Destiny 2 - I don't have time to explain Bungie's MMO shooter 2.0

I played at release, got a character to whatever the gear score was at that time, and then hung it up for 3 years. I seem to remember the main hub was somebody’s farm or something at release and I remember thinking, Warframe is faster so why not just play that.

Cut to last week when I reinstalled. I bought Forsaken at some Steam sale awhile back so I thought I may as well see that content. Lots of changes but the lore and story are so convoluted that is easier for me to just ignore that stuff and try and figure out the systems.

I am really enjoying myself in PvP. There are people flying around shooting with their giant pistols left and right but I feel like I am getting the hang of it and don’t mind being slaughtered over and over because of the quick respawn in Control. I feel like I will probably be out before I hit the “meta” part of game, but so far so good.

I started playing this as it’s gotten added to PC gamepass with some of the expansions. I’ve really enjoying it and ended up getting the season pass which is pretty rare as I hardly ever put real money into free to play games.

I’ve gotten really hung up on Destiny 2 lately, if anyone wants to play, add me :):) (not doing Crucible, and no voice chat)

KristinaKraah#2770

Can someone explain weapons to me. Does a weapons power level have anything to do with it’s attributes? Do all weapons with the same name have exactly the same stats no matter the level? Is it just the perks or whatever they are called that are different?

I still shake my head at Bungie’s trajectory.

It goes something like:

Remember when Bungie felt they would be forever trapped making Halo sequels? It turns out they felt that Master Chief and Cortana had too much personality. They would prefer to spend the rest of their years making a more generic first person shooter with less personality.

I went on a 170 hour binge of Destiny 2 but I think my time has ended. Very fun while it lasted though.

The power level slog past 1320 is starting to feel more like work than fun. I had the same problem with Warframe after a certain point. Anytime there is a time sensitive requirement of"this event lasts a week" or Destiny’s weekly reset, I get the FoMO and stress.

Coupled with the insane amount of money Bungie wants for 20 minutes of cutscenes and 6-10 hours of repetitive quests (what they call an expansion), plus the season pass, plus the 30th Anniversary = $100.

I really enjoyed the PvP up until I realized I will never get any better. I can take getting slaughtered for awhile IF there is a reasonable way to get better. Better gear, learn the maps, better tactics, etc. This just seems futile. I have no idea how some players only hit head shots while flying around the map or by the time I see the Guardian they have slid 100 feet and I can’t even hear the shotgun blast. I tell myself the controller auto targeting is way to high but I know the real reason is the speed is more than I will ever be able to handle.

This is definitely the big problem destiny has.

If you do playing for a long time, like I did, when you come back it’s pretty cool. There’s stuff to do, and the progression is serviceable.

But once you hit the real endgame, and are working for those few final light level points, the game’s progression becomes trash.

99.9% of the lot you get is just auto trash. It’s useless. Inexplicably, you still find BLUE lot at this point, which is even more guaranteed to be trash.

And yet you can’t tell the game to Auto shard it… you are forced to take it. If you don’t pick it up, it will go into your mailbox and eventually fill it up, at which point you will lose items… Possibly that 0.1% of items you actually want.

Some non trivial portion of my time playing destiny is literally just manually sharding garbage items. Other games let you have the game automatically break down any item below a certain quality level, but not destiny… It contributes to the feeling that it’s work instead of fun.

I slogged at it for evert day for a couple of months and I could barely get my power level to 1323. And the game simply refuses to drop me a Power 1323 Kinetic Weapon, but I’ve had no shortage of 1323 Boots, Helmets, Power Weapons, etc.

Bungie’s big problem with me right now is Halo has dropped, and while the MP is a different beast, it’s still hella fun.

Aren’t Blues completely worthless? Once you hit the max power level they offer nothing but glimmer for dismantling them. But you’re never going to use a Blue item, not when you have more power legendaries and exotics.

I must be misunderstanding because it sounds like they’re saying you can’t rely on postmaster to store better than blue, because blues will overwrite the good stuff. That doesn’t seem good; what am I missing?

I think it’s a joke, given that they also say that dropped blues will start to replace your currently-equipped items.

So I decided to give Destiny 2 another try before it leaves Game Pass on PC. (April 11).

After installing it and trying to continue my previous character, it started the Witch Queen intro I think, and it was all very high production, very impressive. It presented with a choice that made me really happy: normal difficulty or a new Witch’s Queen Legendary difficulty! Woohoo, the game was always too easy! But just like the last time I tried to play the game on Xbox, I couldn’t make a dent on enemies. Even if I took cover and didn’t let myself get hit (one hit kills me instantly), my own shots don’t seem to damage enemies at all. There was nothing in the interface telling me what to do to change this. I even went back to the tower and got a TON of messages that were all very confusing. I had no idea what was going on anymore, I was overwhelmed with information. It told me to go into my inventory and equip artifacts. And to go change my class and stuff, and there was just too much stuff.

So anyway, I decided, hell with it, if this game is so bad at welcoming back old players who finished Destiny 2 at launch, instead of giving up on it like I did last time, let’s start a new character.

This new character I created started at a higher light level than the character that had finished Destiny 2’s campaign. LOL. And surprisingly, instead of starting at the beginning of Destiny 2, what played out was a remix of the original Destiny’s original cutscene. The music is all new, with no hints of Marty’s original music. I like the new music, it creates quite a different atmosphere. Peter Dinklage’s voice acting is completely gone, of course, but I think even Noland North’s voice acting is gone, or at least, it has now been heavily modified into like a computer voice so that it’s not recognizable as him anymore.

Plus the first “mission” where you go into the wall, doesn’t at all play out like it did in the original Destiny. Again, it feels like a remix. Some of the original elements are still there, but the graphics and art, and music and even the mission structure are all quite different.

But I don’t think I’m in this new “Legendary” difficulty anymore, because everything was super trivial. Maybe because I’m only in the first few missions? I hope so. But that’s been my main beef with Destiny 2, there’s no harder difficulty level that’s actually available that’s balanced and fun. I guess I’ll keep playing and give it another chance, but if it continues to be this easy, where like Destiny 2 at launch it essentially is like a walking simulator, then I’ll lose interest fast.

I hate to break it to you, but the Legendary difficulty option is only for the Witch Queen campaign missions.

There are less trivial challenges in the game, but they tend to be nightfalls in the vanguard playlist and the seasonal content the last few seasons throw enough stuff at you at once that even trivial enemies start to pose a problem. In a nutshell, any activity that features matchmaking isn’t going to be terribly difficult, since it has to cater to the lowest common denominator of player ability.

Then there’s power level, which sounds like the issue you were initially having. If your power level is 20 less than the recommended power level for the activity, enemies are immune to your attacks. Damage scales in some fashion based on the difference, so 19 below and you’re just tickling enemies with your weapons, etc. I have no idea if this is explained anywhere, which is terrible for new/returning players, but there it is.

I kind of figured I was underpowered, as the weapons I finished the campaign with were probably too low, but there was no indication in the game on what to do about it. No message saying, “hey, you’re too low level, go over here to get new weapons” that type of thing.

And yeah, my light level with the post-Destiny 2 campaign character was 1181, and my light level with a new starting character was 1350. So quite a big difference.

By the way, it was nice to play such a gorgeous game that doesn’t cause my CPU fan to spin up or throttle it, like Elden Ring does (which causes huge hitches in the frame rate). Destiny 2 is smooth as butter. 30fps in the cutscenes, and 60fps in the gameplay. It’s just a shame about the difficulty being such a cakewalk. It’s especially egregious in this Soviet Cosmodrome area, because I originally played this at launch all on Hard difficulty (back before Destiny changed it), and every area was super satisfying and challenging in single player.

Which is especially weird because at the start of Witch Queen, all the gear across all my characters and stored in my vault was bumped up to 1350. Maybe there’s some issue or oversight involved in your specific situation that just wasn’t considered, but I’m just guessing here.

I should clarify, each individual piece of gear I had all said 1350.

But my overall light level was listed as 1181.

Well that all sounds like some kind of bug, because your light level is just an average of all your gear. Maybe one piece didn’t get raised?

EDIT: More likely there’s some kind of bug where the power level of one piece of your gear is being ignored since 7/8 of 1350 is… you guessed it… 1181.

I just started this for the 1st time. currently running the shadowkeep missions. Initially it was as confusing as hell but I got some advice from the forums. I have to say I really enjoy the shooting part of it, all feels smooth and fun, got this epic Bow and it totally rocks, lots 1 shot kills but you can only shoot 1 arrow at a time.

I don’t have The Witch Queen but playing through shadowkeep and beyond light is keeping me busy