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[scoobs]

Again, this comparison doesn't work.

Expansions happen every 2 years in WoW. Not every 3 months - fairly sure the community would react differently if that was the case.

Secondly, you don't have to level weapons in wow, and nor do you have to use rare crafting materials to level them a day before you discover that doing so was useless.

Thirdly, weapons and gear in wow are completely different to weapons in Destiny. In wow, all I care about on my weapon is its dps as as a rogue. Yes, my dagger is outdated when the expansion drops - but it doesn't matter because I'll get a higher dps one really easily and am instantly good to go. In destiny we also have range, recoil, element, stability, magazine size and perks - all different, with different styles of gun play that gives you choices between weapons. Thats a huge element of the game, and we know that they aren't adding an extra 20 exotic weapons in to the game with the expansion so they *have* to have an upgrade path otherwise they'd screw their game up even more.

There's no point comparing this to WoW and make out they are doing us a favour compared to other MMOs - it's commoletely different.

I'm speaking very broadly here of course if you get specific like you have then its easier to get upset. I just look at it like I look at every loot game... I expect to grind, I enjoy the grind, I'm not upset if I end up getting better gear for it. This game is a grind, if you've stuck with it this long you know this to be true so lets all just calm down and continue to bang out heads against the wall for better loot and be happy!

 

[Lalalandia]

We should consider ourselves lucky.. I've played WoW for 10 years and each expansion makes my old epic/legendary outdated or all-together useless.

I understand people who aren't used to stuff like this being upset..but the fact that they're even making OLD gear useful in NEW content is incredible to me. I find it very refreshing.

Apples and Oranges dude. The analogy only works if your class skills were reset in WoW as weapons in WoW are almost cosmetic in terms if gameplay impact. In Destiny your weapon radically alters your play style and are the chief difference between being useful or a burden to your raid group. Also WoW releases expansions every two years or so, I doubt WoW fans would be thrilled if Blizzard announced another expansion for Feb that nuked all the gear/skills they've been grinding since last month.

 

[JimmyRustler]

You know what I desperately wanted a Mythoclast and Epilogue from the raid never gotten it once, after reading all this, I doubt only the Mythoclast is worth having that's about it, so once I finish the hard raid sometime this week, I am not even trying to make the effort to upgrade anything anymore...

Considering that all the current raid weapons have bonuses that are needed for completing the hard raid I don't think they'll be obsolete with the DLC.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I thank God every day that Walmart accepted my Destiny trade-in and gave me $46 for it.

Destiny is still literally the only game I have ever traded in. I still have NES and SNES games kicking around in a closet back home.

 

[scoobs]

Apples and Oranges dude. The analogy only works if your class skills were reset in WoW as weapons in WoW are almost cosmetic in terms if gameplay impact. In Destiny your weapon radically alters your play style and are the chief difference between being useful or a burden to your raid group. Also WoW releases expansions every two years or so, I doubt WoW fans would be thrilled if Blizzard announced another expansion for Feb that nuked all the gear/skills they've been grinding since last month.

WoW is actually moving towards an expansion a year model so and people are stoked about it. Crazy people like me have no problem with grinding out new gear every month, the carrot on the stick is as attractive as its ever been.

 

[scoobs]

Considering that all the current raid weapons have bonuses that are needed for completing the hard raid I don't think they'll be obsolete with the DLC.

How so? I know the raid weapons have extra oracle damage but that isn't likely to be useful in the crota raid...

 

[ArkkAngel007]

I just hit 30. No idea how many hours I've played, but pretty much daily since launch. PRNG > RNG. Problem (for Bungie) is: they don't really have that much content for the game. So they need to slow down leveling--which, by the way, is what this system seems to be all about. Notice how we don't get mats in the mail guaranteed now? It's all about slowing us down. Same reason they prioritize some bugs over others. The bugs that make it quick for us to progress need to die. Giving us fun guns... there's no incentive there.

Personally, I don't care that much, but it annoys me how Bungie screwed up the communication this bad.

I'd argue that while the content is rather minimal, it isn't to the point in conjunction with the fun gameplay that this much slowdown is necessary. Neither has it been so for the last few 'solutions'.

It takes about 1.5 weeks to get a Vanguard legendary item (weapon since armor is cheaper) from a vendor currently, though every other week I believe you have enough for one other. While that isn't a ton, there's enough of a selection to keep people busy for a while. Crucible marks can take far longer if you're not constantly on a winning team and devoting a good chunk of hours into it every day. Combined with getting rep up to Rank 3 to make meaningful purchases, it already takes a great deal of time to get there that one has to wonder what the benefit is even from their standpoint to slow it down further.

Gathering mats for Legendaries and, until recently, Exotics is another example. Even when focused, it can be weeks or even a month to get one piece of gear fully upgraded in consideration of RNG. All those hours and resources, all gone because Bungie couldn't think of designing one or two more circles in the upgrade tree with a severely bloated XP gauge.

As it stands now, even the most blessed under RNGesus will only have the smallest sampling of gear fully or nearly so upgraded by the time House of Wolves drops. At which point the process will likely happen once again under the assumption that Bungie doesn't find the minds they have lost.

The sad thing is that this only pushes people to engage more in the farming/loop behavior that Bungie has been against. People aren't going to be engaging in missions, Raiding, and all that good stuff if they have to reset themselves back (let's be honest, the perks of many exotics is what makes or breaks them) and can't really engage back in until they grind out the necessary resources and upgrades once again. This is especially true of Glitter, which at the current point has no real good source of accumulation and is best made farming certain patrol areas in conjunction with chest looping.

Not ranting at you Doc. Agreeing with you while venting on how bad Bungie has molded that system thus far.

 

[Orthogonal]

They ain't. The bonuses for the existing raid still remain with the raid pieces.
And I'm seriously baffled at what people expected. Bungie to add just 1 or 2 more upgrades to each existing exotic/raid gear so people can max out within a day or two and complete all the new content? Yeah, that would make sense.

With the exception of the Raid, everyone will complete the content in a couple hours. 3 story missions and 2 strikes will be beat by most in their first play session. The leveling of the exotics is primarily for the Hard Raid and the new higher level Nightfall. Almost everyone will be back to the status quo of replaying the same content within a week of release.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

WoW is actually moving towards an expansion a year model so and people are stoked about it. Crazy people like me have no problem with grinding out new gear every month, the carrot on the stick is as attractive as its ever been.

What about grinding the same gear you've already had? Doing the same things you've done?

I don't hate that you like that. It's cool you enjoy that. But surely you see why alot of people would have a problem with that?

WoW has had that problem in the past-Where the last raid lasts for a year and nothing new comes out, so you're grinding the same raid over and over and over again just to say you did it and you got a full set. And Blizzards lost customers because of that. However, the issue here is that Bungie is speeding up that cycle by essentially resetting all the progress you've made within a few months of the games release, whilst adding a pitiful amount of content and calling it an 'expansion'. That's the main depravity here.

 

[Fistwell]

And I'm seriously baffled at what people expected. Bungie to add just 1 or 2 more upgrades to each existing exotic/raid gear so people can max out within a day or two and complete all the new content? Yeah, that would make sense.

Most aren't asking for instant gratification or a shortcut to top-gear. Being able to upgrade existing stuff is a positive, but rendering all previous investments (of time, efforts, resources) completely irrelevant to future progress only serves to trivialize previous (and future) such investments. What people were expecting was, if indeed they were going to be able to keep upgrading their stuff, that the upgrade path wouldn't wipe its ass with previous efforts. You might feel different, and if so, more power to you. But it really aint that hard to grasp.

The expectation that this is gonna repeat every 3 or so months is pretty off-putting.

 

[BigJonsson]

Uhhh

I was going to buy the expansion and get back in the game, now I'm not sure

 

[Mutagenic]

They ain't. The bonuses for the existing raid still remain with the raid pieces.
And I'm seriously baffled at what people expected. Bungie to add just 1 or 2 more upgrades to each existing exotic/raid gear so people can max out within a day or two and complete all the new content? Yeah, that would make sense.

What would make SENSE is to add enough new content for this paid expansion rather than have us upgrading weapons we've already spent the time upgrading.

 

[SkylineRKR]

With the exception of the Raid, everyone will complete the content in a couple hours. 3 story missions and 2 strikes will be beat by most in their first play session. The leveling of the exotics is primarily for the Hard Raid and the new higher level Nightfall. Almost everyone will be back to the status quo of replaying the same content within a week of release.

Strikes are a fucking joke anyway. They're so shit, they should be monthly free updates. Its just the same area, but then dinklebotted and with a boss room. Its like, 'its not only a Raid you get at this price... don't forget you also get Strike!'. A no one gives a fuck. The meat of the DLC is the Raid, quite an expensive Raid I must say.

Guys like PrimeGuard will likely beat the Crota Raid within 24 hours. Share tactics and then the rest follows suit. Once its easy it will be grinded over and over, but this time with the knowledge your stuff will be moot with the inevitable level 34 cap.

 

[BigJonsson]

What would make SENSE is to add enough new content for this paid expansion rather than have us upgrading weapons we've already spent the time upgrading.

Ya really, might as well combine all the expansions into one bigger one if this is how they are going to do things

 

[cilonen]

With the exception of the Raid, everyone will complete the content in a couple hours. 3 story missions and 2 strikes will be beat by most in their first play session. The leveling of the exotics is primarily for the Hard Raid and the new higher level Nightfall. Almost everyone will be back to the status quo of replaying the same content within a week of release.

I think the 'story' missions will tie in to the raid and the strikes in some way - this quest line stuff has me concerned as a mostly solo player. I think they'll force us to do the strikes and raid to finish the new 'story' missions.

 

[ArkkAngel007]

Most aren't asking for instant gratification or a shortcut to top-gear. Being able to upgrade existing stuff is a positive, but rendering all previous investments (of time, efforts, resources) completely irrelevant to future progress only serves to trivialize previous (and future) such investments. What people were expecting was, if indeed they were going to be able to keep upgrading their stuff, that the upgrade path wouldn't wipe its ass with previous efforts. You might feel different, and if so, more power to you. But it really aint that hard to grasp.

The expectation that this is gonna repeat every 3 or so months is pretty off-putting.

There's also a big difference psychologically between an effective gear reset than to have an additional gauge or two. Which for some reason seems impossible to have fill incredibly slow to where it would effectively take the same amount of time as the entire post-reset process. Sure some people will still complain, but it feels progressive still seeing the ring fill little by little even at that rate.

Seems also to me like a cheap tactic to make Legendaries a bigger focus despite that they are still necessary (and now even harder to obtain) due to the exotic gear limits.

I think the 'story' missions will tie in to the raid and the strikes in some way - this quest line stuff has me concerned as a mostly solo player. I think they'll force us to do the strikes and raid to finish the new 'story' missions.

While they'll obviously tie in closer to the strikes and Raid presentation and gameplay-wise (Debuffs present in story missions for example I believe), they won't make them necessary to complete in the sense you'll be stonewalled. Though, come to think of it, if it's about killing Crota and Crota is the Raid boss, than I suppose the plot wouldn't be finished until the Raid.

Never thought of it that way really. If it is so, it will likely be that you 'finish' story mission wise by stopping Crota for-good/for a long stretch of time in some round-about fashion, while the Raid you'll get the chance to actually kill the green bastard. Alternate resolutions to the story as it were.

 

[cilonen]

Seems also to me like a cheap tactic to make Legendaries a bigger focus despite that they are still necessary (and now even harder to obtain) due to the exotic gear limits.

This is the bigger bullshit. It's far more annoying than exotics.

Edit: tag failure in quote. Doh.

 

[SkylineRKR]

I think the 'story' missions will tie in to the raid and the strikes in some way - this quest line stuff has me concerned as a mostly solo player. I think they'll force us to do the strikes and raid to finish the new 'story' missions.

Grimoires? Look them up on any destiny site. I have over 2000 score, but never looked at my own.

Story missions are even crappier versions of Strikes. I hate every one of them, only play them for bounties and daily. But thats Destiny, great weapons and gameplay, shitty rest. The shitty stuff is needed to upgrade your stuff. I endured that until now. But not gonna respec my loadout.

 

[JoJo UK]

You're describing me. I got to lvl 20 and then stopped. Sometimes I log back in, and want to play...but I have no idea what to do, how to progress.

Lol, I'm actually in the same boat as well sadly.

 

[ArkkAngel007]

Grimoires? Look them up on any destiny site.

I have over 2000 score, but never looked at my own.

I think their worry is that they won't have that in-game sense of completion to the story. Like if the Black Garden was a Raid rather than a regular story mission.

Which again, I think the story will provide a certain resolution while Crota's End is taking that resolution further or as an alternative one. Likely the more satisfying one if you don't have to sit through another long and nonsensical cutscene like with The Black Garden.

 

[cilonen]

Grimoires? Look them up on any destiny site.

I have over 2000 score, but never looked at my own.

Nah, not grimoires - they've said the new story missions will be multi-part like exotic bounties and are calling them quest lines.

Rather than do mission; complete story; get reward it'll probably be go somewhere, scan something; go somewhere else and find artefact; go and get x kills in a strike, then get reward. This screws solo players if one of the parts of the quest line is something you can't do solo.

 

[amar212]

WAIT.

So, we are trading ~300 Exotics for 302+ Exotics?

Basically, I give my 257 Suros and I get 302/331 Suros? Or I give my 257/300 Hawkmoon and I get 302/331Hawkmoon? Same for Exotic gear?

So, we "only" need to level Perks and "new" XP (from 302 to 331)?

OK, I am content.

 

[Jinjo]

WAIT.

So, we are trading ~300 Exotics for 302+ Exotics?

Basically, I give my 257 Suros and I get 302/331 Suros? Or I give my 257/300 Hawkmoon and I get 302/331Hawkmoon? Same for Exotic gear?

So, we "only" need to level Perks and "new" XP (from 302 to 331)?

OK, I am content.

Giving an unleveled exotic is not the problem. The problem is that the people that spend hundreds of hours levelling exotics to their maximum potential got nothing in it for return. Not even a faster XP gain or something. I'm literally losing in the millions of XP, hundred thousands of glimmer and in the thousands of materials that I spent, for nothing. You don't need to "only level the new perks and XP", you have to do it all over again, if you want to be competitive in the new content.

The WoW analogy doesn't work since WoW adds a lot of new loot and releases on a yearly-biyearly basis. Here we are getting like three new exotics weapons and a few legendary guns and all of our spend time on exisiting stuff gets nullified...

A lot of people in the Destiny thread will quit over this, they are losing the people that are invested most in their game.

 

[Bollocks]

lol
people complain about the lack of content
bungie resets your exotics to give you more to chew on
yet people complain about that too

 

[RSB]

What happened to this Bungie?

Where are they?

I guess the Bungie that knew how to make great, well designed games, just doesn't exist anymore. Because, seriously, there's no way the Bungie that made the Halo trilogy (+ODST) is the same that has made Destiny. No way.

 

[Jinjo]

lol
people complain about the lack of content
bungie resets your exotics to give you more to chew on
yet people complain about that too

Lol, nice troll there. Resetting old content is not the same as new content, you damn well know that buddy. Gg.

 

[Twilight Gap]

lol
people complain about the lack of content
bungie resets your exotics to give you more to chew on
yet people complain about that too

maybe people wouldn't be hungry if they vomited their food and ate it again.

 

[Ominym]

Not sure if there's a newer post, but DeeJ's Twitter says that Game Informer's description is accurate and people are reacting "wrong."

:/

What an absolute joke. I remember listening to this guy spew bullshit on a podcast saying how his new role at Bungie was as a "player advocate", and that he was "doing research" on how the community reacted to the game and relaying it to the developers.

You know what the first rule of quality research and user advocacy is? Clearly it's telling the players they're wrong for how they feel instead of listening to what they have to say.

I know I'm a bit late to the party, and this has likely been discussed at length. But what an unbelievably bad statement.

Edit: I see he later apologized in this thread. Doesn't really do much for me here, considering I don't care if you're sorry I care if you're doing your job. Scoffing at player's feelings then turning around saying you're tasked with "player advocacy" isn't something that gets fixed with an apology. It gets fixed when you do your job like you're paid to do.

 

[Fistwell]

maybe people wouldn't be hungry if they vomited their food and ate it again.

Yah pretty much.

I know I'm a bit late to the party, and this has likely been discussed at length. But what an unbelievably bad statement.

Yeah, comes across as pretty unprofessional for a community manager type of guy.

 

[Bastos]

Giving an unleveled exotic is not the problem. The problem is that the people that spend hundreds of hours levelling exotics to their maximum potential got nothing in it for return. Not even a faster XP gain or something. I'm literally losing in the millions of XP, hundred thousands of glimmer and in the thousands of materials that I spent, for nothing. You don't need to "only level the new perks and XP", you have to do it all over again, if you want to be competitive in the new content.

The WoW analogy doesn't work since WoW adds a lot of new loot and releases on a yearly-biyearly basis. Here we are getting like three new exotics weapons and a few legendary guns and all of our spend time on exisiting stuff gets nullified...

A lot of people in the Destiny thread will quit over this, they are losing the people that are invested most in their game.

Well, you won't have to spend a lot of resources this time.

It's not like the game isn't fun anymore just because it reseted your perks.

 

[Freshmaker]

What an absolute joke. I remember listening to this guy spew bullshit on a podcast saying how his new role at Bungie was as a "player advocate", and that he was "doing research" on how the community reacted to the game and relaying it to the developers.

You know what the first rule of quality research and user advocacy is? Clearly it's telling the players they're wrong for how they feel instead of listening to what they have to say.

I know I'm a bit late to the party, and this has likely been discussed at length. But what an unbelievably bad statement.

It is funny to see the "Comments closed" on every Dark Below blog entry.

"We want to listen, but you're not saying what we want to hear."

 

[Twilight Gap]

It is funny to see the "Comments closed" on every Dark Below blog entry.

"We want to listen, but you're not saying what we want to hear."

in their defense, the comments on B.net tend to be a toxic mess riddled with profanity and insults. it's far beyond harsh criticism.

 

[Freshmaker]

in their defense, the comments on B.net tend to be a toxic mess riddled with profanity and insults. it's far beyond harsh criticism.

Sounds about right given the news that's coming out of Bungie TBH.

 

[Jinjo]

Well, you won't have to spend a lot of resources this time.

It's not like the game isn't fun anymore just because it reseted your perks.

You literally have to do the entire thing over again, step by step. Only change is that you don't need ascendant materials but an exotic shard. Which is arguable more difficult to come by than ascendant materials. Plus you need an exotic shards and a ton of glimmer to even start the upgrade. What you can upgrade is also limited by RNG-hooks (Xur).

Game becomes a drag in order to participate in the new content, which makes it less fun. Also, nullifying my time investment is this game makes it instantly a whole lot less fun too.

It's like Zoba said; they are forcefeeding us even more recycled stuff down our throats.

 

[Twilight Gap]

Sounds about right given the news that's coming out of Bungie TBH.

it is interesting how much backlash there's been for the game though. i wonder if bungie even understands why people are still playing, and why they're upset when they pull these stunts.

money talks i guess

Glad to see that bnet hasn't changed a bit over the years.

it's been largely self moderated for the last 2 years, so it's actually gotten worse.

 

[Trey]

in their defense, the comments on B.net tend to be a toxic mess riddled with profanity and insults. it's far beyond harsh criticism.

Glad to see that bnet hasn't changed a bit over the years.

 

[JimmyRustler]

How so? I know the raid weapons have extra oracle damage but that isn't likely to be useful in the crota raid...

Well, Bungie already said that VoG won't be obsolete with the new DLC, so I strongly assume that the raid gear/weapons won't be as well.
My guess is that they'll add a super hard lvl 32 version of VoG or something for which again you will need the existing raid gear/weapons. There is no way I'm gonna get rid of my stuff.
If Bungie is smart they'll separate each raid, so you'll always have to keep the hardly earned raid gear/weapons in order to do the hard version of it.

 

[GlamFM]

I still don´t get what the problem with the Exotics is.

Since Bungie narrowed the upgrade path, the updated versions will probably start with a higher attack / defense level - right?

It seems completely logical to me that I will have to level them up again.

As I said - I don´t get what your problem is.

 

[Ominym]

It is funny to see the "Comments closed" on every Dark Below blog entry.

"We want to listen, but you're not saying what we want to hear."

A fundamental problem this medium faces is that because some level of anonymous comments made are full of childish bullshit? A lot of legitimate criticism is ignored as the wagons are circled by developers.

It's almost like they should have someone on staff who goes out and seeks to understand why people are saying what they're saying, both good or bad. Childish or not. And give some sort of qualitative, unbiased report based on plausible emerging trends.

Oh wait...

 

[Fistwell]

It's almost like they should have someone on staff who goes out and seeks to understand why people are saying what they're saying, both good or bad. Childish or not. And give some sort of qualitative, unbiased report based on plausible emerging trends.

Nope, your reaction is wrong.

Spoiler

the new "why would I live there"

 

[Sephiroth503]

As a "casual" player of Destiny; that is I played it with my brother frequently enough for the first month but not enough that I would ever be doing Raids or anything I finished up at Lvl 26.

At that point I had gotten up to Vanguard Rank 3 and was content that whenever I was going to jump back in, in other words when the expansion hit, I'd have a new drive to collect marks, buy more legendary gear and so on.

I know a lot of people are worked up about the Exotics (I only ever had an Exotic chest plate so can't really empathise regarding the grind for levelling everything to max) but for me the changes regarding purchasing only one piece of legendary gear from a vendor at each rank is sickening. It took me long enough getting to Rank 3 playing the same missions again and again just have the option of choosing between all the gear I'd like to buy, collecting the marks was enough of an endeavour but now there's another layer on top of that again. Could not be bothered to play Destiny again at this point.

 

[Fistwell]

EG is chiming in on this debacle.

 

[DryvBy]

So if I'm reading this right, my Ice Breaker that I fully upgraded is now a piece of crap and I need to get the 2.0 version?

 

[panda-zebra]

So if I'm reading this right, my Ice Breaker that I fully upgraded is now a piece of crap and I need to get the 2.0 version?

It's not a piece of crap, it's just not in it's final form. If you want to make it the best it can be, you're going to have to first hope RNG allows you to via Xur and then grind the grind as if you just dropped it.

 

[Gillian Seed]

So if I'm reading this right, my Ice Breaker that I fully upgraded is now a piece of crap and I need to get the 2.0 version?

Yes.

 

[darkwing]

I still don´t get what the problem with the Exotics is.

Since Bungie narrowed the upgrade path, the updated versions will probably start with a higher attack / defense level - right?

It seems completely logical to me that I will have to level them up again.

As I said - I don´t get what your problem is.

Yup, you get a 302 weapon as base, and goes to 330

 

[amar212]

I still don´t get what the problem with the Exotics is.

Since Bungie narrowed the upgrade path, the updated versions will probably start with a higher attack / defense level - right?

It seems completely logical to me that I will have to level them up again.

As I said - I don´t get what your problem is.

My feeling exactly.

First I was underwhelmed, but once I managed to understand everything more coherent, it is fine.

Nothing will be "lost" for real, because all the progress stays.

No gear will become "obsolete" with a day, every player can decide for himself what parts of the gear and weapons he is willing to scrap in order to gain high-level items.

As I understood, all my LV30 gear will be more than fine.

The process remains the same as before, in transition from "Blue" to "Purple" weapons and gear. We have also "lost" all progress/glimmer/time when we scrapped blues for purples.

As I sad in my post above, if my questions are all answered by "yes", I am content with this complete overhaul.

 

[140.85]

I like being able to update my exotics and not having to use ass mats anymore, but please don't make me grind the non-dmg bubbles again...(perks, sights, etc.)

 

[geordiemp]

With the new store items is there new legendary weapons with higher attack as well as the new legendary armour ?

Bit confused about the stores.

Also if you level up say dead orbit does that also give a commendation same as levelling vanguard ?

 

[GlamFM]

Yup, you get a 302 weapon as base, and goes to 330

My feeling exactly.

First I was underwhelmed, but once I managed to understand everything more coherent, it is fine.

Nothing will be "lost" for real, because all the progress stays.

No gear will become "obsolete" with a day, every player can decide for himself what parts of the gear and weapons he is willing to scrap in order to gain high-level items.

As I understood, all my LV30 gear will be more than fine.

The process remains the same as before, in transition from "Blue" to "Purple" weapons and gear. We have also "lost" all progress/glimmer/time when we scrapped blues for purples.

As I sad in my post above, if my questions are all answered by "yes", I am content with this complete overhaul.

I thought so.

So yeah, I´m cool.