1927

I see. For me, campaigns in the majority of games are a chore I need to get through. I rarely find being in a narrative straightjuacket enjoyable, so this might be targeted at people like me. Still, if there’s no challenge at all that does make it more of a chore…

1928

The difficulty in modern games has gone down dramatically, but this happened for the most part because of story driven games, where the difficulty prevents you to enjoy the story.

Having a loot based game only rely on cosmetics makes for a very bland formula. And that’s exactly why Borderlands is successful but without having a real impact. It’s just sorta out there and then people move on.

It’s bland without proper difficulty. It becomes grindy, and most people abandon these games very quickly.

And then you have a case like World of Warcraft where everyone wants to go back at the classic server because leveling up used to be fun, and it isn’t anymore.

1929

It’s not a chore if it doesn’t exist.

1930

The best kind of campaign, for sure! Diablo 3, for instance, became infinitely better once I didn’t have to go through that crap ever again. Borderlands 3 is dead to me right now because I can’t stomach having to sit through another round of the campaign.

1931

The Destiny 2 might be the game for you. Even if utterly confusing and without direction.

1932

Yeah, I don’t trust Bungie anymore after Destiny 2. Once they’re done with Destiny and move on to their next thing, I suspect that’s when I’ll get back to trying another Bungie game.

Destiny 1’s campaign was superb at launch though. I wish I could install a launch version of Destiny and play through that campaign again with the other two characters. I only did it with a wizard.

1933

I played Destiny 2 at launch and thought it was… OK. Tried again at Forsaken and thought it was slightly better OK. The armor 2.0 stuff looks interesting in this expansion, I just haven’t had a chance to try it yet.

1934

Interestingly - if you create a new account for D2 and start from scratch you get the OG D1 cosmodrome starter mission.

1935

The mission where OG D1 got good on hard difficulty was the mission in which the Vex were revealed. I think I did that mission at least 50 times before I finally got the perfect run and finished it. And my reward was the “I don’t have time to tell you I don’t have time” cutscene, which was a pretty funny reward for finally finishing that mission.

In Destiny 2, I don’t think there were any missions in which I died. Maybe once or twice by accident. It never pushed back at all.

1936

Okay, I’m dumbfounded. On Battle.Net I stopped playing during a mission quest. But how do I know where to continue? The UI doesn’t tell you anything and everything seems to be unlocked?

1937

If you were in the middle of a quest, halfway through a mission, then you should be able to resume it normally.

Otherwise it resets all story progress, for everyone. Story is now only “legacy” (pointless) content that to start again you need to go speak at the tower to the NPC on the far left.

You’re instead supposed to ignore the old content and focus on the rest.

1938

Dang, I’m pretty sure I left in the middle of a mission, but I couldn’t find any “resume” option. And I have no idea on how to begin with “the rest”.

1939

A mission is generally on some planet, so you click on the planet and it should be right there. If it isn’t it was probably reset, the whole campaign.

You can go straight to the moon and do the first mission of Shadowkeep (for free).

1940

This game does an even more terrible job than normal of explaining what the hell you’re supposed to be doing. It’s like ESPN, with 2000 screen popups and scrolls, none of which are all that helpful, particularly when they appear in the middle of a firefight and disappear before you can look at them.

1941

This thing is a hot mess. I mean, I’m sure it’s still the same good moment to moment boom-boom stuff, but jeez, logging in to the Steam version after migration is confusing as hell. First, get rid of half your inventory because it’s all been superseded or whatever and is now jut mat fodder. Second, there are a billion new thingamajigs you have to look at or click through or other wise process that don’t seem to actually do anything but add fluff.

Then, there’s the confusion (at least for me) over just what version is what. I bought Destiny 2 on Battle.net. I migrated it over here. So far, so good–I have my three characters, inventory, etc. But what about Forsaken or Shadowkeep? They are both available as DLC, one for like $25 and the other for $35. What are they? What do they offer? If I don’t get one or the other, what happens?

1942

More or less:

  • Base (free) game is D2 + Osiris + Warmind + Forsaken’s annual pass
  • Forsaken is Forsaken story missions + year 2 raids/small raids + exotics/quests part of Forsaken + subclasses (these unlock through Shadowkeep as well)
  • Shadowkeep is the new bit of story content + first three months pass (includes those loot unlockables you see, plus some sort of content/live event that is starting soon) + a small raid/dungeon ? + one (solo?) strike + nightmare hunts (new activity with bosses)

Also:

  • Forsaken story content (and all legacy story content) is now too easy to play, and generally irrelevant/superfluous mechanically. Although it’s still cool and nice to watch.
  • At the same time, the exotics are for many players enough of a good reason, since all items can be upgraded to current levels. So old exotics don’t get replaced by the new.

You can do Shadowkeep first mission as a preview, the moon as destination is free for everyone, for roaming.

People say Shadowkeep story content is bad (repetitive kill missions, recycled bosses, nothing new to do). But there’s a good plot twist at the end of the first mission that hyped everyone. Past that, the story campaign ends in nothing and doesn’t have any other high point. But it also seems to push the overall story a bit forward and some people hope there will be some development during the seasons (I doubt it).

Once you have Shadowkeep and the first pass, the next pass will be in January and will cost $10. All the pass content is removed from the game after the three months are over, minus the loot you get, that of course stays with you (the “artifact” that you level for three months is completely reset every season, and needs to be re-leveled from zero)

(actually the artifact is free for everyone, unlocks at 8 level of the free season track)

1943

The more I dig, the more it gets worse from a design perspective.

Since they integrated lots of DLC content, all that stuff is cut & pasted by removing its standard introduction.

So you keep finding NPCs that give you obscure quests, with NO DIRECTION on how to complete them. There is absolutely nothing in the quest description that can even suggest what the quest is asking you to do. It’s worse than the quests in the first version of Everquest.

And then you get bounties, triumphs, challenges and a bunch of other stuff. I have no idea what’s the difference between these.

The screen fills with all sort of tasks. The problem isn’t even the confusion, the problem is that even if I pick one of of them at random, often there is nothing written there that explains what this thing wants me to do.

1944

Not surprising its not going that smooth for some. They are taking a big game that was designed to be played and released it a totally different way when they did their deal with Activision. Now they are trying to morph it into a “games as a service” title and a long term platform when it wasn’t made that way. Not easy.

Also I don’t think Destiny 3 is coming for a long time if ever. This is in the game camp of Fortnite or Warframe now where it doesn’t ever have distinct numbered releases but continued changes and content added.

1945

I don’t think so. Destiny 2 is in maintenance or they would be a lot more proactive.

This is a necessary move to get some money to fuel the sequel. I do agree that Destiny 3 will take time, and it’s not imminent (more than one year). For that reason they need some form of ongoing revenue to pay the bills, and so they need D2 to keep going. But Bungie is a big studio and D2 isn’t built to scale well. They are extending its life, but not turning it into their long term flagship.

…Or they end up like Guild Wars 2. Where all the team focuses on the new game, that gets delayed again and again, ends up in failure, and then most of the team is fired and they go back at trying to make the former game last a little longer since they don’t have anything else ready.

1946

Thanks!