https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/48058

Based on how long this ended up being, a key learning from this is "maybe there's a better way to communicate this than a GIANT WALL OF TEXT!" Let me know. I also may like doing it in a different format in the future, I'll let you know.

They could try using that fancy Twitch studio they built and have used all of twice to shows us marketing videos. Once again, look to Digital Extremes as the example of doing it right.

Can’t wait to really sit down and read this later.

Based on how long this ended up being, a key learning from this is "maybe there's a better way to communicate this than a GIANT WALL OF TEXT!" Let me know. I also may like doing it in a different format in the future, I'll let you know.

They could try using that fancy Twitch studio they built and have used all of twice to shows us marketing videos. Once again, look to Digital Extremes as the example of doing it right.

Can’t wait to really sit down and read this later.

I feel like this is something he needed to have composed over multiple days instead of on air live. However if they had a fireplace and a plush chair... I would watch that even if he was just reading out of a book.

Im glad they’ve realized that Well of Radiance is an overpowered, fun destroying Super in PVE. And that “using your Super to get a Super” is similar. I look forward to being an active participant in Raids again, instead of one of the people who get told not to kill anything because I’ll disrupt the Hunter or Warlock who are necessary for success...

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One doesn’t preclude the other. Write this, then go on air and talk about it.

I just finished reading it. It’s nit particularly well-written, to be honest. It’s well worth reading, but it’s rambling. I think it could have benefitted immensely from being stated on a stream with a few of the developers actually talking about it.

Seems like any hope of Age of Triumphs style ornaments from activities is completely dead.

I am fine with that, and it’s good to have that knowledge out in the open. But they are really going to have to up their aesthetic game if they want my money. The Solstice glows are a good start.

Im glad they’ve realized that Well of Radiance is an overpowered, fun destroying Super in PVE. And that “using your Super to get a Super” is similar. I look forward to being an active participant in Raids again, instead of one of the people who get told not to kill anything because I’ll disrupt the Hunter or Warlock who are necessary for success...

I suppose I see the complaint about this, but I don't feel it when I'm playing. I enjoy seeing a Well when my Fireteam is taking shots from all directions, and suddenly there's a safe place to stand and catch a breather, or focus fire on larger enemies.

And with regard to "using your Super to get a Super", I think Orpheus Rigs provide an important function within the gamut of available exotics to produce orbs for the fireteam. I guess I don't really see why folks are down on the exotics that generate orbs in high quantities, it seems like they're designed to get party started with regard to Super chains in almost any activity. Not sure why this is a bad thing.

And for my next trick, I'm going to heap some love on Reckoning. I was frankly a little dismayed that Lukems is telling us they may be going back on part of the design philosophy with regard to the Reckoning, and going back to some of the guidelines they'd tossed in the process of developing the encounters. Yes, the bridge is harrowing and challenging; but having to watch my six (and all angles, really) forces me and my fireteam to really play differently. In a way, it's the closest thing I've felt to the initial encounter of the Crota Raid in D1. Being an immortal avatar of destruction has always been fun, but "carve in this direction" feels kinda lame. It comes off to me more as we-set'em-up-you-knock'em-down in a narrow valley of death. I appreciate that they don't want to design things in such a way that leaves only a narrow set of options for success, and I'd implore them not to, but I'd hope this indicates a refinement and embellishment of the Reckoning encounters rather than a "let's move on" mentality.

If anything, I think a couple more boss encounters thrown into the rotation, along with maybe even a couple of new second-tier encounters that could exist where the bridge encounter currently sits (or hell, even another segment altogether in the encounter chain) could really breathe new life into that activity. If the goal is a general focusing and refinement of the activities on hand, rather than expanding the game infinitely, I hope this means new things in that direction.

Orbs for the fire team is fine. 100% regenerating the Hunter’s own Super and then the team only being able to solve an encounter by using that method is boring as hell. I and others were told straight up to not interfere with enemies so they’d be in position and alive for the Hunter to tether them. What am I even going to do with those orbs if the best strategy is for me to never ever dare use my Super?

If the Hunter used his tether to empower me to use my Super to empower him to use his tether, that would be one thing. But that’s not what happened at all. Those quick regen exotics need to be capped at 50% so the rest of us have something to do.

Orbs for the fire team is fine. 100% regenerating the Hunter’s own Super and then the team only being able to solve an encounter by using that method is boring as hell. I and others were told straight up to not interfere with enemies so they’d be in position and alive for the Hunter to tether them. What am I even going to do with those orbs if the best strategy is for me to never ever dare use my Super?

If the Hunter used his tether to empower me to use my Super to empower him to use his tether, that would be one thing. But that’s not what happened at all. Those quick regen exotics need to be capped at 50% so the rest of us have something to do.

I can appreciate this logic, and I don't disagree. I can't help but shake the feeling that orb generation and the whole reciprocal Light economy needs a bit of reworking. I will say that the number of situations where I feel I'm in competition with my fireteam to take out targets in order to generate orbs seems to be increasing a little over time (generally when we're physically spread out), and I've begun to find a sort of growing resentment at fireteam members using non-Masterworked weapons, because it means they're effectively robbing the entire team of the orbs that weapon would have generated. Granted, this typically only applies in endgame activities. Entirely possible I'm just overthinking this part of things.

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Hodgepodge. Jumble. Mishmash. You get the jig.

Wall of text? It's only 4,175 words. This... this is light reading. COME ON! Whatever! Fine. All the same, after reading this... I'm both flabbergasted and bemused. In part it's because of the ramble in the format, and in part because answers bring more questions.

Questions like;

• Why, or rather what, caused them to break their "encounter design philosophy"?
  
• How did that become a direction to take?
  
• Why did they think Whisper of the Worm wasn't going to end up just like Black Hammer?
  
• What exactly is the goal of the UI team?
  
• ...Way too many Planning and Foresight questions to list...

I... really... REALLY am being very measured and weighed with my words writing this up.
I'm withholding alot of thoughts... but I'm going to wait it out, and see what part two has in store.

• Supers and PVP in Destiny 2
  
• Armor, Stats, Mods, and Tradeoffs
  
• Powerful Sources, Prime Engrams and the World
  
• Damage numbers, damage stacking rules
  
• And more

I'll finish this by saying I SUPER appreciate the carte blanche honesty on display here. This is cool. This is really cool. But... it's a shame as well that these discussions can tend to be only one sided on the internet, sans the occasional exception. I can give all the thoughts I want, but at this point it feels more like throwing a message into a bottle. Bobbing on these digital seas.

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Luke apparently wants to reduce Gambit down to one thing. I'm not a fan, but mostly because Reddit seems to overwhelmingly prefer Prime, whereas I'd rather play regular Gambit all day. What would people here choose?

Do the armor sets only work in Prime? I've not really bothered with them. If so, then I think Prime is what they will keep.

I lean towards Prime just because it doesn't feel like it drags out for too long. They've already had to shorten regular gambit because games took too long.

I think I slightly prefer original Gambit, but my preference isn’t strong.

If they keep Prime, they need to rework how the armor drops. Making Reckoning a requirement would suck. It would ensure that I only ever do enough Gambit for quests, and I would forever be a burden on the team for not having the armor.

I guess they could maybe rework it completely for Armor 2.0.

Prime is faster, but other than appreciating the change to boss mechanics I think detracted from what made Gambit interesting. I would take regular Gambit over Prime any day.

First of all, this:

Whisper of the Worm's ornaments were successful enough that it paid [dev cost-wise] for the Zero Hour mission/rewards to be constructed (this shit matters!).

I bought a Whisper ornament for exactly that reason (and a Bad Juju ornament--I'd buy an Outbreak Prime one too, if I didn't think they were both ugly).

In regards to earning gear through gameplay versus buying cosmetics, I've been thinking about this a bit more today.

I think most would agree that the Age of Triumph ornaments for raid gear is the pinnacle of Destiny fashion. I want to see more of that sort of stuff. I think ornaments are a good compromise for what Bungie is shooting for here. You earn the gear from playing the game, and you can purchase ornaments from Eververse to change how it looks. I think I can get behind that.

We've seen that for the past two seasons, with ornaments available for the new Legendary weapons. That's cool.

I just think we need more ornaments for armor, and especially more glows. You play the raid and get the gear, then you can get the cool glows from Eververse.

It's not as cool as getting the glows from doing challenge modes, which would be ideal for me, but it's a compromise I can live with. I don't have a huge problem spending money (or bright dust), so long as it's reasonably priced, and so long as it looks great, which I wouldn't really say about much of the stuff available through Eververse so far in Destiny 2. If they want us to pay for that stuff, they're going to have to put in the effort.

Luke apparently wants to reduce Gambit down to one thing. I'm not a fan, but mostly because Reddit seems to overwhelmingly prefer Prime, whereas I'd rather play regular Gambit all day. What would people here choose?

I don't know. I've not yet played Gambit Prime. Let me show you why.

It was advertised that there would be roles, aided by perks on kit. I like to mix and match, as what I enjoy one day might not be true the next day. Thus that means I have 20 slots I need in my vault to hold on to this kit, at least 20 slots which I really don't want to give. If I have a choice between armor or weapons, weapons win every time. To add on top of that, while I do enjoy Gambit from time to time, it's not my main bread and butter. And so, as a result, I've just not bothered at this time to try it.

I really, really like Gambit. Like, it single-handedly would be enough to justify pre-ordering Forsaken, for me. The very first month of Forsaken was spent religiously stomping fools in Gambit with the one friend I had playing Forsaken on PC. Coming up with strategies and general game-sense over timing and planning in my sleep. There was a moment, during the 2nd or 3rd month of Forsaken that I realized we weren't even calling out stuff. We were already so in tune with the gametype and each other that we would just chat around and still outplay the crap out of most other teams.

I really, really like Gambit. Thank you, Bungie. Seriously.

An (apparently) polemic preference of mine, though, was that the original blockers were way better than the current ones. If you give me the original blockers and the new pacing and tiebreaker of regular Gambit, I'd pick that. Alas, we don't have that. So I think I'd pick Gambit Prime just because it's generally faster to end.

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Luke apparently wants to reduce Gambit down to one thing. I'm not a fan, but mostly because Reddit seems to overwhelmingly prefer Prime, whereas I'd rather play regular Gambit all day. What would people here choose?

My preference is OG Gambit, and here's why:

I like having multiple rounds, because if your team doesn't get their battle rhythm down, it doesn't mean the end of the game, like it does in Prime. Prime also suffers from the armors not being readily available enough (not a criticism of the mode itself, but of the mechanics around it). I do appreciate the grind it takes to curate an armor set that synergizes with the weapons one enjoys using, and I don't begrudge the Reckoning as the avenue to do that. However, succeeding in Prime seems to hinge not only on players working together (which is hard enough with even 1 blueberry on the team), but also on how much Prime armor factors into the build of the team.

Have you ever experienced a Bubble Titan invader that locks down the bank and casts Ward over it? What about that nightmare scenario at the SAME TIME as a Collector sending over a Giant Blocker? That, my friends, is an almost assured game-ender. It's practically the equivalent of earning a Nuke (or at least an AC-130) in CoD:MW:BLOPS of Honor.

Now don't get me wrong, I do quite enjoy the dynamic that the Prime armor sets add to Gambit. But I'd honestly prefer the armor be made...not necessarily *easier* to acquire, but maybe getting more armor to drop with Reckoning win streaks, or a consumable that allows multiple pieces to drop from a completion. Hell, being able to burn multiple synths of the same type so they stack, or being able to buy synths via MTX would actually address a bunch of this.

I'm also not really a fan of the three-Envoys-and-a-well mechanic before the Primeval burn. If I had my way, Prime armors would be allowed to work in OG Gambit, with a few tweaks to keep invasions from being as frequent. As it is now, though, if they did away with Prime altogether but kept the Reckoning and OG Gambit in their current forms, I wouldn't complain.

~m

So if they get rid of original Gambit, will that void out Mote Thief?

I like regular better overall, especially with the Sudden death mechanic they added. Prime is fun, but it is very different, so I think they both should be around, as sometimes I do want Prime.