Destiny

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Steve Evil

10,653 posts

228 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
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You'll need rank 3 to buy the weapons from the factions.

Glimmer comes in handy for some of the obscure exotic weapon bounties you get. A friend had to have 50 Heavy Weapon ammo packs you buy from the gunsmith in order to complete part of the bounty, buying those amounted to around 25,000 glimmer. They are also useful to have during higher level strikes and raids.

Wrathalanche

696 posts

139 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
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Steve Evil said:
You'll need rank 3 to buy the weapons from the factions.
Ah! Cheers for that - apologies. I just made 20 last night, so had a quick run round to see what I could start to work towards - I wasn't paying too much attention to the weapons so I missed that.

Is there anything else you need to get up to reputation level 3 or is it just factions for legendary weapons? Does the Cryptarch start selling purple engrams at higher reputation levels (seems like an obvious one but might as well ask)?

Steve Evil

10,653 posts

228 months

Tuesday 23rd September 2014
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Wrathalanche said:
Is there anything else you need to get up to reputation level 3 or is it just factions for legendary weapons? Does the Cryptarch start selling purple engrams at higher reputation levels (seems like an obvious one but might as well ask)?
Not really no, but it's worthwhile getting them up to level 3 as you get a gift for each level you get to, I got one last night and it was a legendary pulse rifle as well as some crafting materials. Likewise you get gifts when you level up the cryptarch.

What has just arrived today is a new set of bounties from the queen. These involve grabbing one of her specific bounties from the vendors, completing that and then returning it. You'll then unlock the ability to do a level 24 mission which will appear on the map on the left hand side. Complete that mission and you'll unlock a piece of legendary armour. Looks like you can replay the mission several times to get more armour. The mission has the Epic modifier on though, so the enemies will be super tough.

VeeDubBigBird

440 posts

128 months

Wednesday 24th September 2014
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Had a quick look at the new area opened up in The Tower, where the Queens Emissary is based, and there's definitely some interest points dotted around it.

Looks like there's a similar setup for a new Gunsmith and Cryptarch in there.

Trustmeimadoctor

12,526 posts

154 months

Wednesday 24th September 2014
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in the crucible are weapon damages evened out at all ? it seems a bit rich me level 19 getting stuck in with a bunch of level 28's in free for all

Steve Evil

10,653 posts

228 months

Wednesday 24th September 2014
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Trustmeimadoctor said:
in the crucible are weapon damages evened out at all ? it seems a bit rich me level 19 getting stuck in with a bunch of level 28's in free for all
Yes, the damage is all levelled out, unless you're in the as-yet-unreleased Iron Banner mode which takes everything into account.

Baryonyx

17,990 posts

158 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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Posted this in the XB1 thread, but it's relevant here too:

I am a bit pissed off this morning after reading more into the levelling system and the changes Bungie are making. Not all of them have been made yet. Scout Rifles are still woefully underpowered, for instance.


I never used the cave farming point, but Bungie found out about it and said "it's cool that players are communicating about the best ways to play and discovering these things, but standing in front of a cave shooting monsters as they come out isn't our idea of how Destiny was supposed to be played". So they've changed the spawn rate from one group every 6 seconds to one group every 40 seconds.


If the fking level up system wasn't so fking broken, people wouldn't do this! Essentially, players were farming the cave for stacks of engrams, then taking them back to the tower to decrypt. Good kit was kept and crappy kit was broken up. This works because STILL, the game's loot system isn't biased towards levelling. So wiping out 1000 level 4 Thralls at the cave produces the same amount of engrams as killing 1000 level 25 Cabal does, but it takes far less time. Hell, even before the level soft cap, enemy levels did not affect experience gained! I've broken loads of legendary engrams down and only once received a legendary items (a fantastic hand cannon). Now, Bungie are changing the system so that any engram broken will produce an item of at least the colour of the engram, or better. However, this will probably just mean purple engrams get rarer. Also, don't think you can store any purple engrams in your inventory and wait for the change to be implemented, anyone stockpiling high level engrams is in for shock - I gather that once the change is implemented, all unclaimed purple engrams will be relegated to blue to level the playing field, so use them now!

Bungie also state that the Cryptarch has taken on a personality of his own now. Has he fk. It's still just a mechanism to slow players down. Items should be viewable in the field when they're collected, instead of necessitating a trip back to the tower to decode and find out what you've got. Players are asking for this, Bungie are saying no.


Bungie have now also modified the Queen's Wrath kill order missions. If you've seen players equipped with legendary or exotic items in almost every slot, you can bet they did it by farming the kill order missions. Previously, the kill order missions granted a selection of guaranteed purple or better gear. Duplicate gear could be broken down for Ascendant Shards, that rarest-of-rare resource that is used for top level upgrades. This allowed players in the know to rapidly level up their kit and thus their characters. Bungie have now taken away this exploit, so the missions are still there but there is no reward for grinding them out, over and over.


Then I investigated the time scales related to levelling up. Because Bungie have said they want people to play this game for years (or until the next one comes out), but their way of achieving this seems tied to drip-feeding content to players and installing artificial barriers into the game to stop players progressing too quickly. It's too long and complicated to explain, but the timescales of things like 12 hours flat out play time (best case scenario) to simply buy or upgrade a piece of high level kit came to mind, as do the restriction on things like weekly mark accumulation, or the cap on glimmer stocks.


Bungie are now stuck with an impasse where they have a lot of high level players running around in the game who have farmed high level kit and used exploits to influence their progression. Note, I didn't do this. I've been stuck at level 23 forever, playing fair by grinding - silly me! Bungie aren't going to turn around and remove the kit from those high level players, but they have to stunt the overall progression arc to allow the majority of players to fairly reach the highest levels now.


Frankly, I'm struggling to think of a game that has torn my opinion so much in the past. The shooting action is great and when Destiny works, it's fantastic. But then reality sets in, and you remember what a passionless grind the game is outside of the fun shooting action. Every shootout plays out the same, becase spawning and scripting is fixed. You find yourself running the same route through every level, inch for inch, because you know where the cover is and where the bad guys are. I realised yesterday I had played for maybe four hours, and aside from amassing more weapon parts, armour parts and glimmer, I wasn't really any better off simply because the luck of the draw decided that today wasn't going to be my day to get an exotic bounty or a legendary item.

Knowing Borderlands is just around the corner, this rubbish is getting traded in today. Bungie's hubris is staggering, they thought that they could do no wrong but frankly, Destiny just isn't fking good enough.

Trustmeimadoctor

12,526 posts

154 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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i must be doing this wrong as ive got to level 20 and i had a couple of bits with a light value of like 2 and 3 i have since found one more bit with a slightly hire light value taking it from 2 to 3 and thats its nothing else at all how the hell am i supposed to level up ? ive found maybe 15 blue engrams that have given me blue kit but they have no light value so am i doing something wrong or have i just got to sit there hoping that i might get a piece with a light of 5 or so ?

Steve Evil

10,653 posts

228 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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Trustmeimadoctor said:
i must be doing this wrong as ive got to level 20 and i had a couple of bits with a light value of like 2 and 3 i have since found one more bit with a slightly hire light value taking it from 2 to 3 and thats its nothing else at all how the hell am i supposed to level up ? ive found maybe 15 blue engrams that have given me blue kit but they have no light value so am i doing something wrong or have i just got to sit there hoping that i might get a piece with a light of 5 or so ?
Each bit of kit will have a level, you really want level 20 blue stuff, but level 18 will get you started. Once you level the kit up with extra defense it will add a bit more light. You'll probably struggle to find level 20 kit though until you get to about level 22 by using level 18 stuff. Once you've got level 20 blue kit fully levelled up you should be about light level 24. From there you'll need purple kit which you can either find in drops, or by purchasing from the factions. A full set of purple kit will get you to about level 27-28, whereupon you need one piece of exotic (gold) kit to push you up to just about level 29. After that you'll need drops from one of the raids to get you to level 30, still purple kit, but better stuff than the regular purple kit from drops or the factions.

GarryDK

5,670 posts

157 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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just brought a ps vita so i will be on destiny more now with remote play woohoo

Oakey

27,524 posts

215 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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This game is really, really mean at rewarding players. I saw a funny comment on another forum that summed this up regards finishing the story mission;

Speaker: "well done, you've saved us all, here's your reward... one mote of light"

Guardian: "mote of light? What's that?"

Speaker: "It's currency, for my shop. I sell towels"

Guardian: "O-kay... I'll have a towel then"

Speaker: "Sorry, you need 10 motes of light"


The reward system is utterly ridiculous. Whether you kill a lvl 4 or a lvl20 dreg, the glimmer, etc that drops is the same.

A patrol gets you 10 vanguard rep... doing a daily heroic strike gets you... 10 vanguard rep.

A bounty to complete 6 patrols in an area gets you... 50 rep... just doing the 6 patrols nets you more than that!

It's just so inconsistent.


Steve Evil

10,653 posts

228 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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Oakey said:
This game is really, really mean at rewarding players. I saw a funny comment on another forum that summed this up regards finishing the story mission;

Speaker: "well done, you've saved us all, here's your reward... one mote of light"

Guardian: "mote of light? What's that?"

Speaker: "It's currency, for my shop. I sell towels"

Guardian: "O-kay... I'll have a towel then"

Speaker: "Sorry, you need 10 motes of light"


The reward system is utterly ridiculous. Whether you kill a lvl 4 or a lvl20 dreg, the glimmer, etc that drops is the same.

A patrol gets you 10 vanguard rep... doing a daily heroic strike gets you... 10 vanguard rep.

A bounty to complete 6 patrols in an area gets you... 50 rep... just doing the 6 patrols nets you more than that!

It's just so inconsistent.
Finishing the story is really only the prologue to the game though, if it were a Bond film that would be the section where the theme song and snazzy credits sequence played, they've even got Paul McCartney to record the theme song that you can choose to watch there if you so desire.

The rewards system is there to stop people ripping through the game too fast I think. Once you get to about level 24 it will take you the same number of shots to drop a level 1 dreg as a level 24, it auto-scales the damage you do to compensate, likewise the damage they do you will be the same. This explains why you get the same amount of XP for each one, as you won't be expending any more effort in killing one or the other. You also shouldn't be tackling enemies much above your current level no matter where you are in the game, as you suffer penalties to the damage you do and they'll also hit you much harder.

Don't spend your motes of light at the Speaker's towel shop either, save them up and spend them with Xur who appears at the weekends. I bagged an exotic helmet with mine over the weekend.

Baryonyx

17,990 posts

158 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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Steve Evil said:
Finishing the story is really only the prologue to the game though, if it were a Bond film that would be the section where the theme song and snazzy credits sequence played, they've even got Paul McCartney to record the theme song that you can choose to watch there if you so desire..
It's not though, really. In spite of several reviewers saying "getting to level 20 is just the tutorial", it turns out it's not. I thought the same, when I hit the soft cap. I thought "this is where the game really starts then". But the reality is, you just end up doing the same missions over and over again. The loot system is arranged to make progress slow, perhaps to hide the lack of progression reward and lack of content in the game.

There is nothing new really to see after Level 20, except for enemies getting tougher and difficulty modifiers. If you can band together a team of 6 friends you can try a raid, but they don't look like much fun. And that's...about it, really.

I see now that some of the critics who trotted out the "getting to level 20 is just the tutorial" line have now revised their opinions and criticise the game for being a tedious grindfest to progress after that.

Flat-out

832 posts

194 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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Got my first bits of purple last night having changed tactics- I swapped out all of my vanguard bounties for crucible ones so that all were for the crucible. I'm a happy level 25 now.

Have to say that doing so opened me up to a game mode I wouldn't ordinarily play- the 3 v 3 clash. Very tactical and reminded me of the original (and best!) Gears of War. good fun thumbup

Anyway, I think I'll focus on making use of the acquired vanguard marks before joining a faction. I just need to get some rep!

I'm still loving this. smile

Guvernator

13,109 posts

164 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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Flat-out said:
Got my first bits of purple last night having changed tactics- I swapped out all of my vanguard bounties for crucible ones so that all were for the crucible. I'm a happy level 25 now.

Have to say that doing so opened me up to a game mode I wouldn't ordinarily play- the 3 v 3 clash. Very tactical and reminded me of the original (and best!) Gears of War. good fun thumbup

Anyway, I think I'll focus on making use of the acquired vanguard marks before joining a faction. I just need to get some rep!

I'm still loving this. smile
So what are the difference between vangaurd and crucible reps. I didn't think they were interchangeable. I am quite enjoying the Crucible at the moment as it beats the hell out of endlessly repeating the same patrol\story levels but I'm not sure if\how Crucible Rep\Marks help with my level progression as it doesn't seem to be doing anything for it at the moment.

Flat-out

832 posts

194 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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Guvernator said:
So what are the difference between vangaurd and crucible reps. I didn't think they were interchangeable. I am quite enjoying the Crucible at the moment as it beats the hell out of endlessly repeating the same patrol\story levels but I'm not sure if\how Crucible Rep\Marks help with my level progression as it doesn't seem to be doing anything for it at the moment.
They aren't interchangeable. The marks are like currency (and so drop when you make purchases) and rep is like your level, i.e. you may have enough marks to purchase items from the right vendor (like I did last night) but not have a sufficiently high rep rank to make a purchase. I spent last night completing crucible bounties to boost my rep until I reached rank 2 which opens up purchasing purple items from the right vendors.

Vanguard marks (with the right rep rank) are spent with the vanguard master-blokes at the centre-back of the tower (stood around the big table that I like to dance on hehe). Crucible marks (with the right rep rank) are spent with the Crucible Quartermaster and other robot just in front of the vanguard master-blokes. You may be able to spend these elsewhere but I haven't tried.

I check my crucible/vanguard marks by going to the screen with all of your materials/useable items- they are on the top right of the screen. I don't know a quick and easy way to check the rep of both on the fly. I always just head to the vendors and the rank is a large symbol to the left of the screen. If you hover over this, you'll see the number of rep points needed to hit the next rank.

Bounties will give you both marks and rep.

As for how this helps leveling, the purchase of the legendary items on sale all have increased light levels which is what you need to level up past level 20. thumbup

Any ideas/shortcuts for checking your rep on the fly/via the options screen?

youngsyr

14,742 posts

191 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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Oakey said:
The reward system is utterly ridiculous. Whether you kill a lvl 4 or a lvl20 dreg, the glimmer, etc that drops is the same.
You guys do realise that a level 4 dreg is just as hard to kill when you're level 27 as it is when you're level 8?

That's why the drops are the same. wink

It's the only way it could work too - otherwise a level 27 character will sneeze and nuke every level 4 within 3 miles whilst a level 3 character will be banging away all day with their machine gun.

Edited by youngsyr on Tuesday 30th September 18:39

Shinobi

5,072 posts

189 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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Give it a chance, this is new territory for Bungie and they have a large area on each planet you can explore already. It has great shooting mechanics and really enjoyable if you stop just playing to level up and get RARE loot. The hint is its meant to be rare and not get all of it within a month of the game being out.

anarki

759 posts

135 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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I popped my copy of destiny on eBay a few days ago.

I put in about 16 hours total gameplay into it and I felt that was a decent amount of time for me to come to my own conclusion.

Personally I find it lacks real depth. The RPG element is weak, PvP is weak, PvE is weak. Bungie have tried to mix a few genre's into a massively marketed hype train of a game and its very bland.

A limited number of planets to explore with regurgitated map designs, constant grinding to get above the very easy to reach level 20 soft cap. Then its like climbing a vertical wall of grind to get bits of kit with light.

It all became very obvious to me that bungie are going to release huge amounts of paid DLC over the next couple of years. No thanks, not for me.

Oakey

27,524 posts

215 months

Tuesday 30th September 2014
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youngsyr said:
You guys do realise that a level 4 dreg is just as hardeasy to kill when you're level 27 as it is when you're level 8?

That's why the drops are the same. wink

It's the only way it could work too - otherwise a level 27 character will sneeze and nuke every level 4 within 3 miles whilst a level 3 character will be banging away all day with their machine gun.

Edited by youngsyr on Tuesday 30th September 18:39
fixed that for you