Destiny 2: The Witch Queen out now

Tafdolphin wrote:
Preezy wrote:I downloaded the base game the other night after seeing on here that it was free. Haven't got round to giving it a go yet, but what should I be expecting? Is it any good? I'm not interested (at all, in any way) in spending any money on this so I'm not going to be getting any of the DLC, is it worth bothering with the base game and does that have any longevity?

Depends.

Thanks for the insight, appreciated. I've got an evening free on Friday so I'll give this a go, but I'm on PS4 so our paths won't be crossing.

Apparently crossplay, including PS4 crossplay, is now a real possibility given that Sony have finally given in and are allowing it to all titles that want it.

Fingers crossed.

It's a bit of a mess for new players too. Someone at work had D2 but never finished the campaign so he's wanting to play it all again and didn't know what he's doing. Now to play the previous campaign and the first two DLCs you have to go and select them from Amanda Holiday(?!) and going by what he was saying they've got rid of the exotic weapon and armour choices you get in the vanilla campaign. And I see they've added another strawberry floating material into the game that you need to infuse gear :fp:

Yeah. I've been away for...8 months? I have zero idea what the strawberry float is going on.

Ehhh, sounds like it might be a bit too much effort for a Friday night. I've got Battlefield 1 waiting to be played so maybe I'll give that a go instead.

You should definitely okay through the base game's campaign (the Red War). It was pretty decent and better than Battlefield 1's solo content.

The disorder is something inherently wrong with MMO as they grow. They pile layer upon layer and extend things in various directions, so you get what basically Rob Wesley's house but in video game form (not the best analogy I've ever made). This is on top of all the currencies and upgrade materials they have.

The thing is though, they listened to the fan base. The no-lifers and the hardcore absolutely moaned to high hell about vanilla Destiny 2.

Bungie said that the original Destiny got too bloated with such things, so they streamlined a lot of it in D2. They might have gone a bit too far in the opposite direction, but unfortunately they listened to the loudest complaints - the same people who horde items to reach max level the day new DLC comes and then complain there's nothing to do - and added in a lot of obtuse layers again. I would probably just horde stuff and keep playing, and if you find yourself getting hooked on the min-maxing part of the game you can look stuff up (as with MMOs again, the game doesn't really explain upgrades and materials too well either). You can enjoy the game without delving in to all that.

Why they didn't make the solo campaigns easier to access I don't know. Sounds like they just flicked a switch to make a two year MMO (and a five year old series) FTP without really wondering what new players would see and feel when they entered this world. That world is very different now, after countless revisions and expansions, compared to the one regular players entered in 2014 or 2017.

Still, the game is absolutely worth sticking with.

EDIT - Also to Taf, I am still seeing the weekly Challenges/Powerful Gear rewards under the icons in the Tower and stuff. For example, the Drifter has "WEEKLY - Complete Gambit Bounties". All the stuff giving powerful gear has a blue icon on that vendor now. I think they've removed the Dreaming City powerful rewards though.

Ah strawberry float. I started doing some dailies and... I think I'm back in.

Balls.

Didn't realise you can play the first Shadowkeep mission without the DLC.

Mafro wrote:Didn't realise you can play the first Shadowkeep mission without the DLC.

Wha...how?

Tafdolphin wrote:
Mafro wrote:Didn't realise you can play the first Shadowkeep mission without the DLC.

Wha...how?

You can play it once you reach 780 by selecting it from the director. Once you've done it you have access to the moon patrol area. Thought I'd accidentally bought the DLC for a second :lol:

Oh yeah! Never noticed that.

Just did it and yeah. It's fine. It's actually put me off buying the DLC as it happens as most of my interest was getting to see the moon from D1 again. Now I've seen it...meh. I'm fine. From what I can see most of the major changes, Armour 2.0 and all that, are included for free. About the only thing that's making me want to pay money is the battle pass.

I don't think it's a good look that their first post-Activision content without the help of their studios is basically just a rehash of a major D1 area and Hive that are now red.

Mafro wrote:I don't think it's a good look that their first post-Activision content without the help of their studios is basically just a rehash of a major D1 area and Hive that are now red.

This is definitely an issue I think. Apparently the Moon is much bigger below the surface than above, and I've only scooted around the above bit, but it's almost exactly the same as the D1 area. I suppose it doesn't help that the assault on the big red tower, you know the one in all the ads, comes in a strike. A strike that, not owning Shadowkeep, I was randomly given whilst in the Strikes playlist and that proceeded to spoil the Pyramid reveal before I realised you could play the first mission of the new campaign. :fp:

Saying all that, I'm now back into the loop for reals and it really does show just how good a place Destiny is at. There's so much to do for one: I'm trying to mop up some of the pinnacle weapons from last season so I'm playing strikes. But then I learn about an exotic I haven't gotten so I start that quest, which then ends up with me having to invest in the Menagerie stuff I didn't bother with last season, which then means I need more upgrade modules to be able to use my Calus weapons, which means I have to do bounties to level up my season rank, which then...

They've really struck gold when it comes to gameplay loops...everything leads into everything else which all leads to activities like the Raids and Nightfalls. It's an extremely intricate, extremely well done web of game design.

Oh, and I managed to get a fireteam together to get Outbreak Perfected finally which, like Whisper, required completion of a pretty fun puzzle/combat mission with a strict timeline. It was great, even with 2 randos I found on bungie.com

EDIT: My wife's away for 5 days at the end of the month. There's no way I'm not buying Shadowkeep at that point I think so, you know, well played Bungie?

Tafdolphin wrote:
Mafro wrote:I don't think it's a good look that their first post-Activision content without the help of their studios is basically just a rehash of a major D1 area and Hive that are now red.

This is definitely an issue I think. Apparently the Moon is much bigger below the surface than above, and I've only scooted around the above bit, but it's almost exactly the same as the D1 area. I suppose it doesn't help that the assault on the big red tower, you know the one in all the ads, comes in a strike. A strike that, not owning Shadowkeep, I was randomly given whilst in the Strikes playlist and that proceeded to spoil the Pyramid reveal before I realised you could play the first mission of the new campaign.

Saying all that, I'm now back into the loop for reals and it really does show just how good a place Destiny is at. There's so much to do for one: I'm trying to mop up some of the pinnacle weapons from last season so I'm playing strikes. But then I learn about an exotic I haven't gotten so I start that quest, which then ends up with me having to invest in the Menagerie stuff I didn't bother with last season, which then means I need more upgrade modules to be able to use my Calus weapons, which means I have to do bounties to level up my season rank, which then...

They've really struck gold when it comes to gameplay loops...everything leads into everything else which all leads to activities like the Raids and Nightfalls. It's an extremely intricate, extremely well done web of game design.

Oh, and I managed to get a fireteam together to get Outbreak Perfected finally which, like Whisper, required completion of a pretty fun puzzle/combat mission with a strict timeline. It was great, even with 2 randos I found on bungie.com

EDIT: My wife's away for 5 days at the end of the month. There's no way I'm not buying Shadowkeep at that point I think so, you know, well played Bungie?

They've obviously addd lost sectors to the Moon and they feel a bit longer than the previous ones thankfully.

I'm just going through trying stuff I missed in the season pass stuff from the last year.

Drifter stuff - not arsed
Forge stuff - seems alright and thank god there's matchmaking
Menagerie - this is gooseberry fool hot, basically like a mini raid. I did it once but for some reason it wasn't letting me do it again and I've got no idea what I have to do to make it available again because Bungie are terrible at explaining anything.

I've got the last part of that Outbreak Perfected quest to do as well but I never bothered with it before since it didn't have matchmaking.

Yeah, you need a team for Outbreak. It's very similar to the Whisper quest, although I'd say it's not quite as tricky. Basically impossible solo though.

I need to do more Menagerie. The stuff with the Chalice still confuses the strawberry float out of me so I'll have to do some reading.

Oh lordy.

Took an ungodly amount of grinding, and that's after the quest was toned down by a factor of 3. Also got The Recluse at the same time by accident!

I’ve played precisely zero PvP and it’s staying that way.

The recluse is a beast

I actually started to enjoy it. Thanks to the requirements of the quest to get the MT I've become very strawberry floating good with the Fighting Lion light grenade launcher and I ended my run on the competitive playlist with a 5 game win streak.

The Grenade Launcher double kill step was bullshit though.

I just got another 2 pinnacle weapons out of nowhere too, so apparently I managed to satisfy a lot of requirements doing just that one quest. Who knew?

Yeah I think Revoker, the sniper rifle, requires basically the same amount of glory it roughly takes to get to Fabled. Was Luna's the other one?

I'm enjoying PVP this season, so I'm going to solo queue for Fabled to get the Recluse. Almost there now, having not played that many games. I'm also juggling between tryibg to get the kills for Luna's, the kills for Thorn and the scout rifle kills for Randy's Throwing Knife. I didn't play much over the Season of the Drifter and for 2/3s of Opulence so I've got a backlog on the pinnacle weapons.

The Mountaintop's requirements just seem like a massive grind. You did it all in the past week or so? My main problem is I am gooseberry fool at aiming the Fighting Lion in PVE, so cant see myself being effectively in Crucible. It just seems to bounce right past it.

How did you manage the double kills too? I feel like it would take me the entire season and focusing entirely on that. I doubt I'd win many Crucible games while I focused on grenade launchers too, as I tend to use Hammerhead as my heavy in Comp.

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen out now

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