VE3TRO
Formerly Gizmowned
Which clan you in?
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Destiny 2 |OT| Here We Go Again
- Thread starter JohnOfMars
- Start date
Which clan you in?
Arc Soul buff gives you and your fireteam bonus damage from a rift for a while (both healing and empowering), Storm Grenades are insanely powerful, and Storm Trance seems even more OP for clearing mobs this time around.
NegroNinja
Member
So what's the best build for titans right now? I wanted to use the sun seeker but the Passover on it suck. So far I'm using the shield with the top tree because that overshield is too good.
that looks awesome
Is that black and gold?! GOAT shader
Dynasty8
Member
I'd like to know this too.
i stock up on those things that make treasure chests icons appear
JohnOfMars
Banned
Right.
Yes and no. While playing, the only way to tell is dying and there will be an overlay that says "Recommended Power Level". When selecting activities, every activity will provide a "Recommended Power Level."
Rare weapon mods from the Gunsmith. When you get to Power Level 280, you can upgrade 3x rare to a legendary, which is useful on it's own AND can be sharded to get legendary shards.
noomi
Member
So transmat animations are pretty cool, when you spawn/re-spawn it gives your guardian a little effect. These are applied through the ship.
Unfortunately there is no way to preview them so we need to gamble on whether or not we will like the new one we select. Even worse, once you select a new transmat it deletes the other one forever. So if you don't like the new one you selected for your ship... too bad
I've been using the veteran transmat as a default, and would like to see how the other ones look before deciding if I want to have it applied.
Hope that they add an option to preview these somehow...
Unfortunately there is no way to preview them so we need to gamble on whether or not we will like the new one we select. Even worse, once you select a new transmat it deletes the other one forever. So if you don't like the new one you selected for your ship... too bad
I've been using the veteran transmat as a default, and would like to see how the other ones look before deciding if I want to have it applied.
Hope that they add an option to preview these somehow...
Revolutionary
Member
Mods at the Gunsmith
Yeah, this. Well, get the treasure maps from Cayde for the week too, but after that dump excess Glimmer into random mods from the Gunsmith so that once you do eventually clear 280 you have more to upgrade into purple mods.
Which adventure was this?
Nerd_Incognito
Member
Question about Clan Rewards: on the website it says "Everyone earns this reward when you clan completes the [activity] as a group."
Does that mean literally every member has to complete the activity? Or does the clan benefit when a select number of members complete activities cumulatively?
Does that mean literally every member has to complete the activity? Or does the clan benefit when a select number of members complete activities cumulatively?
infusing weapons and armor, i think they're currency for xur too. you can buy some trash legendary weapons from vendors too.
JohnOfMars
Banned
Shards are used to infuse gear to higher powe levels.
real video of me gaining advantage over everyone else
Congrats. You just ruined destiny.
Broadbandito
Member
Anybody want a 1500+ word essay on the history of cosmetics in Destiny and my concerns about this new shader system? There's so much good in Destiny 2, but this is truly frustrating for me. And I get that maybe this is trivial for you, but it's not for me, so maybe don't shit on people who don't feel the same as you? With that out of the way, it was a fun trip down memory lane to put this together and kind of eye opening how many factors go into these kind of design decisions.
Customization in Destiny has always been limited with no transmog & Single shader for all armor, but has steadily improved. At the beginning of Vanilla Destiny, there were 2 endgame item sets everyone had to wear and shaders were one-time drops. There was no kiosk to save Shaders, and the Vault was incredibly small by today's standards. The only shaders that were prestigious were raid and trials shaders. A once and done treat that was guaranteed when most loot was not. For example, I ran Skolas a dozen times and never got an elemental weapon, but I got the shader that I could show off. In House of Wolves, Etheric Light could be used to upgrade any legendary armor to end game levels, thus giving people control over their armor appearance and shaders. Trials of Osiris was introduced which gave people largely cosmetic rewards for going flawless.
Starting in Taken King, Kiosks were added to collect shaders and infusion was added to allow people to have full control over their armor appearance. Kiosks allowed people to begin to collect shaders AND informed people about which activities granted which shaders. For prestige, a second raid armor set was added that had unique appearance and would need to be grinded for. Chroma was added in the April Update (AKA The Taken Spring). Chroma was single use and cost glimmer to apply. It was also heavily tied to microtransactions. I never bothered with it because it wasn't my style. But this is crucial: Chroma was optional AND was a layer on top of shaders. You didn't have to interact with them and they complimented the current system.
Rise of Iron kept the infusion, kiosks and hard mode armor sets. It also introduced ornaments. Ornaments were purely cosmetic additions from end-game challenges like going flawless in Trials or completing raid challenges. Ornaments were also added to exotic weapons via microtransactions. Ornaments were an interesting implementation because they were tied to gear sets. Trials ornaments went on Trials gear and Raid on raid. This set a limit to the amount of grinding needed, while also giving people chances to grind more for ornaments if they get a better armor piece, but within the limits of those fixed sets.
Enter Destiny 2, which has removed all of our old shaders, as well as kiosks for retrieving them. In exchange, they are drops that can be applied to weapons (3 slots), armor (4 slots), as well as ghosts, sparrows and ships. This is a massive increase in the number of things that can be shaded. Shaders drops frequently and from a variety of locations. There is no way to know where they are from anymor other than going to each vendor individually and previewing their rewards (which you cannot do unless you turn in all the tokens to them, which is frustrating since in a wonderful quality of life upgrade inventory is shared between characters and you might be saving tokens for an alt and thus don't want to turn them in.) We don't know about the raid or Trials at all to know if hard mode armor sets are in. Now one thing that has a significant impact is that gear is much more fixed now. Armor and weapons have one roll only and then have modification nodes that can be swapped out. What this means is that armor grades are a thing of the past and changing from an 89% Jovian Guard gauntlets to 96% gauntlets won't happen anymore. So we will need to change armor less often. However, the flip side of this is that with fixed perks on armor, we again have to make the choice do we favor looks or perks. And this is where Shaders in the past have always been helpful that even if you were unhappy with your appearance due to perks or light level, you could have a shader that you could apply freely to maintain your appearance. I favored Rose Gold throughout Years 2 & 3. One cool thing is shaders now have 4 part icons which actually show all the colors and textures of the shader!
Here's a summary. As you can see, Bungie has played around A LOT with gearing, end-game cosmetic rewards.
All that said, we're still very early in the game and haven't seen any of the endgame yet. So we don't have the full picture. But what we've seen so far is still worthy of addressing.
Here are my concerns:But the biggest issue is the total contradiction in Luke's statements.
- Shaders are an incredibly important factor in how your guardian looks. Hell, I'll argue they're the most important if you're like me and play around with armor quite a bit and use shaders to look consistent. This is not like changing how ghosts work or ships or anything like that. This is what you see on log-in, the menu and everything in 3rd person. Putting RNG limits on shaders for ongoing use is unpleasant.
- Shaders have been the one purely cosmetic free-to-use how you see fit option since Vanilla. Class items were co-opted into the light and perk system. Armor is continent on RNG for dropping and then for perks and stats. If you couldn't get the armor you liked (for me Jovian Guantlets), you could at least look the color you wanted. Now there are limits and cost placed on that.
- The ability to grind end-game activities is only viable while that activity is current. After the new raid drops, no one plays the old one and NO ONE will care about going back for shaders. Further, we are on a 3 content drop per year, so this window is much smaller than years' past.
- The current ability to change shaders per armor piece is clunky and does not allow for the player to preview how a whole armor set will be colored together. What I mean to say is I should be able to freely preivew shaders to all my armor at the same time and then if I'm happy, then commit them together.
- Shifting the end-game grind from stat perfection-ism (chasing max light level, perfect stats, Tier 12 cooldowns) to people who like to change their shaders a lot sucks. I never hit max light level on all my armor sets from Year 2 onward. Didn't need to. I found armor that I liked and played with that. I optimized my perks and stats well enough, but they were never flawless. I preferred my looks to stat perfection, which is why this stings.
- Prior prestige cosmetics were for limited number of items (flawless ornaments on flawless gear) and were purely optional ornamentation in addition to shaders. Addtionally, they were optional. This new system is a wholesale change for every shader. You do not have a choice to interact with these or not.
- It takes a long time to get shaders and longer to able to get gear worthy of applying them. Shaders don't start really dropping til level 20. But level 20 is power level ~200, nowhere near end-game, so most gear at this point is blue and disposable. So this is two issues: You must play 20+ hours to start getting shaders and then you must play tens of hours more til you get to gear "worth of a shader". I realize 30-40 hours is slight compared to the 1000+ hours we put in over the past few years, but please respect people's time, 30-40 hours is still a lot of time. People say "you'll have a ton of these eventually" have no answer to what it's like now.
- It's possible to have a great multitude of shaders and a small number of each. The loot pool for each vendor is small, except Bright Engrams, which are huge and cannot be grinded for nearly as quickly or easily as zone vendors.
- Shaders of small number become "too awesome to use" and will just sit there waiting. It gives me literal anxiety to stare at all these shaders with just a couple of options and try to figure out which ones I want to use and on which gear and if that gear is worthy of getting a shader or if I'll get a better one in a day or a week or oh my god, it's a shader, why do I have to think about it this much?
- Oh, and since the community is clearly upset about this, there's the added pressure of "hopefully Bungie will fix this, so maybe I shouldn't use at all them right now."
We expect you'll be flush w/ Shaders as you continue to play.With D2, we want statements like "I want to run the Raid, Trials, or go back to Titan to get more of its Shader" to be possible. (4/4)
So which is it? We'll be flush? and I don't need to be anxious or we'll need to grind more. It cannot be both.
I completely understand everyone's frustrations with this. I'm really glad that this is the biggest issue instead of some incredibly flawed game design choices, lack of story, etc. (it's how you know they made a great game)
I am not going to jump to any conclusions for another few weeks. The game came out almost exactly 4 days ago now. It'll be interesting to see everyone's shaders page a month after release.
Oooh.
So much shit I didn't know about.
Probably why I never excelled at the first Destiny...
BenjaminBirdie
Banned
wow thanks for the spoilers wtf
i think it unlocks post campaign, it's in the Cistern on Nessus
Giriath_89
Member
Just heard you don't need your best gear equipped when looting to get the highest level rewards. Instead the game now counts all your items and determines your highest possible level?
MegaSackman
Member
Only played the first three missions, the first one is the same as the beat so, nothing to add there but the next two set a pretty cool mood. I'm already in love with the soundtrack, way better than the original so far, pretty impressed.
I'll marothon it tomorrow.
I'll marothon it tomorrow.
Yep. It's a god send.
Yes. As long you have highest possible PL gear in your inventory you get engrams and gear rolled accordingly.
I think it actually takes vault gear into account too
ThatOneMexican
Member
I tried enfusing that exotic smg but it's now allowing me to am I doing something wrong? What materials do you need?
I thought they said it checked items in vault as well?
Come on breh, Nolan North is the best.
Giriath_89
Member
To be safe, even items in the vault count?
Ah good, saw the other responses. That is indeed a god send.
It's not too bad other than the giant pasta shells for shoulders!
Interficium
Banned
By next week the complaint is going to morph into "Why the fuck didn't Bungie give us more vault space for shaders!!!" when people have massive stacks.
Giriath_89
Member
I heard don't finish Milestones that reward 'Powerful Gear' because they have a chance of exotics.
JohnOfMars
Banned
I want to play Destiny 2 but I have school work to do
Ah, you are still early! Once you start getting blue rare engrams as rewards hang on to the blue scout rifles (doesn't matter if they are kinetic or energy) - you'll need them to complete the Mida Multi Tool quest.
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