https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/ypued6/telesto_is_broken_again/

Truly the besto.

It’s not a bug. It’s a puzzle. Apparently.

https://reddit.com/r/raidsecrets/comments/ypvy8n/new_telesto_bug_is_intentional/

It’s not a bug. It’s a puzzle. Apparently.

https://reddit.com/r/raidsecrets/comments/ypvy8n/new_telesto_bug_is_intentional/

It's fun reading through that thread. I did find it curious that Banshee had started working on Telesto a while back. These puzzies are always neat to follow.

It’s not a bug. It’s a puzzle. Apparently.

https://reddit.com/r/raidsecrets/comments/ypvy8n/new_telesto_bug_is_intentional/

ATTENTION Contacting Destiny 2 servers… pic.twitter.com/cvmInMOqIV

— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) November 9, 2022

I dunno. An emblem chase at the end of an extremely uneventful season (you wasted Pirates, Bungie! PIRATES!) centered around a tired joke?
Call me when we get the free code so I can forget to get around to claiming an emblem that I'll never use.

Now if the reward for this turns out to be a new dungeon/exotic mission, then I'll eat a Funkmon sock (and I'll be your official Carry person for it forever)...

But this ain't Whisper/Zero Hour Bungie anymore.

Now if the reward for this turns out to be a new dungeon/exotic mission, then I'll eat a Funkmon sock (and I'll be your official Carry person for it forever)...

But this ain't Whisper/Zero Hour Bungie anymore.

I mean, fair enough, but why does it have to be something gawdang amazing? Can something no longer just be "eh, pretty neat!"?

It’s not a bug. It’s a puzzle. Apparently.

https://reddit.com/r/raidsecrets/comments/ypvy8n/new_telesto_bug_is_intentional/

is it?

No puzzles to solve, just a ghost in the machine. Don't panic—we are working on a fix.

— Cozmo name change test (@Cozmo23) November 9, 2022

is it?

isn't it?
welcome to cinephobe.

Now if the reward for this turns out to be a new dungeon/exotic mission, then I'll eat a Funkmon sock (and I'll be your official Carry person for it forever)...

But this ain't Whisper/Zero Hour Bungie anymore.

I mean, fair enough, but why does it have to be something gawdang amazing? Can something no longer just be "eh, pretty neat!"?

I don’t wanna come off as entitled as the above post makes it seem. Rather, my issue is with how lackluster everything has been the entire season (which may not be entirely on Bungie, as I’ve noticed an odd trend in the live-service space in general these past couple of months), and how low the community sentiment is with Bungie in general right now from a PvP perspective (personally, I’ve no issue with the state of PvP, but it’s the hot topic at the moment).

Apparently some folks were being hyped about some so-called “community event”, too, though I don’t know what all that’s about, and this is no Sundial event.

I think it’s just a goodwill issue and poor timing all things considered. But if you think it’s neat, more power to ya!

So... at first, I thought - OH Telesto. Never Change. But then folks started(?) LOSING THEIR COLLECTIVE MINDS...

OH IT'S A Constellation!

IT'S A MESSAGE!

It's SPARKING!

WHAT DOES IT MEAN!!!

...and I'm just sit'n goin' ... I think y'all are goin' a bit too far about all this. Lay off the spin foil for a while, right?

No puzzles to solve, just a ghost in the machine. Don't panic—we are working on a fix.

— Cozmo name change test (@Cozmo23) November 9, 2022

And yet... at risk of some Stand Alone Complex Shenanigans, not so sure anymore...

Cool. Cool. Cool. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’ve been trying not to be so much of a downer lately, but I agree with you. “Isn’t Telesto being broken again so funny?!” is not the hilarity they think it is. Then again, they also wrote the shit in Dares of Eternity, so I suppose it could be so much worse.

Now, a gift: 9LX-7YC-6TX

Those who wish may bear my mark. I already know what choice each of you will make. pic.twitter.com/puGA0jL3WO

— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) November 10, 2022

After this week's hugely successful "microevent" (Dmg's words, not mine) Bungie’s David Aldridge (Head of Engineering) and Ylan Salsbury (Senior Engineering Manager), did an AMA on Reddit regarding engineering processes. While it is not strictly about community events or anything, the question regarding them/secret missions was asked, and the reply was disheartening to say the least:

"Suppose you want to encrypt a secret mission. Ok... let's tag the world art spaces (bubbles) and the activity itself as "encrypt behind this key that we'll release later". Victory! Except... hm, there are rewards from the mission that we also want to hide, their flavor text contains spoilers...
...it's all solvable, it's just expensive, and so far we've concluded that it makes more sense to spend on more cool experiences instead. This all would have been much cheaper if we'd considered it at the system design stage and forced more modularity around things we might want to make secret in the future... but we had a lot of other priorities on our minds back then and didn't foresee the future value of secrets and surprises.

Tragic, as we are still waiting on the fruits of "more cool experiences" that have been promised, while the yearly cost of content continues to rise...

This AMA prompted Dmg04 to do damage control on Twitter, clarifying that while we should be "resetting expectations" for any event moving forward, this doesn't necessarily mean that Bungie will never do a secret mission event. Which, given their track record, effectively means that Bungie will never do a secret mission event again.

To speak further on the feedback of 'we want more secret quests' - the feedback is heard.

That said, I don't want this statement to become "Bungie just promised more secrets!"

— dmg04 (@A_dmg04) November 11, 2022

What a weird week; Telesto really did shake things up beyond the boundaries of the game.

That’s sort of tongue in cheek, but not completely.

The secret stuff has been cool, stretching all the way back to D1 with Black Spindle and Outbreak and whatever else I’m forgetting. Whisper was very cool, and it being a secret thing was part of that, certainly. But it was mostly just that the actual activity was cool and fun.

The Xenophage quest was just a twist on the Black Spindle mission, it just wasn’t secret. And it was still really awesome! It was a fun alternate encounter in that dungeon. ( Stabbim currently has that quest—wanna help run him through it?)

I’m not sure how you can ask where the cool stuff is when we just got Duality, which is maybe the single best activity ever put into Destiny. I’ll take one Duality over ten Sundial puzzles or whatever the fuck. Secrets are cool, and it’s a bummer on principle they don’t really exist in the game like they used to. But I don’t really care as long as the actual content we get is actually good. The seasonal things are very hit and miss, but they continue to knock it out of the park with the core content (Legendary WQ campaign, the raid, the dungeons). I’ll take that over some secret puzzle that I wouldn’t even actually participate in any day, and doubly so if we could get that quality in the three main playlists.

That’s sort of tongue in cheek, but not completely.

The secret stuff has been cool, stretching all the way back to D1 with Black Spindle and Outbreak and whatever else I’m forgetting. Whisper was very cool, and it being a secret thing was part of that, certainly. But it was mostly just that the actual activity was cool and fun.

I think it's because of the idea of more content being added because devs had a passion for what they're doing, and a budget afforded to them because of players rewarding good content (remember how Zero Hour was famously funded by Whisper of the Worm ornament purchases?). It was a symbiotic cycle!
It's why I mentioned that the price of content is increasing, but the amount of content has decreased.

The Xenophage quest was just a twist on the Black Spindle mission, it just wasn’t secret. And it was still really awesome! It was a fun alternate encounter in that dungeon. ( Stabbim currently has that quest—wanna help run him through it?)

Sure, I had totally erased that quest from my brain....

I’m not sure how you can ask where the cool stuff is when we just got Duality, which is maybe the single best activity ever put into Destiny. I’ll take one Duality over ten Sundial puzzles or whatever the fuck. Secrets are cool, and it’s a bummer on principle they don’t really exist in the game like they used to. But I don’t really care as long as the actual content we get is actually good.

That's the thing though. Duality was paid content. It cost me $20 to even play it, so I hope it's good! I was also forced to pay for the next dungeon regardless of Duality's quality!

It's not that I wanted it to be unlocked through a secret, or that the community had to rally behind obnoxious streamers to unlock it, it is a product that I paid for just like any expansion. So yeah, while it's great, I can't put it on the same list as Zero Hour, Whisper of the Worm, the Black Spindle mission, etc.

The seasonal things are very hit and miss, but they continue to knock it out of the park with the core content (Legendary WQ campaign, the raid, the dungeons). I’ll take that over some secret puzzle that I wouldn’t even actually participate in any day, and doubly so if we could get that quality in the three main playlists.

"Sure, the content that used to be great sucks now, and we have to be nickel-and-dime'd for it, but the $60+ stuff feels worth it still!"
I've never had a taste for boot leather myself, but I respect your opinion.

I think we've both stated that a Dungeon-focused Destiny would be best, so I'm not personally clamoring for more time-wasting merchandise-shilling events that give streamers more reason to scream at a screen, but seeing the death of fun in Destiny happening in real time while the devs are like "Y'all need to lower that bar for us even further! Also, preorder Lightfall!" is sad from any angle, even if I was loving the paid expansions.

Oh, I’m not here to defend the quality of most Destiny content. Most seasons have been straight up bad and unfun with a few exceptions. There has never been an actually fun six person matchmade activity. They’re decent time-wasters at absolute best.

I just also happen to think people expect far too much from live game developers. Fortnite kinda set the bar, and they’re infamously worked into the ground for it. Bungie says they don’t do that. For whatever reason, I actually believe them. The Destiny we have now is partly the price of that. I just don’t think it’s currently possible to produce the quality and quantity of content people want and not run your team into the ground while doing it. I’d still give up the seasonal bullshit for a Taken King or Forsaken every fall. It’d be a far better value proposition.

But, at the end of the day, I still feel like I’m getting my money’s worth from my annual $100 deluxe edition purchase, but I’ll admit they’re getting close to the line there.

I just don’t think secret missions or puzzles are the thing that’s missing, although I can see why so many people think so. Destiny has been pretty rote for years now. The seasonal model seems to working for them, and there are things to like about it, but it seems like it has them stuck in a rut a little bit. There aren’t surprises any more. We now thoroughly understand the cadence of Destiny, and people missing secret stuff is a desire to see that routine change in some way. I agree with that desire, I just don’t think it has to be a secret thing. A season not built around grinding the main playlists so I can in turn grind the season playlist to then unlock the weekly mission would be enough.

I just don’t think secret missions or puzzles are the thing that’s missing, although I can see why so many people think so. Destiny has been pretty rote for years now. The seasonal model seems to working for them, and there are things to like about it, but it seems like it has them stuck in a rut a little bit. There aren’t surprises any more. We now thoroughly understand the cadence of Destiny, and people missing secret stuff is a desire to see that routine change in some way. I agree with that desire, I just don’t think it has to be a secret thing. A season not built around grinding the main playlists so I can in turn grind the season playlist to then unlock the weekly mission would be enough.

Back in the DeeJ era, Bungie used to advertise Destiny as a "living world" in which you could explore and discover the "secrets of the golden age." The story missions reflected this. I love the moment when the Archive doors start to open, shaking the ivy that's grown over them, and seconds later you hear, mysteriously, "Welcome, Dr. Shim...." That excitement wore off with repetitions, but what made the Whisper of the Worm mission so great was it renewed the perception that this worlds of Destiny had surprises has unexplored depths. It's just a great feeling to experience unexpected content.

Destiny isn't the first game that had its secrets leaked with data mining (Hello, New Alexandria!), and it's a tough problem, but for me unexpected, unadvertised events help Destiny be the game it was supposed to be.

I don't think things need to be secret to capture that feeling. Deep Stone Crypt and Vow of the Disciple both captured that feeling of entering the archives on Venus extremely well, I think. Even the story missions from last season with the revelations about Zavala's and Caitl's pasts captured that feeling through the story presentation. Every Dungeon to date has done it. As I mentioned, the Xenophage mission did that, too. It just had quest steps pointing you in the right direction instead of relying on reddit to spread the word around.

For me, it does come down to the way seasons are structured. I appreciate what they're trying to do, but it's become stale. And it breaks the "lived in" feel I want out of Destiny (and that it used to have, at least marginally). Now, every three months, we get a different flavor of the same matchmade playlist. It's a bespoke playlist I need to select from a menu. I hate it, just from a design philosophy standpoint. It's sucks for the game structure. Instead of making use of the amazing, expansive patrol destinations, we get a playlist that we basically have to do multiple times per week. It makes me miss the old public event style seasons. I realize Arrivals was sort of the breaking point of that for lots of folks, but that's the season I played the most until last season hit (which was a return of Public Event based seasonal activities).

Hell, remember Escalation Protocol? That event fucking ruled. Yeah, it had it's annoyances with the weekly loot pools, sure. But I will always prefer activities that make good use of the public spaces instead of shuffling me into a bespoke playlist for a single activity. I loved zooming around on my sparrow looking for those stupid music boxes and then stopping because a large group of people were doing an Escalation Protocol. That's the sort of lived in moments that made Destiny good and special. Hopping into a playlist with a single activity because Bungie wants to me to kill 300 champions or whatever the fuck just ain't it.

None of this is to say I would be upset about secret missions or puzzles or even just little things like this Telesto stuff existed in the future. Just that I don't actually care. I just want it to be fun.

After this week's hugely successful "microevent" (Dmg's words, not mine) Bungie’s David Aldridge (Head of Engineering) and Ylan Salsbury (Senior Engineering Manager), did an AMA on Reddit regarding engineering processes. While it is not strictly about community events or anything, the question regarding them/secret missions was asked, and the reply was disheartening to say the least:

"Suppose you want to encrypt a secret mission. Ok... let's tag the world art spaces (bubbles) and the activity itself as "encrypt behind this key that we'll release later". Victory! Except... hm, there are rewards from the mission that we also want to hide, their flavor text contains spoilers...
...it's all solvable, it's just expensive, and so far we've concluded that it makes more sense to spend on more cool experiences instead. This all would have been much cheaper if we'd considered it at the system design stage and forced more modularity around things we might want to make secret in the future... but we had a lot of other priorities on our minds back then and didn't foresee the future value of secrets and surprises.

Tragic, as we are still waiting on the fruits of "more cool experiences" that have been promised, while the yearly cost of content continues to rise...

This AMA prompted Dmg04 to do damage control on Twitter, clarifying that while we should be "resetting expectations" for any event moving forward, this doesn't necessarily mean that Bungie will never do a secret mission event. Which, given their track record, effectively means that Bungie will never do a secret mission event again.

To speak further on the feedback of 'we want more secret quests' - the feedback is heard.

That said, I don't want this statement to become "Bungie just promised more secrets!"

— dmg04 (@A_dmg04) November 11, 2022

What a weird week; Telesto really did shake things up beyond the boundaries of the game.

I simply do not care if these thing are secret, just if they're cool to do.

I simply do not care if these thing are secret, just if they're cool to do.

Let's drop the "secret" part of the entire conversation. It's not secrets that matter in this entire debacle. It's content. Bungie has straight up said that:

Because they can not keep the content secret, they are straight up not making this type of content. You like Whisper? Zero Hour? Black Spindle? Corridors of Time? Niobe Labs?

Too bad. These free content releases and events simply aren't in the cards anymore. Zip. Dead.
The excuse is "because they can't keep them secret".
Obviously we want content like this even if it wasn't secret. A live service game needs a live service to work.

All scrapped in favor of two Dungeons a year that you pay $20 for.

These free content releases and events simply aren't in the cards anymore.

Zero Hour and Whisper were the only free things in that list. Everything else was contingent on a DLC or season, I’m pretty sure.

Also, we’re still getting lots of that style of content. Whisper and Zero Hour have just become the exotic missions like Presage and whatever the Hawkmoon quest was called. Vox Obscura was a disappointing follow up to those, admittedly, and it’s a bummer we haven’t seen another one since then. Dungeons are also expanded versions of that style of content.

Corridors of Time was neat in principle, but it’s not exactly riveting content, and I’m not super torn up about obscure puzzles not being a thing. At least Niobe Labs was ostensibly solvable without internet crowd sourcing.

All scrapped in favor of two Dungeons a year that you pay $20 for.

I genuinely do not feel like we’re getting less worthwhile content than we used to. We got Presage and Hawkmoon. Vox Obscura, I guess. Seasonal content is hit or miss, but the story missions for last season were great, in my opinion, and far better than the Corridors of Time puzzle, if I had to choose. The Xenophage Quest. The exotic quests from Beyond Light were both fun. All the Dungeons. The reprised raids are arguably more substantial free content than we ever got before.

I would say it’s a bummer to know we can’t really look forward to any surprises, but that’s more because the pattern of Destiny releases is so well established. It needs a structural shake-up of some sort, I think.

Destiny youtube is going crazy trying to stir up drama about dropping player numbers like we aren’t at the end of the most boring season in recent memory, in a long line of very samey seasonal content. I don’t think a new Corridors of Time is the fix.

Because they can not keep the content secret, they are straight up not making this type of content. You like Whisper? Zero Hour? Black Spindle? Corridors of Time? Niobe Labs?

Where do Bungie say this? The only thing you quoted says nothing of the sort. Especially if we consider dungeons or exotic quests an extension of those sorts of things, which I do.

- No text -

I don't think things need to be secret to capture that feeling. Deep Stone Crypt and Vow of the Disciple both captured that feeling of entering the archives on Venus extremely well, I think. Even the story missions from last season with the revelations about Zavala's and Caitl's pasts captured that feeling through the story presentation. Every Dungeon to date has done it. As I mentioned, the Xenophage mission did that, too. It just had quest steps pointing you in the right direction instead of relying on reddit to spread the word around.

For me, it does come down to the way seasons are structured. I appreciate what they're trying to do, but it's become stale. And it breaks the "lived in" feel I want out of Destiny (and that it used to have, at least marginally). Now, every three months, we get a different flavor of the same matchmade playlist. It's a bespoke playlist I need to select from a menu. I hate it, just from a design philosophy standpoint. It's sucks for the game structure. Instead of making use of the amazing, expansive patrol destinations, we get a playlist that we basically have to do multiple times per week. It makes me miss the old public event style seasons. I realize Arrivals was sort of the breaking point of that for lots of folks, but that's the season I played the most until last season hit (which was a return of Public Event based seasonal activities).

Hell, remember Escalation Protocol? That event fucking ruled. Yeah, it had it's annoyances with the weekly loot pools, sure. But I will always prefer activities that make good use of the public spaces instead of shuffling me into a bespoke playlist for a single activity. I loved zooming around on my sparrow looking for those stupid music boxes and then stopping because a large group of people were doing an Escalation Protocol. That's the sort of lived in moments that made Destiny good and special. Hopping into a playlist with a single activity because Bungie wants to me to kill 300 champions or whatever the fuck just ain't it.

None of this is to say I would be upset about secret missions or puzzles or even just little things like this Telesto stuff existed in the future. Just that I don't actually care. I just want it to be fun.

Yes, I want fun, too. I wasn't covering that in my post, and I wasn't speaking to the over all value proposition of Destiny. I wanted only to add that I liked what finding secrets in the game. It's a spice in the spice rack that helped to make a compelling dish. For me it made Destiny feel a little less like a big chunk of code, and more like a real place with real mystery. I'm sad that data farming makes that trick harder to pull off.

I'm not sure that single 'secret' missions really accomplish what secrets are intended to do: Make the game feel bigger and more expansive by letting you know there's more to it than meets the eye.

Traditionally you'd have tiers of secrets. Some are easy to find, others tougher, and several very hard. Critically, the easy ones lead you to realize that there's more to the game than it seems. And there are many. The game is full of them. They can range from neat little bonuses, to more substantial things.

Also critical is that they not be tracked or labeled. There must be no expectation that the player will find any of them. Doing so immediately turns them into a checklist, explicitly letting players know everything there is to find, which is the opposite of what is described above. It'll be perfunctory, with players just following guides to get the achievement. No sense of mystery or wonder.

Where would a secret mission with a gun as reward fall here? Closer to the latter scenario I think. Everyone will simply look it up on /r/DestinyTheGame. It might as well just be a regular mission.

Only a few can have the awesome moment of discovery before the secret is simply known to all. Information travels too quickly these days.

- No text -

I'm not sure that single 'secret' missions really accomplish what secrets are intended to do: Make the game feel bigger and more expansive by letting you know there's more to it than meets the eye.

Traditionally you'd have tiers of secrets. Some are easy to find, others tougher, and several very hard. Critically, the easy ones lead you to realize that there's more to the game than it seems. And there are many. The game is full of them. They can range from neat little bonuses, to more substantial things.

The entire game is built around discovery and seeing the puzzles all around you. Some are simple combat encounters (often at the mercy of the narrators), some involve physics, and others use the environment to set up a sequence that builds off of another area. But the game very rarely tells you what the puzzle even is. You have to use the power of common sense to find the starting steps and solution all on your own.

The whole thing feels like it was built of the question “what if Breath of the Wild had fun puzzles?”.

I highly recommend it, and I think it’s on Gamepass.

Also critical is that they not be tracked or labeled. There must be no expectation that the player will find any of them. Doing so immediately turns them into a checklist, explicitly letting players know everything there is to find, which is the opposite of what is described above. It'll be perfunctory, with players just following guides to get the achievement. No sense of mystery or wonder.

Where would a secret mission with a gun as reward fall here? Closer to the latter scenario I think. Everyone will simply look it up on /r/DestinyTheGame. It might as well just be a regular mission.

The game also does a fun balance of rewarding you for doing the puzzles with seemingly random rewards, usually cosmetic, occasionally with unique gear that’s part of a set. There’s nothing explicitly telling you that any puzzle will give a certain reward, so it just comes down to you going out there and solving things because you want to.

Only a few can have the awesome moment of discovery before the secret is simply known to all. Information travels too quickly these days.

I still love Genshin Impact for its exploration and discovery. It’s just fun to move around the world and find things, even if it’s just an obvious chest hidden slightly behind a rock or something. And it seamlessly mixes up traversal puzzles, logic puzzles, time trials, and combat trials into that exploration such that they all feel rewarding, both in terms of just finding them and in completing them. The Primogems and materials you get for completions are great little dopamine hits, but often times the little challenges are reward enough for exploring—you just get another fun little thing to do! And the way they keep expanding it so that every new region has its own little mechanic to engage with. It’s something I really wish Destiny could figure out.

Man, Genshin Impact fucking rules. It’s so easy to look at it as some free to play mobile game bullshit, and I assumed that for a long time. But the more I play it, the more I think it is truly one of the most well-designed games on the market.

This looks rad.

You always come through with the good recommendations!