We think that there are some major issues with Power in Destiny 2 and how it prevents players from seeing some of our best content, so we’d like to make a big change to the system in The Final Shape. However, to understand more about how our changes could be improved, we want to keep tweaking our Power settings over the year of Lightfall.
Some of these tweaks might be found in our back end with little transparency to the average Guardian, while others will be front and center. For example, when Lightfall launches, we will have a Power climb that is very similar to that in The Witch Queen, but later in Season of the Deep, we don’t plan to raise the Power or pinnacle cap at all.
Oh shit here we go (season of the deep is season 21)
We get the sense that the Power climb is stupid, repetitive, and harmful to players engaging with the harder content. Therefore, we have decided to launch with the same system again.
They have not figured out what to replace it with yet is how I read that. Which, yeah, I can understand.
We think that there are some major issues with Power in Destiny 2 and how it prevents players from seeing some of our best content, so we’d like to make a big change to the system in The Final Shape. However, to understand more about how our changes could be improved, we want to keep tweaking our Power settings over the year of Lightfall.
Some of these tweaks might be found in our back end with little transparency to the average Guardian, while others will be front and center. For example, when Lightfall launches, we will have a Power climb that is very similar to that in The Witch Queen, but later in Season of the Deep, we don’t plan to raise the Power or pinnacle cap at all.
Oh shit here we go (season of the deep is season 21)
We get the sense that the Power climb is stupid, repetitive, and harmful to players engaging with the harder content. Therefore, we have decided to launch with the same system again.
They have not figured out what to replace it with yet is how I read that. Which, yeah, I can understand.
Yeah, ripping out power is almost certainly a net good for the game, but a lot of the games current engagement loops are built around the power grind
Which isn't good and I'm certainly not defending it, but ripping it out willynilly is just daft. They've as much said they're using this year too tinker with things and see what works - Season of the Deep being a blatant let's see what happens to engagement without the power grind, for example
I am hyped to see them try something at least. Besides the WQ release/raid my favorite time in recent destiny history was that 6 month season we had, my buds and I were just raiding, doing GMs and futzing with builds with not having to worry about grinding pinnacles.
+3
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
We think that there are some major issues with Power in Destiny 2 and how it prevents players from seeing some of our best content, so we’d like to make a big change to the system in The Final Shape. However, to understand more about how our changes could be improved, we want to keep tweaking our Power settings over the year of Lightfall.
Some of these tweaks might be found in our back end with little transparency to the average Guardian, while others will be front and center. For example, when Lightfall launches, we will have a Power climb that is very similar to that in The Witch Queen, but later in Season of the Deep, we don’t plan to raise the Power or pinnacle cap at all.
Oh shit here we go (season of the deep is season 21)
We get the sense that the Power climb is stupid, repetitive, and harmful to players engaging with the harder content. Therefore, we have decided to launch with the same system again.
They have not figured out what to replace it with yet is how I read that. Which, yeah, I can understand.
Yeah, ripping out power is almost certainly a net good for the game, but a lot of the games current engagement loops are built around the power grind
Which isn't good and I'm certainly not defending it, but ripping it out willynilly is just daft. They've as much said they're using this year too tinker with things and see what works - Season of the Deep being a blatant let's see what happens to engagement without the power grind, for example
I agree with all of this, but it's also a feel bad that games have to be designed for an "engagement loop" today. I feel like someone is going to eventually crack the financial / game design code for how you offer a game with all the good parts of a live service like Destiny, but without the need for engagement loops, daily user counts, FOMO, daily/weekly activity limits and all that mess. I'm not sure what black magic it will require, but I'm here for it. Especially as we watch tons of other live service games crash and burn with only a few really good ones left. Someone will hopefully come in and disrupt the space. Maybe it will be Bungie with their new thing, who knows. They've certainly learned an immense amount over the years.
I am hyped to see them try something at least. Besides the WQ release/raid my favorite time in recent destiny history was that 6 month season we had, my buds and I were just raiding, doing GMs and futzing with builds with not having to worry about grinding pinnacles.
This is how I felt as well. The most fun and invested I've felt in D2 was during that long season. I felt like I wasn't running on a tread mill just to have to do it all over again in three months. I'm sure players with much higher hour counts than me may feel different, but I loved the longer season. Did the most high tier content I've ever done during that season.
Yep, me too. That realllly long season allowed me to explore parts of the game I rarely get to. Having said all of that, Bungie has access to metrics we don't so they are much better positioned to determine the long term health of their own game. Maybe only having two seasons per year would be better, and maybe it would kill the game... we just can't know that.
We think that there are some major issues with Power in Destiny 2 and how it prevents players from seeing some of our best content, so we’d like to make a big change to the system in The Final Shape. However, to understand more about how our changes could be improved, we want to keep tweaking our Power settings over the year of Lightfall.
Some of these tweaks might be found in our back end with little transparency to the average Guardian, while others will be front and center. For example, when Lightfall launches, we will have a Power climb that is very similar to that in The Witch Queen, but later in Season of the Deep, we don’t plan to raise the Power or pinnacle cap at all.
Oh shit here we go (season of the deep is season 21)
We get the sense that the Power climb is stupid, repetitive, and harmful to players engaging with the harder content. Therefore, we have decided to launch with the same system again.
They have not figured out what to replace it with yet is how I read that. Which, yeah, I can understand.
Yeah, ripping out power is almost certainly a net good for the game, but a lot of the games current engagement loops are built around the power grind
Which isn't good and I'm certainly not defending it, but ripping it out willynilly is just daft. They've as much said they're using this year too tinker with things and see what works - Season of the Deep being a blatant let's see what happens to engagement without the power grind, for example
I agree with all of this, but it's also a feel bad that games have to be designed for an "engagement loop" today. I feel like someone is going to eventually crack the financial / game design code for how you offer a game with all the good parts of a live service like Destiny, but without the need for engagement loops, daily user counts, FOMO, daily/weekly activity limits and all that mess. I'm not sure what black magic it will require, but I'm here for it. Especially as we watch tons of other live service games crash and burn with only a few really good ones left. Someone will hopefully come in and disrupt the space. Maybe it will be Bungie with their new thing, who knows. They've certainly learned an immense amount over the years.
I think the games that crack it will be the ones that figure out how to make a model that's not reliant on constant engagement, for sure.
Half the reason you see so much crashing and burning is because these games try and exist in spaces where all the room is taken up, and don't expand that room meaningfully.
I.e Warframe and Destiny get along because they're both pretty different takes on the looter-shooter genre. And I think The Division 3 is still trucking along? But if you were going to announce a new looter shooter right now... Well, what's my motivation to play it? What's it's content model? Sunk cost definitely applies here, and not just that - D2 for all it's flaws is reliable
Or look at the MMO space - stop many that crashed and burned did so because they tried to be World of Warcraft.
The survivors were wildly different (guild wars, Eve) or offered something that Wow did not, be that genre or otherwise - and WoW itself has stopped being viewed as reliable, and had it's lunch mostly eaten by FF14 (which in turn has only pulled this off by existing for years on end and very firmly establishing /why/ you'd want to play it over WoW or other options)
The other bit is frankly, assume of this stuff works. power grind is daft, but it's an easy to chase goal that gets you to hit a bunch of different content - I've certainly happily chased it as a result before. I'm not sure loot can provide the same chase, and I'm sure Bungie is aware of that
We think that there are some major issues with Power in Destiny 2 and how it prevents players from seeing some of our best content, so we’d like to make a big change to the system in The Final Shape. However, to understand more about how our changes could be improved, we want to keep tweaking our Power settings over the year of Lightfall.
Some of these tweaks might be found in our back end with little transparency to the average Guardian, while others will be front and center. For example, when Lightfall launches, we will have a Power climb that is very similar to that in The Witch Queen, but later in Season of the Deep, we don’t plan to raise the Power or pinnacle cap at all.
Oh shit here we go (season of the deep is season 21)
This sounds good on paper (and is a good change), but I worry that players will still need to grind out artifact XP for master raids and such.
They absolutely will. If not because of power level shenanigans then because of the way they're changing artifact unlocks.
If the level grind is basically like Witch Queen, i.e. do the Legendary Campaign, then that's fine with me.
I am pretty ready for the power level grind thing to just go away.
even if they made me grind xp or something or have to fill an imaginary pinnacle power bar every season i'd be fine with it. i just absolutely despise the gear rng. having looking at optimizers to make sure i'm not doing activities in the wrong order so i shoot myself in the ass, stuff like "oh whoops i did dares with weapons at +2 guess i wasted that for the week!".
it's just so much extra busywork that sucks
+1
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Not the tool itself, or the developers who did the lords work, but the need for the gear optimizers is what really got me to realize the pinnacle grind as implemented was kind of silly. It's why I just stopped engaging with it directly. If I get a pinnacle upgrade, great, but I don't play specifically for them at this point.
They could keep power, they really don't need to throw it out at all.
Just make it so pinnacles are on knockout. This means the player still has to engage with pinnacle content, but respects the players time. I doubt you'd get any complaints about the power system if this were in place, because you'd know exactly what's going to be required.
What bungie is doing instead is making the pinnacle cap significantly lower than it was, and therefore requiring less time. But it still feels awful because its RNG progression. Its just awful for less time, so yeah its better, sure, but, come on. They're committed to this path because I guess Season of the Deep won't increase the ceiling at all.
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I really need to engage with the LFG Discord this week. I need to run Vox Obscura (normal and master), and all the Legendary PsiOps battlegrounds before the season ends.
I think the way to do power levels without making it a horrible RNG grind is to give your character an XP bar that fills up that can be emptied on item levels for gear or crafted weapons.
well, I guess that entire season of activity was a waste of time, later rasputin, for indiscernible reasons
Extremely, achingly lame. Rasputin must sacrifice himself for the most contrived of reasons. Killing a character is among the least interesting things you can do with them, even if you have an actual rationale to do it, and in this case is was just 'because that's how the Warsats work.'
well, I guess that entire season of activity was a waste of time, later rasputin, for indiscernible reasons
Extremely, achingly lame. Rasputin must sacrifice himself for the most contrived of reasons. Killing a character is among the least interesting things you can do with them, even if you have an actual rationale to do it, and in this case is was just 'because that's how the Warsats work.'
Woof.
The sad thing is the pieces were there they just absolutely failed to follow through on it. It feels like some of stuff that Seth Dickensen did with the Hive and how they apparently don't really get what it was about.
Rasputin turning his own weapons on himself as a way to undermine the God of War? Yeah, rock solid. Exposes a flaw in the whole hive "embody a concept" power thing. If you gain tribute from folks following what you embody then you become vulnerable when people strongly repudiate it. Of course, that wasn't why Rasputin did this so you don't get that choice. No, R had to do this because Eramus just waltzed in and took total control while he was, uh, napping? *shrug*
It makes even less sense that Rasputin is toast because the station had to be destroyed...except we were on the station for that ending cutscene. Not picking up Rasputin on our way out after he retargeted stuff is kind of a dick move. Wait, did Ana retarget stuff? Was R unable to issue a simple text command? Despite seizing control of the pod system and spawning in giant death robots before we plug him in.
Let's not even go into WHAT THE FUCK was up with the Traveler. "Oh, sorry, did you think I was leaving? I just needed to stretch my orb. For the first time in centuries. At the exact moment when it was too late to actually escape from your death lasers. Why, it sure did look like I decided to high tail it as soon as Rasputin no longer had a gun to my head, huh? Wow, that's the sort of extremely contrived scenario you'd put together if you only cared about cheap cliched melodrama while being unable to write worth a damn, huh?"
This once again feels like they got a rock solid outline from somebody who actually knew how to write and are now hitting the high points without bothering to do any of the work to make them hit right.
The Traveler could have moved because it understood that the warsats targeting it could have led to great collateral destruction for the city. Or it could have been intending to take up a defensive position against the incoming Witness' forces to, again, reduce potential collateral. Or maybe it did intend to leave, but seeing the sacrifice gave it pause. It is, as ever, enigmatic.
Or they might've seen an opportunity in all that to recreate some keyart from before Destiny 1 as a callback.
I could quibble all day about small stuff, but there were moments in there that worked for me. Admittedly the fantastic score is doing a lot of emotional heavy lifting.
well, I guess that entire season of activity was a waste of time, later rasputin, for indiscernible reasons
Extremely, achingly lame. Rasputin must sacrifice himself for the most contrived of reasons. Killing a character is among the least interesting things you can do with them, even if you have an actual rationale to do it, and in this case is was just 'because that's how the Warsats work.'
Woof.
The sad thing is the pieces were there they just absolutely failed to follow through on it. It feels like some of stuff that Seth Dickensen did with the Hive and how they apparently don't really get what it was about.
Rasputin turning his own weapons on himself as a way to undermine the God of War? Yeah, rock solid. Exposes a flaw in the whole hive "embody a concept" power thing. If you gain tribute from folks following what you embody then you become vulnerable when people strongly repudiate it. Of course, that wasn't why Rasputin did this so you don't get that choice. No, R had to do this because Eramus just waltzed in and took total control while he was, uh, napping? *shrug*
It makes even less sense that Rasputin is toast because the station had to be destroyed...except we were on the station for that ending cutscene. Not picking up Rasputin on our way out after he retargeted stuff is kind of a dick move. Wait, did Ana retarget stuff? Was R unable to issue a simple text command? Despite seizing control of the pod system and spawning in giant death robots before we plug him in.
Let's not even go into WHAT THE FUCK was up with the Traveler. "Oh, sorry, did you think I was leaving? I just needed to stretch my orb. For the first time in centuries. At the exact moment when it was too late to actually escape from your death lasers. Why, it sure did look like I decided to high tail it as soon as Rasputin no longer had a gun to my head, huh? Wow, that's the sort of extremely contrived scenario you'd put together if you only cared about cheap cliched melodrama while being unable to write worth a damn, huh?"
This once again feels like they got a rock solid outline from somebody who actually knew how to write and are now hitting the high points without bothering to do any of the work to make them hit right.
Yeah, Rasputin symbolically committing suicide (the chosen death of a mind devoted to war) as a way to combat Xivu Arath's ritual power over the concept of war, would've been pretty amazing. Especially if Ras himself discerned this as the optimum strategy for countering Xivu's paracausal powers.
I also had hoped something more might have come of the Clovis AI and their ambition to usurp Rasputin and seize the Warsat network for themselves. That was a pretty noteworthy revelation, but Clovis just sort've got put back in his corner. Maybe they're saving him for another season.
I'd heard the idea that Rasputin's sacrifice is what stopped the Traveler from leaving, and however dumb the rationale for Rasputin's fall, I do like that idea. Though funnily enough, the Witness' declaration that there is nowhere left for them to run is actually what I've long thought was the reason the Traveler hasn't left already - that somehow, either there's no other races out there period (all reaped) or no one better equipped to stop the Black Fleet.
I wonder if an existence like Rasputin could become a Guardian?
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Eh, it had a few confusing bits, but the whole thing felt fine. Not their best work, not their worst. Some of the reactions here don't seem in line with the actual quality of the content. Falling back on ad hominem and suggesting the writers are bad at their jobs because a story beat didn't land perfectly? Not a fan.
counterpoint: almost no story beats land within the same zip code as their intended target. this entire expansion has been borderline hilariously bad from a writing perspective, and they’ve basically dropped the ball every single time they have to conclude a story.
like i don’t really care because if i played destiny for the story beyond like, repeating lines from strikes with my friends as we go insane learning a gm or something, i would have stopped a while ago. but it’s not well executed in game pretty much top to bottom.
the only decent writing is in the lore cards, those are fun
Warminds went from super interesting in Pre-release stuff, to surface level interesting in D1 launch, to the awful retcons to other Warminds, to the absolute wet fart expansions around Rasputin. The stuff with Felwinter was neat but once again, not a lot of payoff with anything relating to this stuff. It sucks because on paper the Warminds were really interesting but it felt like Bungie didn't know what to do with them.
I often think about how different the game would be had they gone with the original script for D1 (or even some of the planned and scrapped stuff for base D2 like more Siva)
Ultimately felt like they needed some pieces off the board so they did it in the way they felt best given the timing but yeah, color me in the less than satisfied for that resolution
I wonder if an existence like Rasputin could become a Guardian?
He explicitly was going on about every line of code being deleted, so I think he's capital-D Dead.
I'll be honest, I'm not 100% clear on the Guardian-making rules. I was under the impression that it's full-blown magic where you just need something that had a soul and something to call a body, like Ghosts are picking burnt-out skeletons like Sarah Conner from the dream sequence in T2 which presumably have all their 'code' boiled out of their skulls.
I wonder if an existence like Rasputin could become a Guardian?
He explicitly was going on about every line of code being deleted, so I think he's capital-D Dead.
I'll be honest, I'm not 100% clear on the Guardian-making rules. I was under the impression that it's full-blown magic rules, like Ghosts are picking burnt-out skeletons like Sarah Conner from the dream sequence in T2 which presumably have all their 'code' boiled out of their skulls.
We do know they need some sort of physical remains. We're keeping Savathun from being resurrected by holding tight to her corpse.
So how many "things" do we think count as parts of Rasputin? The billion warsats around the place? Sleeper Simulant? Half the guns we crafted this season? The exo shell we crammed him into just a few weeks ago?
I wonder if an existence like Rasputin could become a Guardian?
He explicitly was going on about every line of code being deleted, so I think he's capital-D Dead.
I'll be honest, I'm not 100% clear on the Guardian-making rules. I was under the impression that it's full-blown magic rules, like Ghosts are picking burnt-out skeletons like Sarah Conner from the dream sequence in T2 which presumably have all their 'code' boiled out of their skulls.
We do know they need some sort of physical remains. We're keeping Savathun from being resurrected by holding tight to her corpse.
So how many "things" do we think count as parts of Rasputin? The billion warsats around the place? Sleeper Simulant? Half the guns we crafted this season? The exo shell we crammed him into just a few weeks ago?
That last one.
We all figured he'd be walking around as an Exo one day anyway.
well, I guess that entire season of activity was a waste of time, later rasputin, for indiscernible reasons
Extremely, achingly lame. Rasputin must sacrifice himself for the most contrived of reasons. Killing a character is among the least interesting things you can do with them, even if you have an actual rationale to do it, and in this case is was just 'because that's how the Warsats work.'
Woof.
The sad thing is the pieces were there they just absolutely failed to follow through on it. It feels like some of stuff that Seth Dickensen did with the Hive and how they apparently don't really get what it was about.
Rasputin turning his own weapons on himself as a way to undermine the God of War? Yeah, rock solid. Exposes a flaw in the whole hive "embody a concept" power thing. If you gain tribute from folks following what you embody then you become vulnerable when people strongly repudiate it. Of course, that wasn't why Rasputin did this so you don't get that choice. No, R had to do this because Eramus just waltzed in and took total control while he was, uh, napping? *shrug*
It makes even less sense that Rasputin is toast because the station had to be destroyed...except we were on the station for that ending cutscene. Not picking up Rasputin on our way out after he retargeted stuff is kind of a dick move. Wait, did Ana retarget stuff? Was R unable to issue a simple text command? Despite seizing control of the pod system and spawning in giant death robots before we plug him in.
Let's not even go into WHAT THE FUCK was up with the Traveler. "Oh, sorry, did you think I was leaving? I just needed to stretch my orb. For the first time in centuries. At the exact moment when it was too late to actually escape from your death lasers. Why, it sure did look like I decided to high tail it as soon as Rasputin no longer had a gun to my head, huh? Wow, that's the sort of extremely contrived scenario you'd put together if you only cared about cheap cliched melodrama while being unable to write worth a damn, huh?"
This once again feels like they got a rock solid outline from somebody who actually knew how to write and are now hitting the high points without bothering to do any of the work to make them hit right.
Rasputin had to die because that was the only way to self-destruct the warsat network. If they had fired on the traveller, or attacked the Hive forces, the ritual that Sivu Arath was casting would have activated, and she would have got a massive power boost. The self destruct was entered by Ana, in the cutscene.
My take on the Traveller moving was that it was intending to leave, but Rasputin’s sacrifice led it to change its mind.
I wonder if we’ll get another bit of gameplay next week, to take us into Nightfall ?
If nothing else, it’d be interesting to read what was in the files Rasputin left for Osiris, and Osiris’ reaction.
The Traveler could have moved because it understood that the warsats targeting it could have led to great collateral destruction for the city. Or it could have been intending to take up a defensive position against the incoming Witness' forces to, again, reduce potential collateral. Or maybe it did intend to leave, but seeing the sacrifice gave it pause. It is, as ever, enigmatic.
Or they might've seen an opportunity in all that to recreate some keyart from before Destiny 1 as a callback.
I could quibble all day about small stuff, but there were moments in there that worked for me. Admittedly the fantastic score is doing a lot of emotional heavy lifting.
I found it a little odd and wasn't sure what to think of it at first. But I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberately ambiguous. Neither we nor the characters in the game are supposed to understand what it's intentions were at the time or why it acted. All the in-game characters are making assumptions about what it meant. And if the writing is any good in following up on that, their different reactions to the events will do something in the story to come.
"What the fuck is the Traveler thinking" has been a plot thread through a good bit of Witch Queen so I think they're keeping it intentionally ambiguous and I doubt Bungie is ever going to have any one particular character or interpretation end up representing the Traveler. You can thank Ghaul for that.
"What the fuck is the Traveler thinking" has been a plot thread through a good bit of Witch Queen so I think they're keeping it intentionally ambiguous and I doubt Bungie is ever going to have any one particular character or interpretation end up representing the Traveler. You can thank Ghaul for that.
Didn't the speaker admit he was making it all up, before Ghaul killed him ?
I think the traveller is best left as an enigma, like the darkness.
Given their apparent natures, they're probably best left explained through parables and stories.
I assume we'll learn more throughout Lightfall, given the name.
2 weeks to go - I can't wait - for the story and the new systems.
I've made peace with the fact that the up-and-front story of Destiny is poor to mediocre at best. The year of WQ was the opportunity to really get traction with this story as Bungie had time in the saddle with the seasonal format and was free from the stilted releases of shadowkeep and the beyond light.
But that's fine, plenty of games are carried by their gameplay. But at least the lore is amazing and acts as a sort of backstop to the story at large. Sure, it sucks that the good stuff is *always* tell, not show, but better to have that than not.
Bungie's character work has improved dramatically. Calus, Osiris, Caitl, Crow, Eramis--all complex characters with varied, believable motivations and character arcs that feel interesting but also like natural progression based on their actions and identities.
Bungie is still struggling with narrative design and I hope they continue to improve here. Laying the groundwork of good characters helps immensely, as it lets otherwise mild story beats (basic betrayals, character decisions, allegiance shifts) turn into compelling events.
I do think some Destiny fans are more interested in poking holes in the story than enjoying it. This isn't meant to shield the story from all sorts of legitimate criticism, but there is an element of "why didn't this event specifically conform to and explain my theories?!?" in some of the story criticism I see regularly levied against Bungie.
FWIW, I think the game would benefit heavily from a bit less hand-wavey SPACE MAGIC and a bit more structure to the various paracausal mechanisms regularly influencing the world.
Bungie's character work has improved dramatically. Calus, Osiris, Caitl, Crow, Eramis--all complex characters with varied, believable motivations and character arcs that feel interesting but also like natural progression based on their actions and identities.
Bungie is still struggling with narrative design and I hope they continue to improve here. Laying the groundwork of good characters helps immensely, as it lets otherwise mild story beats (basic betrayals, character decisions, allegiance shifts) turn into compelling events.
I do think some Destiny fans are more interested in poking holes in the story than enjoying it. This isn't meant to shield the story from all sorts of legitimate criticism, but there is an element of "why didn't this event specifically conform to and explain my theories?!?" in some of the story criticism I see regularly levied against Bungie.
FWIW, I think the game would benefit heavily from a bit less hand-wavey SPACE MAGIC and a bit more structure to the various paracausal mechanisms regularly influencing the world.
Very this. I think the frustrations and nit picking come from the fact that what people think are Capital M Mysteries are really just the absence of a story, so mysteries come laden with an expectation there might be an answer out there. The reality is that bungie has no idea, haven't given it any thought.
So I think your last paragraph is absolutely critical. The lore desperately needs more rules. It took until this season to get an explanation on why Sav wasn't just resurrected whenever.
Incidentally, that lore was so damn satisfying! Sure, they just now made the rule up that if they're not disintegrated they need the body, but this *finally* gives us some concrete rules to resurrection. It solidifies stakes in certain scenarios.
And, again, they made it up now, but they tied to old lore. If in the before times you couldn't kill a risen's ghost the next best thing was to hoard their body? The implications on how that influenced combat in the dark times is amazing.
And its all thanks to Rules.
Rules in fiction rock. They give the story gravity. And you can't break rules for dramatic effect if you don't have them!
It's a good example of an established rule aiding the narrative IMO. Considering how potentially important it is, probably could have been communicated to the player earlier but narrative time for the main story is pretty valuable so there are lots of items competing for those slots.
So if I fuck up a jump in the current end of season mission, the internal logic that people jerk off to is that someone teleports my body back to a platform, where my ghost is waiting to resurrect me?
Why does anyone need "lore" for a shooter video game that mainly delivers its story through text dumps, and features strikes that make no sense if you want them to fit into current "cannon"?
It's fine, relax and shoot some space dudes with your space guns.
(Yes, that's needlesly shitty, but you can't be super tight with your "lore" and run a pseudo game-as-a-service, which always includes prior content, because that's just how it works if it's going to be at all feasible)
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They have not figured out what to replace it with yet is how I read that. Which, yeah, I can understand.
Yeah, ripping out power is almost certainly a net good for the game, but a lot of the games current engagement loops are built around the power grind
Which isn't good and I'm certainly not defending it, but ripping it out willynilly is just daft. They've as much said they're using this year too tinker with things and see what works - Season of the Deep being a blatant let's see what happens to engagement without the power grind, for example
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Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
I agree with all of this, but it's also a feel bad that games have to be designed for an "engagement loop" today. I feel like someone is going to eventually crack the financial / game design code for how you offer a game with all the good parts of a live service like Destiny, but without the need for engagement loops, daily user counts, FOMO, daily/weekly activity limits and all that mess. I'm not sure what black magic it will require, but I'm here for it. Especially as we watch tons of other live service games crash and burn with only a few really good ones left. Someone will hopefully come in and disrupt the space. Maybe it will be Bungie with their new thing, who knows. They've certainly learned an immense amount over the years.
This is how I felt as well. The most fun and invested I've felt in D2 was during that long season. I felt like I wasn't running on a tread mill just to have to do it all over again in three months. I'm sure players with much higher hour counts than me may feel different, but I loved the longer season. Did the most high tier content I've ever done during that season.
I think the games that crack it will be the ones that figure out how to make a model that's not reliant on constant engagement, for sure.
Half the reason you see so much crashing and burning is because these games try and exist in spaces where all the room is taken up, and don't expand that room meaningfully.
I.e Warframe and Destiny get along because they're both pretty different takes on the looter-shooter genre. And I think The Division 3 is still trucking along? But if you were going to announce a new looter shooter right now... Well, what's my motivation to play it? What's it's content model? Sunk cost definitely applies here, and not just that - D2 for all it's flaws is reliable
Or look at the MMO space - stop many that crashed and burned did so because they tried to be World of Warcraft.
The survivors were wildly different (guild wars, Eve) or offered something that Wow did not, be that genre or otherwise - and WoW itself has stopped being viewed as reliable, and had it's lunch mostly eaten by FF14 (which in turn has only pulled this off by existing for years on end and very firmly establishing /why/ you'd want to play it over WoW or other options)
The other bit is frankly, assume of this stuff works. power grind is daft, but it's an easy to chase goal that gets you to hit a bunch of different content - I've certainly happily chased it as a result before. I'm not sure loot can provide the same chase, and I'm sure Bungie is aware of that
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They absolutely will. If not because of power level shenanigans then because of the way they're changing artifact unlocks.
If the level grind is basically like Witch Queen, i.e. do the Legendary Campaign, then that's fine with me.
I am pretty ready for the power level grind thing to just go away.
it's just so much extra busywork that sucks
Just make it so pinnacles are on knockout. This means the player still has to engage with pinnacle content, but respects the players time. I doubt you'd get any complaints about the power system if this were in place, because you'd know exactly what's going to be required.
What bungie is doing instead is making the pinnacle cap significantly lower than it was, and therefore requiring less time. But it still feels awful because its RNG progression. Its just awful for less time, so yeah its better, sure, but, come on. They're committed to this path because I guess Season of the Deep won't increase the ceiling at all.
I'm not bothered by spoilers though. To me, the fun is in the experience, not the 'surprise'.
Woof.
The sad thing is the pieces were there they just absolutely failed to follow through on it. It feels like some of stuff that Seth Dickensen did with the Hive and how they apparently don't really get what it was about.
It makes even less sense that Rasputin is toast because the station had to be destroyed...except we were on the station for that ending cutscene. Not picking up Rasputin on our way out after he retargeted stuff is kind of a dick move. Wait, did Ana retarget stuff? Was R unable to issue a simple text command? Despite seizing control of the pod system and spawning in giant death robots before we plug him in.
Let's not even go into WHAT THE FUCK was up with the Traveler. "Oh, sorry, did you think I was leaving? I just needed to stretch my orb. For the first time in centuries. At the exact moment when it was too late to actually escape from your death lasers. Why, it sure did look like I decided to high tail it as soon as Rasputin no longer had a gun to my head, huh? Wow, that's the sort of extremely contrived scenario you'd put together if you only cared about cheap cliched melodrama while being unable to write worth a damn, huh?"
This once again feels like they got a rock solid outline from somebody who actually knew how to write and are now hitting the high points without bothering to do any of the work to make them hit right.
Or they might've seen an opportunity in all that to recreate some keyart from before Destiny 1 as a callback.
I could quibble all day about small stuff, but there were moments in there that worked for me. Admittedly the fantastic score is doing a lot of emotional heavy lifting.
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I also had hoped something more might have come of the Clovis AI and their ambition to usurp Rasputin and seize the Warsat network for themselves. That was a pretty noteworthy revelation, but Clovis just sort've got put back in his corner. Maybe they're saving him for another season.
I'd heard the idea that Rasputin's sacrifice is what stopped the Traveler from leaving, and however dumb the rationale for Rasputin's fall, I do like that idea. Though funnily enough, the Witness' declaration that there is nowhere left for them to run is actually what I've long thought was the reason the Traveler hasn't left already - that somehow, either there's no other races out there period (all reaped) or no one better equipped to stop the Black Fleet.
It's now or never.
like i don’t really care because if i played destiny for the story beyond like, repeating lines from strikes with my friends as we go insane learning a gm or something, i would have stopped a while ago. but it’s not well executed in game pretty much top to bottom.
the only decent writing is in the lore cards, those are fun
I often think about how different the game would be had they gone with the original script for D1 (or even some of the planned and scrapped stuff for base D2 like more Siva)
Ultimately felt like they needed some pieces off the board so they did it in the way they felt best given the timing but yeah, color me in the less than satisfied for that resolution
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So how many "things" do we think count as parts of Rasputin? The billion warsats around the place? Sleeper Simulant? Half the guns we crafted this season? The exo shell we crammed him into just a few weeks ago?
We all figured he'd be walking around as an Exo one day anyway.
My take on the Traveller moving was that it was intending to leave, but Rasputin’s sacrifice led it to change its mind.
I wonder if we’ll get another bit of gameplay next week, to take us into Nightfall ?
If nothing else, it’d be interesting to read what was in the files Rasputin left for Osiris, and Osiris’ reaction.
I found it a little odd and wasn't sure what to think of it at first. But I'm beginning to suspect it's deliberately ambiguous. Neither we nor the characters in the game are supposed to understand what it's intentions were at the time or why it acted. All the in-game characters are making assumptions about what it meant. And if the writing is any good in following up on that, their different reactions to the events will do something in the story to come.
Didn't the speaker admit he was making it all up, before Ghaul killed him ?
I think the traveller is best left as an enigma, like the darkness.
Given their apparent natures, they're probably best left explained through parables and stories.
I assume we'll learn more throughout Lightfall, given the name.
2 weeks to go - I can't wait - for the story and the new systems.
But that's fine, plenty of games are carried by their gameplay. But at least the lore is amazing and acts as a sort of backstop to the story at large. Sure, it sucks that the good stuff is *always* tell, not show, but better to have that than not.
Bungie is still struggling with narrative design and I hope they continue to improve here. Laying the groundwork of good characters helps immensely, as it lets otherwise mild story beats (basic betrayals, character decisions, allegiance shifts) turn into compelling events.
I do think some Destiny fans are more interested in poking holes in the story than enjoying it. This isn't meant to shield the story from all sorts of legitimate criticism, but there is an element of "why didn't this event specifically conform to and explain my theories?!?" in some of the story criticism I see regularly levied against Bungie.
FWIW, I think the game would benefit heavily from a bit less hand-wavey SPACE MAGIC and a bit more structure to the various paracausal mechanisms regularly influencing the world.
Very this. I think the frustrations and nit picking come from the fact that what people think are Capital M Mysteries are really just the absence of a story, so mysteries come laden with an expectation there might be an answer out there. The reality is that bungie has no idea, haven't given it any thought.
So I think your last paragraph is absolutely critical. The lore desperately needs more rules. It took until this season to get an explanation on why Sav wasn't just resurrected whenever.
Incidentally, that lore was so damn satisfying! Sure, they just now made the rule up that if they're not disintegrated they need the body, but this *finally* gives us some concrete rules to resurrection. It solidifies stakes in certain scenarios.
And, again, they made it up now, but they tied to old lore. If in the before times you couldn't kill a risen's ghost the next best thing was to hoard their body? The implications on how that influenced combat in the dark times is amazing.
And its all thanks to Rules.
Rules in fiction rock. They give the story gravity. And you can't break rules for dramatic effect if you don't have them!
Why does anyone need "lore" for a shooter video game that mainly delivers its story through text dumps, and features strikes that make no sense if you want them to fit into current "cannon"?
It's fine, relax and shoot some space dudes with your space guns.
(Yes, that's needlesly shitty, but you can't be super tight with your "lore" and run a pseudo game-as-a-service, which always includes prior content, because that's just how it works if it's going to be at all feasible)