Bungie released it’s “State of the Game” blog and there is a lot of different things in there to look at. However, I’ve only got 12 bullet points, so you’re gonna have to share.
- 12 – The Witch Queen Moveth
Bungie announced that the new expansion, The Witch Queen, is getting moved from the end of 2021 to “early” 2022. This doesn’t really bother me to be honest. The end of the year is always crowded with games anyways, so having this get moved to springtime is fine. Bungie will toss in an extra season and most of us will happily ride the hamster wheel for a few more spins. Plus, the world is moving at half speed while everyone gets a mask on, so delays must be accommodated.
- 11 – The Sunsetting of Sunsetting
For the better part of a year, the entire D2 community has been in fits over sunsetting. While originally feelings were more split, as many people gave Bungie the benefit of the doubt in bringing in cool guns and new ideas, over time the vast majority has decided that sunsetting is one of the worlds greatest evils and must be destroyed at all costs. Without belaboring the missteps taken by Bungie in the execution of sunsetting, let’s just say they didn’t do themselves any favors along the way. The fact that all of Destiny Reddit basically made Thursday, February 25, 2021 a holiday, is proof that whatever they were doing wasn’t working for most of their fanbase.
I’m admittedly also happy that sunsetting has gone away. I was less upset by it than most as I’m not a Godroll farmer, but I was annoyed when certain combos weren’t even in the game, such as no void SMG last season. My Godrolls also don’t tend to be other people’s Godrolls. A quickdraw, snapshot Shotty might makes everyone else go crazy, but my first perk on all Shottys is autoloading. It doesn’t matter how fast it aims if it isn’t loaded. Let’s also be honest though, the vast majority of the guns in your vault don’t come out, mainly because Bungie never gives us reasons to bring them out (which is a separate blog), so we didn’t lose too much. If 200 guns were sunset, we only used 20 of them anyways.
An additional element to the backlash speaks to the scarcity of upgrade resources in the game. When you put over 100 Enhancement Cores into an armor piece (1 Shard = 10 Prisms = 100 Cores) to get less than 50% of that back, makes you reluctant to invest in your armor. Realistically, armor should never have been part of sunsetting in the first place. While I’ve played long enough that I have plenty of resources for almost anything I could want, I still consistently ran most of my armor at 7-9 power rather than invest an Ascendant Shard I might need for something else. As a game, they should encourage you to use the things in the game, not make you feel like you need to store a little of everything for a rainy day. It stifles experimentation, playing with builds, adjusting loadouts, everything Bungie claims to want us to do in the game.
- 10 – The Power of Power
Bungie has changed the way non-expansion power levelling works. No longer is it 50 levels plus 10 pinnacle levels grind (per character), it is simply 10 pinnacle levels. I’m honestly of two minds about this as, for new players, or people with less time on their hands, this is great news. I know a lot of people who only have time to run 1 character because the grind just takes too long and then resets every 3 months. Now they know, if they can get those alternate characters to max power at any point over the course of a year, they’re basically set to run any content they want to on all 3 characters. This is a great change for those players. For players who already main 3 characters though, this is not as good. The grind keeps people going in the first few weeks after a season launches, trying to get to max power for the new activities. It also allows people to play with their power settings to make things harder. Want to recreate contest mode in the raid? Drop your power. Want a tougher Iron Banner experience? Drop your power. Worst case scenario for Bungie, some of us putting in 20 hours a week to do weeklies on all our characters may just have to find new hobbies…or Bungie could give us more reason to do weeklies (cough *bright dust* cough) I suppose.
- 9 – The peak of three-peaking
I wish I understood Bungie’s obsession with “aspirational content”? Over and over, you hear them talk about it when most players I know simply want more stuff to do in the game. It doesn’t have to be ridiculously hard stuff, just stuff. Stop dumping resources into the “endgame” of Crucible and fix Crucible! If regular Crucible continues to hemorrhage players, there won’t be anyone left to play in the precious Trials of Osiris except the streamer gods who ruined regular Crucible with their whining about SBMM. Why so much focus on a mode no one plays and most don’t even want to play?! If you told me I could have 20 sets of Trials Armor and 20 new Trials guns, or 15 crucible maps (ones actually designed for 6v6 instead of 4v4) …give me maps all day and every day. /rant
Sorry for the tangent, three-peeking is silly, but allowed, so they’re taking it away. For those who don’t know, this is when you use a sword or an emote to look around corners to spot the enemy. It provides a tactical advantage, so it is used…a lot. It is also hated…a lot. So, it is going away in Season 15. As you can imagine from my rant, I don’t play Trials unless the gun is a must have for PVE (looking at you Summoner) and is the 3-win reward, so this doesn’t impact me, but I’ll take anything that tries to level the playing field.
- 8 – Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater
Cheaters are like Thanos, inevitable. They’re sad humans that this is how they choose to spend their time, but they will always exist. I applaud any efforts to eliminate them from the game as they impact everyone else’s legitimate enjoyment. Having worked for a company with a massive Security and Game Integrity department, as well as having written and enforced rules for a global operation, I understand the frustration with Bungie not being able to tell us everything and from players wanting to know everything. Bungie doesn’t want cheaters any more than we do but stopping them is a lot harder than we (or they) wish it were. Let me put my application in for Game Security now since they’re expanding the team. I used to work to catch cheaters live, happy to do it online.
- 7 – The Trials of Iron Banana
I am happy with everything Bungie is attempting to do to improve the playability of Trials of Osiris, but I am confused why they’re doing Trials first and Iron Banner second. The only thing I can see to suggest doing it that way is it’s 3v3 instead of 6v6, so it is a smaller sandbox to test things in. I don’t have the statistics that Bungie does, but my anecdotal evidence suggests a vast majority of players play Iron Banner and an exceedingly small minority play Trials. I don’t understand why they are focusing on their “most aspirational modes first” when I don’t know anyone who “aspires” to Trials, but I know lots of people who dislike Crucible in general and wish it were more fun for them to play. Fixing Iron Banner (or just Crucible in total) would impact a much higher percentage of the player base than Trials.
To the specific items, “defining a separation of skill tiers” sounds particularly good. My first weekend ever playing Trials, I quit after I played 4 games, on a 0-win card, against 12 people with a combined 1,395 flawless. Does anything about that sentence seem like it’s how a game should matchmake? To incentivize a wider audience, I would make sure people know that they can get the 3-win item via the bounty (maybe make Saint 14 glow on the map and when people get there, he explains what the 3 win item is and how you can get it for bounties, or make a GIANT notice for it in orbit?), create a solo queue like in Competitive, and create a separate queue for people after they go flawless each weekend.
- 6 – Vault of Glass Returneth
In season 14, we get the return of the VOG. I’m happy to see the return of stuff from D1 as I’m eventually hoping for a massive Destiny experience that includes everything we’ve had over the last 6+ years. I didn’t raid very much in D1, I only have 11 completions, 7 Crota and 4 VoG. I never attempted King’s Fall and only got a partial Wrath once or twice, so am really looking forward to experiencing these raids as a more veteran player. I’m intrigued by the challenges Bungie mentions, although nervous they might have just tossed a bunch of Champions in and called it day. Bungie is a bit inconsistent in challenges, as most Raid challenges are either pretty easy, or really hard (looking at you Garden). My favorites are the ones that encourage people to experience the encounters in full, like Of All Trades in DSC or Gauntlet in Leviathan. Anything that makes you do all the jobs or participate in all the mechanics is a great challenge in my opinion. I’m hoping to put together a Day 1 team of people who’ve never done it before (I never learned it, just did what I was told) and see how we do. Destiny currently has 9 Raids in the vault and I’d like to see at least 2 of them a year, but that also represents potentially 9 years of releases if you’re Bungie so I’m not exactly holding my breath for it.
- 5 – Mastering of the Universe
As shocking as it might be, apparently Bungie doesn’t read my blog (To Time or Not to Time, That is the Question – Worlds of Destiny)! I know, I’m as stunned as the rest of you are. I recently wrote a blog about how timers suck the joy out a mission, yet here we are with a timer in the Master version of Presage. The initial response of most of the people I know was expletive laced and unfit to print, but suffice it to say it wasn’t “Awesome, way to go!”. Now that we know Bungie is cooking up plans to “Master” every major activity type in Destiny (Raids, Dungeons, Missions), we should be really concerned about what that is going to look like.
I’ve never really understood why “speed” is equated with “skill” in most video game activities. I understand the appeal of speed-running and it’s a fun category that many people enjoy, but it shouldn’t be a core part of Master level missions in Destiny. Why aren’t accuracy or stealth praised on the same level as speed? What if a variant of Master for Presage was getting to the boss without shooting any enemies? What if there were 3 or 4 different variants that rotated weekly like burns do on those missions and Dungeons? Speed and a timer week 1, stealth week 2, accuracy (95%+ bullet hits?) week 3, for week 4 they could allow between 1-6 people to run it, giving players who aren’t as good a chance to go in with more than 2 people, but maybe with tons of hard modifiers like Attrition, Togetherness, Famine, etc. Those modifiers would make it difficult for the Destiny Gods on YouTube (great new content) and add a bit of challenge to the people running it like a Raid with 6 people. I just think there are many more ways to measure skill than how fast you can do something. Regardless of how they implement it, I hope it isn’t just a standard of Match game, locked gear, 3 types of Champions…and a timer.
- 4 – But I Haven’t A Thing To Wear
“Every season Ada will offer players a set of bounties that highlight various activity types. Players can complete these quests and receive the materials they need to power up Ada’s Loom, which can turn any piece of armor in your collection into a permanent universal ornament. Players short on time will also be able to purchase Synthesis tokens for Silver.”
It’s finally happening! Transmogrification is bringing all 6 of its syllables to Destiny 2. Ada-1 is bringing her new fashion boutique to the Tower and while Silver is the currency of the moment, Bright Dust can stay in the bank. I will admit to being incredibly nervous Bungie would/will mess this up, to the point that I’m obsessing on the wording of the first sentence. I’m wondering if this is weekly and repeatable bounties, like Zavala and Shaxx, or if this is a specific number of bounties each season (like Seasonal Challenges)? You know, thus forcing us to only transmog say 5 sets a Season in the hopes we’ll use Silver to transmog more sets? Do I think this is the case, no, but I also never would have imagined they would delete 30-40% of the earnable bright dust in the game either, so…? The customization screen they put in does give me hope. After all, if you could only do a few sets why would they bother making white, green, and blue armor customizable?
I’m also hoping they allow us to transmog exotics as well. I know Bungie has concerns about that, but it doesn’t matter what armor your Warlock wears, if they’re wearing an exotic chest piece that is 75% of what you see. Phoenix Protocol, Wings of Sacred Dawn, all of these overwhelm any outfit you’re trying to create. Not being able to transmog exotics means 90-100% of the time you’re only wearing 4 out of 5 pieces of transmogged gear.
- 3 – Let’s All Play Together
Crossplay is coming in season 15 and suffice it to say I won’t be partaking, and that I very much hope there is a general ability to opt-out of all interaction with PC players. I could write volumes on this, but there is no point, other than to say most game-breaking cheats are PC based. I’m happy for people who will now be able to play with friends they couldn’t play with before, I’m happy the player pool for Destiny overall will expand for Bungie’s sake, but I’ll just keep swimming in my Xbox pool (if I’m allowed to).
- 2 – The Status of Stasis
While Salvation’s Grip has done its absolute best to unseat Telesto at the top of the Cheese Forever global rankings, it is the only Stasis gun currently in existence, and not especially useful DPS-wise, although great for specific builds. Thankfully, that is changing in season 15 when Stasis joins the loot pool in deeper measure and probably means the addition of Stasis shields for our enemies as well. It will certainly up the ante in Match game activities.
- 1 – What’s In A Name
This is one I’m quite excited about, the Gilded Title System and its expansion. The titles give people something to chase and reasons to play all the myriad activities in Destiny. While I’m not thrilled with being told to win 50 Gambit games, I’ll get there over the season and my Dredgen will be shiny. I just wish the tasks were a little more interesting than win 50 games. I’m really hoping this Phase II discussion includes ways to gild many of our other, existing titles and that they may be expanding the titles to have a general Strikes title, Iron Banner title and a general Crucible title. These types of achievements don’t really cost much development time and provide hours if not days and weeks of play for all of us.
That’s it, no more bullet (points)…
