The HELM is neat, but I hate that it’s separate loading zone from the Tower. It’s just not convenient. Now I have to hit two loads to pick up all my bounties. Not the end of the world, but this is the little shit that feels like it should be common sense that adds up into a grating experience. It’s exactly the sort of thing I point to as Destiny not getting out of its own way and actively preventing me from just playing the damn game.

If you have a smartphone, you can install the Destiny 2 app and grab all your bounties from orbit (or the tower I believe). No need to even load into the tower until you need to turn something in, upgrade the hammer, or decrypt some engrams. OR you can load into the tower grab all those things and then grab the HELM bounties from the app.

As for the rest of the season so far:

I like the Battlegrounds. They are miles better than Wrathborn Hunts. They’re actually pretty close to the Contact events. As always, I wish there was more variety in mechanics instead of them being the exact same every time. But they are enjoyable. I’m glad the gold is easier to come by than lure charges.

I also do like the storytelling. They’ve finally landed in a good spot with that side of the game, I think. All the dialogue with Crow in the Battlegrounds is good, and I’m glad we’re getting so many voiced lines instead of just walls of text when you finish a quest. I’m less thrilled that they just keep kicking the Uldren Sov can down the road. He’s wearing a mask to hide is identity, seriously? I definitely rolled my eyes at that.

The HELM is neat, but I hate that it’s separate loading zone from the Tower. It’s just not convenient. Now I have to hit two loads to pick up all my bounties. Not the end of the world, but this is the little shit that feels like it should be common sense that adds up into a grating experience. It’s exactly the sort of thing I point to as Destiny not getting out of its own way and actively preventing me from just playing the damn game.

I’ve been highly critical of Beyond Light, but I’m starting to think that I may have underestimated how much damage Bungie has done to this game over the past ~16 months, especially with Beyond Light. It just feels like there’s nothing left in this game, which is crazy because there is technically tons of stuff to do. But I think the core pillars of the game, the bread-and-butter activities like strikes, crucible, and gambit are either boring (strikes), tedious (gambit), or a complete fucking disaster (crucible). Sunsetting has largely killed my investment in my gear, and I don’t see how the PvP side of the game will ever recover from the addition of Stasis.

While
A. I certainly think there's plenty Bungie can do better
B. I'm anti-power level

I think this season is pretty solid.

• Gambit and strikes as quick palate cleansers between other activities. Getting the weekly challenge pinnacles? That's a strike/gambit game per day max to get that. And there's so many pinnacle sources that who really cares if you're not getting both of those.
  
• I feel like in the past 16 months they've really upped their game with Nightfall strikes. There's a wide variety of difficulty levels, cool loot, and matchmaking at the lower levels.
  
• Legendary lost sectors, Empire Hunts, and Exo Challenge provide me the solo difficult content that I've always wanted out of Destiny but rarely got. And the cool thing is it doesn't even have to be solo!
  
• re: stasis and PvP, I feel like their recent nerfs have made it much more manageable and at the end of the day, I'm playing a wacky space wizard shooter, not a hard as nails military shooter, I like the wackiness... I'd also like to see the data on how Stasis is currently faring in PvP
  
• Love that they're giving some attention to Dungeons, some of the best content they've put into this game

I think they've done a better job of balancing where you feel compelled to go lately. For example, I've done most of the things that I want to do in battlegrounds for this week, and don't really need to dive back into them unless I'm having friendship time with someone else.

I just really appreciate that it feels like I can do whatever I want to level up and unless I"m truly trying to min/max my leveling, that I don't have to do everything if I don't want to. Don't feel like gambit this week? cool (and god knows I don't feel like gambit ever since I got the Reckoner title). I remember when Destiny had me running the strike playlist non-stop to struggly bus my way up the power curve, and this feels so damn far away from that.

Ultimately I take issue with people saying Bungie is out of touch with it's audience, in part because I feel like they've been nailing a lot things lately and these comments make me wonder "am I not their audience?". Where are the metrics, where's the proper analysis of player's time? Of public opinion?

All fair points, and I agree with much of what you’ve said. But I don’t think anything you’re saying contradicts my initial concerns. Like you, I appreciate that I can bounce around from activity to activity and level-up while doing whatever I want to do, but that doesn’t change the fact that most of the activities I may want to do have been negatively impacted by other decisions Bungie has made. For example, I think the crucible sandbox is in a fantastic place right now... except for Stasis. None of the light-based subclasses are drastically dominant over the others, and the breadth of competitively viable primary weapons is just wonderful. Just about every primary weapon type has a place and play style where it can excel right now. The crucible should be in the best shape it’s ever been, but Bungie went and upper-decked the whole experience with Stasis.
Nightfalls are another example for me. I have always enjoyed the Nightfalls. But ever since Shadowkeep, the combination of Champions and Artifact mods have made the whole experience feel increasingly restrictive. Every season, Bungie basically tells me which weapon types I’m going to be using for every single Nightfall for the next ~3 months. Between all the restrictive measures at play (choice of anti-champion mods, power levels, elemental types, costs of resetting the artifact, cost of juggling/replacing armour mods), the end result is that iI’m cornered into using variations of the same 1 or 2 loadouts for all end-game activities that feature champions. It is possible to experiment with a wide range of build diversity, but there are so many annoying or tedious points of friction along that path that the ends no longer justify the means for me. Once again, the stuff in the game that I really like is buried under stuff that feels unnecessary or even counter-productive.

I guess what I’m getting at is that yes, it’s nice that I’m not really forced into activities I don’t want to do anymore, but I’m also being driven out of activities I DO want to do because they’ve been underdeveloped, neglected, or flat-out ruined by relatively recent changes/additions to the game. I look back at the D1 Age of Triumph era, and what a blast it was to have such a wide breadth of great PvE and PvP content to play, and so much exciting end-game loot to chase. D2 at this point should feel even wider, and yet to me the game has felt progressively smaller and smaller since somewhere around Season of Opulance.

If they could make the Powerful/Pinnae rewards work the same way, that would go a long way towards fixing my major issue with the game. Let me continue to earn the previous six weeks worth of Pinnacles if I missed them. I’d still be locked into doing those specific activities instead of playing what I want, but being able to spend a night in Crucible and earn 4 Pinnacles that I missed out on would alleviate the game feeling like a job.

This right here is spot on and would alleviate a lot of the pressure to not miss a week (which is something their obviously thinking about with this system). I just hope they go all the way and include Powerfuls/Pinnacles like you're saying.

I mean honestly I'd like it just because I'd like fewer places to check to see what pinnacles or powerfuls I have left for the week. Hopefully they're migrating the WHOLE challenge system there...

I think they raised the level of harbinger for this season, but last season every one of the dozen times I did harbinger I was in the low to mid 1260. Maybe lower? So, Yes. You would've been fine. And, yes that is with a fireteam, but if you expect destiny to design for solo play, I get it and in many ways sympathize, but that just isn't and never has been the game that it is.

Um . . . every dungeon has had Triumphs for soloing it. The new Lost Sector rewards are explicitly designed around solo play. I like playing with people, so I’m not fussed about that, but the game is pretty explicitly designed around soloing high level content in some regards.

In any case, I just watched a video about the new season stuff. I’m happy with the new challenge system (other than it just being another list of chores). At least I can actually catch up if I do decide to jump back into the game in six weeks, rather than just missing out on six weeks worth of progress. If they could make the Powerful/Pinnae rewards work the same way, that would go a long way towards fixing my major issue with the game. Let me continue to earn the previous six weeks worth of Pinnacles if I missed them. I’d still be locked into doing those specific activities instead of playing what I want, but being able to spend a night in Crucible and earn 4 Pinnacles that I missed out on would alleviate the game feeling like a job.

Sorry, I was talking about the Harbinger mission last season in that example. It was 1270, correct? I was at 1260ish with Artifact. I’d have probably been okay with a fireteam. But it still sucks that I even have to think about it. Power level only works as a time gate for access to certain activities. I have thousands of hours in Destiny, I’m confident in my skills and ability to play high level activities, and I’m tired of being told I can’t because Bungie has decided I still haven’t put in enough time.

I think they raised the level of harbinger for this season, but last season every one of the dozen times I did harbinger I was in the low to mid 1260. Maybe lower? So, Yes. You would've been fine. And, yes that is with a fireteam, but if you expect destiny to design for solo play, I get it and in many ways sympathize, but that just isn't and never has been the game that it is.

Sorry, I was talking about the Harbinger mission last season in that example. It was 1270, correct? I was at 1260ish with Artifact. I’d have probably been okay with a fireteam. But it still sucks that I even have to think about it. Power level only works as a time gate for access to certain activities. I have thousands of hours in Destiny, I’m confident in my skills and ability to play high level activities, and I’m tired of being told I can’t because Bungie has decided I still haven’t put in enough time.

I miss playing with you all too, it never fails to be fun, but I’m really tired of playing Destiny for weeks on end and then realizing I still have to do it for more weeks on end (even when I don’t want to), so that I’m allowed to continue playing the new stuff that gets added at the end of the season. This game is not actually built in a way that allows me to do anything else for a while and the come back. If I could jump in and play whatever I wanted with you, I’d be there tonight, but that’s not the case.

As always, I’m not done forever. I’ll be there day one for the new big expansion, and I’ll jump in before then if they put out something that looks sufficiently interesting.

Really, I want to play Destiny, but it increasingly feels like Bungie just won’t let me do so in any way that I actually find enjoyable. Or, at least, I have to endure weeks of slogging through stuff I don’t want to do in order to get to the stuff that is genuinely great.

I know I’m the forum broken record at this point, so I’ll leave it here, but I just can’t help continuing to be incredibly bummed that I feel like I can’t play a game that I really love when it’s at its best. I would pay actual money every season to just be given a power boost to max level. I know that’s silly, and I’d feel terrible about spending money on something so dumb, but the ability to just jump in and play the best parts of the game with you would be well worth the money.

I empathize strongly with you hating the grind, and also want to point out the grind this season is drastically compressed compared to last season making it much easier to play casually while being leveled enough for things.

I miss playing with you all too, it never fails to be fun, but I’m really tired of playing Destiny for weeks on end and then realizing I still have to do it for more weeks on end (even when I don’t want to), so that I’m allowed to continue playing the new stuff that gets added at the end of the season. This game is not actually built in a way that allows me to do anything else for a while and the come back. If I could jump in and play whatever I wanted with you, I’d be there tonight, but that’s not the case.

As always, I’m not done forever. I’ll be there day one for the new big expansion, and I’ll jump in before then if they put out something that looks sufficiently interesting.

Really, I want to play Destiny, but it increasingly feels like Bungie just won’t let me do so in any way that I actually find enjoyable. Or, at least, I have to endure weeks of slogging through stuff I don’t want to do in order to get to the stuff that is genuinely great.

I know I’m the forum broken record at this point, so I’ll leave it here, but I just can’t help continuing to be incredibly bummed that I feel like I can’t play a game that I really love when it’s at its best. I would pay actual money every season to just be given a power boost to max level. I know that’s silly, and I’d feel terrible about spending money on something so dumb, but the ability to just jump in and play the best parts of the game with you would be well worth the money.

The cool new mission they just added was almost 10 points above my total power level. I shouldn’t have to decide between going in under leveled or spending another two weeks grinding out Pinnacles to be appropriately leveled because I had the audacity to play something else for a while, or because I played Destiny in a way that isn’t exactly as Bungie prescribed.

This is a completely reasonable attitude... except for the fact that it took less than a day to climb those 10 points. (Remember, we're still in the early days of a season, when everything gives you huge gains.)

My Warlock (as of now, Thursday morning, 48 hours after the season started) is at 1289.

I agree with the abstract concept - leveling up just to play what you want is a pretty shitty way to get in the door.

And I agree with the concrete concept, when it applies - playing a GM this season is probably, as it's always been, out of your range (and mine, for that matter).

But your SPECIFIC complaint here is relatively baseless. You can jump on and play for a couple of hours with friends (I'D LOVE TO PLAY WITH YOU AGAIN), and be ready for almost everything currently available.

Gambit and strikes as quick palate cleansers between other activities. Getting the weekly challenge pinnacles? That's a strike/gambit game per day max to get that. And there's so many pinnacle sources that who really cares if you're not getting both of those.

I’ve still never done a GM Nightfall, despite really wanting to, mostly because I’m burned out on the grind before getting anywhere close to appropriately leveled. If you don’t get every Pinnacle available, getting to the required power level is basically impossible in a timely manner. The Artifact scales in such a way that I can’t use that to make up the difference, because I also refuse to spend my time doing the chores Bungie calls bounties.

The cool new mission they just added was almost 10 points above my total power level. I shouldn’t have to decide between going in under leveled or spending another two weeks grinding out Pinnacles to be appropriately leveled because I had the audacity to play something else for a while, or because I played Destiny in a way that isn’t exactly as Bungie prescribed. It’s infuriating to see new stuff in the game that actually looks really fun, but I can’t do it because Bungie expects me to play Destiny like it’s my fucking job. It’s honestly insulting.

I’ve been highly critical of Beyond Light, but I’m starting to think that I may have underestimated how much damage Bungie has done to this game over the past ~16 months, especially with Beyond Light. It just feels like there’s nothing left in this game, which is crazy because there is technically tons of stuff to do. But I think the core pillars of the game, the bread-and-butter activities like strikes, crucible, and gambit are either boring (strikes), tedious (gambit), or a complete fucking disaster (crucible). Sunsetting has largely killed my investment in my gear, and I don’t see how the PvP side of the game will ever recover from the addition of Stasis.

While
A. I certainly think there's plenty Bungie can do better
B. I'm anti-power level

I think this season is pretty solid.

• Gambit and strikes as quick palate cleansers between other activities. Getting the weekly challenge pinnacles? That's a strike/gambit game per day max to get that. And there's so many pinnacle sources that who really cares if you're not getting both of those.
  
• I feel like in the past 16 months they've really upped their game with Nightfall strikes. There's a wide variety of difficulty levels, cool loot, and matchmaking at the lower levels.
  
• Legendary lost sectors, Empire Hunts, and Exo Challenge provide me the solo difficult content that I've always wanted out of Destiny but rarely got. And the cool thing is it doesn't even have to be solo!
  
• re: stasis and PvP, I feel like their recent nerfs have made it much more manageable and at the end of the day, I'm playing a wacky space wizard shooter, not a hard as nails military shooter, I like the wackiness... I'd also like to see the data on how Stasis is currently faring in PvP
  
• Love that they're giving some attention to Dungeons, some of the best content they've put into this game

I think they've done a better job of balancing where you feel compelled to go lately. For example, I've done most of the things that I want to do in battlegrounds for this week, and don't really need to dive back into them unless I'm having friendship time with someone else.

I just really appreciate that it feels like I can do whatever I want to level up and unless I"m truly trying to min/max my leveling, that I don't have to do everything if I don't want to. Don't feel like gambit this week? cool (and god knows I don't feel like gambit ever since I got the Reckoner title). I remember when Destiny had me running the strike playlist non-stop to struggly bus my way up the power curve, and this feels so damn far away from that.

Ultimately I take issue with people saying Bungie is out of touch with it's audience, in part because I feel like they've been nailing a lot things lately and these comments make me wonder "am I not their audience?". Where are the metrics, where's the proper analysis of player's time? Of public opinion?

I, too, have found myself playing A LOT of Titanfall 2 in the last month or so. There's something about that sandbox, the way that things are balanced, the nuance at play, even though it's in a static state. Something in the way the game feels doesn't really need anything to change. And I wish I could say that it shows that Bungie still understands or prioritizes those things, but...well.

Destiny feels like it's in kind of a precarious place. Stasis continues to be a massive thorn in the side of my experience. It's infuriating to play against, and it's never particularly satisfying for me to use. Sure, I enjoy punching the crystals that I create, because who doesn't love ridiculous amounts of AoE damage? But truly, I don't have much fun with it. And it kills any kind of PvP encounters that include it. There is a mountain of tweaking to be done to get the game back to any feeling of balance, and I still fear that the very nature of Stasis is going to keep the game from being more frustrating than it needs to be.

All that aside, a word about activities. I do miss the Forges; and I'm still skeptical of most of the seasonal events. I had fun with the Vex incursions, the Sundial, and with Warmind basketball; but the recipe that's trying to be arrived at still needs something. I never really got tired of the Contact public events, but there just needed to be more of an element of randomization to them. I don't think I've been on more than 6 Wrathborn hunts, total; and I'm a bit concerned that Battlegrounds are going to turn out the same way for me. I understand different encounters are coming in the future; but running Nessus and Europa versions endlessly is going to tire me out before we get there.

I'll say again that the new weapons on offer are all (for the most part) refreshing and fun to use. I picked up my Salvager's Salvo today and I can say with confidence that I'm probably going to be running a grenades-and-grenade-launchers build for the season on my Titan. The custom I've arrived at with each season is basically to pick a new look and build and run with that for the duration; an across three characters, I don't feel like I've gotten tired of it yet. That said, the notion that there is so much to do, but less of it appealing still rings true.

We desperately need at least two new Gambit maps. We desperately need at least two new Crucible maps. More than new maps though, Crucible needs new gametypes. Seasonal events are great and all; but there's got to be more to the two modes that encourage the player base to compete with each other.

I've got mixed feelings about being granted new Fragments for Stasis while the other subclasses seem to pale in comparison, but I'll save that for another thread.

I saw a thread on twitter the other day. One of the UI guys at Bungie said he thought it was funny that he keeps seeing people online theorizing that the game is being supported by a skeleton crew because there’s more people on it now than there has been for a long time. I was confused, because he said that proudly, whereas it actually seems like that would be fucking embarrassing, given the state of the game. For me, it encapsulated the entire relationship between Bungie, the game, and the players. It feels like they fundamentally misunderstand just about everything about the game they’re making and what the players of that game actually want.

(The following is all Cody's opinion)

The real problem is the decision to make a game that's supposed to be played daily or at least often over a long period of time. That's it. They could have 10,000 people working on the game and it would still be a problem. The issue isn't manpower. It's big picture decision making.

(Cody's opinion ends)

Someone who plays FF14 will have to confirm this, but the game director apparently said "We have content drops every 4 months. So play the new content, and when you're done, just go play another game until the next content drop happens". And apparently FF14 is an awesome game.

I just think it highlights the communication problem with Bungie. People assuming there is a skeleton crew working on Destiny has very little to do with the UI and everything to do with the amount of new playable content being added to the game (or removed from the game). I’m glad there are more UI designers working on the game, thanks, that totally fixes the lack of any sort of consideration for the fundamental systems and core playlists in Destiny. I’m glad the fucking menus are pretty, I guess, and that the Tower is finally the default selection on the Director again after two years.

And I suspect that he knows the people theorizing about skeleton crews aren’t talking about the UI. So he’s either oblivious to the real
issues people have (which, fine, I guess that’s not his job if it’s not about UI), or he’s just being deliberately obtuse for some reason I can’t quite comprehend. And if we’re meant to extrapolate that there are currently more UI designers in the game than ever, then that also means the other teams are equally staffed, it still makes me wonder what the hell they’re actually doing over there, because I would not say the game reflects that at all.

I would like to add here, has anyone here played in the updated rendition of "The Devils' Lair"? Since I started the season at 1260 on my main, I was able to jump into a 1270 night fall immediately, and as it turns out this week said strike is the Nightfall this week. WOW! Does that strike outdo the Battlegrounds activity. The so called Battlegrounds are just poorly made strikes. "The Devils' Lair" is a BATTLEFIELD end-to-end. It's actually fantastic. And yes, all the "problem spots" (where everyone is likely to get downed and restart) have returned. I don't think sniping the tank works as well as it once did, but that's ok because it's more fun not to now. It's really interesting.

The Brigs there certainly caught me off-guard! Had a blast