Thoughts?

I'm pretty mixed. I like PoE, so I think it's cool that they're making it relevant again. Other than Skolas, it hit a nice middle ground for me between running Strikes and committing to a full raid (especially since King's Fall is still a multi-hour run). It was challenging enough to be fun, but not so demanding that you can't bullshit with your Fireteam while you play.

So, I'd really like to jump back in, and will at some point. I'd like to start a Titan on PS4 (Titan was the only class I didn't spend much time with on Xbox One--I never hit max level with one), but I'm not ready to buy Destiny on PS4 yet. Maybe in a month or two.

All in all, it seems like what they've got planned is a pretty decent update for the folks that are still around playing Destiny, but I'm impatient and eager to hear about the Fall expansion, as that's what will really having me itching to come back in full force.

Edit: I like your new profile picture. (:

Edit 2: I bought a new Us Weekly for $12 freaking dollars because it had three big Taylor Swift posters. I'm not sure if I'm proud or ashamed . . .

Thoughts?

I look forward to playing it with everyone here in the fall.

So now that we've had a little time to digest the info from this week's reveal, what does everyone think about the April update? Excited? Not? Likes/dislikes?

Personally, I'm interested in seeing what the new quest looks like. The new strike should be fun... hopefully the missions leading up to it will be new and exciting. I'm not sure what kind of scope or scale we should be expecting there. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

The SRL quest was kind of odd in that you couldn't even use your Sparrow (much less need it) at all throughout, so that set an odd precedent. It was fun, though, and the reward was neat.

If this new one is anything like it it should be interesting, but I don't like that we can only run quests once (unless I'm missing something).

I know we haven't seen much new gear yet, but I love the look of what they've been showing. The shaders look super cool, and I love that new Titan and Warlock armor :)

Yeah, next Wednesday is the big gear reveal. Interesting that they're dedicating a whole stream to it, so my expectations may be a bit higher than they should, but I'm really hopeful that we'll see stuff like weapon shaders, Ascending of Year 1 gear/transmog, and more Void exotics and Warlock legs... In fact...

I'm trying to keep an open mind about Prison of Elders. On the one hand, it's great to have new things to do, but on the other hand I really disliked PoE in year 1. So I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea of going back to an end game focused on it. On the bright side, Kings Fall, Trials and Iron Banner will all be dishing out better gear as well, so it looks like we'll be able to level up through playing a variety of activities, which is nice.

Thoughts?

You definitely had a lousy opinion about Prison of Elders. Sure it wasn't the Firefight that we had hoped for, but it was a pretty unique challenge with good rewards in its day.
PoE2 now has engram drops, guaranteed loot, xp/bounty progression, Legendary Marks, no cap on postgame drops, and it adds a new endgame event on top of whatever good stuff there was to say about it before. I'm eager to hop back in.

What I'm really curious about is the huge sandbox and Crucible updates coming up. Two weeks to go for that stream, but I really hope they nerf MIDA and TLW, while leaving Jade Rabbit alone...

I can't really say the stream yesterday generated any strong emotions from me, positive or negative (the negative emotions came from the earlier Urk tweet about Vog/CE).

The April update will be a thing that happens, but I don't see myself looking forward to it, or dreading it.

I"ve been meaning to make a post going through all the design flaws of POE, but why I think it's one of the most important and underused elements in Destiny. Suffice to say though I think Challenge mode fixes many of the biggest flaws.

Just a quick recap, my big 3 problems with POE are:

1. Too much Filler. The whole process of POE Just DRAAAAAAGS. Airlock-> boring round 1 -> break slightly more interesting round 2 -> break -> challenging round 3/really good boss fights. Back to the airlock All those low engagement enemies and annoyingly long breaks between the good stuff just need to go. I feel like I play for 4 minutes to get one minute of interesting content. (this tied in with the lack of checkpoints in the longer ones, where it could take an hour, with not a ton of interesting content, and then you might have to play al that boring content again)

2. Enemy flow and cover. Due to the levels of spammy enemies, their spawn location, and the places you need to go, the most viable strategy for most rounds is to find a secure location with only two sides and lock it down. There's no need to cycle or move, there's very little reason to communicate outside of the raid like bosses.

3. No decisions: the objectives do help spice things up, but they never let you make strategic decisions. one spot appears at a time, or one VIP, and you pursue that goal singlemindledly, and hope you can do it before it blows up.

When POE clicks, on the boss rounds, or even just a round with good objectives, it can be kind of amazing. But theres so much meh between the good.

Challenge mode answers those three, and It brings some design ideas that destiny desperately needs.

1. Three areas, no filler rounds, just mechanically interesting boss fights.
2. Bosses are mobile, and can push you out of cover with teleports/fire. The need to bring down adds since it's on a timer fast encourages players to work together and break out of those firing bunkers.
3. The scoring system adds a lot of decisions. Obviously, do I target the boss right now, or target more adds? How do i prioritize adds to move quickly? Do I want to save adds for point bonnusess with the special condition, or do I clear them out now to survive?

As a big thing though, it brings something I've thought Destiny needed since Day 1: multiple levels of success/failure. Win the match, get a good shot at some engrams, and progress to your global score goal. Or do awesome and clear the match in such a way that you clear the card.

It has a ton of room to gorw too; having a scoring system allows for a ton of flexibility in design. You could think of scenarios where you can setup and protect point generators, or have to coordinate two players hitting a switch to get a score bonus.

There's still some major failure points that we haven't explored though, so I'm still cautious about it. Is it balanced so that you have to actually make decisions and prioritize targets, and gear appropriately or can you play it mindlessly? Does the encounter design still rely on a spam of fire and push you into corners?

So it's exciting, but I said the same thing about POE, and Bungie really dropped the ball with it.

I like the idea of 3 person activities returning mostly due to how difficult it is currently to get 6 people to run KF with my dumb schedule. However, I don't find PoE or CoO fun in the slightest, so hopefully that changes for me.

If not, oh well. Holding off any real opinions until the gear reveal, as the current progression system is a bit of a disappointment.

I also wish they brought Sepkis/Nexus up to endgame activities, as I really enjoyed those strikes. But that isn't a big deal.

Happy. I spent about 2 hours yelling at everyone--"Yeah, I bet your ass wants to play PoE now, don't ya! I bet you're gonna line up for Court of Oryx again!"

Internet backhands for everyone!

I'm very excited about it, though. Variks is my homeboy and I'm certain he will hook me up with teh hawtness first.

I'm really hoping I can continue trying to get the HoW exotics I missed from last time.