Destiny

I put that wrong. I like Ghaul because he gets a lot more characterization and a proper voice, and for basically being a Big Bad on a Hero's Journey. I just wish we hadn't gotten to godslaying so soon in the timeline, because he feels like the sort of guy we would've fought _before_ the likes of Oryx, if that makes sense? And for that matter I wish the Hive could get more characterization in-game than just shrieking and NP Cs lore-dumping on you.

Indeed, the grind is real. Stupidest part of it all has to be just how long it takes to gradually collect those orbs, and how you need to do so across multiple modes of play. For example, I'm supposed to collect Arc orbs only during strikes, and Void orbs only in the EDZ. Making Arc orbs appear so far hasn't proven tough, but the sheer amount you're supposed to collect is ridiculous. Even worse the Void orbs don't seem to appear very often, uncommonly enough to the point where I'm thinking they only spawn whenever performing a certain action.

And then there's the Chosen Redux mission... Dear lord, that was a complete and utter chore to finish. No music, with only the rain to hear, the entirety of the mission needs to be completed with no parts cut out, the enemies are now all bullet-sponges, and that section where you're jumping from one rooftop to the next was made even harder due to all of the Scorpio auto-turrets scattered about.

And as for Ghaul... the guy was ultimately meh. It really says something about the problems Destiny has with villains and writing quality when even some of the more shallow Marvel and DC villains had more depth and characterization than Ghaul ever received, yet he's regarded as the antagonist with the most depth and relatable motivations so far.

the no music part sounds like a glitch, because it played both times I've done that one...

Now, for me the worst one is 1AU. The part on the ship's haul with the sun burning you up and the Checkpoint Starvation during it was just brutal. Plus it's a long as hell level.

Also, don't bring friends along for Payback. Unlike the normal version, you get only one Tank in the Heroic version, regardless of the number of players. Weirdly, 1AU gives you as many tanks as you have players for its finale.

I got my Warlock gear up to Legendary at this point and plan to get all three classes to Masterwork, and to be honest I've found the Faction Rally Ornament grind to be worse?

...wait, are you talking about the Solstice of Heroes event? How'd you even grind it so quickly?!

Easily?

I had help doing the Redux missions a second time, mind (hence how I knew that about Payback), but getting the EDZ orbs is just a matter of farming Public Event. And about regular five strikes was all I needed to max out that one, too. The requirements all look more impossing than they really are. The longest for me was probably the orb-type you can farm anywhere since naturally you need the most of those to make up for the lack of restriction. Thankfully, Warlock required Solar, and the Payback mission drops Fire orbs by the truckload thanks to the tank's cannon being a Solar weapon.

Worth noting is that while your weapon does have some effect on orb drops, it's your current subclass that actually determines what orbs are going to be dropping, and enemies with yellow health bars are the most likely to drop orbs on death.

Oh right, the five Crucible Wins was also a bit of a headache due to a long string of bad luck. I actually clapped when my team was down save for one in a Competitive Match (I switched because I kept getting bad teams in Quickplay), and that one player, despite being outnumbered, actually won the final round I needed.

Edited by TheGunheart on Aug 8th 2018 at 2:24:45 AM

And now I'm upset about some of the changes the Forsaken DLC is going to bring.

All weapon mods will be removed from your collection, both in storage and equipped, and all elemental types that are equipped on your weapons will become permanent. Worse yet, you will no longer be able to remove and install new element types, which means you will now have to waste even MORE vault space storing the same damned gear. I kinda liked that system, at least it allowed a bit of control over how your weapons handled, and meant that you no longer had to worry about the armors and their stats too much - just equip the mods you like along with the movement/regen/health stats as you wish, and then dress as you please.

Furthermore the Tokens system will be removed from the game and replaced with a new rewards mechanic. This isn't that big of a deal, but it means you'll want to spend any remaining tokens from all of your vendors ASAP before Forsaken is released.

I dunno, I think random rolls and the massive overhaul to the mod system in general is worth it.

Oh really when?

There's something about completely overhauling a game that just feels... off to me. It's like buying an RTS game and then they patch it so it runs as an FPS (Yeah bit extreme).

But why not just... have that feature just be part of Forsaken? Tokens WORKS. Feels like you have control over how you build that reputation a bit more. But I'm maybe being a stick in the mud - haven't seen their new solution yet after all.

Tokens are just going to stop dropping, existing tokens are fine.

There moving to planetary resources alone, which also are used in weapon upgrades.

I feel like Ghaul could have been a very good villain but you never interact with him but once and everything we learn is via cutscenes.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

And so I finally unlocked the Legendary Solstice Armor for my Warlock. Ironically the one objective that took forever was me grinding solar grenade kills - I ultimately had to sit around the EDZ for a couple of hours, waiting for those suckers to recharge over and over again. Not. Fun. At. All.

Really, this even was the single most tedious thing I've done in Destiny 2 so far. At least while attempting to achieve the other milestones and achievements the goals were gradually completed and expanded in an organic manner; as in, if you were attempting to complete one task, chances are you'd bump into something else and get roped into that, such as a public event, a named yellow-bar enemy roaming around the region, treasure chests, some kill quota getting achieved, etc. But for the Solstice stuff? Damn, almost none of those suckers were intuitive in any way, and as Gunheart pointed out you were seriously at the mercy of the Pv P community when it came to winning Crucible matches. And that's not even getting into just how many elemental orbs you needed to collect just to pass the 1st stage alone - I imagine that itself must've scared off a bunch of interested candidates.

No way I'm even going to bother grinding for the Titan and Hunter. I literally don't have the time, nor the interest in doing so anymore.

I'm now on Warmind after finishing Curse of Osiris (very disappointing) and am enjoying it a lot even though I hate Rasputin and think he's just there because Bungie likes Rogue AI.

I've got to say Destiny 2 really is a huge improvement in every way.

It's the AC 2 to Destiny's AC 1.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

What's wrong with Rasputin?

Oh really when?

Basically, a lot of Destiny was focused on him but for the life of me I didn't think he was that interesting. He doesn't have much of a personality and was threatening you as much as protecting. Given I was playing a game of gods and demons and space undead, he also seemed a little out of place.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

The biggest problem with Destiny's lore and characters overall is probably due to the staff changing multiple times, especially the writers. Or as one of the other Tropers pointed out, they can't seem to reconcile the scale of the threats with the reality of what a player will encounter in-game. Best example so far being the Worm God Xul at the end of Warmind; its supposed to be a threat even greater than Oryx and capable of genuinely threatening the Traveler, yet he goes down in a single strike mission (or worse, against a single player).

Same goes for Rasputin. The AI's characterization has changed several times - at one point, Rasputin was supposed to be the true Big Good of the series who deliberately disabled the Traveler to prevent it from fleeing and forcing it to protect humanity against the Darkness, but now it's just an AI that happens to have very pragmatic and obscure combat strategies. Or if you take Rise of Iron into account, the lore was implying that Rasputin disliked the influence the Guardians had over it, and was eventually planning to take over the Fallen via the SIVA nanites in order to have its own army.

Edited by SgtRicko on Aug 20th 2018 at 12:53:20 AM

Good summary.

Threat scaling can be an enormous pain in the ass in Destiny as there's also a lot of problems with figuring out what is meant to be a threat and not.

• For the single player experience, I wasn't even aware I was playing through Crota's expansion because I kept waiting for a series of adventures about his awakening. Because Crota is killed in a raid, I didn't know when and where he was dead and kept looking for an adventure about facing him. Instead, there's a lot of talk about his sword and lieutenants and so on that confused the hell out of me.
• Ghaul is the best antagonist so far in the game but he's a weird character to throw in as we've had a literal god attack the Earth by this point. So, now he's a Badass Normal who proceeds to wipe the Guardians out and almost take the Traveler's power.

This is very much a game suffering from Superman issues where some of our toughest enemies so far is Skolas the Kell of Kells, Ghaul, and now Uldren. Vs. The literal God of the Hive and his son being two people we've dealt with. Also, the less than threatening piece of the Darkness.

Xol didn't bother me, though, because I assumed we were just fighting its avatar since you can't kill gods outside of their realms.

Except, apparently you can.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 19th 2018 at 6:17:29 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

I dunno, I kind of appreciate Ghaul for being bold and smart enough to win despite not having superpowers.

That's like his whole character, really. Fighting him first in the series would have kinda diminished that, I think.

Oh really when?

He's a bit Lex Luthor in that analogy. And we're surprised because by that point we've blown through anything the Cabal could throw our way.

I like the idea the Traveler is NOT our friend. But I do agree that the complex lore writers are sidelined to background fluff whilst the bick ticket bombast writing takes centre stage... despite the audience for once actually LIKING the weird stuff.

I'll probably get Forsaken. Probably. Haven't gone back in for the grind for the armour. I think I need something new.

Weirdly - I miss the Prison of Elders and the fun had there. And the weird portal of Onyx.

Everything else is great fun - the gunplay still feels good, the movement. But I'm a bit tired of grinding zones.

I have a different view. Of the various possibilities, I prefer that the Traveler is God Is Good and Neutral Good as a general rule. However, the Traveler is not POWERFUL and that his attempts to do good make him God Is Flawed. It's like, say if Call of Cthulhu were real and ONE Great Old One out of 1000 turns out to be a decent person.

It's just its attempts to help backfired horribly for the Forsaken and humanity.

HOWEVER, if it DIDN'T help we'd still be fucked because it's not like the Hive and Ghaul would leave us alone without the Light.

Finished Warmind.

Fuck Rasputin even if I do like the Valkyrie.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

I finished Warmind now and have finally gotten up to 340 Light but I don't think I'm able to get any higher by normal methods.

Some general thoughts:

• Warmind is probably the second best story after the main game but way too short.
• I had a lot of fun on Mars
• I liked Rasputin's ominous speech at the end.
• Ana Bray is a great but woefully naive character
• I feel like killing Xol and another son of Orxy seems a BIT much.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Only way to get better gear beyond Light level 340 is to start doing the Nightfalls, Heroic Strikes and Raids. There's also the option of slowly grinding via the daily Powerful Legendary Engrams, which always guarantee higher level items. But those will still require you to perform something like playing Crucible matches, completing flashpoints on listed planets, completing Heroic Strikes (yeah, no avoiding that one...) etc.

Oh, and there's also the Summer Solstice event which will give you a level 400 set of armor once complete, but that sucker is going to require a TON of grinding to achieve.

Edited by SgtRicko on Aug 22nd 2018 at 8:30:55 PM

Ah yes.

Well, that helps at least.

There's also the other option of waiting for the next DLC and its inevitably better gear.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Does anybody know just why the heck did we get some quest about Cayde's Spicy Ramen in the Tower? Because all it does is have you check out this noodle shop near Ikora's area and receive an expired coupon.

Edited by SgtRicko on Aug 23rd 2018 at 12:33:24 AM

Bungie has its sense of humor.

Look at the Grunts.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Apparently it's just Cayde being thoughtful and leaving us a coupon....that's expired.

But people are going full on "Mew is underneath the truck" with the thing and bringing it everywhere trying to see what happens.

Edited by LeGarcon on Aug 22nd 2018 at 8:13:15 AM

Oh really when?