"We're Listening."

Bungie has seriously confused me at this point. While it doesn't really bother me on a loot level (I really don't care about the any of the loot itself), it's weird that Bungie continues to make seemingly deliberate missteps, at a time where they are well aware that their every move is being scrutinized.

So it turns out that Faction Token acquisition has a throttle. As it stands right now you aren't supposed to be able to earn more than two sets of Tokens from Public Event chests every ten minutes. I say "supposed to" because there's a chance that you won't get affected by the throttle (I was able to earn five sets before I hit it).

Bungie reported yesterday that yeah, actually there is a new throttle that they didn't tell us about, but it's "not supposed to" affect Public Events, but it's bugged, so it does. Oops!

The thing that gets to me is that putting in a throttle is something that caused huge backlash. This is a loot game where Bungie wants to keep you from earning loot. They want to control the efficiency of your grind. Now sure, that in itself is understandable, since many developers want to slow the rate at which people acquire new gear, but here's the kicker:

You can't actually get any new loot this Faction Rally.

According to Bungie:
"New Faction Rally weapons introduced with Curse of Osiris are not currently available within Faction Engram rewards. These weapons will become available over the course of the season."

So while they pushed the Faction Rally off for a month, there is nothing but Ornaments that non-DLC owners would have missed out on, since none of the new gear will be dropping. And to top it all off, Bungie put systems in there to slow down your ability to get the loot that has not only been available since the first Faction Rally, but you won't have any chance of earning any of the new stuff until the next Faction Rally (besides the Victory weapon that you can buy).

It's just incredibly bizarre to me, because they had to have known that this would not go over well. But over the course of a month, a number of people saw this, checked off on it, and sent it out with a smile.

Meanwhile, about a week ago I made the suggestion that DE should add a Mastery notice to the items in the Market (it already tells you if you own the item, but I thought that it would be neat to see if I'd hit full Mastery with the gear). And what do I see this morning? Exactly what I wanted...

Communication is NOT THAT HARD, BUNGIE. I thought they were listening...

That said, I want to get the Ornament for completing a Nightfall with all NM gear. Who wants to carry me? :v

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I don't mind cooldowns, but my confusion is on why they don't have timers now when almost everything with cooldowns in D1 had timers.

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I don't mind cooldowns, but my confusion is on why they don't have timers now when almost everything with cooldowns in D1 had timers.

Same. They should put them on the top right corner of your screen whenever you pull up your Ghost.

Like I said, the throttling itself isn't inherently bad (literally every MMO has it, and with acceptable reasoning), but I thought "communication" and "honesty" was going to be a big thing for Bungie now.

Cooldown timers would have communicated that real easily, as would, ya know, telling us in the first place that there will be throttling.

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Like I said, the throttling itself isn't inherently bad (literally every MMO has it, and with acceptable reasoning)

Don't enjoy the game at the pace you feel is best. Perfectly acceptable reasoning.

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I don't mind cooldowns, but my confusion is on why they don't have timers now when almost everything with cooldowns in D1 had timers.

I agree! Hiding the debuffs is the most infuriating part of this. Just give me an on-screen notification that I'm locked out for 10 minutes. I should never have to go online to the forums, post "Am I bugged" and then find out something was designed to suck. I'm sure DJ is nice as a person, but I think Bungie needs to clean house on its community team and start over. Everything is way too corporate-speaky and full of unwarranted hype and fluff, while actual substance is avoided at all costs. I'm sick of hearing after the fact mia culpas (mias culpa? Plurals are hard) when there should have been ample communication made BEFORE the patches so that all players of the game, including those who never visit the forums, know what is going on.

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I did 3 Lost Sectors in a row yesterday, and didn’t get tokens for the last one. That’s why I turned the game off.

Hey Bungie, Lost Sectors are fucking boring to begin with, so if you’re going to encourage me to do them during faction rallies, maybe don’t fuck me out of my tokens too.

This is the sort of asinine design that just blows my mind. People complain about all the nagativity around here, but this is why. Imagine if Bungie designed Halo with the same authoritarianism they design Destiny with. They’d see Rockslider out there putting together his awesome and fun mega battles and put an end to that shit immediately.

How about you just let people play the damn game without throttling them? It is actively hurting the game. I enjoyed myself for probably forty five minutes yesterday, until the first time I didn’t get the tokens I was supposed to, and then I just had a bad taste in my mouth.

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Bungie reported yesterday that yeah, actually there is a new throttle that they didn't tell us about, but it's "not supposed to" affect Public Events, but it's bugged, so it does. Oops!

I'm confused - where did they say there was actually a new throttle that they didn't tell us about? Cozmo's response in that thread simply says there is not throttle - where are you getting the rest of this?

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They said the Throttle to Lost Sectors was intended. It's there any their Twitter I think

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Bungie reported yesterday that yeah, actually there is a new throttle that they didn't tell us about, but it's "not supposed to" affect Public Events, but it's bugged, so it does. Oops!

I'm confused - where did they say there was actually a new throttle that they didn't tell us about? Cozmo's response in that thread simply says there is not throttle - where are you getting the rest of this?

Cozmo said:

"I'm seeing others in the thread who are stating the Public Events are not affected by the throttle."

Which acknowledges the presence of a throttle. Although you could chalk it up to poor word choice, he imediately follows it up with "I spoke with the team and there is no throttle on Public Events."

Which of course is different than saying that there is no throttle at all. But it's clearly a real, and common issue if it's unintentional, and dmg04 has already said that we'll have an official statement from Bungie later today.

And yeah, as was pointed out, dmg04 had to amend yesterday's post, acknowledging that there is one:

"Right now if a player opens more than 2 Chests in a 10 minute period they will not receive additional rewards from Lost Sector chests for 10 minutes. This does not prevent players from completing milestones related to Lost Sector chests."

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Bungie reported yesterday that yeah, actually there is a new throttle that they didn't tell us about, but it's "not supposed to" affect Public Events, but it's bugged, so it does. Oops!

I'm confused - where did they say there was actually a new throttle that they didn't tell us about? Cozmo's response in that thread simply says there is not throttle - where are you getting the rest of this?

Cozmo said:

"I'm seeing others in the thread who are stating the Public Events are not affected by the throttle."

Which acknowledges the presence of a throttle. Although you could chalk it up to poor word choice, he imediately follows it up with "I spoke with the team and there is no throttle on Public Events."

Which of course is different than saying that there is no throttle at all. But it's clearly a real, and common issue if it's unintentional, and dmg04 has already said that we'll have an official statement from Bungie later today.

And yeah, as was pointed out, dmg04 had to amend yesterday's post, acknowledging that there is one:

"Right now if a player opens more than 2 Chests in a 10 minute period they will not receive additional rewards from Lost Sector chests for 10 minutes. This does not prevent players from completing milestones related to Lost Sector chests."

This is obviously to fix the Winding Cove exploit. Is this really different than closing the Loot cave or not letting us get exotics for killing Draksis every three minutes? I mean, obviously there will always be exploits, but Bungie has consistently fixed the game when things turn up that lead to tedium.

Oh, I know what's different. The internet is in high dungeon about "throttling"--a term that makes it sound like Bungie is choking us to death. Sigh.

Increasingly, I feel like I'm living on a different planet than most people.

Kerm

P.S. I alternated public events and lost sectors and some other stuff for a few hours. I now have everything but the helmet. Every time I filled the bar I got a new piece of armor.

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Increasingly, I feel like I'm living on a different planet than most people.

Increasingly, I feel like Bungie is living on a different planet than most people.

If people want to shoot into a cave for hours on end, what’s the harm? It’s honestly hardly different in terms of effort than actually playing the game.

What is Bungie “fixing” by limiting the rate at which people can earn tokens? Doing the recommended activity for Faction Rally should never result in getting no tokens. It’s back to Bungie not respecting my time. Even if it’s just a few minutes, it sucks. If I want to do things quickly and efficiently by farming, why shouldn’t I?

Thankfully I realized that I don’t actually care about those ornaments enough to play the game, so I’m not. It still has me down though. It feels like Bungie is being willfully obtuse at this point.

I still don’t hate the game, but I am coming to resent it again for not just letting me do things the way I want.

Ah, well, for now Breath of the Wild has me engaged in a way it didn’t the first time I tried it. Here’s to hoping the next expansion and all the updates are worthwhile.

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Increasingly, I feel like I'm living on a different planet than most people.

Increasingly, I feel like Bungie is living on a different planet than most people.

If people want to shoot into a cave for hours on end, what’s the harm? It’s honestly hardly different in terms of effort than actually playing the game.

It changes what is normal progression and makes that activity the default if you want to progress at a normal rate. Not to mention you're no longer engaging in an imaginative simulation where you're the hero fighting for humanity. You're a dog with your paw on the lever. I guess it comes down to whether we see loot is a bonus we get while we're having fun, or we're pushing buttons to get loot.

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Not to mention all of the negative impacts to the experience of other players in the world. The Loot Cave ruined one of the best playspaces in the Cosmodrome for quite awhile. Same thing with folks who speedrun strikes w/o a full fireteam. Behaviors that some people consider fine for themselves build toxic environs for others.

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Loot cave was without a doubt the most fun thing in the game for me. It was highly social and I became friends with other loot cavers, like LumpySalamander and some other dudes.

I loved the loot cave.

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What's it tell you that this forum and other places on the internet are still relitigating things from Destiny 1 (and how it pertains to D2)? Korny's right and Kermit's right. They don't both have to be wrong or entirely correct, either. They can totally co-exist. Bungie's "listening" but hardly learning. And the players are also being ridiculous on many levels, but some of those levels are understandable. Frankly, for such good games, the handling of Destiny as a whole is and has been a huge mess. And there appears to be a lot of problems within Bungie; I don't work there, but it doesn't look good. And while not all of the player reactions and expectations have been reasonable at all, it appears that a lot of the reactions and expectations with D2 have been largely informed based off of the many improvements to D1 that D2 is lacking and the sliminess (real and perceived) with Bungie's own actions and words. It's a vicious circle at this point, and it doesn't help the players or Bungie.

I think it kinda sucks that the contract might require a sequel. Bungie needs to get D2 to a great place somehow, and then they need a reset and to move on from Destiny at D2's end. But that probably won't happen.

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Loot cave was without a doubt the most fun thing in the game for me. It was highly social and I became friends with other loot cavers, like LumpySalamander and some other dudes.

I loved the loot cave.

Well, you also think CoO is the best $20 expansion in Destiny, so...

;p <3

Snark aside, I loved the loot cave too, for the brief moment it was around. It actually reminds me a bit of the Great Prometheus Lense Weekend, because it was so clearly not an intentional part of the game, and it was also quite obvious that it wouldn’t stick around for long.

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I guess that’s where I’m at.

I started doing Faction Rally stuff on Tuesday. I enjoyed just playing again for about 30 minutes. Then I didn’t get tokens from a loot cave and it completely flipped my mood. Maybe that’s on me. It’s really not a big deal. But it also made me realize that I was like 80% just playing to get FWC ornaments for my Hunter. And then I stopped playing.

I’m just at the point where playing the game just isn’t that fun, unless we’re raifing. And even that has lost a bit of its luster. And that’s fine. That’s part of the reason I love D2. I can feel good about putting it down and waiting for the next expansion. But I do still want that FWC armor. But Bungie decided I can only get that during one week ever month or two, and they also decided I can’t just grind out tokens quickly, so I can just get bent, I guess. Ultimately that’s fine, too—it’s their game, they can do what they want and I’ll just go without. But I also won’t pretend that it’s not annoying. It didn’t ruin my day, it’s just a video game, and I have plenty of those to play. Partly I think it’s just that I wish the game was more fun for me than it actually is.

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You're a dog with your paw on the lever. I guess it comes down to whether we see loot is a bonus we get while we're having fun, or we're pushing buttons to get loot.

Then why is the point of the activity literally to earn as many tokens as possible for your faction?! You are punishing players for doing exactly what you asked of them.

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You're a dog with your paw on the lever. I guess it comes down to whether we see loot is a bonus we get while we're having fun, or we're pushing buttons to get loot.

Then why is the point of the activity literally to earn as many tokens as possible for your faction?! You are punishing players for doing exactly what you asked of them.

It's not the point for me. I don't care who wins. I'm writing little stories in my head about how my little hellion teenage titan is rebelling against her war-mongering mom and nihilistic dad by embracing New Monarchy. It doesn't hurt that she just got a sweet medeival helm with a horse hair plume.

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Increasingly, I feel like I'm living on a different planet than most people.

Increasingly, I feel like Bungie is living on a different planet than most people.

If people want to shoot into a cave for hours on end, what’s the harm? It’s honestly hardly different in terms of effort than actually playing the game.

It changes what is normal progression and makes that activity the default if you want to progress at a normal rate. Not to mention you're no longer engaging in an imaginative simulation where you're the hero fighting for humanity. You're a dog with your paw on the lever. I guess it comes down to whether we see loot is a bonus we get while we're having fun, or we're pushing buttons to get loot.

I agree with everything you are saying. I do also see where Cheapley is coming from, though. The scenario of:
"I'm kinda bored with Destiny, so I'll stop playing for a while" -> "hey, they've added some new loot to Destiny, I'll jump back in and check it out" -> "oh, they've made the loot a bit of a grind to get and the activities are no more fun than they used to be and I just need to repeat a bunch of stuff I'm already bored of"
is a scenario I can relate to. And that's not a big knock against the game at all... it's just easy as Bungie fans to get excited about coming back when Bungie adds new stuff to the game. And when loot is really the main thing being added, well, that's where the excitement can easily get focused.

For me, the issue is more that I care far more about new gameplay content, and what Bungie has added to D2 so far was extremely disappointing to me. I was looking forward to a fresh batch of fun gameplay so that I could continue to have fun playing the game and treat loot like little bonuses I get along the way, but there's nothing in CoO that I find remotely fun, with the exception of the Raid Lair (which is exceptional... I adore it... but its just not something I have time to jump into as often as I'd like).

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Increasingly, I feel like I'm living on a different planet than most people.

Increasingly, I feel like Bungie is living on a different planet than most people.

If people want to shoot into a cave for hours on end, what’s the harm? It’s honestly hardly different in terms of effort than actually playing the game.

It changes what is normal progression and makes that activity the default if you want to progress at a normal rate. Not to mention you're no longer engaging in an imaginative simulation where you're the hero fighting for humanity. You're a dog with your paw on the lever. I guess it comes down to whether we see loot is a bonus we get while we're having fun, or we're pushing buttons to get loot.

I agree with everything you are saying. I do also see where Cheapley is coming from, though. The scenario of:
"I'm kinda bored with Destiny, so I'll stop playing for a while" -> "hey, they've added some new loot to Destiny, I'll jump back in and check it out" -> "oh, they've made the loot a bit of a grind to get and the activities are no more fun than they used to be and I just need to repeat a bunch of stuff I'm already bored of"
is a scenario I can relate to. And that's not a big knock against the game at all... it's just easy as Bungie fans to get excited about coming back when Bungie adds new stuff to the game. And when loot is really the main thing being added, well, that's where the excitement can easily get focused.

For me, the issue is more that I care far more about new gameplay content, and what Bungie has added to D2 so far was extremely disappointing to me. I was looking forward to a fresh batch of fun gameplay so that I could continue to have fun playing the game and treat loot like little bonuses I get along the way, but there's nothing in CoO that I find remotely fun, with the exception of the Raid Lair (which is exceptional... I adore it... but its just not something I have time to jump into as often as I'd like).

For the record, I don't begrudge anyone who doesn't find D2 fun. One of the great things about D2 is that it lets you quit and come back without losing your "place in line" as it were.

I won't assume this is true of cheapLEY, but I find myself fighting to stay positive and wonder how much of our perception of D2 hinges of the negativity in the air. I think it's tougher than ever to have clear individual perceptions. Without going into a rant, I'll just say that social media has democratized information but hasn't necessarily improved the quality of that information. Also, what we hear everyday we start to believe.

Kermit

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I guess I won’t pretend that might not be part of it.

I was excited for the Faction Rally. I wanted that new FWC shader and armor. I played for thirty or forty minutes, doing stuff on the EDZ. Some Public Events and Lost Sectors. And then I didn’t get the tokens that one time and I literally said “this fucking game . . . “ out loud and quit. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t get tokens (although that sucks, and I still don’t think that should ever happen). But that was the catalyst for me to realize I wasn’t actually having fun, and I was just playing to get that armor.

I’m not trying to be negative, just realistic. And it honestly makes me question my entire relationship with the game. I had fun for a month after CoO launched. Now I’m not. I’ll have fun when the next expansion comes out, I’m sure. That’s the way I’m going to have to play the game I think. But that’s sort of a bummer. D2 just isn’t fun for me in the same way D1 was. I don’t know why, I don’t know what the difference is. Ultimately that’s okay, and it’s honestly probably better this way. To think that I put off playing The Witcher 3 for nearly a whole year because I was too busy playing D1 . . .

Again, not trying to be negative, it’s just sort of a bummer to go from D1 which I played a bunch of and enjoyed nearly every single second of to D2, which I play less and enjoy less. It’s a better game in so many ways, but it’s also a less compelling one for me. Maybe that’s a “me” problem more than a problem with D2. I really don’t know. I do know that Bungie exacerbated the feeling with these stupid decisions. Loot lockouts in a freaking loot game is dumb on its face. Doing so without letting the player actually know feels sleazy. Just telling us (in game, with a timer, not in the weekly update after the fact) would honestly make all my bad feelings go away. Instead of being mad that I didn’t get tokens, I’d have just done a different activity and probably never noticed the difference. Whatever their actual motivations, the way they operate and choose to implement these systems feels sleazy and dishonest, and it honestly makes me consider why I want to play a game developed by people that actively dislike me for just trying to play the damn game how they tell me to.

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It is wholly fair to assess that at least some of the problem is caused by the game itself, but I homestly don’t think it is the actual reward systems that are the problem. I would suggest that the issues with fun in D2 are related entirely to how D2 minimized D1’s gear systems.

The more varied and the more “cool” things you do, usually the more fun that equates to, unless the core loop is sufficiently enjoyable to an individual to override variety and wow moments. Varied content is lacking in D2, though it has a better start in some regards than D1, and it can’t compare to D1Y3 yet. PvP feels less varied, as do strikes. And other than Flashpoints there is very little mix up in patrol spaces.

Now, doing cool things is more subjective and a few ways this can be handled. The first time you play a mission or do a Strike can be a wow moment. The first time a variable in a strike gives you a different encounter could be one. First Heroic version of a Public event or your first Raid, and each step through it. These moments are finite, however, so they hinge on variety and expanding existing content to keep people having them.

Outside of event moments you have player actions. D2 has a pretty wide variety of these which you can find, and ymmv, but they are out there. My issue with the way D2 handles them, however, is narrow scopes. For me, Orpheus Rig is basically the most fun Hunter Exotic, period. Chaining supers is cathartic and actually makes me feel powerful again. Most of these moments are from synergy between an exotic and a class perk. Skullfort and maining your shoulder is also excetionally satisfying, though less biable in higher challenge content. Winter’s Guile/Devour is popular. Peacekeepers and Lucky Pants for no need to reload are fun, too.

This is getting long, but I’m getting to the crux of why I think most people don’t have as much consistent fun with D2 as they had with D1. And I know I’ve said this here before, at least in other terms. But the issue is a drop in variety, mixed with less moments of excitement, and I put the blame on that to boring weapons and less abilities - both in regard to skill trees as well as rate of use. There are no longer emergent experiences with new weapons due both from everything being unlocked from the start and having less perks-per-weapon. Oh, and a single set perk that does anything interesting, instead of two which interact.

I do feel things are getting better, but it is slowly. Recent news is encouraging, but that doesn’t fix the current core loop and so a lot of people shift focus from those awesome watercooler moments to feeling like you aren’t being rewarded fairly for your time. So yeah. It isn’t all you. There are definitely elements to the game that are leaving sour tastes, but if the core loop were more enjoyable, I think the focus on reward issues would diminish because the rewards go back to being icing for most of the experience.

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Good summation.

D2 doesn't have the complexity of D1, and I do think that's part of the loss of interest. I can't make up my mind about it all. I'm glad I'm not staring at perk trees trying to glean what I should do like I felt I was always doing in D1. I'm still in love with so much of the streamlining--not going to orbit all the time, fast travel, no variations between armor/guns with the same name, and so on. I've yet to hit the cap, and it' hasn't kept me from anything but prestige mode. Maybe I'll get to that. But I'm still tickled by is the lack of anxiety regarding my progress.

I don't know the answer--maybe they'll hit the sweet spot? Here's hoping.

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But the issue is a drop in variety, mixed with less moments of excitement, and I put the blame on that to boring weapons and less abilities - both in regard to skill trees as well as rate of use. There are no longer emergent experiences with new weapons due both from everything being unlocked from the start and having less perks-per-weapon. Oh, and a single set perk that does anything interesting, instead of two which interact.

The weapons and abilities are boring precisely because of the investment system.

If weapons and abilities can interact in cool, fun, powerful, and skillful ways, then that puts people who roll the RNG correctly at a giant advantage, and conversely those who don't at a huge disadvantage. If you remove randomness, you can now have all of that since it's just a part of the game and not a random roll.

Bungie went wrong because they removed the randomness of the perks, but left in the randomness of the drops, AND THEN removed powerful interactions. The correct thing to do is to remove both random perks and random drops while keeping cool elements of multiplicative design.

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But the issue is a drop in variety, mixed with less moments of excitement, and I put the blame on that to boring weapons and less abilities - both in regard to skill trees as well as rate of use. There are no longer emergent experiences with new weapons due both from everything being unlocked from the start and having less perks-per-weapon. Oh, and a single set perk that does anything interesting, instead of two which interact.

The weapons and abilities are boring precisely because of the investment system.

If weapons and abilities can interact in cool, fun, powerful, and skillful ways, then that puts people who roll the RNG correctly at a giant advantage, and conversely those who don't at a huge disadvantage. If you remove randomness, you can now have all of that since it's just a part of the game and not a random roll.

Bungie went wrong because they removed the randomness of the perks, but left in the randomness of the drops, AND THEN removed powerful interactions. The correct thing to do is to remove both random perks and random drops while keeping cool elements of multiplicative design.

I don't lament the loss of random perks on guns. I think the removal is a good thing, and I agree that the loss of the fun interactions is what has killed the fun here. However, I think Bungie went a little too far with the complete removal of randomness.

I'd like to see named sets of perk variants and the gun name would end with the variant you got, so: Matador 64-A, Matador 64-B, Matador 64-C. So the Matadors would all essentially be the same gun, only w/ one different set of perk nodes...

A perks: Aggressive Ballistics, Knee Pads, Rifled Barrel
B perks: Rangefinder, Full Auto, Performance Bonus
C perks: Reinforced Barrel, Fitted Stock, Field Choke

or something along those lines. That way Bungie could easily add a lot of variety to the weapons, give a greater chance for emergent behavior, allow for tuning specific god rolls that get out of hand (or buffing crappy rolls), all the while keeping the name of the weapon significant.

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I'd like to see named sets of perk variants and the gun name would end with the variant you got, so: Matador 64-A, Matador 64-B, Matador 64-C. So the Matadors would all essentially be the same gun, only w/ one different set of perk nodes...

A perks: Aggressive Ballistics, Knee Pads, Rifled Barrel
B perks: Rangefinder, Full Auto, Performance Bonus
C perks: Reinforced Barrel, Fitted Stock, Field Choke

or something along those lines. That way Bungie could easily add a lot of variety to the weapons, give a greater chance for emergent behavior, allow for tuning specific god rolls that get out of hand (or buffing crappy rolls), all the while keeping the name of the weapon significant.

And you could do so much with this as well, such as quest-exclusive versions of the same gun, or variants that drop from different bosses. That way you can get a default version from Vendors, and if you like it, you find out which activities drop which variants, and do those.

The funny thing is that Destiny 1 had weapons like this, such as the red-colored Legendary variants of the exotics that you could get from Crucible (Eyasluna anyone?)

You could even implement a crafting system, where you can buy white (let's call them MK-1) versions of a Legendary, which have all of the base stats, but no perks. You then do a series of things to add perks and bump up the weaapon's rarity, up until you have one of the A/B/C variants of the Legendary. meybe you could even integrate an exotic mod that grants it an interesting perk (such as double orbs from Masterworks).

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Crafting could be neat, but it could also be awful. Seems like at the end of the day it’d just be more grinding. Granted the community at large seems to just want structured grinding, so maybe that’s not a bad thing.

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Crafting could be neat, but it could also be awful. Seems like at the end of the day it’d just be more grinding.

Granted the community at large seems to just want structured grinding, so maybe that’s not a bad thing.

You mean, the community that talks the most. Which is a very small percentage of the destiny community.

I am personally at a loss as to whether I want specific ways to get specific guns solely for the fact that if that gun is great, then you have a subset of people dominating with a gun that is very hard for some people to get. That, I think is why Bungie kinda stepped away from it. Or maybe not, I can't read their minds.

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At that point why not just make them bespoke guns?

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At that point why not just make them bespoke guns?

I don't see how having a handful of possible rolls/variants on a gun make them a custom/guardian_specific gun.

I envision fun stuff like this happening:
Some Gun - C: Icarus, & two other meh perks. But dude, I run a Titan with Lion Rampant greaves which have "Jump Jets: Provides additional aerial maneuverability" (I don't know how this would really work, it's just something I came up w/ for the sake of discussion). Suddenly Some Gun variant C is extra fun with my titan, or any other armor/class/perk that has extra in-air abilities.

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Increasingly, I feel like I'm living on a different planet than most people.

Increasingly, I feel like Bungie is living on a different planet than most people.

If people want to shoot into a cave for hours on end, what’s the harm? It’s honestly hardly different in terms of effort than actually playing the game.

Because the very next thing that happens -- the very next thing-- is the complaints about how the game is boring because the "best way" got get stuff is to do something boring and repetitive.

This is, in fact, exactly what did happen.

What is Bungie “fixing” by limiting the rate at which people can earn tokens? Doing the recommended activity for Faction Rally should never result in getting no tokens. It’s back to Bungie not respecting my time. Even if it’s just a few minutes, it sucks. If I want to do things quickly and efficiently by farming, why shouldn’t I?

Because Bungie wants to limit the delta between the rate of progress for people who min/max this sort of thing and those who don't, at least in part because activities and content are gated based on progress, and the willingness of players to enter into a game with progression is based at least in part on how hard they think it will be to catch up.

Thankfully I realized that I don’t actually care about those ornaments enough to play the game, so I’m not. It still has me down though. It feels like Bungie is being willfully obtuse at this point.

I still don’t hate the game, but I am coming to resent it again for not just letting me do things the way I want.

The game absolutely lets you "do things" the way you want. What you're complaining about is a limit on the rate you earn in-game currencies for doing it, which is sort of a separate thing. The loot economy is sort of broken and the Eververse is a blight and a scandal, but throttling on how often you get a certain kind of payoff in the game really isn't part of it.

Ah, well, for now Breath of the Wild has me engaged in a way it didn’t the first time I tried it. Here’s to hoping the next expansion and all the updates are worthwhile.

At least weapons in Destiny don't have durability.

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Increasingly, I feel like I'm living on a different planet than most people.

Increasingly, I feel like Bungie is living on a different planet than most people.

If people want to shoot into a cave for hours on end, what’s the harm? It’s honestly hardly different in terms of effort than actually playing the game.

Because the very next thing that happens -- the very next thing-- is the complaints about how the game is boring because the "best way" got get stuff is to do something boring and repetitive.

If the game encourages people to chase experiences instead of stuff, the problem solves itself.

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Increasingly, I feel like I'm living on a different planet than most people.

Increasingly, I feel like Bungie is living on a different planet than most people.

If people want to shoot into a cave for hours on end, what’s the harm? It’s honestly hardly different in terms of effort than actually playing the game.

Because the very next thing that happens -- the very next thing-- is the complaints about how the game is boring because the "best way" got get stuff is to do something boring and repetitive.

If the game encourages people to chase experiences instead of stuff, the problem solves itself.

Whether it does or not it also includes stuff, and some people are both stuff-centric and confident about it.

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This is obviously to fix the Winding Cove exploit. Is this really different than closing the Loot cave or not letting us get exotics for killing Draksis every three minutes? I mean, obviously there will always be exploits, but Bungie has consistently fixed the game when things turn up that lead to tedium.

You're talking about preventing the Weep exploit, which is something that they announced ages ago, and that we knew would be a part of the patch well ahead of time. Not what I'm talking about at all. The problem with this "fix" is that it hurts players who are playing the game "correctly", and there's no way that the player knows if he'll get ripped off. When it happened to cheapLEY, it was hugely discouraging, and I don't think he's alone.

Oh, I know what's different. The internet is in high dungeon about "throttling"--a term that makes it sound like Bungie is choking us to death. Sigh.

Now that's just stupid, man... It means that players are suddenly cut off from earning what they would normally be. First it was XP (and chest rewards), now it's just legitimately earned chest rewards. I don't think anyone means to use the term in the way your vivid imagination is, but the term is appropriate for what is happening again.

Increasingly, I feel like I'm living on a different planet than most people.

Clearly, you're living on a planet where I'm talking about the rewards themselves, even though the whole point of the thread was about Bungie continuing to make boneheaded mistakes and choices that they know won't go over well (especially when those choices turn out to be buggy and hurt the people who are already playing their game the way Bungie wants them to), and then failing to communicate with their customers. It has nothing to do with them fixing a specific exploit.

P.S. I alternated public events and lost sectors and some other stuff for a few hours. I now have everything but the helmet. Every time I filled the bar I got a new piece of armor.

Congrats. I had a full Warlock set with new Monarchy the first week, IIRC. My Titan is missing the helmet, but I think he'll be doing Dead Orbit this week; I think the Lion armor looks dumb...

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Yeah, that's how it works (and if you recall, I totally called it). They normalized it so that players who don't play as much earn less engrams by default, even though they removed the XP throttle. The only part that surprised me was that they left the Well Rested bonus, but it makes sense that they wanted to keep it, since it's effectively been nerfed as well.

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Yes. But I am doing the same activites that that system was making more rewarding, but since people get upset by load balancing I now earl less than I did prior to everyone being up in arms. Activities that were previously boosted to bring them in line lost that boost.

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So, can I or can I not get the cool future war cult titan armor that showed up for y2 from this event?

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So, can I or can I not get the cool future war cult titan armor that showed up for y2 from this event?

Through completing the Ornaments, yes.

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So, can I or can I not get the cool future war cult titan armor that showed up for y2 from this event?

Through completing the Ornaments, yes.

I really want the FWC helmet ornament, but to get it I have to have the full set. I either need to have a lot of luck on RNG, or grind out to rank 10 (200 tokens) and buy all the armor (25 tokens each). If a public event gives 5, I need to run 40 events to just rank up. Then 5 more for each piece of armor I don't receive along the way. That's somewhere between 40 and 65 public events, then run the nightfall.

I know I can get tokens from other sources, but I'm guessing public events are the fastest if they don't have the cooldown. Are reputation bundles resetting every day?

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Regular punclic events are 3, Heroic are 5, if you complete the supply point activities you get 2-8, depending on how many you were able to complete (though I have seen conflicting reports, this is anecdotal)

So people should always do the supply points. Everyone in a local area gets tokens for them. And most regular PE’s don’t take the 6 or 9 people I was seeing around yesterday.

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And most regular PE’s don’t take the 6 or 9 people I was seeing around yesterday.

But having that many people on it can make it fun!

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Well, that begins quickly.

Also I want that Travolta emote.

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Sure, but don’t leave the one guy who’s trying to earn everyone around more tokens hanging.

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So, can I or can I not get the cool future war cult titan armor that showed up for y2 from this event?

Through completing the Ornaments, yes.

I really want the FWC helmet ornament, but to get it I have to have the full set. I either need to have a lot of luck on RNG, or grind out to rank 10 (200 tokens) and buy all the armor (25 tokens each). If a public event gives 5, I need to run 40 events to just rank up. Then 5 more for each piece of armor I don't receive along the way. That's somewhere between 40 and 65 public events, then run the nightfall.

I know I can get tokens from other sources, but I'm guessing public events are the fastest if they don't have the cooldown. Are reputation bundles resetting every day?

This is silly. I played for a couple of hours last night - a whole bunch of different things, with a friend. (A little crucible, a few strikes, running around Mercury to finish the Flashpoint - a standard night.)

I ended up with 137 tokens (and 3 of the 5 armor pieces).

I don't know how long 65 (or even 40) public events would take, but I'm DAMN sure it's more than a couple of hours.

Just play the game. You'll get what you need.

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So, can I or can I not get the cool future war cult titan armor that showed up for y2 from this event?

Through completing the Ornaments, yes.

I really want the FWC helmet ornament, but to get it I have to have the full set. I either need to have a lot of luck on RNG, or grind out to rank 10 (200 tokens) and buy all the armor (25 tokens each). If a public event gives 5, I need to run 40 events to just rank up. Then 5 more for each piece of armor I don't receive along the way. That's somewhere between 40 and 65 public events, then run the nightfall.

I know I can get tokens from other sources, but I'm guessing public events are the fastest if they don't have the cooldown. Are reputation bundles resetting every day?

This is silly. I played for a couple of hours last night - a whole bunch of different things, with a friend. (A little crucible, a few strikes, running around Mercury to finish the Flashpoint - a standard night.)

I ended up with 137 tokens (and 3 of the 5 armor pieces).

I don't know how long 65 (or even 40) public events would take, but I'm DAMN sure it's more than a couple of hours.

Just play the game. You'll get what you need.

I agree with this assessment. People are complaining they can't "grind" but it's really just public events! Just play the game, mix it up and you will easily get what you want.

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But do hit up the daily milestone on whatever, that’s 15 tokens for idle work. Not necessarily the most fun. But yesterday it wasn’t hard to knock all 3 out across my account for 45 bonus tokens.

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I haven't really tried yet. Just doing the math off of what I remembered. How many do strikes pay out?

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I think strikes are 7-10 or something, and a first NF/character is 10-18.

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So, can I or can I not get the cool future war cult titan armor that showed up for y2 from this event?

Through completing the Ornaments, yes.

I really want the FWC helmet ornament, but to get it I have to have the full set. I either need to have a lot of luck on RNG, or grind out to rank 10 (200 tokens) and buy all the armor (25 tokens each). If a public event gives 5, I need to run 40 events to just rank up. Then 5 more for each piece of armor I don't receive along the way. That's somewhere between 40 and 65 public events, then run the nightfall.

I know I can get tokens from other sources, but I'm guessing public events are the fastest if they don't have the cooldown. Are reputation bundles resetting every day?

This is silly. I played for a couple of hours last night - a whole bunch of different things, with a friend. (A little crucible, a few strikes, running around Mercury to finish the Flashpoint - a standard night.)

I ended up with 137 tokens (and 3 of the 5 armor pieces).

I don't know how long 65 (or even 40) public events would take, but I'm DAMN sure it's more than a couple of hours.

Just play the game. You'll get what you need.

So, I just cashed in 8 engrams with New Monarchy. Those engrams dropped the following faction related items:

titan but towel (which I unlocked anyway for turning IN engrams....)
titan but towel ornament (twice)
new monarchy shoulders
new monarchy auto rifle
new monarchy side arm

The rest were either NM shaders (not complaining) or unrelated weapons and armor.

I gotta say, I'm disappointed :/

Maybe RNG wasn't on my side, but I don't think that I should be getting NON-faction gear from these engrams....

The payout doesn't seem right, but that might just be in my head.

It is my first faction rally so I admit I wasn't already aware how it works.

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FWIW, I pledged to a faction when I started playing last night, and after my first outing, which I think was just doing the Mercury stuff (I might have done the lost sectors thing, too, I don't recall), I came back to the tower and found that I had like 70 tokens.

I wish I could remember exactly what I did, but it couldn't have been more than a couple of hours. So if you're playing semi-regularly and doing some of the gear activities/milestones, I'd be surprised if you don't get to 200 tokens.

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You are under the impression that the communication WITHIN Bungie goes smoothly. It doesn't. Time and time again, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. There are countless examples of people not knowing about changes other departments make.

Maybe they should try listening to themselves too.

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You are under the impression that the communication WITHIN Bungie goes smoothly. It doesn't. Time and time again, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. There are countless examples of people not knowing about changes other departments make.

Maybe they should try listening to themselves too.

Management is clearly broken over there. A company that size needs inter-office coordinators (and sometimes inter-department coordinators) who ensure that everyone is on the same page. Bungie prides itself on the 1 on 1 meetings department heads have with their workers, but do they have all-department-head meetings to ensure everyone knows and understands the current goals and vision of the game?

Okay, I'm inspired. Office Management Manifesto incoming... probably in a few hours. Stay tuned.

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Office Management Manifesto incoming... probably in a few hours.

I just remembered, I'm busy that night.

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Office Management Manifesto incoming... probably in a few hours.

I just remembered, I'm busy that night.

Just posted. I'm not gonna lie, it's not really a page-turner. I'm just kind of a nerd about how to manage people.

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Christopher Barrett finally commented on one of the issues that were brought up. Not the throttling, but the lack of new loot acquisition itself, which is working as intended:

"Our new goals for weapon rewards in Faction Rallies should have been broadcast before it returned. I think we could have avoided lots of confusion for players. The Development update was our priority.

Going forward we’ll strive to communicate any changes to rewards or experiences before they go live."

Well...
I feel for the guy, but this is a bit too much. Less than a week after making purposeful strides in communication, he is having to issue yet another "we'll have to try to communicate better in the future".

At least someone was willing to say something, so it's still progress. Gift horse and all that.

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No one is ever a perfect communicator. There will always be missteps, especially in proximity to things of higher visible priority. Acknowledging shortcomings is the first step to working on overcoming them.

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You're right, but I fear the collective wrath of the Internet is not wise enough to know this.

Either way, you've got to admit, it's not a great look for Bungie to write up a long blog post about how they're going to improve communication with the community, only to experience yet another instance of bad communication not one week later.

Chris' task is thankless. He is being put under a lot of pressure that could be alleviated if other team leaders within Bungie stepped forward and started communicating with the fans too. Frankly, they're hanging him out to dry here.

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You're right, but I fear the collective wrath of the Internet is not wise enough to know this.

Either way, you've got to admit, it's not a great look for Bungie to write up a long blog post about how they're going to improve communication with the community, only to experience yet another instance of bad communication not one week later.

Chris' task is thankless. He is being put under a lot of pressure that could be alleviated if other team leaders within Bungie stepped forward and started communicating with the fans too. Frankly, they're hanging him out to dry here.

One of the lines given to me when going through official channels to speak with people currently working at Bungie was verbatim: “We wouldn’t want anyone to make any unauthorized remarks.” This was after specifying I’d be asking about Halo and before.

There is too much at stake nowadays to simply be frank and open with fans. Part of it is the internet jumping on a single utterance and instance of fault, but part of it is the huge publishing deal they have in place.

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To this effect, most likely Chris Barrett has his associated tweets vetted to make sure they are communicating things accurately. Supposition on my part, but my expectation was that prior to the hubbubs Bungie considered the accuracy of silence to the inaccuracy of words. Painting it in a negative light here, because as a fan I like to know things, but with understanding from the way most of the internet latches onto anything.

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I'm not sure I get why there has to be a cool down. They already kind of pace the rewards to the time invested, (sort of). It isn't like you can run PE's super fast to begin with, and with a fixed amount per win this isn't the type of thing you need a cool down on. Likewise given the low rewards for other activities it seems hard to really grind tokens.

So why do you need a cool down? I mean you have PVP, which is timed. Strikes which are timed. PE events which rotate on a timer, and if you are lucky you can finish one early and hit a second right away, supplies on a timer, and lost sectors.

Of these, lost sectors were spammed, and I can understand putting a timer to defeat the loot exploit in the EDZ. Why have a cool down for anything else? It just seems like added work for minimal benefit, especially since you have this large publicity risk.

Players are hugely sensitized to this issue. Cooldowns, especially hidden ones, are a major sore point. Why risk adding them back in? They would have been better off adding a closing door to the sump lost sector.

There seems to be a cabal of programmers that want to solve all the grind issues with time outs. Its weird.

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a cabal

Mow them down, Guardian! Show no mercy!

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Didn't they explicitly say somewhere that it wasn't supposed to apply to public events in the first place? That the timer EXISTING was intentional, but that it was supposed to have been for lost sectors, to prevent some particular exploit?

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EA sports game developers often say ‘we’re listening’ right before implementing something that the community hates.

Not really related, I just found it a humorous coincidence that it happened here as well.

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EA sports game developers often say ‘we’re listening’ right before implementing something that the community hates.

Not really related, I just found it a humorous coincidence that it happened here as well.

Reading this from my desk inside EA sports HQ and nodding my head.

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EA sports game developers often say ‘we’re listening’ right before implementing something that the community hates.

Not really related, I just found it a humorous coincidence that it happened here as well.

Reading this from my desk inside EA sports HQ and nodding my head.

Remember when it used to be "EA sports. ITS IN THE GAME!"

Lol it's ironic it's not in the game anymore but in DLC!

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This one is better.

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"We're Listening." (Criticism)

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

That hit home

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

+1

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

Am I in bizarro world?

Am I in bizarro world?

Am I in bizarro world?

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

On negative feelings, D1 to D2. /long

On negative feelings, D1 to D2. /long

On negative feelings, D1 to D2. /long

Weapon rolls, my variant/perk/emergent fun solution.

Weapon rolls, my variant/perk/emergent fun solution.

Weapon rolls, my variant/perk/emergent fun solution.

Weapon rolls, my variant/perk/emergent fun solution.

Weapon rolls, my variant/perk/emergent fun solution.

Weapon rolls, my variant/perk/emergent fun solution.

One Armed Bandit

One Armed Bandit

One Armed Bandit

A wide swing and a miss, Kermit...

I earn less XP after the “throttle” got turned off tho.

I earn less XP after the “throttle” got turned off tho.

I earn less XP after the “throttle” got turned off tho.

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

Armor?

+1

Faction Engrams

Armor?

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"Going forward we’ll strive to communicate..."

Commumication is a process.

Commumication is a process.

Commumication is a process.

Commumication is a process.

There seems to be a group working at cross purposes

There seems to be a group working at cross purposes

There seems to be a group working at cross purposes

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"We're Listening."

"EA sports. It's INSIDE the game!"

The full game is coming from INSIDE the DLC!

^ Post of the week