Is anyone here playing? Anyone make it flawless?

I don’t think they captured the excitement that it had in D1, but I haven’t played enough to definitively say that.

It's okay.

I ran a few cards the last 2 weeks (but not this week due to the glitched rewards and unpleasant map). The best I've gotten is 6 wins with a chance at flawless, but things went real downhill from there.

The gametype itself is just as fun as ever, but the Hard Light spam meta is sort of embarrassing. The level of competition is extremely high, which unfortunately doesn't bode well for the future of Trials, unless changes come quickly. Not being able to turn in tokens unless you get 3 wins is dumb, the fact that resetting your card to farm tokens is the best strategy for high level players is dumb.

It's close to being great, but close isn't good enough.

Edit: That being said, I'm willing to run a card any time with anyone interested in a serious attempt at winning a game or two. You get lore for one win a week.

I feel like they need to go back to random matchmaking. Win based matchmaking is okay on paper I guess, but Trials is already so competitive that feels unnecessary, and I think there’s definitely something to be said for getting a lucky match late on a card. Might make the elite feel like they don’t have to reset cards and farm easy wins.

The game mode itself is fantastic, just as it was in D1. But the whole loot/reward ecosystem around the mode is a train wreck IMO.

As you already mentioned in your reply to Squid, the matchmaking being card based is a mistake. I’ll die on that hill. Trials was at its very best when it originally launched with purely connection-based matchmaking. It gave the start of every match an extra bit of “let’s see what kind of team we’re up against” tension, and it made each and every card feel different. Sometimes you’d get crushed on your very first game, and other times you’d get lucky with 4-5 fairly easy games in a row. And most importantly, it gave hope to those less-than-too-tier teams. Even if you weren’t the best players out there, you still felt like if you played enough cards on enough weekends, you just might get that lucky streak and make it to the Lighthouse. And that feeling kept players of vastly different skill levels playing, which kept the playlist healthy... until Bungie changed the matchmaking, and the playlist population began a steady nosedive over the course of D1Y2. I don’t know who’s decision it was to bring back Trials with card-based matchmaking, but they dropped the ball big time.

Another big problem is the loot/rewards situation. First, there are no adept weapons. This is such a huge oversight, I can only imagine that Bungie just couldn’t scrape together the resources to make them. Because I simply can’t believe that anyone at Bungie would think that no adept weapons is actually a good idea. Getting to the lighthouse in D1 felt special for several reasons, but the adept weapons were arguably the single biggest draw, especially for repeat flawless cards. They were the main reason people kept going back week after week. So without adept weapons, or a similarly enticing reward, there’s little actual incentive to get to the Lighthouse beyond the experience of going there, which won’t last very long.

Then there’s the whole token farming fiasco where top-tier teams have been repeatedly resetting their cards to farm tokens and keep their loot pool limited to one of the weapons they’re chasing, because that’s actually more rewarding than going to the Lighthouse. This made it common for teams who were just starting their cards to go up against teams that were on 20 game win streaks, but were still in the early-card matchmaking pool because they kept resetting.

Finally, as bad as all this is, none of it works. Disconnects are rampant, and there’s a bug with the weekly reset which can prevent your character from getting any drops if you happen to play Trials on a Friday, or possibly even for the whole weekend. Just this Friday, I got to 5 wins on my Hunter and got no drops. The bug also prevented me from spending my tokens, even though I’d gotten past the 3-win threshold. So I jumped back in tonight, but the bug persisted. Since my Hunter was just toast for the weekend, I switched to my Titan. Got disconnected 2 games in a row, and then Destiny full-blown crashed, so I gave up. 60+ tokens in my inventory that’ll disappear without me being able to spend them, and 3-4 hours playing Trials this weekend with nothing to show for it.

BUT... all that said, the mode is still freaking awesome. I have a blast playing it with friends. It’s just so poorly implemented. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I’m just baffled by how badly Bungie bungled this one. The only part of it that’s good is the mode itself, which is literally copy and pasted from D1. No design work needed there. But everything that they did have to do work on, they messed up. And then shipped it broken, to boot :-/

The lack of adept weapons is clearly due to the phasing out of elemental primaries. And if adept weapons were just kinetic and better than normal, they’d end up getting nerfed just like Not Forgotten when they begin to show up a lot. It’s the same dilemma over and over. If you make it good enough to be “worth” it, then it will just unbalance the game. Make a balanced weapon and it’s just not special to get.

The lack of adept weapons is clearly due to the phasing out of elemental primaries.

Adept elemental primaries haven't been a thing since D1Y1. Adepts in D1Y2-3 were the same as the normal version, except with a special skin and an extra perk that gave the gun better stats when you were the last person alive on your team. Hardly gamebreaking, cool enough to want. No change needed, Bungie makes change.

The lack of adept weapons is clearly due to the phasing out of elemental primaries. And if adept weapons were just kinetic and better than normal, they’d end up getting nerfed just like Not Forgotten when they begin to show up a lot. It’s the same dilemma over and over. If you make it good enough to be “worth” it, then it will just unbalance the game. Make a balanced weapon and it’s just not special to get.

Setting aside the fact that Squid pointed out in his reply (Bungie continued to feature Adept primaries in Trials long after elemental primaries went away), this whole question of balance vs desirable is one of those cases where Bungie’s words and actions just don’t line up with reality, IMO. Year 2 of D2, we were drowning in awesome, unique, POWERFUL weapons, and it was the most fun that the game has been. Then; around Season of Opumlence, the nerfs started rolling in, and the game has become progressively less enjoyable ever since.

Whisper of the Worm wasn’t a problem when we also had Sleeper Simulant, Tractor Cannon, and Legrnd of Acrius along with a bunch of other great power weapons all using the same slot. Not to mention the fact that it was an exotic that required completing a really challenging mission to acquire, then multiple weeks of mastering that mission to complete the catalyst. Let it be a little overpowered in a few niche situations. It’s fun. If Bungie can’t live with a weapon like that being a bit overpowered in a handful of PvE encounters, then why the hell bother with this kind of thing at all? But no, they nerfed it into mediocrity, and now you never see anyone use it outside of maybe 1 or 2 raid bosses. Same with Sleeper, and a bunch of the other standout weapons.

And don’t get me started on Luna’s Howl/Not Forgotten, Lol. They were never a problem over on PC, because none of the other hand cannons on PC suffered from the accuracy/recoil issues that made them so tough to use on Console (if I remember correctly, neither of those guns landed in the top 10 usage list on PC... LH might have slipped in at number 10, but barely). Basically, Luna/NF on console behaved the way all hand cannons behave on PC (in terms of their accuracy and consistency). So while one could argue that the guns needed slight toning down, they certainly didn’t warrant getting slaughtered the way they did, especially on the PvE side.

And more to my point, it’s not like the crucible is any more balanced now than it used to be. Now it’s all Hard Light and Revoker spam. There will always be a new weapon at the top of the heap. So the heavy handed nerfs didn’t really improve anything. All they did was take guns that people loved using and were excited to have, and ruined them.

The lack of adept weapons is clearly due to the phasing out of elemental primaries.

Adept elemental primaries haven't been a thing since D1Y1. Adepts in D1Y2-3 were the same as the normal version, except with a special skin and an extra perk that gave the gun better stats when you were the last person alive on your team. Hardly gamebreaking, cool enough to want. No change needed, Bungie makes change.

They should just narrow the perk pool slightly and move celerity to "adept" versions only.

Why is hip fire grip + box breathing even a potential drop on the Eye of Sol sniper? I'm fine with some RNG within reason but that combo should just never happen on a weapon from a 7 win card drop.

Is anyone here playing? Anyone make it flawless?

I don’t think they captured the excitement that it had in D1, but I haven’t played enough to definitively say that.

It feels like D1 trials which is amazing. The rewards system just blows.

Others have hit on the same topics already but I'll repeat:

• Not being able to use tokens unless you get 3 wins is dumb and kills the player pool of PvE only players who just want a weapon.
  
• Maybe allow a world drop level of rewards for people who don't make it to 3 wins?
  
• Going against players at the same spot on the card makes it extremely hard if not impossible to make it to the lighthouse when you have PvP gods that just run stacked all the time. This will only get worse later in the season.
  
• Not having adept weapons to chase is an awful call. Move the celerity perk to adept only weapons and narrow the perk pool some to get rid of shit rolls.
  
• Not being able to tie a round is infuriating when you lose even though the last two people traded kills. Since 30 frame rates and lag are a thing, this causes more issues than it solves.

With that said. There are some nice changes that were made.

• Ascendant Shards (whatever the golf ball things are) for going flawless is awesome for the PvP Focused population
  
• 3v3 is how it should be. Thank you for getting rid of 4v4
  
• It just feels like how trials should be.

I've made it to 6 wins numerous times but have yet to go flawless. Game 7 has been a nightmare due to facing god-like stacked teams every time.

I think whisper was not just overpowered in a few encounters. It was basically used for every boss ever right?

Nope. Only boss fights where you could reliably hit headshots for extended periods of time.

There’s also a huge gap between what you’d see the streamer teams pull off, vs the actual experience of the average LFG group. You could watch Glad solo the Whisper mission using Whisper to melt all 3 bosses because the guy isn’t human and never misses, but every time I tried it I’d run out of ammo before killing even 1 of the 3 bosses, and I’m pretty good at this game.

Most LFG groups would still struggle against most raid bosses, and most other encounters didn’t really favour Whisper in any meaningful way.

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Nope. Only boss fights where you could reliably hit headshots for extended periods of time.

There’s also a huge gap between what you’d see the streamer teams pull off, vs the actual experience of the average LFG group. You could watch Glad solo the Whisper mission using Whisper to melt all 3 bosses because the guy isn’t human and never misses, but every time I tried it I’d run out of ammo before killing even 1 of the 3 bosses, and I’m pretty good at this game.

Most LFG groups would still struggle against most raid bosses, and most other encounters didn’t really favour Whisper in any meaningful way.

So why'd it get nerfed?

Nope. Only boss fights where you could reliably hit headshots for extended periods of time.

There’s also a huge gap between what you’d see the streamer teams pull off, vs the actual experience of the average LFG group. You could watch Glad solo the Whisper mission using Whisper to melt all 3 bosses because the guy isn’t human and never misses, but every time I tried it I’d run out of ammo before killing even 1 of the 3 bosses, and I’m pretty good at this game.

Most LFG groups would still struggle against most raid bosses, and most other encounters didn’t really favour Whisper in any meaningful way.

So why'd it get nerfed?

I can only guess it’s because of the hardcore streamers using it to melt a few raid bosses, which does influence the rest of the player base to at least imitate, even if they aren’t always as successful. It’s true that there were plenty of “must have whisper” raid posts on LFG sites. But those never go away. Nerf whisper, and those min-maxers will just switch to the next most effective weapon. They didn’t improve weapon diversity, they just ruined what was a player favourite weapon and made all the tryhards switch over to DARCI instead.

If they actually wanted to improve the situation, they should start by designing more boss encounter that don’t involve shooting a big target from long range because you can’t get close without being stomped into oblivion. It’s almost like they want us to go back to using our Scout Rifles for DPS, like we had to back when D2 first shipped. Similar to the Luna’s Howl/Not Forgotten issue, they didn’t improve the underlying issue, only soured something that people enjoyed.

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Because Bungie have always nerfed based on perception of power rather than actual power.

Except for that one brief moment where shotguns were good in PvE. And then immediately nerfed again. #neverforget

thank streamers for bringing back random perks :)

AOE boss stomp melees is one of the worst design decisions in Destiny. Almost all the boss fights seem designed to encourage sniper rifles and scouts/pulse from a distance. Shotgun pve damage buffs are nice but they never fixed the main issue of the boss having an unavoidable melee sphere.

The fundamental disconnect in all the Halo games balancing is of the weapon limit to encourage a variety of weapons for different situations and no one weapon being the best at everything versus the mid range utility headshot gun existing at all.

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That’s the most important thing. It feels like shit every single time it happens. It’s never the goofy-funny hilarity of getting killed by a traffic cone in Halo. It’s always at least annoying, and more often than not actually infuriating.

It might be a “good” way to encourage whatever play dynamic Bungie wants (although nerfing ranged weapons is definitely a case of mixed signals there), but in a game where almost everything feels amazing, it’s a major standout that feels completely awful in every regard.

AOE boss stomp melees is one of the worst design decisions in Destiny. Almost all the boss fights seem designed to encourage sniper rifles and scouts/pulse from a distance. Shotgun pve damage buffs are nice but they never fixed the main issue of the boss having an unavoidable melee sphere.

I rarely die from boss stomp any more - sword swing (especially if I'm running Passive Guard) is usually enough to not only keep me alive, but also keep me from being thrown out by the stomp... though I'll admit I haven't tested it on the Reckoning bridge. :)

Doesn't really change the fact that the stomp mechanic sucks - just says they've acknowledged that we need a way around it.

That’s the most important thing. It feels like shit every single time it happens. It’s never the goofy-funny hilarity of getting killed by a traffic cone in Halo. It’s always at least annoying, and more often than not actually infuriating.

It might be a “good” way to encourage whatever play dynamic Bungie wants (although nerfing ranged weapons is definitely a case of mixed signals there), but in a game where almost everything feels amazing, it’s a major standout that feels completely awful in every regard.

The game would be infinitely better if Bungie replaced the stomp with interesting changes, such as the Servitor enemies teleporting you away from them. Gives you a window to do up-close damage, while also adding an element of risk that you and your teammates can account and prepare for. Also doesn't help that the stagger mechanic is wholly inconsistent (and often disabled). Honestly, the Stomp mechanic feels like a permanent issue, since Bungie is too "game dev is hard" to add even a single new combat mechanic/animation to existing enemies.

It's especially frustrating given how our abilities (rift, barrier, Phoenix Dive) encourage stationary placement. more often than not, I manage to cast my rift just before I'm launched far from it.

Remember Banshees eight years ago in Mass Effect 3, which could pick you up for an insta-kill if you got too close, but it gave your teammates just enough time to do damage to her so she could drop you? Good times. Good teamwork. Fun mechanic.

It's especially frustrating given how our abilities (rift, barrier, Phoenix Dive) encourage stationary placement. more often than not, I manage to cast my rift just before I'm launched far from it.

It seems like they spend a lot of time making stuff that encourages a certain way of playing, and then going "Not like that!" when players make those ways of playing too effective.

Remember Banshees eight years ago in Mass Effect 3, which could pick you up for an insta-kill if you got too close, but it gave your teammates just enough time to do damage to her so she could drop you? Good times. Good teamwork. Fun mechanic.

I still have that game installed. We should play that again soon. I know stabbim is in.

AOE boss stomp melees is one of the worst design decisions in Destiny. Almost all the boss fights seem designed to encourage sniper rifles and scouts/pulse from a distance. Shotgun pve damage buffs are nice but they never fixed the main issue of the boss having an unavoidable melee sphere.

I rarely die from boss stomp any more - sword swing (especially if I'm running Passive Guard) is usually enough to not only keep me alive, but also keep me from being thrown out by the stomp... though I'll admit I haven't tested it on the Reckoning bridge. :)

Doesn't really change the fact that the stomp mechanic sucks - just says they've acknowledged that we need a way around it.

Glad to see steps were taken to address it.

The stomp is actually something Bungie could work more class flavor into, what if Titans just resisted stomps more? Or enemies used more powerful but slower directional melee attacks that hunters could dodge or warlocks could blink?