For the people who quit back in Novemberish, I'll write down some of what's changed or will change with TTK. If you flat out didn't like the game, chances are high you still won't. But if you were just annoyed at some of the annoying bullshit in what you felt would otherwise be a good game, I think many of the original complaints are being addressed. To prevent you from reading the full wall of text, I'll start with the stuff in disappointed isn't yet included:
- Private / custom PvP lobbies
- Optional Raid Matchmaking (Id never touch this but I think it would not affect me negatively at all to have that option exist for the others who might take advantage of it. With stronger AFK detection, a mic requirement, and a check that you've completed the raid at least once before you can use matchmaking I think it wouldn't be bad for those who don't have peeps who play the game)
Now the wall of text. Stuff that has been changed for the better:
- Less grind required because upgrading weapons and armor is much faster than it was, along with Legendary weapon drop rates being significantly higher in PvE and PvP playlists
- Engrams no longer decrypt below their color quality (legendary engram will always give you a Legendary or above)
- Upgrades require far fewer upgrade materials. The materials list has also been streamlined, with no more class-specific armor materials (Plasteel, Sapphire Wire, Hadronic will all be merged) as well as planetary materials actually being sold instead of being farmed on Patrol. No more Ascendant/Radiant Shards or Energy anywhere (good riddance).
- No more Vanguard/Crucible marks. The currency unification ensures that players who only enjoy PvP or who only enjoy PvE each earn the same currency and are thus able to purchase anything from vendors. Before, Faction gear had to be bought with PvP currency, which was hard to get for mainly PvE players. To further balance PvE and PvP, a Crucible win now awards 6 Marks instead of the original 3, in line with the Strike playlist run
- Public events are far more frequent than at launch, and even more so with the addition of the HoW Rowling wolf packs (I imagine that'll be replaced with somethings else come TTK)
- "Forever 29" no longer. You'll level up by gaining XP. This is a godsend, unchain img your progression from RNG drops
- Loot table will be completely overhauled, with this expansion adding as much loot as 1.0 had to begin with
- Reworked story and quest structure will feel the game feel a bit more coherent, with the vanilla->Crota->Oryx story arc being fleshed out in dialogue
- New Crucible modes and 8 maps, with no fragmentation since everyone who owns TTK must also own TDB and HoW, leading to potentially very varied playlists with less map repetition (one would hope)
- With the addition of 3 TTK Strikes, and the expiry of the exclusivity deal of 2 others (Dust Palace and Undying Mind), the Nightfall rotation will include a total of 12 Strikes (as compared to the 5 strike rotation at launch).
- Remember having to go to the tower to put weapons in the vault, then change characters, take them to the tower to get that stuff to the vault? Doing a NF with one character then switching to another was a huge hassle because of the hoops to move gear around. Now you can do this via Apps automatically
- Post TTK you'll no longer have to go to the Tower to deliver bounties (finally!!!!), cutting down on time lost on loading screens
- You'll have the freedom to wear whatever class item you want. You can pledge your rep to a faction without having to wear their class item, meaning you won't have to sacrifice looks for that reputation climb
- Speaking of that rep climb, it's been hunted that getting faction shaders and stuff won't be as much of an RNG grind as it is now, with the Shader vendor showing all the shaders you've owned at some point and those you don't, with hints on how to obtain the ones you're still missing. Guessing it'll be tied to Faction-specific bounties
- Weekly Heroic Strikes for strange coins feature matchmaking. They are now also a different Strike than the NF so doing both activities feels less stale (running the same strike 6x in a week was harsh
)
- Crucible will introduce a new Mercy rule, ending a match halfway if the score difference is too high. This will prevent the issue of people quitting out to a certain extent since they might as well get some marks for a premature loss; I hope this also this leads to a lower chance for joining a match in progress.
- A Patrol area designed with exploration in mind and which actually has mysteries and good loot. Remember the beta when we first saw a level "???" Ogre we couldn't hurt? We wondered what loot he might be guarding. Turns out there's nothing of worth in Patrol areas anywhere. The Dreadnaught will change that (exploration hype).
- speaking of Exploration: the new Raid will be even bigger than VoG. And with leveling up being a more natural process now, I hope more people get to experience the raid. Reaching level 27 at launch required intense, ridiculous grinding be for reputation, marks, planetary materials, ascendant materials, class-specific materials, and tons of XP. lots of people quit before they were able to enter VoG. Hopefully this changes now.
- At launch there was no way to voice comm with your lobby unless you manually started a chat. Now there's team chat with the Randoms (it's opt-in though)
- A lot of changes to Crucible to make it a bit more balanced (less orbs generated to prevent chaining or trains, some OP weapons toned down etc)
Most important, TLDR change, for me, since launch:
- People no longer play this game like a checklist. The "endgame" at launch was limited enough that you could do it all every week. As in 3x Nightfall, 3x Weekly, 3x VoG.
In a month, the game won't have that problem. There will be so many activities that you'll never even consider doing it all and you'll play more casually. At least that's been my experience. There's Nightfall, Weekly, VoG, CE, 3 different PoE activities, a weekend PvP mode that's super intense, monthly Iron Banner, more bounty vendors, and come TTK we'll have yet another Raid, actual exploration in the new Patrol area... You'll just log on and always have stuff to do, and you can just find a group to run whatever you feel like instead of "oh I'm missing a NF!" When you're "missing" 8 activities you just say fuck it and play for fun
I think in a month we'll have the game we should have gotten at launch. It won't be perfect - this game is by design a bit whacko in its PvP, the story won't be Mass Effect, and though the grind will be a tiny fraction of what it was at launch it'll still be there. RNG won't be as bad a bitch as it was, but it'll still annoy us sometimes. But Bungie has consistently listened to the community and slowly but surely molded the game into a continually improving experience.
