Lol. Just beat the Raid on Hard. Literally every drop gave me Ascendant Shards. Atheon gave me a sparrow and shards. I really wanted Fatebringer or a Helmet!

That might have been my only chance to beat it on Hard and get loot given the upcoming tweak to the timestream :-(

That might have been my only chance to beat it on Hard and get loot given the upcoming tweak to the timestream :-(

Does anyone else around here think this game is too easy? I'm not saying I can play this like I play Tetris, but my first time through the vault was terrific for me because it was the first time I'd team-wiped several times in weeks. It's the first time I had flashbacks to Jackal one-shots on High Charity. The hardest thing in the game so far, and maybe the only thing. That's why it was also the most fun I had.

I kind of want Hard mode to be so hard it takes me months to beat. This is the thing that should be so hard that only a fraction of players beat it. If the point of this game is to become legend, I want to be able to see a guy walking around with that raid helmet and go 'damn, THAT dude beat hard mode'. I watched some guys beat hard mode in an hour and a half yesterday. Atheon took them 5 minutes, tops. I don't think randomizing the team is going to stop that kind of thing, and I don't think VoG Hard mode will ever be hard if you have the gear and the teammates to handle it. Is a shame that the only hard thing about Hard mode so far is the grind.

Also, badass job finishing on Hard mode! Wish I was at that level, I hope to get there in a couple months! I bet you get it again ;)

I kind of want Hard mode to be so hard it takes me months to beat. This is the thing that should be so hard that only a fraction of players beat it. If the point of this game is to become legend, I want to be able to see a guy walking around with that raid helmet and go 'damn, THAT dude beat hard mode'.

This may be Bungie's motivation. It's interesting that the changes to Atheon's teleport are happening NOW, and not way back after the raid first came out. Folks figured out he teleports the three farthest people on the first day. I think it's taken so long for Bungie to raise the issue, because truthfully a group of moderately skilled level 29s can conquer the raid with the right gear and strategy. I'm guessing Bungie wanted level 30s only to be able to do it. Back then it wasn't a big deal because nobody was close to level 30, which is why the issue is only arising now. It seems entirely based around requiring more time investment, since now strong players may not be able to cary the weaker, and everybody has to have all the best stuff and be high level since they may have to perform any task.

It's stupid, because the strategy for hard is different than for normal, and especially at level 29 is a lot more dependent on execution and being a slick machine. I was on the portal team for the Atheon fight, and me and the other Oracle killer naturally settled on a path where we would steadily advance while killing Oracles, while staying close so we can be cleansed together. It was automatic at one point. It's fun to work it out to get to that point. It was a lot of fun feeling like we were going up against something we shouldn't be able to defeat, but did.

Honestly I think a far better solution to the problem would be to eliminate easy boss kills, and to make it so that you cannot join a raid in progress if the checkpoint is past where you have already achieved. If you've made it to the templar, you can only join games at that checkpoint or earlier. This means you'd need roughly the same group, and you'd have to complete the entire thing.