Destiny 2 - Place your bets on how many $40 DLC packs we'll get this time.

[Judge Dredd]

Dead Orbit had had enough of everything and just left.

So they got the good ending they wanted the whole time?

Really it was just Bungie's way of saying "stop asking about factions, we're done, we're not doing anything with them anymore," even though they still left all their regalia up in the Tower.

What a shame, but that's nu-Destiny MO. Has been since Taken King.

 

[Spilled Spaghett]

As for the factions, they all went kaput after Season of the Splicer. FWC had a lot of egg on their face after Lakshmi-2 incited violence against the House of Light refugees, even to the extent of aiding a Vex incursion into the city, and when she got killed by the Vex in the process, the whole faction disbanded. New Monarchy was supportive of FWC's efforts and also skeedaddled out of there after the invasion was stopped, and Dead Orbit had had enough of everything and just left. Really it was just Bungie's way of saying "stop asking about factions, we're done, we're not doing anything with them anymore," even though they still left all their regalia up in the Tower.

The Season of Splicer is probably one of the worst story arcs. Not only was it a thinly veiled "racism bad" story, but it gave a completely unsatisfying ending to each of the factions. D2's major flaw is how unified everything became. All your enemies over time are either destroyed or bow down to the glory of diversity and inclusion. I was a FWC fan in D1 so seeing the faction disgraced like that was tough to watch. Not to mention even in their strawman story, Lakshmi is right. She was right that Savathûn was behind The Endless Night. She was right that inviting the Fallen into the City was part of the plan. She may not have known exactly how but she knew it was trouble and inviting the House of Light in could have been a catastrophic mistake. If the plot didn't demand that she die, there is no way the story should have actually panned out this way. Because the story doesn't have time to get into the dirty details of day to day life we just assume that there are enough resources for everyone, that the Fallen aren't taking up limited space, that no one invited into the city was a criminal, or that any of the Fallen would harbor resentment to humanity and try to undermine their sovereignty. It mirrors their naive real world politics that if you just learned to love immigrants and give up everything you have, we can all get along.

Then there's the shit with Saint XIV. This guy was a warrior and brutalized The Fallen. But someone tells him a sob story about how they didn't appreciate being killed and suddenly he gets all teary eyed? "Oh no I didn't realize all the aliens were afraid of me killing them!!! I'm such a MONSTER!!!" We're just going to ignore that The Fallen were the ones who invaded the Sol system, and were raiding human settlements the moment they found us. We're going to ignore the human families that lived in fear and died from Fallen raiders, because it's only bad when humans kill. This is the same Saint who said:

All is lost, Guardian. Get out of here. I'll hold them off for as long as I can. The Fallen cannot be stopped. They do not negotiate. Their bargains are lies. I've watched them burn and pillage whole villages in the Cosmodrome. [gags] I've watched Dregs eat children. They envy us. Their legends say the Traveler chose them before us. And they will kill. They will torture. They will maim to earn their Machine God's favor.

 

[StacticShock]

While it can hurt a bit the champions related changes are just to make sure that grandmaster (or whatever it called now) meta would not be just stuck in the meta defined by weapon mods from final artifact.

they want the meta to be flexible to their whims, because fuck player choice, not to mention people would just use their godrolls with whatever set of anti-annoyance champions they feel like, can't have that... besides it keeps people on the grinding wheel considering it's the final update and shieet, nevermind the entire stat system being even more randomized now with the focused rolls.

all of this shit

nigga twas a fucking yes or no question but reading your post, couldn't be a clearer yes.
that's great that you like bungo/destiny and all but don't expect me to not nootice their acute retardation and point that out, especially when they themselves changed the entire shit for absolutely no reason other than fuck you that's why.

The Season of Splicer is probably one of the worst story arcs. Not only was it a thinly veiled "racism bad" story, but it gave a completely unsatisfying ending to each of the factions. D2's major flaw is how unified everything became. All your enemies over time are either destroyed or bow down to the glory of diversity and inclusion.

bruh don't even remind me, i recently did a brachus zahn mission and caught myself shooting at the allied cabal out of fucking nowhere because while they have blue colors, they still have the same cabal armor that i learned to shoot on the face during red war, then there's caiatl whom sounds like a fucking tranny.
and that's not even getting on the part where one of the portal missions has you do "ship battle" with both allied and enemy fallen, i lost the count how many borealis shots were wasted on allied fallen in that mission.

 

[Pod 042]

they want the meta to be flexible to their whims, because fuck player choice, not to mention people would just use their godrolls with whatever set of anti-annoyance champions, can't have that... besides it keeps people on the grinding wheel considering it's the final update and shieet, nevermind the entire stat system being even more randomized now with the focused rolls.

Yah, they forced new metas seasonally to try and keep the game feeling "fresh". It wasn't to limit player choice/power, in a sense (a nerf could do that), but to "force" creativity or "replayability" considering everything is just a variation of something else that you've done before. It was a poor engagement driver like power resets. People used to complain endlessly when ballerhorn or sleeper was the BIS for heavy and they got bored of god rolled primaries too. Then champions and seasonal mod rotations came and they switched from being bored to being angry they couldn't just use what they always used. Destiny fans being bipolar in their demands has always been a thing. This conversation has been had countless times and you're late. Not to disparage you, Bungie is retarded and deserves anything you feel like slinging their way. But D2/D1 people know most of this.

Counterpoint, Come June 9th literally none of that matters anymore. They're giving you 6 artifacts that you can switch at will. So it's not going to matter. You're preferred loadouts will be supported for anti-champion mods and you'll be able to pick the one you like the most. The discussion is moot at this point. Unless you like digging up dead horses so you can kick them a few times since you missed the initial flogging and feel left out.

I'm just saying, there's criticism and then there's complaining for the sake of complaining.

I get the feeling that's what this is. These are old gripes that have been talked into the ground and are almost irrelevant given we've reached EoL. Unless you're completely new then nothing here is surprising. But people should be allowed to voice their grievances.

nigga twas a fucking yes or no question but reading your post, couldn't be a clearer yes.
that's great that you like bungo/destiny and all but don't expect me to not nootice their acute retardation

No one tried to sweep for them being retarded. Champions we're a stupid idea. The relics being baked into the seasonal model was even more retarded. But no one is excusing it, just explaining that it is what it is. It's done, and the game is EoL. No matter how much you or I or anyone complains nothing is getting changed or overhauled after the 9th. So what's the point in having the same fights we've had over 9 years just because someone new enters the arena and thinks their the first to notice this backasswards design philosophy that Bungie implemented? You're not special for noticing.
>Champions suck
>Seasonal mods/relics suck
>The portal sucks
>Tiered loot sucks
>Removing crafting sucked
>Narratively, TFS sucked and so did post TFS
And here we are anyways. The final update is upon us and we'll see what it has in store when it drops. As for me, I just logged in today after leaving in LF with almost 5k hours in D2. And it's a cluster fuck, hopefully they hammered out something for new players. But I doubt it lol. Thanks Bungo at least you're consistently retarded.

 

[King Dead]

nigga twas a fucking yes or no question but reading your post, couldn't be a clearer yes.
that's great that you like bungo/destiny and all but don't expect me to not nootice their acute retardation and point that out, especially when they themselves changed the entire shit for absolutely no reason other than fuck you that's why.

Jesus Christ, dude, calm down. Just because someone is mildly disagreeing with you does not mean that they're a Bungie dicksucker (a laughable accusation given what I've said across this and the Marathon threads).

"Fuck player choice," huh? Okay, let's do a comparison, and then I'll drop this because if this doesn't lay it out, nothing is going to. (Spoilered for length.)

Spoiler

Under the previous system, anti-champ counters were:

• Up to five specific weapon archetypes as chosen by Bungie per season
  • Occasionally one of these mods would count for multiple weapon archetypes, but this was rare
  • More likely you'd only take three at most because any more would take away from better artifact mods
    • This did, of course, hinge on actually taking the proper mods for the activity and weapons you were using
• Elemental keywords, with every element able to deal with two champ types in various ways (except stasis, rip)
  • Able to be applied with weapons or abilities in various ways, too many to go into
• Exotic weapons, with about 25 different options with intrinsic anti-champ properties
  • Limited by only being able to take one exotic, but you had options
• Exotic armor, six options spread across three classes with two champion counters each
  • Adds some kind of counter to an ability

So already you had a pretty sizable amount of options to where champions would generally not be an issue if you took a bit of time to prepare, but a lot of players would not (as evidenced by the many, many times I was the only person who could counter champs in activities). How about the new system?

• Every single weaponhas some kind of anti-champ intrinsic
  • Every weapon category has multiple different options for champion counters based on frame, and many (especially primaries) can counter all three
    • The six primary frame categories are split into three groups of two for different champs
    • Minor frame categories are split based on what they're most similar to
  • No special behavior like aiming down sights or sustained fire to activate the counter, just shoot and instantly counter
  • No additional effort on the player's part, just equip the gun and go
• Elemental keywords are still available (please revert the stasis slow overload nerf bungo)
• Every single exotic weaponhas its own anti-champ intrinsic built in
  • 138 options available, not including any exotics being added with this update
• Exotic armor, no info yet but obviously a bare minimum of six options already

So let's do the math. We go from a maximum of five weapon archetypes to literally every weapon in the game, and 25 to nearly 140 exotic weapons, on top of using elemental keywords for counters, and you're trying to tell me that Bungie is against player choice? Just because you might not be able to use a particular weapon that you like against any champion type forever, when that was never the case before anyway?

Look, don't get me wrong, I hear what you're saying with regards to "why didn't they just put another mod slot in?" I'm sure they thought of that too. While I once again don't have any sort of insight into gamedev because I'm just an internet tard, my guess why they didn't go that route is twofold.

First, that's extra data that needs to be added to every single gun in the game. Besides just the UI work to add another slot for the extra mod, adding an extra variable to every gun is going to add up over the entire game. Extra storage is now needed for every gun a player has equipped in every slot, plus all the guns in their inventory, plus all the guns across their characters, plus all the guns in their vault and mailbox, and then multiplied across every player in the game (even those that don't play anymore), plus every single gun that drops in the future. Even a small change can add up when scaled into the billions. Easier to just make a modification to how the already-existing intrinsic frames work that modifies the behavior of the weapons accordingly.

And second, it's just easier for the players. Like I mentioned earlier, the average player is notoriously bad at handling champions by default. They'll load into an activity with the wrong guns or the wrong mods and not even bother to change them because they just like using their guns. Requiring them to slot an extra mod into their weapons when many probably aren't even aware that mods are a thing they can use in the first place is, in my opinion, simply too much to ask. This way, even through sheer accident, anyone can actually contribute to dealing with champs with considerably less effort.

(And this is without even getting into the fact that many times champions can be beaten even without hard countering them if people are focused, but this is long enough as it is.)

So yeah, I've said my piece, I've devoted way more time to this than I probably should have, but I'm done. If you still think that Bungo wants to make your life harder in this particular instance for whatever reason, you're welcome to keep on keeping on. I think this is an overall positive change, and if you think that makes me a Bungie dicksucker, you're also welcome to keep thinking that too.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

People used to complain endlessly when ballerhorn or sleeper was the BIS for heavy and they got bored of god rolled primaries too. Then champions and seasonal mod rotations came and they switched from being bored to being angry they couldn't just use what they always used. Destiny fans being bipolar in their demands has always been a thing. This conversation has been had countless times and you're late. Not to disparage you, Bungie is retarded and deserves anything you feel like slinging their way. But D2/D1 people know most of this.

The issue is that bungie is just really shit at making content. Take a look at payday 2, it has a billion weapons and a billion builds most of which are viable while still having high levels of satisfying difficulty. Nobody complains about the meta being stale and there's certainly no complaints about it being too easy on deathwish. You can bring more or less what you want and you will still struggle if you want to.

Its fully possible to make challenging pve content without resorting to cheese (again, payday 2), but due to the way destiny abilities work (1 keystroke erases an entire map), they invalidate all challenge associated with ad clear, so they just get huge cooldowns which makes the game lame because while the gunpay is good it needs the abilities to support it, so the game devolves into oneshoting 500 ads and then shooting at bullet sponges for half an hour.

Champions were a cheap ass shortcut that kills build diversity while being annoying and unfun to fight.

The thing that actually has dragged destiny down kicking and screaming every step of the way is the fucking pvp mode attached to its hip like a rotting vestigial necrotic twin. Every class, every cooldown, every weapon, every ability has to be designed with the attrociously dogshit pvp mode's balance in mind because for some reason when they designed the game they didn't give themselves the ability to split them properly/fully.

God, even fucking warframe handles conclave better than destiny handles crucible. Some abilities, classes and weapons are outright banned and some are literally completely seperate abilities entirely just to make it work without ruining the rest of the game.

 

[King Dead]

There is definitely still challenge in the game, though a lot of it comes from tackling it in particular ways (low-man raids, solo dungeons). It's always a tough balance to strike, though. Make it too easy, and nobody gets a really satisfying time while the sweats bitch about it. Make it too tough baseline, and only the no-life sweats get to see it (and still complain that it's too easy). Making something mechanically complex is about the only way to guarantee people find it challenging, but again, you go too far in that direction, and you get Verity.

I think that complaints about a hard meta are a little bit silly for anyone that isn't either day 1 raiding or trying to speedrun shit. The dirty little secret about Destiny is that pretty much anything is good enough to clear, as long as you're actually giving it your best shot. You don't necessarily need the BiS weapon loadout and to run the current subclass du jour. It helps, sure, but encounters aren't really balanced around everyone being perfect (and when they are, you get Desert Perpetual contest mode). If you need to do one more damage phase, it's not the end of the world. Some speedrunning faggot might complain that he has to wait another minute for his loot, but most people deal with it just fine.

But yeah, in hindsight, not having a hard PVE/PVP split didn't really help the game in the long term. Each has always affected the other in some way, and it's been completely impossible to ensure that both are somewhat fair. I get the intention of not needing to adjust to a different sandbox when you go from one mode to another, but it did more harm than good in the long run. If Destiny PVP were more like Halo's (small fixed weapon pool, everyone starts with the same guns, find other guns on the map), it probably would have been better for the game overall.

 

[Croaking Spider]

The thing that actually has dragged destiny down kicking and screaming every step of the way is the fucking pvp mode attached to its hip like a rotting vestigial necrotic twin. Every class, every cooldown, every weapon, every ability has to be designed with the attrociously dogshit pvp mode's balance in mind because for some reason when they designed the game they didn't give themselves the ability to split them properly/fully.

I'm not entirely sure what was lost in translation between the balancing of D1 and D2, but I remember thoroughly enjoying my time with PvP in the first, even though you would think it would suffer the same issues as D2. One of my fondest Destiny 1 memories was keeping that beat-up old world M4 you got in the tutorial. As far as I remember, that was the only weapon in the game to use that model. Pretty much just a fun momento as far as PvE content goes, but I brought that thing into PvP CONSTANTLY. It didn't have any special properties, but it had a good dot sight and it handled like you would want an AR in a video game to handle. Was it "competitive"? Not really, not a sense. But it was still viable and I would occasionally even pop off with it. My friends always ribbed me about it and I would occasionally get an XBL message from someone wondering what gun I was using.

Destiny 2? Not a chance. You either play by the meta or you end up getting shitstomped by those that are. Even from the early days, D2 PvP was some of the sweatiest most unfun shit I had played, and the constant insistence of events based around it and the reward structure only made it worse.

 

[Swarth Suppressor]

Finished the Heliostat exotic mission a few hours ago and it wasn't great. Encounters didn't have the no-respawn darkness zones and the last encounter was particularly lousy because of the big open arena and the yellow bar legionary spam. Not fun chipping away at a boss's health while I'm getting spawn camped.

 

[Vhailor]

It was a poor engagement driver like power resets.

I think the artifacts also helped to highlight new gear and remove (or least weaken) powercreep. It allowed Bungie to print just slightly stronger weapons (in opposition to dropping just strictly better weapon like they did earlier days) but make them interesting to grind during that season because of synergies with the artifact mods. It is a cheesy way to make things interesting and does not really solve problems, but I think it is probably most optimal way to handle it, at least still better than dropping guns with just better numbers in them.

 

[Burgundy Brandy]

My biggest thing at the moment is the exotic quest and if there actually is one. During renegades we hear mentions of a foundry for weapons of sorrow, it would be a shame if we didn't assault it for whatever toy Bael and Lume have being cooked up. It might be a bit much to ask at this point but I'd like if we somehow procured Bael's outfit and for his hilt to be something you could earn in Equilibrium. It definitely won't happen but I'll huff the hopium for the time being.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

There is definitely still challenge in the game, though a lot of it comes from tackling it in particular ways (low-man raids, solo dungeons). It's always a tough balance to strike, though. Make it too easy, and nobody gets a really satisfying time while the sweats bitch about it. Make it too tough baseline, and only the no-life sweats get to see it (and still complain that it's too easy). Making something mechanically complex is about the only way to guarantee people find it challenging, but again, you go too far in that direction, and you get Verity.

The issue is that the challenge is never really raw combat challenge. Its doing puzzle mechanics while evading fire and seeing how long you can maintain grit/nerve/concentration while doing those mechanics.

Playing payday 2 on deathsetence is a test of how good of a tactician/gunslinger you are, you could have the best build in the game, you're still eating shit if you play wrong and dying in the first 5 seconds.

Playing destiny 2 challenge mode dungeons/raids/whatever is a test of how fast you can do mechanics, its arguably not even a test of skill, its a test of patience and a good build will carry you 90% of the way. Abilities take care of ad clear and you only use guns to magdump bullet sponges.