Destiny (PS4)

[SimianWonder]

Dick Dastardly said:

Congrats on the G-horn. I'm sure you'll put it to good use.

Note to self - don't ever buy simian a present, as he screams like a girl when he gets what he wants!

Sorry Stimps, I did promise myself I wouldn't make a fuss, but I guess I was kidding myself!

Watching the Bungie stream right now with regards to HoW stuff, and Vex, Fatebringer and even your old pre-Dark Below legendary gear is able to be upgraded to 365 attack. It's a simple process as well, just requires a few materials but you don't need to level the weapon up again. Result!

Edited by SimianWonder on Wednesday 22 April 19:56

[SimianWonder]

You can reforge legendary class weapons as well, much like you can with Iron Banner gear. Ooh. That is awesome.

[SimianWonder]

That was actually pretty good, revealed a lot more than I thought they would.

To summarise;

• Queen's Wrath is back, and the bounties offered are different to the crappy ones from the last time it was here Destiny's infancy.

• The Reef has all the facilities of the Tower, though its not yet clear if the bounties/inventories of vendorsare shared between the two or each has unique.

• You do not need to have purchased the house of wolves to access the Reef area itself.

• Xur may or may not visit the Reef. But probably will.

• Weapon upgrades will not require Xur, the costs have been greatly reduced, and even old 300 atk gear can be upgraded to 365, without resetting your progress. All Vault of Glass gear will be upgradable as well, so we do have a chance of some unique looking end-game characters.

• House of Wolves gear can be reforged at the Gunsmith, a la Iron Banner.

• The Speaker is doing material exchange. Sitting on hundreds of ascendant shards? You can trade them for motes of light. Need glimmer? Trade in your energies, that sort of thing.

• Deej dismantled a Gjallarhorn.

I'm actually genuinely impressed. They seem to have addressed a lot of the complaints about the way Dark Below handled this sort of thing, and actually listened to a lot of what the community wanted.

[Moog72]

Gazzas86 said:

i only had a limited time this week, as im away now for 2 weeks, however i bagged my 2nd FateBringer, Hunger of Crota and Plan C.

How the hell did you manage to do that in approx 1.5hrs?

[lovechild]

Hhhhmmmmmmm. The cynic in me thinks that they're giving us what we want because they've not got a lot else to give. I think they may have peaked too early. VoG, FB, IB, Gjally and other guns with interesting perks are going to be hard to beat, those guns and the 1st raid weren't surpassed with TDB and I'm not sure they will be with HOW. If last gen is restricting what they can do, I can't see any major changes happening. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I feel they're just trying to placate us.

Anyway.......... I've had 2 stupid ideas for the weekend:

Idea 1: Flawless No Cheese Raid attempt.

Idea 2: Raid Races. I watched some twitch feeds via the PS app the other day and it got me thinking. Might be quite fun to get 2 teams together, start Crota at the same time and race to the end. Each team would broadast their run, so the other team can see how they're doing. Got the potential to be quite frantic and fun.

[Speckle]

lovechild said:

Hhhhmmmmmmm. The cynic in me thinks that they're giving us what we want because they've not got a lot else to give. I think they may have peaked too early. VoG, FB, IB, Gjally and other guns with interesting perks are going to be hard to beat, those guns and the 1st raid weren't surpassed with TDB and I'm not sure they will be with HOW. If last gen is restricting what they can do, I can't see any major changes happening. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I feel they're just trying to placate us.

Anyway.......... I've had 2 stupid ideas for the weekend:

Idea 1: Flawless No Cheese Raid attempt.

Idea 2: Raid Races. I watched some twitch feeds via the PS app the other day and it got me thinking. Might be quite fun to get 2 teams together, start Crota at the same time and race to the end. Each team would broadast their run, so the other team can see how they're doing. Got the potential to be quite frantic and fun.

Same here. It is great that we will be able to upgrade all our favourite guns but, the reason they are our favourites is that we have had no better offerings from TDB. Also good news that my ascendant shards (over 440 of them) can be converted to glimmer but, they shouldn't really have been so useless for so long.

Still reserving judgement on the rest of it but, not feeling very excited yet...

I'm really not bothered about a flawless raid achievement so, will happily stand aside for those who are. I can see it being quite a frustrating endeavour if there is a death during the final fight (and let's face it, there is usually at least one!)

Raid races are an interesting (and positively daft) idea but, I think you'll struggle to co-ordinate 2 full raid teams over the weekend as many people (myself included) have been cheating on Destiny with other games lately. You would also need at least 2 participants who would want to stream.

I get the sense Lovechild, that you're struggling to find things to do in Destiny

[Flat-out]

I *think* I am about ready to come back to the fold. The changes are awesome and I need to upgrade my VoG helmets and armour before HoW drops, to take them to 365 as soon as possible. That armour is so much better than CE armour, in terms of looks.

The weeks away have been refreshing but I shall once again be acquainted with my beloved holes and/or my sexy red hunter.

365 Vex.

Oh. yeah.

[Moog72]

If they just add more social space (for what I don't know, as I don't use the Tower like that now) and different trading mechanisms for re-rolling guns, swapping materials for some other materials and what have you, then I'll be badly let down - where is the new content, what will that be? We've all heard the rumours about a horde Arena type thing, but that's yet to be confirmed.

Great, you can upgrade old guns to 365 attack but if there is limited scope for using them due to lack of new levels & challenges, no new raid, etc etc then what's the point really aside from being "something to do"

New DLC should be just that - NEW, not just rehashing things that should have been there in the first place or general improvements that should have been introduced over time through normal maintenance patches

All IMO of course and as I've said before I'll reserve judgment until it actually arrives, but I'm not feeling it at the moment

Now Lovechild, your ideas:

1) Flawless non cheese raid - that's me out straight away I haven't yet once got through that Abyss section without dying at least once so no flawless attempt raid team would want that burden on their squad

2) Raid race - could be a bit of a laugh, but getting 12 people together at the same time would be a push I think given the current level of interest within the "regular" crowd. The teams would also need to be balanced so that you don't have one team with 6 x GHorns and another with 6 x Dragon's Cough, etc

[Speckle]

My fear is that without a new raid, they are trying to make VoG 'relevant' again. So, upgraded VoG armour & guns may be followed by a new harder VoG raid difficulty, say level 33 or 34.

So, there we will be playing exactly the same raid we have been playing for over 6 months at what will essentially be exactly the same difficulty level as hard mode was when we were all level 29/30. And somehow they will be trying to spin it as giving us something new...

[lovechild]

Speckle said:

I get the sense Lovechild, that you're struggling to find things to do in Destiny

Oh big time. I'm not that bothered about playing the game, but do still love playing with everyone. I've finished Alien, am currently on Bloodborne and have The Evil Within to start. All these are quite frustrating at times and Destiny offers the perfect antidote. I'm on the other games most of the time with jaunts into Destiny for some fun when people are on.

For the 1st time ever we couldn't get past the Confluxes in Vault the other day, but it didn't matter as it was hilarious. Shane (and possibly me!) plunged the raid into new depths of depravity and Stimps was getting pussy whipped by his missus to put the controller down. We achieved nothing, but I had a blast (as usual) and there's still plenty of fun left in the game.

Flat-out said:

my beloved holes

Don't worry, the spirit of Singh is alive and well in the abyss............................."Already gone!"

Moog72 said:

1) Flawless non cheese raid - that's me out straight away I haven't yet once got through that Abyss section without dying at least once so no flawless attempt raid team would want that burden on their squad

2) Raid race - could be a bit of a laugh, but getting 12 people together at the same time would be a push I think given the current level of interest within the "regular" crowd. The teams would also need to be balanced so that you don't have one team with 6 x GHorns and another with 6 x Dragon's Cough, etc

1) Couldn't care less. We'd either do it, or not. The whole point is that you'd treat the whole endeavor like hard mode Crota, utilise every team member and devise strategies for each section.

2) We wouldn't need full teams, and I've devised a plan and some rules to make it fair.

I agree though, and I don't think there will be enough interest, but last week we had 2 full raid teams on the go so thought it worth a mention.

[lovechild]

Speckle said:

My fear is that without a new raid, they are trying to make VoG 'relevant' again. So, upgraded VoG armour & guns may be followed by a new harder VoG raid difficulty, say level 33 or 34.

So, there we will be playing exactly the same raid we have been playing for over 6 months at what will essentially be exactly the same difficulty level as hard mode was when we were all level 29/30. And somehow they will be trying to spin it as giving us something new...

I know you've heard this before, but I'm tempted to skip this one and get the end of year DLC.

I've dismantled most of my VoG armour.

[youngsyr]

Guys, you better get used to the Crucible!

Apparently in HoW you can relevel ANY legendary item to the new max level, but it requires a token from the trials of Osiris each time, i.e. multiple crucible wins.

You can also relevel ANY exotic with just an exotic shard, weapon parts and glimmer.

I'm led to believe that current progress will not be lost when relevelling.

That changes the game massively for us collectors, as we'll have several complete sets of kit for each character to choose to relevel - but we must win in the crucible first.

[Flat-out]

lovechild said:

Don't worry, the spirit of Singh is alive and well in the abyss............................."Already gone!"

Every man for himself...

I'll be on later to get to grips with the buttons/aim sensitivity again. What this means is that the level 2 dregs will be handing my a55 to me in the cosmodrome.

Give me a shout if there are any nightfalls etc that people need a hand with. Happy to help.

[SimianWonder]

I think most of the changes are very positive, especially as it appears that they'll also apply to those who don't purchase the DLC, they're not being hidden behind a pay wall.

I've still got all my VoG Raid armour for the warlock, I've got a few bits for the hunter but nothing for the Titan as she's never run VoG before. On the subject of Raids, I'm off to the states on Tuesday for ten days and while I will be taking my Vita with me, I'm not sure how well remote play is going to work across 4500 miles, so I'll be well up for getting VoG or CE done as many times as possible this weekend. I'm eager to test out my shiny new Gjallarhorn on Crota, especially as I got it levelled up to 331 in less than 24 hours!

[youngsyr]

On reflection, I think a lot of it, whilst good, is just window dressing.

It's great that we can relevel our gear, but what are we going to use it for - a couple of strikes, a handful of missions and a horde mode?

For 4 months until Comet is released?

[youngsyr]

Xur has MIDA and pretty average other stuff. Chest engram.

Anyone else watch the Reef Twitch? I'm even more concerned now about the lack of things to do in HoW - I suspect it'll look great and be very exciting for the first two weeks, then you'll have played everything multiple times and be wondering what to do next.

Iron Banner is back next Tuesday and Xur will be selling the helmet. That'll give me something to do for a week at least - it's the first time the helmet has been sold and I have full gear on my titan and only missing one piece each on the other two.

Hope he sells the pulse rifle and sniper rifle too.

[Flat-out]

Servers were down preventing my glorious return/reunion with Randall the Vandal.

I'll reserve judgment until the content drops. In the meantime, and there was a great post on reddit about it, following the requests from the community, we've had and are getting:-

- heavy ammo fix
- bigger vault
- A way to make old raid armour relevant.
- Ditto for old weapons.
- Upgradable fatebringers(!)
- New social space.
- Material exchange.
- New PvP modes.
- Better PvP map rotations.
- Way to switch weapons on the fly.
- Other stuff I can't remember.

...and a promise that the errors of CE will be avoided. We'll see whether that is true or not, but for me, if that means a raid is delayed until Comet then so be it. We'd otherwise be moaning about another "crappy raid" and I'd rather wait and play something good. They're in a lose-lose situation by making this decision but good on them for doing so. I'm of course assuming that the delay is down to this and not just due to more DLC. I'm inclined to think this is the case given that they did say HoW will contain a raid. There was no need for them to make a rod for their own back.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Bungie fanboi (the way they've handled Xur "being random" is atrocious), but they are evidently "listening to the community" far more than other developers. For that, I'm willing to cut them some slack.

[lovechild]

Most of the things listed shouldn't have been an issue in the first place though.

I'm happy that I can upgrade my old weapons, but I think this has been done because they can't give us too much new stuff as the vault limitations won't allow it. Bearing in mind it's supposed to be a 10 year game, it should evolve. Old weapons should be replaced by new and there should be ample space to collect them. I'd be quite happy not being able to use old weapons for new content as long as the new stuff is as good, or better than the old, and we could pull the old guns out of the vault in a years time and run a couple of VoGs/CEs for nostalgia.

New social space..........So what? The tower doesn't actually perform any social function. It'll just be the tower, but in a different colour

The standard content gets old pretty quick. The top tier content (raids and whatever the new thing's called) is what keeps me hooked (that, and the 'magpie effect' and my OCD to have things maxed).

I'm not convinced by the bells and whistles, the new raid replacement is what will convince me. I'll wait until the reports are in before I get the new DLC. The game has been outstanding fun and value for money thus far though, and I certainly don't feel cheated or indignant that it hasn't run to it's full potential. All the time new content is fun and value for money, then great, I'm in.

Youngsy!! I'll be IB'ing if you fancy teaming up.

ETA: I've only done 1 NM crota this week so up for hitting the raids tonight.

Edited by lovechild on Friday 24th April 13:33

[Flat-out]

Crikey, you lot are demanding.

I think if this game was sold at £100 then there would be merit in what is being asked i.e. a perfect product from launch. The fact is, it is a cross-format, semi-MMO, semi-FPS with a load of variables on top of that (weapons, armour, the concept of RNG, weekly strikes etc etc) aimed at the consoles... for £40.00 + DLC cost, i.e. the cost of every other game. However, the variable issues mentioned mean it isn't an ordinary game- there is "new" stuff on a weekly basis.

Of course there were going to be issues that needed to be corrected along the way. How on earth could they have foreseen every eventuality/problem?! They'd need thousands upon thousands of testers playing for months on end. I'm not going to be too hard on them for the issues they've had to correct. Maybe if it cost me £100, but not for >£40.

As for the social spaces etc, I wasn't saying all of the things to be implemented were useful, just that people have asked for it (god knows why) and we have been given it.

Anyway, as my mother used to say when I'd lose at ISS Pro, it is just a game.

[youngsyr]

Flat-out said:

Crikey, you lot are demanding.

I think if this game was sold at £100 then there would be merit in what is being asked i.e. a perfect product from launch. The fact is, it is a cross-format, semi-MMO, semi-FPS with a load of variables on top of that (weapons, armour, the concept of RNG, weekly strikes etc etc) aimed at the consoles... for £40.00 + DLC cost, i.e. the cost of every other game. However, the variable issues mentioned mean it isn't an ordinary game- there is "new" stuff on a weekly basis.

Of course there were going to be issues that needed to be corrected along the way. How on earth could they have foreseen every eventuality/problem?! They'd need thousands upon thousands of testers playing for months on end. I'm not going to be too hard on them for the issues they've had to correct. Maybe if it cost me £100, but not for >£40.

As for the social spaces etc, I wasn't saying all of the things to be implemented were useful, just that people have asked for it (god knows why) and we have been given it.

Anyway, as my mother used to say when I'd lose at ISS Pro, it is just a game.

Not sure I agree on the "new stuff on a weekly basis", Singhy.

Let's not forget that the full price of the game and DLCs is £80, or the equivalent of two normal games and beyond that Bungie promised a lot at the start that hasn't been delivered.