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

[Rorschach]

I haven't touched Destiny in months. Grind became too much. Not sure I have the energy to get back into it

[Peppermint Lounge]

Fair enough. Have you tried Division 2 yet? I was on the verge of installing it for before Destiny 2 unexpectedly grabbed me again.

[Rorschach]

I'll probably get back into it at some point this year, I still pay my $1 a month for clan membership. I've been smashing Division 2 but that game as well has become super grindy. Just doing Manhunt stuff now.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I've yet to join a clan. I'd love to try the raids and higher level nightfalls. Hard to commit to activities with young kids. Though there's probably a parent friendly Aus clan out there if I looked for it.

[Gamma]

Scourge of the Past raid is nice and short, you can comfortably get through in under an hour on your first go as long as at least one person knows what's going on. Ran it for the first time recently, it was good fun, and there's still quality loot to be found. Dads of Destiny (DoD) is a clan I see a lot around the traps, might be worth checking out.

Y'know what wasn't fun? This piece of shit Guardian Games "event". But Heir Apparent rips so I did my space chores.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Heir Apparent is a lot of space chores. Congrats. This casual is still riding his recently acquired Wavesplitter thanks to a random exotic endgram dropped in the field. A powerful gun.

Will check out Dads of Destiny. Cheers.

[Rorschach]

I logged in the other night, couldn't get excited. The whole game feels so tired now. Wish Bungie would move on to a new IP. Destiny had a good run but time to retire it.

[Gamma]

I still really like the Destiny universe, but I'd prefer they move along to Destiny 3 sooner rather than later- apparently they're getting ready to release D2 on the next gen platforms though. For me it's QoL issues like constant inventory management and the increasingly bad load times that are the biggest drag, but lately the content's getting really lazy too.

Guardian Games was basically just a bunch of half-broken bounties and a podium, and immediately afterwards they released a new "quest" that is literally just doing a shitty public event 3 million times (community wide). They've already started backpedalling and have artificially boosted progress because there aren't enough neckbeard streamers in the world to grind that out before the season's through.

This casual is still riding his recently acquired Wavesplitter thanks to a random exotic endgram dropped in the field. A powerful gun.

Wavesplitter's great, it was my go-to for Crucible for quite a while. The Supercharged Battery perk is really strong, plus it just looks awesome.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I came in during the last week of Guardian Games. I managed to get a games ghost shell for my Hunter just as it wound up so I came away with something.

At the moment I'm just enjoying levelling my season pass. I rolled a Titan and Warlock a couple of days ago having played my Hunter exclusively til now. Had fun running the Red War campaign again with my Titan. Am enjoying her abilities but I'm still working out that jump. I've only run New Light and a single Lost Sector with my Warlock. Voidwalker Warlock is pretty awesome.

[Gamma]

Good synergy with your Wavesplitter too. I did the opposite and mained a Hunter this season just to mix things up, I think the Warlock will always be my favourite for PvE but playing a Hunter really opened up PvP for me (and the fashion endgame!). Dodge is a million times more useful than a rift in a gunfight, and the difference in melee speed is definitely noticeable.

If you're not already aware, the last set of seasonal armour in the pass has much better stats than all of the other junk, so be sure to hold onto it. Also the gear from the pass comes out at your current base level, so if you claim it in the right order you can level your lower characters pretty quickly. All of the exotic engrams in the pass work like Xur's fated engram (that is, they'll drop something you don't already have), so depending on where you're at with exotics you might want to claim those on particular characters.

[Peppermint Lounge]

I soloed the Bad JuJu quest which is no biggie. It's very soloable. It's no walk in the park either. I'm here to acknowledge the multiple yellow bar Shrikers in this quest. Fuck those cunts. Shriekers for those not playing can be described as floating proximity turrets. They're as fun as they sound. They appear in the sky and rain bullet hell upon you. Normal Shriekers are very escapeable but these pricks shredded me in seconds. But hey I'm a Guardian and can't die, so they succeed in being annoying only.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Destiny 2 here for the long haul. Three major expansions accounced for '20, '21 and '22 with 'no plans to make another sequel'.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/9/21285 ... -no-sequel" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Upcoming trailer for Beyond Light exapansion releasing 22/9:

[lestat]

They've gone Warframe with Destiny, I figured that was going to be the way when they parted ways with Activsion who wanted a full priced release every 2 years.

I remember reading some posts about job ads for designers for a new IP. So I guess Bungie will be working on something completely new on the side for a while. Such is the way now, stuff just takes a good 3-4 years now.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Season of Arrivals early content is excellent. I've really enjoyed the opening story missions. Destiny 2 art is always absolutely gorgeous and there's plenty of new content to see. Lots of new 'darkness'-infused weapons that look great. There's also a new whole dungeon (haven't played it yet) which is a nice chunk of content for a season release. You can now 'focus' your engram drops toward armour or weapons via this season's Umbral engrams eg: if you want drops for previous seasonal weapons only you can do so.

[Gamma]

I'm really happy with the season so far. As you say, the first couple of missions are great (I trust you enjoyed the Shriekers). The Cradle looks fantastic, it seems there'll be more missions released and more to do there throughout the season. So far none of the new Darkness weapons are bad- I'm not a huge fan of the fusion rifle but I never am. The bow, auto and scout all have good rolls available, and though I really like Temptation's Hook I can't wait to get hold of that buster-sword-looking dealio. Likewise all of the new perks are good or at least interesting to use, there are none where I see it and instantly dismantle the gear like so many other shitty perks from Y1/2. The Umbral system is good and makes levelling a bit less painful. The new Contact public event is so much better than the Seraph Towers from last season, it's basically Gambit with all of the shit parts removed (invaders, rounds, matchmaking times). In these regards I'm impressed.

Two areas where Bungo have Bungoed- the "living world" thing they're going for and gear sunsetting. I was initially confused after the early cutscene with Ana, since my first inclination was to fly over to Mars to see how bad things were, but she's chipper as always and everything is seemingly hunky-dory. The actual repercussions are hidden away in lore books (classic Destiny 1 move). Likewise it's rather odd that Asher doesn't seem to acknowledge the rather notable addition to the Io skybox. I'm avoiding spoilers here, but definitely give these a read if you're interested in what actually happened:

Asher: Observation
Ana: Frayed

(also for anyone who played Season of Dawn, this is gold)

As for the gear sunsetting... I've been against it since they announced it was happening, but it wouldn't have been too hard to stomach if they'd even pretended it was done for a good reason, particularly since they managed to come through with some desirable new gear (which I was doubting TBH). Instead, from the moment it's implemented I'm getting drops of weapons that were sunset. So for example I've got an Outlaw/Rampage Last Perdition pulse rifle that can't be upgraded beyond this seasons level cap (1060)... meanwhile Last Perdition is in the current loot pool, is exactly the same in every way, but can be upgraded for another year. It hasn't been toned down so that you can't get Outlaw/Rampage (so the "power creep" argument is out the window), I just have to grind that roll again if I want to keep using it. Seems to be a completely transparent attempt to boost player engagement metrics to satiate some wankstain in a suit. I'm just going to be less invested in my gear.

All in all it's a much better season than I expected so far, and I can't wait to get into the new Dungeon. I've already warned my fireteam to expect non-stop 80s music through the headset.

[Gamma]

They've gone Warframe with Destiny, I figured that was going to be the way when they parted ways with Activsion who wanted a full priced release every 2 years.

I remember reading some posts about job ads for designers for a new IP. So I guess Bungie will be working on something completely new on the side for a while. Such is the way now, stuff just takes a good 3-4 years now.

Apparently the new IP is called Matter, Christopher Barrett (who was at the reins pretty much any time Destiny was hitting a peak) is working on it so I'm cautiously optimistic. The upshoot of D3 not happening is that a whole bunch of content that had been in development for it can be rolled out in D2 expansions, so I'm expecting an improvement in quality compared to some of the lazy seasonal content we've been getting. Still would have preferred a fresh start with Destiny 3 though, their spaghetti code's got to be out of control by this point, and it would avoid the whole "Destiny Content Vault" shite (a bunch of destinations are being removed from Destiny 2 to allegedly make room for new destinations).

[Peppermint Lounge]

(I trust you enjoyed the Shriekers)

They were of the easy variety. Most are. I've since read the overpowered Bad JuJu Shriekers are a deliberate mechanic to keep players on the ground during boss fights vs cheesing them from elevated positions. Not my favourite design choice if true.

[Gamma]

In a desperate bid to get the Bad Juju catalyst before the Leviathan gets vaulted, I'm trying to solo that mission without dying. Fuck those fucking Shriekers. I've had to rote learn their spawn points so I can delete them before they delete me. The final room is much easier if you just don't poke them with a stick to begin with though. I've done each section a few times without dying now but just can't string it all together into one good run.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Gave it a few days before I asked. Did you make it?

[Gamma]

Got through on my second attempt after that last post, I think it took around ten runs all up. I'm not sure where I misstepped but on that last run I managed to simultaneously draw aggro from every single Shrieker in the final room. By then I'd learned all of the safe(ish) spots so I bunkered down and systematically took them out with an Explosive Rounds scout. Absolute pricks.

It was all for naught in a sense, as it turns out that triumph doesn't reward a tribute and so doesn't contribute toward the Bad Juju catalyst. I've reassessed the requirements and decided I just can't be arsed, it's too much of a commitment- I'd have to get Menagerie gear, then run about 20 raids and a whole lot of Gambit wearing said gear. But it's a really cool mission, and I'm glad I gave it a good run before it's retired.

[guttermouth]

I played the shit out of Destiny 2, would have to be in the 100s of hours. Neglected so many other games cause I spent so much time on it. Its been 2 months since I played it.....missing it

[Gamma]

Newish trailer, the variety of environments and new enemies on Europa has me in hype mode:

BTW a couple of new quests have gone live in the last few weeks. One from Lance Reddick to evacuate Io/Titan/Mars/Mercury, easy to finish and has an excellent exotic as a reward, but brace for some savage lore-kicks to the nuts. The other is a nice tribute to a Vicarious Visions dev that passed away about a year ago after a battle with cancer. The execution could have been better but the tribute itself is touching. I just wish I hadn't cut all of those onions immediately beforehand. It takes a couple of minutes tops and has a really good reward if you're missing any exotic weapons from previous seasons.

[Peppermint Lounge]

Been doing Lance's quest. Shame the steps are the same old bounties and quests but now you've got my nuts intrigued.

[Gamma]

Yeah it was very much a case of going through the motions, but I saw it as a kind of final tour if you like. The pacing of things toward the end of Arrivals is a bit of a mess with the expansion delay. That quest was supposed to lead directly into the final week of the season, during which Eris Morn's shenanigans in the cradle should be coming to a head. We would have been playing Beyond Light already, and the evacuated locations would be completely out of the picture. All of the salvaged supplies and stuff are in the Tower hangar which is kind of cool. I don't think anything's been revealed one way or another but it'd be nice if there was a live event like the Almighty, or even just a decent cutscene of the locations going dark.

Best to finish the quest entirely then read the lore IMO so you get everything in the right order. It's all here if you'd prefer:
https://www.ishtar-collective.net/categ ... and-egress

Dark days. Indeed.

[Gamma]

Oh, I think the Prophecy dungeon is going away for a little while at the end of this season too- not into the DCV like Io/Titan/etc, a shorter term thing. There have been some theories that it's to rework the lighting with these new consoles on the way, as it uses volumetric lighting as one of the main gameplay mechanics. Definitely recommend giving it a run before then if you haven't checked it out Pep, it's great. Heaps better than Shattered Throne and Pit of Heresy IMO, and they're both pretty damn good.