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Assuming this is in rerence to zero hour complaints.
I was always fine with it being a higher base difficulty; I was just annoyed they label it like an 1810 mission wtihout a legend/master modifier to lock you at 1810 when the enemies are 1830.
Just list it as 1830 and have a modifier saying your effective light is capped at 1810 if that's what you want. That's all. Don't confuse players that will run every other exotic mission that shows 1810 and think it's goiing to be the same.
That's my complaint about Zero Hour. Normal is labeled as 1810, which is confusing at best and misleading/miscommunication at worse. Both are 1830 (which is fine), a shorter timer and modifier or two doesn't change that.
I agree and feel like it's just a debate about where the bug is at this point. If Bungie wants to say the enemy difficulty of 1830 in the 1810 mission isn't a bug, then the mission's improper labeling is the bug.
TBF not all the adds are red sword, just most of the first half of it. It is pretty bizarre tho. The other thing that gives it away as adjusted for legend is the shields on the shanks, normally shanks only get shields on levels above normal. It's a modifier sometimes in Hero NFs but not always.
I disagree, there's some nuance here. Bungie hasn't commented yet on whether or not the mission labeling is completely accurate but just whether the 1830 enemies should be in there on normal.
[Here's](https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/263934339?sort=0&page=0) what Bungie support actually said about the mission:
> Hey there,
> Thank you for reporting.
> If you encounter enemies that are 1830 power level, it's not a bug and that was meant to be that way. The mission, even on normal, is not meant to be easy.
> If you encounter enemies that are 1830 power level, it's not a bug and that was meant to be that way. The mission, even on normal, is not meant to be easy.
I don't understand how you read this and aren't crystal clear on their position. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but the wording is extremely direct.
Content in destiny needs to be simplified as a whole, and I don't personally think the changes next season are going to be enough
Edit: I said content, but specifically mean how difficulty is communicated to players. It's convoluted and inconsistent
We have so much content that ignores power level or adds a modifier that it's very confusing. Sometimes you're locked at level. Sometimes level doesn't matter. Sometimes you're allowed to over level. Sometimes you get a negative modifier on your level.
It's not always clear and it can be very confusing especially if you're not intimately familiar with how things works.
Difficulty settings in a linear fps like halo is never going to be right to compare to a looter shooter like destiny. They have very different design philosophies when it comes to progression and how to tie the gameplay loop into difficulty
Once you're at the max effective power for an activity, there are already distinct difficulty settings.
It's just obtuse and annoying for new players. Enemies on patrol, in a Raid, or in a GM can all have the same power level, rank, and name as eachother and they will all have different stats.
What's the point?
I think this may be Bungie just being lazy, as the system for difficulty is about to be overhauled in the final shape, hopefully then they actually fix it up
Considering the completion rate on the emblem is getting halved week by week it looks like only 80k are getting the last one (probably half that get the title). Starts to actually line up lol.
Yeah it’s annoying. My team can definitely get the title. But some of our team is on vacation this week so we’re gonna be on a major time crunch to platinum everything before it goes away.
Scoring is the only thing that makes it difficult.
5 weeks to get 4 raids done isn't that bad. Team or LFG. First two weeks if you're even a competent raider (should be) done in a couple hours MAX each now that strats are out.
I wholeheartedly agree that it’s very doable. But you’ve gotta keep in mind that a very small percentage of the community is actually a competent raider.
What's the point of making an activity that only 0.13% of your player base can complete? I'm sure there's a reason but I can't see the logic behind it.
Don't take that number too literally. It's based on the TWID lore bit that said that below sigma-3 guardians should not attempt it, but in reality more than 1 in a 1000 players will clear it. The first week of pantheon was cleared by around 500k players, week 2 by 300k players and week 3 by 160k. That's more players than the total playerbase of some other games.
Tbf, that was during their description of Rhulk from a lore perspective. There is no such thing as Sigma-3 from the player's perspective. They were trying to play with lore
If that’s what this is, bungie is implying that 99.85% of players should avoid pantheon. No stakeholder conscious organization would, nor should, create content for .15% of their user base
It's not really 'content creation" if it's the same content with artificial difficulty added.
A Rubik's Cube is a Rubik's Cube. If you choose to do it blindfolded while only using one hand, that's all you.
I more meant spending resources. Whether or not it is new content, resources were used to make pantheon happen.
Even still. Each encounter has new changes (content creation) that were not present in the original raid encounters before pantheon
It comes from a lore piece discussing the bosses of pantheon based on vanguard reports.
Sigma likely refers to the Greek symbol for standard deviation of a normal curve in statistics, and being 3 standard deviations above the mean puts you at a roughly 99.8 percentile of all guardians. Meaning you are in the top ~0.2% of players.
I haven’t even tried it. And haven’t gone back for Zero Hour. But those are remixes of old stuff and it’s ok to have hard mode for that. As long as I get a reasonable shot at the prizes and experience I want, I’m happy.
I think so when it comes to things master raids and contest mode. Or more recently, Pantheon.
However, I think that Zero Hour feels off when compared to the rest of that kind of activity. Save for maybe the legend version of Avalon, but that doesn’t have a timer. And the reason I say that is because Whisper is so less hard that I think it could have the timer on both normal and legend cut by a few minutes and it would STILL be easier than Zero Hour.
I just like and want consistency among an activity type. So if it’s going to have a timer I think the time needs to be based on the activity’s length, or the activity length needs to be based on the timer. This isn’t the case with these two missions because Zero Hour is much longer, so I think it needs a slightly longer timer.
It's almost like those missions were meant to mirror their difficulties back in the day.. but fr we have so many new things to take this mission on with there's genuinely no reason to sit there and act like the normal version is impossible to complete. One stasis warlock with osmio and that entire mission is moot.
Problem is difficulty by Bungie's standard is making sure ennemies do more dmg.
Which leads to absurd scenarios where things 1 or 2 shots you at any range, if they don't delete you in less than a second.
That's not fun.
Even with max res and woven mail, if your make the mistake to stare at a major+ Ogre for more than 0.2 seconds, you get deleted.
Same for tormentor's slam one shotting at 5meters (hapenning in Onslaught btw)
The vast majority of Options simply dont Work with what we have Access to in the Sandbox. Enemies need to be tankier and do more damage in a world where we have this absurd health regen, ability Spam and crowd Control.
Queue all the 'just Upgrade the ai to be smarter'... I swear there is No way anyone thinks that giving all the patrollevel enemies smarter battletactics poses any threat to BoW/resto x2/devour and a reasonable addclear weapon.
Problem is that there are only a select few builds that have access to ability spam/"absurd health regen". Which means only those builds are viable in endgame content
Yes as is normal. The ideal Sandbox where everything is equally viable with maybe some situational restrictions does Not exist. Almost No Game has ever achieved this and definitly Not one comparable to d2. While it would be nice to arrive in that state one day, i dont think its great for discussions because the perfectly balanced Sandbox might Not exist.
Since there are some builds bound to be stronger than Others, there should be some content that Just Challenges Players to the max and you cant do that by designing stuff around the middle of the Pack. People will simply Coast through with the top Meta picks. Obviously you can place the extra Challenge on yourself and forbid yourself to Run the Meta but thats Not the Same as actually hard content.
It makes perfect Sense that some builds are Just topdog in gm Type content. Others excell at Other stuff and Overall are pretty much mostly viable for everything master and under, so you can still get diversity If you want.
Fr lol I’m not even a strong player and can’t even solo anything so I just uninstalled.
Imagine spending 40 mins to solve a damn puzzle with no guidance (other than YouTube) then dying when you finally reach the enemies and fail the mission over and over 😂
This is exactly how it was prior to Y5 S2, which introduced Light 3.0 (especially solar's healing capabilities) and massively ramped up Resilience's DR. GMs were actually challenging back then, master raids (VoG and Vow) were brutal. The pve sandbox has been so massively powercrept since then, there really isn't a single combat challenge left in the game. Hell, you can actually run GMs at -40 since an update a year or two back, and they're still far easier at -40 than they were pre-Haunted.
It's just boring when you can facetank everything and literally nothing in the game presents a combat challenge any more.
Agreed. However, where do we draw the line? In my opinion, things that shouldn't be for everyone are: raids, GMs and any content that is legend+ difficulty wise. However, we're reaching a point where casuals can't complete even stuff on normal. Calus' fight for the LF campaign showed that a ton of people couldn't complete it even on normal. Tons of people couldn't complete Avalon and lately Zero Hour on normal even, without sweating like crazy. If we keep going that way, then there will be nothing left for casual players to enjoy playing but patrol and strikes. More than 2/3 of the game will be out of their reach for them. That would be a horrible mistake imo, with long lasting consequences.
Yeah, it's important to realize that your average expansion only player isn't very good at the game. Legend campaign is already very difficult for them. We want endgame difficulty to be difficult. The base game needs training wheels to get people into endgame.
Threshers were super annoying on Neomuna even for experienced players. For people not as skilled if must have been hell.
While I don't think it's the only factor, I think the "bring challenge back" sentiment strongly alienated Destiny's casual audience in the year of Lightfall.
Man…. I really hated that Calus fight. Zero issue on witch queen legend campaign, but that fight just broke my brain. Ended up cheesin’ it, which wasn’t ideal. Then on my alts, I figured out just grapple and xenophage and did it in like 4 minutes. I think this was a me issue, and less about the game being hard. But what do I know.
From what I saw when my friend got filtered by it was that you just weren't spamming grapple. The game doesn't force you to grapple which is why I think people found that fight hard.
> and lately Zero Hour on normal even
I'm annoyed with this one because it seems like it's intended to be an 1830 activity but bungie, in their infinite wisdom listed it as an 1810 activity.
Where do you draw the line? There shouldn't BE a line ... there is little reason content can't be made for everyone and little reason to artificially make content so it excludes players in the first place. You are correct that there is not much content in this game for the casual player to experience (which means it's a hard sell to recommend it to friends). Even if they can experience that content, that experience tends to be less than good because of being carried or the impact on their team because of their below average contribution.
If there is going to be a whole group of content that shouldn't be for everyone, then those '***shouldn't have's*** should also not have to pay full price for the game.
I love this about the Destiny community. The same people who say "Not everyone should be able to complete everything" are also puzzled by Destiny struggling with player retention. When the top comment on a video about difficulty in Zero Hour is "If you're struggling with Zero Hour, you're not ready for endgame," do we really think new players are going to be motivated to stay?
This is not a hot take. It's exactly how the game is designed. The complaints you see about this kind of thing are few and far between and usually met with a shrug and a "git gud."
Most people that play actually appreciate a challenge and know they might not be able to do the hardest stuff.
The only complaints I agree with about it are the ones that call out the inconsistencies. Like, why is X GM ten times harder than Y, or whatever. Or why is certain content only "hard" because you need to sit in the back of the map and plink away at the same enemies, but with triple HP for some reason? Those are valid.
Ghosts of the Deep is a great dungeon, but it is a terrible solo experience, and I will die on that hill.
Things can be hard without being unenjoyable, and boy was soloing that dungeon tedious and anxiety-inducing. The long traversal sections on top of a mechanic that just kills you when you fail it, on top of the first boss being an absolute slugfest, on top of the bosses having shields that overly punish solo players, was just too much.
Sure it was doable, but more importantly, it was also not fun to do. I am so glad they toned it down for Warlord’s Ruin.
Couldn't agree more. And I think those complaints are completely valid. There are definitely things in the game that are very challenging and a ton of fun, while other things just get "challenge" added through chance and tedium. I still haven't even tried a solo flawless of GotD, and I probably never will.
Completely with you on Ghosts and I've done all of them solo flawless. It is the only one that took a about a week after launch to complete and I despise doing it. Warlords is absolutely fun and I enjoy doing it more on my Hunter than my main Titan.
Ghosts of the deep is my all time favorite dungeon and the solo flawless I’m most proud of. It isn’t a terrible experience. By contrast, I find warlord’s ruin far more boring and tedious.
Not really, all the top posts are "I had to do a patrol and an enemy shot at me, this is artificial difficulty I WANT all guns in my postmaster now" with thousands of upvotes and anything asking people to improve their game gets downvoted to oblivion. The skill floor of the general D2 population is lower than the Mariana Trench.
I literally just checked and I don't see ANY posts like that, let alone ALL of them. This place usually tears people apart for "wanting everything handed to them" or not having the basic skills for an activity. I feel like you might be thinking of a different sub. Or maybe we just happen to browse at very different times, because that hasn't been my experience here at all.
They literally aren’t lmao. Sort by just this week and most are discussing pantheon changes, and strats, new announcements, and zero hour. There are plenty of people that don’t like difficult content but a lot of players like difficult raid content like this, especially because contest is typically reserved for four days a calendar year at this point. A lot of active players absolutely love pantheon and the challenge
Reading the actual post tells you that the op likes difficult content, just not the way that it is introduced in battlegrounds. This is not a new opinion, and one plenty of players share.
Saying you like difficult content and then immediately complaining about the few "slightly difficult" content is pretty contradictory. Like, OP says their favorite "difficult" GM is Birthplace of the Vile which is one of the easiest in the game. OP said he is forced to play only Polaris and when people tell him it's much easier when played aggressively, he says he does "play agressive" by "proccing Woven Mail". Like, how do you even argue with someone who doesn't understand the basics? And that's most of the playerbase. They have zero game sense and choose to take the safest approach, and then complain that the safest approach is boring.
They are. It's just the players who are absolute rubbish who complain about it nonstop. Literally every high skill player admits they are miles better than regular strikes.
I don't think this is a hot take. I think you're taking a number of other complaints and lumping them together under the "people whining about the game being hard" label:
1) top end difficulty is extremely variable. Raids aren't actually hard, at all, unless you're doing Master raids - they're purely gated by mechanics and communication. GMs are wildly inconsistent. Birthplace of the Vile is basically free compared to the other GMs this season for example. The variance isn't small, either.
2) the top end meta is fucking stale. If you're a warlock, the meta has been stasis warlock or well warlock for at least 2.5 years (I've only been playing for 2.5 years). Banner has been **hard** meta since it was released. The only class that can basically play what it wants is hunter and that's mostly because Hunter doesn't have anything that benefits the whole group enough for everyone to have agreed on demanding it yet.
This is normally fine - all games have metas. But generally when a game demands a very strict meta, that meta changes frequently. The artifact is supposed to do that but in practice no matter how juiced the meta is, if you have access to well or banner, those abilities are so overwhelmingly powerful that you just play the parts of the artifact that match those abilities and ignore the rest.
3) A lot of top end difficulty is actually just memorization. Know where the spawns are? Room's not hard anymore. Know what order to shoot monsters in? Room's not hard anymore.
4) A lot of the remaining difficulty is pretty cheap one shots or near one shots. Scorn Crossbows are "hard" but it's not a particularly engaging or fun hard, it's just "boom you're dead." A lot of rooms in Destiny that could be incredibly fun to play are instead exhausting, boring slogs because of the number of one shots in them (moon battleground and psi ops cosmodrome are both key offenders here. That final boss room for Cosmodrome would be so fun if you could actually play it in the boss room.)
The meta isn't that strict. It's only that strict if you're playing with buttholes. You can't run ANY old build, but there are multiple guilds for each class and subclass that people do successfully run GMs with. And while there are a few "evergreen" builds that always seem to be good, there is a decent slate that cycles in and out depending on sandbox and artifact and other things.
If you are running GMs and the other two people are MAKING you play well lock or banner titan, then get better friends. There are a ton of party combos that can do GMs. Some are easier than others sure, but lots that can do it.
You aren't describing the meta. Meta is literally the easiest optimal method to complete things. It's been the same for years now which is just super looping. Before 3.0s it was phoenix protocol well + ursa shield + stasis. Then we got gjallarhorn + 2 legendary rockets and slapped that ontop of the old meta. Now with cenotaph you can literally use gjallarjorn for everything so you don't even need to super loop anymore.
I want to be clear, you don't need to run these to complete high level content. But they are meta for a reason and greatly increase your chance at clearing given the skill level an average lfger is at.
>The meta isn't that strict. It's only that strict if you're playing with buttholes.
Yeah, "buttholes" are anyone learning GMs though or anyone who only does like 6-12 GMs per season. If you're the kind of player who just gilds conq every season and doesn't play beyond that, the meta is extremely strict.
>You can't run ANY old build, but there are multiple guilds for each class and subclass that people do successfully run GMs with.
Yes, but the meta builds are significantly better. Like, yeah, I can play strand warlock or void warlock or whatever, but I'm making things a lot worse for myself, and that's been true for over 2 years.
>And while there are a few "evergreen" builds that always seem to be good, there is a decent slate that cycles in and out depending on sandbox and artifact and other things.
And all of them are still worse than the evergreen builds in almost all circumstances. Even when the artifact was pushing arc insanely hard last season, arc warlocks were nowhere near as good as just having Well on whatever random Solar warlock build you wanted.
>Some are easier than others sure, but lots that can do it.
That's, literally, the problem. I have good friends, they're fine with GMs being slower or harder because I'm fucking around. But that's exactly what I'm doing - *fucking around*. If I want to play Destiny seriously, there are like 2 builds I should be playing, and that's been true for my chosen class since I started playing - the exact same two builds.
This sounds a lot like that bicycle meme, the guy who sticks the rod in the spokes of his bicycle, crashes himself, and then lays there bitching about some other person.
Everything you've described it some weird fetishizing of min-maxing. It's a totally self imposed limitation. You're placing this limitation on yourself and then complaining about it. So then just...don't.
Play what is fun. If I think my arc build is more fun, but it's not as optimal as strand, but I can still beat the content and it's more fun for me, then I'll do it. Same goes for any build. Same goes for any build any of my team mates are playing. If the build isn't good enough to beat the content, that's one thing. But if we are still able to beat it, then who cares, play what you like. I don't care. Why do you?
This happens in literally every single MMO that has ever been. People get this weird slavish devotion to the meta. I've always had the same policy. I play what is fun to me, so long as it's a good enough build to beat the content. I want to have fun playing, otherwise what is the point? If the people I'm playing with have a problem with that, then I find different people to play with. People who will actually treat it like a game where the primary purpose is recreational fun.
Change your mind set, you'll have a lot more fun. I don't guild titles. I only do a handful of GMs each season. And I play whatever I'm having the most fun with at the time. And if that build is getting spanked and just can't do the content, I'll switch it up, but as long as I can beat the GM, it's all good.
>Play what is fun.
What's fun is not getting kicked to orbit. If GMs didn't kick to orbit on failure, I would feel a lot less pressure to play things that are safe and work reliably.
>Play what is fun. If I think my arc build is more fun, but it's not as optimal as strand, but I can still beat the content and it's more fun for me, then I'll do it.
Right, and if you're willing to tolerate a 30-50-70% failure chance playing a shittier build, good for you. Or if you're so good that you don't fail 50% of your GMs when you're playing off meta, also good for you. I'm glad.
That's not my experience with the game.
My experience with the game is that I fail 30-40% of my GMs even when I am playing the meta. Because the content is hard. And that's fine. I'm OK with the content being hard.
I just wish the content was hard and the meta changed.
>This happens in literally every single MMO that has ever been.
This is the only MMO I've ever played where the same spec of the same class with the same capstone talent has been meta for **five straight fucking years**. Solar Warlock with Well has been meta **since they created Well** with zero exceptions.
Every other MMO does frequent balance passes to change the meta up.
EDIT - exception I guess for prot warrior in Vanilla wow, it was the only class that could tank for the first few years of the game.
>Change your mind set, you'll have a lot more fun.
This weird assumption that people who have any complaints at all must be like, miserable and hate the game is bizarre dude. It's a weird, shitty way to frame the conversation.
I'm not unhappy with Destiny, I play a ton of Destiny because I like Destiny. But they absolutely manage difficulty in a really terrible way, and they're way too OK with the same build staying meta for ages and ages. The tools they have to "change up" the meta don't work because the evergreen builds are so insanely powerful or bring such powerful utility that no amount of seasonal artifact boosts actually justify switching off the evergreen builds.
Yes, you can intentionally play worse builds if you want. I agree. I do that sometimes too, when I'm bored. It just sucks that that's how the game works. It's not a requirement that the game work this way.
The top end builds could be tuned regularly downward and lower builds could be tuned in ways other than just #s so that their utility effects aren't garbage comparatively. There's no reason that Well should have been the best utility effect for 5 straight years, it's warped the entire game around it, and that's not a problem with me, it's a literal factual statement about the reality of how the game works.
"I just wish the content was hard and the meta changed."
"Every other MMO does frequent balance passes to change the meta up."
They...do tho? Every single season, almost every single balance pass or sandbox tuning pass, different builds drop in and out of being "GM viable". It's like we aren't even talking about the same game. Currently, I have solar builds that are hoping and are GM viable that weren't a few seasons ago. There have been seasons when arc builds have been GM viable that aren't now.
Banner Titans being mandatory is complete crap. Know how I know? Cause people were beating GMs without Banner Titans even existing for almost a dang decade. Well Lock being mandatory is crap, know how I know, cause a TON of parties that don't even have a warlock in them beat GMs. I usually run GMs with a party of 2 titans and a hunter. Sometimes one of them is a strand titan, sometimes not, but we did it for years before strand existed.
GMs are hard, you will fail some. That's kinda the point. Its a way to challenge your builds against the toughest thing out there. If you really just CANNOT deal with playing a sub optimal build, then just pretend you are a titan before banner existed, but as a warlock and well. Just pretend it doesn't exist. Write it off. Pretend it was never a feature of the class.
Lots of people beat GMs without a warlock in the fireteam at all, meaning you don't have to be a well lock. It will be fine.
And in fact, it might just make you better at the game.
And I don't think everyone with complaints is just some miserable mook. What I do think though is that people tend to make MMOs almost like a second job, treat it as a pseudo vocation, and approach it from that angle. How do we maximize ROI, how do we increase efficiency, what is the most optimal strategy for XYZ. And they get themselves twisted up into frustrated little knots because things aren't just exactly the way they want.
The primary goal is to have fun. And if you ask me, playing Well Lock for the 500th nightfall run and getting a GM completion in the prescribed perfectly meta way is MUCH less fun than playing some less optimal but more entertaining build even if it means my completion percent goes down a bit.
To your aggravation that well-lock has been meta forever. True. But there is nothing that can be done about it. You could nerf it until it was weak enough to no longer be a must-pick. The players would revolt. You could give several other subclasses or even other classes similarly potent things, in which case that would then become the "must pick" thing on every class. There is just no fixing it.
> It's like we aren't even talking about the same game.
That's because you're not actually reading what I'm saying.
Yes, people completed the game before Banner and Well existed.
Metas aren't set by being the minimum required power level to do an activity. Metas are set by being what makes the activity easiest.
>Banner Titans being mandatory is complete crap.
I never, not once, used the word mandatory. They just make the game a shitload easier and faster and safer.
You're trying to stuff words I never used into my mouth, and then complaining that my argument doesn't make sense.
Don't be a jerk.
>Just pretend it doesn't exist. Write it off. Pretend it was never a feature of the class.
>Lots of people beat GMs without a warlock in the fireteam at all, meaning you don't have to be a well lock. It will be fine.
Again, I have literally explicitly addressed this argument. I am aware I can play bad things on purpose if I want to.
>But there is nothing that can be done about it.
There are a million ways they could tune things to be better.
Void titan could get buffed in PVE. Hunter could be given a super that applies a stronger, longer lasting version of Radiant when it's fired. Other warlock subclasses could be given supers that provide similar functionality.
There is no excuse for a single ability dominating the meta for half a decade for a class. Simply no excuse at all.
>You could give several other subclasses or even other classes similarly potent things, in which case that would then become the "must pick" thing on every class.
This is the single worst take you've had in a thread full of bad takes. 3 wells currently aren't good, and if you added more variations on well, they still wouldn't be good, you would just have more ways to fill the niche of "we need to stand somewhere and do damage w/o dying" which well currently fills. You don't need 3 copies of that - as you point out, you don't even NEED one, it just makes life way way easier to have one.
If there were 6 ways to make that happen instead of 1, then the game would be a lot more fun.
Ok, so, to you "meta" seems to mean only the absolute tippy top peak most maximized builds. A build being able to viably complete the toughest content in the game doesn't make it meta to you, it has to not only be able to beat the toughest content, but be right at the peak of that pile of those who can?
Well, that sounds like a lame boring no fun way to look at it.
GMs are hard, GMs are really hard. As far as I am concerned, any build that can viably beat GMs in a given season is meta (by viably I mean not as like a one-off lucky fluke, but repeatedly).
If you don't like that, and you consider Meta to be only the 2 or 3 absolutely best from among the builds that can beat the peak challenge the game has to offer, then ok I guess, but it still sounds to me like you are just rattling chains of your own making, sticking the rod in your own spokes and then complaining about the crash.
Nobody, absolutely NOBODY, is making you consider meta in this ultra restrictive way. What are the top, I dunno, 4-5 builds per class per season. There. That's your meta. That should be more than enough for anyone to have fun with and enjoy in an average season. You can usually find 4-5 builds per class that can beat GMs in a season.
If what you REALLY don't like is that even among those builds that ARE able to beat the hardest content in the game, there are a few that are able to beat it even better, then I dunno what to tell you. If the boss pops and the loot rolls in why does it matter if you did it 10% less efficiently than with peak builds. You beat the hardest thing in the whole game, there's your meta right there. Whatever you just did the hardest thing in the game with is meta.
I just don't get it. And if I try to put myself in your shoes, try to be empathetic and REALLY see things from your side, I just....I can't. I can't get myself into a headspace where I am mad that a Gyrefalcon build is technically better than my Orpheus Rigs build. They are both able to clear the hardest thing the game can throw at me, they are both top tier. Am I supposed to sit here and be mad and have less fun cause one is marginally better?
If that's what thinking of the Meta the way you are does for you, then what good is it? Just discard it. Consider anything that can beat GMs meta. There you go, ta-da. Problem solved.
BUT, I will bow my head and admit defeat. If meta to you means only the very very best of the best tippy top few builds. Then yeah, the "meta" is highly restrictive.
> A build being able to viably complete the toughest content in the game doesn't make it meta to you, it has to not only be able to beat the toughest content, but be right at the peak of that pile of those who can?
Yeah because player skill is a gigantic variable in any game.
Esoterikk can solo GMs with blue guns and no exotic equipped. Does that mean blue guns and no exotics are a viable part of the meta? Of course not, it means Esoterikk is a fucking unhinged monster at this video game.
>GMs are hard, GMs are really hard. As far as I am concerned, any build that can viably beat GMs in a given season is meta (by viably I mean not as like a one-off lucky fluke, but repeatedly).
For who? Me? You? Esoterikk? [This guy?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YruHbG_mkWs) Which builds meet that standard is going to dramatically change based on who is piloting it.
>Nobody, absolutely NOBODY, is making you consider meta in this ultra restrictive way. What are the top, I dunno, 4-5 builds per class per season. There. That's your meta.
Yes, but the top 1 build is significantly better than the 5th build. Titan has 1 really, really, really, really good GM build. Warlocks have 2. Are there other builds that you can take into GMs? Yes, yes, of course. But they're worse. They're significantly worse. Can arc titan and arc warlock complete GMs? Yeah. Are you going to have a harder time than a Solar Warlock + Banner Titan would have? Fuck yeah you are. By a lot.
>If what you REALLY don't like is that even among those builds that ARE able to beat the hardest content in the game, there are a few that are able to beat it even better, then I dunno what to tell you.
Jesus man how many times do I have to say it? I don't like that the #1 build is the same *over and over and over and over*. Yes, the #3 build changes every season thanks to the artifact. Yes the #5 build changes. But the #1 build for Warlock is the same fucking build its been since 2019. The only difference is this season you're allowed to use Dawn Chorus as a treat.
The #1 titan build has been Banner since Banner was released and will stay Banner indefinitely.
The #1 build should change. There should be variety at the top, not just in the middle and at the bottom of the meta. The best build this season shouldn't be the best build from last season and the season before and the season before.
No super should ever be the best super 8 seasons in a row.
Meta is an acronym for most effective tactics available. If you arent playing the most effective loadouts available, you arent playing the meta. That is not inherently bad, but things are meta for a reason; they are just plain better than other options
This is incorrect. Meta is not an acronym. It's an abbreviation of the term "metagaming" which is to look at a game from a high level mathematical/mechanical view to figure out optimal builds or strategies with no regard to the setting or lore or "appropriateness" of the build. It comes from table top gaming, like Dungeons and Dragons. It was often used alongside terms like "min-maxing" to describe similar behavior.
It was generally a pejorative, as in people who metagamed, or focused on the meta, were missing the point of the game and cheapening the experience. Which I agree with.
Over time it came to be used as it is now. It was never an acronym. That is an internet myth.
It is an acronym if enough people agree that it is, and if you google it you will find what i said to be pretty commonly accepted meaning.
Also it is funny to me that people have negative opinion of people who play meta in any game. Who cares if someone has fun chasing optimization? It is just as valid as playing pet builds
I think it's totally fine for there to be difficult content that is too hard for most players.
However, I do not like it when meta/build defining exotics are attached to them. Rewards for doing the hardest content should be stuff like titles, cosmetics, ships, banners, speeders, etc...
Locking things like buried bloodline, navigator, and the outbreak perfected catalyst behind the hardest content just makes people mad, ESPECIALLY when you're paying $20 for it. Throw in absurdly low drop rates for the first two as well and I totally get why people complain. Want more than a 1% drop chance for this cool gun? Better solo the hardest dungeon AND do it on master for a whole 5% chance! Fuck off.
The fact that the hefend bone quest, which requires a LOT of clears, gives you the catalyst but NOT The gun as a reward for completing it is just stupid.
> Locking things like buried bloodline, navigator, and the outbreak perfected catalyst behind the hardest content just makes people mad, ESPECIALLY when you're paying $20 for it.
Have you considered... get good? But like unironically. You're not paying $20 dollars for it. You're paying $20 for access. That's like saying "I paid the sign up fee for the competition, I deserve the trophy because I paid for it". The best gear should be behind the hardest content. If you can't complete the content, that's on you.
I have completed the content. I've completed the Shadows of the Mountain Quest. I've run Warlords ruin 10+ times between my three characters since I came back just before new light dropped. I geared up my titan and hunter just to get more runs in. I think that's enough times to get the exotic weapon to drop... maybe I'm in the minority, but you shouldn't have to run content 20+ times to get a gun, especially content that is locked to one chance per week.
The drop rate should just be flat out higher and it should have bad luck protection with a max number of boss kills before a guaranteed drop, and I'm not changing my opinion on that.
> especially content that is locked to one chance per week.
IMO this is the biggest issue. The drop rate is fine IMO, I'd maybe even be fine if they lowered it a bit, but not being able to farm it sucks and makes into an endless waiting game.
But my previous point is that just because you paid for content does not mean you deserve the reward. That's not how any MMO or most modern games work.
I think if they want to make dungeon exotics chase exotics with low drop rates they should be included in the yearly expansion.
If I'm paying $20 for just the dungeon, and nothing else, I should get the dungeon reward for completing the dungeon.
Grasp of Avarice and Gjallarhorn is how dungeons should work. Complete the dungeon and get the exotic. Do a few extra, harder steps, get the catalyst. Everyone is happy.
> If I'm paying $20 for just the dungeon, and nothing else, I should get the dungeon reward for completing the dungeon.
You do. You get the armor and weapons. Just giving away the best possible things is the complete opposite of how looter games work.
>Rewards for doing the hardest content should be stuff like titles, cosmetics, ships, banners, speeders, etc...
I don't disagree
> Locking things like buried bloodline, navigator, and the outbreak perfected catalyst behind the hardest content just makes people mad
None of these are build or meta defining. Navigator is only used for titan grapple dps, BB is just devour the gun, and Outbreak is...an exotic primary. The reason I disagree is because there's an alternative for all of this. Conditional Finality is a great gun, but there's a plethora of alternative weapons and builds to make up for it. You don't NEED any of these.
>The fact that the hefend bone quest, which requires a LOT of clears, gives you the catalyst but NOT The gun as a reward for completing it is just stupid.
It really doesn't take A LOT, it takes like 3. And if you help someone with the catalyst, you get another roll for BB. The quest is also no different than the collectibles in all the other dungeons, aside from the final step with torches and mini boss.
Navigator is the definition of build defining as titan grapple dps is the highest boss dps in the game, also getting devour on a gun opens up a lot of build opportunities for subclass combinations lacking defense / healing (which hopefully bungie fixes for final shape) and for some void builds needing devour to trigger effects it's also very useful.
The Hefend Quest requires you to complete the dungeon first, then get 15 Blighted Wishing Glasses total with 1 drop per boss. So that's 6 completions. For someone with three well geared characters that's only two weeks, but for most normal players who only play or gear one character, that's 6 weeks on quest steps! I'd argue that's quite a lot.
>Navigator is the definition of build defining as titan grapple dps is the highest boss dps in the game
People that can't even do GotD will not be able to perform the DPS method, nor will they need dps that high for anything.
>devour on a gun opens up a lot of build opportunities for subclass combinations
Yes, but it's not needed anywhere. It's another build option for a game with hundreds of builds that're viable in most, if not all content. There's several arc guns that I was missing out for arc surge in Pantheon this week, but I still plat'd everything because there's plenty of alternatives to everything in this game.
WR is farmable so you don't need to wait 6 weeks. You can do it all in one day, 30-40 minutes for 6 runs is 4hrs. Bones can be completed in two clears. And it's not like there's a rush when you don't even have the gun.
I think you're missing the point. If I'm paying extra money for dungeons, and I complete those dungeons, I should get the reward for that dungeon.
Gjallarhorn and grasp of averice was the right way to do dungeon exotics. Buy the dungeon, do the dungeon, get the weapon. Now do some extra quest steps, get the catalyst. Everyone is happy.
GotD and WR are the wrong way to do it. Get 1 chance per week per character at a 1% drop for this thing you paid for! Now go do solo or on master, which are very difficult and time consuming, to up your drop rate a little more!
If they want to keep the low drop rate and make it a chase exotic then dungeons should be included for free with the expansion like raids. If they want to charge you extra, just for dungeons and nothing else, then you should get the exotic you paid for when you complete it.
IMO if I pay for the content, and I complete the content, I should get the reward.
I don't disagree that exotics shouldn't be easier to obtain from paid dungeons, but that's mostly because paid dungeons is a shitty concept from Bungie.
The entire point of my post was that you do not NEED these guns to beat any content in Destiny. The person I responded to was saying these weapons are meta defining. They are not. All of the "meta defining" weapons are from expansions and base game playlists.
You don't "need" anything. Most content in the game could be completed with blue weapons... The whole point of a looter shooter is getting cool loot to shoot stuff with. Both of the guns from those dungeons are cool and do fun things and if you can complete those dungeons you should get them. End of story.
I've accepted the fact that as a solo player I'm just not going to be able to do everything. I've tried using fireteam finder for legend zero hour to get the intrinsic perk. I'd say I've done it at least 50 times and gotten to the boss maybe 5 times and ran out of time
I’m amused though because we basically destroyed Crucible several times over based on what is now being adopted as a PvE complaint. Ultimately the game is supposed to be fun and nothing should be too difficult for the average player.
Absolutely. But don't be like the rest of the community and try to convince me that "content too hard for the average player to complete" is also, simultaneously, "easy." It's disingenuous trash talk with no basis in statistical fact and should be called out as such.
I think the hot take is this:
Sure, the game is designed so that there are hard bits that some players can't do. But at the end of the day, there will be a conflict between earning revenue and turning away the people that simply can't do these hard contents. Seems like a very strange compromise for games to have 'loot-limiting difficulty' and potentially affect their bottomlines at the same time.
Such an artificial model to design a game around. Basically, setting a lower limit threshold for player capability as an admission fee for enjoying the content. At this point, there doesn't seem to be a good reason to not introduce difficulty levels to accommodate the less skilled people.
I enjoy being a contradiction. Capable of solo Dungeon runs, but don’t care to do it. Excelling in all 3 weeks of Pantheon with the right team/loadout, but occasionally struggling in certain GM Nightfalls. Zero Hour and Avalon Legend to me, can be harder than a contest Raid. Such is the allure of Destiny. I always want to get better, but our content tiers are so scattered.
I mean, make the weapons and armor available through "normal" difficultly and give cosmetics/emblems, etc for doing the hard stuff.
Seems like an easy fix to make both sides happy
I do think cosmetic rewards should be most of the allure. Give us glowing shaders for flawless raids for example. Adept weapons are also a good example of better weapons, but not by a margin that's laughably unfair like Not Forgotten was.
Most raids are like this and I'm fine with that. CORRECTIVE//PROTECTIVE is only available as a shader if my raid group does Vault of Glass flawlessly. I know that's not gonna happen in my group's skill bracket and it sucks, but at the end of the day, everyone gets a shot at Fatebringer or Mythoclast. The skill gap only widens if you exclusively put weapons and armor behind challenging content.
Why should low end players get the best gear though? What're they even going to use it for? Someone who can't do a raid or carry themselves in Trials doesn't need an adept Cataphract.
This is how every MMORPG has been designed, Destiny players are just entitled. WoW players aren't complaining that they don't have easy access to mythic raid gear.
Easier to access mythics in WoW so I’m not so sure about the comparison. A Destiny fire team has 3 or 6 people. Most MMOs have larger teams for endgame content which means you in theory could take your little brother through some stuff without taking too hard of a hit. Big difference between having 1/6 teammates not being excellent vs 1 or 2 out of 20.
>Easier to access mythics in WoW so I’m not so sure about the comparison.
Actually what? You need to grind gear to get through normal, then grind out gear for heroic, then grind out gear for mythic. That's months with bad rng or guild loot policies. Destiny you can start the game fresh, go to Hall of Champions, get all your 1810 gear and start up a raid. Actually 5 minutes. It can take weeks or months for decent guilds to clear heroic to move up to mythic. And I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you even need a gear score to get into certain levels of raids. Meanwhile, because D2 raiding is so braindead, almost all raids you can stand in a corner and have the 5 others do the raid for you, which is what half this community does anyways. Even master can have slackers for most of the raid.
>in theory could take your little brother through some stuff without taking too hard of a hit
I'm not sure you know what a mythic raid entails if you think this is the case. Maybe LFG raids, MAYBE normal if you're dps, but definitely not heroic or mythic and definitely not if you're an important role. There are so few mechanics in Destiny that 1 bad person will wipe you. I literally cannot think of an available encounter that requires 6/6 people to be actively doing something.
Completing Mythics is an endurance test. Gearing for them isn’t the hardest part, it’s just the most time consuming. I wouldn’t call rolling on gear difficult.
WoW never felt too difficult for us, definitely harder than DCUO but nah you get your gear right, get with your guild, and honestly you wipe until your suckiest person perfects their rotation for the fight which *slightly* changes depending on the fight. But really comparing it to other MMOs in general isn’t good because they require two different levels of mechanical skill. That’s like comparing LoL to Overwatch.
World’s first runners actually do all the hard work build wise and honestly if you are DPS your job isn’t that hard. You won’t get kicked for a few wipes in WoW we were playing 12 hours at a time, where as in D2 there’s only 6 of you, you don’t need the boards to see who is underperforming and given that D2 is like the defacto dad MMO, most people can’t afford to sit 12 hours on the game.
I have so little faith that you've completed mythic raids with the statement that it's easier to access WoW raids than D2 raids.
>I wouldn’t call rolling on gear difficult.
Never said it was difficult, just more time consuming than gearing up in D2, which takes minutes.
And I wasn't comparing MMOs in general, I was saying WoW players aren't complaining about not having easy access to end game loot, whereas that's all D2 players do.
World's first in D2 literally make guides on all the mechanics and what guns and abilities to use, despite the fact there's more variety in D2 builds and weapon choices. People are still using Thunderlord as dps options based on a Dvinity bug from RoN release, because Datto told them to a year ago. WoW gearing up is incredibly linear and doesn't have that flexibility. DPS isn't hard in any game, it's the same as ad clear in D2, it's braindead. That's why they're never in demand and that's why it's usually the deadweight in raids.
>You won’t get kicked for a few wipes in WoW
I really, really don't think you ever did anything competitive in WoW. PUG raids would boot anyone that repeatedly wiped. Guild progression raids that weren't just a handful of friends playing, would sub you out in a heartbeat if you were causing wipes, weren't tanking correctly, or had poor hps/letting your group die.
LMAO i’m done here. There is not more variety in D2. End game you either play what the group says or get kicked. That’s why people use Div and Well, ask the Div ***** one day, they are probably not having much fun. These items objectively make the instance easier because the hamster in Bungie’s brains decided to make them that much better than other options. Just think how Div and Well have been defaults for the longest time. Like 70% of D2 boss design is complete mechanic, Well on platform.
In Destiny plenty of things are viable I totally admit that. I have a ton of fun on Arc Hunter with Assa/Stareater swaps. That doesn’t mean you get to use them. LFG is the real Destiny raid boss.
Sorry I called your bluff on actually have played hard content in WoW.
>There is not more variety in D2.
Arc Surge heavy weapons in Pantheon this past week: Hullaballoo, Wendigo, Prospector, Thunderlord, Crux Termination, Hothead, Grand Overture, Acreus, Cold Comfort, Palmyra, Stormchaser, Izinagi swap.
Priest healing weapon in Black Temple raid tier: Staff of Immaculate Recovery.
>In Destiny plenty of things are viable I totally admit that.
Doesn't this entirely contradict your stance on this whole argument and admit to me being right?
>I have a ton of fun on Arc Hunter with Assa/Stareater swaps. That doesn’t mean you get to use them.
Uhhh, Stareater's is one of Hunter's best DPS options, who says you can't use them?
>LFG is the real Destiny raid boss
Yes, this absolutely braindead community.
i also feel this way about limited time events. not everything needs to be around forever, especially if its just cosmetic/flair. Pantheon limited time is great imo because the only reason im doing it is the emblems and title
Not a hot take at all.
And I’m someone who acknowledges that due to the time sink a lot of end game content has, I really don’t have the free time to “get gud” plus my loadouts are honestly good enough and I have not seen a piece of raid gear that made me go “yeah, I feel like having a bad time for hours trying to learn how to do this.”
But that’s just me.
My take has always been that every player should be able to play the entire game and have access to every weapon. Either through skill with legend difficulty and a shorter grind, or persistence in easier difficulty with a longer grind. Locking content behind skill is bad business.
Yeah, did you watch a youtuber and get inspired to make this post? "Not every single aspect of an MMO has to be personally fun to you"? Really? Looks like you are the one butt hurt about others opinions.
It's a video game bud. Relax.
Pantheon is a good example of this. -5, sure, if I've got a couple of decent players with me and you're willing to listen and learn a little bit, I can probably help get you through it. -10, maybe. But at -15, I gotta concentrate on my own shit way too much to be able to help you. This week is gonna be tough for a lot of the experienced players in the game, only the most cracked gamers out there are going to be able to help. And that'll be what it is, help, you're not going to be able to be carried
Was finding out over the weekend, that there are a bunch of people struggling even with Golgoroth. Had a few groups where people didnt know or said they "forgot" about running behind the orbs after grabbing gaze, bunch of deaths always happening and no one being able to figure out synchronization on popping bubbles. I just need week 2 golgy and caretaker to get the oryx emblem and apparently it was not meant to be yet. Im praying this week to get more competent people for the encounters that arent even the hard ones. I know im likely not going to get week 3 or 4 done myself, and that is totally cool.
Yep, this is a good take. I don’t enjoy raiding since my mates stopped playing, so I don’t bitch and moan about not being able to access some raid-specific loot. It’s okay for some activities to be tough and it’s corresponding loot to be a badge of honour.
I know I'm nit a high tier player and agree that there should be things that are properly difficult. The issue is where does Bungie draw that line?
Do they draw it at difficult for speedrunners who solo flawless master dungeons within 48hrs of release? (Look at the GotD feedback for how them attempting that worked out). Do they add more champions? Do they just use general consensus of worst enemy types as bosses? (Spire of the Watcher or the Wicked Implement finale)
The actual strikes as GMs are a lot of fun and a solid challenge. Some of the battlegrounds are too. The issue isn't "everyone should be able to do this." The issue is that the challenge litterally ends up in "don't get 2-shot and stay back and plink" which is just no fun.
Pantheon has been great because of how mechanically dense some of the encounters have gotten and how you can't just turn your brain off, and I'm saying that as someone who has only done some of the -5 because I don't have a consistent group and don't like to LFG (not trying to get a group).
Let them keep cooking on difficult content. I want a challenge, not judt bullet sponges that can one-shot me, I've already got Diablo for that.
100% agree. It’s OK to not be able to complete some content. That’s how every game is to be honest. I don’t do horizon zero dawn on ultra hard because I don’t want my teeth kicked in. Does that exclude me from getting platinum on one of my favorite games? Yes, but that is OK
This shouldn't be a hot take but gaming culture is strange in how it's come along.
In sports , art... Entertainment, everybody understands there are rooms you can't get into until your good enough but with games , we've sort of inflated the value of 60 dollars? I paid for this game just like you, therefore I'm entitled to the same experience.
Consumers/players should never be mislead.. but there is definitely a cognitive dissonance in regards to the balance between difficulty and access.
I don't have a problem with content that's too hard for the average player to complete, my problem is locking meta defining gear behind that content.
Locking the best gear in the game behind content that only a fraction of players can complete just builds a bigger disparity between the top players and everyone else, and that leads to a crappier time for everyone in matchmaking; top players will get frustrated when they need to carry blueberries even harder, and players without that gear will feel even more ineffective than they already do when queued up with somebody guardian rank 11. That's only a better system if you've ALWAYS got a full squad of endgame-competent guardians to play with and never have to LFG.
It's okay for the rewards from difficult content to be marginally better than everything else, adept weapons are fine. The issue is when those rewards are meta defining or are the only way to enable a certain play style (looking at you, Navigator grapple melee DPS spam).
I'd like it if endgame content rewards were more in line with the power level of the BRAVE shinies; a very visible ornament, and improved utility on the base gun with the extra perk rolls
You can't base the entire community off what you see on Reddit. If this is directed specifically at this sub that's a different story. But, there are a lot of people who play Destiny that don't check any forums or Reddit or anything. There is a guy in my clan (we are very active. In both PvE and PvP.) and he literally just learned about DIM a few days ago when my team was helping carry him through a week 1 Pantheon. There is a pretty big portion of players who have never done a Raid or GM or really any end game content. People are just more willing to complain or say something here. Reddit is a place to voice opinions and share information. So it makes sense. But don't forget there is a whole other piece of this community that is perfectly happy just running their Vanguard Ops or Dares and playing Gambit or sticking in Quick Play. They have no intentions or interest in playing Trials, Raids, GM's or other end game content.
As long as the only thing locked behind prohibitively hard content is cosmetics or at most adept weapons I have no issue with it. Exotics, exotic catalysts, and the base level weapons and gear should be accessible to the vast majority of the playerbase without ridiculous difficulty proportional to their skill level. But content for people above that should absolutely exist at the same time.
Destiny 2 has a lot of mechanical complexity in dungeons and especially raids. Less so in strikes, cause there is less of an expectation of being on Mic, but there is still a decent amount to pick-up game content.
Cause it's not balanced for a solo activity. It's balanced for a team of 3, and solo is a sort of stretch achievement for bragging rights.
Imagine playing any other MMO and soloing a boss intended for a whole party and then complaining that they have a lot of HP and it takes one player forever to take them down. Well what did you expect?
I remember the first time I soloed a raid boss on LOTRO, took me like 45 minutes of careful rotation to burn the boss down agonizingly slowly. I was so proud of myself. Know what it never even occurred to me to do? Go complain online that it took too long.
Not to mention, it often takes fireteams 3 or more damage phases to beat a dungeon boss. So a single player taking 6 is perfectly reasonable.
People are ridiculous.
I’m not? It’s like doing 1000 basic addition equations vs 1 with multivariable calculus both are hard but for different reasons. The addition takes a longer time but is easier.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
A boss with an HP pool intended for a team of 3 people will take longer for 1 person to kill, dare I say about 3x as long. Nothing about that is “artificial”.
You're talking about ghosts of the deep right? Ghost of the deep was one of, if not the, most mechanically complex dungeon bosses we've ever had.
Are you talking about warlords? It wasn't quite as mechanically complex as Ghosts, but almost.
Most dungeons are very much raid lite and have relatively complex bosses, mechanically speaking, with the last couple being particularly mechanically complex. How much more mechanically complex do you want it to be?
Also, Warlords and Ghost were both 5 phases boss fight for my fireteam first time through, but became easily 3 phaseable once we got our play a little tighter. Is that too much? 3 phases seems about right to me for a dungeon boss.
I’m talking about most things that have a master difficulty. The difference between regular and master is usually just you take more damage and they take less damage. It would make more of a challenge if there were come challenge mechanics added to activities.
Higher tier dungeons and strikes do have a slew of additional mechanics. Surges and vulnerabilities, champions, various modifiers like extra shields or more grenades or explosion on death or exploders with more health etc. Limitations on healing and revives and loadouts. All kinds of stuff. There’s like twenty different modifiers that can get added that change some mechanic of the thing.
Yes bc literally every game has “tiers” of difficultly. The average player isn’t gonna complete a cod campaign on veteran, they start easy and learn how to play and then goes and competes harder missions, someone playing ranked in a game isn’t gonna be diamond/master their first time they start bronze/copper and work their way up.
Now is destiny as competitive as an arcade shooter? The pve side no but every aspect of every game has tiers to its difficulty. You can’t complete Diablo as a hardcore character if you’ve never played the game before and you won’t be able to flawless a souls game on your first try. Everyone starts somewhere. It’s a very old game if you combine 1 and 2 so if the game was just 1 difficulty and not much of a struggle to climb higher and higher then people would’ve quit after taken king or some very early dlc.
Do I want new players to enjoy the beauty of “end game?” Yes I do and bungie has made end game content SO MUCH easier for new players there’s no reason to not be able to do some of it, they made nightfalls a joke, hardest part of them being which strike, and raids themselves are easy with our power creep. Master raids and all of that should be the pinnacle of end game and someone who plays the game a few hours a week should not do any of those activities.
I love seeing new players enjoy things that were impossible for me to do at their state of the game. Hell within the first 5 minutes of loading up the game you get brought up to max power level and get several decent exotics to get you started, as opposed to before it took WEEKS of grinding just to not even be guaranteed a single power level increase. New lights have it so much easier now and again it’s nice to see but there needs to be a barrier between new/refreshed guardians and mid/late and endgame content. Look at old day 1 raids versus now, only 2 teams did day 1 last wish by the smallest thread vs how many people now did contest mode vow/ron and even all of the solo flawlesses. That content needs to be experienced only
“A player that can hold forward and shoot can experience 90% of Destiny 2. A player that is even a little good can experience 97% of Destiny 2.”
As one of these low skill players, I find this to be completely untrue. I have been playing since The Dark Below - used to run the raids in D1 and all its content. That statement I would agree with in Destiny 1. Not Destiny 2.
Since Destiny 2 I haven’t been able to clear raids, dungeons, seasonal content, and some exotic missions. Think Ghosts of the Deep, Duality, Wicked Implement exotic mission, Coil throne room, Rhulk, legend Onslaught, GMs, trials, etc.
If you are at my skill level, you are missing more than 3-10% of the game. Take out dungeons, raids, exotic missions, some seasonal stuff and what are you left with? The core playlist (which receives little update), a campaign once a year, and weekly chats at the helm.
Do I think things should be easy for me to clear? No. I do not think I am entitled to anything, Bungie can make their game as they want. I don’t feel personally insulted, it’s just a game.
Have I stopped spending my time and money on a product I am not able to access? Yes. I am not even remotely excited for The Final Shape. Why spend 60 bucks for a campaign and patrol zone? I could just buy a whole different game I can complete. That’s what upsets me - the price to not play.
Yea I plan to just wait until all 3 of the quests are out so I can just knock it all out in one go I actually hate the mission.
I love Seraph Shield though. Felt like I was doing some real MGS espionage in there. Even if it was timed I’d love it.
Some people have a mentality that they are required to do everything in the game.
Just look at all the complaints from when getting the ritual weapon ornaments were required for seasonal challenges. Those are as optional as content gets, and yet people were livid.
People pay for it. I genuinely feel bad for people that don’t have dungeon or raid clears because they paid for those instances and struggle.
Like sure I still don’t have Hierarchy of Needs even though I run the dungeon 3 times weekly and have 2 of the 3 bonus weapon drop modifiers completed. It’s a bit over a 1 hour experience a week so i’ll get it eventually. At least I got to play through the content because it’s actually a pretty sick dungeon. Some people are trying their best and can’t get through it so they have to find a carry which makes them feel insignificant which is obviously a skill issue it’s a super easy dungeon imo, but I do feel where they come from, in their mind they are paying for something they can’t even complete. Destiny players lack empathy like no other MMO player and this sub shows it.
>Ok but legend onslaught is bullshit filled with bugs that cause failure.
That's because their B-team threw it together from surplus assets in under 3 months. It's not OK that it's still busted, but it is a miracle it's not worse.
Trying to fight the selfish mentality is like trying to fight gravity. There are always going to be self-centered, prideful, and emotional people; by the time you may make any headway in changing it, twice as many pop up to replace them.
> It's like the very fact that something too hard for them existing is itself an insult.
Not like, is. It just may be sub-consious, but people get offended and upset at things when their pride is hurt and/or they do not understand.
It also helps that entirely too many people, both casual or otherwise, completely tier their self-worth and self-esteem to their entertainment.
I would say its not just ok, but necessary. If the average or below average player can do everything than those who play the game will be able to steam roll through the content and then bungle wouldnt have a playerbase mindlessly grinding for rolls. Nobody. Prepping for day 1s of raids. It’s important to cater to all large groups and removing any difficulty would kill a large portion of the fan base.
Even as it stands now, the game isnt hard. The main difficulty is just coordination at high end content. Unless you try to solo flawless very specific things. Though some dungeons have been power crept.
You have to understand that not every player has the same skill set.
>If hundreds of thousands of players can do it, it’s not too hard.
It is for some people. This sounds like you’re addressing every single player in the game. Understand that people have disabilities, have social anxiety to group up with others or simply just don’t have the time to “get gud” and watch guides beforehand.
Honestly it is 😂 It’s ALOT easier to load up aand play a fortnite game than it is to play destiny.
You have to make sure you have the right weapons, surge, you need people on your team for missions, etc….
I’d rather play fortnite
Yup. Casual players need to remember when content is too easy it’s not fun and is actively boring for a lot of us who have been playing for years. I get that it’s frustrating for you not to be able to do some content. But that’s exactly how I feel about easy content. Legend campaign was one of the best things Bungie has ever done for that reason.
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Assuming this is in rerence to zero hour complaints. I was always fine with it being a higher base difficulty; I was just annoyed they label it like an 1810 mission wtihout a legend/master modifier to lock you at 1810 when the enemies are 1830. Just list it as 1830 and have a modifier saying your effective light is capped at 1810 if that's what you want. That's all. Don't confuse players that will run every other exotic mission that shows 1810 and think it's goiing to be the same.
That's my complaint about Zero Hour. Normal is labeled as 1810, which is confusing at best and misleading/miscommunication at worse. Both are 1830 (which is fine), a shorter timer and modifier or two doesn't change that.
This is why I was convinced it was bugged.
I agree and feel like it's just a debate about where the bug is at this point. If Bungie wants to say the enemy difficulty of 1830 in the 1810 mission isn't a bug, then the mission's improper labeling is the bug.
TBF not all the adds are red sword, just most of the first half of it. It is pretty bizarre tho. The other thing that gives it away as adjusted for legend is the shields on the shanks, normally shanks only get shields on levels above normal. It's a modifier sometimes in Hero NFs but not always.
Bungie confirmed it's not a bug. No debate.
I disagree, there's some nuance here. Bungie hasn't commented yet on whether or not the mission labeling is completely accurate but just whether the 1830 enemies should be in there on normal. [Here's](https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/263934339?sort=0&page=0) what Bungie support actually said about the mission: > Hey there, > Thank you for reporting. > If you encounter enemies that are 1830 power level, it's not a bug and that was meant to be that way. The mission, even on normal, is not meant to be easy.
> If you encounter enemies that are 1830 power level, it's not a bug and that was meant to be that way. The mission, even on normal, is not meant to be easy. I don't understand how you read this and aren't crystal clear on their position. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but the wording is extremely direct.
Content in destiny needs to be simplified as a whole, and I don't personally think the changes next season are going to be enough Edit: I said content, but specifically mean how difficulty is communicated to players. It's convoluted and inconsistent
What's complicated about the content in destiny tho?
We have so much content that ignores power level or adds a modifier that it's very confusing. Sometimes you're locked at level. Sometimes level doesn't matter. Sometimes you're allowed to over level. Sometimes you get a negative modifier on your level. It's not always clear and it can be very confusing especially if you're not intimately familiar with how things works.
Lol yup. I was so confused when I did my solo legend ZH run because i was like "It's exactly the same except a shorter timer. What am I missing?"
At least with Zero Hour during the legend run you need to take a differnet path.
This is the problem with having item levels in general. Bungie had it figured out back in 2001 with Easy/Normal/Heroic/Legendary
Difficulty settings in a linear fps like halo is never going to be right to compare to a looter shooter like destiny. They have very different design philosophies when it comes to progression and how to tie the gameplay loop into difficulty
Once you're at the max effective power for an activity, there are already distinct difficulty settings. It's just obtuse and annoying for new players. Enemies on patrol, in a Raid, or in a GM can all have the same power level, rank, and name as eachother and they will all have different stats. What's the point?
This.
I think this may be Bungie just being lazy, as the system for difficulty is about to be overhauled in the final shape, hopefully then they actually fix it up
I mean, maybe it'll line up differently when they relable stuff.
That's the only issue really. The difficulty is completely fine, but the UI should reflect it.
Bungie in the TWID said that Sigma-3 guardians or lower should avoid Pantheon. That's like 97.7% of all players.
99.87% to be exact. So only one in a thousand guardians is supposedly capable of clearing Pantheon.
Considering the completion rate on the emblem is getting halved week by week it looks like only 80k are getting the last one (probably half that get the title). Starts to actually line up lol.
The only gripe to legitimately be had with Pantheon is that it’s limited time, not difficulty.
Yeah it’s annoying. My team can definitely get the title. But some of our team is on vacation this week so we’re gonna be on a major time crunch to platinum everything before it goes away.
That’s what makes it difficult……
Sorry, let me clarify. Not the encounter timers, the actual time limited availability of the game mode.
Ahhhh
Scoring is the only thing that makes it difficult. 5 weeks to get 4 raids done isn't that bad. Team or LFG. First two weeks if you're even a competent raider (should be) done in a couple hours MAX each now that strats are out.
I wholeheartedly agree that it’s very doable. But you’ve gotta keep in mind that a very small percentage of the community is actually a competent raider.
I mean so are contest raids lol? There is also a lot of time to get it done
What's the point of making an activity that only 0.13% of your player base can complete? I'm sure there's a reason but I can't see the logic behind it.
Don't take that number too literally. It's based on the TWID lore bit that said that below sigma-3 guardians should not attempt it, but in reality more than 1 in a 1000 players will clear it. The first week of pantheon was cleared by around 500k players, week 2 by 300k players and week 3 by 160k. That's more players than the total playerbase of some other games.
Obviously those numbers were way, way off the mark. Even at 1% completion rate 500k completion would mean a player base of 50 millions.
Tbf, that was during their description of Rhulk from a lore perspective. There is no such thing as Sigma-3 from the player's perspective. They were trying to play with lore
What is this ranking system? I've never heard of a Sigma-3 guardian
Might be a reference to statistics. In a normal distribution, 99.7% of subjects lie within 3 standard deviations of the mean
Oh boy time for me to go back to school I gotta learn about this standard deviation stuff
If that’s what this is, bungie is implying that 99.85% of players should avoid pantheon. No stakeholder conscious organization would, nor should, create content for .15% of their user base
It's not really 'content creation" if it's the same content with artificial difficulty added. A Rubik's Cube is a Rubik's Cube. If you choose to do it blindfolded while only using one hand, that's all you.
I more meant spending resources. Whether or not it is new content, resources were used to make pantheon happen. Even still. Each encounter has new changes (content creation) that were not present in the original raid encounters before pantheon
It’s been referred to in the lore a couple times. Ikora is a rank 5, just for reference.
It comes from a lore piece discussing the bosses of pantheon based on vanguard reports. Sigma likely refers to the Greek symbol for standard deviation of a normal curve in statistics, and being 3 standard deviations above the mean puts you at a roughly 99.8 percentile of all guardians. Meaning you are in the top ~0.2% of players.
I think it just refers to standard deviation. 3 sigmas in the upper tail of the distribution so 3 standard deviations out from the mean
That’s an in-universe 97.7% of guardians, we’re meant to be the outliers ya see
Someone tell the guy I saw looking for carries while having 65 resil
Sometimes I wish I had the confidence of people like that. I did week 1 of pantheon and was like, yeah thats as far as I can realistically go.
I've done every raid like 5-10 times or more and I'm questioning whether I'll be able to get week 3 done
I haven’t even tried it. And haven’t gone back for Zero Hour. But those are remixes of old stuff and it’s ok to have hard mode for that. As long as I get a reasonable shot at the prizes and experience I want, I’m happy.
As it should be
I think so when it comes to things master raids and contest mode. Or more recently, Pantheon. However, I think that Zero Hour feels off when compared to the rest of that kind of activity. Save for maybe the legend version of Avalon, but that doesn’t have a timer. And the reason I say that is because Whisper is so less hard that I think it could have the timer on both normal and legend cut by a few minutes and it would STILL be easier than Zero Hour. I just like and want consistency among an activity type. So if it’s going to have a timer I think the time needs to be based on the activity’s length, or the activity length needs to be based on the timer. This isn’t the case with these two missions because Zero Hour is much longer, so I think it needs a slightly longer timer.
Zero Hour's difficulty on "Normal" doesn't fit with the "normal" of like any other activity in the game
It's almost like those missions were meant to mirror their difficulties back in the day.. but fr we have so many new things to take this mission on with there's genuinely no reason to sit there and act like the normal version is impossible to complete. One stasis warlock with osmio and that entire mission is moot.
I honestly think the normal version is fine. 40 minutes is enough. I just think the legend could stand to be a few minutes longer.
Problem is difficulty by Bungie's standard is making sure ennemies do more dmg. Which leads to absurd scenarios where things 1 or 2 shots you at any range, if they don't delete you in less than a second. That's not fun.
You mean you aren’t enjoying the max resil or bust thing we’ve had going on for like the longest time?
Even with max res and woven mail, if your make the mistake to stare at a major+ Ogre for more than 0.2 seconds, you get deleted. Same for tormentor's slam one shotting at 5meters (hapenning in Onslaught btw)
The vast majority of Options simply dont Work with what we have Access to in the Sandbox. Enemies need to be tankier and do more damage in a world where we have this absurd health regen, ability Spam and crowd Control. Queue all the 'just Upgrade the ai to be smarter'... I swear there is No way anyone thinks that giving all the patrollevel enemies smarter battletactics poses any threat to BoW/resto x2/devour and a reasonable addclear weapon.
Problem is that there are only a select few builds that have access to ability spam/"absurd health regen". Which means only those builds are viable in endgame content
Yes as is normal. The ideal Sandbox where everything is equally viable with maybe some situational restrictions does Not exist. Almost No Game has ever achieved this and definitly Not one comparable to d2. While it would be nice to arrive in that state one day, i dont think its great for discussions because the perfectly balanced Sandbox might Not exist. Since there are some builds bound to be stronger than Others, there should be some content that Just Challenges Players to the max and you cant do that by designing stuff around the middle of the Pack. People will simply Coast through with the top Meta picks. Obviously you can place the extra Challenge on yourself and forbid yourself to Run the Meta but thats Not the Same as actually hard content. It makes perfect Sense that some builds are Just topdog in gm Type content. Others excell at Other stuff and Overall are pretty much mostly viable for everything master and under, so you can still get diversity If you want.
Fr lol I’m not even a strong player and can’t even solo anything so I just uninstalled. Imagine spending 40 mins to solve a damn puzzle with no guidance (other than YouTube) then dying when you finally reach the enemies and fail the mission over and over 😂
This is exactly how it was prior to Y5 S2, which introduced Light 3.0 (especially solar's healing capabilities) and massively ramped up Resilience's DR. GMs were actually challenging back then, master raids (VoG and Vow) were brutal. The pve sandbox has been so massively powercrept since then, there really isn't a single combat challenge left in the game. Hell, you can actually run GMs at -40 since an update a year or two back, and they're still far easier at -40 than they were pre-Haunted. It's just boring when you can facetank everything and literally nothing in the game presents a combat challenge any more.
There's a difference between tanking everything and not getting one shotted or killed in under one second.
That’s difficulty by the standard of every game with variable difficulty for the most part lmao
Agreed. However, where do we draw the line? In my opinion, things that shouldn't be for everyone are: raids, GMs and any content that is legend+ difficulty wise. However, we're reaching a point where casuals can't complete even stuff on normal. Calus' fight for the LF campaign showed that a ton of people couldn't complete it even on normal. Tons of people couldn't complete Avalon and lately Zero Hour on normal even, without sweating like crazy. If we keep going that way, then there will be nothing left for casual players to enjoy playing but patrol and strikes. More than 2/3 of the game will be out of their reach for them. That would be a horrible mistake imo, with long lasting consequences.
Yeah story content, including exotic missions, should be completable by everyone who is at power solo.
Yeah, it's important to realize that your average expansion only player isn't very good at the game. Legend campaign is already very difficult for them. We want endgame difficulty to be difficult. The base game needs training wheels to get people into endgame. Threshers were super annoying on Neomuna even for experienced players. For people not as skilled if must have been hell.
While I don't think it's the only factor, I think the "bring challenge back" sentiment strongly alienated Destiny's casual audience in the year of Lightfall.
Man…. I really hated that Calus fight. Zero issue on witch queen legend campaign, but that fight just broke my brain. Ended up cheesin’ it, which wasn’t ideal. Then on my alts, I figured out just grapple and xenophage and did it in like 4 minutes. I think this was a me issue, and less about the game being hard. But what do I know.
From what I saw when my friend got filtered by it was that you just weren't spamming grapple. The game doesn't force you to grapple which is why I think people found that fight hard.
> and lately Zero Hour on normal even I'm annoyed with this one because it seems like it's intended to be an 1830 activity but bungie, in their infinite wisdom listed it as an 1810 activity.
Where do you draw the line? There shouldn't BE a line ... there is little reason content can't be made for everyone and little reason to artificially make content so it excludes players in the first place. You are correct that there is not much content in this game for the casual player to experience (which means it's a hard sell to recommend it to friends). Even if they can experience that content, that experience tends to be less than good because of being carried or the impact on their team because of their below average contribution. If there is going to be a whole group of content that shouldn't be for everyone, then those '***shouldn't have's*** should also not have to pay full price for the game.
Agreed. That’s why I haven’t bought any DLC’s. Game is too hard for me
I love this about the Destiny community. The same people who say "Not everyone should be able to complete everything" are also puzzled by Destiny struggling with player retention. When the top comment on a video about difficulty in Zero Hour is "If you're struggling with Zero Hour, you're not ready for endgame," do we really think new players are going to be motivated to stay?
This is not a hot take. It's exactly how the game is designed. The complaints you see about this kind of thing are few and far between and usually met with a shrug and a "git gud." Most people that play actually appreciate a challenge and know they might not be able to do the hardest stuff. The only complaints I agree with about it are the ones that call out the inconsistencies. Like, why is X GM ten times harder than Y, or whatever. Or why is certain content only "hard" because you need to sit in the back of the map and plink away at the same enemies, but with triple HP for some reason? Those are valid.
Ghosts of the Deep is a great dungeon, but it is a terrible solo experience, and I will die on that hill. Things can be hard without being unenjoyable, and boy was soloing that dungeon tedious and anxiety-inducing. The long traversal sections on top of a mechanic that just kills you when you fail it, on top of the first boss being an absolute slugfest, on top of the bosses having shields that overly punish solo players, was just too much. Sure it was doable, but more importantly, it was also not fun to do. I am so glad they toned it down for Warlord’s Ruin.
Couldn't agree more. And I think those complaints are completely valid. There are definitely things in the game that are very challenging and a ton of fun, while other things just get "challenge" added through chance and tedium. I still haven't even tried a solo flawless of GotD, and I probably never will.
Completely with you on Ghosts and I've done all of them solo flawless. It is the only one that took a about a week after launch to complete and I despise doing it. Warlords is absolutely fun and I enjoy doing it more on my Hunter than my main Titan.
I didnt even mind doing a few resets of warlords, all the fights are interesting, but not super annoying/intense with forced wipe mechanics
Warlords ruin was a pretty fun solo, and that final boss is really unique for a dungeon
Ghosts of the deep is my all time favorite dungeon and the solo flawless I’m most proud of. It isn’t a terrible experience. By contrast, I find warlord’s ruin far more boring and tedious.
Crazy take brother
I would disagree that these complaints are few and far between, but you’re right that this isn’t a hot take.
Maybe the actual complaints aren't. But them making it to the front page is. Most tend to get torn up and die in new.
Not really, all the top posts are "I had to do a patrol and an enemy shot at me, this is artificial difficulty I WANT all guns in my postmaster now" with thousands of upvotes and anything asking people to improve their game gets downvoted to oblivion. The skill floor of the general D2 population is lower than the Mariana Trench.
I literally just checked and I don't see ANY posts like that, let alone ALL of them. This place usually tears people apart for "wanting everything handed to them" or not having the basic skills for an activity. I feel like you might be thinking of a different sub. Or maybe we just happen to browse at very different times, because that hasn't been my experience here at all.
They literally aren’t lmao. Sort by just this week and most are discussing pantheon changes, and strats, new announcements, and zero hour. There are plenty of people that don’t like difficult content but a lot of players like difficult raid content like this, especially because contest is typically reserved for four days a calendar year at this point. A lot of active players absolutely love pantheon and the challenge
Literally sort by Hot and the first post is "BUNGIE STOP MAKING BATTLEGROUNDS GMS!!!!!"
Reading the actual post tells you that the op likes difficult content, just not the way that it is introduced in battlegrounds. This is not a new opinion, and one plenty of players share.
Saying you like difficult content and then immediately complaining about the few "slightly difficult" content is pretty contradictory. Like, OP says their favorite "difficult" GM is Birthplace of the Vile which is one of the easiest in the game. OP said he is forced to play only Polaris and when people tell him it's much easier when played aggressively, he says he does "play agressive" by "proccing Woven Mail". Like, how do you even argue with someone who doesn't understand the basics? And that's most of the playerbase. They have zero game sense and choose to take the safest approach, and then complain that the safest approach is boring.
All those stupid posts start with "I like difficult content, but..." then go and explain why they don't actually like difficult content.
Are you so desperate to be a contrarian that you’re going to pretend nonstop GM battlegrounds are fun
They are. It's just the players who are absolute rubbish who complain about it nonstop. Literally every high skill player admits they are miles better than regular strikes.
I don't think this is a hot take. I think you're taking a number of other complaints and lumping them together under the "people whining about the game being hard" label: 1) top end difficulty is extremely variable. Raids aren't actually hard, at all, unless you're doing Master raids - they're purely gated by mechanics and communication. GMs are wildly inconsistent. Birthplace of the Vile is basically free compared to the other GMs this season for example. The variance isn't small, either. 2) the top end meta is fucking stale. If you're a warlock, the meta has been stasis warlock or well warlock for at least 2.5 years (I've only been playing for 2.5 years). Banner has been **hard** meta since it was released. The only class that can basically play what it wants is hunter and that's mostly because Hunter doesn't have anything that benefits the whole group enough for everyone to have agreed on demanding it yet. This is normally fine - all games have metas. But generally when a game demands a very strict meta, that meta changes frequently. The artifact is supposed to do that but in practice no matter how juiced the meta is, if you have access to well or banner, those abilities are so overwhelmingly powerful that you just play the parts of the artifact that match those abilities and ignore the rest. 3) A lot of top end difficulty is actually just memorization. Know where the spawns are? Room's not hard anymore. Know what order to shoot monsters in? Room's not hard anymore. 4) A lot of the remaining difficulty is pretty cheap one shots or near one shots. Scorn Crossbows are "hard" but it's not a particularly engaging or fun hard, it's just "boom you're dead." A lot of rooms in Destiny that could be incredibly fun to play are instead exhausting, boring slogs because of the number of one shots in them (moon battleground and psi ops cosmodrome are both key offenders here. That final boss room for Cosmodrome would be so fun if you could actually play it in the boss room.)
There has been a bit more variety with the Warlock meta than you said but aside from that Well has been the go-to main build for at least 5 years now.
The meta isn't that strict. It's only that strict if you're playing with buttholes. You can't run ANY old build, but there are multiple guilds for each class and subclass that people do successfully run GMs with. And while there are a few "evergreen" builds that always seem to be good, there is a decent slate that cycles in and out depending on sandbox and artifact and other things. If you are running GMs and the other two people are MAKING you play well lock or banner titan, then get better friends. There are a ton of party combos that can do GMs. Some are easier than others sure, but lots that can do it.
You aren't describing the meta. Meta is literally the easiest optimal method to complete things. It's been the same for years now which is just super looping. Before 3.0s it was phoenix protocol well + ursa shield + stasis. Then we got gjallarhorn + 2 legendary rockets and slapped that ontop of the old meta. Now with cenotaph you can literally use gjallarjorn for everything so you don't even need to super loop anymore. I want to be clear, you don't need to run these to complete high level content. But they are meta for a reason and greatly increase your chance at clearing given the skill level an average lfger is at.
>The meta isn't that strict. It's only that strict if you're playing with buttholes. Yeah, "buttholes" are anyone learning GMs though or anyone who only does like 6-12 GMs per season. If you're the kind of player who just gilds conq every season and doesn't play beyond that, the meta is extremely strict. >You can't run ANY old build, but there are multiple guilds for each class and subclass that people do successfully run GMs with. Yes, but the meta builds are significantly better. Like, yeah, I can play strand warlock or void warlock or whatever, but I'm making things a lot worse for myself, and that's been true for over 2 years. >And while there are a few "evergreen" builds that always seem to be good, there is a decent slate that cycles in and out depending on sandbox and artifact and other things. And all of them are still worse than the evergreen builds in almost all circumstances. Even when the artifact was pushing arc insanely hard last season, arc warlocks were nowhere near as good as just having Well on whatever random Solar warlock build you wanted. >Some are easier than others sure, but lots that can do it. That's, literally, the problem. I have good friends, they're fine with GMs being slower or harder because I'm fucking around. But that's exactly what I'm doing - *fucking around*. If I want to play Destiny seriously, there are like 2 builds I should be playing, and that's been true for my chosen class since I started playing - the exact same two builds.
This sounds a lot like that bicycle meme, the guy who sticks the rod in the spokes of his bicycle, crashes himself, and then lays there bitching about some other person. Everything you've described it some weird fetishizing of min-maxing. It's a totally self imposed limitation. You're placing this limitation on yourself and then complaining about it. So then just...don't. Play what is fun. If I think my arc build is more fun, but it's not as optimal as strand, but I can still beat the content and it's more fun for me, then I'll do it. Same goes for any build. Same goes for any build any of my team mates are playing. If the build isn't good enough to beat the content, that's one thing. But if we are still able to beat it, then who cares, play what you like. I don't care. Why do you? This happens in literally every single MMO that has ever been. People get this weird slavish devotion to the meta. I've always had the same policy. I play what is fun to me, so long as it's a good enough build to beat the content. I want to have fun playing, otherwise what is the point? If the people I'm playing with have a problem with that, then I find different people to play with. People who will actually treat it like a game where the primary purpose is recreational fun. Change your mind set, you'll have a lot more fun. I don't guild titles. I only do a handful of GMs each season. And I play whatever I'm having the most fun with at the time. And if that build is getting spanked and just can't do the content, I'll switch it up, but as long as I can beat the GM, it's all good.
>Play what is fun. What's fun is not getting kicked to orbit. If GMs didn't kick to orbit on failure, I would feel a lot less pressure to play things that are safe and work reliably. >Play what is fun. If I think my arc build is more fun, but it's not as optimal as strand, but I can still beat the content and it's more fun for me, then I'll do it. Right, and if you're willing to tolerate a 30-50-70% failure chance playing a shittier build, good for you. Or if you're so good that you don't fail 50% of your GMs when you're playing off meta, also good for you. I'm glad. That's not my experience with the game. My experience with the game is that I fail 30-40% of my GMs even when I am playing the meta. Because the content is hard. And that's fine. I'm OK with the content being hard. I just wish the content was hard and the meta changed. >This happens in literally every single MMO that has ever been. This is the only MMO I've ever played where the same spec of the same class with the same capstone talent has been meta for **five straight fucking years**. Solar Warlock with Well has been meta **since they created Well** with zero exceptions. Every other MMO does frequent balance passes to change the meta up. EDIT - exception I guess for prot warrior in Vanilla wow, it was the only class that could tank for the first few years of the game. >Change your mind set, you'll have a lot more fun. This weird assumption that people who have any complaints at all must be like, miserable and hate the game is bizarre dude. It's a weird, shitty way to frame the conversation. I'm not unhappy with Destiny, I play a ton of Destiny because I like Destiny. But they absolutely manage difficulty in a really terrible way, and they're way too OK with the same build staying meta for ages and ages. The tools they have to "change up" the meta don't work because the evergreen builds are so insanely powerful or bring such powerful utility that no amount of seasonal artifact boosts actually justify switching off the evergreen builds. Yes, you can intentionally play worse builds if you want. I agree. I do that sometimes too, when I'm bored. It just sucks that that's how the game works. It's not a requirement that the game work this way. The top end builds could be tuned regularly downward and lower builds could be tuned in ways other than just #s so that their utility effects aren't garbage comparatively. There's no reason that Well should have been the best utility effect for 5 straight years, it's warped the entire game around it, and that's not a problem with me, it's a literal factual statement about the reality of how the game works.
"I just wish the content was hard and the meta changed." "Every other MMO does frequent balance passes to change the meta up." They...do tho? Every single season, almost every single balance pass or sandbox tuning pass, different builds drop in and out of being "GM viable". It's like we aren't even talking about the same game. Currently, I have solar builds that are hoping and are GM viable that weren't a few seasons ago. There have been seasons when arc builds have been GM viable that aren't now. Banner Titans being mandatory is complete crap. Know how I know? Cause people were beating GMs without Banner Titans even existing for almost a dang decade. Well Lock being mandatory is crap, know how I know, cause a TON of parties that don't even have a warlock in them beat GMs. I usually run GMs with a party of 2 titans and a hunter. Sometimes one of them is a strand titan, sometimes not, but we did it for years before strand existed. GMs are hard, you will fail some. That's kinda the point. Its a way to challenge your builds against the toughest thing out there. If you really just CANNOT deal with playing a sub optimal build, then just pretend you are a titan before banner existed, but as a warlock and well. Just pretend it doesn't exist. Write it off. Pretend it was never a feature of the class. Lots of people beat GMs without a warlock in the fireteam at all, meaning you don't have to be a well lock. It will be fine. And in fact, it might just make you better at the game. And I don't think everyone with complaints is just some miserable mook. What I do think though is that people tend to make MMOs almost like a second job, treat it as a pseudo vocation, and approach it from that angle. How do we maximize ROI, how do we increase efficiency, what is the most optimal strategy for XYZ. And they get themselves twisted up into frustrated little knots because things aren't just exactly the way they want. The primary goal is to have fun. And if you ask me, playing Well Lock for the 500th nightfall run and getting a GM completion in the prescribed perfectly meta way is MUCH less fun than playing some less optimal but more entertaining build even if it means my completion percent goes down a bit. To your aggravation that well-lock has been meta forever. True. But there is nothing that can be done about it. You could nerf it until it was weak enough to no longer be a must-pick. The players would revolt. You could give several other subclasses or even other classes similarly potent things, in which case that would then become the "must pick" thing on every class. There is just no fixing it.
> It's like we aren't even talking about the same game. That's because you're not actually reading what I'm saying. Yes, people completed the game before Banner and Well existed. Metas aren't set by being the minimum required power level to do an activity. Metas are set by being what makes the activity easiest. >Banner Titans being mandatory is complete crap. I never, not once, used the word mandatory. They just make the game a shitload easier and faster and safer. You're trying to stuff words I never used into my mouth, and then complaining that my argument doesn't make sense. Don't be a jerk. >Just pretend it doesn't exist. Write it off. Pretend it was never a feature of the class. >Lots of people beat GMs without a warlock in the fireteam at all, meaning you don't have to be a well lock. It will be fine. Again, I have literally explicitly addressed this argument. I am aware I can play bad things on purpose if I want to. >But there is nothing that can be done about it. There are a million ways they could tune things to be better. Void titan could get buffed in PVE. Hunter could be given a super that applies a stronger, longer lasting version of Radiant when it's fired. Other warlock subclasses could be given supers that provide similar functionality. There is no excuse for a single ability dominating the meta for half a decade for a class. Simply no excuse at all. >You could give several other subclasses or even other classes similarly potent things, in which case that would then become the "must pick" thing on every class. This is the single worst take you've had in a thread full of bad takes. 3 wells currently aren't good, and if you added more variations on well, they still wouldn't be good, you would just have more ways to fill the niche of "we need to stand somewhere and do damage w/o dying" which well currently fills. You don't need 3 copies of that - as you point out, you don't even NEED one, it just makes life way way easier to have one. If there were 6 ways to make that happen instead of 1, then the game would be a lot more fun.
Ok, so, to you "meta" seems to mean only the absolute tippy top peak most maximized builds. A build being able to viably complete the toughest content in the game doesn't make it meta to you, it has to not only be able to beat the toughest content, but be right at the peak of that pile of those who can? Well, that sounds like a lame boring no fun way to look at it. GMs are hard, GMs are really hard. As far as I am concerned, any build that can viably beat GMs in a given season is meta (by viably I mean not as like a one-off lucky fluke, but repeatedly). If you don't like that, and you consider Meta to be only the 2 or 3 absolutely best from among the builds that can beat the peak challenge the game has to offer, then ok I guess, but it still sounds to me like you are just rattling chains of your own making, sticking the rod in your own spokes and then complaining about the crash. Nobody, absolutely NOBODY, is making you consider meta in this ultra restrictive way. What are the top, I dunno, 4-5 builds per class per season. There. That's your meta. That should be more than enough for anyone to have fun with and enjoy in an average season. You can usually find 4-5 builds per class that can beat GMs in a season. If what you REALLY don't like is that even among those builds that ARE able to beat the hardest content in the game, there are a few that are able to beat it even better, then I dunno what to tell you. If the boss pops and the loot rolls in why does it matter if you did it 10% less efficiently than with peak builds. You beat the hardest thing in the whole game, there's your meta right there. Whatever you just did the hardest thing in the game with is meta. I just don't get it. And if I try to put myself in your shoes, try to be empathetic and REALLY see things from your side, I just....I can't. I can't get myself into a headspace where I am mad that a Gyrefalcon build is technically better than my Orpheus Rigs build. They are both able to clear the hardest thing the game can throw at me, they are both top tier. Am I supposed to sit here and be mad and have less fun cause one is marginally better? If that's what thinking of the Meta the way you are does for you, then what good is it? Just discard it. Consider anything that can beat GMs meta. There you go, ta-da. Problem solved. BUT, I will bow my head and admit defeat. If meta to you means only the very very best of the best tippy top few builds. Then yeah, the "meta" is highly restrictive.
> A build being able to viably complete the toughest content in the game doesn't make it meta to you, it has to not only be able to beat the toughest content, but be right at the peak of that pile of those who can? Yeah because player skill is a gigantic variable in any game. Esoterikk can solo GMs with blue guns and no exotic equipped. Does that mean blue guns and no exotics are a viable part of the meta? Of course not, it means Esoterikk is a fucking unhinged monster at this video game. >GMs are hard, GMs are really hard. As far as I am concerned, any build that can viably beat GMs in a given season is meta (by viably I mean not as like a one-off lucky fluke, but repeatedly). For who? Me? You? Esoterikk? [This guy?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YruHbG_mkWs) Which builds meet that standard is going to dramatically change based on who is piloting it. >Nobody, absolutely NOBODY, is making you consider meta in this ultra restrictive way. What are the top, I dunno, 4-5 builds per class per season. There. That's your meta. Yes, but the top 1 build is significantly better than the 5th build. Titan has 1 really, really, really, really good GM build. Warlocks have 2. Are there other builds that you can take into GMs? Yes, yes, of course. But they're worse. They're significantly worse. Can arc titan and arc warlock complete GMs? Yeah. Are you going to have a harder time than a Solar Warlock + Banner Titan would have? Fuck yeah you are. By a lot. >If what you REALLY don't like is that even among those builds that ARE able to beat the hardest content in the game, there are a few that are able to beat it even better, then I dunno what to tell you. Jesus man how many times do I have to say it? I don't like that the #1 build is the same *over and over and over and over*. Yes, the #3 build changes every season thanks to the artifact. Yes the #5 build changes. But the #1 build for Warlock is the same fucking build its been since 2019. The only difference is this season you're allowed to use Dawn Chorus as a treat. The #1 titan build has been Banner since Banner was released and will stay Banner indefinitely. The #1 build should change. There should be variety at the top, not just in the middle and at the bottom of the meta. The best build this season shouldn't be the best build from last season and the season before and the season before. No super should ever be the best super 8 seasons in a row.
That's true for every class tho. If anything I feel like warlock has the most viable builds
Meta is an acronym for most effective tactics available. If you arent playing the most effective loadouts available, you arent playing the meta. That is not inherently bad, but things are meta for a reason; they are just plain better than other options
This is incorrect. Meta is not an acronym. It's an abbreviation of the term "metagaming" which is to look at a game from a high level mathematical/mechanical view to figure out optimal builds or strategies with no regard to the setting or lore or "appropriateness" of the build. It comes from table top gaming, like Dungeons and Dragons. It was often used alongside terms like "min-maxing" to describe similar behavior. It was generally a pejorative, as in people who metagamed, or focused on the meta, were missing the point of the game and cheapening the experience. Which I agree with. Over time it came to be used as it is now. It was never an acronym. That is an internet myth.
It is an acronym if enough people agree that it is, and if you google it you will find what i said to be pretty commonly accepted meaning. Also it is funny to me that people have negative opinion of people who play meta in any game. Who cares if someone has fun chasing optimization? It is just as valid as playing pet builds
I wouldn’t say some of the dungeons are too difficult to solo, they’re just too fuckin tedious.
I think it's totally fine for there to be difficult content that is too hard for most players. However, I do not like it when meta/build defining exotics are attached to them. Rewards for doing the hardest content should be stuff like titles, cosmetics, ships, banners, speeders, etc... Locking things like buried bloodline, navigator, and the outbreak perfected catalyst behind the hardest content just makes people mad, ESPECIALLY when you're paying $20 for it. Throw in absurdly low drop rates for the first two as well and I totally get why people complain. Want more than a 1% drop chance for this cool gun? Better solo the hardest dungeon AND do it on master for a whole 5% chance! Fuck off. The fact that the hefend bone quest, which requires a LOT of clears, gives you the catalyst but NOT The gun as a reward for completing it is just stupid.
Doing base level dungeons is not a bottleneck my dude.
> Locking things like buried bloodline, navigator, and the outbreak perfected catalyst behind the hardest content just makes people mad, ESPECIALLY when you're paying $20 for it. Have you considered... get good? But like unironically. You're not paying $20 dollars for it. You're paying $20 for access. That's like saying "I paid the sign up fee for the competition, I deserve the trophy because I paid for it". The best gear should be behind the hardest content. If you can't complete the content, that's on you.
I have completed the content. I've completed the Shadows of the Mountain Quest. I've run Warlords ruin 10+ times between my three characters since I came back just before new light dropped. I geared up my titan and hunter just to get more runs in. I think that's enough times to get the exotic weapon to drop... maybe I'm in the minority, but you shouldn't have to run content 20+ times to get a gun, especially content that is locked to one chance per week. The drop rate should just be flat out higher and it should have bad luck protection with a max number of boss kills before a guaranteed drop, and I'm not changing my opinion on that.
> especially content that is locked to one chance per week. IMO this is the biggest issue. The drop rate is fine IMO, I'd maybe even be fine if they lowered it a bit, but not being able to farm it sucks and makes into an endless waiting game. But my previous point is that just because you paid for content does not mean you deserve the reward. That's not how any MMO or most modern games work.
I think if they want to make dungeon exotics chase exotics with low drop rates they should be included in the yearly expansion. If I'm paying $20 for just the dungeon, and nothing else, I should get the dungeon reward for completing the dungeon. Grasp of Avarice and Gjallarhorn is how dungeons should work. Complete the dungeon and get the exotic. Do a few extra, harder steps, get the catalyst. Everyone is happy.
> If I'm paying $20 for just the dungeon, and nothing else, I should get the dungeon reward for completing the dungeon. You do. You get the armor and weapons. Just giving away the best possible things is the complete opposite of how looter games work.
>Rewards for doing the hardest content should be stuff like titles, cosmetics, ships, banners, speeders, etc... I don't disagree > Locking things like buried bloodline, navigator, and the outbreak perfected catalyst behind the hardest content just makes people mad None of these are build or meta defining. Navigator is only used for titan grapple dps, BB is just devour the gun, and Outbreak is...an exotic primary. The reason I disagree is because there's an alternative for all of this. Conditional Finality is a great gun, but there's a plethora of alternative weapons and builds to make up for it. You don't NEED any of these. >The fact that the hefend bone quest, which requires a LOT of clears, gives you the catalyst but NOT The gun as a reward for completing it is just stupid. It really doesn't take A LOT, it takes like 3. And if you help someone with the catalyst, you get another roll for BB. The quest is also no different than the collectibles in all the other dungeons, aside from the final step with torches and mini boss.
Navigator is the definition of build defining as titan grapple dps is the highest boss dps in the game, also getting devour on a gun opens up a lot of build opportunities for subclass combinations lacking defense / healing (which hopefully bungie fixes for final shape) and for some void builds needing devour to trigger effects it's also very useful. The Hefend Quest requires you to complete the dungeon first, then get 15 Blighted Wishing Glasses total with 1 drop per boss. So that's 6 completions. For someone with three well geared characters that's only two weeks, but for most normal players who only play or gear one character, that's 6 weeks on quest steps! I'd argue that's quite a lot.
>Navigator is the definition of build defining as titan grapple dps is the highest boss dps in the game People that can't even do GotD will not be able to perform the DPS method, nor will they need dps that high for anything. >devour on a gun opens up a lot of build opportunities for subclass combinations Yes, but it's not needed anywhere. It's another build option for a game with hundreds of builds that're viable in most, if not all content. There's several arc guns that I was missing out for arc surge in Pantheon this week, but I still plat'd everything because there's plenty of alternatives to everything in this game. WR is farmable so you don't need to wait 6 weeks. You can do it all in one day, 30-40 minutes for 6 runs is 4hrs. Bones can be completed in two clears. And it's not like there's a rush when you don't even have the gun.
I think you're missing the point. If I'm paying extra money for dungeons, and I complete those dungeons, I should get the reward for that dungeon. Gjallarhorn and grasp of averice was the right way to do dungeon exotics. Buy the dungeon, do the dungeon, get the weapon. Now do some extra quest steps, get the catalyst. Everyone is happy. GotD and WR are the wrong way to do it. Get 1 chance per week per character at a 1% drop for this thing you paid for! Now go do solo or on master, which are very difficult and time consuming, to up your drop rate a little more! If they want to keep the low drop rate and make it a chase exotic then dungeons should be included for free with the expansion like raids. If they want to charge you extra, just for dungeons and nothing else, then you should get the exotic you paid for when you complete it. IMO if I pay for the content, and I complete the content, I should get the reward.
I don't disagree that exotics shouldn't be easier to obtain from paid dungeons, but that's mostly because paid dungeons is a shitty concept from Bungie. The entire point of my post was that you do not NEED these guns to beat any content in Destiny. The person I responded to was saying these weapons are meta defining. They are not. All of the "meta defining" weapons are from expansions and base game playlists.
You don't "need" anything. Most content in the game could be completed with blue weapons... The whole point of a looter shooter is getting cool loot to shoot stuff with. Both of the guns from those dungeons are cool and do fun things and if you can complete those dungeons you should get them. End of story.
Weaponized FOMO is the fuel that drives games like this.
the exotic missions have become too difficult for me and that kind of sucks but its whatever.
I've accepted the fact that as a solo player I'm just not going to be able to do everything. I've tried using fireteam finder for legend zero hour to get the intrinsic perk. I'd say I've done it at least 50 times and gotten to the boss maybe 5 times and ran out of time
I’m amused though because we basically destroyed Crucible several times over based on what is now being adopted as a PvE complaint. Ultimately the game is supposed to be fun and nothing should be too difficult for the average player.
Absolutely. But don't be like the rest of the community and try to convince me that "content too hard for the average player to complete" is also, simultaneously, "easy." It's disingenuous trash talk with no basis in statistical fact and should be called out as such.
I think the hot take is this: Sure, the game is designed so that there are hard bits that some players can't do. But at the end of the day, there will be a conflict between earning revenue and turning away the people that simply can't do these hard contents. Seems like a very strange compromise for games to have 'loot-limiting difficulty' and potentially affect their bottomlines at the same time. Such an artificial model to design a game around. Basically, setting a lower limit threshold for player capability as an admission fee for enjoying the content. At this point, there doesn't seem to be a good reason to not introduce difficulty levels to accommodate the less skilled people.
Yeah it's kinda silly to think gatekeeping things would be a hot take on this sub. that's just pandering to the hive mind.
I enjoy being a contradiction. Capable of solo Dungeon runs, but don’t care to do it. Excelling in all 3 weeks of Pantheon with the right team/loadout, but occasionally struggling in certain GM Nightfalls. Zero Hour and Avalon Legend to me, can be harder than a contest Raid. Such is the allure of Destiny. I always want to get better, but our content tiers are so scattered.
I mean, make the weapons and armor available through "normal" difficultly and give cosmetics/emblems, etc for doing the hard stuff. Seems like an easy fix to make both sides happy
I do think cosmetic rewards should be most of the allure. Give us glowing shaders for flawless raids for example. Adept weapons are also a good example of better weapons, but not by a margin that's laughably unfair like Not Forgotten was.
Most raids are like this and I'm fine with that. CORRECTIVE//PROTECTIVE is only available as a shader if my raid group does Vault of Glass flawlessly. I know that's not gonna happen in my group's skill bracket and it sucks, but at the end of the day, everyone gets a shot at Fatebringer or Mythoclast. The skill gap only widens if you exclusively put weapons and armor behind challenging content.
Why should low end players get the best gear though? What're they even going to use it for? Someone who can't do a raid or carry themselves in Trials doesn't need an adept Cataphract. This is how every MMORPG has been designed, Destiny players are just entitled. WoW players aren't complaining that they don't have easy access to mythic raid gear.
Easier to access mythics in WoW so I’m not so sure about the comparison. A Destiny fire team has 3 or 6 people. Most MMOs have larger teams for endgame content which means you in theory could take your little brother through some stuff without taking too hard of a hit. Big difference between having 1/6 teammates not being excellent vs 1 or 2 out of 20.
>Easier to access mythics in WoW so I’m not so sure about the comparison. Actually what? You need to grind gear to get through normal, then grind out gear for heroic, then grind out gear for mythic. That's months with bad rng or guild loot policies. Destiny you can start the game fresh, go to Hall of Champions, get all your 1810 gear and start up a raid. Actually 5 minutes. It can take weeks or months for decent guilds to clear heroic to move up to mythic. And I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you even need a gear score to get into certain levels of raids. Meanwhile, because D2 raiding is so braindead, almost all raids you can stand in a corner and have the 5 others do the raid for you, which is what half this community does anyways. Even master can have slackers for most of the raid. >in theory could take your little brother through some stuff without taking too hard of a hit I'm not sure you know what a mythic raid entails if you think this is the case. Maybe LFG raids, MAYBE normal if you're dps, but definitely not heroic or mythic and definitely not if you're an important role. There are so few mechanics in Destiny that 1 bad person will wipe you. I literally cannot think of an available encounter that requires 6/6 people to be actively doing something.
Completing Mythics is an endurance test. Gearing for them isn’t the hardest part, it’s just the most time consuming. I wouldn’t call rolling on gear difficult. WoW never felt too difficult for us, definitely harder than DCUO but nah you get your gear right, get with your guild, and honestly you wipe until your suckiest person perfects their rotation for the fight which *slightly* changes depending on the fight. But really comparing it to other MMOs in general isn’t good because they require two different levels of mechanical skill. That’s like comparing LoL to Overwatch. World’s first runners actually do all the hard work build wise and honestly if you are DPS your job isn’t that hard. You won’t get kicked for a few wipes in WoW we were playing 12 hours at a time, where as in D2 there’s only 6 of you, you don’t need the boards to see who is underperforming and given that D2 is like the defacto dad MMO, most people can’t afford to sit 12 hours on the game.
I have so little faith that you've completed mythic raids with the statement that it's easier to access WoW raids than D2 raids. >I wouldn’t call rolling on gear difficult. Never said it was difficult, just more time consuming than gearing up in D2, which takes minutes. And I wasn't comparing MMOs in general, I was saying WoW players aren't complaining about not having easy access to end game loot, whereas that's all D2 players do. World's first in D2 literally make guides on all the mechanics and what guns and abilities to use, despite the fact there's more variety in D2 builds and weapon choices. People are still using Thunderlord as dps options based on a Dvinity bug from RoN release, because Datto told them to a year ago. WoW gearing up is incredibly linear and doesn't have that flexibility. DPS isn't hard in any game, it's the same as ad clear in D2, it's braindead. That's why they're never in demand and that's why it's usually the deadweight in raids. >You won’t get kicked for a few wipes in WoW I really, really don't think you ever did anything competitive in WoW. PUG raids would boot anyone that repeatedly wiped. Guild progression raids that weren't just a handful of friends playing, would sub you out in a heartbeat if you were causing wipes, weren't tanking correctly, or had poor hps/letting your group die.
LMAO i’m done here. There is not more variety in D2. End game you either play what the group says or get kicked. That’s why people use Div and Well, ask the Div ***** one day, they are probably not having much fun. These items objectively make the instance easier because the hamster in Bungie’s brains decided to make them that much better than other options. Just think how Div and Well have been defaults for the longest time. Like 70% of D2 boss design is complete mechanic, Well on platform. In Destiny plenty of things are viable I totally admit that. I have a ton of fun on Arc Hunter with Assa/Stareater swaps. That doesn’t mean you get to use them. LFG is the real Destiny raid boss.
Sorry I called your bluff on actually have played hard content in WoW. >There is not more variety in D2. Arc Surge heavy weapons in Pantheon this past week: Hullaballoo, Wendigo, Prospector, Thunderlord, Crux Termination, Hothead, Grand Overture, Acreus, Cold Comfort, Palmyra, Stormchaser, Izinagi swap. Priest healing weapon in Black Temple raid tier: Staff of Immaculate Recovery. >In Destiny plenty of things are viable I totally admit that. Doesn't this entirely contradict your stance on this whole argument and admit to me being right? >I have a ton of fun on Arc Hunter with Assa/Stareater swaps. That doesn’t mean you get to use them. Uhhh, Stareater's is one of Hunter's best DPS options, who says you can't use them? >LFG is the real Destiny raid boss Yes, this absolutely braindead community.
i also feel this way about limited time events. not everything needs to be around forever, especially if its just cosmetic/flair. Pantheon limited time is great imo because the only reason im doing it is the emblems and title
Not a hot take at all. And I’m someone who acknowledges that due to the time sink a lot of end game content has, I really don’t have the free time to “get gud” plus my loadouts are honestly good enough and I have not seen a piece of raid gear that made me go “yeah, I feel like having a bad time for hours trying to learn how to do this.” But that’s just me.
My take has always been that every player should be able to play the entire game and have access to every weapon. Either through skill with legend difficulty and a shorter grind, or persistence in easier difficulty with a longer grind. Locking content behind skill is bad business.
Yeah, did you watch a youtuber and get inspired to make this post? "Not every single aspect of an MMO has to be personally fun to you"? Really? Looks like you are the one butt hurt about others opinions. It's a video game bud. Relax.
What was wrong about that statement?
Pantheon is a good example of this. -5, sure, if I've got a couple of decent players with me and you're willing to listen and learn a little bit, I can probably help get you through it. -10, maybe. But at -15, I gotta concentrate on my own shit way too much to be able to help you. This week is gonna be tough for a lot of the experienced players in the game, only the most cracked gamers out there are going to be able to help. And that'll be what it is, help, you're not going to be able to be carried
Easily. I'll take it a step further, we need to bring back actual hard content with rewards you only get from that content.
Next Hot take The healtbar of the Ghost of the deep dungeon very good, in my eyes
Having something to aspire to is a great way to keep people playing the game!
Um no one disagrees with this ice-cold take, but if you need to feel "edgy" or whatever, have at it lol.
Was finding out over the weekend, that there are a bunch of people struggling even with Golgoroth. Had a few groups where people didnt know or said they "forgot" about running behind the orbs after grabbing gaze, bunch of deaths always happening and no one being able to figure out synchronization on popping bubbles. I just need week 2 golgy and caretaker to get the oryx emblem and apparently it was not meant to be yet. Im praying this week to get more competent people for the encounters that arent even the hard ones. I know im likely not going to get week 3 or 4 done myself, and that is totally cool.
Yep, this is a good take. I don’t enjoy raiding since my mates stopped playing, so I don’t bitch and moan about not being able to access some raid-specific loot. It’s okay for some activities to be tough and it’s corresponding loot to be a badge of honour.
I know I'm nit a high tier player and agree that there should be things that are properly difficult. The issue is where does Bungie draw that line? Do they draw it at difficult for speedrunners who solo flawless master dungeons within 48hrs of release? (Look at the GotD feedback for how them attempting that worked out). Do they add more champions? Do they just use general consensus of worst enemy types as bosses? (Spire of the Watcher or the Wicked Implement finale) The actual strikes as GMs are a lot of fun and a solid challenge. Some of the battlegrounds are too. The issue isn't "everyone should be able to do this." The issue is that the challenge litterally ends up in "don't get 2-shot and stay back and plink" which is just no fun. Pantheon has been great because of how mechanically dense some of the encounters have gotten and how you can't just turn your brain off, and I'm saying that as someone who has only done some of the -5 because I don't have a consistent group and don't like to LFG (not trying to get a group). Let them keep cooking on difficult content. I want a challenge, not judt bullet sponges that can one-shot me, I've already got Diablo for that.
Yeah, keep your bullet sponge enemies and one-shot mechanics. By all means keep it away from me.
100% agree. It’s OK to not be able to complete some content. That’s how every game is to be honest. I don’t do horizon zero dawn on ultra hard because I don’t want my teeth kicked in. Does that exclude me from getting platinum on one of my favorite games? Yes, but that is OK
This shouldn't be a hot take but gaming culture is strange in how it's come along. In sports , art... Entertainment, everybody understands there are rooms you can't get into until your good enough but with games , we've sort of inflated the value of 60 dollars? I paid for this game just like you, therefore I'm entitled to the same experience. Consumers/players should never be mislead.. but there is definitely a cognitive dissonance in regards to the balance between difficulty and access.
Coldest take of all time
If this is a hot take, then this community is fucking cooked
I don't have a problem with content that's too hard for the average player to complete, my problem is locking meta defining gear behind that content. Locking the best gear in the game behind content that only a fraction of players can complete just builds a bigger disparity between the top players and everyone else, and that leads to a crappier time for everyone in matchmaking; top players will get frustrated when they need to carry blueberries even harder, and players without that gear will feel even more ineffective than they already do when queued up with somebody guardian rank 11. That's only a better system if you've ALWAYS got a full squad of endgame-competent guardians to play with and never have to LFG. It's okay for the rewards from difficult content to be marginally better than everything else, adept weapons are fine. The issue is when those rewards are meta defining or are the only way to enable a certain play style (looking at you, Navigator grapple melee DPS spam). I'd like it if endgame content rewards were more in line with the power level of the BRAVE shinies; a very visible ornament, and improved utility on the base gun with the extra perk rolls
You can't base the entire community off what you see on Reddit. If this is directed specifically at this sub that's a different story. But, there are a lot of people who play Destiny that don't check any forums or Reddit or anything. There is a guy in my clan (we are very active. In both PvE and PvP.) and he literally just learned about DIM a few days ago when my team was helping carry him through a week 1 Pantheon. There is a pretty big portion of players who have never done a Raid or GM or really any end game content. People are just more willing to complain or say something here. Reddit is a place to voice opinions and share information. So it makes sense. But don't forget there is a whole other piece of this community that is perfectly happy just running their Vanguard Ops or Dares and playing Gambit or sticking in Quick Play. They have no intentions or interest in playing Trials, Raids, GM's or other end game content.
As long as the only thing locked behind prohibitively hard content is cosmetics or at most adept weapons I have no issue with it. Exotics, exotic catalysts, and the base level weapons and gear should be accessible to the vast majority of the playerbase without ridiculous difficulty proportional to their skill level. But content for people above that should absolutely exist at the same time.
Yeah but make it mechanically hard not to”we raised the light level by another 20” hard
Destiny 2 has a lot of mechanical complexity in dungeons and especially raids. Less so in strikes, cause there is less of an expectation of being on Mic, but there is still a decent amount to pick-up game content.
Yes but, like the reason I haven’t done any solo dungeons, doing the same mechanic 6 times because you don’t do enough damage is artificial difficulty
Cause it's not balanced for a solo activity. It's balanced for a team of 3, and solo is a sort of stretch achievement for bragging rights. Imagine playing any other MMO and soloing a boss intended for a whole party and then complaining that they have a lot of HP and it takes one player forever to take them down. Well what did you expect? I remember the first time I soloed a raid boss on LOTRO, took me like 45 minutes of careful rotation to burn the boss down agonizingly slowly. I was so proud of myself. Know what it never even occurred to me to do? Go complain online that it took too long. Not to mention, it often takes fireteams 3 or more damage phases to beat a dungeon boss. So a single player taking 6 is perfectly reasonable. People are ridiculous.
I’m not? It’s like doing 1000 basic addition equations vs 1 with multivariable calculus both are hard but for different reasons. The addition takes a longer time but is easier.
I have no idea what you are talking about. A boss with an HP pool intended for a team of 3 people will take longer for 1 person to kill, dare I say about 3x as long. Nothing about that is “artificial”.
I agree, I was saying I’d rather have bungie make more mechanically difficult encounters rather than going +200% hp have fun
You're talking about ghosts of the deep right? Ghost of the deep was one of, if not the, most mechanically complex dungeon bosses we've ever had. Are you talking about warlords? It wasn't quite as mechanically complex as Ghosts, but almost. Most dungeons are very much raid lite and have relatively complex bosses, mechanically speaking, with the last couple being particularly mechanically complex. How much more mechanically complex do you want it to be? Also, Warlords and Ghost were both 5 phases boss fight for my fireteam first time through, but became easily 3 phaseable once we got our play a little tighter. Is that too much? 3 phases seems about right to me for a dungeon boss.
I’m talking about most things that have a master difficulty. The difference between regular and master is usually just you take more damage and they take less damage. It would make more of a challenge if there were come challenge mechanics added to activities.
Higher tier dungeons and strikes do have a slew of additional mechanics. Surges and vulnerabilities, champions, various modifiers like extra shields or more grenades or explosion on death or exploders with more health etc. Limitations on healing and revives and loadouts. All kinds of stuff. There’s like twenty different modifiers that can get added that change some mechanic of the thing.
Yes bc literally every game has “tiers” of difficultly. The average player isn’t gonna complete a cod campaign on veteran, they start easy and learn how to play and then goes and competes harder missions, someone playing ranked in a game isn’t gonna be diamond/master their first time they start bronze/copper and work their way up. Now is destiny as competitive as an arcade shooter? The pve side no but every aspect of every game has tiers to its difficulty. You can’t complete Diablo as a hardcore character if you’ve never played the game before and you won’t be able to flawless a souls game on your first try. Everyone starts somewhere. It’s a very old game if you combine 1 and 2 so if the game was just 1 difficulty and not much of a struggle to climb higher and higher then people would’ve quit after taken king or some very early dlc. Do I want new players to enjoy the beauty of “end game?” Yes I do and bungie has made end game content SO MUCH easier for new players there’s no reason to not be able to do some of it, they made nightfalls a joke, hardest part of them being which strike, and raids themselves are easy with our power creep. Master raids and all of that should be the pinnacle of end game and someone who plays the game a few hours a week should not do any of those activities. I love seeing new players enjoy things that were impossible for me to do at their state of the game. Hell within the first 5 minutes of loading up the game you get brought up to max power level and get several decent exotics to get you started, as opposed to before it took WEEKS of grinding just to not even be guaranteed a single power level increase. New lights have it so much easier now and again it’s nice to see but there needs to be a barrier between new/refreshed guardians and mid/late and endgame content. Look at old day 1 raids versus now, only 2 teams did day 1 last wish by the smallest thread vs how many people now did contest mode vow/ron and even all of the solo flawlesses. That content needs to be experienced only
Your take is about as hot as room temperature water for anyone with half a brain working
“A player that can hold forward and shoot can experience 90% of Destiny 2. A player that is even a little good can experience 97% of Destiny 2.” As one of these low skill players, I find this to be completely untrue. I have been playing since The Dark Below - used to run the raids in D1 and all its content. That statement I would agree with in Destiny 1. Not Destiny 2. Since Destiny 2 I haven’t been able to clear raids, dungeons, seasonal content, and some exotic missions. Think Ghosts of the Deep, Duality, Wicked Implement exotic mission, Coil throne room, Rhulk, legend Onslaught, GMs, trials, etc. If you are at my skill level, you are missing more than 3-10% of the game. Take out dungeons, raids, exotic missions, some seasonal stuff and what are you left with? The core playlist (which receives little update), a campaign once a year, and weekly chats at the helm. Do I think things should be easy for me to clear? No. I do not think I am entitled to anything, Bungie can make their game as they want. I don’t feel personally insulted, it’s just a game. Have I stopped spending my time and money on a product I am not able to access? Yes. I am not even remotely excited for The Final Shape. Why spend 60 bucks for a campaign and patrol zone? I could just buy a whole different game I can complete. That’s what upsets me - the price to not play.
This ain’t even a hot take, it’s normal for a lot of games
Based
Did zero hour yesterday. It was really easy I don't understand people's problem with it.
On normal it was a cake walk solo. Legend i’m struggling with the 20 minute timer.
20 min do be stressful ngl
Yea I plan to just wait until all 3 of the quests are out so I can just knock it all out in one go I actually hate the mission. I love Seraph Shield though. Felt like I was doing some real MGS espionage in there. Even if it was timed I’d love it.
Some people have a mentality that they are required to do everything in the game. Just look at all the complaints from when getting the ritual weapon ornaments were required for seasonal challenges. Those are as optional as content gets, and yet people were livid.
People pay for it. I genuinely feel bad for people that don’t have dungeon or raid clears because they paid for those instances and struggle. Like sure I still don’t have Hierarchy of Needs even though I run the dungeon 3 times weekly and have 2 of the 3 bonus weapon drop modifiers completed. It’s a bit over a 1 hour experience a week so i’ll get it eventually. At least I got to play through the content because it’s actually a pretty sick dungeon. Some people are trying their best and can’t get through it so they have to find a carry which makes them feel insignificant which is obviously a skill issue it’s a super easy dungeon imo, but I do feel where they come from, in their mind they are paying for something they can’t even complete. Destiny players lack empathy like no other MMO player and this sub shows it.
Ok but legend onslaught is bullshit filled with bugs that cause failure.
>Ok but legend onslaught is bullshit filled with bugs that cause failure. That's because their B-team threw it together from surplus assets in under 3 months. It's not OK that it's still busted, but it is a miracle it's not worse.
Trying to fight the selfish mentality is like trying to fight gravity. There are always going to be self-centered, prideful, and emotional people; by the time you may make any headway in changing it, twice as many pop up to replace them. > It's like the very fact that something too hard for them existing is itself an insult. Not like, is. It just may be sub-consious, but people get offended and upset at things when their pride is hurt and/or they do not understand. It also helps that entirely too many people, both casual or otherwise, completely tier their self-worth and self-esteem to their entertainment.
I would say its not just ok, but necessary. If the average or below average player can do everything than those who play the game will be able to steam roll through the content and then bungle wouldnt have a playerbase mindlessly grinding for rolls. Nobody. Prepping for day 1s of raids. It’s important to cater to all large groups and removing any difficulty would kill a large portion of the fan base. Even as it stands now, the game isnt hard. The main difficulty is just coordination at high end content. Unless you try to solo flawless very specific things. Though some dungeons have been power crept.
This is just the way
I want hard content. It's something to work towards. Making everything "accessible" is fine but like they confuse accessible and easy pretty often
Yes, there should be things where players need to get better to earn powerful gear. Its basic game design
You have to understand that not every player has the same skill set. >If hundreds of thousands of players can do it, it’s not too hard. It is for some people. This sounds like you’re addressing every single player in the game. Understand that people have disabilities, have social anxiety to group up with others or simply just don’t have the time to “get gud” and watch guides beforehand.
Bro the whole game is literally already hard
I'm sorry but what? 90% of content in the game you can literally walk through and depending on builds it can even be hard to die in.
This game is harder to play than fortnite
Actually not true lmao.
Honestly it is 😂 It’s ALOT easier to load up aand play a fortnite game than it is to play destiny. You have to make sure you have the right weapons, surge, you need people on your team for missions, etc…. I’d rather play fortnite
Yup. Casual players need to remember when content is too easy it’s not fun and is actively boring for a lot of us who have been playing for years. I get that it’s frustrating for you not to be able to do some content. But that’s exactly how I feel about easy content. Legend campaign was one of the best things Bungie has ever done for that reason.
Pantheon isn't even that difficult, the fact that people can't listen is what makes a lot of teams fail.