No monsoon in sight... time to Escalate!

Junior and I are jumping into Glacial Drift to take another run at EP, hoping that the third time is a charm.

Come join us! We have two separate instances, so we can hold four more.

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Just got home. Let me know if something frees up!

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Nine-man Escalation Protocol is SO MUCH fun!

That's for all who rallied up with us for a few runs.

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Always a pleasure.

Ended up completing the Armor set, I don't believe I saw a gun drop for anyone. :(

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I'm jealous.

I got the Sniper Rifle the last time we got a 9 person crew together. It seems neat, but also somewhat pointless--if I'm going to run a Sniper Rifle it's going to be DARCI (until I get Whisper, I suppose). Although, that might change with Forsaken, I suppose.

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It's pretty nice if you are choosing to (for whatever reason) run an Exotic in one of your other slots. As it stands it is one of two Legendary Snipers I feel comfortable using.

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Also keep in mind that the sleeper simulant catalyst requires that you own all 4 EP weapons to complete it.

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Also keep in mind that the sleeper simulant catalyst requires that you own all 4 EP weapons to complete it.

Jeez. I don't even have a Sleeper Simulant yet. I finished the EP step for 10 wave clears, and I don't remember what was left. Maybe I should mop that up before Forsaken.

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Not only because gaming fun, but because of shirt.

Has anyone just stumbled into a good one? I take it Bungie expected this to be like Public events and just have people team up with strangers by chance, but everything I hear is about complicated methods of finding each other.

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Has anyone just stumbled into a good one? I take it Bungie expected this to be like Public events and just have people team up with strangers by chance, but everything I hear is about complicated methods of finding each other.

I've had two clears just stumbling into a random event with strangers. The drop rate is way too low if this is how bungle wants it to happen. I lucked out and got my forth weapon on clear 26. A friend mine didn't get his last until number 79.

-Chappy

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I still haven't got the shotgun to drop. I don't think I have ever had a clear with randoms, even with 5 or 6 in the instance. They never hang around if we fail. My only luck has been with the Xbox LFG, but it seems there aren't many groups looking at the times I can get on.

I wish they had either made this a matchmaking activity or put it in a side area where only people interested in running it would go. Most of the time the other randoms seem to ignore it or be afk, which keeps me from being matched with people who want to do it. I get tired of going in and out of the areas and finding nothing.

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At this point with more players having completed their Solstice armor it is easier to do them without communication. I've got about a dozen completions and all were with random folks. I only started really trying in the last week or two.

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Not only because gaming fun, but because of shirt.

Has anyone just stumbled into a good one? I take it Bungie expected this to be like Public events and just have people team up with strangers by chance, but everything I hear is about complicated methods of finding each other.

Escalation Protocol has become my favorite go-to activity of late, despite the fact that getting a good session up and running is by no means guaranteed.

On one occasion, I made a substantial run with a group of strangers (6 of us in total) who just happened to find ourselves in the same instance together. I've done the first wave or two plenty of times in this manner, but this was the only time I've been part of a random group that managed to make it to wave 7. We got the Boss's health down to about 50% before we ran out of time, and the group instantly broke apart without making a 2nd attempt.

Every other time that I've made a substantial EP run has been done with organized groups, either through DBO or the Xbox LFG tool. Once you get everything up and running, its a blast. Pure chaos and hectic fun, decently challenging at times and hilariously easy at other times. The rewards are great (when they happen to drop), and it feels special without being as intense and demanding an activity as a raid.

I really, really hope that Bungie takes the time to address the way Escalation Protocol is handled, from a player-grouping point of view. Because at the moment, there are some severe barriers between the player and this fun activity. Everything about how the activity is accessed seems to imply a sort of "vision" of how Destiny is played that, in my experience, does not at all line up with the reality of how Destiny is played.

If the patrol spaces were filled with 3-person fireteams who were constantly out and about, looking for EP instances or other public events, then the current implementation might not be so bad. But in my experience, finding 3-person fireteams patrolling mars almost never happens, except for the rare times I come across a group who is looking to run Escalation Protocol. The far more common situation I find myself in as to be alone in a patrol zone, or to find myself along side 1 or 2 randoms. And because of how Destiny's patrol space/instancing/player cap system works, if there are 3 random individuals in an instance on mars, the game won't allow more players to join that instance unless they are being invited in to a fireteam by one of the already present players.

I know there are some real hotshot players out there who have managed to 3-man Escalation Protocol, but that is simply impossible for the majority of players to ever achieve. A group of 6 organized players, all max light, who are all communicating and know what they are doing, have a decent chance of making it through as long as at least of few of them are real damage-dealing monsters. Any less than that, and the chances of success drop to slim at best.

All this to say, I love EP and would love to see Bungie address its current implementation. Its a super fun activity that not enough players get to experience, purely due to the severely awkward player-grouping systems around it. It would be a great platform to add to, as well. I'd love to see new IKELOS weapons and armor added, perhaps some new wave variations.

In the meantime, I'm always up for running EP with anyone here at DBO. If you happen to catch me online, feel free to fire me a message or invite! (My Xbox gamertag is NevinDouglas).

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I agree with all of that.

I love Bungie’s vision for Destiny, where groups can form organically and tackle something like EP. That just doesn’t happen (or at least if it does, it’s rare).

There’s always been a huge difference in how Bungie seems to want people to play the game and how people actually play the game.

I’d love to see more end game activities designed for big fire teams that aren’t raids or Crucible. EP is a great start—they just need to make it easier to actually get a session started.

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I agree with all of that.

I love Bungie’s vision for Destiny, where groups can form organically and tackle something like EP. That just doesn’t happen (or at least if it does, it’s rare).

There’s always been a huge difference in how Bungie seems to want people to play the game and how people actually play the game.

I’d love to see more end game activities designed for big fire teams that aren’t raids or Crucible. EP is a great start—they just need to make it easier to actually get a session started.

A potential piece of the puzzle, I think, is that pretty much every fireteam-based activity in the game pulls the players out of the public spaces. Warmind showed some thought towards changing this, with a relatively large number of quest-based activities in the patrol space (such as the Nacent Dawn quest). But, while these activities do a great job of getting individual players out into the public spaces, they aren’t particularly conducive to playing as a group. With such long, multi-phase, time gated quests, there are just too many opportunities for a group of friends to fall out of sync with each other. It takes a serious commitment for 2 or 3 friends to play through one of those quests together, especially with the added pressure of putting significant time into whichever activities a given player wants to do in order to s-l-o-w-l-y climb their way up the power level grind.

Really, the simple solution (conceptually speaking) is to just add matchmaking for EP, lol.

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Really, the simple solution (conceptually speaking) is to just add matchmaking for EP, lol.

You're not wrong. And the few 9 person EPs I've done have been a blast--I desperately wish we could just matchmake into that as a group.

I do also wish, however, that more people just played the game the way I imagine Bungie intended people to. Matching up with randos to accomplish something is special and fun in a neat way.

I don't know what the answer is to accomplish that, though. I won't begrudge anyone for playing Destiny in whichever way they want, but too many people treat the game like a checklist. They laser focus on whatever they're currently doing, be it weapon catalysts, finishing a quest step for Sleeper Simulant or whatever else. That's totally fine, I just feel like Bungie intended folks to just play the game, and let those things happen naturally, and I really feel like the game is designed around that philosophy.

I don't know if they can somehow teach and encourage players to play the game like that (or if they even should). Maybe just adding matchmaking to literally everything in the game is the actual answer--just let people do what they want. But I also do think that something special about Destiny would be lost if that were to happen.

I also recognize that I'm probably in the minority with how I engage with Destiny. I like just dicking around in patrol, I play basically whatever anyone else is in the mood for, whether it's something I'll get a reward for it or not. I rarely have a specific thing I want to accomplish in the game--I just like playing the game. I suspect that most people don't have that mindset (given all the bitching about how doing X activity isn't rewarding enough, as if just the joy of playing isn't a good enough reason to do something). So getting people to just jump into a patrol to dick around is probably like pulling teeth.

It's a shame, because I feel like such a large percentage of development time and effort goes into the campaign and the patrol spaces, which end up feeling like throwaway things, because no one wants to just hang out in the patrol spaces.

Eh, anyway, I think I'm rambling now, and I have a hard time articulating my thoughts on this, partly because they're not fully formed anyway.

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Really, the simple solution (conceptually speaking) is to just add matchmaking for EP, lol.

You're not wrong. And the few 9 person EPs I've done have been a blast--I desperately wish we could just matchmake into that as a group.

I do also wish, however, that more people just played the game the way I imagine Bungie intended people to. Matching up with randos to accomplish something is special and fun in a neat way.

I don't know what the answer is to accomplish that, though. I won't begrudge anyone for playing Destiny in whichever way they want, but too many people treat the game like a checklist. They laser focus on whatever they're currently doing, be it weapon catalysts, finishing a quest step for Sleeper Simulant or whatever else. That's totally fine, I just feel like Bungie intended folks to just play the game, and let those things happen naturally, and I really feel like the game is designed around that philosophy.

I don't know if they can somehow teach and encourage players to play the game like that (or if they even should). Maybe just adding matchmaking to literally everything in the game is the actual answer--just let people do what they want. But I also do think that something special about Destiny would be lost if that were to happen.

I also recognize that I'm probably in the minority with how I engage with Destiny. I like just dicking around in patrol, I play basically whatever anyone else is in the mood for, whether it's something I'll get a reward for it or not. I rarely have a specific thing I want to accomplish in the game--I just like playing the game. I suspect that most people don't have that mindset (given all the bitching about how doing X activity isn't rewarding enough, as if just the joy of playing isn't a good enough reason to do something). So getting people to just jump into a patrol to dick around is probably like pulling teeth.

It's a shame, because I feel like such a large percentage of development time and effort goes into the campaign and the patrol spaces, which end up feeling like throwaway things, because no one wants to just hang out in the patrol spaces.

Eh, anyway, I think I'm rambling now, and I have a hard time articulating my thoughts on this, partly because they're not fully formed anyway.

Here’s the thing; in order for me to reach the point where I could casually jump into EP with a group of randos, I needed to treat D2 like a checklist for 3 solid months. Thats how long it took me to get my characters leveled to the point where the final waves of EP are not an absolute train wreck, while also acquiring the diverse range of gear needed to be able to slip into any group and fill a needed role. I’m totally with you when it comes to the desire to just float around the game and do whatever you’re in the mood to do. I LOVE Destiny when it gets to that point. I just can’t actually play that way in the true sense until after I’ve climbed the power ladder, and Bungie keeps making that climb longer and slower with each release.

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Here’s the thing; in order for me to reach the point where I could casually jump into EP with a group of randos, I needed to treat D2 like a checklist for 3 solid months. Thats how long it took me to get my characters leveled to the point where the final waves of EP are not an absolute train wreck, while also acquiring the diverse range of gear needed to be able to slip into any group and fill a needed role. I’m totally with you when it comes to the desire to just float around the game and do whatever you’re in the mood to do. I LOVE Destiny when it gets to that point. I just can’t actually play that way in the true sense until after I’ve climbed the power ladder, and Bungie keeps making that climb longer and slower with each release.

I'm with you there, too! It wasn't that long ago that I made a post saying that the soft cap system is complete shit. Hell, I've made the argument that power levels add basically nothing worthwhile to the game anyway.

I know they've made the climb even longer in Forsaken, and I'm curious to see how that will play out. The problem isn't necessarily the time it takes to climb, the problem is that in Warmind, there weren't enough steps on the ladder. As long as there is a steady stream of content that opens up as you make the power climb, and don't have to rely on repeating the same activities for weekly milestones to get to the next step, I'll be okay.

Escalation Protocol is a perfect example of how to botch that, I think. It feels so obvious that EP could have been built to facilitate that climb, rather than just being available at the end of it. It could have scaled so much better, with most people only being able to get through Wave 1 for a week, with it actually having drops that give you more power, so you can make it through Wave 2 the next week, which leads to drops that will allow you to get through Wave 3, etc. It seems like a no-brainer.

I just want a clear path to max level, without having to farm weekly milestones for weeks to get there.

While I don't feel like they've been super clear about it (even in that meaty update from a few weeks ago), I get the impression that the climb to max level might be longer, but also more steady (like it was in The Taken King). That seems like an okay middle ground, at least.

I'm still not even at 380 on any of my characters on either platform, because at a certain point, I got tired of chasing the milestones every week. It is a shit system. Just let me do what I want, Bungie.

That said, reaching max level has never meant much of anything in Destiny. Nothing in the game has ever required max level (Prestige raids, I guess, which I don't particularly care about). 3 manning Escalation Protocol would require it, too, but I've never felt like I was under powered or useless being in the mid-to-upper 370s in our big group.

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Just wanted to chime in here and say I play very much with the same mindset. I'm down for anything, and hanging with the people I know (primarily DBOers), is what keeps bringing me back. Sure, I have hazy goals (I'll get around to Masterworking my Solstice gear eventually), but I really don't focus on the grind at all.

Escalation Protocol seemed like a stretch up until I got near the level cap, and now it feels almost easy with a set of 400-405 Solstice armor.

But I got to thinking recently about something that Claude has said in the past about Bungie titles: There's always a particular twist you don't expect. And the way that tends to play out is in terms of how they've implemented things. I think in this case, with EP, there's a phenomenon that's really important to take stock of.

I've made more friends out of randos running EP in the last two months than I have in almost any other similar period since Xbox Live went live. And whether by design or not, the reality is that the way that groups have to self-organize in order to achieve a win is something that works better than anything else (at least that I've seen) to build new bonds within a community; especially for a game that's at this point in its lifecycle. Frankly, I'm more than ok with the solution being placed just out of reach (with no "proper" matchmaking); and needing to rely on the community to come together to beat a challenge.

My mind begins to race considering what kind of experiences one could craft by scaling things up past 9 players...

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The integrated LFG tools being useful for EP on Xbox is not what I hear from people playing PS4, and it really does seem like a cool competitive advantage.

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Hey Pyro, Hit me up if you see me on, I will gladly run some EP's with you.

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Pyromancy if I'm online I will run some EP with you and others.

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I flew down to mars this morning, and walked right into a group that was assembling outside of Braytech. Ended up doing 3 or 4 complete runs with them. Recorded a few clips for anyone interested. Some great clips on the IKELOS Shotgun in all its boss-melting glory.

(Side note: EP is inadvertently the single best Destiny-related reason to buy an Xbox One X... it runs quite smoothly, as opposed to the stutter-fest that it becomes on the base consoles).

Wave 1 Boss: (remember how hard it used to be to kill this thing?)

https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/nevindouglas/video/59017956

Wave 6 Mobs and Bosses:

https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/nevindouglas/video/59018034

Wave 7 Boss:

https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/nevindouglas/video/59018071

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I love it so much.

One cool thing is, as OP as it clearly is, there is some risk involved in using it to its full potential. Hitting bosses with melee attacks can backfire easily. Much as I loved D1 weapons like Gjallarhorn and Icebreaker, I think I prefer the trend that Bungie has going with D2 where the most powerful weapons all take a bit more thought and/or skill to use. The IKELOS Shotgun, Whisper, Polaris Lance all have a bit more of a learning curve than just “pull the trigger and watch everything explode” :)

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I love it so much.

One cool thing is, as OP as it clearly is, there is some risk involved in using it to its full potential. Hitting bosses with melee attacks can backfire easily. Much as I loved D1 weapons like Gjallarhorn and Icebreaker, I think I prefer the trend that Bungie has going with D2 where the most powerful weapons all take a bit more though and/or skill to use. The IKELOS Shotgun, Whisper, Polaris Lance all have a bit more of a learning curve than just “pull the trigger and watch everything explode” :)

I like this trend. Weapons alone won't win you the fight, you have to actually attain some measure of skill with them. I love how the Polaris lance is sort of an evolution of the needle rifle from Reach. Same requirement of patience in critting to get that pop.

But man, I can't wait to land my own IKELOS shotgun so I too can kill Guardians from 5 miles away in Crucible...

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I love it so much.

One cool thing is, as OP as it clearly is, there is some risk involved in using it to its full potential. Hitting bosses with melee attacks can backfire easily. Much as I loved D1 weapons like Gjallarhorn and Icebreaker, I think I prefer the trend that Bungie has going with D2 where the most powerful weapons all take a bit more thought and/or skill to use. The IKELOS Shotgun, Whisper, Polaris Lance all have a bit more of a learning curve than just “pull the trigger and watch everything explode” :)

I just REALLY want to use melting point + IKELOS shotgun... Sounds so freaking OP.

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I love it so much.

One cool thing is, as OP as it clearly is, there is some risk involved in using it to its full potential. Hitting bosses with melee attacks can backfire easily. Much as I loved D1 weapons like Gjallarhorn and Icebreaker, I think I prefer the trend that Bungie has going with D2 where the most powerful weapons all take a bit more thought and/or skill to use. The IKELOS Shotgun, Whisper, Polaris Lance all have a bit more of a learning curve than just “pull the trigger and watch everything explode” :)

I just REALLY want to use melting point + IKELOS shotgun... Sounds so freaking OP.

I put a void mod on mine, so if there’s another guardian with a tractor cannon in the mix... oooooh baby!

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On that note, with the EP shotgun being locked to Solar, and Perfect Paradox being made Kinetic, we won’t really have any ultra-high damage void weapons, will we? (Aside from anything new dropping in foresaken, I mean). Whisper, EP Shotty, Sleeper are all Solar. Darci and Acrius are arc. Hopefully we’ll get one or two void power weapons of a similar quality.

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Just Boopgun and your prefered Backup Plan fusion. Probably be the most mileage out of that combo given you’ll be able to carry both.

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Just Boopgun and your prefered Backup Plan fusion. Probably be the most mileage out of that combo given you’ll be able to carry both.

That’s an exciting thought that occurred to me earlier today; the ability to use the Booper and another void shotty/fusion at the same time. Should be great :)

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(Side note: EP is inadvertently the single best Destiny-related reason to buy an Xbox One X... it runs quite smoothly, as opposed to the stutter-fest that it becomes on the base consoles).

But EP feels so much more epic when you are running at 10 frames a second!! It's like a constant slow-mo action scene!

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(Side note: EP is inadvertently the single best Destiny-related reason to buy an Xbox One X... it runs quite smoothly, as opposed to the stutter-fest that it becomes on the base consoles).

It's smooth on PS4 Pro. OMFG come back to us d00d!

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No monsoon in sight... time to Escalate! (Destiny)

update - we now have 3 fireteams! 9 player happening now!

update - we now have 3 fireteams! 9 player happening now!

Thanks!

Thanks!

Junior had the shotgun drop

Nice!

Nice!

Nice!

Nice!

Yeah... I'm not sure where I'm at on the Sleeper quest

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

I would very much like to escalate.

This really feels like it should be an XBL marketing ad

Anyone on PS4 want to Escalation Protocol this week?

Anyone on PS4 want to Escalation Protocol this week?

IAnyone on PS4 want to Escalation Protocol this week?

Thanks guys! Would be fun to get a small group of us going

A few EP video clips

So jealous of that shotgun!

It almost feels like cheating :)

It almost feels like cheating :)

It almost feels like cheating :)

It almost feels like cheating :)

Until Aug 28th*

*sad face*

*sad face*

*sad face*

PS - still no void Trace Rifle...

Just gotta wait for Forsaken :)

A few EP video clips

A few EP video clips

sad face

sad face

sad face