Jumped into Court of Oryx last night with Slycrel and Vortech. We were looking to complete a tier 3 battle to finish Eris' quest. Slycrel inserted his rune into the receptacle (I'm sure there's a better way for me to say that), we went to the portal... and out walks Crota. Well, technically it's Thalnock, Fanatic of Crota. But yeah, it's basically Crota.

We were joined by a couple of randoms, so I thought "no big deal, people solo Crota all the time. We can bring him down with 5".

Wrecked.

Crota stomped us. The mechanics are basically the same as the raid fight. Kill a sword barer, drop Crota's shields, smack snack smack. You even get the same music dropping in when you pick up the sword.

Except none of us have homing rockets anymore, so we couldn't get his shields down. And when we finally did, he only stayed down for a couple seconds. And he's flanked by wizards, while the sword barer has an entourage of Taken phalanx and acolytes. And there is almost no cover.

It took us 6 or 7 tries and a pair of replacement randoms, but we eventually figured it out.

Step 1: Kill the wizards that flank Crota ASAP, then go to work ok the rest of the adds.

Step 2: Kill the sword barer, but DON'T pick up the sword.

Step 3: Everyone now concentrate fire on Crota. Primaries or machine guns seem to work best. Takes a while to drop his shields, but steady sustained fire is the only way to prevent them from recharging.

Step 4: when his shields are almost down, someone needs to grab the sword and get ready. He doesn't stay down as long as he does in the raid. You'll have time for 2 or 3 slams, max.

It was an intense, challenging, awesome fight. Great twist on a mechanic that many of us have been handling with ease for months. Can't wait to try it again :)

Three of us tried last night with 4 randoms, but didn't get it. It's really hard to coordinate anything with randoms. I also had a hard time with the lack of tracking rockets. Every time I would go to fire a rocket a phalanx would push me.

I would like to try to force it to match two fireteams one night so we had have some coordinated effort with 6 people.

The Talent Void 'clan' (some of the peeps Slycrel, Peaks & I play with) tried it last night. I don't know if they finished it because I had to leave before their 2nd attempt. Our strategy was to all get in the same instance so we could coordinate and not run it with randoms. We all kept trying to phase into the same instance, and once we got 2 people in the same instance we joined them (2 joined 1, 2 joined the other) so we had 6 people together. We tried it once and were unsuccessful, but it was nice in that we could all work together as we were in the same party chat. I really want to try it again.

It was an intense, challenging, awesome fight. Great twist on a mechanic that many of us have been handling with ease for months. Can't wait to try it again :)

Awesome, & well done. I think it's fun to try the Crota fight again only tweaked a little bit (hopefully made a little easier, health gain & no oversoul) with randoms or a smaller fireteam.

Three of us tried last night with 4 randoms, but didn't get it. It's really hard to coordinate anything with randoms.

This was our biggest problem for the first while. Our randoms kept going straight for the sword barer, killing him, grabbing the sword and rushing straight at Crota. Meanwhile we're all fighting for our lives or dead, with no hope of bringing Crota's shields down. Best case scenario, we'd be able to get his shields down just as the sword ran out.

I also had a hard time with the lack of tracking rockets. Every time I would go to fire a rocket a phalanx would push me.

Yeah, we had the same problem. It seems primary or machine gun fire really is the way to go. His shields recharge the moment he stops taking damage, so maintaining constant fire from at least 3 guardians is crucial.

I was a little frustrated by the end, but ultimately had a good time. Very glad we stuck to it! Was fun to see crota in a slightly different setting.

I'd like to try it earlier in the night next time, I was pretty wasted. heh.

My scout rifle (sustained fire) worked just as well as my HMG, if not better.

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I might even swap step one and step two there. The sword bearer is incredibly deadly and probably killed me more than any other thing in that fight.

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I wonder, why aren't there 6 player fireteams? What was the reasoning for that design decision? I have trouble believing it's because more than 3 people are too powerful for public events as instances with public events often have that # of people in it. Is it because patrol missions would be too easily accomplished, I doubt this too as they could be adjusted based on the # of players in the fireteam, except for the scan a specific location, but then they'd just be saving time if they were spread out.

I wonder, why aren't there 6 player fireteams? What was the reasoning for that design decision? I have trouble believing it's because more than 3 people are too powerful for public events as instances with public events often have that # of people in it. Is it because patrol missions would be too easily accomplished, I doubt this too as they could be adjusted based on the # of players in the fireteam, except for the scan a specific location, but then they'd just be saving time if they were spread out.

I've heard two explanations from Bungie employees (both are true, just it's more than one reason):

1. They wanted to design for a number of people that made the most sense and allowed for the best encounters. With 4 they found that it would be too easy if it was also relatively easy to do with one person, and they found 3 to be the perfect number to balance that. (You can even see this in Halo. Halo on Legendary with more than 3 people is super easy).
2. The bubbles can only handle 12 people, and they try to keep enough slots open so that you can bring in a full fireteam (this obviously isn't true in the social areas), so if they gave everyone five slots, then only two random people could encounter each other, now 4 random people can encounter each other, and they can still have a full fireteam of 3 each.

I wonder, why aren't there 6 player fireteams? What was the reasoning for that design decision? I have trouble believing it's because more than 3 people are too powerful for public events as instances with public events often have that # of people in it. Is it because patrol missions would be too easily accomplished, I doubt this too as they could be adjusted based on the # of players in the fireteam, except for the scan a specific location, but then they'd just be saving time if they were spread out.

If I had to guess, I'd say it comes down to the logistical side of things. Look at what happened when House of Wolves launched:

Many of us DBO PS4 players spent several nights per week raiding together. If we weren't raiding, we would often jump into PvP as a full group. Even when we did our weekly Nightfall night, we'd party up into a group of 6 so we could still hang out together.

Then HoW came along, and suddenly there were fewer ways for us all to play Destiny's end game together. Trials of Osiris and Prison of Elders were both 3-man activities, along with all the strikes and story missions and patrol... it kind of "broke up the band" for a while.

Since the majority of Destiny's activities are designed and built to accommodate 1-3 players, I suspect Bungie wanted to limit our ability to jump in to larger groups because most of the game would only force those groups to break apart again.

All that said, I am 100% in favor of 6-player patrols :)

1. They wanted to design for a number of people that made the most sense and allowed for the best encounters. With 4 they found that it would be too easy if it was also relatively easy to do with one person, and they found 3 to be the perfect number to balance that. (You can even see this in Halo. Halo on Legendary with more than 3 people is super easy).

I never understood why in that situation the enemies don't either get tougher, or have more spawn. In the Diablo games, each additional player increases the health of the enemy monsters. It's still easier with more people, but not by a ton.