Skolas Rules, Raids, some thoughts on D1 v D2, etc. (Destiny)

by cheapLEY , Tuesday, April 03, 2018, 21:17 (2214 days ago)

Cyber, Cody, and I just killed Skolas (he's a real chump now, but it was still fun).

We talked about it a bit, but it made me think about Destiny encounters in general, and raids (and Skolas), and now I have a random mess of thoughts that you all get to wade through.

What makes for a good raid (or boss) encounter?

I instantly think of what makes a bad boss encounter, and I remember early Nightfalls. Everyone huddled in the back of the room with sniper rifles and rocket launchers, taking potshots at the boss from relative safety. It was pretty boring.

Which leads me to Skolas, and the reason that it's still my favorite D1 encounter: movement. Yeah, the leading strategy when he was still really difficult was huddling on or under the balcony in the corner of the room, but the encounter was designed around that. The combination of having to pass the Devouring Essence back and forth (and the timer ensuring that everyone will have to take a turn) along with dismantling mines means that, unless you get very lucky and have mines appear in the right order at the right time, everyone is going to have to do some running. It requires movement and, often, some flexibility from players to ensure that the Essence is passed correctly and the mines are disabled, all while still damaging (or sometimes just avoiding) Skolas.

Which brings me to Mines and Argos, which I'll put in spoiler brackets for Korny, just in case. I don't talk about specifics at all, so I'd say it's safe, but just in case.

Mines and Argos have replaced Skolas for me as the best encounter in Destiny. I know it's two separate encounters (if it really came down to it, I think I might like mines a bit more). It's an encounter that's fundamentally about movement and flexibility. I have never actually defeated Argos, yet, but every time I've done Mines or Argos, there's been some switching of roles due to a death or just bad positioning. It's an encounter that asks everyone to actually understand what's going on, rather than just being told to stand in a certain spot and shoot something. It also obviously has tons of shooting and some of the waves can be pretty tough to survive, if you get caught alone on a platform, so it's still got a lot of the classic Destiny moment to moment shooting.

Compare that with Baths, which, while it does have some movement due to passing the buff, mostly boils down to standing on the right platform and shooting, then running to the middle to stand in a specific spot and shoot something. Sure, figuring it out was fun and pretty neat, but that's mostly true of all the raid encounters. Calus Shadow Realm also sort of just boils down to standing the right spot and shooting a few Psions. Oddly enough, I think The Gauntlet is the encounter that breaks from that, at least if you do the non-mobile strategy (which I still like better). It definitely boils down to just standing on a platform and shooting the right target. But I think the rhythm and efficiency of shooting your target, jumping to punch the psion, jumping back to the platform, and turning to hit the next target is compelling enough to make up for it.

I really hope we see more Mines/Argos type things moving forward. I think I like it better than the Atheon and Oryx picking players at random for a role they may not be comfortable with. While that's fine, I think Mines/Argos and even Skolas encourage and require that same flexibility without actually forcing a random player to suddenly be the entire crux of the encounter. Something like being a runner for Oryx or Sisters or Vosik requires a single person to do a mobility based challenge, while the rest of the team can just pick a spot and hang out, for the most part. Mines and Argos require the entire team to be highly mobile throughout the encounter, and I think that's when Destiny is at its best.

Which brings me to D1 v D2.

I've been thinking about it a lot in the last few weeks, now that I've been going back to D1. After tonight, I'm even more sure that D1 feels better than D2. Whether that's the guns or the movement or the ability recharge rates or all of the above, it just feels better to me. I think D2 still feels great, and if I had never gone back to D1, I'd have probably said it was better in that regard.

But I think D2 does one particular thing much better that I previously took for granted in regards to my first point above. And that comes down to boss encounters and strikes. All of the strike bosses require constant movement. The bosses are all very mobile. Cover moves around or disappears entirely in at least two strikes. I'm trying to think about all of the strikes, and I can't think of one that just lets you sit in a corner and pick at the boss like you could do with almost all of the strikes in D1. Savathun's Song is the closest to allowing it, but the Shrieker moves around enough to the far corners of the space to require the players to at least change positions, even if there isn't a whole lot of constant movement like a lot of the other strikes require.

I think Destiny 2 really encourages (and often forces) its players to be mobile, whereas large swaths of Destiny 1 could be played by parking in a corner and plinking away from across the room.