The Destiny Thread

[Iceglow]

I got to try the Vault of Glass for the first time last night (first chance we had to get a full team together and yes, we knew it was going to be reset today) Got to the Templar boss and was fighting that. Unfortunately could not get enough damage dealt to him to finish the battle (most of us had purple weapons and gear with the odd exotic thrown in). I personally ended up with the raid sniper rifle being earnt during the process which was awesome as the sniper rocks.

Tonight I managed to get a legendary engram drop, and an ascendant shard in a chest on the moon within 15 mins of each other (no events included, just doing patrol missions) and afterwards gained a second ascendent shard in the cosmodrone from a chest. Combined with my Cryptarch package I wound up with a second pair of legendary boots of a design I don't own already and the Future War Cult's "The Cure" Rocket Launcher. I'm pretty happy with that haul.

[Nicolas]

I got to try the Vault of Glass for the first time last night (first chance we had to get a full team together and yes, we knew it was going to be reset today) Got to the Templar boss and was fighting that. Unfortunately could not get enough damage dealt to him to finish the battle (most of us had purple weapons and gear with the odd exotic thrown in). I personally ended up with the raid sniper rifle being earnt during the process which was awesome as the sniper rocks.

Tonight I managed to get a legendary engram drop, and an ascendant shard in a chest on the moon within 15 mins of each other (no events included, just doing patrol missions) and afterwards gained a second ascendent shard in the cosmodrone from a chest. Combined with my Cryptarch package I wound up with a second pair of legendary boots of a design I don't own already and the Future War Cult's "The Cure" Rocket Launcher. I'm pretty happy with that haul.

Yeah. Gear and level are incredibly important to beating the raid. You don't necessarily have to max your Legendary weapons, but just having them to the point before using Asc. Energies and a void weapon or two tends to make things go much smoother. Hopefully you get some more great stuff and not take too many tries to get raid gear. That seems to be a fun RNG issue people have with the raid.

[Pheesh]

I haven't even started up the game in about 2 weeks now I think, but I'd be happy to help you get through the raid for the first time Bubba. Interested to try it out since they changed some of the mechanics as well.

[Bubba]

I've attempted it twice with randomers online and got to the final boss both times. Just couldn't finish it off. Be great if we could give it a go. I'm usually available evening time in the UK during the week but could do it on a Saturday or Sunday at any time if that is better for everyone?

[Pheesh]

I'm 8 hours ahead of you and 12 ahead of nico so as long as it's at some kind of reasonable hour I don't mind.

[Nicolas]

just as long as i'm not working, i'm pretty much available... even if i'm playing another game.

[Bubba]

I'm 8 hours ahead of you and 12 ahead of nico so as long as it's at some kind of reasonable hour I don't mind.

That's nice and awkward! Well I'm available all day on Sunday so could do any time that day.

If not I'm home from 8pm on Tue night and then off all day on Wed so can do any time then?

[Iceglow]

Bit of a big bump here but as the new expansion to Destiny drops in just under a week and several of the patches for this have gone live I figured I'd come see what people are making of it here at EoFF.

Firstly can I say the Tumbler... oh god that thing is fun, I've spent so much time on Mars and the Moon tonight trying different styles of flipping. My favourite was on Mars when a War Sat event was taking place, I'd just entered the area half way through the event so was still going flat out on my Tumbler towards it hoping to make it on time. As I go up a massive dune right next to the event I decided to do a front flip in to combat, it looked beautiful dropping me right in the middle of things guns blazing.

Weapon tweaks: Balancement is good, I like how guns such as Bad Juju are now becoming viable options (Bad Juju being perhaps the worst of the exotic weapons). It also appears rare/blue weaponry has been capped at level 16 or 17. I've been playing today and yesterday and not seen a single gun higher than this on a rare tier. I also noted that my own blue Auto Rifle (I've been lazy, hence have not brought the legendary version) is now several levels lower than previously.

Not needing copious, frankly ridiculous amounts of ascendant materials to use on your exotics as well as your legendaries is also a nice addition. However, I still consider 7 strange coins to be perhaps a little low for an exotic shard. That means that you could simply do the Weekly Strike on hard and get one a week. It'd be nice to see Motes of Light having more currency usage too. Perhaps Exotics should have used motes of light as well as materials to level up. Though the slow rate of attainment here may have been the reason they chose not to go down this path.

As a side point here with regards to Armour upgrading, I still feel like there's too little being done to curb the outrageous amounts of items like Saphhire Wire being accrued. I'd definitely agree to doubling, even tripling the current required numbers of sapphire wire per upgrade. As it stands, even with very little activity this past month, my Hunter has something like 400 of Sapphire Wire in their inventory. The fact that you generally will have 1 maybe, 2 different sets of armour you use per character means that you have a massive overstock of the upgrading material for your class. Something needs doing here. Even if it's just the option to sell it for Glimmer (perhaps a more detailed trade system whereby a huge stockpile I.E. 500 - 1 exchange rate of getting a strange coin or ascendant material selected at random could be implemented) or trade it in for other materials such as Spin Metal, Helium, Relic Iron or Spirit Bloom and a minor boost to your reputation.

Inverting the exchange of materials which are commonly found, for reputation gains (and marks) is perhaps not such a great idea. I'm not a huge Crucible player, but knowing I could, if needed trade some of my now huge stash of materials in for those last few marks required to purchase a weapon or armour. I feel like that this is now not likely to be a huge source of use for many guardians. Though perhaps if you've got all the gear you need but are desperate for materials like Relic Iron which seems a little more rare than others, you may go for it.

So people, thoughts?

[Pheesh]

Wow, I haven't picked up the game in like 2 weeks, but it sounds like there's some pretty big changes. Maybe sometime this weekend I'll jump on and see what's new.

[Tigmafuzz]

Inverting the exchange of materials which are commonly found, for reputation gains (and marks) is perhaps not such a great idea. I'm not a huge Crucible player, but knowing I could, if needed trade some of my now huge stash of materials in for those last few marks required to purchase a weapon or armour. I feel like that this is now not likely to be a huge source of use for many guardians.

It's a terrible idea. If I get on an hour before weekly reset and realize I haven't hit my weekly mark cap yet, I could go turn in some of the ridiculous number of materials I have. But now I can't, and I have way too many materials, since I don't have the need to upgrade anything other than exotics at this point.

Though perhaps if you've got all the gear you need but are desperate for materials like Relic Iron which seems a little more rare than others, you may go for it.

Relic Iron is the second fastest to farm, doing the chest run in the Scablands on Mars. Relic Iron farming averages 50-80 in one hour depending on how quickly you make it from chest to chest and how lucky you get with chest spawns.

But anyway, I'm going to wait a while and see if there's a safe way to unlock the extra content on the disc before buying any expansions.

After everything they scrapped and dumbed down just to get that T rating, then locking content that's on the disc, and locking people out of the Weekly Heroic if they don't have the DLC? Activision can suck it.

[Iceglow]

It's a terrible idea. If I get on an hour before weekly reset and realize I haven't hit my weekly mark cap yet, I could go turn in some of the ridiculous number of materials I have. But now I can't, and I have way too many materials, since I don't have the need to upgrade anything other than exotics at this point.

How is that a terrible idea. Whether you've spent the hour farming Relic Iron, Spin Metal, Spirit Bloom or whether you spent the hour doing fastest possible time runs through strikes on Vanguard Tiger, the resulting Vanguard mark gains was not significant for the cost. Each stack of material is capped at 200 (barring class material), that was on the original division of material in to 5 marks exchange 4 trades. Even if you do 2 or 3 exchanges, you're looking at roughly 2 hours of farming for every 10 marks. In the same time, you could go out and do more than 2 strikes and get more than 10 marks.

But anyway, I'm going to wait a while and see if there's a safe way to unlock the extra content on the disc before buying any expansions.

After everything they scrapped and dumbed down just to get that T rating, then locking content that's on the disc, and locking people out of the Weekly Heroic if they don't have the DLC? Activision can suck it.

I don't know how much you think Destiny had massive loads of data on the disc. Destiny had a lot of downloads since launch. I remember it took my 360 well over an hour on my net connection (which whilst I'm on the edge of the router's effective range it seems due to obstructions, my 360 still pulls in a reasonable down speed) to install the downloaded content day 1. That's without the patches since, some of which have taken over 30 - 45 mins to do. But by now we're well past what could have been stored on the disc. I mean sure probably you could write all of Destiny as is to a BR disc but since PS3, PS4 merely have 1 additional strike in the original release playlist and a handful of guns/armour variances not on 360/Xbox 1 it's hard to believe that either XB1 or PS4 contained all The Dark Below and it's content in the disc release.

You mean, during the launch of their new DLC, they made the Weekly Heroic the new DLC Strike? OMG! No way! What assholes!

Seriously? I mean seriously. Is that the big Activision and Bungie can suck it comment now? They made their brand new content the weekly Heroic? I'm not defending a lot of the decisions with Destiny, the game is definitely a different beast from the one that was hyped up. It certainly could never have lived up to the hype and Bungie and Activision have certainly handled the criticism poorly in some regards. Though you can see they made changes based on player feedback to a lot of the weapons and analyzed their game to bring more balance to it themselves. Not all the changes are welcome, after all the SUROS Regime master race in PvP weren't happy to see that their beloved domination of the crucible through virtue of a better gun was being nerfed. Though I can see and believe having read and watched a copious amount of open transparent articles released by Bungie that they're doing this in all for the benefit of all players.

That aside for another conversation perhaps and returning to the point of the Weekly Heroic being the Dark Below strike... Of course they did. Anyone expecting this week's weekly heroic to be anything but the DLC strikes is a self deluding fool. They're doing it for 2 reasons; Marketing - We have new content, do you have it yet? No? Oh what a shame, guess you can't do this like all your friends! And secondly because it's something new giving equal opportunity to the players who have brought their new content but don't have as much time to play the same opportunity as those with plenty of free time to do the DLC content and yet have the opportunity to play in a weekly Heroic or Nightfall. I'm not mad at all about the fact that they've done this (though I do have the DLC I suppose) but even in the position of someone who didn't purchase it I'd be fine. A little disappointed perhaps but I'd understand it's a marketing thing, when something is new, you scream about it until your lungs hurt. This is the games way of doing so.

That being said, The Dark Below's story is one which definitely feels more engaging than that of the main game. I'm not thrilled about the lack of story in beautifully depicted, well voiced cut scenes but the voice over's prior to the missions certainly contain more of what is in the Grimoire than the vanilla stories. Though I'm sorry but what I wanted from Destiny in this regard was each of the missions being opened and perhaps ended with something similar to the story snippet you obtain visiting the Queen of the Awoken in the Reef or the time you kill the Archon.

The new quest progression structure is better too though again, I'd have liked more quests and more development there than we got. Perhaps it's having worked on quest and story development for video games myself, I understand how hard this is to get right. With Destiny's mix of genre's it can't be easy either as you've got to accommodate for players varying skill and styles otherwise you risk developing a game which is so heavily scripted that it basically becomes Uncharted 3. A great game but every play through feels exactly the same. With that in mind, the changes made is a significant and welcome change but I still feel like we're taking baby steps here.

Missions generally still follow the progress and then hold point A or point B flow but I've also found especially in the Strike that it is much more "Attack point A, Take Point B and Survive at point C" this time around. There's a lot more enemies being spawned in too. Thralls now come at you in hordes of 10+ enemies. It feels dangerous even at high levels with a damn good shotgun in hand. The higher numbers have to do both with the player levels now and also because the Hive and Fallen are generally fighting their internecine wars in the areas you assault. With that in mind, the only way to ensure you're challenged is to put much more of them in there due to the weakening/killing of some by attrition.

So my review of the Dark Below is: This is more like it, but it's not quite there yet. Baby steps I guess.

[Iceglow]

Sorry for the double post but completely unrelated to the previous one. The other night I finally got to beat the Vault Of Glass for the first time (Thanks to Drassenov and her friends teaming up with me and my best mate. I started off using my scout rifle but the rate of fire was too low (it has 300 AP), so I moved over to Bad Juju and well even on full auto firing I wasn't doing great. I still needed a higher rate of fire for oracles and such. In the end I wound up using the Galahad-E rare auto rifle in my inventory... level 16 199 attack power (maxed out). Ironically, I completed the entire vault using that gun with Plan-C and my Future War Cult Rocket Launcher as backups.

Even though I was doing absolutely F'all damage per bullet I was one of the better oracle hunters in the Atheron fight. It was brutally hard but funny. I'm now looking at getting myself a legendary auto-rifle ASAP I'm just miffed that the Shadow Price isn't available

[DrAssenov]

We must do the raid again, Steve! That was really fun!

[Aulayna]

I still haven't done Vault yet... mostly because I am so terribly geared. I didn't enjoy things once I hit lv20 and it just became an uninspired grindfest that was dull by even MMO standards.

Vault looks cool, but I doubt I'll ever do it.

[DrAssenov]

I still haven't done Vault yet... mostly because I am so terribly geared. I didn't enjoy things once I hit lv20 and it just became an uninspired grindfest that was dull by even MMO standards.

Vault looks cool, but I doubt I'll ever do it.

Are you on Xbox or playstation? Sorry if you mentioned it earlier... @____@;