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Destiny 2 |OT2| Leviathan Wakes (Spoiler Tag ALL Raid Discussion)

T

the210

Member
Is there any point to turning in tokens after you've hit 280? I play almost completely solo and I cant figure out how I'm supposed to level up without having a group to do night falls with. All the vendors drop 273 gear and world purple drops seem to max out at 278.
What happened to the daily story missions that we used to have in destiny? What happened to being able to pick a strike from the map?
 
J

Jest Chillin

Member
GhaleonEB said:
It's not reductive - it's literally what they did. Some weapons are given out early and/or made accessible to everyone early on. Those are going to get more use than weapons that are harder to get, regardless of their utility. I can't recall if it was once or a few times, but on the update I'm thinking of, Bungie *only* used usage and popularity to justify nerfing weapons. Specially, my favorite and most used PvE weapons.

I agree with what you said in general, and as a process it makes sense. But it's not always what Bungie did, especially in the back half of Destiny 1's run when they got really aggressive about whacking down popular PvP guns.


Obviously personal preference, but I hated using MIDA in PvE without high impact rounds. The stagger ability is critical to how I use it, chaining headshots together as enemies stagger. It felt like a pea shooter that made us move a bit faster once the high impact rounds were gone. Of course, this happened concurrently with updates that gutted snipers, which at that point were the only secondary weapon I still enjoyed using (after shotguns were rolled back to a state worse than the shipping game). So there was a cumulative effect of hitting my favorite primary and the entire class of secondary weapons that I used. (Weapons I used in part due to abandoning ones due to how severely they were nerfed.)

I should note again that I'm almost entirely a PvE player. I didn't play Crucible until many months after Destiny shipped. (True story, my first PvP game was with a couple of Bungie folks. They didn't believe me that I'd never played it until achievements started popping. :lol) I still haven't played Crucible in Destiny 2. I respect that balance is much more fragile in PvP than PvE. My overarching request is that they balance them separately, or offer mode specific perks. For instance, in the case of the MIDA, "fires high impact rounds when fighting non-guardian combatants".

My great fear is Destiny 2 goes down the same path Destiny 1 did, where the content got better and better, and the PvE sandbox worse and worse, because of PvP balancing. I'm already upset that the entire loadout system for Destiny 2 was overhauled with PvP in mind (there are so many weapons stuffed into the Power slot that I don't ever touch 90% of them). That's what I'm on this particular high horse for. :p
Click to expand...

Somehow your quote grabbed the wrong name lol.

That's not how they balanced, though I can understand how it may have seemed that way given how creative DeeJ words his statements. Overwhelming popularity just put a spotlight on weapons, after which they looked at the data.

Believe me, I understand how the cycle of shifting meta's left a bad taste in people's mouths. However, given that the way the weapons were built this time around specifically allows for more flexibility in balance passes, I take the stance of benefit of the doubt rather than skepticism and resistance to change.

The way things ended up being balanced in the back half of D1 was specifically due to the fact that they couldn't nerf OR buff without things getting out of hand due to how the weapons were developed. They've said they changed that this time around though. So I'd like to see how balance passes work out.

Separating PvP from PvE would be the easiest way to deal with balance from the perspective of players who favor one type of gameplay or the other, sure. Bungie wants consistency across both modes though and as someone who plays both modes, I agree with that philosophy.

Where I'm coming from is a position where I'd like to see balance in both modes. I want reasonable challenge (NF this week needs to be adjusted down in the future), no cheese/op stuff (Titan pulse arc nades needs adjusted down), and an even playing field in regards to weapons in PvP (Mida loses HCR and multi-shot sidearms get a look).
 
Y

yanipheonu

Member
Foxxsoxx said:
But they aren't effective.

D1 strikes had skeleton keys, specific loot, strike scoring, additional rewards for playing multiple strikes, etc.

Nowhere to be seen here. Worse rewards, much longer time frame.
Click to expand...

To be fair those were mostly additions after the fact. I'd assume we'd get some endgame patches down the line, like for the promised custom games. It hasn't even been one month.
 
Iorv3th

Iorv3th

Member
Acorn said:
I dunno about that. The grind in early d1 almost compelled you to devote vast amounts of time.
Click to expand...

The grind was because exotic drops were so so rare and the only other way to level up was the raid. In this the raid is not really useful for leveling.
 
F

Future

Member
the210 said:
Is there any point to turning in tokens after you've hit 280? I play almost completely solo and I cant figure out how I'm supposed to level up without having a group to do night falls with. All the vendors drop 273 gear and world purple drops seem to max out at 278.
What happened to the daily story missions that we used to have in destiny? What happened to being able to pick a strike from the map?
Click to expand...

You level up by doing “powerful” gear milestones. Once that’s done for the week you are grinding bright engrams / shaders, legendary shards and exotic drops.
 
F

Foxxsoxx

Member
yanipheonu said:
To be fair those were mostly additions after the fact. I'd assume we'd get some endgame patches down the line, like for the promised custom games. It hasn't even been one month.
Click to expand...

Totally, but this is also the sequel. The game should have definitely launched with these things that were patched in months, and even years ago.

For example, they patched in custom games a year ago and of course, D2 releases with no custom games. Again. When will we get them? 3 months? 6? A year? 2 years?

Then the cycle just repeats for D3? All these things that will eventually get patched in D2 just missing in action when D3 launches? That is a horrible way to launch a game.
 
F

Future

Member
I think one problem with the end game is actually that the game just isnt difficult at all. You fly through the content quickly with no options to make anything harder. Only the nightfall and raid is tough
 
Mikey Jr.

Mikey Jr.

Member
jviggy43 said:
Datto on End game problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g24i44UlW0A
Click to expand...

I put over a 100 hours into Destiny 2. I feel like I got my money's worth.

After Tuesday, I'll do the milestones, do the raid 1 more time, then I think I'll trade the game in.

I'll be at around 302 power level.

Nothing against the game. Had a really fun time. But yeah, there is nothing for me to really do anymore. I logged in today, dicked around for about an hour, then left. Tuesday feel like Destiny day. Trials is completely out of my league, and nightfall, from the 2 I've done, are not fun for me at all. I hate the time aspect to it. I really do despise it.

So yeah, will trade, get some decent trade credit, then buy it again for the next expansion probably.
 
vivftp

vivftp

Member
301 Titan looking to finish the last part of the raid and defeat
Calus

I've completed it 3 times so far.

PSN vivftp00
 
Q

quik killa

Member
So how many people have their clan rewards bugged? I've only received an engram for the clan XP milestone each week even though my clan has completed all four weekly engrams.
 
F

Foxxsoxx

Member
Mikey Jr. said:
I put over a 100 hours into Destiny 2. I feel like I got my money's worth.

After Tuesday, I'll do the milestones, do the raid 1 more time, then I think I'll trade the game in.

I'll be at around 302 power level.

Nothing against the game. Had a really fun time. But yeah, there is nothing for me to really do anymore. I logged in today, dicked around for about an hour, then left. Tuesday feel like Destiny day. Trials is completely out of my league, and nightfall, from the 2 I've done, are not fun for me at all. I hate the time aspect to it. I really do despise it.

So yeah, will trade, get some decent trade credit, then buy it again for the next expansion probably.
Click to expand...

Yeah, pretty much the same feeling here. Devoted my life to the game, and now I'm just thinking that maybe I'll get back into it when the DLCs hit. Was fun while it lasted I suppose.
 
J

jviggy43

Member
Mikey Jr. said:
I put over a 100 hours into Destiny 2. I feel like I got my money's worth.

After Tuesday, I'll do the milestones, do the raid 1 more time, then I think I'll trade the game in.

I'll be at around 302 power level.

Nothing against the game. Had a really fun time. But yeah, there is nothing for me to really do anymore. I logged in today, dicked around for about an hour, then left. Tuesday feel like Destiny day. Trials is completely out of my league, and nightfall, from the 2 I've done, are not fun for me at all. I hate the time aspect to it. I really do despise it.

So yeah, will trade, get some decent trade credit, then buy it again for the next expansion probably.
Click to expand...

I enjoyed it, its what I expected which is to say more destiny. I would have liked to see a sequel that really expanded on the foundation but it doesn't look like thats really happening here.Alas, there are a LOT of good games coming out soon. Cuphead and South Park should hold me over until the DLC is out. I probably wont jump back in until there is a raid or something (maybe if the first DLC is really worthwhile).
 
neoism

neoism

Member
thanks for the raid guys all 7 hours of it... sucks i had a damn headache from hell the whole time, still do 😭

still was fun.. 😎
 
R

Razzmatazzer

Member
finally went flawless, god damn... although funny thing happened, got our first win and i forgot to reset my card from the previous attempt. So I was mega nervous when we won 7 and we still had to get one more win for me, lol.
 
F

Flipyap

Member
catspit said:
They need to do something with strikes. Why play them when you can just do heroic public events.
Click to expand...
They need to go back to the drawing board with the entire loot system and their loot creation pipeline, because right now the only way they could realistically make Strikes seem "worthwhile" would be to nerf the rewards of every other activity.
There simply isn't enough loot in the game to allow for activities that drop even more gear than they currently do. Add Xur to the mix and you've got a game that allows you to complete the entire loot collection even if you play at a casual pace. There's really no room for rewarding repeatable activities in a game whose endgame progression is built around weekly lockouts.
 
N

Nightengale

Member
Flipyap said:
They need to go back to the drawing board with the entire loot system and their loot creation pipeline, because right now the only way they could realistically make Strikes seem "worthwhile" would be to nerf the rewards of every other activity.
There simply isn't enough loot in the game to allow for activities that drop even more gear than they currently do. Add Xur to the mix and you've got a game that allows you to complete the entire loot collection even if you play at a casual pace. There's really no room for rewarding repeatable activities in a game whose endgame progression is built around weekly lockouts.
Click to expand...

Dunno if making vanguard rewards ( Zavala and Ikora ) scale to only 1-2 level below your current level works or not.

Basically making strikes the go-to place for infusion material
 
A

atpbx

Member
Jest Chillin said:
Somehow your quote grabbed the wrong name lol.

That's not how they balanced, though I can understand how it may have seemed that way given how creative DeeJ words his statements. Overwhelming popularity just put a spotlight on weapons, after which they looked at the data.

Believe me, I understand how the cycle of shifting meta's left a bad taste in people's mouths. However, given that the way the weapons were built this time around specifically allows for more flexibility in balance passes, I take the stance of benefit of the doubt rather than skepticism and resistance to change.

The way things ended up being balanced in the back half of D1 was specifically due to the fact that they couldn't nerf OR buff without things getting out of hand due to how the weapons were developed. They've said they changed that this time around though. So I'd like to see how balance passes work out.

Separating PvP from PvE would be the easiest way to deal with balance from the perspective of players who favor one type of gameplay or the other, sure. Bungie wants consistency across both modes though and as someone who plays both modes, I agree with that philosophy.

Where I'm coming from is a position where I'd like to see balance in both modes. I want reasonable challenge (NF this week needs to be adjusted down in the future), no cheese/op stuff (Titan pulse arc nades needs adjusted down), and an even playing field in regards to weapons in PvP (Mida loses HCR and multi-shot sidearms get a look).
Click to expand...

Now, here we have a thing.

Last weeks nightfall was a lot, lot harder than this weeks.

I did this weeks with two fandoms from Reddit, first time, with four minutes left.

Last week it took me five attempts to even get to the boss room with enough time to get him to the third phase.

When it comes to balancing they absolutely have to balance PvP and PvE separately, OR have cruicible specific weapons which would be a lot easier than the constant breaking, fixing and breaking weapons that was a permanent fixture in D1, and which was almost always done with ham fisted incompetence.
Take the Pocket infinity, a weapon that took a fair bit of effort to get, and was reasonably effective in the cruicible, they hit it with a whole boat load of nerfs at once in the something like the second patch, nerfing fire rate, charge time, damage per shot, ammo capacity etc rendering it entirely useless in both modes for the rest of the life of the game.
Vex Mythoclast was reasonably effective for an average player, deadly in the hands of a good one, because it wasn't handed out on a plate to scrubs, range, ammo and damage nerfed all at once, ruining it for a year+
Auto rifles nerfed into the ground to almost complete uselessness during an early patch and left for 8 months, broke in both modes.

Then all of a sudden they decided they COULD change things separately in PvP and PvE, because they changed how shotguns and the Thorn worked, for one patch, and then decided that was too much work and pretty much forgot they could do it after that.
 
G

GhaleonEB

Member
Jest Chillin said:
Separating PvP from PvE would be the easiest way to deal with balance from the perspective of players who favor one type of gameplay or the other, sure. Bungie wants consistency across both modes though and as someone who plays both modes, I agree with that philosophy.

Where I'm coming from is a position where I'd like to see balance in both modes. I want reasonable challenge (NF this week needs to be adjusted down in the future), no cheese/op stuff (Titan pulse arc nades needs adjusted down), and an even playing field in regards to weapons in PvP (Mida loses HCR and multi-shot sidearms get a look).
Click to expand...

By a pretty wide margin, the most fun I ever had with Destiny 1 was the House of Wolves --> TTK era. And a big part of the reason was, they buffed shotguns in PvE, and left them alone in PvP. It instantly changed how I played, and I had multiple builds around it, taking on different roles in things like Skolas in PoE and Nightfalls. There was an abundance of great weapons to cycle through and I had 5-6 in each slot that I loved using.

Then they reversed that philosophy, and IMO began slowly killing the PvE game. Literally, every weapon I liked using was nerfed into oblivion for the sake of PvP. Even Truth, which went unmolested for two years eventually got whacked, from three in the tube down to one, because it became a popular rocket launcher in PvP. Because all the others had been beaten to death or left behind, along with the 'Horn. That's actually a perfect example of the whack-a-mole approach to balancing, where a weapon that was not an issue for literally two years, suddenly needs one of its main perks excised because everything else around it was punched down. Truth, MIDA, and the class of mid-range sniper rifles were my last, main PvE loadout. And the all got severely nerfed. I took two 6-7 month breaks from Destiny, both 100% because they gutted the PvE game for the sake of Crucible.

Without hyperbole, I think they sapped most of the fun out of PvE by the end. After the big spring update post-TTK, I played just a couple of times before setting it aside until RoI came out. And I had planned to keep playing. The sandbox was a wasteland.

So I vehemently disagree with a philosophy that results in a game that goes in that direction. It ruined Destiny 1, and it will kill this game too, despite how good the surrounding content is.
 
A

Acorn

Member
GhaleonEB said:
By a pretty wide margin, the most fun I ever had with Destiny 1 was the House of Wolves --> TTK era. And a big part of the reason was, they buffed shotguns in PvE, and left them alone in PvP. It instantly changed how I played, and I had multiple builds around it, taking on different roles in things like Skolas in PoE and Nightfalls. There was an abundance of great weapons to cycle through and I had 5-6 in each slot that I loved using.

Then they reversed that philosophy, and IMO began slowly killing the PvE game. Literally, every weapon I liked using was nerfed into oblivion for the sake of PvP. Even Truth, which went unmolested for two years eventually got whacked, from three in the tube down to one, because it became a popular rocket launcher in PvP. Because all the others had been beaten to death or left behind, along with the 'Horn. That's actually a perfect example of the whack-a-mole approach to balancing, where a weapon that was not an issue for literally two years, suddenly needs one of its main perks excised because everything else around it was punched down. (Truth, MIDA, and the class of mid-range sniper rifles were my last, main PvE loadout. And the all got severely nerfed. I took two 6-7 month breaks from Destiny, both 100% because they gutted the PvE game for the sake of Crucible.

Without hyperbole, I think they sapped most of the fun out of PvE by the end. After the big spring update post-TTK, I played just a couple of times before setting it aside until RoI came out. And I had planned to keep playing.

So I vehemently disagree with a philosophy that results in a game that goes in that direction. It ruined Destiny 1, and it will kill this game too, despite how good the surrounding content is.
Click to expand...
I don't understand their stubbornness with this shit. I remember me and everyone bitching about it from nearly day 1 of destiny. The whole "same gun regardless of mode" sounds good until you actually dig into the details of what it means, especially with their penchant for fucking over pve for pvpers.

I'd love to see stats on what is more played pve or their half assed pvp. We all know the answer so if anything fuck pvp Balance for pve if you must stick to this this dumbass policy.

Also fuck snipers and shotguns being heavies because of pvp, again they could seperate that shit.
 
T

traveler

Not Wario
It really doesn't make sense when other developers have so publicly learned the lesson over the past decade. I know Luke isn't in charge of tuning the balance directly and he was more raid oriented in his original role, but he's a huge fan of WoW- have they not seen Blizzard realize their mistake in keeping PvE/PvP balance? What is different about Destiny that it shouldn't be treated the same way? Elegance and consistency do not deserve this pedestal when so many other things have to be sacrificed to get them there.

I've been happy with a lot of their balance decisions over the years. Their nerfs have largely made sense and the buffs they did throw out didn't break the game- in the shotgun pve case, they made it more fun and made the risk/reward decisions more meaningful. But I will never get onboard with keeping pve and pvp balance identical. The two are just too different to justify that.
 
GraveRobberX

GraveRobberX

Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
Destiny Year 1 and Destiny 2 Week 3 tell you that a little bit of grind and tier walling could pay dividends to extend your content

I'm not saying go back and farm 400 Spinners to Rank up 1 gun you got in the Raid
Destiny Year 3 QoL changed the community mindset


They had many activities but they tiered them horribly

This week most should be hitting 290+, not be 305+
There's too much given away by Milestones, that smart players will squeeze the advantages

Like in this very thread, ever other page, we get how do I get past PL ### or I'm stuck @240+
Progression is there, the Grind to do it is there, but they don't tier the gear the right way to keep moving you along

Right now most efficient way is to PTE farm. Glimmer, Tokens, Loot, and chance at Legendary and Exotic Engram in ONE FUCKING ACTIVITY!

Could have shifted some stuff around and send things into different activities to make it viable

Why are Adventures not in different tiered versions.
Same for Lost Sectors. Give me Heroic and Prestige versions.

Hell of you could put timers in NF, give us challenges to do in those actions too.
Then at least you can spread out your Power Level and gains from many avenues, but keep players at leat in the 1% of the 1% going.

Should have been

Story, 20, 200 PL
PTE and Adventures/Lost Sector, 240 PL, still in Rare territory
Heroic PTE and Adventures/Lost Sector, 260 PL
Tokens/Packages, 270 PL
Prestige Adventures/Lost Secrors 270-275 PL
Milestones, 285-290 PL
Nightfall, +3 Current Max PL (1 Weapon and Armor, no Zavala Package)
Raid 285-300 PL
Nightfall Prestige, +2 Current Max PL (Zavala gives you +5 Luminous Engram)
Exotic 305 PL


Now you can progress, things would take longer, but at least your building up to it
I mean people did alt of same guardian and abused the Exotic Quests to literally power level their power level, until Bungie stealth nerfed
 
M

MomoPufflet

Member
Looking for another player for the Rat King quest. I won't subject people to the Nightfall step this week if they're not up for it but I want to get the easy steps done.

Easy stuff is:

-3 patrols
-2 public events
-2 crucible matches

Should be pretty quick. Respond with gamertag if you need it / can help!

PSN: Appletz
 
T

tearsintherain

Member
Anyone else get the feeling that Calus is destroying people's desire to raid? I did an hour or so at him (after ~3 hours up to) and just have no desire to go back in. I look at the various LFG sites and its 90% 1 person looking for a group, very few groups looking for more people. Many of the posts have a sort of sad sack line in them, like "...spent 3 hours on Calus, really want to find a good group to kill him".
 
M

Mezoly

Member
I have googled some of my questions and couldn't find good answers.

I'm power level 266.

1. Does Power level Matters at trials of the nine? or is it like the Crucible ?
2. Do Exotic quests need multiple people? If so I have a friend who is in the low 200s, could we do them now and then do them again once he reaches 265 so that he get the weapons again at a higher level?
 
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