My concern (Destiny)

by Speedracer513 , Dallas, Texas, Thursday, April 23, 2015, 15:56 (3342 days ago) @ Cody Miller

It wouldn't be right if I were completely satisfied, would it? :-p

My concern is that too much of the House of Wolves experience will revolve around grinding to upgrade, with not a lot of new things to do, and the activities that are there mainly being there to service the grind.

I've always wondered what was the point of having great weapons drop from end game content. So you've just done the hardest content in the game. But then, what do you need the best guns for? If I'm running Prison of Elders every week, and doing Trials of Osiris already, why would I need the new guns? There's a reason you don't get the best stuff from the hardest optional bosses in JPRGs; the game makes them so hard that you have to use your best stuff to defeat them!

I'm just worried that the ability to upgrade old gear is going to replace content that could have been in the game to spend time on instead. I foresee the story missions being easy, and the poor storytelling continuing. This leaves Prison of Elders, which I cannot possibly imagine being as challenging as a raid that is expertly crafted by hand. I guess we'll know more when that's revealed. I'm hoping it's not like firefight.

My fear is that the grind will simply get worse, since so much gear has to be upgraded to 365. Everything you buy looks like it starts at 331 and needs to be ascended. I'm playing out this scenario in my head, and a lot of it just seems pointless… at least with raids I can run them because the activity is inherently challenging. But judging by the activities that drop upgrade materials, it would appear you'd need to do them often.

I wonder if I'm making sense at all. I'm just in general sick of the idea of grinding and upgrading, and would just rather play cool shit. Granted, the system they have is probably the best I could have imagined for what it is, and so they have my admiration. The only thing that would make it better is being able to use commendations to buy legacy gear (which could then be ascended!).

Not saying you're wrong obviously (because there is still a lot left to reveal so none of us know much about it yet), but...

I can't really understand how you can have that concern if you watched the stream yesterday. Everything they showed made it supremely clear that so much of the grind (at least in regard to upgrading weapons and armor) has been eliminated. Your old weapons and armor that you choose to "Ascend" will not need to be re-leveled. New weapons and armor you buy will have half the upgrade nodes that they used to (it appears that the upgrade attack and defense bubbles are completely gone).

The only thing that seems like it might be quite a grind is the actually obtaining of "Etheric Light" - which we will acquire through running the new (and existing) end-game content -- and which we haven't seen yet. I haven't seen any of the Trials of Osiris or Prison of Elders stuff yet (and neither has anyone outside of Bungie with the exception of Gothalion (who saw it yesterday) and Datto, Byf, MoreConsole and some other YouTubers that are going to Bungie today). From what Goth has been saying on his stream today, which obviously isn't much because of NDA, I think it's quite reasonable to expect that Prison of Elders is going to be pretty cool. According to the only non-Bungie person to play it so far, there are lots of cool surprises that will make us - especially those of us that like the raids because of the unique mechanics and emphasis on team-play - very happy.

It seems to me that if it's really important to you to hit level cap ASAP, you should be able to do it within a week or two because you can just apply the first four Etheric Lights that you get to your armor (and won't even need to level anything else up for those pieces). In any case, I think what you really need to do is just take a step back from the "race" to have all your stuff completely upgraded to the new cap and just enjoy running Trials of Osiris and Prison of Elders with us.