Yeah just did that. It’s a remarkably bad way of doing things when the series x upgrades just work.
It needs to be improved. The downside to how X is doing it is there’s no way to play the BC version of the older game, but the use case for that I think is so small that Sony should just not worry about it and do how X is doing it.
For what its worth, I played Destiny 2 from shortly before the Forsaken expansion came out to shortly after it came out (that’s around when the base game was being handed out for peanuts). I only picked up playing again in September when I grabbed the Shadowkeep expansion on sale and did the campaign. I then shelved the game until the new expansion released, so I’m not a heavy Desiny player or anything.
But I’ve played a lot of the game since Beyond Light came out. What I’m happiest about is how much clearer things are in the new expansion. I know what’s happening, and I know what I’m supposed to be doing; I got fairly lost in the previous expansions after completing the main campaign story even though there was clearly more content available but this time around I’m not scratching my head looking at the map or my quest log or whatever. It’s quite a relief to me, actually.
I also picked up and played through the new player experience in the Cosmodrome and found it way better than what it was when I came back to play the game in September.
This is going to be my first time playing the seasonal content, but so far so good.
I booted this up on PS5 after only having played the core launch version on PS4. It sure looks and runs nice but man a lot has changed and it’s kind of overwhelming for someone who has been gone a long time. Is there anything worth doing if say I don’t want to buy the expansion packs? I notice entire planets and destinations are gone.
Apparently this most recent patch broke fireteam formation on the PS4.
Steam was struggling last night on PC. My son and I were running some things and got discoed and message to log out and back into steam.
Hopefully that gets settled, though no drops when in content, always zoning or at tower.
I am “Hechicera” in Bungie (and on steam - one of several on steam - I have this planet as steam icon) if anyone wants a slow somewhat ungeared friend?
I have more fun laughing and dying with people I know than chasing speed runners. Esp. when I have a quest that needs me to get 12 finishers on low level boss lieutenant mobs.
So the new season started last week, and yesterday they added some new stuff… Overall, very well done. The new battleground is good.
But the real gem is the quest for Deadman’s Tale, an exotic scout rifle. This quest was SUPER well done. The ambient acoustics of the level were the best I’ve seen in game. Has a very good deadspace/event horizon vibe to it.
If anyone’s in Destiny 2 at this point, make sure you check out this quest.
(the gun itself is also very cool.)
Change at the helm. Maybe with someone who gives a shit and is not completely insane and egomaniac like Luke Smith proved to be.
Summary filtered by me:
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Commitment to make Destiny an ongoing MMO. Yearly exp pack extended by one. So Beyond Light released this past November, then Witch Queen, Lightfall, and an unnamed one to follow. It’s unclear here. They say this last exp pack will “fully complete our first saga of Destiny”, but at the same time that “Destiny now committed to being an everlasting evolving world”. “Everlasting” and “complete” being at odds. We can still assume they are going to launch a new game, and in order to be ready for this they need more time. So another exp pack to cover the gap. Therefore, the likely interpretation is that Destiny is an everlasting world, but not an everlasting game. I do expect that after this first saga there will be a reset and a sequel. Yet they are saying they want to take time to upgrade the systemic foundation, so it seems more like they want to evolve the game without a reset. Since we are talking about years in the future, and plans are changing every few months, all of this is like an empty promise that I don’t think can be taken seriously in the end.
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It was obvious that Witch Queen, planned for this September originally, was going to be delayed, after the current exp pack was delayed to November. Now the announce is that it won’t launch before “early 2022”. As always, this doesn’t exclude the possibility of further delays, especially about what comes after (since now there are two more exp pack, after the 2022 one, so with path paved up to the start of 2025, maybe with a new game launching later that year, without considering further delays).
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Backpedaling on armor and weapon sunset. No more caps from season 14 onward. They still have no plan on how to solve the problem sunset was meant to solve, but will work this year to find a different solution.
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Power increase every season reduced from 50 to 10 (but pinnacle-driven only, it seems, so they simply cut the non-pinnacle portion).
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More attention to PvP balance and cheating. Work on modes like Trials of Osiris, but not before end of 2021, Iron Banner after that.
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Vault of Glass (raid) next season (summer).
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Crossplay in season 15, but PvE only (it should be August/September, but they write “fall 2021”).
No mention on the content part of the sunsetting.
Also, the feel I get is that they are patching the current game the best they can to stop the bleeding (no sunsetting of loot, no seasonal activities that vanish), but there’s not much to expect in 2021 beside what’s announced there. They are betting everything on the 2022 expansion and loading all their effort there.
Downloaded this on my XSX last night, after @Timex mentioned it over in the GP thread. I’m so weak. I haven’t played since after Forsaken/before Shadowfall. Nice that they just power you up to the 1100 light level, and that my old loadouts seem highly effective for the (now ‘Legacy’) Shadowfall content, and that there’s lots of tooltips and guides to get you up to speed as a returning player. That said, the animated intro when I loaded it up yesterday was pretty funny- they literally say “Mars, Mercury… (etc)… have all disappeared, and we don’t know why” to sort of explain the deprecated content.
The gameplay is as fun as ever, and it looks and runs really, really well with the 4k upgrade on the Series X. I got roped into some random group of players doing whatever the Well of Souls-equivalent on the Moon was, and had an absolute blast, and the game never slowed down a whit, even with hordes of beasties and effects on the screen. I have to dig into the new armour and Ghost upgrading systems, though- I have no idea what’s going on with those.
All that said, they pushed the upgrade to the full season pass, which I guess would get me the ‘old’ content from the last season… For $60? Which seems a bit nuts?
I’m not sure what you mean here?
For me, I’ve just been playing on Gamepass, and I think we’ve got access to everything?
I’ve been getting the season pass, to get various reward and stuff each season, but with GP I think that’s only like $9 each season?
yeah, that’s about right for gamepass. I actually bought the current season as during the pandemic Console/Couch gaming is far preferable to PC gaming in the same home office, same chair, same monitor, etc. also that I need some solid shootyface in coronatime. Pyperkub on xBox.
I think what it was saying was that you could get content from previous seasons, like Exotic Quests and whatnot, that might not be available - stuff from Season of the Hunt, for example, or perhaps earlier. I’ll look again next time I boot it up.
You should be able to get access to all that stuff without paying additional money.
What you need to do to get access to older quests and stuff is go to the kiosk that’s in the tower right next to the postbox robot. There you can take on older season quests and stuff.
Also, you can go to the kiosk near the vault access points, and buy older discontinued weapons from prior seasons. (like old exotics and stuff)
Huh. Good to know! That said, I haven’t even been to the Tower yet. I booted it up, watched/got dumped into the Europa cinematic/mission, got through that, flew to the Moon, and turned it off. When I came back the next day, I immediately got hit with the current season cinematic (with no audible dialog, so I ended up skipping it) and the a pop-up splash screen about subbing for prior season content. Went back to the moon, did a few missions. It’s been fun. The old moves came back quick.
I dunno if I already mentioned it, but if not…
So this season, they added in this new exotic quest called “Presage”.
This is possibly one of the best activities they’ve made in the game thus far, almost akin to a 3 man raid. I highly recommend folks check it out.
It’s not raid-like in that it’s super challenging…it’s not. But it’s raid like in that when you first go through it, there are lots of little puzzles and stuff to find. I recommend folks not look up any guide for it, and just do it live.
Me and my buddies had a ton of fun going through it.
Now, to get the Dead Man’s Tale exotic catalyst, you had to do this at master level, which gives you a time limit to complete… THAT was challenging, but doable, even for old gamers past our prime.
Oh, another thing that’s cool, is that every week it’s a bit different, in that there are different things to find, and the voiceovers from NPC’s taking place in the background change.
I’ll look for it! Thanks for the tip.
I ended up springing for 3000+ silver to buy the season pass- it was on sale-ish, and I figured got the Shadowfall/Beyond Light expansions for free, so I should chip in something, since I’ll probably be playing for a bit. I played though the main Shadowfall content, and a bit of BL- just got sent back to the Cosmodrome. I’ve dug in to the new power/armor upgrading systems since my 1100 power gear was starting to lose its effectiveness- really a bummer that I had to scrap my masterwork weapons. But I also scrapped everything in my Vault, giving me something like 700 Legendary Shards and a ton of Cores, so I’m set on moderately upgrading for a while, until I play through the campaign content at least.
I’ve gotta say again, I really appreciate how cool this game looks a lot of the time. Not just the 4k/framerate upgrade, but the art direction and implementation. There’s a lot of scenes where you’ll be running along and round a corner and the scene will be nigh indistinguishable from the concept art that inspired it.
Going through it solo takes awhile, and the boss battle is very difficult due to the mobs and ceiling and one hit kills. I gave up on it.
Damn the upgrade systems in this have become obtuse. Everything surrounding the whole Battlegrounds thing is kind of annoying- and just a side note, I avoided that for a bit as I assumed it’d be some sort of Battle Royale or Battlefields thing based on the name. What’s really the difference between these and Strikes? A slightly more freeform structure?
So I need to get Cabal Gold to power up my hammer so I can open chests so I can decode Umbral Engrams. But not too much Cabal Gold or it’ll be wasted. But you can get various perks to make this easier… by spending the Cabal Gold you need for other things. And mostly ditto all that for the Herealways(wtf?) stuff Variks wants. This stuff in annoying to figure out and annoying to play.
But I liked the Beyond Light campaign story. Well, not the story itself- that was mostly forgettable pap- but I’m liking the Darkness/Light Lore stuff, the history of the Fallen, having once worshipped the Traveller as we did, but then it abandoned them for some reason… as it seems to be doing to us. They’ve been hinting about that for years, nice to see it out there. This is really the story they should have done at the beginning of D2, with Guardians going ‘Dark’, etc. I’m guessing that’ll be the focus of each of the next expansions? Unlocking more Darkness powers? My warlock’s stasis powers are kind of annoying, though- I don’t really like the grenade, melee or super, but I keep having to use them to fulfill various missions. Oh, well.
After finished Wildlands, Divisions 1&2 a friend and myself decided to give this game a try.
We’re about 7h in and its still pretty confusing: Here are some thoughts, perhaps some of you are willing to give me some pointers? I’ll dig around online for starter hint pages, guess that’ll help? Though I feel the game should be self-explanatory. This game is NOT friendly to newbies…
Last night we got to the tower for the first time and were shown various people and then got sent off for the first proper mission (I’m guessing?) - No idea if this is still part of a tutorial? (btw What is a Cosmodrome? Are there other planets involved too?)
I gather there are three elements that have an influence on weapon / armour type?
I’m collecting those spiky leaves and blue squares as currency to upgrade stuff, right?
Is it normal that after killing the boss in the first big mission (Navôta) we’re still only on level 1 with 20% towards level 2? Seems like a REALLY slow grind if thats the case…
Also when launching that first mission from the tower it says its for teams of 1-3 players. Our fireteam is 2 people and only open to friends. Thus we assumed we could jump straight in, but the game seems to search for a third player for about 2 min before launching us into the game. Is that normal?
All the items seem to have slots to upgrade, but it seems pretty overwhelming in terms of their functionality.
Whats a campaign mission, an expansion, a daily / seasonal event, timed exclusive…?
The basic mechanic of running around and shooting stuff seems like fun though! Reminds me of Halo (not really surprising considering its Bungie).
Guess we’ll try to get into it a bit more, but right now all the “stuff” around the basic gameplay and the long load times is very offputting!
I came to Destiny 2 never having played the original, and had a lot of the same questions starting out. But essentially, the best advice I can give you is don’t think too hard about things and just roll with it. The shooting/combat is fun, and there are no penalties for failure, other than some wasted time, which if the shooting/combat is fun, then it really wasn’t wasted. The game has many, many huge grinds if you let it. First there’s xp to level up, and then upping your power, and oh yeah, two more classes to repeat all this on. It’s kind of nuts, so only engage with it if you want to, don’t feel you have to.
As to specifics: There are three elements that influence weapons and armor, and importantly shields. If your target is surrounded by a bubble of orange, for example, then you want to hit it with a solar weapon if you can, as bringing down the shield will explode it and potentially deal damage to surrounding enemies. In the early game, any weapon will work, but solar will work a little better. Endgame activities, solar might be the only effective way to bring down that shield, but it’ll be a while before you reach that point. For armor, the element type will determine some of the mods it can slot. Be aware of it, but don’t worry about it too much, it only matters much later.
Some activities have matchmaking, which is location based, so it’s trying to put you in lobbies with folks geographically near to you for a better connection. If you’re playing at 3am on a Wednesday, this might be a problem, but if it is, it will eventually give up, launch the activity, and then if it finds someone later it might add them. Not sure how many new players the game pulls in regularly, and older players don’t have a reason to revisit early content, so I don’t really have any advice here.
Don’t worry about upgrading things in the early game, mostly focus on weapons you find that you enjoy using or that fit your play style. A lot of the fiddly bits are hidden, and you can most certainly look them up online, but early on just focus on the fun. Learning the difference between a gun with kill clip and another with rampage and how they’re different and why you might want one over the other can wait. It’s helpful, but it shouldn’t be a priority.
The Cosmodrome is a location on Earth, and yes, other planets are involved eventually, with much better and more interesting artwork/geometry.