Warmind Story Time (spoilers) (Destiny)

by slycrel , Friday, May 11, 2018, 21:17 (2186 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I both liked the expansion content more than expected, and was as disappointed as I expected in other ways. Here are some of my thoughts, in relatively random order, and probably doesn't cover everything... but it's a good start.

On the positive side:
- The new mars is a great mix of the old mars (clovis bray type things with cabal) and the moon (hive infested tunnels) with a sprinkling of the old earth rasputin areas near his bunker there, both inside and out. Much MUCH more interesting and explorable than mercury. It's obvious this is what they were going for and I think they largely succeeded. Level design win.
- While I'm mentioning levels, fantastic job on the ice and the glass in the rasputin areas. Also loved the server room area, familiar and new all at once.
- I like that the patrol area is key to the events and largely seamless. I really love picking up an adventure with no loading screen and seamless gameplay into potentially custom "public but only me really" areas.
- The new valkyrie weapon is fun and feels appropriately limited in scope and power.
- I enjoyed the subtle nod to "the magic of orbital bombardment" by rasputin in the story mission.
- Also enjoyed the "not quite the same" fragment of the traveler, and the hints at things to come with that. (Though, depending on perspective this might be a plot hole rather than foreshadowing. heh)
- I have yet to beat the self-starter public event. I like how it's paced, some of the new mechanics, and having something to look forward to ongoing. It's paced well for groups of lower light players, and seems to be geared towards community building.
- Seems like regular public events and self-started events are appropriately not layered over each other. I think this is a good thing.
- I like the new public event with the hive, even if it's very similar to the portal event on titan. Well placed and hints at depth that may or may not be there.
- I like the audio and visual cues with the new frequency "chests".
- Levelling was largely seamless to the experience of the campaign.
- bright engrams pacing seems pretty good.
- I'm a little confused at the new section of the store, but I like how it shows a preview of what I could possibly get. (Unclear if I will get chances at this or got my first taste for free and it's strictly pay to play from now on...?)
- I got the popcorn emote from my first engram, I finally have a food emote! ;)
- I thought the story (mostly) was better at setting up the gameplay than the last expansion.
- I have yet to run the new strike, looking forward to that! Also ps4, wooo! =)
- Sparrow in the patrol area! Yay!
- It was fun to see semi-destructible buildings in the Xol fight. I hope we see terrain morphing in a limited, and thus more impactful, way as we go forward.

Things that are so/so or not so good:
(Bungie, if you're reading, feel free to take this as UX and "expectation" constructive criticism)
- Shaders continue to be a headache to manage.
- I was surprisingly out of glimmer just after levelling, probably due to using a few shaders to "get rid of them".
- I was confused at the term "valkyrie" in the story, I thought it was a ship, then a NPC of some sort, then finally figured it out as I was using it.
- Xol came out of nowhere. Felt like 2 expansions smashed into one, both cut short.
- As has been mentioned, "there is no light here" and "the deeps" Xol mentioned felt about the same as Xol suddenly being introduced -- a break in the story. Almost like different teams did these pieces with little coordination around how they lined up.
- artificial light caps. This is really just D2 more of the same. Once I get my basic engrams earned for the week I can either do things I don't care for or... nothing particularly meaningful until next reset.
- Getting all 45 frequencies x4 will be a huge timesink that the content can't sustain, which is unfortunate. I've enjoyed the 5 of these I've found so far, but at this pace there is no way I'll make it halfway, let alone to the end.
- Also, if I hadn't been paying attention, it was easy to miss how to combine materials to get the frequencies.
- I have a blue microchip thing, limit 3, in my inventory that has to do with mars, but I have no idea what it is or why I need it.
- I have a love for AI, inspired in part by Bungie's Marathon series. We've fallen a long way since coining terms like 'Rampancy' in bungie's AI storytelling. This might be my biggest disappointment -- seems like a waste of some great storytelling material that's been building since the beginning. Actually, just like osiris, so maybe this is "wrapping up" the old stuff, with a bridge to the new "what's next".
- I wanted to interact with rasputin. Instead I did what Ana told me to and didn't really meet rasputin, just got a teaser trailer for something (friend and foe both probably) in the future. Interaction with rasputin seems to be limited to "friend of a friend" status, with even the valkyrie weapons being called in on her behalf.
- I was really disappointed that failsafe had no impact on the warmind expansion. Seems like a natural crossover point... trapped AIs stranded on a planet from the same age in history.
- I had hoped for more than 3 characters with dialogue (Ana, Zavala, Ghost... and I guess Rasputin is #4)
- I tried my first heroic adventure today. I'm at LL 346, recommended LL is 350, I kept getting 2-3 shotted by groups of red enemies and had to call it quits. These are likely not meant to be soloed except at the highest light levels... but I really don't have much incentive to bring along friends to these either.
- I've not particularly noticed weapon changes in PvE, most weapons seem not as good (much less powerful) than my current go-to weapons. I expected more. (i.e. Someday I hope to use scout rifles again, sadly they just can't compete with other weapon types)
- Patrol events seem pretty canned. I wish the "scan the area" patrols were more diverse, even if it were the locations you go to and nothing else... There is little difference between those and the "ghost scan" patrols, other than "look at a thing" vs "look at a vista".
- Tokens doing double-duty with legendary marks seems a little heavy. They could simplify a bit here.
- I loved that most areas in the original destiny looped, and that there was a largely successful attempt to do so on the new mars. I get that we have fast travel now... I don't love the "long tunnel of cool stuff that dead ends with a player teleport". Makes for less useful areas. I know this isn't always possible, but a little creativity would go a long way. Lost sectors usually acknowledge this and they are mostly great there... This is probably just a resource limitation. D1 sometimes felt this way, particularly on mars; you could go to most all of the places, but many of them didn't have patrol beacons or meaningful content loops short of leaving to do something else. I'm thinking of the underground train station on mars, the sepkis prime area on earth, the endless steps on venus. These seem like they could be much more reusable than they turned out to be, I think because of the lack of looping layout combined with the lack of patrol beacons. I think there was an early nod to this concept past the library on venus, with a courtyard that had patrol beacons (a natural point of fast travel in D2 terms).

Overall I liked it more than I expected, which was a positive. It's better in many ways than the last expansion. Other than my weapon quest (I'm on step 3 of however many) I think I'm largely done with the single player content, over the space of 3-4 hours, with an extra hour or 2 of patrol space exploration. The expansion does feel rushed (or cut) in a few places. Overall this is good content that adds to the D2 ecosystem in a good way. I continue to be disappointed that new expansions feel like islands rather than a greater piece of the whole, with individual ecosystems that don't tie together. Some of this is by necessity, but there's room for improvement here. TTK still shines as far as content expansions for many reasons.

p.s. sorry about the invite ignore the other day Cody, I was in the middle of an intense fight then forgot. :/