1967

Oh my god. I’m so sorry man. I’ve never played a game that way. That sounds horrible.

The closest I came was in Wolfenstein 2, the courtroom scene. But even in that, I waited until I survived for a good 10-20 seconds before saving each time.

1968

Pretty terrible. It gives nearly no explanation as to any of the game mechanics or what the hell you’re even supposed to be doing. It is one of the most garbage new player experiences I’ve ever had.

1969

If I were a brand new player, my first question would be “Why do I start at level 750?”

1970

I could not agree more. I gave it about an hour last night, then uninstalled. The current version is like dropping someone new to WoW into a level 100 char, then queuing them up for 5 mans.

There is virtually zero guidance on basic gameplay or what you should do.

1971

It’s weird that the newbie experience is so horrible now, as IIRC when I played Destiny 2 for the first time, it was pretty easy to figure out. I guess the combo of adding tons of stuff and switching both platforms and business models led to a whole bunch of goat roping.

1972

Gameplay wise, the opening level that’s ripped out of Destiny 1 is pretty good for getting the basic controls down and the feel of the game. If you’re coming in with an old character and are just rusty, make a new character and play that real quick.

The real confusing part, to me at least, is knowing what to do after that. I think Bungie’s goal is to just have you do… whatever, since you’ll level up effectively doing anything. I stopped playing before Warmind and I just started doing quests I had in my quest log and that seemed to get me to the point where I got my bearings about what I wanted to seek out.

And I think this would be okay if the menus in Destiny 2 weren’t as annoying as they are. Also, putting legacy quests in Amanda Holliday’s shop in the City’s hanger is just weird.

1973

I was able to level down to 187, even at the expense of one weapon slot.

With a pistol at zero power (literally) I’m still able to kill enemies easily on the EDZ. This means that all planetary content hasn’t be leveled up to 750. So there’s no way to “fix” that.

Looking at damage numbers, going from 282 to 750 power. Zero difference in damage done.

There’s still hope for story missions.

1974

It never explains anything about your character’s abilities, how to use them or how to navigate the gameworld. Anyone who has played shooters should already understand WASD, R for reload and how to switch weapons, but they don’t add anything on top of that.

Then you get dumped into a hub with no instructions. Is there a campaign? How do you start it? What are all these things in the director, and which should I do? I eventually started a mission at random, and two other new players and I spend about 30 minutes dying to the boss before I just closed the game.

I’ve played a metric fuckton of games, and this was about as useless an intro as I can remember.

1975

Nope. The game is just broken.

I was able to go down to 93 total power (at the expense of two weapon slots). I still two-shot enemies in Osiris. The game just isn’t working as they described in the patch notes.

Osiris content is content originally well above 200 power. I’m well under 100 power levels the original values and 700 power levels under the suggested power level.

This means the scaling is broken for all the original campaign and Osiris. Pobably broken for all legacy content. They seem to have coded the scaling only for the new content. It’s LAME.

EDIT: more experiments confirm what I said. I’m now 665 and in Warmind enemies are still invulnerable and one shot me. If I switch to 750 it’s me one shotting them. The scaling doesn’t seem to exist.

I’ve done the first missions in the base campaign at 93 power. I actually receive damage due to me having zero armor, but I one-shot enemies and it’s just too easy. The content just isn’t there, it’s way easier even compared to when I played it with a standard character.

The trick to go down to 93 power also seems to be possible only for me. I had this zero armor in the inventory, but the base campaign doesn’t give you old items anymore. So this special zero armor cannot be acquired anymore in any way. It’s just me (and power level is being ignored, so not much is lost).

I’ll keep trying to go above 665 to see when Warmind enemies become vulnerable, but now I suspect that the scaling doesn’t exist and it will be just a hard switch when you get to 750.

1976

Last update from me (fuck you Bungie, I was hopeful).

After some more research I’ve found out level scaling is disabled on all content that isn’t Shadowkeep. Including heroic story missions and strikes.

I reached 674, so 76 power levels below. Enemies still invulnerable. Switch to 750, and they are too easy. No scaling happening. To be absolutely certain I need to reach 749, but it will take time.

Bungie didn’t expect someone like me would try to go under the base 750, so… they didn’t implement the system.

I mean, I can’t blame them. Capitalism.

Who could imagine there would be a fucking CONTRARIAN like me who would go in the opposite direction than EVERYONE ELSE. You are supposed to go up, higher, level up, up, up, UP. New content, not old. See the road? See the sign? THAT WAY! Not down, you fucking idiot! You gotta level up fast! FASTER!! Move! From left to right! Progress! Modernity!

Me: working for hours to see if there’s a way to go lower.

1977

I hate level scaling. I’m gonna go one shot everything in the old content now…sweet

1978

Yep


1979

Hrose, you soloed NF at 920 yet since it is so “easy”?

That gun you talked about earlier (Kharkov), couldn’t see what was so special about it, although it looks nice.

1980

That’s the raid right? Hrose already mentioned the raid as an exception. He’s talking about the campaign missions as the legacy content.

1981

No, I spent all my time testing 750 and below, so I’m nowhere close to 920 to try it.

Don’t assume that because I’m looking for challenging content then I’m a pro. I’m rather bad at these games, competitively I’m awful. Probably the mid-low tier.

The game is just too easy. To make an example, an heroic story mission played solo now straight out of the tutorial (with the Khvostov!) is slightly easier than the same story mission played during the campaign normally, non heroic, as it was before this update. It was already way too easy before, and now easier.

I also found out that strikes cannot be soloed. I thought they were because last week I was under level, so I suspect matchmaking was failing systematically. Strikes were good content to play solo, but not possible. Bungie doesn’t allow to disable matchmaking.

Then there are higher level strikes, called nightfall. These are hard version of strikes. But they are too high level right now for me to test, and I suspect the jump is just too wide to be enjoyable.

You can even solo the raids, but I’m not sure it’s a fun activity. It’s probably all built around cheesy tactics rather than “fun”.

There’s nothing special about the Khvostov beside the fact that due to how damage is calculated and current systems, you can use the tutorial weapon efficiently for all content. Using it simply works, it won’t “gimp” the character.

Imagine doing that in, say, Diablo or similar games. Using the first weapon you pick up for all the game. It’s just absurd

I already said why I consider it a great weapon. It looks, sounds and handles great. It has a large magazine, 700+ ammo, reloads quickly. And due to its lean shape it covers far less screen space compared with most other weapons. I have no reason to replace it.

Besides this, I also found out they butchered the story content. They removed steps between missions, and removed all exotic rewards that you would obtain for doing the legacy campaigns. It’s a distaster (with legacy content

1982

You can’t solo the raids. Or rather, you can start them, but you’ll quickly reach a section that several players each need to stand on different floor plates or you can’t progress, effectively locking you out.

1983

Dang, it took me over a week but I’ve finally wrapped my head around how a lot of stuff in this game works (i.e. WTF am I supposed to be doing and how do I do it?). It required basically googling every 5 minutes as I would run across another term I didn’t understand. It also took a while to figure out what I’m supposed to do with the 3,472 currencies and stuff I’ve accumulated. There’s still a lot more I’m unfamiliar with. WTF is the menagerie, for instance? Back to Google.

I’m not quite sure why I persisted but I’m having quite a bit of fun now that I did. So much is unexplained to a newish Destiny player (i.e. I didn’t play the first one). How the gear system works is finally clicking with me now. I played Destiny 2 at launch and I think the game would have stuck better with me had I understood how Infusing works. I never wanted to invest anything in upgrading my weapons/gear because I figured I’d just find something a couple gear score points higher. I’d also get really frustrated because I wanted to use a particular class of weapon, but all I could ever find upgrade wise was hand cannons or something else. I didn’t figure out until this past weekend what Infusing was and how it worked. Now things make more sense to me.

Anyway, it’s kind of shocking how badly the onboarding process works in this game. I’m a person who gets frustrated with lengthy tutorials and enjoys figuring stuff out on my own, but even so it was overwhelming. It felt like it took an entire week just to figure out how I’m supposed to be playing the game. It doesn’t help that some of the stuff is really obtuse, like how to obtain legendary weapons from the Black Armory or the nightmare stuff in the current season.

1984

Infusing was way worse in the past. It was more expensive and required tons of rare mats. It’s way friendlier in New Light.

1985

Glad I started really playing now, then. It’s what made the gear system kind of click for me. Now I know that if I find an item I really like, I can keep it. Before I never could get attached to anything I found because I knew I was going to find something a couple gear score higher and I really didn’t want to use that particular weapon type.

1986

Yeah, it’s pretty nice. There is also the collection system now which lets you reacquire lots of gear you found in the past at a power level just behind your current rating so you don’t have to worry as much about breaking stuff down.