Destiny 2

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

Bear in mind that this was the last Faction Rally of what they are calling ‘Season 1’, and Season 2 will be replacing the rewards with new ones, both for Faction Rally and other sources like the Bright Engrams, because of course they will.

[Psyren]

Bear in mind that this was the last Faction Rally of what they are calling ‘Season 1’, and Season 2 will be replacing the rewards with new ones, both for Faction Rally and other sources like the Bright Engrams, because of course they will.

What they could think of doing is something like Diablo's seasons, where they voluntarily get people to reset their gear levels in exchange for completing challenges and cosmetic rewards. Puts the focus on the gameplay while removing the power creep.

But I'd say they need a lot more gear variety and playstyles before they could pull that off.

[The_Jackal]

What they could think of doing is something like Diablo's seasons, where they voluntarily get people to reset their gear levels in exchange for completing challenges and cosmetic rewards. Puts the focus on the gameplay while removing the power creep.

But I'd say they need a lot more gear variety and playstyles before they could pull that off.

Given how they've functionally capped power creep by making the power level basically a gating mechanism only, I'm not sure that there's really much benefit to be reaped by having people drop their power level. Once you hit 265, there's really no content you can't access, bar the raid, so what does lowering your power cap really accomplish? If you want to re-experience campaign missions, just meditate, if you want to go back to early EDZ, it's still there, and just as challenging as when you did it the first time.

My hope is that they offer new types of mods, and more gear with more perk choices, to really over more variety in lieu of straight power creep. With only 5 mod slots, there's really only so much meaningful power creep they can indulge in anyway. Coming up with some other perks to compete with the power perks of Explosive Payload and High Caliber rounds would be nice, for example.

[The_Jackal]

Well, me and the lads tried a Nightfall Strike, but we didn't pay any attention to the special mechanics, so we wound up faceplanting on the timer three times, and only read up on the scenario parameters later. Lesson learned. In the good news category, my three Guardians are now all over 280 power, so it's mod farming time, not that I'm in any danger of setting foot into the raid.

[Velaryon]

Honestly this is a feature to me, not a bug. I can log in, do all my weeklies/clear my milestone tracker, and then be ready to Nightfall or Raid with guildies later in the week without an interminable treadmill of grind in between. This gives me time to actually, you know, play other damn games, which is something that WoW never let me feel like I had time to do if I wanted to keep up.

I'm certainly glad that it isn't necessarily another huge time sink of a game, but when I can do all the advancement I'm able to do on my character in two hours, and then I'm not allowed any more progress for a week, that's pretty frustrating.

This I agree with. Particularly the fact that being well above the minimum gearscore doesn't seem to matter.

Indeed. Gear score seems to mean absolutely nothing other than functioning as a gating mechanism. Once you're over 280 and can go into the absurdly hard content, the only point in pushing up your numbers any higher seems to be doing it just to do it, or to have a head start if any of the DLC requires a higher score.

Join a clan (maybe Jackal's?) to handle the endgame stuff. But even if you don't, the beauty about Destiny is you're not paying a monthly fee to subsidize the folks who are raiding to see all of the game's content - your endpoint can be any time you feel you've gotten your money's worth (or decide you aren't likely to.)

My clan is my friends. Sadly there aren't enough of us to do the Leviathan Raid, but we have enough for a full fireteam for Nightfall strikes, on the rare occasion we can all play at the same time. Unfortunately the difficulty is insane and we can't seem to do it.

How did people make out in the Faction Rally? I have 3 toons, so I pledged for one each, but my main, my Warlock, was pledged for New Monarchy, so I got the sword, and that was the faction I had done the most turn-ins for. Apart from the armor and shaders, which I really like, I also really like a few of their weapons. Older Sister III is a great hand-cannon, I like energy weapons with armor piercing, makes dropping shields that much faster, and I like Maxim IX, the sniper with fast ADS and no reticle sway when you strafe.

Not well, in my case. I have three characters but I don't enjoy the Warlock, so he's sitting at level 9 and only midway through the story campaign. So really I only have two.

I pledged my Titan to Future War Cult because they have the coolest background fluff and I liked their items in the last game. Unfortunately, their shaders are hideous and the reward this time around was terrible (I forgot to look at it before making my pledge).

I pledged my Hunter to Dead Orbit since they won last time and I like their shaders more than New Monarchy.

On top of that, I didn't have 50K glimmer to buy the reward from New Monarchy. So I pretty much got nothing from this rally.

Yeah, I'll be pledging NM for my titan next time, I wanted to kit our my 'lock first.

Am I the only one who thinks the Hunter cloaks and helmets just look bad? I feel like the Hunter class got the short end of the stick, in more ways than one.

Helmet designs are a bit limited by how they insist on all hunter cloaks having hoods. I have a cloak that I like well enough, though there do seem to be fewer unique "looks" available for them than the other classes.

Other than in visual aesthetic, how else do you feel like Hunters got the short end of the stick? They're my favorite class.

[Psyren]

I'm certainly glad that it isn't necessarily another huge time sink of a game, but when I can do all the advancement I'm able to do on my character in two hours, and then I'm not allowed any more progress for a week, that's pretty frustrating.

Again though, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding why this is the case. Do you have no other games to play? If it's the gunplay itself you enjoy, you can do that as much as you want.

Indeed. Gear score seems to mean absolutely nothing other than functioning as a gating mechanism. Once you're over 280 and can go into the absurdly hard content, the only point in pushing up your numbers any higher seems to be doing it just to do it, or to have a head start if any of the DLC requires a higher score.

My hope is that this is a symptom of their pre-xpac doldrums, and that future progression will be a little more noticeable.

It's a safe bet though that the xpac content will render the current Nightfall and Raid rewards obsolete.

My clan is my friends. Sadly there aren't enough of us to do the Leviathan Raid, but we have enough for a full fireteam for Nightfall strikes, on the rare occasion we can all play at the same time. Unfortunately the difficulty is insane and we can't seem to do it.

Yeah, it seems to be a crapshoot difficulty-wise depending on the mutators that week.

On top of that, I didn't have 50K glimmer to buy the reward from New Monarchy. So I pretty much got nothing from this rally.

That's the other thing you could work on - I myself am literally capped on Glimmer due to all the patrol rewards and such.

[Legoshrimp]

That's the other thing you could work on - I myself am literally capped on Glimmer due to all the patrol rewards and such.

You can buy mods before you hit 280, you just can't combine them.

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

My hope is that this is a symptom of their pre-xpac doldrums, and that future progression will be a little more noticeable.

It's a safe bet though that the xpac content will render the current Nightfall and Raid rewards obsolete.

First expansion is adding, after the new story content and play space and whatnot, exactly two strikes and a new 'Raid Lair' activity, a smaller, less complicated activity set in a different section of the Leviathan. The current raid will be boosted to Level 25 and higher power levels to match players getting to 335. The Leviathan menu will include the first raid, the raid lair, and a spot waiting for a second raid lair for the second expansion.

Chances are there will be a new armour set, maybe weapons, from the Raid Lair and the same reward system from the Nightfall, just boosted to the new levels (and probably inaccessible until you reach the new level 25, and only if you own the DLC). The infusion system will mean if you like your current Raid gear you just keep it fed.

A Heroic Strikes playlist is coming, bringing higher difficulty (but not Nightfall difficulty) match made strikes as well. It might possibly also have modifiers on the strikes, like the Nightfall but generally not time based, like Heroic Strikes had in Destiny 1.

[The_Jackal]

It's a safe bet though that the xpac content will render the current Nightfall and Raid rewards obsolete.

I wouldn't bet on that. I think they'll just keep letting you get a weekly nightfall run, and increase the range of possible strikes that it will be.

That's the other thing you could work on - I myself am literally capped on Glimmer due to all the patrol rewards and such.

I can't count the number of times I've capped out on Glimmer.

On top of that, I didn't have 50K glimmer to buy the reward from New Monarchy. So I pretty much got nothing from this rally.

Make 3 toons, and pledge one to each faction. That way, you're guaranteed to win one item. You can still hit the faction whose gear you want hardest, all it takes is a strike to pledge your faction of choice.

Helmet designs are a bit limited by how they insist on all hunter cloaks having hoods. I have a cloak that I like well enough, though there do seem to be fewer unique "looks" available for them than the other classes.

You should try selecting from a range of Titan butt-towels. I got lucky on my Hunter. Celestial Nighthawk both looks fantastic, and has a great perk that I really enjoy.

Other than in visual aesthetic, how else do you feel like Hunters got the short end of the stick? They're my favorite class.

I think lots of folks underrate the Hunter's mobility. Being able to always get position and control range is hugely helpful. I like them alot too. The only thing I think the hunter has that's a bit meh is their dodge. It's kind of underwhelming. Out of curiosity, what cloak do you like the look of? I really haven't found any that appeal to me.

[The_Jackal]

First expansion is adding, after the new story content and play space and whatnot, exactly two strikes and a new 'Raid Lair' activity, a smaller, less complicated activity set in a different section of the Leviathan. The current raid will be boosted to Level 25 and higher power levels to match players getting to 335. The Leviathan menu will include the first raid, the raid lair, and a spot waiting for a second raid lair for the second expansion.

Going from 7 strikes to 9, with a more challenging mode is far from a bad thing. Will there be any new abilities unlocked with the increse in level cap? Because it seems to me like level really has almost no bearing on your effectiveness, apart from gating certain ability unlocks.

Chances are there will be a new armour set, maybe weapons, from the Raid Lair and the same reward system from the Nightfall, just boosted to the new levels (and probably inaccessible until you reach the new level 25, and only if you own the DLC). The infusion system will mean if you like your current Raid gear you just keep it fed.

I really hope they add more armor and weapon sets, and new mods and weapon perks.

A Heroic Strikes playlist is coming, bringing higher difficulty (but not Nightfall difficulty) match made strikes as well. It might possibly also have modifiers on the strikes, like the Nightfall but generally not time based, like Heroic Strikes had in Destiny 1.

All sounds good to me. Any hope of a new outdoor planet/zone or some new group events, lost sectors, etc.?

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

Oh my yes. We are going to Mercury, to the Infinite Forest, a forest of Vex spires inside the hollowed our insides of Mercury wherein the Vex are simulating alternate timelines. Each spire apparently contains a patrol space, some in a Dark Future, some pre-Collapse when Mercury was a garden world, some alternate presents, linked by the hub of Real Destiny Mercury and the Lighthouse. You’ll unlock more of Mercury and the timelines by completing the world’s Adventures, which is neat.

Historically expansions have also repurposed older activity spaces, like missions that start in the last zone of a strike and head back for the new scenario. (I think I’m explaining that right. Like starting where you fought Savathun’s Song and fighting, say, Fallen back up to the surface, for a theoretical D2 example)

I don’t know if there will be new abilities to unlock. Destiny 1 didn’t have any new ones, until the third subclass came in DLC 3.

[The_Jackal]

Okay, is it just me, or is the Destiny 2 community the most whiney, entitled bunch of otaku who ever walked the Earth? If you're not aware, there was some amount of controversy when it was discovered that there was a discrepancy between the amount of XP the game said you've earned and how much you were actually collecting toward your next Bright Engram.

Now this seems to me to be the most asinine thing to get upset over you could possibly select, especially if you have any familiarity at all with the MMO genre. So the upshot is that they've capped the amount of XP you can gain per hour, and apparently if you're too efficient at farming XP, you'll run into the cap, and wind up getting less XP than your pop-up notifications might indicate.

Okay, so the popular outcry is, of course "You lied to me!!", without thinking about the alternatives of the throttling system. This one thing is true: One way or another, we will get a cap on the amount of progress that can be made per hour in the game. They can accomplish this in a number of ways: 1) They can reduce the amount of XP each event offers. 2) They can reduce the amount of events that occur. 3) They can cap the amount of XP to prevent the garden-variety minimaxing nutcase from wildly outstripping the general player population.

Maybe it's just my crazy talking, but I think option 3 (the current status quo) is actually the best option.

[Knaight]

3) They can cap the amount of XP to prevent the garden-variety minimaxing nutcase from wildly outstripping the general player population.

Maybe it's just my crazy talking, but I think option 3 (the current status quo) is actually the best option.

Option 3 is fine - the problem is with specific implementations, starting with how it would be nice if the actual amount of earned experience was displayed properly. This doesn't make a great deal of sense as a hidden system.

[chainer1216]

Okay, is it just me, or is the Destiny 2 community the most whiney, entitled bunch of otaku who ever walked the Earth? If you're not aware, there was some amount of controversy when it was discovered that there was a discrepancy between the amount of XP the game said you've earned and how much you were actually collecting toward your next Bright Engram.

Now this seems to me to be the most asinine thing to get upset over you could possibly select, especially if you have any familiarity at all with the MMO genre. So the upshot is that they've capped the amount of XP you can gain per hour, and apparently if you're too efficient at farming XP, you'll run into the cap, and wind up getting less XP than your pop-up notifications might indicate.

Okay, so the popular outcry is, of course "You lied to me!!", without thinking about the alternatives of the throttling system. This one thing is true: One way or another, we will get a cap on the amount of progress that can be made per hour in the game. They can accomplish this in a number of ways: 1) They can reduce the amount of XP each event offers. 2) They can reduce the amount of events that occur. 3) They can cap the amount of XP to prevent the garden-variety minimaxing nutcase from wildly outstripping the general player population.

Maybe it's just my crazy talking, but I think option 3 (the current status quo) is actually the best option.

You do realise the reason they cap the EXP and lied about it is to cause players to buy bright engrams with real money right?

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

Frankly the controversy would not even exist if Bungie had simply described their farming reduction xp cap system from the start. They hid it, they designed it to give false numbers, and they only said anything after curious people spent a lot of time to investigate it.

Like, seriously, if the xp count at the bottom of the screen had shown the correct values, if that third public event said 3000 xp after the first two said 6000, there would have only been a couple people complaining about it, and most would just ignore them. Because yeah, it makes sense.

[Psyren]

I don't mind them throttling XP for spamming the same activities. I do mind them obfuscating it. WoW figured this out over a decade ago - marketing matters, and reskinning a penalty system to look like a buff works. Call it a "bonus" for your first few publics in a day or hour or what have you, and then call the throttled amount "regular" and bam, no controversy.

But I couldn't care less about their crappy lootboxes - 90% of the shaders I found are gathering dust because I like how my guy looks already. No, my problems with the game run far deeper:

- Scaling shutoff: I understand they want the gunplay to trump the RPG systems under the hood, I'm even fine with that, but why is it that gearscore/power/light above a certain level does nothing? After a certain point (some say 265+, some say 280+, I'm not sure when) getting higher Light does nothing to your damage or toughness and content stays at the same difficulty forever. I don't want to overgear the content necessarily, but making it that much easier or faster to clear would at least be a reward for all the damn grinding.

- No clan chat: Seriously, what were they thinking? I can understand no general chat channels, as you give a bunch of randos megaphones and you'll be drowning in a cesspit of trolling, memes and politics in moments. But one of the joys of an MMO is just shooting the breeze with your guildmates - it makes that mutual treadmill you're all running on that much more tolerable . Yeah Discord and TeamSpeak exist, but it's just not the same as hopping on to do some dailies and seeing a lively greentext debate about the merits of waffles vs. pancakes, or someone who just finished Stranger Things 2 wanting to chat about it, or some guildie having problems with their SO and looking for advice or solace. In short, community. These days, aside from the folks who purposefully log in with me to grind out some tasks, everyone else in the world might as well be highly functional bots - bots that randomly burst into dance, anyway.

I'm really hoping Osiris changes some of this, otherwise I don't know that I'll still be around when xpac 2 finally hits. And given that EA is content to sweatily jog behind Activision's bandwagon, I'm willing to bet Anthem (shudder) will have all the same problems without innovating a micron.

[The_Jackal]

Frankly the controversy would not even exist if Bungie had simply described their farming reduction xp cap system from the start. They hid it, they designed it to give false numbers, and they only said anything after curious people spent a lot of time to investigate it.

Like, seriously, if the xp count at the bottom of the screen had shown the correct values, if that third public event said 3000 xp after the first two said 6000, there would have only been a couple people complaining about it, and most would just ignore them. Because yeah, it makes sense.

Look, nobody can be a more vitriolic critic of microtransactions and free-to-play dynamics than I am. But as these things go, D2's bright engrams hand out nothing that can be confused for buying power, or even vanity. Shaders, Sparrows, and Starships rain from the sky, and my biggest problem is throwing the damned things out, because there's no batch dismantle operation in the user-interface. Yes, obviously showing people that their XP gains were being reduced would have been far preferable, but I find it far simpler to attribute that to stupidity rather than malice.

But the larger point is that even with the throttle, spamming public events is wildy more lucrative than any other activity, so all the throttle is doing is limiting the rate at which the maniac grind posse exhausts all of the rewards they can expect to get. (more shaders! Yay!)

I don't mind them throttling XP for spamming the same activities. I do mind them obfuscating it. WoW figured this out over a decade ago - marketing matters, and reskinning a penalty system to look like a buff works. Call it a "bonus" for your first few publics in a day or hour or what have you, and then call the throttled amount "regular" and bam, no controversy.

Totally true. But again, this looks like naivete, not manipulation, at least to me.

But I couldn't care less about their crappy lootboxes - 90% of the shaders I found are gathering dust because I like how my guy looks already. No, my problems with the game run far deeper:

- Scaling shutoff: I understand they want the gunplay to trump the RPG systems under the hood, I'm even fine with that, but why is it that gearscore/power/light above a certain level does nothing? After a certain point (some say 265+, some say 280+, I'm not sure when) getting higher Light does nothing to your damage or toughness and content stays at the same difficulty forever. I don't want to overgear the content necessarily, but making it that much easier or faster to clear would at least be a reward for all the damn grinding.

That's so your gear doesn't let you trivialize content. WoW does exactly this in Legion, and they're back-porting it to all open-world content in the next expansion. It's GENIUS. It means that EDZ isn't a tumbleweed infested wasteland a few weeks after launch, like Northern Wilds and Everstar Grove were in Wildstar. Besides, with a good gun, you can already one-shot minion level enemies and two-shot lieutenants. How much more powerful do you really need to be? If you don't have a Nameless Midnight scout rifle, get one (you get a chance to get one from your first strike mission from Vuvuzela (Yes, I liked that joke. Shut up.)), it's fantastic.

I'm really trying to agree with you when I can, man, but I have to hold out on this one: Keeping the power creep from trivializing content is fantastic. I think the big problem is more that the open world progression halts at, like, level 18. So, you can qualify for everything but the raid in, like, a weekend.

- No clan chat: Seriously, what were they thinking? I can understand no general chat channels, as you give a bunch of randos megaphones and you'll be drowning in a cesspit of trolling, memes and politics in moments. But one of the joys of an MMO is just shooting the breeze with your guildmates - it makes that mutual treadmill you're all running on that much more tolerable . Yeah Discord and TeamSpeak exist, but it's just not the same as hopping on to do some dailies and seeing a lively greentext debate about the merits of waffles vs. pancakes, or someone who just finished Stranger Things 2 wanting to chat about it, or some guildie having problems with their SO and looking for advice or solace. In short, community. These days, aside from the folks who purposefully log in with me to grind out some tasks, everyone else in the world might as well be highly functional bots - bots that randomly burst into dance, anyway.

I'm with you 100% here. I get that they wanted to not give voice to Barrens' Chat, but blocking clanmates ability to talk to each other is just inane.

I'm really hoping Osiris changes some of this, otherwise I don't know that I'll still be around when xpac 2 finally hits. And given that EA is content to sweatily jog behind Activision's bandwagon, I'm willing to bet Anthem (shudder) will have all the same problems without innovating a micron.

My impression is that EA by and large succeeds by accident. They're nothing but a mindless publishing behemoth running around signing developers to make... whatever, and if something good like Titanfall or Dungeon Keeper makes it to shelf, they're happy, but so long as they can rely on selling Madden 2025, they don't care.

[Psyren]

That's so your gear doesn't let you trivialize content. WoW does exactly this in Legion, and they're back-porting it to all open-world content in the next expansion. It's GENIUS. It means that EDZ isn't a tumbleweed infested wasteland a few weeks after launch, like Northern Wilds and Everstar Grove were in Wildstar. Besides, with a good gun, you can already one-shot minion level enemies and two-shot lieutenants. How much more powerful do you really need to be? If you don't have a Nameless Midnight scout rifle, get one (you get a chance to get one from your first strike mission from Vuvuzela (Yes, I liked that joke. Shut up.)), it's fantastic.

I'm really trying to agree with you when I can, man, but I have to hold out on this one: Keeping the power creep from trivializing content is fantastic. I think the big problem is more that the open world progression halts at, like, level 18. So, you can qualify for everything but the raid in, like, a weekend.

Oh, I don't want to "trivialize" content either - by all means, hard cap my damage and toughness while I'm running around the EDZ so that I can't sleep through heroic publics (even though I kind of already am.) My problem though is that they're applying that same ceiling to the top-end content too. Currently, there is no difference between walking into a Nightfall with 265 Light or with 300, and that's a problem - the difficulty stays just as spiked as ever, and there is no tangible reward for weeks and weeks of grinding. Even a small increase in my damage or toughness could be the difference between a 5 minute+ clear for my Rat King or not, and the fact that my gear could make that difference is a strong incentive to keep making it incrementally better. And it's not like they have to worry about segregating their community into haves and have-nots by doing this either - I can all but guarantee Osiris is going to drop with 300+ blues and we'll all get put on a level playing field anyway. But in the meantime, no amount of dedication and singular focus on this game gives you an edge, so why shouldn't I go play something else the moment the low-hanging fruit (read: weekly luminous) is picked?

My impression is that EA by and large succeeds by accident. They're nothing but a mindless publishing behemoth running around signing developers to make... whatever, and if something good like Titanfall or Dungeon Keeper makes it to shelf, they're happy, but so long as they can rely on selling Madden 2025, they don't care.

Agreed here (and with the stuff I didn't quote.)

[The_Jackal]

Oh, I don't want to "trivialize" content either - by all means, hard cap my damage and toughness while I'm running around the EDZ so that I can't sleep through heroic publics (even though I kind of already am.) My problem though is that they're applying that same ceiling to the top-end content too. Currently, there is no difference between walking into a Nightfall with 265 Light or with 300, and that's a problem - the difficulty stays just as spiked as ever, and there is no tangible reward for weeks and weeks of grinding. Even a small increase in my damage or toughness could be the difference between a 5 minute+ clear for my Rat King or not, and the fact that my gear could make that difference is a strong incentive to keep making it incrementally better. And it's not like they have to worry about segregating their community into haves and have-nots by doing this either - I can all but guarantee Osiris is going to drop with 300+ blues and we'll all get put on a level playing field anyway. But in the meantime, no amount of dedication and singular focus on this game gives you an edge, so why shouldn't I go play something else the moment the low-hanging fruit (read: weekly luminous) is picked?

Yeah, this is a challenge, I'll agree. One one hand, I think easy victories are treacherous to hand out. What you wind up with is a situation in which people want there to be a new, more difficult mode, so why not just keep the Nightfall difficult throughout. On the other hand, I do agree with the notion that there should be a sense of progression once you REACH the Nightfall, and because you can cap out at 265 without ever setting foot in a Strike, I think it defuses the whole concept of progression.

If this week's Nightfall is any indication, the Nightfall is tuned not around DPS, but just around bypassing content, which isn't really that interesting a challenge.So long as you have one party member who can juke their way to the next spawn point, you don't need to fight most of the mobs in the place. That, too, is a questionable strategy.

But the core issue is that their progression system has made the most fun content (Strikes, imo) basically irrelevant. Yes, you CAN do them, but doing a one-zone juice cycle with patrols, public events, and the odd chest will reward you far more of the only real resource of any scarcity to speak of: Tokens.

What I think I'd like to see Bungie try out is a Diablo III style Rift system. Hopefully that's what the Infinite Forest setup winds up looking like. I don't want to see more roster-gated content, I want to get a system that rewards people for teaming up and tackling content that scales with them, and hopefully they can also add more armor, weapons, and mods. (Fixing the innate stats so that durability and mobility aren't quite do dumpster-tier would also be nice)

For me, the endgame is collecting armor sets, weapons, etc. Power (Light) is functionally meaningless.

[Velaryon]

With regard to hiding the reduced XP, I think that was a crummy move on Bungie's part and I don't see any real need for it either. Bright Engrams are largely pointless since they give nothing but cosmetics, so why even bother artificially slowing the rate at which people can earn them?

And if you find this community to be whiny, I can only assume you've never played any WWE games (though to be fair, 2K and THQ before them gave fans a LOT of valid reasons to complain).

I'm really trying to agree with you when I can, man, but I have to hold out on this one: Keeping the power creep from trivializing content is fantastic. I think the big problem is more that the open world progression halts at, like, level 18. So, you can qualify for everything but the raid in, like, a weekend.

I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, you don't want content becoming stupidly easy to where people with max gear are one-shotting everything. On the other hand, after like a week of playing the game, improving your gear score is about all that's left to do, so that number ought to actually mean something.

Oh, I don't want to "trivialize" content either - by all means, hard cap my damage and toughness while I'm running around the EDZ so that I can't sleep through heroic publics (even though I kind of already am.) My problem though is that they're applying that same ceiling to the top-end content too. Currently, there is no difference between walking into a Nightfall with 265 Light or with 300, and that's a problem - the difficulty stays just as spiked as ever, and there is no tangible reward for weeks and weeks of grinding. Even a small increase in my damage or toughness could be the difference between a 5 minute+ clear for my Rat King or not, and the fact that my gear could make that difference is a strong incentive to keep making it incrementally better. And it's not like they have to worry about segregating their community into haves and have-nots by doing this either - I can all but guarantee Osiris is going to drop with 300+ blues and we'll all get put on a level playing field anyway. But in the meantime, no amount of dedication and singular focus on this game gives you an edge, so why shouldn't I go play something else the moment the low-hanging fruit (read: weekly luminous) is picked?

Agreed here on all counts. Right now, there's a huge difficulty spike for Nightfall strikes, and I assume Leviathan raids as well (my clan only consists of RL friends and that's not going to change, so I can't play Leviathan raids unless they add matchmaking to pair us up with randoms). I literally can't even complete a Nightfall strike with a full party, so having the ability to increase my chances by improving my gear score would be a BIG plus for me. As it is now, I'm tempted to just put the game down entirely because I've reached the point where the two characters I care about are close to max, but there's nothing to be gained from grinding my way up from 301 to 305.

If this week's Nightfall is any indication, the Nightfall is tuned not around DPS, but just around bypassing content, which isn't really that interesting a challenge.So long as you have one party member who can juke their way to the next spawn point, you don't need to fight most of the mobs in the place. That, too, is a questionable strategy.

Honestly, this pisses me off quite a bit. Nightfall is built around skipping as many of the encounters as you can in order to run the mission at top speed. You literally cannot fight your way through everything with the amount of time provided. Last I checked, I thought I was buying a shooter game, so shouldn't I be able to clear the content by, I dunno, SHOOTING THINGS?

[The_Jackal]

Agreed here on all counts. Right now, there's a huge difficulty spike for Nightfall strikes, and I assume Leviathan raids as well (my clan only consists of RL friends and that's not going to change, so I can't play Leviathan raids unless they add matchmaking to pair us up with randoms). I literally can't even complete a Nightfall strike with a full party, so having the ability to increase my chances by improving my gear score would be a BIG plus for me. As it is now, I'm tempted to just put the game down entirely because I've reached the point where the two characters I care about are close to max, but there's nothing to be gained from grinding my way up from 301 to 305.

I don't know if you've got the collector impulse, but that's what's driving me, and it's actually a lot more interesting than just increasing the integer on your sheet. Getting different weapons with different perks are actually meaningful at various tiers of content, including PVP.

Honestly, this pisses me off quite a bit. Nightfall is built around skipping as many of the encounters as you can in order to run the mission at top speed. You literally cannot fight your way through everything with the amount of time provided. Last I checked, I thought I was buying a shooter game, so shouldn't I be able to clear the content by, I dunno, SHOOTING THINGS?

Well, that's fundamentally the problem with timed modes where the player is permitted to bypass trash. Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with a timer, but the timer should account for clearing, not just jogging through the map. I ran it with a couple of friends a few times, but we didn't do any skips, so we kept running out of time.

[spectralphoenix]

I feel the problem is the game needs something for the players to try to earn, and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly difficult. I'm pretty happy with my current set of weapons - MIDI scout rifle, Vigilance Wing pulse rifle, Antiope-D smg, and three Uriel's Gifts in orange, blueberry, and grape. Besides seeing the power number tick higher and maybe try to improve my PvP stats (that can only be seen on 3rd party websites anyway,) I'm not really sure what it is I'm supposed to do at this point.

[The_Jackal]

I feel the problem is the game needs something for the players to try to earn, and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly difficult. I'm pretty happy with my current set of weapons - MIDI scout rifle, Vigilance Wing pulse rifle, Antiope-D smg, and three Uriel's Gifts in orange, blueberry, and grape. Besides seeing the power number tick higher and maybe try to improve my PvP stats (that can only be seen on 3rd party websites anyway,) I'm not really sure what it is I'm supposed to do at this point.

Yeah, that does seem to be the predominant complaint from the community, that there's nothing meaningful to chase, though I'd argue that's more due to a dearth of content than a lack of incentives to repetition. There's only two fully fleshed-out zones (Nessus and EDZ), only 8 types of public events, and only five types of patrols, and only six strikes. There's Lost Sectors, which I quite like, but like everything else, little incentive to repeat them from a progression or collection standpoint.

I do think there's got to be some carrots to promote player engagement, and I'd really like to see something akin to Diablo III's rift system implemented. I'm also starting to think that maybe the infusion system is a bit of a mistake, as it makes it a bit too easy to just settle into your itemization of choice, and then park there. As you say, once you've got your preferred loadout, you're kind of done, everything else is just waiting for a similar class of item to infuse into it.

I do think there's something to more randomization in equipment and weapon traits, too, again, DIII style, something to shake up the 'mida/nameless midnight' doldrums.

[Psyren]

For me, the endgame is collecting armor sets, weapons, etc. Power (Light) is functionally meaningless.

Agreed, I'm fine with hunting exotics and sets as the endgame. But Diablo did that better too - you're not just dependent on random drops to get them, there's also that cube recipe that lets you generate some randomly, and of course some (hissss!!!) can be crafted to get you started. I definitely don't want a crafting system in this game, but some other means to get them besides "do activity, hope for engram, hope engram is yellow" or "complete excruciating quest chain for this specific yellow" would be nice. Making that consumable that increases your drop rate / XP haul an occasional reward from doing community stuff like publics, strikes, and patrols (and yes, PvP) would be a nice start, and letting the buff persist through login sessions would be great too.

And of course in Diablo, the main thing is that harder content gives you better loot. In Destiny, you'll get a bonus for doing the Nightfall once, but after that, it gives pretty much the same loot as every other activity.

With regard to hiding the reduced XP, I think that was a crummy move on Bungie's part and I don't see any real need for it either. Bright Engrams are largely pointless since they give nothing but cosmetics, so why even bother artificially slowing the rate at which people can earn them?

They're not just cosmetic though, that's part of why people are so upset. That consumable I mentioned above, the one that helps you farm exotics more effectively, costs Bright Dust - which you currently can only get from those engrams (or dismantling their contents.) They contain mods too, so if the ones from the weapon guy suck, your engrams might contain a better one, or at least give you more mod parts to gamble on a better one.

Well, that's fundamentally the problem with timed modes where the player is permitted to bypass trash. Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with a timer, but the timer should account for clearing, not just jogging through the map. I ran it with a couple of friends a few times, but we didn't do any skips, so we kept running out of time.

Diablo did this better too. There's a timer, but killing stuff gives you more timer. There is a Nightfall mutator that does this, but the amount it gives you for each kill is so badly undertuned that you're forced to skip trash (and especially elites) anyway. In Diablo, skipping elites dooms you to failure, even in the modes where they don't drop loot.

In fact, in Diablo, not only do individual enemies give you timer, killing a bunch at once or in rapid succession gives you more, rewarding your skill. Imagine if D2 did the same with killstreaks, suddenly everyone would be practicing to land those headshots much more regularly, or getting better at aiming their grenades. People would be completing Nightfalls the logical way (murdering all the things) and having way more fun doing it. It's win-win.

[The_Jackal]

Agreed, I'm fine with hunting exotics and sets as the endgame. But Diablo did that better too - you're not just dependent on random drops to get them, there's also that cube recipe that lets you generate some randomly, and of course some (hissss!!!) can be crafted to get you started. I definitely don't want a crafting system in this game, but some other means to get them besides "do activity, hope for engram, hope engram is yellow" or "complete excruciating quest chain for this specific yellow" would be nice. Making that consumable that increases your drop rate / XP haul an occasional reward from doing community stuff like publics, strikes, and patrols (and yes, PvP) would be a nice start, and letting the buff persist through login sessions would be great too.

Agreed. Crafting is fundamentally chore wars, except that your apartment doesn't get cleaned and your laundry doesn't get done. Extrinsic incentives should be there to drive players toward intrinsically rewarding activities, ie: Gameplay, something I've been consistent about for ages. Yes, I think it's fair to say that DIII has a more robust endgame plan than Destiny 2 altogether, however, I love the Destiny 2 gameplay SO much more. I also think they need to leverage more art assets. They needn't be mechanically distinct, even, just offer different cool looking and cool sounding gear.

And of course in Diablo, the main thing is that harder content gives you better loot. In Destiny, you'll get a bonus for doing the Nightfall once, but after that, it gives pretty much the same loot as every other activity.

Well, yes. I'm not really wild about the time gates either. Clearly, Diablo III's endgame is based on infinite progression, and I'd hope that Bungie catches on and figures out how to deliver that as well. Are set bonuses a thing we'd like to see? Worth considering.

They're not just cosmetic though, that's part of why people are so upset. That consumable I mentioned above, the one that helps you farm exotics more effectively, costs Bright Dust - which you currently can only get from those engrams (or dismantling their contents.) They contain mods too, so if the ones from the weapon guy suck, your engrams might contain a better one, or at least give you more mod parts to gamble on a better one.

If they're not cosmetic, they're certainly trivial. Blue mods and 7% faster sparrows aren't exactly breaking the meta-game here. For the drop rate buff, do we even have any idea how much the drop rate is improved? I've never used one, and I'm already pushing 300 on all three of my Guardians.

Diablo did this better too. There's a timer, but killing stuff gives you more timer. There is a Nightfall mutator that does this, but to he amount it gives you for each kill is so badly undertuned that you're forced to skip trash (and especially elites) anyway. In Diablo, skipping elites dooms you to failure, even in the modes where they don't drop loot.

Once again, Blizzard proves they understand what they're doing on a higher level than their competition. That's not to say that DIII is perfect, but they clearly have their engagement incentives much more well-thought out than Bungie.

In fact, in Diablo, not only do individual enemies give you timer, killing a bunch at once or in rapid succession gives you more, rewarding your skill. Imagine if D2 did the same with killstreaks, suddenly everyone would be practicing to land those headshots much more regularly, or getting better at aiming their grenades. People would be completing Nightfalls the logical way (murdering all the things) and having way more fun doing it. It's win-win.

Well, rewarding certain builds, which is one of my minor gripes with D3. That said, I'm 100% on board with rewarding players for surmounting mechanical challenges.

[The_Jackal]

A very encouraging post from the developers on the Bungie site. That's as good of a nostra culpa as I could ask for, and certainly offers a glimpse of a better future for the game. With any luck, it will hush up the gripe police. We'll see.

[Psyren]

If they're not cosmetic, they're certainly trivial. Blue mods and 7% faster sparrows aren't exactly breaking the meta-game here. For the drop rate buff, do we even have any idea how much the drop rate is improved? I've never used one, and I'm already pushing 300 on all three of my Guardians.

It's not for gearscore though, it's for collecting all the yellows and sets. As we previously discussed, gearscore is irrelevant once you can get into all the content.

Are the BE mods blue only?

Once again, Blizzard proves they understand what they're doing on a higher level than their competition. That's not to say that DIII is perfect, but they clearly have their engagement incentives much more well-thought out than Bungie.

I dunno that I'd call them competition necessarily. Kotick buys that new yacht no matter which game splashes

Well, rewarding certain builds, which is one of my minor gripes with D3. That said, I'm 100% on board with rewarding players for surmounting mechanical challenges.

I think DIII did a good job of rewarding multiple playstyles. You can have the ones that are focused on devouring clumps of trash, and then you have the ones that want to ignore trash and assassinate elites, and then you have the ones that want to kill trash but only when elites are around. There are the ones that have to manage resources, and the ones that don't care but have to manage cooldowns, and so on. Destiny has the levers in place to reward all of these, but the wires aren't connected.

[The_Jackal]

It's not for gearscore though, it's for collecting all the yellows and sets. As we previously discussed, gearscore is irrelevant once you can get into all the content.

Sure, but then you're talking about weapon skins, which, again, isn't buying power. Hey, I agree, it's chapped, I hate microtransactions, even for hats and such, but I'm not prepared to boycott a good game over something that innocuous.

Are the BE mods blue only?

I'm not sure, but since we've agreed that the difference between a blue and a purple mod is only adding 5 to a meaningless number, then I think we can call that one trivial.

I dunno that I'd call them competition necessarily. Kotick buys that new yacht no matter which game splashes

Sure, but that's like saying that whether you like Jay Z or Rhianna or Shakira, Live Nation is still gonna get their cut. At that level, those guys are all basically money men, they have little say on how the game turns out, except to demand that they get paid.

I think DIII did a good job of rewarding multiple playstyles. You can have the ones that are focused on devouring clumps of trash, and then you have the ones that want to ignore trash and assassinate elites, and then you have the ones that want to kill trash but only when elites are around. There are the ones that have to manage resources, and the ones that don't care but have to manage cooldowns, and so on. Destiny has the levers in place to reward all of these, but the wires aren't connected.

I think we had this throwdown in the DIII thread a while back, and I will say that their recent spate of changes has gone some way to address the build disparity problems I was complaining about at the time. Honestly, I haven't been back to check on how it turned out. As for Bungie, if they take the effort to tune weapon classes and perks (shave off the massive power of rocket launchers, beef up snipers, tune some of the less than amazing perks), and add some more variety, I'll be satisfied. I will say that much of the communities complaints seem to be based on a rather reductive mindset: "High Caliber or Explosive or it's garbage" seems to be the word of the day, and I'm not quite sure if that's true. I busted out the Forward Path I got from Iron Banner, and it's not too bad.

[Psyren]

Sure, but then you're talking about weapon skins, which, again, isn't buying power. Hey, I agree, it's chapped, I hate microtransactions, even for hats and such, but I'm not prepared to boycott a good game over something that innocuous.

Er, by "collecting yellows" I meant exotics. They're not cosmetic, they all have unique mechanical effects.

I'm not sure, but since we've agreed that the difference between a blue and a purple mod is only adding 5 to a meaningless number, then I think we can call that one trivial.

They matter because the purple ones give mod parts, which you can then use to gamble and min-max stats, or change your weapon elements (about the only meaningful way to change your Nightfall performance, depending on the mutator.) So these aren't cosmetic either...

Sure, but that's like saying that whether you like Jay Z or Rhianna or Shakira, Live Nation is still gonna get their cut. At that level, those guys are all basically money men, they have little say on how the game turns out, except to demand that they get paid.

That's exactly what I'm saying though In this analogy, Jay Z and Rihanna are performing the same concert venue. More tickets sold for everyone.

I think we had this throwdown in the DIII thread a while back, and I will say that their recent spate of changes has gone some way to address the build disparity problems I was complaining about at the time. Honestly, I haven't been back to check on how it turned out. As for Bungie, if they take the effort to tune weapon classes and perks (shave off the massive power of rocket launchers, beef up snipers, tune some of the less than amazing perks), and add some more variety, I'll be satisfied. I will say that much of the communities complaints seem to be based on a rather reductive mindset: "High Caliber or Explosive or it's garbage" seems to be the word of the day, and I'm not quite sure if that's true. I busted out the Forward Path I got from Iron Banner, and it's not too bad.

It's less the weapon diversity I was talking about and more the activities. I agree with you on the power weapons though.

[The_Jackal]

Er, by "collecting yellows" I meant exotics. They're not cosmetic, they all have unique mechanical effects.

Wait. I thought we were talking about stuff inside Bright Engrams. You need exotic engrams for that, or some missions, and you can't get those in the microtransaction dumpster.

They matter because the purple ones give mod parts, which you can then use to gamble and min-max stats, or change your weapon elements (about the only meaningful way to change your Nightfall performance, depending on the mutator.) So these aren't cosmetic either...

Sure, except a) I've got a stack of 40+ mod parts in my inventory because of just flushing my glitter and b) once you HAVE the mod you want in purple, all it does over the blue mod is increase your power level from 280 to 285. Too bad you already qualify for all content at 280. Nightfall qualifies at 245, so my presumption is that you're basically capped out once you hit 265, which you can get to without ever collecting a single powerful engram from your weekly milestones. As I say, basically meaningless.

That's exactly what I'm saying though In this analogy, Jay Z and Rihanna are performing the same concert venue. More tickets sold for everyone.

I still don't think that means you can conflate them as artists. There is a difference between Blizzard and Bungie, regardless of which faceless publicly traded company owns them.

It's less the weapon diversity I was talking about and more the activities. I agree with you on the power weapons though.

I guess I went there because those decisions (what kind of mobs you want to fight) are driven by your build in RoS. Or am I misunderstanding your meaning?