DESTINY 2 September 8th....XBOX,PS4 and PC!

[Peppermint Lounge]

I'll log in and have a look. I've been capitalising on the lull before Witch Queen to have a break from D2 to play other games.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Was fine for me. An annoyance I get with D2 however including just now is it resets video settings back to 1080p. Not too taxing but occasionally it also glitches my HDR settings requiring me to fiddle around to get it right again.

[Gamma]

Reading around, it doesn't seem to hit many people but if it does, there doesn't seem to be a resolution. At first I was still going to use it with the intention of just sitting in Orbit and cleaning up my inventory with DIM on the other monitor, but I can't even get to the log in screen now. The darkness devoured four destinations, the marmots took the rest.

I realised the legendary shattered realms were up so I gave the forest a go solo last night... how naive of me. Tried about four completely different loadouts before I managed to get past the abbey, but kept getting caught by the phalanx's homing bullshit during the second beacon. Very challenging to cover both the champion types and match game by yourself without ending up with a wonky loadout. Smoke bombs are great for survival (I was on my Hunter), but then if I'm running a void subclass I can't afford to have any void weapons... and Le Monarque was really effective. Might take the Warlock for a spin.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Rorschach are you in on Witch Queen + seasons? Assuming yes for Gamma.

[Rorschach]

Yep, sure am. I have two weeks off now as well.

[Gamma]

You assume correctly. Ended up grabbing the 30th Anniversary content + WQ pre-order. The new dungeon (Grasp of Avarice) is a blast, had a great time going in blind. I liked Dares of Eternity the first half a dozen times but I'll be dropping it like a hot sack of shit as soon as I reach rank 16 and unlock everything. The bounties suck (competing with other players for final blows with weapons I don't want to use) and the number of completions required to actually get the content you pay for is excessive. Grindy game is grindy, in other news the sky is blue.

Loving the complete lack of Stasis in the trailer, it'll be a welcome change. I am a bit concerned that Void 3.0 will be another step sideways rather than forward, but as things are now I only switch to void Hunter or Titan if I have to match the strike singe, I don't really enjoy using either of them so I guess the only way is up. Just don't break my voidlock pls Bungo.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Just an FYI. I upgraded my GPU recently. I haven't been playing D2 much but the couple of times I logged in to do some chores I was getting a lot of stutter. In particular the Exo Challenge on Europa. The stutter appeared when enemies appeared and it was bad. I fixed it by running a Windows disk cleanup and checked the box to delete Direct X shader cache. Since running that it's smooth as silk again.

And yes I'm paid up for full Witch Queen, seasons and 30th anni pack.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Preload complete. Launches proper at 4am tomorrow morning (23/2 AEDT).

[Peppermint Lounge]

After preordering in Dec I honestly wasn't at all pumped for Witch Queen/Season of the Risen as the launch drew near. The previous season went for months as Bungie worked on the new release and I was bored. Even playing through the first Witch Queen campaign mission I wasn't feeling it. I came around soon after and can say Bungie nailed it. Witch Queen is the best D2 campaign so far (exceeding Red War and Forsaken IMO). Loving the new zone, quests, weapons and updated weapon levelling/crafting.

[Gamma]

The campaign is really good, there's a lot of variety and surprises. I played a fair bit of it solo on legendary but the baddies became bullet spongey enough in the last few missions that it started to hurt the pacing, so I phoned a friend. Loved that it was challenging without restricting our loadouts via Champions, the Lightbearer Hive are great and the Lucent Moths are a cool gameplay dynamic. The new areas are expansive and fun to explore, there seems to be quite a lot of little secrets hidden around the place. Soundtrack is top tier too.

Crafting hasn't really landed for me- feels like a lot of hoops to jump through for guns that don't really stand out, and most of the appealing Deepsight weapons I've seen turn out to not be available for crafting. At this stage I think I prefer just playing the game and seeing what drops. I expect it'll only improve throughout the year, and the raid and Wellspring weapons (still haven't played it) may yet change my mind. Void 3.0 has impressed me more than I expected, it's very powerful and a lot of fun.

My cheeky stashed exotic engram from last season decrypted to a great roll on the new Warlock boots before I'd completed the campaign, so I've got both of the new exotics already. Every season Bungie claims this won't work, every season I prove them wrong.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I started Veteran but hit a point where it was taking too long to fell some of the more spongey enemies. No friends to phone so I dropped it back to normal. A much more enjoyable way to hit the story points and it was still a decent challenge in spots. Some excellent boss fights. I'll have another crack at Veteran but will need to read some build guides I think.

[Rorschach]

Hot damn, the Dungeon of Avarice is ridiculous. What I thought was an hour mission turned into three and half hours of grinding. So happy to complete it.

[Peppermint Lounge]

GG. Thanks for the invite. Took me another half hour to unwind after that.

[Rorschach]

Work was rough today - pretty tired. Worth it to finish that dungeon - I actually enjoyed it but was not prepared at all for how long it took. Basically a three man raid. That sparrow section sucked large balls.

[Peppermint Lounge]

After getting a chest piece I want the rest of the armour now.

[Gamma]

It's a sweet set, I've turned it into ornaments for the Warlock. Eventually will man up and tackle Master difficulty, the armour drops with an additional perk slot which I think will be really handy for chucking a cheap mod into to activate things like Powerful Friends and Radiant Light. The sparrow section can be really frustrating the first time but once you know where all of the buttons are it's pretty easy on subsequent runs. Same with the ogre encounter, it takes ages the first time because you have to start the whole thing again if anyone slips up. Knowing where the traps and switches are in the first bit really helps too. Still feels like a relatively long dungeon but it won't take you three hours in future.

Finished a second run of the new raid last night. I expected this raid to be a huge pain in the arse because of all of the symbols you need to learn (25?), but I'm really getting into it. One of our guys was late but we managed to get through the first half and complete this weeks raid challenge with five of us, then he turned up and we smashed through the rest. Such a cool final boss fight... Atheon and the classic "Guardians make their own fate" will always be a high point for me but the mechanics when fighting this new guy are top notch.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I suspect we'd breeze past the sparrow sections now. On our first runs we thought we had to disembark at points A, B and so on to wait for the timer. We were pleased to eventually learn that wasn't necessary.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Had a blast playing and completing the Parasite exotic quest line last night. Engaging story, fun as a solo, great final fight. That the weapon is fun to use is a bonus.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Also did the Report Pyramid-Inspect quest you pick up from the evidence board on Mars. I think that's the raid location? It looks amazing. Super cool area to play through.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I've yet to buy Lightfall as I've been heavily engaged with another game but have keenly watched the reception knowing that I'll pick it up soon. It's not been received well so far it seems with Steam averaging 'mostly negative'. I'm avoiding spoilers but even the more bullish takes talk of things needing to be fixed while many reviews bag it out completely. For example:

https://www.gamesradar.com/destiny-2-lightfall-review/

Forget the bounds of Destiny for a minute; Lightfall has one of the worst campaigns I've experienced in any video game in recent memory. How on god's green earth did we go from The Witch Queen, handily the best story Bungie has ever produced, to this? Lightfall is a staggering downgrade that makes me worry for The Final Shape, the expansion meant to cap off the game's Light and Darkness saga in 2024. Big story arcs like this are about time and momentum, and Lightfall has simultaneously wasted everyone's time and all but killed the hard-won momentum from the past year. The Witch Queen demonstrated the true potential of Destiny's universe, but Lightfall repeats its greatest failures. It's infuriatingly random and inconsistent, and it flounders in vague MacGuffins during what should be clear and critical moments.

[lestat]

Yep, 29% reviews on steam, it's getting shredded.

[Rorschach]

Okay, just finished the campaign - compared to Witch Queen, not nearly as good. The Nimbus character sucks in terms of design and concept. However, the final mission was pretty awesome - had call backs to Halo ODST and Gears of War in it. Large areas with plenty of enemy types and cool boss encounter that will be more fun on Legendary difficulty mode. I understand why Lightfall is getting the hate it is but I think the quality of life improvements it has brought simplified a lot of the mods system, Loadouts is a much welcomed feature and the overall bump in difficulty is good.

I like it. I've never really been invested in the story. It plays better than ever, the new weapons are cool and once the Raid and Dungeons come online I think it'll come into its own. For me, the DLC is a year long endeavour with the seasons offering the real content and story progression. Who knows if they stick it with the ending but if they pull it together and give a good final chapter, people will look back at Lightfall as the clearing house chapter that needed to happen to make the game more accessible.

[Madmya]

I've re-entered Destiny for the first time in years with Lightfall. They released The Witch Queen for free a couple of weekends ago so I smashed that when I could and loved the hell out of it. To agree with all of the negativity, I'm not enjoying Nightfall as much as I was The Witch Queen, but I am still enjoying it. Neptune itself is pretty shit though, the city is bland. Whereas the Throne World in the Witch Queen was great.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Yeah I'm enjoying it too. No idea what happened with the Neomuna patrol location though. It looks terrible. The campaign missions play great and I'm enjoying the Tormentors. Not seeing the Nimbus hate at this stage. Yes the dialogue is regularly corny but that's Destiny. We'll see how the later missions play out. I'm enjoying how Strand plays with my Hunter.

[Gamma]

If I could pay another $150 to have Bungie roll the servers back to before Lightfall was released, I would do it in a heartbeat.