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Destiny 2 |OT3| The Token King

Z

ZeoVGM

Banned
Kaiken said:
Just picked up Sweet Business. Going to try a new loadout on my Titan for Calus.

Kinetic - Sweet Business
Energy - Uriel's Gift
Power - Man of War

The old loadout:

Kinetic - Origin Story/Nameless Midnight
Energy - Coldheart
Power - Man of War

Sorely lacking in the Power department.
Click to expand...

Hm, my team all went with Coldhearts this week and melted Calus pretty well. Took two rounds.
 
S

Strider

Member
IMO all of these are good things:

- removal of rng on perks
- faster leveling process
- more prevelant loot drops
- clan engrams
- removal of leveling up weapons

Pretty much anything involving the removal of the leveling and loot grind was a good change to me. Destiny's core strength has always been getting your favorite loot and actually using it. My opinion will never change here.

But the endgame still feels pretty poor to me... and it has nothing to do with needing to chase anything. I actually enjoy having everything, hoarding materials, etc. in the games I play. The problem I have with Destiny 2's end game is that once you've done all the content, the actual core gameplay becomes extremely stale. Part of this is because. as mentioned by many people, the exotics are very tame. But more so for me it's due to the streamlined RPG mechanics.

IMO the streamlined subclass trees are a complete disaster. This is the one area I thought they should actually expand on from D1 and add more depth... But they made the skill trees as shallow as possible. There's nothing exciting here. There's no "builds" in D2. Everything feels the same... all the time.

Destiny 1 struggled with this some as well as it obviously wasn't super in-depth either... but at least you could do some fun and interesting things. Like equipping a Monte carlo and running the gunslinger perk that recharges throwing knife faster. You could have a build where you're just throwing knives all the time. Pretty damn fun occasionally.
Or I could stack speed on my armor and subclass tree and run through strikes at blazing fast speeds with my Nightstalker + Telesto.
The removal of stats from gear and the dumb downed subclasses with 0 customization remove any kind of fun variations of my character in D2. Those provided nice little twists that kept D1 feeling fresh... This is now gone.

They also completely botched the mod system as well. This could've been a game changer but instead they made the mods as uninteresting as possible. I wasn't shocked by the tame mods but I did at least expect Bungie to get the inventory/UI portion of the mod system down.... But it's just a mess there too.

Through more powerful exotic perks, more utilization of modifiers (and more of them in general), subclasses with more depth, and an expanded mod system this game could definitely provide what I'm looking for long term... But right now the game just lacks some personality and uniqueness to me.
 
V

Van Bur3n

Member
Damn, Xur brought the goodies this week. I unfortunately got Vigilance Wing earlier this week, but it's good to see it nonetheless. And some pretty legit Titan and Warlock helmets. Fucking blows Hunter's get a repeat of something that has already came before. It's sunbreakers all over again.
 
V

v1perz53

Member
So power level doesn't matter in Iron Banner anymore? And you get tokens for playing that you turn in for engrams?

Soooo... how is this different from just regular crucible, aside from being Control only and seemingly having some kind of stat tracking for "daily and weekly milestones"? I'm not complaining, it just seems like the entire point of Iron Banner (a week where your light level mattered for PvP and higher light gear dropped) is missing from the new system, unless the engrams drop higher than your max base power (which I kinda doubt will happen).

At least the armor sets look cool, def wanna collect those (please be restorative armor for my titan/hunter, tired of mobility stuff!)
 
V

void666

Banned
Razzmatazzer said:
I joined a group lastnight at Calus and one of the guys asked if we wanted to try the glitch. I said no, glitch probably takes longer to execute than the fight itself. So we went into the fight, beat calus on first try with 2 cycles. It was awesome, fastest/best random group I've joined on Calus so far.
Click to expand...

My team wanted to do the glitch. I rolled my eyes. Believe it or not i hate cheesing.
Thank god we did it the legit way. It was fast and surprisingly easy.
 
X

xxTHIN_WHITE_DUKExx

Member
Hawkian said:
I see this misguided logic applied often, look at all the people yelling, surely indicative of a massive failure! If they don't correct x, they'll be sorry, just look at all the people complaining about it.

I've yet to be convinced, in terms of launch design without really any knowledge of where the game will go, they made the wrong call.

In this industry, if your game has a playerbase of a certain size, any decision, even those that seem inconsequential (or universally positive) are going to be resented by some percentage of that playerbase. What's more is that the number of people resenting it isn't likely to appreciably change from event to event, just which subset of the total playerbase is upset by it. Sometimes this resentment is invisible, as when decisions are made that screw over the lowest common denominator, a player who does not and will not ever have a NeoGAF account nor post on a forum of any kind about videogames. Sometimes the resentment is mild, as when the decision is made that impacts the median player but does not impact the fringes. Sometimes the resentment is at a fever pitch, as when the decision primarily impacts the vocal minority at the far high end of the spectrum.

Any of these can be "an issue" of course, And live software development is ever an unwinnable game of triage and prioritization to try and fix things that are showstoppers, improve systems for the greatest number of users with the resources available, and add new things to an existing framework, all without breaking anything in the process. Sometimes you're more successful than others.

But for these games, failure is not contingent on any number of complaints. Failure is silence. History strongly indicates that those complaining the loudest also have a high likelihood of playing for another few hundred hours regardless. Meanwhile by design the game attempts to cater to people who may very well not be 100% happy with the product, but are also less likely to ever even experience the problems being described most vocally.

I can guarantee you for example that Bungie considers the posts about people hitting 265 and feeling roadblocked by poor conveyance of the path ahead to be a higher priority issue than the much more fervent and frequent posts by regulars about having "nothing to do." This was a soft cap they attempted to smooth over during initial progression with some success, but I would wager they are unhappy with anyone feeling frustrated at this point in the journey- especially because they simply may not know all of the avenues of progression available.

It makes both good business sense and design sense to prioritize that issue and its potential reappearance going forward- even if a lot of us at the high end of the spectrum never had that issue, rocketing easily past 265 in the first few days, and couldn't care less about it now. Probably many would consider it dumb to allocate any resources to it that could be spent improving things for the most devoted players of the game instead.

But that's a perspective problem and nothing more.

There's a very simple binary at play either: either you enjoy actually playing the game or you don't.
If you do, then your vertical progression is not the source of this enjoyment but merely the way you unlock all the options. It's just how you ensure that you can do whatever you want to do.
If you don't, but would be compelled to play anyway by the introduction of "more to do" in a checklist sense, that's a problem. It's not a failing of the game that it does not encourage people who aren't having fun to continue playing anyway.

The version of the game that simultaneously pleases all types of players in equal measure does not and cannot exist. I've talked about this exact thing so many times, for many different games. I can find big-ass posts I made from five years ago about the same topic, back when I actually enjoyed the arguments themselves. Now having seen exactly how cyclical it is it's just boring.

I don't care at all how casual or hardcore you are. What matters to me is whether or not you're having fun. That's the basis of every attempt I make to help others; it's fun for me, hopefully it makes things more fun for them. If you aren't having fun there is literally nothing for you here that would make this worthwhile and never will be.

For my part, it does feel a little weird to see some of the hand-wringing, since I'm around 150 hours and I'm not "done" even in the more traditional progression/stuff to do sense:

-In collection terms, I don't have all the exotic weapons, let alone all exotic armor pieces, let alone all of the legendary weapons I want that are currently in the game, let alone all legendary armor and weapons.
-I don't have the two fully optimized armor/mod sets I want on my main character, let alone my other 2
-Only two of my characters are at 305/base level 300
-I don't have 305 versions of many of the weapons and armor pieces I use regularly
-I haven't done all the Adventures
-I haven't done the Prestige Raid (obviously), which I am interested in for the challenge itself
-I would love to go Flawless in Trials, at least once

One interpretation might be that it is my own "fault" that I have played so much and haven't accomplished all/more of these things yet. I suppose that is fair. I could have played more efficiently and focused solely on the most completion/progression possible over time. But would I have enjoyed myself more under those circumstances? Or is it more likely I would simply have more to complain about right now?

Then there's the stuff I don't have to check off a list but keeps me playing anyway. I also generally enjoy the PvP and I'm better at it than I was in D1. I find rolling with a competent team very satisfying and I've always enjoyed Iron Banner, and vastly prefer the Control gametype in D2 to its D1 incarnation, so I'm excited. I am also looking forward to running weekly newbie raids which is its own challenge and reward. Even if playing with DGAF wasn't the most compelling reason to keep playing regardless of content for me- which it is- there's legitimately still plenty for me to do even as an "almost hardcore" player.

But therein lies the rub... Destiny 2 isn't the only game I play. There's a massive new GW2 expansion I've barely been able to sink my teeth into. Cuphead is fantastic and scratches a completely different itch than anything I've played recently. Nioh, which I scrambled to beat in advance of this coming out, has multiple DLCs I haven't touched including one that came out last goddamn week. Despite over 90 hours in Hyrule I still haven't beaten Ganon in BotW, And I heard there's some game coming out this month with a plumber in it or something, I think it's a new IP.

There's no reason that someone with the free time I have available should expect any single game to indefinitely hold my interest for both hours per session and months per year. Even if it could do a better job of it, there's no way I could be convinced that it would be better for Destiny 2 to occupy literally all of my gaming time. I don't want it to. I understand that many people feel differently, and for the moment all I can do is be happy that the game's intrinsic design favors my approach.

The people who benefit from making D2 the only game they play? I play all the time with husbands, wives, parents, people with jobs with whack schedules, people in timezones that put them at all offpeak hours. People who have a dedicated night or two to do some gaming and make it count. People who want to play more and have plenty to do, but can't. All of the progression/grind aspects of D1 that are gone had a tangible effect of making players like this feel like they would get rapidly left behind. I'm not the least bit sad to see them go. For me, bringing them back would really just make the game worse.

Do these changes mean that there is less to occupy the hours of the hardcore day-in and day-out? Of course. But if you aren't having fun it doesn't matter either way. Take a moment to really ask yourself whether or not you are and you should know what to do.
Click to expand...

Well said, two thumbs up. I appreciate the candor, and that is how I have been feeling for awhile now too.
 
M

MythicReclaimer

Member
v1perz53 said:
So power level doesn't matter in Iron Banner anymore? And you get tokens for playing that you turn in for engrams?

Soooo... how is this different from just regular crucible, aside from being Control only and seemingly having some kind of stat tracking for "daily and weekly milestones"? I'm not complaining, it just seems like the entire point of Iron Banner (a week where your light level mattered for PvP and higher light gear dropped) is missing from the new system, unless the engrams drop higher than your max base power (which I kinda doubt will happen).

At least the armor sets look cool, def wanna collect those (please be restorative armor for my titan/hunter, tired of mobility stuff!)
Click to expand...

This is how it is different from regular Crucible. You are playing for those armor sets.
 
T

Theorry

Member
Van Bur3n said:
Damn, Xur brought the goodies this week. I unfortunately got Vigilance Wing earlier this week, but it's good to see it nonetheless. And some pretty legit Titan and Warlock helmets. Fucking blows Hunter's get a repeat of something that has already came before. It's sunbreakers all over again.
Click to expand...

Xur sucks in D2 so far. Why isnt he selling mods, shaders etc? Now its only weapon and armor for some reason.
 
M

MythicReclaimer

Member
Theorry said:
Xur sucks in D2 so far. Why isnt he selling mods, shaders etc? Now its only weapon and armor for some reason.
Click to expand...

It's all about the Token and Bright Engram system. The Gunsmith is now the grindy RNG-based end-game component even though the mods are the one thing that should not be RNG-based.

I'm a big believer that the Token system was implemented way late in development replacing Legendary Shards as the central Economy/Currency system.
 
GraveRobberX

GraveRobberX

Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
commish said:
Is it confirmed that there are no weapons at all? Just armor?
Click to expand...

No datamine shows weapons

Bungie only showed off Armor

They would have at least showed "these weapons also available only through IB" during the blog post yesterday on TW@B

Funny we didn't even get that awesome Calendar like September, which could have been a nice thing
 
D

Deku Tree

Member
Here is what I think the Calendar is...

Prestige Raid Oct. 10
Iron Banner Oct. 10

Faction Wars Approx 1 month after first one.
Next Iron Banner Approx 1 month after the first one.

Repeat until DLC1.
 
V

v1perz53

Member
MythicReclaimer said:
This is how it is different from regular Crucible. You are playing for those armor sets.
Click to expand...

Too bad armor is intrinsically uninteresting in Destiny 2 because of the mod system. I still wish there was a system where I could choose to infuse either the stats OR the power level into armor, so that I could actually use cool armor with shitty stats without feeling gimped. Low recovery just feels so bad in Destiny 2. If the titan armor is resilience/mobility it may as well not exist.

Van Bur3n said:
Damn, Xur brought the goodies this week. I unfortunately got Vigilance Wing earlier this week, but it's good to see it nonetheless. And some pretty legit Titan and Warlock helmets. Fucking blows Hunter's get a repeat of something that has already came before. It's sunbreakers all over again.
Click to expand...

Hah yea I literally got a Vigilance Wing to drop last night. Nezarec's is pretty strong, basically exclusively better version of Eye of Another World but for Voidwalker only (well, it works for others but works way better for Voidwalker). Skullfort is ok, I've been a bit disappointed with it though since if you accidentally use your melee and don't kill something you lose both benefits (and it is pretty hard to use the shoulder charge after damaging an enemy) but it has its uses. Foetracer is a repeat, but at least it is in my opinion the best Hunter crucible exotic so it is nice to get it to more people.
 
S

Seth Enosh

Member
Kaiken said:
I wish.
Click to expand...
Isn’t the linear fusion rifle able to do equal damage to Calus as a cluster bomb rocket anyway? That’s the impression I got from datto’s video.

Although the rocket is nicer for spamming against adds if you’re in the throne room and and have ammo to spare.
 
GraveRobberX

GraveRobberX

Platinum Trophy: Learned to Shit While Upright Again.
Savathun Song still broken?

How is that Crystal part not fixed yet, come on...

5/6, cockblocks

Thought a stealth fix from all these maintenances would have sufficed

So stupid this is still hampering progressing in a Strike, it's not even NF version, I'm just running the Daily 3 strikes for fun, yet last 2 Songs, that glitch appears
 
G

GustyGardens

Banned
DrROBschiz said:
So whats the deal with WEAPONS

From how the weekly update reads it almost seems like the Prestige raid and Iron banner are only offering cosmetics and Armor

No new weapons at all?
Click to expand...

There are definitely weapons. They showed a few of them in some of the PvP trailers that came out before the game was released. Off the top of my head, I remember a sidearm and grenade launcher.

They're specifically Iron Banner because they all had the Iron Lords sigil on them.
 
K

Kaiken

Banned
Seth Enosh said:
Isn’t the linear fusion rifle able to do equal damage to Calus as a cluster bomb rocket anyway? That’s the impression I got from datto’s video.

Although the rocket is nicer for spamming against adds if you’re in the throne room and and have ammo to spare.
Click to expand...

I did see some videos where they spoke praise of actually using the linear fusion rifle. Need to start watching some Datto videos.
 
P

pantsmith

Member
I'm reminded of that post mortem on Cow Clicker, how in the absence of cows to click (the developer had them forcibly "raptured") players freaked out because they could no longer click their cows; the "clicking" intended as a transparent mockery of what he considered the abusive and shallow mechanics of other games unironically became a comfort to these players.

Anyway, farming 1,000 strike runs for a "god roll" is basically a mix of a slot machine and homework. Destiny 2 just outright giving you set weapons must seem like a joke to anyone who "earned" their jackpot weapon, but its honestly the way it should be. Thats hardly an endgame.

Could Destiny 2 use more variety? More options? More stuff to do? Put simply: yeah.

I think most importantly players need a bigger sandbox or playground to actually use their exotics and non-meta gear in. I think the endgame should be amassing a collection of gear, and the payoff should be the increased variety it enables. The current sandbox is either way too easy or way too punishing to reward experimentation.

How cool would a "roulette" strike playlist be, where you get random goofy modifiers like weapons stats getting reversed, being locked into SMGs or melee damage, or even a periodic "the floor is lava" game that encourages staying in the air longer. I can think of a handful of exotics that'd suddenly become very useful, not to mention fun to use.

But whats lacking right now is any incentive to use any of your off-meta exotics, or your less than stellar weapons. People are unhappy because they have all the best stuff, and none of the other stuff is useful. That, IMO, is what needs to be fixed: make the other stuff fun, and useful.
 
N

NowhereFaded

Member
What level do our classes have to be to play in the iron banner?
Are iron banner rewards class specific/ tied to class we are playing as when rewarded with IB gear??
 
G

GustyGardens

Banned
NowhereFaded said:
What level do our classes have to be to play in the iron banner?
Are iron banner rewards class specific/ tied to class we are playing as when rewarded with IB gear??
Click to expand...

You have to have completed the main campaign and be at level 20. Power level doesn't matter this time around. As for rewards, they're tied to your specific class. If you're a Warlock, you're never going to get Titan stuff.
 
N

NowhereFaded

Member
GustyGardens said:
You have to have completed the main campaign and be at level 20. Power level doesn't matter this time around. As for rewards, they're tied to your specific class. If you're a Warlock, you're never going to get Titan stuff.
Click to expand...
Fuck! That’s what i was afraid of. Will iron banner armor remain the same (aesthetically ) for the 1st year or does it change every IB? Thx
 
L

LTWood12

Member
mehrmantrout said:
Removing random rolls was also a huge mistake (imo), the problems with the drops came from the pool being diluted with shit perks, balancing and diabolical drop rates meaning it was a 1/1,000,000 chance of getting the god roll, I mean who wouldn't cream themselves if these dropped?

Cym4cK9WgAAIqDo.jpg
Click to expand...

Diabolical is putting it kindly. Not even including the odds of getting the thing to drop in general, assuming you got a drop you had a 0.08% chance of getting this roll. As cool as the gun is, the perk economy, mainly starting in year 2 took the wind out of the loot system for me. Even having 4 separate perks on raid/trials weapons sucked. The current weapon economy in D2 reminds me a lot of vanilla Destiny. Yes there were random rolls but the pool wasn't so diluted on each weapon; and many of the outright garbage perks didn't exist yet. If you got a Shadow Price, or a Devil You Know, more than likely it was gonna be a decent weapon.

On top of that, the community at large GRAVITATED to the static roll weapons in Destiny. The year one and three raid weapons are fantastic and you know what you're getting when you see the gun drop. You don't have to have the dread of wondering if whatever you just got dropped with exhumed. On top of that many of the most popular PVP weapons amongst the community were ones sold by a vendor with a static roll. Hawksaw, Palindrome, Clever Dragon, & the Vacancy to name a few. And the mother of all PvE weapons post year one, Hung Jury. Sure that gun has a perk pool, but when someone says Hung Jury you know they're saying Torch, Triple Tap, Ext Mag/Hand-Laid Stock, & Firefly.

I get wanting to chase something and there's nothing wrong with that. But hopefully you can see why some people would have tired of that model.
 
K

Kyne

Member
if we're just getting tokens as rewards can't we stock them up using multiple classes and use them wherever we want?
 
G

GustyGardens

Banned
NowhereFaded said:
Fuck! That’s what i was afraid of. Will iron banner armor remain the same (aesthetically ) for the 1st year or does it change every IB? Thx
Click to expand...

In Destiny 1 all of the vendor armor and weapons changed with every expansion or major update. That goes for Iron Banner, too. I'd imagine it's going to be the same in D2.
 
M

Matticers

Member
Every power weapon I get from a vendor via tokens is a damn sniper rifle. It's honestly ridiculous at this point. Occasionally I'll get a rare grenade launcher that I have absolutely zero interest in using.

Shotguns, rocket launchers and fusion rifles exist too, Bungie. I'd love to raise the light level of my Merciless and be able to use it without having my light level drop down because I have it equipped when it's like level 280. RNGesus hates me.
 
R

Ryouji Gunblade

Member
Matticers said:
Every power weapon I get from a vendor via tokens is a damn sniper rifle. It's honestly ridiculous at this point. Occasionally I'll get a rare grenade launcher that I have absolutely zero interest in using.

Shotguns, rocket launchers and fusion rifles exist too, Bungie. I'd love to raise the light level of my Merciless and be able to use it without having my light level drop down because I have it equipped when it's like level 280. RNGesus hates me.
Click to expand...
That's unfortunate, but still not as bad as my friend who never got the Pocket Infinity questline to drop. Ever.
 
G

GustyGardens

Banned
Kyne said:
if we're just getting tokens as rewards can't we stock them up using multiple classes and use them wherever we want?
Click to expand...

That seems likely. I wonder if they're strictly relying on engram to deliver rewards, if they'll have the occasional post-match IB gear drop.
 
O

owlbeak

Member
Just double-checking here, I still had 200+ Dead Orbit tokens from Faction Rally, I got everything but the arms but I hit the engram cap for that week and was only getting shaders. I am still only getting shaders this week when I turn the tokens in, so I assume you can't get gear drops any longer until the next faction rally? What a bummer. :(

Not a huge fan of the whole token system for everything. IB armor looks cool. I hope there are IB weapons, but seems like maybe there will not be any.
 
D

Deku Tree

Member
owlbeak said:
Just double-checking here, I still had 200+ Dead Orbit tokens from Faction Rally, I got everything but the arms but I hit the engram cap for that week and was only getting shaders. I am still only getting shaders this week when I turn the tokens in, so I assume you can't get gear drops any longer until the next faction rally? What a bummer. :(
Click to expand...

30 engram gear cap. After this week your tokens are also going to reset before the next faction rally.
 
N

Number45

Member
owlbeak said:
Just double-checking here, I still had 200+ Dead Orbit tokens from Faction Rally, I got everything but the arms but I hit the engram cap for that week and was only getting shaders. I am still only getting shaders this week when I turn the tokens in, so I assume you can't get gear drops any longer until the next faction rally? What a bummer. :(
Click to expand...
There's a hard limit of 30 engrams per faction (FWC is glitched), and any ran ups you earn after that point will be shaders only. This was true even before the event actually ended.
 
O

owlbeak

Member
Deku Tree said:
30 engram gear cap. After this week your tokens are also going to reset before the next faction rally.
Click to expand...
Oh really? I will dump them all and get shaders, then. Thanks!

Number45 said:
There's a hard limit of 30 engrams per faction (FWC is glitched), and any ran ups you earn after that point will be shaders only. This was true even before the event actually ended.
Click to expand...
Yes, I knew that. I just thought after the reset you'd be able to turn them in for gear engrams again. Obviously not. Shame I didn't get the whole armor set this time, but there's always next time.
 
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