Destiny 2: Shadowkeep

[mythmonster2]

For those who haven't heard the news, Destiny 2 recently went free-to-play, since they finally got away from Activision, and they also just released a new expansion. I've only just finished the main story + the other DLCs, and I was wondering if anyone here had Shadowkeep and what their thoughts were. Now that I'm done with the main story, too, I was wondering what the main progression from here was: just strikes and raids?

[Geno9999]

*Transmats in, noticeably covered in moon dust* So the Moon's Haunted DLC is alright. Better than Curse of Osiris at the very least.

Spoiler: STORY SPOILERS

Show

Turns out, the Moon is haunted because of one (1) black pyramid ship that we've seen at the very end of Red War(Destiny 2's Main Story.) Eris Morn gets the BRILLIANT idea that we should go inside the thing, but first you need to cobble together an armor made of old spacesuits and rosary beads by beating up a bunch of Destiny 1 Nostalgia bosses. With the armor finished, you go inside the Black Pyramid and top off the nostalgia by doing a final boss rush of Ghaul, Fanatic, and Crota. Afterwards, you get mind****ed into the Black Garden(?) and meet yourself(?!?!?!)

I didn't go into this thinking it would be a big DLC, since I expected Destiny 3 was around the corner after the transition of the current console gen to the next. And despite me telling a very abridged version of the story, I really enjoyed my playthrough despite it lacking the depth of Forsaken because it really nailed that eldritch sci-fi horror story vibe.

With the past year of Forsaken + Season Pass (and CoS and Warmind for that matter,) I felt that the stories felt too self contained with their threads all tided up (except with Forsaken's Dreaming City, which is a giant dangling thread that I was very surprised with how little the following Seasons followed up on it beyond the weekly curse quest missions but they were hardly the focus of those seasons.) But with Shadowkeep, it feels like the story left a big "To Be Continued" at the end.

That being said, it's content is only partially released: the Raid (Garden of Salvation) and the bundled Season of Undying's Vex Offensive activity this weekend, and the Dungeon is released near the end of the month. And with Bungie talking like they're moving towards a more evolving and connected storyline, I'm excited not just how these activities play out but also it's story.

I wasn't too impressed with the Nightmare Hunts though, they strike me as... well, Strike minus any interesting mechanics in Strikes that break up the shooting action. Even the bosses at the end are all boringly just "Shoot Boss until he becomes immune, then clear all the ads, repeat until Boss is dead." Maybe the higher difficulties shakes things up, but I wouldn't hold my breath.



As for progression, it's just getting your average Light level to the soft cap of 900, then it opens up with getting Weekly Powerful Rewards to get yourself to Light level 950 (which is mostly doing Strikes, Crucible, and Gambit, along with the Flashpoint of the week.) After that, the only way to go even further beyond with your base Light Level to 960 is doing the new Raid or getting 100k points in Nightfalls.

[Spacewolf]

Coming in as someone who has never played destiny. My experience has been pretty fun my main issue is that the introduction for new players to the world is awful. It's basically spawn, get a weapon get shown the very basics. (No explanation of light orbs or anything about who you're fighting and for some reason my way out if the zone was blocked by a giant spider tank that infinitely re spawned that the game never acknowledged as existing.) Then you get tossed into the tower where it's talk to this person now talk to this person now good luck. Fortunately I looked up how to start the old story campaigns and now I've done afew strikes so it's falling into place.

But they really do need something to guide new players better. Even the tutorial tips you do get are annoying. "Oh you've finished a bounty well let me take up the entire bottom tenth of your screen until you accept it. Even if you're in the middle of a fight."

[The_Jackal]

Coming in as someone who has never played destiny. My experience has been pretty fun my main issue is that the introduction for new players to the world is awful. It's basically spawn, get a weapon get shown the very basics. (No explanation of light orbs or anything about who you're fighting and for some reason my way out if the zone was blocked by a giant spider tank that infinitely re spawned that the game never acknowledged as existing.) Then you get tossed into the tower where it's talk to this person now talk to this person now good luck. Fortunately I looked up how to start the old story campaigns and now I've done afew strikes so it's falling into place.

But they really do need something to guide new players better. Even the tutorial tips you do get are annoying. "Oh you've finished a bounty well let me take up the entire bottom tenth of your screen until you accept it. Even if you're in the middle of a fight."

Yes, clearly the F2P intro is perfunctory, but then again, is there a tutorial level in Fortnite when you jump into the game? I feel like the mandatory 'tutorial level' is getting somewhat tired, given that the FPS genre is pushing 40. Plus, every time Bungie has put effort into single player story content, it's been pretty negatively received, overall. I'd just assume they put their money into content with replay valuue. Old-school arcade games managed to be fun without a tutorial, and they cost you $0.25 per play to learn.

[Spacewolf]

Yes, clearly the F2P intro is perfunctory, but then again, is there a tutorial level in Fortnite when you jump into the game? I feel like the mandatory 'tutorial level' is getting somewhat tired, given that the FPS genre is pushing 40. Plus, every time Bungie has put effort into single player story content, it's been pretty negatively received, overall. I'd just assume they put their money into content with replay valuue. Old-school arcade games managed to be fun without a tutorial, and they cost you $0.25 per play to learn.

A Tutorial would be more long the lines of, here is how you activate the story missions, here is how you actually go to destinations, here is what all the words we're going to throw at you mean i.e. Bounties, Lost Sectors, stuff like that. Plus what your subclasses are and what they actually do.

Basically yea they can rip out the entire Tutorial they do have and I would know pretty much as much as I did after completing it since it only teaches stuff that's obvious. Meanwhile it ignores the actual confusing stuff in this sort of game.

[Geno9999]

I've started playing since last year, around this time actually, and I felt Red War campaign was an alright tutorial for the game overall. Although that kind of went in the opposite direction in that it really didn't open up or explain what the endgame was until well after you've finished the campaign, and even then you're sometimes not done unlocking all of your subclasses and you'd still needed to grind out your gear a bit before doing the other campaigns.

And then you would be grinding for QUITE a while more before you could do the Forges, Reckoning, or the Menagerie, because the Year 2 Season Pass more or less assumed that you've bought Forsaken and beat it all the way through to unlock Dreaming City and had reached the power cap. (Though for the latter two they did give you a effectively a level boost (assuming you started playing mid-season or grinding out the other classes) through a set of bounties and even just outright handing over a set of blues for the latter.)

Which is kind of why I have mixed feelings about leveling the playing field to set everyone, whether they played since it launched on Battle.net or since it moved to Steam. Because on one hand, I don't think throwing new players into the deep end with all the end game all at once is a good idea for keeping them around, but on the other, I wouldn't wish anyone to suffer the utter grinding nonsense that was pre-Shadowkeep Black Armory Forges.

[The_Jackal]

Which is kind of why I have mixed feelings about leveling the playing field to set everyone, whether they played since it launched on Battle.net or since it moved to Steam. Because on one hand, I don't think throwing new players into the deep end with all the end game all at once is a good idea for keeping them around, but on the other, I wouldn't wish anyone to suffer the utter grinding nonsense that was pre-Shadowkeep Black Armory Forges.

I definitely don't have mixed feeling about truncating old content. You are, in effect, reducing the entertainment value of the title. Imagine if I sold you a vacation package, and told you, that to get the most value, your trip would take you from your local airport to and back home in an hour and a half? Well, that's the mindset of the 'level up instantly' crowd: The only objective is to push a quickly as possible through the content so that you arrive at the final scrap of content in the game, at which point you're ready to play something else, because there's nothing left to do.