I don't think the sky's fallen quite yet, let's see what the full details are maybe? Everyone seems to be assuming that artifact power will work just how it has but they've said multiple times that maybe it won't?
Edit: also people declare Destiny a dead game ruined by incompetent developers 11,000 times per minute and it's still here so ehhhhhhhh
Man idk the reveal trailer for Trials felt really sincere in that they wanted it to do good. They've changed course before when the backlash is big enough. I don't think it's as bad as people are making it out to be. Annoying, sure. Not the end of days at all.
I don't think the sky's fallen quite yet, let's see what the full details are maybe? Everyone seems to be assuming that artifact power will work just how it has but they've said multiple times that maybe it won't?
Edit: also people declare Destiny a dead game ruined by incompetent developers 11,000 times per minute and it's still here so ehhhhhhhh
To be fair I didn’t say it was dead. I said I hope it dies.
1. Light leveled enabled Trials has one redeeming factor (it means Legendary weapons that rotate out have a shelf-life and so you won't still see SpareBenders a year from now).
2. They really do seem to be going down the route of not making a D3, which still makes me sad for being unable to convince some of my RL folks to hop back in. If they were making a D3, they wouldn't need a rotation plan for Legendary weapons.
So yeah, I guess if their choice for rotating weapons out is to have it cap power level, then yeah, I'm glad that Trials has it. They could have done it differently, I suppose, but they didn't.
The Director's Cut digs into many of the topics we've been hashing out as of late, including FOMO, making Core Activities rewarding, and Weapon Design + Forced Obsolescence.
Some TLDRs:
1. Moving forward, legendary weapons will have a capped power level they can be infused to, so they're only relevant for 9-15 months. Not taking any away, still can be used in activities but won't be as powerful as new stuff
2. Too much FOMO, moving away from Seasonal activities like Sundial and adding more stuff to core activities like Crucible and Strikes, more effort into quests and questlines that will last a whole year
3. Faction Rallies not coming back, but the armors and some weapons are coming back to the loot pool next season
4. Bright Engrams can no longer be bought, still part of the season pass
5. Changing the intro experience for New Players this fall as it doesnt do enough to help, drastically underestimated the amount of new players that would join with New Light
6. Categorized quest tab yaaaaaay
I'm honestly not sure whether I'm happy or sad that they've already bailed on the seasonal activity thing.
On the one hand I liked there being a thing to do that I knew I could either engage with for the season or not and that it'd stop being a thing later. On the other hand, new strikes would be nice provided they don't suck...
I don't think they've entirely bailed on the seasonal activity thing, they are just re-evaluating how it's gonna work. Which is a good idea imo since I think a lot of people have already starting to get tired of the whole Menagerie/Vex Offensive/Sundial/etc thing. It was not sustainable from the perspective of keeping players interested.
I don't think the sky's fallen quite yet, let's see what the full details are maybe? Everyone seems to be assuming that artifact power will work just how it has but they've said multiple times that maybe it won't?
Edit: also people declare Destiny a dead game ruined by incompetent developers 11,000 times per minute and it's still here so ehhhhhhhh
To be fair I didn’t say it was dead. I said I hope it dies.
Well, they haven't been keeping it especially secret that they have a separate Next Gen IP in development, which is apparently being led by Chris Barret (the lead on Rise of Iron).
And the whole New Light rebranding was big ol' "naw, ain't gonna be no D3" and this Director's Cut just reifies that position.
Putting out a D3 in a new console year is probably a bad idea. D2 already has issues on the current hardware, the new consoles have no install base yet.
I'd much prefer to see a D3 come out a year plus after the PS5/XOXSXBXOXXXXO. D1 had a number of annoying design decisions based on needing to run on cross-generational platforms.
a Destiny 3 right now would have to be both current and next gen and that just doesn't make sense for Bungie. wait a couple years, get D2 running on the newer hardware, get used to working on it and then use that knowledge to build D3.
Faction rallies not coming back is kind of a bummer, and the explanation doesn't make sense (cast of characters too big?) unless they are planning on replacing the faction leaders and dont want to record the VO for the event. On 'the rewards weren't used', well, make rewards that dont suck?
I kind of thought the goal was to have constantly rotating events to keep it 'fresh' but it seems like IB is enough with holidays and the point is to bring back players who tire of the base gameplay instead.
a Destiny 3 right now would have to be both current and next gen and that just doesn't make sense for Bungie. wait a couple years, get D2 running on the newer hardware, get used to working on it and then use that knowledge to build D3.
I hope when they sunset D2 for D3, they leave it in a state for posterity. None of this New Light, you start at 750 crap. Let me experience the progression I missed, that I can apparently still experience if I go back and play Destiny 1, which I never did.
What happened to Destiny 2's progression is exactly what I hate about games as a service. They just binned what would have been an epic experience I would have really enjoyed, just to try to get me into their end game churn faster. And presumably the Eververse and/or seasonal subscription.
It's impossible for me to ever have that experience of progression now. There is no possible way I can play Destiny 2 and get that experience anymore. I know I can still play the content. But even from what little I recall of my first brush with it when I got Destiny 2 in a Humble Monthly, I no longer needed to power up at all. The entire thing was a cakewalk. And the entire skill tree was unlocked from the word go. I've heard other people more familiar with the legacy campaigns complaining that tons of context is lost between missions as well.
I can't think of a single other successful Game as a Service which pulled a move like that. Path of Exile didn't gut their progression system. Never heard of Warframe pulling a move like that.
I'm still enjoying it because the fundamental gunplay is best in class, and I love the vision behind the world design. But god damned if all the decisions they've made around it, and their choices with respect to making Destiny a Game as a Service haven't driven me up a fucking wall. Especially content, story content, just arbitrarily coming and going.
I understand making legenadries only workable for 9-15 months or so.
But god damn, some of the grinds are absolutely insane that it really sucks. It took me forever to get a good blast furnace and hammerhead, and will pinnacle legendaries be exempt. Because fuck me for getting randy's right? Or mountaintop?
Some of these legendaries have to be excluded for wasting away, just because they're tied to content that will exist forever? Like menagerie or black armory. They'll be sitting there forever spitting out bad old loot if they don't get refreshes. And I don't trust Bungie to refresh stuff because they generally don't? I wonder if Season 10 will overhaul escalation protocol. It fits with that blog post, but that content has already been done for a while I imagine.
The thing is, to really work your light level you have to do mostly PVE stuff or you'll be at a disadvantage in PVP. I seem to remember D1 losing some really great weapons I loved because I couldn't infuse them and it felt shitty. Really, really shitty. Also, why grind for the perfect roll if it won't last?
Because there's literally always new guns to grind for and the bank is only so big and because then you never have to collect new stuff nor engage with most if not all content, you can bring stuff from Menagerie into Trials which is quite ridiculous
Nothing from the current season has really been hard to get. And Menagerie, which Sundial is heavily influenced by, was super generous with loot too. Hell, Shadowkeep was generous with loot as well. The trend in all the not-pinnacles has been towards easier.
I suspect loot having a lifespan is not going to be as huge an issue if it's easier to get, like they've been making everything. And I think that's probably part of the point. Making it easier to get new weapons while retiring old weapons so you actually want to get the new weapons is potentially a healthier and more fun gameplay loop then loot being permanent but super hard to get.
This is dumb so they won't do it but I'd be ok if they said that for every year 2 gun you could pick one and it would go in your collection and you could pull that one out as the new "fixed" roll any time you wanted (but capped under light like they will be, that's fine). I could keep my favorite rolls for nostalgia's sake but clear my damn vault out for new stuff, it'd be win/win (for me, maybe not for you).
Or they could let collections behave like... A collections page so we can delete rolls we already have and pull them anytime. The collections page is still such a massive waste.
In an alternate universe Destiny, the collection tracks all of the different perks you've obtained for a given weapon. Then there'd be some sort of reforge mechanic that would allow you to pull out a weapon from your collections with the available perks you've collected. That would be really player-friendly though.
Alternately, just increase vault space. Even for a premium.
In an alternate universe Destiny, the collection tracks all of the different perks you've obtained for a given weapon. Then there'd be some sort of reforge mechanic that would allow you to pull out a weapon from your collections with the available perks you've collected. That would be really player-friendly though.
Alternately, just increase vault space. Even for a premium.
I think that would make it too easy and we'd end up very quickly in a D2 Y1 situation. The mod system is already like this and it doesn't really drive any engagement.
I've always thought a good compromise between making the collection useful without making it invalidate collecting weapons would be letting us save one roll for a weapon in there. You can pull a weapon from the collection any time you want but it will come out as whatever roll you saved there. And you can swap it out for a better roll if you get one.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
In an alternate universe Destiny, the collection tracks all of the different perks you've obtained for a given weapon. Then there'd be some sort of reforge mechanic that would allow you to pull out a weapon from your collections with the available perks you've collected. That would be really player-friendly though.
Alternately, just increase vault space. Even for a premium.
I think that would make it too easy and we'd end up very quickly in a D2 Y1 situation. The mod system is already like this and it doesn't really drive any engagement.
I've always thought a good compromise between making the collection useful without making it invalidate collecting weapons would be letting us save one roll for a weapon in there. You can pull a weapon from the collection any time you want but it will come out as whatever roll you saved there. And you can swap it out for a better roll if you get one.
I'd slightly alter that, in that you could save one "roll" you already have, and then you could either pull that roll or take your chances with a random roll. Taking the random roll doesn't delete the best roll but grabbing out the roll you stored would cost less/nothing, the random would cost more, and there might be a cooldown between pulling something and storing that same thing, so you can't just play the random game trying to get a god roll via collections.
It might also be good to have the collections track the rolls you've already gotten on the weapons and only let you pull those abilities, but that might be too much.
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Hell, I’d settle for just being able to pull any y2+ weapon out with a set roll that was determined when the gun was added. Like a “okay” roll, so I don’t have to hold one to at least one copy of every gun I’ve ever received since year 2 launched.
I have a tiny sliver of hope that tomorrow in twab they’ll explain how balance will work in trials and find a way to not make it a disaster but I can’t think of how
As soon as things like two melees don’t kill or this other gun kills in two (or one in the case of monarque) happen it just stops being fair or fun
part of me is excited that trials is coming back, part of me is disappointed that it seems like it’s going for a full nostalgia grab with old maps, old gear and an old format.
I really hope they’re bringing something new to the equation
Also I haven’t been playing recently- is there a lore reason why Osiris and Saint would restart an old fight club/cult or is it just the typical ‘get me the BEST guardians you have’
Well. Their light locking weapons solution ought to fix FOMO alright.
Invalidating all the godrolls I spent weeks to months grinding for, or invested painful crucible hours in learning to use well. That makes me no longer fear missing out on new content.
Because I’m entirely discouraged from ever bothering to grind new rolls, whether it’s content that’s time limited or not.
Why invest the time when they don’t respect it? When it’ll be useless outside of patrol in a season or two?
Can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot every time they do something good. Trials might be great but I don’t know if I’ll b out her now
"Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination."
Maybe next season's lore will have Osiris taking control of his cult and whipping them into a useful organization? I would be completely behind some lore rehabilitation and this would be perfect timing to do that...
Maybe next season's lore will have Osiris taking control of his cult and whipping them into a useful organization? I would be completely behind some lore rehabilitation and this would be perfect timing to do that...
In connection to the cutscene I saw a week or two ago...
...is Osiris still around? I mean he went and confronted Rasputin face to face pretty much with gun in hand.
Well. Their light locking weapons solution ought to fix FOMO alright.
Invalidating all the godrolls I spent weeks to months grinding for, or invested painful crucible hours in learning to use well. That makes me no longer fear missing out on new content.
Because I’m entirely discouraged from ever bothering to grind new rolls, whether it’s content that’s time limited or not.
Why invest the time when they don’t respect it? When it’ll be useless outside of patrol in a season or two?
Can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot every time they do something good. Trials might be great but I don’t know if I’ll b out her now
Except the problem is that there is no reason to get new rolls when you already have something just as good you got a year and a half ago. Why invest the time in getting new weapons when you already have ones that do the job?
They aren't wrong with the Magic comparison. Or the MMO comparison. There's a reason they rotate things out of play.
Well. Their light locking weapons solution ought to fix FOMO alright.
Invalidating all the godrolls I spent weeks to months grinding for, or invested painful crucible hours in learning to use well. That makes me no longer fear missing out on new content.
Because I’m entirely discouraged from ever bothering to grind new rolls, whether it’s content that’s time limited or not.
Why invest the time when they don’t respect it? When it’ll be useless outside of patrol in a season or two?
Can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot every time they do something good. Trials might be great but I don’t know if I’ll b out her now
Except the problem is that there is no reason to get new rolls when you already have something just as good you got a year and a half ago. Why invest the time in getting new weapons when you already have ones that do the job?
They aren't wrong with the Magic comparison. Or the MMO comparison. There's a reason they rotate things out of play.
Give us new perks, new archetypes, new combinations of perks. Martyr’s this season was exciting and new because it was the first wave frame GL. We got new primaries that can run demolitionist and rampage. Vorpal is an awesome new perk, osmosis too with the right gun.
With how hard it is to get the roll you want, with how much of a grind it can be...I have dropped over 50K fractaline and still don’t have a line in the sand I’m happy with. I got a decent bygones that I like for pvp, finally, last season. That’s over a year after Forsaken dropped. Imagine getting a gun you’ve been chased finally and the damned thing is literally useless after a mere few weeks or a month or even immediately.
People have been complaining non-stop since armor 2.0 came out about the layers of rng upon rng making it impossible to get a set they’re happy with, and now you want to make me redo my entire vault of weapons too? Get outta here!
If they can’t find a way to make new weapons exciting or interesting, I shouldn’t be punished for the time I’ve invested in their game. Planned obsolescence sucks. If I have a perfectly good phone I don’t need a new iPhone but if they make the new one cool and flashy somehow I’ll go and buy it. Don’t brick my old phone to incentivise me
I don’t play magic but the idea of making hundreds of dollars of stuff I’ve bought useless without a decent reason makes it seem like a dumpster fire of a hobby. And as for MMO’s...there’s a reason D2 is the only one I play.
Catalase on
"Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination."
I think the TCG analogy is really good, and reflects why games that allow power creep become stagnant. You need seasons, not in the sense of content but relevancy. Something truly broken or goofy can ride to the top, but it's ok because everything has a built in expiration date. And just because that gun won't be usable in raids or endgame PvP, doesn't mean you can bust it out for yuks in content where LL doesn't matter.
I hate it as much as the next guy. I earned my Trials of the Nine Flawless armor through sheer willpower and cajones alone. I can't wear it without sacrificing alot of potential builds/ammo scavengers, basic stuff for PvP. But with so many overly effective guns that people don't want nerfed, there has to be a way to push people to do new content, collect new stuff and do endgame stuff. In D1 I raided all the time because I had to, and it ended up being pretty fun.
Because my PvP gun stable is so deep, I barely stepped into Sundial. I was being buried in gear from the Vex Offensive stuff, I don't have room for new stuff anyways. I have guns going back to Forsaken launch that I still use everyday. I think I got my mileage out of my Bygones, she can rest now. Same goes for Erentil, Recluse, etc.
I think the really inexcusable stuff is how many systems they have in place that could address some of these issues, like collections and the half-assed Universal Ornament system.
Well. Their light locking weapons solution ought to fix FOMO alright.
Invalidating all the godrolls I spent weeks to months grinding for, or invested painful crucible hours in learning to use well. That makes me no longer fear missing out on new content.
Because I’m entirely discouraged from ever bothering to grind new rolls, whether it’s content that’s time limited or not.
Why invest the time when they don’t respect it? When it’ll be useless outside of patrol in a season or two?
Can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot every time they do something good. Trials might be great but I don’t know if I’ll b out her now
Except the problem is that there is no reason to get new rolls when you already have something just as good you got a year and a half ago. Why invest the time in getting new weapons when you already have ones that do the job?
They aren't wrong with the Magic comparison. Or the MMO comparison. There's a reason they rotate things out of play.
To be fair, the last major vendor refresh was a year and a half ago.
I use Y1 weapons and Season of the Dawn weapons and everything inbetween. I don't think what Bungie is trying to solve is a problem.
The FOMO thing being a Bungie concern is weird. People are concerned that if they don't play our game they won't get to play our game!
Sure, some of the extremely time limited stuff is an issue but I think the shortest we had something this season was three weeks? For some entirely cosmetic stuff with the pathways? Seasons are like a hundred days long and don't feature that much content.
I guess good job for listening to folks but these folks seem to be the ones who aren't playing your game because they don't have time to play it and I'm not sure that's really a target demo you want to go after.
The FOMO thing being a Bungie concern is weird. People are concerned that if they don't play our game they won't get to play our game!
Based on the anecdotal evidence of just my playgroup, I feel like addressing FOMO (akin to any hypothetical remediation of Eververse/microtransactions) is fundamentally about fixing a "spiritual" wound; my friends could play the game, but the heavily transient nature of titles, quests, activities, etc... makes them go "ehhhhhhh, maybe I'll play something else."
Now, some might argue the planned "9-15 month gear lease" system is just replacing one form of FOMO with another. But let's be totally clear here, based on the current environment, the only activities in which players will feel the affect of "9-15 month lease" are: Iron Banner, Gambit Prime, Master Ordeal, Legend Sundial. I presume that once implemented, that grouping will be more or less "true", with the addition of Trials and any new Raid. So basically, folks get to use whatever they want when playing casual or "deprecated" activities, but have to shift things up for the new gear.
And, like I said before, Artifact Power will theoretically serve as a ridge between "rotations".
Well. Their light locking weapons solution ought to fix FOMO alright.
Invalidating all the godrolls I spent weeks to months grinding for, or invested painful crucible hours in learning to use well. That makes me no longer fear missing out on new content.
Because I’m entirely discouraged from ever bothering to grind new rolls, whether it’s content that’s time limited or not.
Why invest the time when they don’t respect it? When it’ll be useless outside of patrol in a season or two?
Can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot every time they do something good. Trials might be great but I don’t know if I’ll b out her now
Except the problem is that there is no reason to get new rolls when you already have something just as good you got a year and a half ago. Why invest the time in getting new weapons when you already have ones that do the job?
They aren't wrong with the Magic comparison. Or the MMO comparison. There's a reason they rotate things out of play.
Give us new perks, new archetypes, new combinations of perks. Martyr’s this season was exciting and new because it was the first wave frame GL. We got new primaries that can run demolitionist and rampage. Vorpal is an awesome new perk, osmosis too with the right gun.
With how hard it is to get the roll you want, with how much of a grind it can be...I have dropped over 50K fractaline and still don’t have a line in the sand I’m happy with. I got a decent bygones that I like for pvp, finally, last season. That’s over a year after Forsaken dropped. Imagine getting a gun you’ve been chased finally and the damned thing is literally useless after a mere few weeks or a month or even immediately.
People have been complaining non-stop since armor 2.0 came out about the layers of rng upon rng making it impossible to get a set they’re happy with, and now you want to make me redo my entire vault of weapons too? Get outta here!
If they can’t find a way to make new weapons exciting or interesting, I shouldn’t be punished for the time I’ve invested in their game. Planned obsolescence sucks. If I have a perfectly good phone I don’t need a new iPhone but if they make the new one cool and flashy somehow I’ll go and buy it. Don’t brick my old phone to incentivise me
I don’t play magic but the idea of making hundreds of dollars of stuff I’ve bought useless without a decent reason makes it seem like a dumpster fire of a hobby. And as for MMO’s...there’s a reason D2 is the only one I play.
They are already doing all those things and it's inadequate to the task. Inventories are bursting and people are getting loaded down with a bunch of new weapons that just aren't different enough from old weapons to be a meaningfully prize for players to go after. And my personal experience with player engagement this season among the PC folks and the people here in this thread, and I'm betting Bungie's extensive data on this stuff, bears out the idea that this is an issue.
It's also an issue from a design perspective since there's only so much you can bloat the system out sideways before it becomes a bunch of interesting but not actually useful filler. You can skirt this issue a bit with meta-changes (eg - if you nerf handcannons and buff sidearms, everyone now has an incentive to farm sidearms, which they weren't doing before) but this can only do so much before you are circling back around to the same stuff and is just more balance work.
And it's really not that hard to get a good roll. The fractaline donation system we're on right now is the easiest loot has ever been to get. The only actual limit on how many rolls you can get is how much time you are willing to stand around in the tower clicking buttons. So it's not like loot suddenly being transient is a huge problem on that account. The game has only been getting more generous with loot for awhile now.
In the end, you need some incentive for players to keep playing and keeping wanting to get new things. And it's basically eventually impossible to do that if nothing ever leaves the game. This kind of thing has been a long time coming and the longer they want to keep D2 going rather then replacing it with D3, the more it or something like it becomes necessary. The transience of everything is just a part of games that aren't strict finite experiences. Metas change, events and activities and such come and go and change all the time.
PS - The problem with Armour 2.0 is it's too much rng. The weapon system is not near as bad on this account, which is why it doesn't get the same level or style of complaints even though it's been around a full year longer. It's really not the same issue at all as it being hard to add meaningful new weapon options that players want to farm.
Well. Their light locking weapons solution ought to fix FOMO alright.
Invalidating all the godrolls I spent weeks to months grinding for, or invested painful crucible hours in learning to use well. That makes me no longer fear missing out on new content.
Because I’m entirely discouraged from ever bothering to grind new rolls, whether it’s content that’s time limited or not.
Why invest the time when they don’t respect it? When it’ll be useless outside of patrol in a season or two?
Can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot every time they do something good. Trials might be great but I don’t know if I’ll b out her now
Except the problem is that there is no reason to get new rolls when you already have something just as good you got a year and a half ago. Why invest the time in getting new weapons when you already have ones that do the job?
They aren't wrong with the Magic comparison. Or the MMO comparison. There's a reason they rotate things out of play.
To be fair, the last major vendor refresh was a year and a half ago.
I use Y1 weapons and Season of the Dawn weapons and everything inbetween. I don't think what Bungie is trying to solve is a problem.
It's definitely a problem imo. People been talking about it for awhile. Even a lot of content creators sort of subtly hint at it with new weapon reviews and such. "Here's the niche reason you might need this" or "This rolls with this one unique perk combo that might be good or you might like" is mostly what you get, rather then "This thing is the new hotness!".
For the most obvious example, at least imo, you can just look at Erentil. It's like "Here's a new fusion rifle. It's got some unique perks or perk combos. Erentil is still better though." And so people just keep using Erentil.
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Edit: also people declare Destiny a dead game ruined by incompetent developers 11,000 times per minute and it's still here so ehhhhhhhh
Granted, I think it gives me two main thoughts -
1. Light leveled enabled Trials has one redeeming factor (it means Legendary weapons that rotate out have a shelf-life and so you won't still see SpareBenders a year from now).
2. They really do seem to be going down the route of not making a D3, which still makes me sad for being unable to convince some of my RL folks to hop back in. If they were making a D3, they wouldn't need a rotation plan for Legendary weapons.
So yeah, I guess if their choice for rotating weapons out is to have it cap power level, then yeah, I'm glad that Trials has it. They could have done it differently, I suppose, but they didn't.
I don't think they've entirely bailed on the seasonal activity thing, they are just re-evaluating how it's gonna work. Which is a good idea imo since I think a lot of people have already starting to get tired of the whole Menagerie/Vex Offensive/Sundial/etc thing. It was not sustainable from the perspective of keeping players interested.
Ah yes, much better
And the whole New Light rebranding was big ol' "naw, ain't gonna be no D3" and this Director's Cut just reifies that position.
Just makes sense to wait until 2021
I kind of thought the goal was to have constantly rotating events to keep it 'fresh' but it seems like IB is enough with holidays and the point is to bring back players who tire of the base gameplay instead.
I hope when they sunset D2 for D3, they leave it in a state for posterity. None of this New Light, you start at 750 crap. Let me experience the progression I missed, that I can apparently still experience if I go back and play Destiny 1, which I never did.
What happened to Destiny 2's progression is exactly what I hate about games as a service. They just binned what would have been an epic experience I would have really enjoyed, just to try to get me into their end game churn faster. And presumably the Eververse and/or seasonal subscription.
It's impossible for me to ever have that experience of progression now. There is no possible way I can play Destiny 2 and get that experience anymore. I know I can still play the content. But even from what little I recall of my first brush with it when I got Destiny 2 in a Humble Monthly, I no longer needed to power up at all. The entire thing was a cakewalk. And the entire skill tree was unlocked from the word go. I've heard other people more familiar with the legacy campaigns complaining that tons of context is lost between missions as well.
I can't think of a single other successful Game as a Service which pulled a move like that. Path of Exile didn't gut their progression system. Never heard of Warframe pulling a move like that.
I'm still enjoying it because the fundamental gunplay is best in class, and I love the vision behind the world design. But god damned if all the decisions they've made around it, and their choices with respect to making Destiny a Game as a Service haven't driven me up a fucking wall. Especially content, story content, just arbitrarily coming and going.
But god damn, some of the grinds are absolutely insane that it really sucks. It took me forever to get a good blast furnace and hammerhead, and will pinnacle legendaries be exempt. Because fuck me for getting randy's right? Or mountaintop?
Some of these legendaries have to be excluded for wasting away, just because they're tied to content that will exist forever? Like menagerie or black armory. They'll be sitting there forever spitting out bad old loot if they don't get refreshes. And I don't trust Bungie to refresh stuff because they generally don't? I wonder if Season 10 will overhaul escalation protocol. It fits with that blog post, but that content has already been done for a while I imagine.
I suspect loot having a lifespan is not going to be as huge an issue if it's easier to get, like they've been making everything. And I think that's probably part of the point. Making it easier to get new weapons while retiring old weapons so you actually want to get the new weapons is potentially a healthier and more fun gameplay loop then loot being permanent but super hard to get.
Alternately, just increase vault space. Even for a premium.
I think that would make it too easy and we'd end up very quickly in a D2 Y1 situation. The mod system is already like this and it doesn't really drive any engagement.
I've always thought a good compromise between making the collection useful without making it invalidate collecting weapons would be letting us save one roll for a weapon in there. You can pull a weapon from the collection any time you want but it will come out as whatever roll you saved there. And you can swap it out for a better roll if you get one.
I'd slightly alter that, in that you could save one "roll" you already have, and then you could either pull that roll or take your chances with a random roll. Taking the random roll doesn't delete the best roll but grabbing out the roll you stored would cost less/nothing, the random would cost more, and there might be a cooldown between pulling something and storing that same thing, so you can't just play the random game trying to get a god roll via collections.
It might also be good to have the collections track the rolls you've already gotten on the weapons and only let you pull those abilities, but that might be too much.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CruciblePlaybook/comments/f9wtmg/preparing_for_trials_and_light_level_differences/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Something that caught my eye, Le Monarque kills in one crit with 5+ power level difference. That's uh, that'll be something alright.
As soon as things like two melees don’t kill or this other gun kills in two (or one in the case of monarque) happen it just stops being fair or fun
I really hope they’re bringing something new to the equation
Also I haven’t been playing recently- is there a lore reason why Osiris and Saint would restart an old fight club/cult or is it just the typical ‘get me the BEST guardians you have’
https://medium.com/@alascii
Invalidating all the godrolls I spent weeks to months grinding for, or invested painful crucible hours in learning to use well. That makes me no longer fear missing out on new content.
Because I’m entirely discouraged from ever bothering to grind new rolls, whether it’s content that’s time limited or not.
Why invest the time when they don’t respect it? When it’ll be useless outside of patrol in a season or two?
Can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot every time they do something good. Trials might be great but I don’t know if I’ll b out her now
In connection to the cutscene I saw a week or two ago...
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Except the problem is that there is no reason to get new rolls when you already have something just as good you got a year and a half ago. Why invest the time in getting new weapons when you already have ones that do the job?
They aren't wrong with the Magic comparison. Or the MMO comparison. There's a reason they rotate things out of play.
With how hard it is to get the roll you want, with how much of a grind it can be...I have dropped over 50K fractaline and still don’t have a line in the sand I’m happy with. I got a decent bygones that I like for pvp, finally, last season. That’s over a year after Forsaken dropped. Imagine getting a gun you’ve been chased finally and the damned thing is literally useless after a mere few weeks or a month or even immediately.
People have been complaining non-stop since armor 2.0 came out about the layers of rng upon rng making it impossible to get a set they’re happy with, and now you want to make me redo my entire vault of weapons too? Get outta here!
If they can’t find a way to make new weapons exciting or interesting, I shouldn’t be punished for the time I’ve invested in their game. Planned obsolescence sucks. If I have a perfectly good phone I don’t need a new iPhone but if they make the new one cool and flashy somehow I’ll go and buy it. Don’t brick my old phone to incentivise me
I don’t play magic but the idea of making hundreds of dollars of stuff I’ve bought useless without a decent reason makes it seem like a dumpster fire of a hobby. And as for MMO’s...there’s a reason D2 is the only one I play.
I hate it as much as the next guy. I earned my Trials of the Nine Flawless armor through sheer willpower and cajones alone. I can't wear it without sacrificing alot of potential builds/ammo scavengers, basic stuff for PvP. But with so many overly effective guns that people don't want nerfed, there has to be a way to push people to do new content, collect new stuff and do endgame stuff. In D1 I raided all the time because I had to, and it ended up being pretty fun.
Because my PvP gun stable is so deep, I barely stepped into Sundial. I was being buried in gear from the Vex Offensive stuff, I don't have room for new stuff anyways. I have guns going back to Forsaken launch that I still use everyday. I think I got my mileage out of my Bygones, she can rest now. Same goes for Erentil, Recluse, etc.
Relevant bit around 4:30
I think the really inexcusable stuff is how many systems they have in place that could address some of these issues, like collections and the half-assed Universal Ornament system.
To be fair, the last major vendor refresh was a year and a half ago.
I use Y1 weapons and Season of the Dawn weapons and everything inbetween. I don't think what Bungie is trying to solve is a problem.
Sure, some of the extremely time limited stuff is an issue but I think the shortest we had something this season was three weeks? For some entirely cosmetic stuff with the pathways? Seasons are like a hundred days long and don't feature that much content.
I guess good job for listening to folks but these folks seem to be the ones who aren't playing your game because they don't have time to play it and I'm not sure that's really a target demo you want to go after.
Based on the anecdotal evidence of just my playgroup, I feel like addressing FOMO (akin to any hypothetical remediation of Eververse/microtransactions) is fundamentally about fixing a "spiritual" wound; my friends could play the game, but the heavily transient nature of titles, quests, activities, etc... makes them go "ehhhhhhh, maybe I'll play something else."
Now, some might argue the planned "9-15 month gear lease" system is just replacing one form of FOMO with another. But let's be totally clear here, based on the current environment, the only activities in which players will feel the affect of "9-15 month lease" are: Iron Banner, Gambit Prime, Master Ordeal, Legend Sundial. I presume that once implemented, that grouping will be more or less "true", with the addition of Trials and any new Raid. So basically, folks get to use whatever they want when playing casual or "deprecated" activities, but have to shift things up for the new gear.
And, like I said before, Artifact Power will theoretically serve as a ridge between "rotations".
They are already doing all those things and it's inadequate to the task. Inventories are bursting and people are getting loaded down with a bunch of new weapons that just aren't different enough from old weapons to be a meaningfully prize for players to go after. And my personal experience with player engagement this season among the PC folks and the people here in this thread, and I'm betting Bungie's extensive data on this stuff, bears out the idea that this is an issue.
It's also an issue from a design perspective since there's only so much you can bloat the system out sideways before it becomes a bunch of interesting but not actually useful filler. You can skirt this issue a bit with meta-changes (eg - if you nerf handcannons and buff sidearms, everyone now has an incentive to farm sidearms, which they weren't doing before) but this can only do so much before you are circling back around to the same stuff and is just more balance work.
And it's really not that hard to get a good roll. The fractaline donation system we're on right now is the easiest loot has ever been to get. The only actual limit on how many rolls you can get is how much time you are willing to stand around in the tower clicking buttons. So it's not like loot suddenly being transient is a huge problem on that account. The game has only been getting more generous with loot for awhile now.
In the end, you need some incentive for players to keep playing and keeping wanting to get new things. And it's basically eventually impossible to do that if nothing ever leaves the game. This kind of thing has been a long time coming and the longer they want to keep D2 going rather then replacing it with D3, the more it or something like it becomes necessary. The transience of everything is just a part of games that aren't strict finite experiences. Metas change, events and activities and such come and go and change all the time.
PS - The problem with Armour 2.0 is it's too much rng. The weapon system is not near as bad on this account, which is why it doesn't get the same level or style of complaints even though it's been around a full year longer. It's really not the same issue at all as it being hard to add meaningful new weapon options that players want to farm.
It's definitely a problem imo. People been talking about it for awhile. Even a lot of content creators sort of subtly hint at it with new weapon reviews and such. "Here's the niche reason you might need this" or "This rolls with this one unique perk combo that might be good or you might like" is mostly what you get, rather then "This thing is the new hotness!".
For the most obvious example, at least imo, you can just look at Erentil. It's like "Here's a new fusion rifle. It's got some unique perks or perk combos. Erentil is still better though." And so people just keep using Erentil.