I'm curious about everyone's thoughts are on CD now that the event is officially over.

I loved the playlist, and the shared bounties were a nice surprise (and led to a popping-out of my comfort zone, which was fun). The Heartbroken buff was definitely interesting, and something I'd love to see return. Going 1v1 against another buffed enemy led to some great encounters that led to some tough choices (Go For The Rez!).

Sammy and I ran it the first evening, and we had a great time (and got loot!). Some funny moments, saving throws, heartbreaking losses, and plenty of hate mail. :P
It was a great Valentines present.

I was somewhat disappointed in the scope of the event, but then again, Valentines ain't that big of a Holiday. At the same time, the smaller scope meant that I could run it multiple times across both consoles without feeling pressured to start.

I think the great thing about it was that you get a better understanding of how you work with another player without the stress caused by the regular doubles playlist (where enemies can space out your revives and control the match), and it was an excellent way to see how pairing certain weapons can help out the team; I remember running Doctrine while Sammy ran Jade Rabbit, and enemies had a very tough time pushing through to us when I played conservatively (which is not really my strong suit, heh).
I also loved playing around with weapons that I never use (Sidearms! Green Sniper Rifles! Scout Rifles! Hawksaw!); that weapon Bounty was great.

On the flipside, laggy enemies were more frustrating because of the fact that you only had one other teammate that could focus on them (and who also experienced their bad lag) so stacking shots was tougher. Fortunately they were few and far between.

I think that there was plenty to improve, and Bungie's already acknowledged some of the issues (320 candy Ghosts for all!), but if I could ask for anything, it'd be:

• Shorter countdown between matches (should take 20 seconds between matches, 4 seconds to go to Orbit)
  
  
• More diverse bounties (Trials has done a good job of varied-but-manageable bounties),
  
  
• The Special ammo situation fixed (bad timing for the whole fix thing against the ammo-generating weapons),
  
  
• More reward variety (I'd like to see the return of a Queen's Wrath style event with specially-skinned weapons/gear. The fact that some of us still have our Year 1 Queen's Wrath gear should tell Bungie something about the value that aesthetics can have over fancy "new' gear. I did get a great Red Spectre out of the event, so it was kind of like what I would like to see :P).
  

Overall, really fun event, I hope to have some clips up soon. In the meantime, here's a clip from a game where I got a flattering hate message:

And our quickest match (that landed Sammy some hate mail), with the aforementioned Red Spectre:

The fact that you could advance even on a loss made things easier. I still had a few minor issues with hits not registering or not getting the grenade off on my screen, but since the cost wasn't so high it didn't feel as bad as trials where one loss kills your chances at the lighthouse.

At the 2v2 and 3v3 levels i felt that it is very tough to balance classes. Warlocks just have too many good things at this level, armor, tracking grenades, life steal/shield on hit melees, that the other classes don't. With more players, these advantages count for less, but in the smaller game types they seem to dominate.

Also, snipers are just really good at holding teams at range. The sniper/TLW or Sniper/high ROF auto rifle are too effective at covering all the range bands. A mid range build with fusion rifles can't compete, so you are left trying to shotgun around a tight corner. In fact I think I was the only team that used fusion rifles in all the games I played (I varied my load out game to game for fun, even ran QBB and an auto combo).

I think there is a video of someone sniping my partner at range and then following up with a headshot on me as I'm killing their buddy not 20 feet in front of him. Of course in that clip I don't get my fusion grenade off, but on my screen I did :(

The point though is that I'm very close, and snipers shouldn't be effective at that close of a range. That they are is one of the main issues right now.

This goes back to the Halo 3 days when players would group up to cheese certain achievements together, because the goals were too situational for most players to complete them naturally (like getting a double-kill with a Spartan Laser in a Free-for-all playlist... you could play 10 games without even touching a Spartan Laser, much less get a double kill with it in Free-for-all).

I don't know what you're talking about.

http://files2.bungie.org/dv/robbed/

OMG I remember when you posted this!

That 'nade explosion at the end :')

I gotta say you summed up my feelings on Destiny PvP incredibly well. Year 1 Destiny PvP reminded me of a quote from Chapterhouse: Dune, "Each attacker is a feather floating on an infinite path. As the feather approaches, it is diverted and removed." There was an intense rhythm to matches that if you managed to get a hold of, you could dominate. It was truly rewarding to aggressive players. Year 2 Destiny still has some of this, but the rhythm has slowed down has begun to favor static play. Halo was all about controlling an area of the map, getting a certain weapon, taking it to a powerful location, rinse-repeat. I played it for 10 years, and loved it. Destiny took that to another level, setting my brain on fire with possibilities. I'd hate to see it fade back into something it wasn't meant to be.

Definitely this. I've tried to tell Schooly that there's more to Destiny than he was giving it credit for, but hey, Destiny isn't for everyone. A lot of people hate how random it can be and how nothing they do or prepare for may matter at any given time based on whatever weapon or power another individual has. It can be frustrating. I just think it makes the game even more competitive. There's a lot of bait-and-switch and trying to out-think your opponents, especially in Trials. It's wonderful.

To me, Trials works so well specifically because it reduces or mitigates so much of the random chaos that makes most of the crucible so frustrating. It adds focus and clarity. The round-based structure eliminates spawn-camping and runaway super chains. The intense 3v3 focus emphasizes careful use of special weapons; they can still dominate, but rounds often end before either team has a chance to collect ammo, meaning every shot really counts. Heavy weapons still (unfortunately) make an appearance, but at least they're confined to a single round. And while I still think the gameplay mechanics of Supers are total BS in PvP, at least Trials forces players to think strategically about how & when to use them.

I guess I just feel very differently about the general quality of Destiny PvP in year 1. I found it enjoyable often enough, but only because the raw movement and shooting feels so good. Overall I think the crucible is a mess compared to other PvP shooters like Halo or Titanfall. Trials was the first time I felt like Destiny really hit its stride as a PvP game. Doubles Elimination shares a lot of the same elements, which is why I enjoy that so much as well.

Heh, I felt my blood pressure rise just watching that... those were some frustrating achievements :)

Good thing I managed to get that one of the very first day. I guess Karma caught up to me with Hawkmoon though…

I gotta say you summed up my feelings on Destiny PvP incredibly well. Year 1 Destiny PvP reminded me of a quote from Chapterhouse: Dune, "Each attacker is a feather floating on an infinite path. As the feather approaches, it is diverted and removed." There was an intense rhythm to matches that if you managed to get a hold of, you could dominate. It was truly rewarding to aggressive players. Year 2 Destiny still has some of this, but the rhythm has slowed down has begun to favor static play. Halo was all about controlling an area of the map, getting a certain weapon, taking it to a powerful location, rinse-repeat. I played it for 10 years, and loved it. Destiny took that to another level, setting my brain on fire with possibilities. I'd hate to see it fade back into something it wasn't meant to be.

Definitely this. I've tried to tell Schooly that there's more to Destiny than he was giving it credit for, but hey, Destiny isn't for everyone. A lot of people hate how random it can be and how nothing they do or prepare for may matter at any given time based on whatever weapon or power another individual has. It can be frustrating. I just think it makes the game even more competitive. There's a lot of bait-and-switch and trying to out-think your opponents, especially in Trials. It's wonderful.

The entire reason that I loved Destiny's PvP has always been the fact that special weapons were something everybody had rather than fought over. The last thing I want to see happen to Destiny is a decay into Halo where everybody is using their 'primary' weapon. I don't want to play a game where the major determining factor in whether you win is your straight up ability to shoot. Otherwise there are other FPSes where you can do that. But that is the most uninteresting type of game. The fact that you have powerful tools like specials, heavies, and supers to get kills is great.

I remember Schooly D slamming PvP pre alpha. It basically came down to there being too many ways to easily get kills. As he put it:

Titans have a super where they slam the ground and kill everyone nearby instantly. Combine this with Destiny's sprinting and sliding mechanics and your paraplegic grandma can manage a 0.8 k/d ratio

How can someone as smart as he is not grasp that K/D is a ratio, and if yours gets higher then someone else's gets lower, so no, not everybody will look good on paper. There will always be over 1 and under 1 in games. Also, you know, everybody has access to all those tools, and some people can use them more effectively than others.

The timing of individual kills make much more of an impact on a game than on the fact that a kill happens.

I gotta say you summed up my feelings on Destiny PvP incredibly well. Year 1 Destiny PvP reminded me of a quote from Chapterhouse: Dune, "Each attacker is a feather floating on an infinite path. As the feather approaches, it is diverted and removed." There was an intense rhythm to matches that if you managed to get a hold of, you could dominate. It was truly rewarding to aggressive players. Year 2 Destiny still has some of this, but the rhythm has slowed down has begun to favor static play. Halo was all about controlling an area of the map, getting a certain weapon, taking it to a powerful location, rinse-repeat. I played it for 10 years, and loved it. Destiny took that to another level, setting my brain on fire with possibilities. I'd hate to see it fade back into something it wasn't meant to be.

This goes back to the Halo 3 days when players would group up to cheese certain achievements together, because the goals were too situational for most players to complete them naturally (like getting a double-kill with a Spartan Laser in a Free-for-all playlist... you could play 10 games without even touching a Spartan Laser, much less get a double kill with it in Free-for-all).

I don't know what you're talking about.

http://files2.bungie.org/dv/robbed/

Heh, I felt my blood pressure rise just watching that... those were some frustrating achievements :)

This goes back to the Halo 3 days when players would group up to cheese certain achievements together, because the goals were too situational for most players to complete them naturally (like getting a double-kill with a Spartan Laser in a Free-for-all playlist... you could play 10 games without even touching a Spartan Laser, much less get a double kill with it in Free-for-all).

I don't know what you're talking about.

http://files2.bungie.org/dv/robbed/

There were some great ideas, such as the shared bounties, where I would equip an Auto Rifle to help my teammate complete his -- I just felt like those ideas weren't developed quite to the degree of sophistication that they could have been and with commensurate rewards, e.g., "Kill an enemy player damaged with your teammate's melee with your melee." This may be tedious to implement from a coding standpoint, however.

In my experience, these kinds of bounties always cause more problems than fun. The problem is that if the bounties get too specific, then you end up with players spending entire matches (sometimes several in a row) focusing on completing the bounty rather than trying to win and play effectively. This goes back to the Halo 3 days when players would group up to cheese certain achievements together, because the goals were too situational for most players to complete them naturally (like getting a double-kill with a Spartan Laser in a Free-for-all playlist... you could play 10 games without even touching a Spartan Laser, much less get a double kill with it in Free-for-all). I believe that if your idea were implemented, we would end up with teams spending all of their time rushing straight at the enemy team and trying to double-melee them over and over until they finally complete the bounty. Stuff like that can really sap the fun out of the game, especially if you run into multiple players or teams trying to do the same thing, game after game.

I agree that the Crimson Doubles bounties were pretty shallow, but I think anything more specific or complicated would have caused problems. The sweet spot, IMO, is to create bounties that reward the kinds of in-game actions all players are striving for anyway. "Get X number of precision kills" and that sort of thing. Bounties like that can actually help train players by giving them incentive to focus on things that will help them become better PvP players.

As other have pointed, going 1v2 when your teammate dies (or, more often, me) is a little more forgiving, and more importantly, this was a great opportunity to get a feel for how smaller teams work with (and against) one another.

There were a lot of "wow we just did that" moments.

I didn't keep track of W/L etc, but I did have a ton of fun playing, and learning.

My main complaint would be that this event was just reskinned 2s. There were some great ideas, such as the shared bounties, where I would equip an Auto Rifle to help my teammate complete his -- I just felt like those ideas weren't developed quite to the degree of sophistication that they could have been and with commensurate rewards, e.g., "Kill an enemy player damaged with your teammate's melee with your melee." This may be tedious to implement from a coding standpoint, however.

As for the Special ammo thing -- I suspect it's a tricky system to implement correctly and that the current measure is a stopgap.

Perhaps there could still be special ammo on spawn on Round 1 but with a debuff which deeply penalizes special weapon damage by a certain % for the first 20s, sort of an "anti-Specialist" type of thing.

As an event, I think Crimson Doubles was tarnished a little by several of Destiny's ongoing issues: I don't think the new special ammo tweaks are having a net positive effect on gameplay at the moment. I like the spirit of the changes, I'm just not sure it is working out.

The entire reason that I loved Destiny's PvP has always been the fact that special weapons were something everybody had rather than fought over. The last thing I want to see happen to Destiny is a decay into Halo where everybody is using their 'primary' weapon. I don't want to play a game where the major determining factor in whether you win is your straight up ability to shoot. Otherwise there are other FPSes where you can do that. But that is the most uninteresting type of game. The fact that you have powerful tools like specials, heavies, and supers to get kills is great.

I remember Schooly D slamming PvP pre alpha. It basically came down to there being too many ways to easily get kills. As he put it:

Titans have a super where they slam the ground and kill everyone nearby instantly. Combine this with Destiny's sprinting and sliding mechanics and your paraplegic grandma can manage a 0.8 k/d ratio

How can someone as smart as he is not grasp that K/D is a ratio, and if yours gets higher then someone else's gets lower, so no, not everybody will look good on paper. There will always be over 1 and under 1 in games. Also, you know, everybody has access to all those tools, and some people can use them more effectively than others.

The timing of individual kills make much more of an impact on a game than on the fact that a kill happens.

There were legitimate problems with the game well in to the Beta stage, but none of them had to do directly with having special ammo spawn. The issue was certain specials being overly powerful, and certain perks being too damn good.

I really hope that in Destiny 2 there exists a separate PvP and PvE ecosystem. Bring them together for special events like Iron Banner when you can use anything, but PvP should have its own guns, and its own set of perks available on those guns. The stats on those guns should be balanced for PvP. This would solve so many problems.

As an event, I think Crimson Doubles was tarnished a little by several of Destiny's ongoing issues: I don't think the new special ammo tweaks are having a net positive effect on gameplay at the moment. I like the spirit of the changes, I'm just not sure it is working out. Matchmaking was also problematic for some... I didn't have any trouble with it myself, but I've heard many people say that games were more tense and hyper competitive than they'd hoped. And of course, the loot drops didn't seem to go as intended.

Overall, I left Crimson Doubles feeling like it offered a great gametype, but as an event it was a bit of a dud for me.

But I'll totally agree that a max armor/recovery sunsinger seems OP in the doubles elimination gametype. I couldn't run thorn just because I felt bad doing so. firebolt grenades made me feel bad enough :)

I had not problem running Thorn/Firebolt grenades last night. I pretty well suck with hand cannons though so it wasn't quite as OP as it could have been. Also I wasn't anywhere near maxed on INT or DIS so I didn't get supers or grenades all that often.

Playing Crimson Doubles immediately reminded me why I'll never touch Trials of Osiris ever in my life ever ever: Camping Icebreakers, High-Intellect Crests, network defying cheaters, and piece of shit teabaggers. No wonder everyone else just killed themselves. I know one thing for sure--I'm not setting foot inside Crucible again unless I'm in a 3-man boosting team in Rumble to finish quests.

But the Tower did look absolutely awesome...I can't help but wonder how long it'll take to leaf-blow all those rose petals off the balcony...

I did play against a guy named something like "BrutalTeaBagger" so I took that as permission to bag. But that's the only time I can think of where I wasn't bagged first.

1) I didn't feel as screwed when I the last guardian standing.

Obviously 1 v 3 is worse than 1 v 2, but the buff was so significant that I could still capitalize if they made a tactical mistake. I won a number of rounds this way where my partner would die in a relatively un-res-able position, and I would instead retreat to a position where I had some chance of picking one of them off. Once it was 1v1 again, it was a new ball game.

2) I think flanking AND dealing with being flanked were both easier in 2v2, than 3v3

I know it Trials it can be effective to divide your group, but it is a great disadvantage if your 1 person runs into 2 people and suddenly your down a person in an un-res-able position. This could potentially happen in doubles, but I found it to be much rarer.

Perhaps I just did well at it, but I didn't have a time this weekend where a flank went so south on me that I couldn't retreat to my partner. And frequently I wasn't flanking until it was 2v1 or for sure we knew both opponents were in the same vicinity. When this is the case, it's almost impossible to survive people flanking you.

That being said, in 2v2, when you see your radar with split reds, indicating you are being flanked, I always immediately called out one of them to push on. When you recognize your opponent is flanking, you need to rush one of them and take him/her out and tip the scales. Time and time again, we did a good job of identifying the flank, choosing one, and taking them out. If only our opponents made this mistake more often.

Lastly, a random factoid. Don't go invisible when you have the enrage buff. Your an invisible body with red flames. You're gonna have a bad time.