg III]

It's got a raid.

[Gorf King]

What are you counting in that £30 though? Because the current season's content didn't cost £30. It cost a tenner.

 

And yes, the raid is great. Not sure exactly how much of that RJ has played to call it 'low effort'. Actually I am sure, obviously.

[RubberJohnny]

Ah I googled around and the only place I could see that listed the price said £30, the Destiny website won't even show you price unless you're logged in. £10 is a bit more reasonable.

[Gorf King]

Fair enough. Yeah, there are three seasons in the £30 annual pass, and this is only the first one. I do think this has been worth it, being a big fan of raids and having enjoyed this one. And I'd definitely not call Scourge of the Past 'low effort' (although it's far from the best raid out there and could have been improved, and is obviously quite short, it's way better than the year one raid and raid lairs imo).

 

I do think they need to re-evaluate how they shape the content of these new annual pass-style drops though. It is weird not to get a new strike and Crucible map every now and then, for example. (Though maybe Scourge is that new strike, lolol.) And obviously they've swung and missed with the puzzle quest to unlock the last forge. They have to learn lessons about the power requirements of brand new content too - raids aside - as you can't expect the majority of the player base to beat content that's 15-25 power higher than previous cap on day one, and if they can't play the new stuff day one they'll feel cheated. New endgame stuff's great, but content can't all be endgame (in the sense of being something you have to work towards), otherwise you've got nothing to play but old content even when the new stuff's out until you get to that endgame.

 

Aside from that, I'm basically fine with this being a tenner. It's probably the next season that'll not suit me so much as it seems to be mainly focussed on new Gambit stuff, and I'm not a huge fan of Gambit. And it has no raid. I might just disengage until the season after.

[Hexx]

15 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

Ah I googled around and the only place I could see that listed the price said £30, the Destiny website won't even show you price unless you're logged in. £10 is a bit more reasonable.

 

You can only get the £30 annual pass. 

Black Armory is 1 of 3 "sections" of it, which is where the £10 comes from

 

You can't buy the sections separately

[K]

If you don't do the raids, then this expansion has been pretty underwhelming. From my brief go on one of the forges, the mode didn't seem to justify the grindy quest that opened it up, or boosting my light level to the point where I can realistically expect to complete it. On the other hand, this has freed me up to play other games. I've nearly done RDR2, and I've got Spiderman and Sonic Mania to play through next. Best Destiny expansion ever!

[Uncle Mike]

If the Forges had kept the same unlocking-over-time structure, but been better aligned for Power (perhaps 600 for the first, 610, 620, 630?) and with fewer hoops to jump through to open them, I think people would feel differently about this expansion.

 

There's the other issue that it doesn't fit at all in the game, lore-wise. Which, even for someone who's not a lore nut, sticks out as badly-fitting. It feels like a bad retcon. It turns out the Vanguard built their City and Tower on top of an ancient Armory, staffed by people who hate Guardians, and never noticed? And the Raid is inside the City, against a terrible Fallen foe? It doesn't fit at all.

 

I do like the Raid, and the Raids are the only thing I'm really playing Destiny for at the end of the day. But it's not a great attempt.

[Gorf King]

36 minutes ago, K said:

If you don't do the raids, then this expansion has been pretty underwhelming.

 

I'd imagine this is definitely the case. Without the raid I'd have been totally underwhelmed too.

 

Ada's secret room being found inside the Tower is indeed a lol moment, and makes no real sense. But some (fairly distant and apparently abandoned) part of the city being invaded by Fallen led by Spider's bro looking for a vault, after discovering the first two forges, does make sense to me. I mean, it's an assault on a city that's been assaulted lots of times (including in D2 itself), it's an unpopulated area, and obviously it doesn't succeed in the end because, well, we knack them. 

[Gorf King]

Just to reiterate what's actually in the £30 annual pass, this is it:

 

 

Obviously which of those slices of content looks best depends on where your interests lie. For me, next season looks the weakest as I'm not a big Gambit fan and much of the new free content and the paid content seems to revolve around that. I think the last season is potentially the most interesting because it has a new raid and also a new 6-player matchmade activity, and the latter might go some way to appeasing people who don't want to, or can't, get an actual raid team together. Though obviously, like the raid itself, whether it succeeds or not depends on the quality of the actual content. Hopefully they'll learn some lessons from previous mistakes and avoid any obvious pitfalls. I also hope there's at least a strike in there somewhere amongst all the redacted stuff.

[K]

From a lore perspective, I can buy the fact that the City is this centuries-old accumulation of strata upon strata of forgotten technology and abandoned, and that relics of previous eras might be hidden in its walls. It's less believable that one of these relics is a thirty second walk from the main spawn point, but I can take a bit of lorebending if it means that the various social areas aren't further fragmented across minute-long loading breaks.