Sunsetting still sucks. If they’re going to do it, they need to at least figure out how to make it make any sort of sense. Half of the gear that isn’t currently sunset is unobtainable because it was in the old seasons this year. The Moon and Dreaming City feel really shitty because everything you can get there is locked at 1060. Raising the level of the entire game to 1050 also proves the lie of “you can still use your weapons, just not in end game content.” I guess literally anything expect Patrols are end game content now. The base strike playlist is well above the 1060 cap. They honestly might as well have actually deleted the old guns for all the use they have now.

I’m coming around on Stasis in Crucible. I still think it needs some adjustments, but I’m getting used to it, and starting to learn how to play around it. It still undeniably changes Crucible, and I’m not sure for the better, but I don’t actually hate it. The biggest problem for me is how strong the freezing stuff is. I actually think the Warlock melee is fine, is the grenades that are annoying. Getting frozen around corners from AoE stuff just sucks. Still, with some adjustments, I think there’s room for it.

Now, onto the good:

Stasis in PvE rules! I fucking love it. It’s so satisfying.

Europa rules! It’s gorgeous, and I’ve really Fallen in love with it. It’s right up there with the Dreaming City. I genuinely enjoy how the post campaign is using the area. It’s very reminiscent of the way they utilized the Dreaming City. I will say that the DC stuff is better because all of the post campaign stuff felt new. The unique Ascendent Challenges, the rotating weekly missions. Maybe we’ll get more unique stuff next week. There were a few good missions post-campaign, but there’s also a lot of bounties and the stuff you pick up from
both Variks and the Stranger that make you just redo old stuff. I don’t even hate it, I think it’s mostly smart reuse of activities, and I like the destination enough to not really be bothered. I think it’s the most coherent a Destination has ever felt in terms of area, quests, and activities all feeling like they make sense together. I also love the Lost Sectors. It’s the best they’ve been utilized yet.

While I hate the way Ghost was written, I really like the way the story is being handled. They’re actually putting the lore and story in the game in the way I’ve always wanted. Ghost talking about the Lost Sectors, the stuff that eventually happens in them with the Stranger quests. Hell, even hearing the transmissions on the radio at base camp.

Now, for some light spoilers:

The stuff with the Stranger is great. All the story she gives after the campaign while we unlock the aspects and fragments. The small touch of meeting her at the end of the Lost Sectors goes a long way towards making it seem like other characters are actually doing stuff. And her meeting with Ana! It’s was great. Even being able to chat with The Drifter and Eris at camp, and Zavala showing up during the campaign was a nice touch.

The new lore books are fascinating too. Hopefully Raga will weigh in at some point. There was also a huge revelation data-mined of a book that’s not available yet: Banshee is Clovis Bray! Wild stuff!

How do you break free? Is it just on a time limit? Or can you break free faster by wiggling the joystick and mashing buttons?

Cody, you broke free nearly 2 years ago :)

2 years on December 23rd.

Wow. I haven't played cruicible yet, but this looks infuriating to play against.

Here's Stasis in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/cN4hCbZAke

— Gladd (@Gladd) November 12, 2020

I'm sure Bungie will see this and nerf fusion rifles.

Actually, a stasis fusion rifle sounds kind of fun. As long as it only freezes on what would have been a kill anyway.

How do you break free? Is it just on a time limit? Or can you break free faster by wiggling the joystick and mashing buttons?

Cody, you broke free nearly 2 years ago :)

Wow. I haven't played cruicible yet, but this looks infuriating to play against.

Here's Stasis in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/cN4hCbZAke

— Gladd (@Gladd) November 12, 2020

I'm sure Bungie will see this and nerf fusion rifles.

Here's Stasis in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/cN4hCbZAke

— Gladd (@Gladd) November 12, 2020

Stasis is straight up fucking broken in Crucible. Every single ability from every class freezes enemies. Grenade? Freezes enemies of they get it, and also makes a huge ice wall that gets in the way. Melee? The Warlock melee literally shoots an energy ball that freezes anything it touches—it even explodes on impact and can freeze multiple people at once! Super? It freezes everyone it touches instantly, even people in their own Supers! Nightstalkers are useless now. Tether has always been shitty and broken in Crucible, but now it’s only marginally more useful than the Warlock melee.

Seriously, did a single person at Bungie even play a game of Crucible where anyone besides themselves used Stasis? I’m not sure I believe it. It was silly fun for about two matches, but quickly wore out it’s welcome. Every ability is an instant win button.

It’s a shame, because I genuinely think Stasis is fun. The grenades that make ice walls are really cool tacticals for blocking routes or making quick cover. I feel like the melees would be annoying but fine if they slowed enemies instead of completely freezing them.

It’s only going to get worse, I bet. We haven’t started upgrading Stasis with Fragments or Aspects yet. How much stronger will it get?

Also, if you wait it out you don't get shatter damage

It definitely feels like a formula that Bungie is getting a bit too comfortable with. I'm not surprised, as Luke Smith himself said that we will never have another Forsaken/TTK-sized expansion again. So yeah, the Bungie that would innovate and blow their previous innovations out of the water every few years is gone for good. Now we're stuck with Guardian Games, seasonal horde modes, and a "fight these mini bosses then the end the main boss threat, then wait for the Big Bad to be teased for a whole year" routine.

This is unfortunate to hear. I have always said that there is a 'critical mass' you have to hit for something to really be worthwhile. Not just in terms of length, but integration. Even short games can have this quality, if everything is essential and builds upon everything else. Especially with sunsetting, we've seen that Bungie seems to be building the game on the exact opposite principles.

When you make a car engine, every piece has a purpose. Remove a piece, and the car doesn't work. But you also can't really ADD much either; because it's already working as an engine. All the critical pieces are there interacting with each other. Anything else is superfluous. Great games are that finely made engine. This integration applies to everything: story, game design, level progression, everything. A perfect machine.

When you piecemeal your game like Bungie is doing, you don't get the chance create that perfect engine. Each of the pieces on their own might do a thing, but they don't ALL work together the way they would if the game was a large content dump. And what's worse, the pieces even conflict with one another.

Obviously it’s still early, and obviously we’ll need more time for some of the changes to sink in. But after completing the campaign and spending another 3-4 hours running around doing post-campaign quests, I’m feeling like this might be the worst D2 expansion, with the exception of Curse of Osiris.

I really like the approach to boss encounters in this expansion. They're give-and-take style fights, where your survival depends on constant situational awareness.

Oddly, the first boss fight (against Phylaks) was way more interesting than most of the fights in Forsaken, and was more what I wanted out of the fight against the sniper in that expansion, where you are forced into cover, and have to move quickly around it, lest you get frozen.

Other than that, yeah. Seeing the absolute worst public event pop up in the expansion left me with a "oh yeah, let's keep those expectations tempered" feeling 20 minutes into Europa.
And pretty vistas aside, the long trips down empty caves (best skipped on Sparrows) really don't do it for me.

That said, I am enjoying the (at least temporary) increase in difficulty. Dying to Hobgoblin Snipers feels refreshing.

On the plus side, Europa is gorgeous. All the scenery and locations are beautiful. And I love the weather effects. But looks aside, I don’t feel like it had been implemented in a way that makes it a compelling patrol destination. We’ll see if that changes over time.

It's a bit too much snow-and-slopes for me. I was hoping we'd get really into exploring the frozen city to the North, or crashed ships, or something... But alas, it's mostly frantic running between the three main Patrol spots, since the quest objectives are scattered to each corner of the map for no reason.

For me, the big ugly elephant in the room is sunsetting, and how it has effected my play through. I was having a decent enough time for the first little while, when I could get by with my old gear. But once that level climb kicked in, and I had to start using whatever random weapons dropped as I played, the whole thing fell apart. For me, most of the weapons in D2 just aren’t enjoyable to use. And if the weapons aren’t fun, then none of the combat is fun. And as luck would have it, every single weapon that dropped for me during my play through was hot garbage. I would have been thrilled with “mediocre”, but they were absolute trash, with the lone exception of a new exotic that I was able to use for 1 mission before it was too under-levelled to continue using it. Finally, long after finishing the campaign, I’ve gotten a bow and a grenade launcher that I kinda like, and it’s starting to feel more like “Destiny” again. But at this point, I’m already mostly “done” with Europa. I’ve done most of the new stuff, and at from here Europa is kinda just another patrol space, filled with patrol activities that I never have any interest in doing.

Yeah, having to rely on that crappy pulse rifle for several missions was lame, and I wasn't about to give up my great-looking armor set when cutscenes loomed around every corner, so I was underleveled the entire night.
I was lucky that the Exotic Cypher weapon was powerful (I got that overshield-granting LMG, which was a lifesaver)

If nothing else, at least they label which weapons are locked at 1060, so you can delete en masse.

Sunsetting isn’t my only gripe, though. I don’t think the campaign is particularly good. Bungie has settled into a formula for how they like to roll out their story missions. Unfortunately, Forsaken still remains the best example of this campaign structure, and they’ve gotten progressively worse since then IMO. And the writing/dialogue in this expansion might be the worst in the franchise. They’ve mostly left behind the campy “marvel-style” banter that was so cringey in vanilla D2, but the dialogue now is just as dumb, only it takes itself way more seriously. It feels like they’re really trying to have the characters say deep, meaningful, impactful things to each other, but it’s all just moronic. From a lore point of view, I’m sure there’s a lot here that lore fans will love (plenty of exploration of Destiny’s backstory), but in terms of the character-driven narrative, the whole things is a big miss for me.

It definitely feels like a formula that Bungie is getting a bit too comfortable with. I'm not surprised, as Luke Smith himself said that we will never have another Forsaken/TTK-sized expansion again. So yeah, the Bungie that would innovate and blow their previous innovations out of the water every few years is gone for good. Now we're stuck with Guardian Games, seasonal horde modes, and a "fight these mini bosses then the end the main boss threat, then wait for the Big Bad to be teased for a whole year" routine.

At least the lore tabs are better organized!

Finally, the thing that I really didn’t see coming: I think the new “stasis” powers make the game instantly worse. Even if I’m not using them, simply having them exist in the game around me has already caused plenty of frustration. Being frozen by an enemy is never, EVER fun. It’s a frustrating experience every single time, especially when getting frozen leaves your health at critical levels, so that by the time you break free you’ll almost certainly get picked off by a random Dregg. Having enemies that will decide the throw their “freeze” blasts at me right as I jump over a chasm, when I had no possible way of dodging, causing me to plummet to my death made me chuckle the first time it happened to me. But by the 5th or 10th time, the novelty has worn off and it just feels awful.
Aside from fighting against stasis powers, I also find it frustrating to fight alongside stasis powers. I’ve lost track of how many times I was about to headshot an enemy when a giant wall of ice suddenly pops up and blocks my shot because a random blueberry threw a grenade at just the wrong time. And these abilities are an absolute shit show in the crucible. Abilities that require little or no aim, immobilize opponents, and cause explosive chain reactions while also blocking movement, line of sight, and fire? What could go wrong ;)

Games like Warframe and Overwatch have freezing and wall mechanics, but they figured out how to make them feel good long ago.
In both games, your bullets go through your teammate's abilities (with the exception of Mei's wall in OW, and Limbo's rift in WF).
And getting frozen is a gradual thing that will slow you more only if you let it, and in OW, when completely frozen, you are only frozen for two seconds, and don't have to push anything to break free.

In D2, getting frozen is a roll of the dice. Were you lucky enough to get frozen with some cover, or did the ice bump you upwards slightly, giving enemies a clear shot at a stationary target?

I died several times to the latter incident.

Freezing mechanics in games are generally not fun, and should be avoided at all costs unless you've really thought them through. Bungie did not, but I don't know how they're going to work with them to make them better (Maybe a counter for how much Freeze you're afflicted by, and you only freeze stiff at Tier 3?).

All I can say is that at this point, I’m really really glad I didn’t buy this expansion (I got it through Gamepass). The real bummer for me is that the D2 that I really love is now mostly gone. It’s been a gradual process over the past 18 months or so, with tweaks and nerfs and gameplay changes slowly undoing all my favourite things about the game. And now, most of it is just straight-up gone.

Same. If I had paid $40 for a shallow loot pool, anti-fun mechanics, and the smallest-yet-buggiest "annual" expansion yet, I would have been mad.
I expect the "Dear Leader Bungie" crowd to enjoy the expansion (and miraculously not run into a single disconnect, crash, or bug like I was plagued by), but I'm not a big fan of Kool-aid, so I'll probably be sitting most of this year out (although those Hunt-themed Warlock ornaments are pretty sick, so I might just chase those) while they sort this mess.

Also, anyone notice that a lot of Emotes were stripped down? Whether they're missing facial animations or effects, it's surprisingly noticeable (and random).

On the bright side, I did still enjoy the few games of control that I played last night, even with the new stasis powers in play. Auto rifles still shred, so I won’t need to put away my Summoner any time soon :)

I'm looking forward to running a 120 hand cannon. Love that this season's perks benefit my Fighting Lion. >:)

Finally, the thing that I really didn’t see coming: I think the new “stasis” powers make the game instantly worse. Even if I’m not using them, simply having them exist in the game around me has already caused plenty of frustration. Being frozen by an enemy is never, EVER fun. It’s a frustrating experience every single time, especially when getting frozen leaves your health at critical levels, so that by the time you break free you’ll almost certainly get picked off by a random Dregg.

How do you break free? Is it just on a time limit? Or can you break free faster by wiggling the joystick and mashing buttons?

On the plus side, Europa is gorgeous. All the scenery and locations are beautiful. And I love the weather effects. But looks aside, I don’t feel like it had been implemented in a way that makes it a compelling patrol destination. We’ll see if that changes over time.

For me, the big ugly elephant in the room is sunsetting, and how it has effected my play through. I was having a decent enough time for the first little while, when I could get by with my old gear. But once that level climb kicked in, and I had to start using whatever random weapons dropped as I played, the whole thing fell apart. For me, most of the weapons in D2 just aren’t enjoyable to use. And if the weapons aren’t fun, then none of the combat is fun. And as luck would have it, every single weapon that dropped for me during my play through was hot garbage. I would have been thrilled with “mediocre”, but they were absolute trash, with the lone exception of a new exotic that I was able to use for 1 mission before it was too under-levelled to continue using it. Finally, long after finishing the campaign, I’ve gotten a bow and a grenade launcher that I kinda like, and it’s starting to feel more like “Destiny” again. But at this point, I’m already mostly “done” with Europa. I’ve done most of the new stuff, and at from here Europa is kinda just another patrol space, filled with patrol activities that I never have any interest in doing.

Sunsetting isn’t my only gripe, though. I don’t think the campaign is particularly good. Bungie has settled into a formula for how they like to roll out their story missions. Unfortunately, Forsaken still remains the best example of this campaign structure, and they’ve gotten progressively worse since then IMO. And the writing/dialogue in this expansion might be the worst in the franchise. They’ve mostly left behind the campy “marvel-style” banter that was so cringey in vanilla D2, but the dialogue now is just as dumb, only it takes itself way more seriously. It feels like they’re really trying to have the characters say deep, meaningful, impactful things to each other, but it’s all just moronic. From a lore point of view, I’m sure there’s a lot here that lore fans will love (plenty of exploration of Destiny’s backstory), but in terms of the character-driven narrative, the whole things is a big miss for me.

Finally, the thing that I really didn’t see coming: I think the new “stasis” powers make the game instantly worse. Even if I’m not using them, simply having them exist in the game around me has already caused plenty of frustration. Being frozen by an enemy is never, EVER fun. It’s a frustrating experience every single time, especially when getting frozen leaves your health at critical levels, so that by the time you break free you’ll almost certainly get picked off by a random Dregg. Having enemies that will decide the throw their “freeze” blasts at me right as I jump over a chasm, when I had no possible way of dodging, causing me to plummet to my death made me chuckle the first time it happened to me. But by the 5th or 10th time, the novelty has worn off and it just feels awful.
Aside from fighting against stasis powers, I also find it frustrating to fight alongside stasis powers. I’ve lost track of how many times I was about to headshot an enemy when a giant wall of ice suddenly pops up and blocks my shot because a random blueberry threw a grenade at just the wrong time. And these abilities are an absolute shit show in the crucible. Abilities that require little or no aim, immobilize opponents, and cause explosive chain reactions while also blocking movement, line of sight, and fire? What could go wrong ;)

All I can say is that at this point, I’m really really glad I didn’t buy this expansion (I got it through Gamepass). The real bummer for me is that the D2 that I really love is now mostly gone. It’s been a gradual process over the past 18 months or so, with tweaks and nerfs and gameplay changes slowly undoing all my favourite things about the game. And now, most of it is just straight-up gone.

On the bright side, I did still enjoy the few games of control that I played last night, even with the new stasis powers in play. Auto rifles still shred, so I won’t need to put away my Summoner any time soon :)

Playing some Gambit and getting one as a random drop is significantly less great.

I’m more and more sure that they gave this decision as a whole very little consideration. I mean, what’s the alternative? That they genuinely thought this is a good way to handle it? That’s even more worrisome, or at the very least more embarrassing for them.

It’s worth it, for me. Granted, it’s new, so that will wear off eventually, but Io always sucked, and I wish they’d have kept Titan instead of Nessus, which also sucks.

Each corner of the map is like the size of main patrol area of Titan and just as dense.

I liked running around last night, after I finished the campaign... except for that 1250 Brig that kept showing up and screwing me over. :(

The other issue is loot sources. There is entirely too much confusion now. I used to know how to get damn near every gun, now I have no idea. If I wanted a Bygones, play Gambit. Can I even get it a Bygones now, or and where does it come from. They just threw everything in the world pool in a dumb way, and they’ve added and removed so much stuff I have no idea what’s even available.

You can, to my surprise, still buy a Bygones from Drifter. Today.

Locked at 1060.

It’s worth it, for me. Granted, it’s new, so that will wear off eventually, but Io always sucked, and I wish they’d have kept Titan instead of Nessus, which also sucks.

I'm torn. Love the Arcology, but dislike the rest of Titan. Always felt sorry for Sloane for being stationed there. I love the look of Nessus (before they screwed up the lighting), but some of that is probably nostalgia for the beta.

Each corner of the map is like the size of main patrol area of Titan and just as dense.

Great to hear! I've only been on the surface, and there everything feels less constricted. I'm seeing and fighting enemies at greater distances. Didn't get to play much, but I very much liked what I saw.

Each corner of the map is like the size of main patrol area of Titan and just as dense.