Destiny

[Griddlelol]

So where's Destiny at now? I've not played it in a while, and I'd like to play again. Has it devolved into 90% PvP?

[Mike Danger]

So where's Destiny at now? I've not played it in a while, and I'd like to play again. Has it devolved into 90% PvP?

 

Here's my take as someone who got back into it recently:

 

There are basically 2 big end-game activities:

 

- Trials of Osiris: This is the PVP endpoint (for lack of a better word). It's like Iron Banner but even more punishing (how good your loot is is tied to how well you perform - if you don't win a lot of games, you're going to have a hard time getting the Osiris set items/weapons) and running every weekend . I haven't played it yet because I'm intimidated by the level of teamwork that seems to be involved in winning a lot and I don't seem to see a lot of events get created for it.

 

- Prison of Elders: This is the PVE endpoint and is a rough approximation of Firefight from Halo, with players going through different waves of enemies that culminate in a boss fight. It can sometimes be very frustrating (there's little to no explanation of the different bosses' mechanics, so if you haven't done a fight before or Googled for info it can be very confusing) but I like it. I haven't done the Skolas fight, which is the Big Final Boss of the game right now in terms of level, but people seem to have mixed opinions about it. If I have one big complaint it's that the rounds (especially the ones with objectives mixed in, like "kill this VIP") seem to take forever and the arenas don't seem to have any gradation between "this is a safe place" and "this is a place where enemies will kill you" - you never 

 

Overall, I've been having fun. I usually log on and do the daily bounties, knock out the Nightfall one or two times for the week, and sometimes I do a raid or Prison of Elders on the weekend. I'd like to try doing Iron Banner now that I have a character at the level cap with some maxed out gear. Sometimes I wish there was more new stuff (which seems to be the eternal refrain of Destiny) but it's a nice game to play when I get home and don't have the brain bandwidth for something else.

[JonCole]

This is my schedule -

 

Tuesday/Wednesday - Nightfall, Weekly Heroic Strike, Crucible

Thursday/Friday - Raids, Prison of Elders, Crucible

Saturday/Sunday - Trials of Osiris

Monday - Catch-up before reset

 

To me, PvP is a huge focus because 1) I have more fun with it on a moment-to-moment basis than PvE and 2) Trials of Osiris rewards are the best time/effort/reward ratio for me personally. I have the potential to win 9 Etheric Light, 3 Elemental Primary Weapons, and 6+ Exotics every week just from Trials. Then again, my performance is such that this amounts to something like 6-ish hours per weekend while I'm sure others could spend far more time without getting all the rewards.

 

That being said, I still have a really good time with the raids and POE. POE is fairly casual for me at this point, I often end up completing the 32/34 within an hour each and the rewards are not insignificant. The raids still reward some of the best gear in the game - heavy boots, excellent heavy weapons, good elemental primaries, etc. Raid rewards even help in PvP - heavy ammo boots, Praedyth's Revenge, Found Verdict, Swordbreaker and Black Hammer are fairly common in Crucible/Trials teams (I've even been wrecked by guys using Fatebringer, VOC, and Praedyth's Timepiece believe it or not).

 

My overall assessment of the current endgame is that there are now enough activities that even a casual player should have more than enough options for things to do on a daily basis.

[Griddlelol]

Thanks for the replies. That's cool. I don't know if I can do the weekly stuff though. If it doesn't have matchmaking I'm pretty much out.

POE sounds kinda fun, I've not experienced that.

 

Seeing it mentioned in the "forever games" thread made me want to try it again. Especially as it certainly has the ability to be one of those games now there's a chunk of extra content.

[JonCole]

You should really check out the100.io site that many of us have been using. It's like LFG or an MMO's guild/clan system but 10x easier. You can joins groups local to your timezone, similar to your playstyle/age/gender/whatever, etc. It makes the non-matchmaking modes a lot more doable and better yet lets you add more people to your friends list that you may be able to recruit for games later on.

[Professor Video Games]

Getting a crew together for a raid or PoE isn't actually too bad. You can usually pull at least a few people from here via our 100.io group, plus at least one person in a group can usually pull in an extra friend or two in a bind. Plus like JonCole said, you can additionally join more general groups and in my experience they have events popping up fairly regularly.

 

I'd say the endgame is pretty well fleshed out at this point. Unless you are a hardcore 3x every event every week kinda guy, it's fairly difficult to deplete the endgame activities of drops and such especially if you are only digging into them now (and even then they are still fun to do). In a given week I'll usually end up doing some combination of Nightfall, PoE, and a raid depending on my schedule, plus PvP or some bounties when I'm in the mood and have a little time to kill.

[Thrik]

I did a few things in Destiny then got distacted by PlanetSide 2. If I were to give it another shot, would I find that there's much in the way of narrative/story to the quests — and if so, how many hours worth — before I get to all this endless end game stuff, or is it really not a game that has much in that regard? I'm craving some sweet sci-fi story and am finding my options limited unless I go back and replay Mass Effect.

[JonCole]

Story is threadbare. For me, the most ready comparison is something like Dark Souls where you're reading the equivalent of item descriptions and taking tiny lines of dialogue to chart an idea of what the greater story is. And considering the actual amount of narrative content is substantially less than DS, a lot of the lore-analysis is highly dependent on speculation and such.

 

In short, this is not the game for that.

[Griddlelol]

Cool I joined the100.io group. I'll figure out how to use it when I get home from work. 

 

Quite nicely, a lot of the players sync up with my early morning play (I generally play before work because I'm up anyway).

 

Is there a way to join more than one group?

[JonCole]

Use the "Browse Groups" function at the top of the page. You can narrow the search to your liking and then go to a group's page to join them. I think you can join 3 public groups at maximum and unlimited private groups.

[Griddlelol]

Ok cool, that should really help with the matchmaking issue. I still don't get why there's no matchmaking for everything but hardcore pvp. 

[Azniac]

So I stopped playing Destiny a little while before The Dark Below released, and I just got back into it last week. Wow, a lot's changed.

 

Some thoughts:
 

1) It's so much easier to hit the level-cap now. I was one of those "forever-29's" before I stopped playing. I never could get the last piece of gear I needed to hit 30, and it only dropped from Vault of Glass. The same day I started playing again, I jumped to 32 and a half, as a result of buying Vanguard/Crucible gear and upgrading one of my exotic helmets. A few friends backpacked me through Prison of Elders, and I ended up hitting 34 a couple days after I started. I'm still looking to replace some of my armor with pieces that have better perks, but at least now I can participate in end-game content.

 

2) Everyone. Uses. Thorn. It's a monster in PvP post-buff. The Last Word is also insanely powerful. I'm already looking forward to the 2.0 update to balance the weapons a little bit.

 

3) Trials of Osiris is really fun. I'm not amazing at PvP, but I'd like to think I'm not terrible. Haven't gone flawless yet, but I've gotten close a couple times. It's hit-or-miss. Sometimes there's a string of horrible teams we'd play against, and other times we'd get destroyed 5-0. I run the MIDA Multi-Tool in PvP, and it's a nice gun, but it can't stand against 3 Thorns being fired through doorways.

 

I also started grinding for the legendary pulse rifle that drops after Dragon Strikes: the Hopscotch Pilgrim. Aside from the amazing name, it looks like it's a fantastic weapon for PvP. I've been keeping a counter of the number of strikes it'll take before the gun drops - I'm currently at 13. So far, I've had several legendary engrams and a couple other legendary weapons drop, so I'm glad that Bungie finally added decent rewards to the Strike playlist.

 

I'm definitely going to end up picking up the Taken King, but I'm not sure if I'll play regularly until then, or if I'll stop once I feel like I've gotten my characters decent gear.

[JonCole]

I really want a Hopscotch Pilgrim as well since I've started to really warm up to The Messenger (the Trials PR that only comes out of the flawless chest or silver/gold packages). From everything I've heard Hopscotch has better stability and can be rerolled which makes it an overall better choice. Messenger can kill in two bursts as long as all of the hits are precision. I've actually really given some Thorn/TLW users some problems using it at mid-to-long range as you really have to be a pro to use those 1) at range 2) with repeated headshots.

 

MIDA is actually not a horrible choice for this week's Trials map, Cauldron. If you have the A spawn, I imagine you could do some work with it just hanging out near the spawn and taking out people who get careless around the B-heavy area. Also, the mobility could really move you across that map in seconds considering it's so small. If you're very comfortable with Mida, I'd recommend generally running the flank game. If you have the ability to blink, you could outflank almost anyone by the Mida speed boost + blink, you'd have Mida for long-range potshots and safe hard scoping, and you'd have blink shotgun to close distance quickly if someone tries to crush your flank.

[Azniac]

Yeah, I roll bladedancer and blink's definitely the way to go. MIDA's mobility boost combined with agility perks in the class makes for a super mobile hunter. The only thing that'd make it better are a pair of Radiant Dance Machines. I still need a bit more practice with using scout rifles in PvP though. It's powerful, but I should consider hanging further back when I'm taking shots with the MIDA. I could just be a little rusty too, after months of not playing. Regardless, I'm glad there's a high-level PvP mode. Vanilla Crucible matches doesn't hold my interest for too long, and I love the fact that Trials is Elimination.

 

A Hopscotch Pilgrim dropped for a random that I matched with during a Strike and my jealousy was palpable. It looks like some of the perks you can roll on it are absolutely amazing, and you can end up with enough Aim Assist that you'll land headshots almost every time. I need it.

[aprettycooldude]

A big shoutout thank you to everyone in that Saturday Crota raid; I couldn't have asked for a better first raid experience or group of folks to play with. Even though I was only 32 and not nearly as geared as everyone else, I felt welcomed, and had probably one of the best times I've ever had playing Destiny. If there was ever a reason to keep playing this game, it's runs like that.

 

Next time I'll make sure to bring a toothbrush before we run the raid.

[Mike Danger]

anyone up for an extremely belated nightfall tonight? aprettycooldude and I are probably going to run it since I leveled my titan to 32 over the weekend

[Griddlelol]

What time (and time zone)?

[Mike Danger]

What time (and time zone)?

Probably like 7/8 PM EST?

[JonCole]

Random tip that I saw while browsing Destiny subreddits - if you want easy level 32 gear (36 light level), run Trials of Osiris with other underleveled people. You'll almost certainly lose, but the random drops are all 36 light.

[Vasari]

I wish I had a good group for Trials. My friends only raid and are all terrible at PvP, so I have to LFG it which is a crapshoot. Would anyone here be interested in getting together and going for the Lighthouse?

[Professor Video Games]

I'm pretty middle of the road when it comes to PvP (a KDR of 1.0 on the nose), but I'd be willing to give it a shot. The few times I've done Trials it's been with random groups and I've had mixed results as well. Would be good to have a regular team for it.

[JonCole]

I'm pretty open to playing Trials with pretty much any of you guys. I used to really advocate that people regularly try to practice with the same group, but after having played as much Trials as I have I think it's less important that the exact same people play together. What's more important is playing regular Crucible enough with each other that we speak the same vocabulary when it comes to the maps and tactics.

 

This is probably the biggest benefit I feel when I play Trials with people from my clan; since we all pretty regularly play Crucible with each other, when we're playing Cauldron and someone says "I'm going to flank through lower heavy" or "someone keep the door open so I can get the res-snipe" we all know exactly what's going on. When we spawn near C in Cauldron, I can expect that when we enter the B room everyone will take a different approach - one person will be by the far left stairs adjacent to the door to A, one person will likely be sniping from the B-heavy door, and the other person will be on the stairs adjacent to the door to C. These are tactics that are too natural to communicate via voice but are sorely felt when I'm trying to snipe through the door and my view is continually being obstructed.

 

My point is this - if we want to make an effort to play Trials as a group, we should try to spend more time doing regular Crucible together. For people with time restraints with respect to the game, this might be a problem and you might have to prioritize PvP over PvE in order to reach that level of comfort that begets good runs.

[Vulpes Absurda]

I've been trying to do five PVP matches a day for the last two weeks to prep for trials so if anyone is looking to get some practice in feel free to join me when you see me on. I've also have been thinking about starting a weekly PVP event on the 100 where we try to get three plus people together every Saturday if that seems like a good idea..

[Griddlelol]

I'm using a scout rifle and I think I was the only person doing so. It was just pulse rifles and hand canons. My two most hated guns. One guy was two shotting me with hand canon body shots.

[Vasari]

I've spent more time doing PvP than anything else in Destiny. I'd love to play some matches with people here to practice. Remember I'm on UK time though so I won't be up as late as you.