my review of this dlc.
They're definitely listening to the feedback. House of Wolves' cadence is much better than the shipping game, and the story missions are starting to feel more like classic Bungie.
Story Missions
- a lot more interesting this time, and a lot more logical progression instead of just "go here, now go here, over there now". Developer wise the 'training' is a lot more apparent. If people are jumping into Destiny now, they also get more direct training towards the Vault of Glass mechanics. lol at interrupting the Fallen raiding the Vault, I liked that moment. Making a story mission part of a Patrol after getting your sidearm was pretty clever as well. Much more cohesive.
Cadence
- Was running the story missions with a friend. We started on the one near the Forgotten Shores (sorry, can't recall mission name offhand, been a long day). As we progressed through the story, a wolf pack showed up and we were tackling that with pubbies. Then halfway through that, a public event with the mining nodes showed up, and we all ran over and completed at the same time. Once that was finished, we continued on with the story. That was pretty cool and a lot closer to their original pitch to the public about Destiny, about doing your thing and then suddenly interacting with the public and then going back to your own thing. Patrol areas feel alive now, and that's the cadence of activity I prefer. Practically every story mission run we did, we want into a Wolves or Public Event. I only wish the Blades of Crota still had a chance to show up to make it feel like factions are moving against each other, and make the world feel completely alive.
- misc
Was cool to see a Fallen speak. Also dat new music
- Developer feedback
From what I can tell they let people that haven't paid yet feel more of a taste of the DLC than with Crota, which gives people a better impression over the events and makes them more likely to actually want the DLC.
- Criticisms
Prison of Elders is the return to Firefight I've been wanting (and it just so happens we're almost to ODST re-releasing on the One WITHOUT Firefight
). However, I wish it was more fast paced. Having to return to the airlock and wait for the speech each time is great for story immersion, but if you're re-running this it's going to get annoying. speed up the wait time between waves kthnx.
Also, the Fallen announcer needs more lines. Get the actor back in and record some more, he repeats himself a lot.
The amount of materials is getting insane and there's not enough slots to manage them all. Bungie, please start using the Mission tab for the Story and Wanted bounties to free up our bounty slots for the other bounties. Right now the Mission tab is basically unused. Or give mats their own special category and slot (world mats, raid mats,etc) or just count them like marks/currency. It's getting to be a bit of work to deal with them.
Your ghost is completely silent again. To the point I almost jumped when he said something during a public event. I understand if this is a timing issue with bringing Dinklage in for lines, but if you get him in the studio again.. have him do some lines for Crota and HoW and patch those in.
I felt there could have been at least 3-4 more story missions for what was paid. Bungie is getting better at doing the story missions, so I want more of them. And then it feels like it's over as soon as you start. Next DLC should have twice the missions of this DLC for the 20$. Or start putting out like, a new story mission per month for free to everyone to advance the story along. -something-.
People should be able to get DLC1 and vanilla armor from the Vendors after they own the DLC. I don't know why they haven't fixed this yet, it's really annoying that the more money you pay for DLC, the less armor selection you have to buy. I know you getting a wider selection of RNG drops but... c'mon son.
neutral:
The new Fallen classes would be cool to see integrated into vanilla/crota DLC missions. I actually got surprised by the new sniper and suicide Shanks, would like to see them sprinkled throughout the game now.
extremely positive:
The new Ascending system for armor and guns should let us see a LOT more variety of max level armor on characters. Wanna be 34 and wear your Vault armor? sure. Mix and match armor from Vanilla/Crota/Wolves? Go right ahead. Old armor and weapons are no longer obsolete. However, people should be able to ascend ANY armor so they can go full custom, even if the armor has crap stats otherwise.
Salvage appears to be a permanent playlist now. THANK YOU.
get LFG functionality inside of Destiny and some small but regular free story additions and the like and Destiny could have enough content to make it near impossible to daily cycle it anymore without killing yourself. They're on the path now, they just need to execute on it firmly.
