This week was the first week of the caches being available in the Shattered Realm, and the first week that I gave up and looked up the location of an item. One of the caches had a triumph that said it was in the shipyard, when it was in a different location, and after about 90 minutes of searching the shipyard fruitlessly I looked it up. It was a little frustrating because if the triumph hadn’t been misleading about the location I would have found it on my own. But that’s a minor thing, I still love the Shattered Realm activity.
It was also the first week the catalyst for Ager’s Scepter was available and I was lucky enough to get it on my first run of Astral Alignment for the week. I then played normally to complete it, finishing in a couple of days. It’s another well-done exotic with a lot of character and utility.
Raid-wise, we did not complete a flawless Vog run and my teammate who is missing vex mythoclast still did not get it, and we tried and failed to complete the red rover challenge in Deep Stone Crypt. It’s funny how even a good team with good players can struggle when doing something different — practice does make perfect. Pinnacles with friends on Thursday was the usual good time.
Friday rolled around and it was Trials time. With the flawless matchmaking pool pushed back to Sunday and having commitments Saturday morning I did my carry run early Friday. It was harder that the past couple of weeks but still pretty routine. The rest of the trials experience, though, was much more difficult this week, as I noted here.
In the end I wasn’t having much fun solo queuing and even with a team we were struggling as compared to other weeks. Having already gone flawless and therefore having no chance of relief when flawless matchmaking turned on I just packed it in for the week and did not play trials anymore after Saturday night. Here were my final stats for the week:
Sunday and Monday I exclusively played other crucible modes and had a pretty good time. Next week is Iron Banner, which I plan on playing a lot of, and when trials returns if the matchmaking remains the same I am not going to go flawless until Monday at the earliest.
Preview
This week we should finish off all of the nodes of the Compass, and complete all of the triumphs for Shattered Realm: Ruins of Wrath. The raid team will take another run at flawless VoG. And, as already mentioned, Iron Banner returns. We are getting towards the end of the seasonal content before the “catch up” weeks and I am going to start paying more attention to the seasonal triumphs to be sure that I am on pace to complete them all.
This week’s trials map is Wormhaven, and it’s a “Trials Lab” experiment with a control zone that unlocks 30 seconds into each round. In addition, with respect to matchmaking Bungie announced that the flawless matchmaking pool would not be in effect until Sunday’s reset.
The result has been a Friday and Saturday Trials experience that is reminiscent of pre-revamp trials. Solo queuing is a miserable experience of repeatedly facing three stacks with multiple flawless for the week. Even playing with regular-player clanmates we struggled to put together wins, though at least the matches were more competitive. The rewards if you don’t win matches are very meager, so ultimately it feels like a bad experience for poor rewards. And I am not a loot farmer, anyway. I am primarily motivated by the experience.
I went flawless as usual getting carried on Friday morning, although it was a bit more of a struggle than the last two weeks and we won “only” 18 out of 22 games. Since then, though, I solo queued 15 games and played 12 with a team of regular players, and won only 6 of those 27 games. Fully 63% of the Carried games and 60% of the Solo games were what Bungie calls “uncompetitive”. And about 27% of my solo matches were “blowouts”. (See the September 23 TWAB for what these terms mean).
Simply put, as much as this saddens me, I am not having enough fun to keep playing. Moreover, I am not sure that I would be having enough fun even at Bungie’s target metrics of under 33% Solo-Fireteam blowouts given that 75% of my Solo matches were against premade fireteams. One game out of four being a blowout — and even more being a 5-1 or 5-2 loss — does not sound like a good way to spend time, nor would it be rewarding enough given the current loot system.
When trials returns in a couple of weeks I will try to solo queue before I’ve gone flawless and after flawless matchmaking kicks in, unless they’ve changed the system. If that is a better experience, then maybe I will limit my trials playing in that way going forward. If not, though, I am going to back to my pre-revamp practice of just playing with a carry team. And I suspect that many other regular players — particularly solo players — will flee as well.
The rhythm of Destiny is becoming a PvE section from Tuesday-Thursday, a Crucible section from Friday-Sunday, and a cleanup day on Monday. Trials is dominating the online discourse about Destiny, as I posted about late last week.
My main PvE activities were finishing up everything available in the Shattered Realm: Forest of Echoes, raiding with my team on Wednesday, and doing a set of pinnacle activities with friends on Thursday. The Shattered Realm continues to impress — it was fantastic to figure out how to find everything and trigger the Ascendant Mysteries. The best part is that it was all reasonably findable so I did actually do it myself rather than get frustrated and look up a youtube video. And there are three more mysteries for the next time around. This is my favorite seasonal activity so far.
On Wednesday my raid team did Vault of Glass then hopped in to do Deep Stone Crypt. Our organizer has us on a schedule to do all of the triumphs for everyone on the team. I already have them all except for the flawless runs but I am really having fun raiding with this crew and I’m glad that we’re still doing it
Thursday pinnacles are just a good way to spend time with friends. We may change it up once all of us are at the cap; the point is to touch base and play together.
Friday the focus switched to trials. There was interest in the raid team to go in together Friday night so I got my wish and got a team together. They couldn’t be on until later than me so I did 10 solo matches first. It was a bit of a weird experience. Five of the games were against solos or duos. My team won all of them. Five of the games were against trios. We lost all of them, and in four of the five we had absolutely no chance taking just 2 rounds total in the four games. So on the one hand I went 5-5. On the other the losses were matches in which I had no chance.
I then played 19 games with teammates from the raid team. The first team we had never played together and it took us a bit to get used to each other — we lost the first two games badly and the next two 5-4. We then won five out of the next seven, and switched teams. The next team it was with someone with whom I had played a lot last week plus one of the guys from the earlier team, so we had some chemistry right away and reeled off six wins in a row before running into a very good team on game seven and losing 3-5. We then had an easy game 8 for my first non-carry flawless ever.
My first non-carried trip to the lighthouse!
I then played a few games post-flawless with one of the guys I had just played with and it was a stark change. We lost all four matches and didn’t have a chance in two of them. Our new teammate decided to leave and find some non-flawless people to go in with.
Saturday morning I played with my carry team. Despite being in the flawless pool, we cruised, winning all 17 matches and with our opponents never winning more than two rounds. The games were harder than last week but still much easier than last season, and I don’t see any team that was able to carry last season having any trouble whatsoever carrying this season.
Sunday evening I went back in intending to solo queue, and then got joined by one of the guys from the flawless team a couple of games in. And the experience was perfectly fine. I lost more than I won (1-1 solo, 4-8 Duo), but only three of the matches were matches in which we didn’t have a chance. Although my overall record on Sunday was 5-9 vs 5-5 solo-queuing on Friday, the games Sunday in the flawless pool felt better.
I played again solo queuing a few games during the workday and then more in the evening on Monday. The experience was generally ok but stomps against me were more prevalent. As I climbed the win ladder (I was working to complete a 7-win card to get one last Adept Reed’s Regret) matches seemed to get harder. And when I had one more win to go I unfortunately lost three 5-4 matches in a row and then got stomped for four matches, for a seven game loss streak before getting that seventh win. And that felt bad. But intellectually I know that if I had won any of those 5-4 games I would have stopped then and seen the experience entirely differently. Here are the final stats:
Post flawless seems to be about a one-third winning percentage solo-queue, which is not wonderful but is enough to keep me playing if the experience is otherwise good. There are still far too many stomp games — on both sides — for my taste. Out of the 83 matches I played, in only 18 — or less than 22% — did the losing team win at least three rounds. I don’t know if this is the nature of elimination or if this indicates that matches are imbalanced, but I wish there were more close games.
Preview
This coming week PvE wise is the next phase of Shattered Realm: Ruins of Wrath. I’ll do the seasonal content including that as well as my weekly pinnacle activity night with my friends, and Wednesday raid night. We are going to try for flawless Vault of Glass. On the weekend we will have a “Trials labs” with an objective and Bungie will be removing the display of the guardian count in the lobby to avoid people dodging teams. Plus, they may make matchmaking changes again — who knows? I plan on playing a lot of Trials again next week.
In this weeks’ TWAB Bungie announced the following change:
Community manager Cozmo later clarified:
Once you go flawless for the week, you start by trying to match with other flawless folks. It may eventually resort to matching against non-flawless. It resets each weekend. https://t.co/ICmbkRU8OM
A lot of feedback, overwhelmingly negative, ensued. Players that routinely go flawless or that were able to go flawless last week were very unhappy at the prospect of matching against only other flawless players after going flawless. That feedback caused a backlash against those players by players who had had worse experiences in trials last week and in earlier seasons.
In my view, there is actually a lot of common ground amongst players and even where there are differences they are differences that can be understood if not reconciled. But there have been very few people actually trying to engage and understand people on the other side of the debate. I think that if we actually listen to each other, we can get to a better understanding amongst each other and not be in a “Civil War,” as GernaderJake called it today:
Whoa.. the horrible, rude, and simply mean comments I’m seeing all over the place the last 24 hours. Say what you wanna say about these Trials changes, but I’ll tell you this:
Last week everyone was happy and positive. This week a fuckin civil war has broken out.
Here are some things that I think the vast majority of players can agree on, in order of least controversial to most controversial:
By the end of last season, Trials was not fun except for maybe the very top players (and maybe not even them).
Trials (or any PvP playlist) is better with increased population.
People will quit playing if they are having poor experiences.
I list the last as ‘most controversial’ because in earlier trials matchmaking discussions when I brought this up about average to lower-skill players, good players would respond that they players will continue to enter a playlist and get stomped if the loot system is good.
Say what you will about the feedback, but what it has made 100% clear is that experiences matter. The Trials loot system is fantastic, both in terms of generosity and ability to focus. It was a big driver of people reentering the playlist, or entering for the first time, last week. And it was a big driver of people staying in the playlist last week. That system was not changed from last week to this week.
What did change is the experience of players that go flawless, after they go flawless. And over and over again people have said that their experiences got worse enough that they will not play for the rest of the weekend after they go flawless. Even though they did last week, and the loot was the same. What changed is the experience.
All of the players that are themselves deciding, and loudly proclaiming, that the loot is not enough incentive for them to keep playing once they dislike their experience should recognize that the same dynamics apply to less-skilled players that don’t go flawless and have consistently bad experiences in the non-flawless lobby. If good players know that they would quit in flawless lobbies, they should see that less-skilled players are going to quit in non-flawless lobbies if they have the same experience. And everyone would recognize that less-skilled players quitting is a problem unless they are replaced.
By the same token, less-skilled players should recognize that average to good players playing great players and having bad experiences feels just as bad as their own bad experiences. There should be some empathy about that rather than accusations that anyone and everyone bringing up these concerns is an elitist that just wants to stomp on lesser-skilled players all the time.
Some Important, and Maybe Irreconcilable, Differences
Everyone has their own threshold for a minimum acceptable experience. And though I knew that before these past two weeks, it’s now become apparent that those thresholds vary widely. Datto, one of the best Destiny PvE players in the world, said this about playing Trials last week:
Chevy, another of the best PvE players in the world, solo-queued into trials this week for the first time. Here is what he had to say:
Worst experience I've ever had in this video game, or in any game really.
First and last time of playing Trials.
Good luck Guardians, I'll literally never step foot in there again no matter the rewards.
These are incredible PvE players who are decent-to-good PvP players. Datto can and has gone flawless. Chevy held his own very well (better than me!) in solo-queue trials. I would be content with their experiences. They are not. They don’t want to play anymore. Likewise, at least some other players feel like their experiences are bad even when I think that same experience for me and many other players would be good. This guy hates the flawless matchmaking pool EVEN THOUGH HE CAN GO FLAWLESS IN IT:
Understanding that these differences exist helps us understand the challenge Bungie has in front of it. Bungie needs to minimize the number of people that have experiences below their minimum acceptable level to remain in the playlist. Leaving the playlist for the weekend but then coming back the following week is less bad than leaving the playlist forever, but both are bad. But what does Bungie do with a player that is only happy if they go into every match as a 90% favorite, if there are no players that are ok with going into matches as a 90% underdog? It’s likely not possible to come up with a matchmaking scheme that will satisfy everyone — even last week’s did not satisfy Datto and likely did not satisfy a bunch of lesser-skilled players that had an excessive amount of 5-0 losses. Because in a system where round wins are how you get loot, then no matter how good that loot is and how good the focusing system is you are going to be frustrated when you make zero progress while losing match after match.
If we all start from the principle that everyone’s opinion and experience deserves the same consideration and respect — not agreement or action, but consideration and respect — then these online discussions will stop feeling like a “civil war.”
This was a bifurcated week: the beginning was all PvE and Gambit, from Friday on it was the Trials revamp and PvP until I returned to PVE on Sunday night to hang out with friends. The hive-themed Shattered realm map (Ruins of Wrath) was revealed and along with it the last of our ‘buffs’ for the activity — Safe Passage, which eliminates the effects of the slow/suppression fields for a short time. As has been usual I had a great time exploring the map and trying to find all of the secrets myself. I don’t think I got everything — there was one building I couldn’t figure out how to get to yet — but I got a lot and doing all of the exploring myself was a lot of fun. And the story that’s playing out over this season continues to be great.
I also raided twice, once with iLulu on her stream and then with my regular raid group. Both were fun and efficient, though one of our team is still looking for Vex to drop and it didn’t happen. After the raid the team went into Astral Alignment and knocked out all of the triumphs except the “destroy all ether” one, on the first try. It’s great to play with such a cool team.
On Thursday I played many, many Gambit matches until I reached a Gambit reset. It was surprisingly fun. For some reason being invaded didn’t bother me that much and the games were usually pretty fast paced.
Friday launched the revamped Trials, and I already posted my initial impressions. After that I continued to play a little and ended up with a total of 51 matches played, pretty much evenly split between a team with very good players (a Carry team, 17 matches), a team of regular players (a Regular Team, 16 matches), and solo and duo queuing (9 matches each, total of 18 matches). These were the results:
The difference between having a team and not is stark, and having a regular team was easily the most fun. It may be that my solo queue experience was worse because I had already gone flawless, so I am going to try solo queue again this coming Friday to see.
Preview
This week we get back into the Forest of Echoes for the first time with all of the buffs. I am looking forward to getting out to the platform off in the sky with the statue on it to see what is there, and to finding out if there are other secrets. I am also looking forward to another fun week of Trials and am going to start to figure out how to get a regular team going. Also, now that I’ve hit the pinnacle cap on all of my characters it is time to figure out what my weekly routine will be for the season.
The big news in Destiny this week is the launch of revamped Trials of Osiris, to overwhelmingly positive reaction. I played a lot of games on Saturday in a variety of situations: 17 games with my main carry team of very good players plus me; about 7 games duo queue , 5 games of solo queuing, and then 16 games with two other regular gamers, one on my level and one a bit higher. The order might matter here since Bungie has said that matchmaking takes into account your “performance” that week. Here are my first impressions.
Gameplay changes
Three-peeking via sword hilts or emotes have been disabled in Trials (and Survival) and Trials rounds have been reduced from two minutes to 90 seconds. These are fantastic changes that vastly improve the experience. Being three-peeked was very frustrating and I’m happy for it to be gone from the game.
Loot Changes
Tokens are gone, and now just completing matches increases reputation towards rewards and results in trials engrams. We get enhanced progress the more rounds (not matches) we win, up to a total of 20 rounds won for max progression. If you are on a flawless card (7 wins no losses) and continue to play, every additional win has a chance to drop another roll of the adept weapon of the week as well as ascendant shards and other materials. And just playing on a 7 win card has a chance to drop enhanced rewards.
Frankly, I could not be more impressed with this loot system. Everybody gets something just for playing; playing a lot gets you more, and playing a lot successfully gets you even more. It will now be trivial for top players to get the exact god rolls they want on adept weapons but I don’t see that as a problem since the adept weapons are not overwhelmingly better than the regular versions that everyone has access to. And they’re using loot to incentivize high-skill players to stay on seven-win cards to help matchmaking for teams on lower-win cards.
Matchmaking Changes
It is now possible to solo queue and duo queue into Trials. Weekly ‘performance’ is also now taken into account in matchmaking, though it is not clear how.
The change to the loot structure and promotion of Trials for this week resulted in a huge amount of interest and a lot of people jumping in without fireteams. That’s fantastic for population and having more players is better for everyone. That said, my first impression is that the solo queue experience is not good and I expect that I will not be playing solo queue unless the experience is different before you go flawless. Here’s how it went:
My first 17 games were with an exceptional team and we won all of them. Our first two games were against other teams of three, and then only two of the rest of the 15 games were against other teams. And we rolled uncoordinated teams. Frankly, if all of the games were like this I’m not sure Trials would sustain my interest beyond loot farming.
My games duo queuing with a good but less experienced player were ok, and about what I expected. Our first five games went 5-4 loss, two stomp losses and two wins. We then lost a couple more stomps and quit but overall it was ok, at least for the beginning of the card.
I then stayed on that card and solo queued for a while. It was terrible. Every match was against a team of three (in contrast to my experience in the morning). And we got stomped every time. These were the matches and my performance:
I then played with two regular players from my raid team, one on my level and one a bit more skilled. We had never played crucible together before, We fell at the gates of the lighthouse twice but had plenty of success and a lot of fun. It was great, even not making flawless. Here was my performance.
These 21 matches were back-to-back, so same time of day and same matchmaking pools.
Solo queue stats: 0 wins, 5 losses, 9 kills, 28 deaths, 0.32 k./d. All against premade teams.
Team queue stats: 12 wins, 4 losses, 99 kills, 69 deaths, 1.43 k/d. Mix between premade and matchmade teams.
I didn’t suddenly get miles better, so the difference (aside from randomness) is either the difference between having a team and not or the difference between solo queuing with a flawless that week and team queuing with a team member that doesn’t have a flawless that week. I’m going to solo queue next Friday to see what the experience is like, but unless it is materially different I don’t see a lot of solo queue Trials in my future unless there are changes.
The best possible change would in my view be a freelance playlist. Premade teams have such a big advantage that having solo queue players in their own playlist would greatly enhance their experience.
At a bare minimum something must be done about having the matchmaking indicator show the number of players assigned to a lobby during matchmaking. As it is, premade teams can force matches with solos or duos by backing out of matchmaking if they see that indicator go from 3/6 to 6/6 all at once. Everyone knows it’s possible, and so everyone knows that people do it. And no one likes feeling taken advantage of. Yes, solos sign up for the possibility of randomly matching teams. They do not sign up for the possibility of preferentially matching teams where they will have a massive disadvantage.
Conclusion
A problem with PvP changes generally is that even when a change is healthy, usually some players will benefit from it and others will be harmed. And since the natural human thing to do is oppose things that harm us, most people oppose PvP changes that they think harm them even if it’s overall better for the game or the population as a whole. What Bungie has managed here is to come up with a package of changes that has benefits for everyone and therefore enjoys broad support, at least initially. Very well done!
My clan’s leader asked us today whether we think using seasonal mods and rotating champion mods is a better way to ‘control and manipulate metas’ than sunsetting. I think it’s an interesting enough question that I thought I’d answer it here and give him a link.
First, we should recognize that the question assumes that metas will in fact be changed by Bungie. This by itself is not accepted by all players; some players like to find a particular loadout that works for them and then use it for everything and are resentful when changes are made. I like to use a variety of weapons so I enjoy meta changes. Neither of these preferences is objectively ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, they are just personal preferences — see my post What Kind of Destiny Player Are You for more thoughts on this.
Assuming that Bungie will change metas, the seasonal mod system is a far better method than sunsetting. Sunsetting was only meta changing when it removed the ability to use certain outlier weapons, like Mountaintop or Recluse, in high-level content. But it also removed a lot of other weapons that caused no issues, as witnessed by the fact that many were reintroduced with the same perks. And players resented having to reacquire a weapon with the exact same perks just because of sunsetting. Moreover, when non-outlier weapons were sunset other similar weapons remained available. Patron of Lost Causes was sunset, but we had Night Watch, for example. Thus, sunsetting served to only change part of the meta — the outliers — with high overhead that affected all weapons and armor.
The seasonal mods, in contrast, don’t permanently change any weapons or armor. Instead, they make some weapons or subclasses stronger, for one season. Their temporary nature means that Bungie can risk going too far, and so we have seen extremely powerful mods like Breach and Clear in Season 14 and now Particle Deconstruction in Season 15. Those can be a lot of fun, but would lead to power creep if they were permanent.
Every season we see complaints that the champion mods are too restrictive because they mandate the use of certain weapons to deal with champions. But in anything other than the highest difficulty level content champions can be dealt with without the mods. It is simply more efficient to use the mods than not. As for the most difficult content, that always requires the best loadout possible. And it is a better system to have some weapons buffed temporarily (and therefore become the best for that time) than to have permanent changes like sunsetting.
This week was the first Iron Banner of the season and my first serious foray into PvP following all of the changes. As has become my custom I tracked all my games in a spreadsheet. I played a total of 57 games to complete all of my bounties: 22 on Hunter, 18 on Warlock, and 17 on Titan. Of the four bounties this week — Defeats with Zone Advantage, Opponent Defeats, Weapon Final Blows, and Ability Final Blows — the Weapon Final Blows took the longest to complete. It appears that we get bonus progress for multi-kills for the final blow bounties, so where I got multiple kills with supers (easier on Warlock and Titan) the ability bounty went quickly. All of my games were solo queue.
Once again I actively dodged stacks, including just leaving games immediately against six-stacks the two times I could not leave the match during matchmaking. Eleven of my games were in the freelance playlist as well. I did not notice an appreciable difference in the quality of matches. One quarter of the games were mercies, which is down a bit from past Iron Banners.
Overall I greatly enjoyed the Iron Banner experience this week. Games were more even than in the past and I felt like I could be competitive with a variety of weapons (though Vex Mythoclast was clearly very strong). I won more than I lost, going 35-22, which I’m sure helped enhance my satisfaction, but even during a stretch where I lost six games out of seven I was having a good time
On the PvE side, we got a new scorn-infested Shattered Realm map, and got the True Sight buff unlocked which shows hidden platforms in the Realms. Shattered Realm continues to be the highlight of the seasonal activities, with Astral Alignment being ok but not something that is so compelling that I want to do it more than the minimum requirements. I also maxed out rank for both Vanguard and Crucible so I got the ritual rocket launcher for the season and can now work on the Vanguard and Crucible ornaments given for the second rank reset.
Levelling went pretty well. I got to 1330 on my Hunter and Titan. Unfortunately my Warlock had awful luck on pinnacle drops and still needs leg and chest armor to drop at 1330 to get there. On the one hand, that kind of bad luck continues to feel bad, but on the other since leveling means relatively little it doesn’t have a tremendous impact on my day-to-day experience.
Preview
We should get the third Shattered Realm map this week and I am looking forward to exploring it and to unlocking the last of the buffs, “Safe Passage”. In addition it is double Infamy week so I think I will be playing some extra gambit on at least a couple of days to get through my first Infamy reset. Most importantly, TRIALS returns on Friday. I am excited to see how the new systems work and to get back in there, and also to see how regular crucible feels on non-iron banner weeks.
This was the first week of Season of the Lost! The first couple of weeks of any season for me are primarily about (1) trying out new things; and (2) levelling up. I played a lot of the new activities and enjoyed them, and posted my initial thoughts yesterday. Beyond that it was all about levelling.
Levelling in Destiny 2 can be a frustrating experience, because (1) the most efficient ways to do it often requires doing specific things in a specific order and of those things require a fireteam you either need to have people ready to play when you are, LFG, or wait; and (2) you are at the mercy of RNG for drops. For example, at one point I needed a powerful helmet on one character and got three cloaks out of four powerful drops (the fourth was also not a helmet).
That said, at this point in Destiny 2 levelling has limited purposes:
Levelling matters in iron banner and trials, but with the cap at 1330 and artifact levelling not mattering, you are ok pretty much as soon as you get to 1321 (i.e., one level).
Levelling matters for Master Nightfalls and Lost Sectors, which are at 1350.
Levelling matters for Master VoG which is now 1360.
Levelling will matter when they bring back Grandmaster Nightfalls in October (will need to be 1345.)
And that’s pretty much it. With artifact I’m well into the 1330s so I have no levelling issues, and I expect that with any reasonable RNG I will be at 1330 or close on at least one character by the end of next week.
In addition to levelling my priorities are to get the new exotics and try out the new guns. I used the Legend lost sectors to get all of the new exotics, though the only one I really tried was Nothing Manacles. I also ran a lot of strikes to try to get the ritual rocket launcher but am not quite at level 16 yet. Crucible took a back seat to PvE this week.
Preview
Iron Banner is coming this week with the opportunity for four extra pinnacles and so this week will be a lot more Crucible focused. I’ll also be trying to manage the power grind to level up my characters as quickly as possible, while trying out whatever new things come up (I expect a different shattered realm, and I’m hoping for a change to the seasonal activity). I’m also keeping an eye on all of the seasonal triumphs to look for opportunities to get those.
It’s a great time to be playing Destiny, the biggest risk is overdoing it.
It’s been a huge week in Destiny with the Witch Queen reveal and start of Season of the Lost. There’s lots of new things coming in Witch Queen that I expect will bring a new wave of interest in the game. And in the meantime, for the next six months, we have Season of the Lost. Here are my initial impressions:
Seasonal Activity: Astral Alignment
The seasonal six person activity follows the model of seasonal activities before: a couple of tasks/stages to get to the boss, and then a boss fight. This first week it takes place in the Dreaming City. Bungie has spiced it up a bit by adding some mechanics to learn to make the encounters go smoother (i.e., you can clear without them, but it’s easier if you know them) which will add a bit of interest particularly early in the season. In general this activity meets my expectations for a seasonal activity. I expect to enjoy it for the first few weeks but be more than happy to stop playing it once all of the new seasonal challenges are done.
Quest: Shattered Realm: Forest of Echoes
A really nice surprise is getting a new soloable activity like the expunges right from the beginning, and this one has mysteries! This is easily my favorite part of the new season so far, and I’ve really enjoyed exploring the arena and trying to figure out how everything works. There are definitely a few kinks — it does seem possible to put yourself in a spot that is very difficult and maybe impossible to get out of and multiple deaths don’t seem to reset your respawn point. (I was lucky enough to find myself on a titan when I got into one and managed to get out with creative use of thundercrash.) But overall this activity is just absolutely fantastic.
Part of the quest is finding Ascendant Anchors and unlike prior hidden things we had to find these are scattered and sometimes hidden but pretty much all not too hard to find if you are actually looking for them. I really appreciate that because I’ve been able to actually explore and look for them myself rather than getting frustrated and just looking up locations on Youtube.
I thought expunge was great last season but this is even better and I’m just thrilled with it.
Vendor rank-up changes
Vendor rank-ups for Gambit, Crucible and Nightfalls/Strikes are now all on a similar scale with bonus progress being given for activity streaks — that is, playing the same activity over and over — rather than win streaks:
For me, this is a mixed bag. I like that the systems are the same and that progress is similar for each. I don’t like that the most efficient way to gain progress is to play the same activity over and over again. I like to vary my play more than that and will get restless after about an hour of doing any activity. Moreover, though Bungie said that breaks to go to the tower would not interrupt a streak, there does seem to be some kind of timer on it because I have lost a streak even without doing anything other than going to the tower and then taking a break.
EDIT (08/31/2021): I’ve now seen that streaks persist even overnight, so I think what happened is that I was time out to orbit for inactivity at the Tower and that reset my streak.
I would feel much better if the activity streak concept were expanded to count all daily activity rather than having to start over if you need to take a break or want to do something else for a bit.
Trials of Osiris
Bungie announced lots of trials changes, but trials will not return until September 10 so I won’t give my thoughts until I’ve had a chance to play.
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All in all, a great start to the season. I’m looking forward to it.
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