Destiny 2

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Invective would probably be as useless as Fighting Lion in the energy slot. The appeal would be there regenerating power ammo. Yeah their capacities would be nerfed, but I'd rather have that than a damage nerf. Shotguns are pretty shit in PvE as it is compared to RLs, Swords, and Fusion Rifles... Sniper Rifles too... you're right, they don't belong in the power slot at all because they just arent as effective. They could do a cleanse thorn quest where you couldn't use it at all until it turned back into Rose. You're also right about Hand Cannons, they are pretty shit in D2 PvP... actually outside of Sunshot and Better Devils, HC are shit in general. I'd take The Last Word back at this point. I do miss that gun as wacky as it was with the hip fire.

 

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

I can guarantee you Bungie won't leave the regenerating ammo perk on the weapons if they stay power weapons due to how OP it is, which is why I feel they should be regulated to energy weapons (yea a damage nerf but it's honestly not as much as people think it is. They still do damn good damage to enemies that don't have shields). Bungie has always been very unforgiving with Power/Heavy ammo and allowing a weapon into that slot that allows ammo regeneration will break their "finely tuned balance". Its the reason why both IB and Invective saw nerfs to their regeneration capabilities in D1.

Thorn will be Thorn, I highly doubt they'll change it's mechanics besides maybe nerfing the DoT if it's too much (that is if it even is the Thorn, remember Hive weapons all look the same for the most part (sorry Hive themed weapons) and this could be a sister gun to the original Thorn. Just because it shares the silhouette does not guarantee that it's Thorn).

Fuck I'd kill for Last Word to come back. That was my favorite HC in D1 outside of whatever the Legendary one I was using when I quit playing (I don't remember, I think it was the Queen's HC).

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

The Last Word would actually be viable in the autorifle/MIDA meta. I'd love to have Red Death on my hunter, just because my recovery is pure shit. Its annoying as hell to find recovery armor for Hunters. Mobility is the most useless shit stat. Bungie needs to rework that whole thing where classes are pigeon holed into those 3 categories because hunters got the shit end of the stick. My Warlock is maxed at 10, and my Titan is at 7. My Hunter is at like 3 or 4 and is miserable trying to stay alive or fight with low health in "oh shit" situations. It feels like an eternity before it starts to regen.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Meh, some good changes and some pretty piss poor changes. I don't think Bungie has a clear idea what they want to do with this game anymore and it's starting to show. Quite honestly I'm not all that interested in CoO anymore if this is what I get to look forward to.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I guess bungie prefers microtransactions over making new content.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Pretty much everything I thought was going to happen with this game. It's sad really because there's the makings of a great game with D2 but sadly it's locked behind greed and incompetence. Plus, this is not the same studio that created Halo. The majority of that Bungie is gone now what with most of them walking away from the company due to creative differences or other shady shit we weren't able to see. This is why I still think the last great game Bungie created was Halo: Reach (while not the most popular Halo title from the Bungie days it's my favorite of the Halo titles with ODST bringing in a very close second).

In retrospect maybe Bungie should have swallowed their pride and ego and stuck with Microsoft, fuck the Halo games may have been better if they had (I hear 5 is great but 4 was a huge letdown for me (almost Halo 2 level of letdown), I still don't think 343 Studios is a good replacement for Bungie (even if most of the Halo guys from Bungie stuck behind to help form the studio).

Sadly Sledge what developer doesn't prefer micro-transactions? It's the one, sure fire way they'll make back the development costs and pad their greedy little wallets.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

The problem with D2's transactions is that its full of shit no one even wants. I bet they aren't making hardly any money off of it and decided to save face today by outlining how they are going to put stuff in the game to play for. My clan is pretty much dead and I only play on resets until i get to max. As limited as the first expac was, the best part of it was crafting the 11 weapons. They should have focused more on this type of content, because it gave a reason to do strikes, crucible, and public events. At least 6v6 is coming back like I figured it would. 4v4 is horseshit and so is the overbalance of PvP. Everyone uses the same 3-4 weapons because tbh they are the only good weapons across both modes. When they had Mayhem up for the Dawning it was actually really fun since you got your super 10-15 times a match.

I'm actually glad this happened though, hopefully other developers take notice, especially EA with Anthem. More so after the Battlefront II fiasco.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Mayhem needs to be a permanent Crucible mode, I fucking adored it during the Dawning. It's the most fun I've had in D2 since playing through the vanilla story (I say vanilla because of Curse being out now). It's just absolute carnage and I fucking love it.

They made plenty of money with their micro-transactions, just not enough to try and take the high road (I know plenty of people who sunk hundreds of dollars into Eververse just to get specific things, hell I threw in $10 just because I wanted a chance to get the whole Dawning armor set (which I only got the boots)). The only redeeming thing about Eververse is it's all cosmetic shit, at least they didn't lock powerful weapons or armor behind it like Battlefront did it's just sad that none of it was really desirable.

Honestly all this is going to do is make companies rethink their micro-transaction system to try and find other ways they can cheat people out of their money, not entirely kill the system (which will never go away because of mobile gaming). If Bungie would of looked at Blizzard's model with Overwatch or hell even GW2's model I think this issue wouldn't of been so catastrophic for them (hell you can even look FFXIV's model, it's all cosmetic shit from outfits to mounts). Sadly they placed to much fucking faith in this system being accepted that it affected the development of the game. This is why publishers are the fucking bane of game development, they force this shit on developers and it ends up hurting a games development to this point (not that I had any real faith in D2 before it launched due to D1's failure in my eyes).

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

The GW2 model wouldn't have worked because they simply didn't make enough content to make it worth it. Plus I don't think people would accept convenience items in this game for already hot issues like inventory space. GW2's micro-transactions are based on that and cosmetics, but are also made desirable through making gold via ultra rare drops.

Overwatch's model might have worked better. The thing I don't like about the Eververse armor sets is that they come with set stats, and I'm not giving up my heavily dependent recovery builds that have medium resilience. Then again, they still haven't made enough desirable content IMO to put stuff people would want. They could have done things like random reroll of stats tokens, but we had static builds... which i was in favor of at first, but now I wish we did have random rolls because of the ease of access to loot and how limited the loot is. The best thing for me to get out of my free bright engrams is a sparrow with insta-summon. As the video pointed out, there isn't enough in game content to justify eververse. Micro-transactions are here to stay, but when you have way more payshop content than in game rewards its a problem... and its a bigger problem when both end game rewards and MT rewards are both underwhelming.

The biggest draw back this game for me right now is complete lack of weapon diversity, and its due to balance in PvP. I finally got my hands on Crimson and Jade Rabbit and they're both pretty trash. Crimson is ok, but it runs out of ammo way too fast and it doesn't do a lot of damage. Pretty much every non power exotic is underwhelming in PvE. I will say the Colony is fucking awesome and a ton of fun to use, especially in PvP. (You can buy it from Xur expac or not right now) After that, Merciless is probably the only other Exotic weapon I'd deem worthy. Better Devils, Nameless Midnight, Uriel's Gift, and The Number are probably the only weapons worth using that feel powerful. The Forward Path is decent if you got it to drop from IB, and some of the trials weapons are ok. One of the new energy scout rifles is decent too, but its not as good as the 450rpm ARs. I was using the new vex autorifle for a while until it just felt underpowered when running a few heroic strikes. I'd really like to use something else to mix it up, but when I try, the either feel off, or weak.

They would have been better off doing procedurally generated weapons like Borderlands of making content was too hard. Of course that would be impossible to balance PvP with, but I think everyone has come to terms that Destiny PvP is more fun when everyone and everything is OP. I remember getting my ass handed to me in D1, when I didn't have any OP stuff, but when I got my hands on Fellwinter's Lie and The Messenger everything changed and it was a blast when I was on the same level as everyone else. With how accessible the game is, it wouldn't be hard for everyone to have some type of god roll weapon.

I still believe every gear tier should be available to everyone in some sort of fashion. For Instance, The Division is having a global event at the end of this month. GE's are the best way to get classified gear sets apparently. Right now I only have 2 mismatch pieces because I mainly only farm the PvE named bosses and West Side Piers. I can't solo my way to wave 10 on Resistance. So I'll be grinding the shit out of the GE to get some gear sets I've been wanting. The Faction Rally could have been used for this rather than the underwhelming rewards they give out now. 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Those comments at the end... ouch.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Basically Rasputin helps you take down some frozen hive with an energy lance and then reactivates the solar systems WARSAT system. He declares he will defend humanity on his own terms and has no equal. 

Yeah pretty much what hes been doing all along, nothing was explained or revealed about his history. What a waste. I'm done with bungie. The campaign was 3 missions no more than 30 min long worth of content. It was shorter than CoO. The Queen and Rasputin were the two most interesting aspects of the destiny world and both got less than stellar expansions across 2 games. Instead we got more hive shit. The only interesting thing in this expac is SUROS Regime is back.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

https://kotaku.com/bungie-splits-with-activision-1831651740

I hope Blizzard can do the same... honestly... The whole mega companies needs to stop.

[Myk JL 1,731]

Here's hoping Bungie can stay independent as Microsoft has gone on a buying spree before the 4th Xbox releases.

As for Activision & their ilk I won't cry when they lose their real consumers, the shareholders.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

I don't think they'll go back to MS since they went to Activision to get away from them in the first place. But they will have to release a solid product to be able to stay independent otherwise that could happen unless Sony forks out the cash as they do have the better relationship with them at the moment. Or Ubisoft could buy them.

 

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

I highly doubt Microsoft would buy them after their split (MS got everything they wanted out of the split with the Halo franchise (the only good thing Bungie did) and the half of the team that made Halo (which is now 343)) as it wasn't exactly amicable by what I've read.

Honestly Bungie doesn't stand a chance on its own unless it can prove itself with the inevitable release of Destiny 3 and if the game they're developing is good enough. Bungie burned a lot of bridges when they left MS and now with them leaving Activision they burned even more (though lets face it, burning a bridge with Activision isn't exactly that bad). I forsee them either being bought out by Sony or Ubisoft (I wouldn't be surprised if EA started sniffing up that tree even if they have their own "Destiny" coming out next month) or completely collapsing in on themselves. They shot themselves in the foot when they left MS imo and dug their own grave with Destiny, it'll take a miracle for them to come out ahead after this.

Blizzard can't afford to leave especially now that Activision has all but taken control of the company (most of the OG Blizzard staff have pretty much quit or been let go) and lets face it they're a sinking ship due to Activision's involvement as of late (and with the multiple Acti transplants taking key positions even more so). Plus, if I remember correctly, Activision owns the majority share in Blizzard when they merged meaning the name stays with Activision (as do the properties they've created). Bungie only had a partnership so it's not surprising they were able to keep the Destiny IP.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Sony would be their best option if they got a deal that gave them as much freedom as Kojima. EA is just walking into the same exact situation if not worse. Even if they just try to partner, they'll tank their games on purpose until they cant absorb them like they did to Respawn and Titanfall. But if they stay solo, I could see them becoming digital only... especially if they're going to continue with the always online, shared world games. I don't really know how else the could cut publishing costs.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I remember Destiny was supposed to be this huge plot driven game that expanded into the universe but instead became a game focused on grinding gear and raids and never leaving the solar system. Meh. People can blame activision all they want for how Destiny turned out, but in the end its still a stain on Bungie's reputation. I'd like to see Destiny get completely rebooted with a focus on a single player campaign.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Sadly that's definitely not going to happen. Since they're going to solo dev and publish as a smaller studio, they'll need a constant stream of income off their singular project similar to how Epic made millions off Fortnite. They could make a better and more complete campaign, but their games will focus on cosmetics, and the way to show them off is multiplayer. The hottest trend right now is battle royale... even Ace Combat is going to have it. Its new and shiny and pretty much no one is going to take a chance on something else until it starts a declining trend possibly years from now.

If they change up how they do things, they can be successful... but if they try on their own to stay with this same business model of $30-40 add ons, they'll be a 3rd party developer again really fast.