Destiny 2: The Witch Queen out now

Mafro wrote:Went to play the new Battleground and strike earlier but their server maintenance kept getting extended. Thin it finally finished at 10pm and I couldn't be arsed.

Huh. PC was fine around that time. Managed to finish solo Glykon (got a real shitty roll but found all this week's collectibles) and a few rounds of IB

Parksey wrote:
It's weird, as it's almost the opposite of what seasons were meant to be and what Bungie themselves said they were aiming for.

Seasons were meant to be repeatable, grindy PVE activities. Bungie said a focus on campaign or story missions wasn't viable as they are often a one-and-done thing, or resource intensive.

Didn't they say this after Forsaken though, referring to campaigns specifically rather than story based activities in general? There's also been a lot of changes since then, at the company and in the game, and I think they've now managed to find a way to walk the grindy PvE Vs plot stuff tightrope pretty well at this point.

I feel like you have to invest a couple of months of solid grinding just to get used to the content structure in this game, so Im balancing between campaign and testing out different builds and completing daily bounties at the moment. As a newcomer I find all the content a bit overwhelming at times but its still nice to have different options on where you want to take the game.

The systems are a mishmash of old and new, and even now they seem to be phasing out, or at least backgrounding, the bounty system too. It's all very messy.

Got the Dead Man's Tale catalyst this morning. The Master version of the Glykon took a few goes, but me and 2 randos did it with 5 minutes to spare in the end.

Tafdolphin wrote:The systems are a mishmash of old and new, and even now they seem to be phasing out, or at least backgrounding, the bounty system too. It's all very messy.

Got the Dead Man's Tale catalyst this morning. The Master version of the Glykon took a few goes, but me and 2 randos did it with 5 minutes to spare in the end.

I unlocked that quest, but had to spend an hour doing the forsaken opening quest before I could start it. When I gave it a go it was late and after falling off the platforms a couple of times I gave up and went to sleep.

Drej wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:The systems are a mishmash of old and new, and even now they seem to be phasing out, or at least backgrounding, the bounty system too. It's all very messy.

Got the Dead Man's Tale catalyst this morning. The Master version of the Glykon took a few goes, but me and 2 randos did it with 5 minutes to spare in the end.

I unlocked that quest, but had to spend an hour doing the forsaken opening quest before I could start it. When I gave it a go it was late and after falling off the platforms a couple of times I gave up and went to sleep.

If it's the Catalyst quest you 100% need a fireteam of 3. It's an extra hard version of the Glykon with a 25 minute timer

BUT!! I suspect you actually mean the normal Glykon quest, which is super doable solo. It's really, really good and Dead Man's Tale is legit one of the best weapons they've ever done. It's incredibly fun to use.

Tafdolphin wrote:

Drej wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:The systems are a mishmash of old and new, and even now they seem to be phasing out, or at least backgrounding, the bounty system too. It's all very messy.

Got the Dead Man's Tale catalyst this morning. The Master version of the Glykon took a few goes, but me and 2 randos did it with 5 minutes to spare in the end.

I unlocked that quest, but had to spend an hour doing the forsaken opening quest before I could start it. When I gave it a go it was late and after falling off the platforms a couple of times I gave up and went to sleep.

If it's the Catalyst quest you 100% need a fireteam of 3. It's an extra hard version of the Glykon with a 25 minute timer

BUT!! I suspect you actually mean the normal Glykon quest, which is super doable solo. It's really, really good and Dead Man's Tale is legit one of the best weapons they've ever done. It's incredibly fun to use.

It definitley is the normal quest as there was no timer! I should give it a go tonight.. Seems like the catalyst quests are the hard ones, which is fair enough I guess, Ill get used to the glykon and get carried by randoms after 8)

I was going to complete the catalyst for the new exotic bow but I see there's a crucible kills requirement so I'll just leave it.

I still don’t really see the logic of challenges AND bounties, but it’s mucho satisfying ticking them off and watching the XP fly up. They should have just invented another vendor for this sort of stuff - The Voice of the Traveller would have been a good one for it if they hadn’t...y’know...

From the way this topic is going I assume the idea of a Destiny 3 is pretty much dead for the near future?

Peter Crisp wrote:From the way this topic is going I assume the idea of a Destiny 3 is pretty much dead for the near future?

Rumours were that Bungie gathered a load of streamers and top level D2 players a few years back, asked them what they thought D3 could bring that continuing to expand D2 couldn't, so the idea of a sequel was there at somepoint (undoubtedly they were working on it whilst still under Activision). Apparently though they unofficially scrapped D3 some time later and the stuff they were working on ended up as Beyond Light. They've planned out the expansions up until 2022 now (Witch Queen this year, LightFall in 2022) so if D3 ever comes, it won't be before 2023 (spoiler: it'll never come).

Good decision in my eyes. As someone with something like 1000 hours in D2, starting from scratch again'd be big no no.

Buffalo wrote:I still don’t really see the logic of challenges AND bounties, but it’s mucho satisfying ticking them off and watching the XP fly up. They should have just invented another vendor for this sort of stuff - The Voice of the Traveller would have been a good one for it if they hadn’t...y’know...

I don't think it's logic, it's just the game changing over time, old systems co-existing with the new until they're phased out. I imagine the bounty system will go entirely before we reach Light Fall.

Tafdolphin wrote:Rumours were that Bungie gathered a load of streamers and top level D2 players a few years back, asked them what they thought D3 could bring that continuing to expand D2 couldn't, so the idea of a sequel was there at somepoint (undoubtedly they were working on it whilst still under Activision).

That wasn't a rumour, it actually happened. The spring after the release of Destiny 2 They invited a bunch of streamers to their studio to have a summit and discuss what a bunch of no-lifers (whose income relied on the game being overly-grindy) thought was wrong with the game and how Bungie could fix it.

That resulted in about 5 dogshit seasons in a row of grindy content that was blatantly targeted at streamers.

Yeah, I forget the name of the streamer who leaked the meeting now...but amongst Bungie's claims at the time was that Vaulting was to be strictly short term, and would be used to take locations offline, update their backend to current standards, then plop them back in.

Given what's happened with the Cosmodrome this year, I can't see that happening now.

Mafro wrote:That wasn't a rumour, it actually happened. The spring after the release of Destiny 2 They invited a bunch of streamers to their studio to have a summit and discuss what a bunch of no-lifers (whose income relied on the game being overly-grindy) thought was wrong with the game and how Bungie could fix it.

That resulted in about 5 dogshit seasons in a row of grindy content that was blatantly targeted at streamers.

Are these the same people who think it's great to have content that's so hard that only the top 1% can finish it because you require the absolute best gear in the game that insanely only drops from the content that requires it?

That's what happened to The Division 2 for a while anyway.
Yey, lets release content most sane people have no hope of half completing unless they quit there job.

On a scale of 1 to 10 how hard would you say the new content is and is it aimed at streamers who have the time to grind insanely?

Peter Crisp wrote:

Mafro wrote:That wasn't a rumour, it actually happened. The spring after the release of Destiny 2 They invited a bunch of streamers to their studio to have a summit and discuss what a bunch of no-lifers (whose income relied on the game being overly-grindy) thought was wrong with the game and how Bungie could fix it.

That resulted in about 5 dogshit seasons in a row of grindy content that was blatantly targeted at streamers.

Are these the same people who think it's great to have content that's so hard that only the top 1% can finish it because you require the absolute best gear in the game that insanely only drops from the content that requires it?

That's what happened to The Division 2 for a while anyway.
Yey, lets release content most sane people have no hope of half completing unless they quit there job.

On a scale of 1 to 10 how hard would you say the new content is and is it aimed at streamers who have the time to grind insanely?

Depends.

Battlegrounds: 0/10 - They're big strikes. Loads of enemies, but not hard
Glykon exotic mission: 5/10 - Can be done alone ok if you're willing to figure out puzzles. The fights are tough but not overly so. A good fireteam can finish in 15 minutes.
Season Pass: 0/10 - This is the core loop now.
Trials: 10/10 - Not new, but this is the mode for the super grindy sweaty neck-beards. A terrible mode where all decent loot is locked behind achievements that are simply impossible for casuals.

I did play trials a few times back when I played.

The team I played with would regularly get to maybe 4 wins with decent matchmaking and both sides fairly well matched but then we'd be put up against a team of terminators and it felt like putting a Sunday league side up again Barcelona.
This happened every time and we gave up in the end.
I know this is supposed tp be content for the hardcore but people that had already got everything from the mode just seemed to hang around and stomp people for fun.
It was all a tad odd.

It made me feel like that kid about to play a game of chess and they bring on a Grandmaster .

Yup, last week teams were throwing themselves off cliffs as there was a good gun reward for 3 matches completed. The matchmaking is apparently totally borked, with LFG noobs being placed against Flawless clan rosters regularly.

I never have, and never will, play Trials. It's the one part of the game I view as utterly irredeemably gooseberry fool. Iron Banner is as Hardcore as I'm ever going to get.

Tried the Glykon Mission again yesterday and could only survive 10-20 seconds in my first boss fight... tried it for about 10 times and then gave up

Have you dipped your toe into the murky waters of armour mods? I’ve not tried that mission myself yet but if you’re struggling why not try adding mods to your armour pieces that boost Resilience, and Recovery. I’m not the greatest at the game so I always boost them and it helps.

Buffalo wrote:Have you dipped your toe into the murky waters of armour mods? I’ve not tried that mission myself yet but if you’re struggling why not try adding mods to your armour pieces that boost Resilience, and Recovery. I’m not the greatest at the game so I always boost them and it helps.

Thanks for the tip, I had boosted my mobility stats to help me with the platforming side of things to get into the spaceship and forgot to change them back

What platform are you on Drej? If you're PC I'd be more than happy to jump on and help you through!