Either way I think you are right, and unlike the raid, this is not worth playing without rewards. There will be no flawless Prison of Elders team.

I'd join the flawless team(!) even though I agree with almost everything cruel said. The best defense in PoE is offense. Rockets rockets rockets!!! My least favorite thing (so far) is the infinite spawning enemies at the boss. Or at least I think they spawn infinitely... we killed the boss eventually and didn't wait eternity to verify level design.

I also tend to like bungie's giant levels the best. Sadly, PoE has no sweeping vistas. Tangent, it's late and my brain is stuck imagining "sweeping vistas" -- dancing windows vista logos holding the brooms in Fantasia.

I found it rather easy, almost like doing a strike playlist or something.

Ironically, I think several of the strikes handle Horde-style design far better than Prison of Elders. The first main room in the Sepik's Prime strike, the locked door in the first moon strike, the Cinders during the Archon Priest strike, Psyon Flayer battle on Mars... Even the indoor Devil Walker battle in the new HoW strike. They all have several defendable vantage points that a team can attempt to lock down together, with fallback options if they get overwhelmed. Bungie clearly knows how to design great wave/survival based encounters, which is why I'm so surprised that the PoE arenas are this bad.

We did find our corners on lvl 34.

Cyber, Vortech and I spent about 90% of our 34 run off in our own corners, because that was the only way we could each find a tiny bit of cover without being sitting ducks against the entire flood of enemies. In Gears or ODST, the trick was to find a point on the map that you could hold as a group, that also forced the enemy to split up and approach you across several different lanes. So your team would still be split up dividing the enemy forces, but within 1 area so you could switch or rotate if 1 lane gets overrun. It feels far more team-focused than PoE.

I didn't think "I don't want to ever do that again", but more like "I guess I could do that again, but I'd rather do a raid.

I'm sure I will end up doing it again, too... Plenty of times. As I said, I still had a good time because I was playing with friends, and Destiny combat is great. But I doubt I'll ever be the one to suggest playing PoE. Take the rewards out of the equation and I'd rather do any other activity in Destiny.

I agree with most of your statements. I too enjoy horde mode (when rewards are involved). I However enjoy the fact that there is almost no where to hide. I grew bored of the mechanics of the raids. I have said it many times as you have definitely heard, I just got tired of going through numbers. There is little to no VARIATION in the Raids. It makes you feel like a robot, to the point where I am playing but not really thinking.

I think a big part of why Raids click with me so much is that they click with the same part of my brain that loved learning and running plays back when I was on my highschool basketball team. The variation in the raids comes from what your team is able to do: can you find a better formation, can you execute better, faster, more efficiently.

Prison of Elders changed that. Its chaos, its random, its challenging.

It is indeed all of those things :)

For me, it's "random" but in a way that makes it feel exactly the same each time. You can never really prepare for what's coming beyond finding your safe corner to start in. There's very little learning curve. I felt like I was just going through the motions by my 3rd run, compared to the 50+ times I've run each raid, and I'm still coming up with new tricks every single time :)

Wut?

I've played through twice and haven't been teleported at all during combat. Admittedly, I don't think anyone I was with in those games was trying to stay put, so maybe we didn't trigger whatever-it-is. But it sounds like Cody's group was trying to do exactly that, and he didn't mention any teleporting (which I would think would have been a major annoyance for them if it had happened).

It does teleport you if you stay in the airlock too long at the beginning of a round, or if you don't return to the airlock after a round.

Weird. I've never been teleported and I've held down a few spots. Maybe I'm moving just enough to not be considered camping?

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I loved firefight, but I was always itching to move around and fight, which is more of my play style even in Halo. Prison of Elders is perfect for that! Mind you there are still encounters where you will want to hunker down behind cover, at least for a little while, but for the most part PoE expects you to keep moving since no cover is very safe.

I think games like Mass Effect 3 and Splinter Cell Blacklist did a much better job of hitting that sweet spot: You had to constantly move and rotate positions, but you always felt like you were moving too a defensable position, if you could just get there.

The other big thing we have to remember is that PoE can and will be improved upon. Bungie knew that going into it. They will add more stuff to it as it matures. This is what I am looking forward to.

Unlike raids, PoE is expected to be changed and morphed into new challenges.

I just hope (but don't expect) those changes to include all-new arenas to fight in.

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I don't like it that much honestly, I prefer the raids, but I also didn't expect it to be ODST firefight or horde mode. It's its own thing and should be judged on its own.

I'm judging it as an 'endgame activity'. By that standard, it falls very short.

Adding to the mess is that enemies will sometimes spawn right smack in the middle of the arena. During a round against the Fallen, I took position on top of a large platform near the center. Not perfectly safe, but some decent cover and sightlines. Just as I though "let's see if I can make this work", a captain, 2 dregs and a servitor spawned directly on top of me.

don't forget the time the game decided that I could not use my cover anymore and just warped me to the middle of the room. :/

Yeah, that was a good time ;)

I like it better than the slightly elongated strike that is Crotas End.

I LOVE Crota's End, except for the final battle on hard mode (normal is fine). Everyone has their moments in the spotlight, everyone has a job to do. You feel like a real team.

Prison of Elders feels like COD multiplayer to me: A bunch of people playing by themselves who happen to be on the same team.