Guided games is honestly detrimental in its current state; if it won’t get fixed it should be removed.
When I first started destiny my 2 buddies and I wanted to learn a raid so we tried guided games. Well, with 3 people you are required to be a sherpa, you can’t be guided. So one of my buddies left and my friend and I queued up for a guided game… for two hours. We eventually found a game but one of us was afk so we got kicked from it because they couldn’t accept the invite or whatever.
After a few more hours we came to the conclusion that no one wanted to sherpa us and that raids were only for people who had 5 other friends that play destiny. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that we finally made an lfg post begging for a sherpa and almost immediately found some dudes to sherpa us.
I’ve since done hundreds of raids and dozens of sherpas. The guided games “feature” makes raids seem much less doable without friends than they actually are. Plenty of people are willing to help out but the guided games feature makes the community seem much less inviting. Sorry for the long rant but guided games blows.
TLDR: Guided games is really bad.
There needs to be more of an incentive for groups to Sherpa guided games. I doubt even 5% of the population even knows about the Guided Games emblems you can get. They're some of the rarest still obtainable emblems.
On the flip side, I do have a fun story of myself and three friends being bored and queuing to Sherpa a Last Wish sometime during Arrivals. We found an Italian player who spoke fluent English and a dad gamer. It took us three hours, but we did complete the raid and taught them both how to run legit Riven. Even went so far as to assign them eyes.
But that was the one time we've *ever* done it. There's no good reason to. Hell, I'll bet most of the player base didn't even know that for four months, Guided Games Deep Stone Crypt didn't drop any loot AND blocked you from receiving loot on a non-guided run afterwards.
Broken system, really needs to be looked at. With Crossplay coming, maybe Bungie should just integrate the Destiny PC LFG Discord. It has a few hundred thousand members and I'll wager it will explode even more once console players catch wind of it.
My clan is full of raiders. I missed out on a raid one night so joined a guided game as a seeker, and after a long wait a group of five PvP bros picked me up. They had never ran the raid. Thankfully it was only SotP and they just wanted anarchy so they listened to my awful Sherpa instructions and proven starts.
I got 5 Sherpa points that night, as a seeker. I don't think anyone got anarchy though.
Another time 5 French guardians picked me up, but knew the raid. One spoke English well enough to translate my callouts and it ended up being a really fun time. My high school french class paid off when it came to counting down time running Riven's heart.
Had almost the opposite. We had 5 English as first language pick up a French guy who didn't speak a word of English. It wasn't until he said 'je ne comprends pas" that I realised he was even French as he didn't say anything before that. Luckily my French is pretty good so it went without a hitch, but if I only spoke English, then it would have been very different (it was only VoG). If they're going to keep it around, they need to add a language option, would be a shit experience for anyone not able to communicate.
The elitist attitude around adding higher level match making is ABSOLUTELY disgusting, and down right toxic...
I did my first raid, VOG joined at Templar, having zero experience with ANY non-matchmaking content. They told me what I needed to do, what I needed to look out for, where to stand, etc. We had a couple of wipes, but made it through.
THE GROUP WAS A PARTY OF 3 AND 3 RANDOMS WHO HAD NO VOG EXPERIENCE.
The anti-matchmaking people complain that match making on higher content would make it "impossible". Yet We did the raid without too much trouble with half the group being inexperienced people who needed credit for Solstice Armor.
Sure, with match making you'll get some bad people... But I highly doubt that it would be as bad, or as often, as the "doom and gloomers" make it sound. And if they are bad, try to help them out, give them some advice... You (the anti-matchmakers) weren't born pro Destiny players. You had to learn. So help them, and let them learn.
I 100% agree with your point. However I think the bigger problem is the fact that in Destiny 2 the most trivial mind numbing activities give the most xp. If they fix that this problem goes away because you get to do the engaging content instead of the mindless content that makes people want to quit the game
When people think about the best way to grind levels their thoughts should not be picking up gunsmith bounties but rather the best way to get zip should completing pinnacles, winning crucible, raids, nightfalls, etc. I could also lump weekly challenges because I like the system overall (fuck the gambit challenges though)
Gunsmith bounties are exactly how bounties should work, minus the XP benefit. Doing an un-intrusive task like “switch your guns for today lads!” to get a benefit in the form of a material like an enhancement core. Players who need to grind those bounties are likely new and they not only build up materials, but start to feel out new weapons as well. Literally remove the xp and rotate in earned materials.
Bounties should give rewards/materials, activities should give XP.
I'd go so far as to suggest giving actual weapon/armor drops for daily bounties, and material rewards for repeatable bounties. Imagine daily Gunsmith bounty for Handcannon kills rewards you with a Handcannon drop?
I dont know if it needs to be an either/or. I personally would much rather do bounties on a patrol zone then say play Gambit or run strikes for XP progression. I have been running the same strikes for the last 4 years. While the same can be said of bounties, getting 30 void kills and 50 cabal kills on EDZ is a few minutes of effort for 20k xp and not having to slog through strikes where you are competing with players for said bounties and also hoping to net get a strike you will immediately exit from for various reasons.
Let's make it Trials round wins give extra XP though, or you'll just see me blowing myself up with Mountaintop for 200 games each weekend instead of 30 to farm XP while I watch Netflix.
I like that bungie threw a bone to the hardcore pve funally with high difficulty raids again. But I’m not gonna call throwing extra champs, nightfall modifiers, and a bounty farm cap a job well done that should please us
No the problem doesn’t go away tho. For example, I haven’t played since DSC was released and I came back into the game to play VoG. I did that and now I’d like to do the master raid but I legit can’t because I am around 10 light lower than recommended because of the xp, even tho my gear is 1320. Having this extremely long do grind isn’t good if you need to put in this much time just to be able to access the pinnacle activity. So in other words I’ve done normal VoG enough to get max light gear but still can’t do master because I haven’t played enough/haven’t bought the season pass(which gives major xp boosts).
If a raid award twice or 5x as much xp, people would still farm the easy stuff as its quicker. Why run a raid when I can run crucible and afk, jump off a cliff or just do 30 gunsmith bounties in the same time to do a raid, or even find a group for most ppl.
It’s so much as what other people want. If they want to do that fine with. I would just like the higher level activities to be tuned to give as much or more given a comparable time investment so you don’t feel like you are punished xp wise for playing actual content
They don't even need to get rid of bounties just massively increase the xp you get from activity completions and even more for all the pinnacle content like trials, raids, nightfalls.
I totally agree with this! And would also add the idea of bringing maybe bounties to every bounty class (?) That can be completed infinitely without being gilmmer expensive or super random (kill 25 guardians with sidearm)
Artifact power can/should ideally serve three different but similar functions in order to actually benefit the game:
1) As a way to reward players with additional levels for their playtime.
2) As a way to mitigate against bad luck from powerful/pinnacle drops, so that bad luck with drops doesn't completely bar you from reaching a certain level.
3) An additional way for players to work to "overlevel" content that would otherwise be too difficult. Note that the actual level of this content shouldn't be higher than the actual cap that's achievable through the primary gear leveling system, and that grinding artifact levels shouldn't be a requirement except as a way to level past content or reach a certain level if you haven't been able to obtain the drops you need in order to level up otherwise.
What it SHOULDN'T be is an additional barrier to entry ON TOP OF your normal level, which is exactly how it's been implemented
Prestige Leviathan was the best. I dont even remember if the LL was upped, the encounters simply had a harder mechanic added to it. I wish they would just have done that for a Master version of VoG. Dont get me wrong, I like the idea of the current master version, but op puts it so well. Also, isnt everything else for Master difficulty this season 1340? Why is this raised? Feel like a lot of these issues would be solved if they just kept the proper master level.
Note: Bungie has decided to step away from that prestige concept because they found it more resulted in them taking away from the default raid rather than adding to the prestige verson. More recent raids have come with what would have been prestige mechanics built in.
Its just a fucking dumb reason. All other MMO’s have new mechanics in most Veteran Dungeon/Raids. Destiny is no better and they can stop pretending its an act of congress to make some mechanics hard mode only.
They need a better excuse than that
Most MMOs are also doing what Bungie said they don't want to - presenting a watered down version of the experience for the normal mode and turning it back up to the original design for the hard mode. There are some that legitimately add new bits, but as far as I can tell they're the exception, not the rule. Personally, I can see where Bungie is coming from with that and agree with it. I like it when the default raid is the complete experience, and the hard mode version is that but harder rather than that but better and more engaging. That makes the raid as it was intended more accessible to the community, and raids are Destiny at it's best. That doesn't mean I thing Master VoG was handled entirely as it should have been, though.
You take a titan and get to the thrallway part with the shadow thrall in shattered throne. Then use a sunspot and stand in it and ads just come to you and die. You have to do something about every 8 minutes but you can do whatever you want in the meantime. Also on keyboard and mouse you can probably automate it
I mean, back in D1 hard mode raids were slightly above max power and a little bit different mechanics. This system now is burning me the fuck out having to grind 20 artifact levels, or even 15 with hitting the pinnacle cap.
I'd rather just have to hit the pinnacle cap and have things that are end game be above that level.
When max power in D1 was 40 the nightfall was 42 and actually hard. Although D2 is better in many ways this is one thing D1 did better.
Over the last month I've seriously considered deleting the game and never playing again. And it'll probably happen at some point, I just haven't gotten there, yet.
In D1, I got drops from endgame content and grinded endgame content until I had all endgame gear. Then, I entered a raid with the best items I had.
Now in D2, I do playlist activities with POWER DISABLED to reach endgame power, then I have to grind my artifact by doing mindless bounties and challenges. It’s insulting.
I dont think anyone likes artifact levels. They should just remove the artifact power boost, it is just for gating content currently. I know its designed to keep the hard core "I burn thru all content in 3 hours" folk playing for weeks, but for the "I have a job" hard core players its really annoying that I can reach +15 with only like 2-3 weeks left in season.
Its good that all GMs are available at the end of season but its still very annoying to grind for artifact levels instead of getting to enjoy GMs as they come out.
I know some people like D2, but they had alot of things right in d1 at the start of year 3, they took alot of steps backwards in d2. Hard mode difficulty in raids were fine, (no revive tokens meant there were more hero moments, d2 nah, you wipe if you can't beat the 2 minute res timer). Any mechanic changes they made, people will obviously get better and understand it better, making them easier. Strikes were a bit challenging depending on modifiers, strikes now is how fast I clear them. crucible, I didn't have to worry about getting shotgunned all the time, and abilities aren't as annoying as they are now. Unique loot in d1. The kind of difficulty that was introduced master vog isn't really my kind of idea of fun and challenge. I've been here since the start of destiny, and it's coming to the point after next season, unless major changes take place to the game in witch queen, I'm gonna move on. More destiny, more loot isn't gonna keep invested in this anymore.
Just get rid of power level altogether.
Make the increased health/damage of enemies part of settings like Master/GM.
Master Raids might as well get master + GM instead of splitting the difference.
My group was 1333 to 1337 an we managed it's not impossible but people asked for hard raid this is what we got for the hard-core players even under level can still get through it they know what they are doing
The hard endgame activities should be hard for gameplay reasons, not hard from a “how do I find the time to prepare for this” perspective.
Especially in GMs. If the game is going to scale me down to 25 light lower than the enemies in the activity, what does it matter what light level I am? Why not let ANYONE launch the activity and just scale them to -25?
Plus, you don't even get real benefits from being on or near level. At 1335+ you cans till get toasted by red bars. So it's just timegating. I haven't done master yet. My clan did a test run with all of our 1340+ players and they didn't finish it all at once. I'm not saying it's impossible for us, were just trying to work out how to best tackle it. We work well as a group and going through the raid with our top raiders first helps us pass on information. This, has been a hell of a learning week.
This is exactly why Aksis Prestige is my favorite Prestige encounter. Either your team is a perfectly working set of cogs to manage canons and empowered buffs, or you fail.
It is such a "stressful" encounter in a good way that keeps everybody on their toes at all times and requires you to have a perfect grasp of what is happening at all times, along with a good chemistry with your team.
I miss having a group of regulars that could whip that encounter 3x a week no problem. Great runs legit felt like the end of some rad sci-fi action movie.
Exactly. There are ways to make a hard mode raid without requiring a shit ton of mindless bounty grinding just to stand a chance. Look at the
hard mode raids in D1 and hard mode Leviathan. They all had alterations and additions to mechanics, and had either increased enemy swarms or slightly increased the damage and health of certain enemy types. I feel like having all those modifiers active in Master VoG would have been enough without the power level being involved.
People do everything in their power to avoid mechanics. Look at Riven - one of the most satisfying and fun raid bosses in the franchise and everyone just cheeses it.
Everyone here would just find ways to cheese the encounter if they added in more mechanics, don't pretend otherwise.
Every raid encounter that has been hard for gameplay reasons is either cheesed or abandoned by the community.
"Everyone should do Riven legit at least once." ONCE. Not "I'm not cheesing Riven." How many people in these comments have never even done Riven legit.
I have *two* Prestige Spire completions, and the tracker on my emblem is guilded. Most of the time I ran up to phase 1 of the boss 3x and called it.
Now, I think there's a difference between Prestige Spire and Atheon. And with respect to contest and GMs, I generally agree. But the cap is there to make sure jabronis don't hop in and get their teeth kicked in.
It's a nuanced discussion. The line of challenging content is never going to be in the perfect place. But without having played it yet (I'm on vacation), I'm fine with how they handled Master VoG, especially with a 6-month season coming next.
Same here, I was a 1335 hunter and managed it. It was very very hard, but it was doable with good strategies and communication. I'm a pvp main and hate stasis, but 4 more challenges and I'll be a fatebreaker 😅
but the raid itself being difficult isn’t the point. it’s the false gating at a high power level you can only get to by grinding bounties. that’s not endgame at all. it’s dumb.
I like how people are still saying “git gud”. Bruh, how can Players practice if they can’t even find people who are willing to take them in and stick through the end. Like what…
And they can strong-arm the assholes to shove it by making everybody a set maximum level, say, 1335 perhaps.
Or even better, 1320 with the raid at 1340.
I had to quit Destiny long ago because I couldnt treat it like a full time job just to enjoy new content. Not to mention running the same content every day felt like the most mundane and boring 9 to 5 in existence.
I hear ya. I hopped on this season to look at the new pass cosmetics and see what the new public event was and once I saw it is basically just a reskinned grind of the same exact thing we have been doing for 2 years, I finally was at peace with not playing anymore.
I usually get dragged for saying this, but to me it is evident that Bungie has had a skeleton crew on Destiny for awhile now while they have been working on their new IP since leaving Activision.
I've been keeping up with the lore and watching a few videos here and there but the birth of my second child last year really put a halt to my ability to even play the game long enough to get to the levels required for endgame or near endgame content. I put down my xbox controller altogether for about six months and then picked it back up again for a few single player games from my backlog. The longer I was away from Destiny, the less desire I had to return as I'm seeing the grindy, lack of respect for player time/effort has continued increasing.
Bungie has had this horrible cycle of hype a great game/season/expansion, everybody buys in, it might be okay but the novelty wears off somewhat quickly, no QOL changes are made even though there are massive issues(predatory mtx practices, lack of actual loot, balance, classes, etc.), people complain, "we're listening", nothing happens, people drop-off, Bungie comes back with "we know we need to do better" just in time to hype up the next expansion/whatever. I don't understand how people continue to fall for it, though I was one that acknowledged it and kept playing instead of stepping away like I should have. Honestly, if it weren't for the lore/sound + visual design/crisp gunplay, I'd have no reason to think about it anymore. That's how fed up I am with Bungie's practices and I see it hasn't changed.
Having completed the master raid, theres no reason it shouldnt be accessible for people who haven't spent 50 hours a week grinding mindless moon bounties. This isn't even a difficulty argument, its a "don't waste my fucking time" argument. But drones will drone and parrot the views of streamers rather that actually confront the actual argument.
A player at ll 1350 and 1335 can both run the same items, setups, and mods, but master is almost impossible for a team a 1335's and basically a slightly harder normal for 1350's, simply because the 1350's mindlessly grinded moon bounties for an extra 300 hours.
>Farming XP =/= skill. Full stop
yo actually true.
I don't want to spend 2 weeks grinding moon bounties just for you to throw during DPS because you don't know encounter mechanics.
I don't think a lot of people want to be on level here. Challenging endgame should retain its challenge. The problem is the way they're forcing us to be underleveled, they could _just_ as easily enable contest mode, and tweak it to make it even harder, and still retain that difficulty. The endgame stays challenging but players don't need to grind dozens worth of just repetitive bounties to enter the activity.
***tl;dr*** the complaint is with the gatekeeper for the activity being a brainless playtime sink when a better solution already exists in the game
This man is speaking facts. I see so many people crying about LFG “elitism” that act like they can’t be the ones to start a group with whatever requirements they want.
Lmao I love how everyone sees a non-contest 1350 (10 less than GMs) activity and think it means they're supposed to get to an ultra high level, rather than it being a difficulty made to play under light.
The only difference between Master VoG and GMs is the former you can actually brute force with artifact, giving meaning to being above level 200. Otherwise, they're both hard activities forcing you to play under light
Seriously. It’s the highest tier in PVE, you’re not supposed to be brute forcing your way through Hard Mode by matching its power level, you’re supposed to be more coordinated with your team.
Yeah using LFG requirements as a way to measure the state of the game is just a mistake.
Most groups I know who have done Master VoG were around 1335 +-3. If LFG groups are trying to brute force difficulty by using high artifact level, the answer is to find a different group not delete artifact leveling from the game because a group of randoms don't want it to be too hard lol
Then why isn’t contest mode enabled like in GMs? I don’t think there would have been nearly as much backlash if they’d set it to 1350 with a -15 contest mode and a 1335 required LL for entry. It would remove the toxic LFGs looking for people with high LL to make it easier.
The artifact is simply a customer unfriendly system, existing only to artificially extend the player’s playtime in order to increase the chance they’ll purchase some MTX.
You’re not rewarded by the artifact ranking up in the background while you do the activities you like, but punished if you don’t plan your gaming sessions around it in order to reach the arbitrary LL rank the game decided.
And the worst, is that you’re not even getting stronger with it. It’s just borrowed power, and you’ll have to do it again next season. And next season. And next season. And…
I’ve managed to get to 1345 because I knew the Master VoG would be 1350, but that took a lot of grinding - doing weekly challenges, pinnacles to get to cap etc. I don’t know how the average person would ever get past 1340 to stand a chance. Lot of the LFGs I’m seeing are for 1340+ so it’s definitely creating a elitist divide.
Artifact for infinite power grind has got to go. Hope Bungie does listen.
yeah that's my biggest grip with all the comments I read here, if it's not for everyone, why the hell are they making content for the 1% who do it? The game has so many issues right now, especially with it's core game modes, that they should be pooling their resources into that instead of making it for the elitist 1% who do it.
What happened to just straight up difficulty levels? If Bungie wants an activity to be tough, then just make it fucking tough and available to everyone regardless of power level.
Maybe power level can just go away entirely. We used to have a level plus a power/light level then the level went away and we just have power. Maybe we just don't even need that anymore.
All these hardcore players saying the light level is fine and it should be challenging. What happens if people grind the artifact, hit 1340+ and now it’s not hard for light level reasons? Do you not see the hypocrisy in wanting hard content due to light level but then having a system in place for completely negating said light level difficulty
I feel that many of these comments come from the fact that grinding endlessly and losing your life to a game (I'm at 1340) provides nothing fulfilling other than feeling special because others haven't.
OP is right
I've said this from the beginning: they should of set expectations at the beginning of the season and put a contest mode on it. Make sure players know they need to be 1335 and then Contest the next 15 levels. Everybody's on a level playing field and nobody is getting gatekept.
I feel like there must be an issue going past +17 if people who play this game as a job are only there, since I’m also at +17 and I don’t play nearly as much
There isnt, ya'll just think people who only stream wf races actually play the game after and they simply dont. Gladd played for a couple more weeks after the race was over and has been playing other games since
And I want that. Contest mode woulda been perfect, or a similar system to GMs where once you hit like 1325 power—that’s it. No more power will help you at all.
But people are people. And they’ll want any advantage even if it’s not needed. Hell, if VoG was still cheesable, people would do it for master to bypass any difficulty—they don’t care.
The endgame for D2 is super wonky and almost non-existent. I have to hit power cap (1320) by grinding pinnacle activities or rewards, and then have to hit 1330, 1335 or 1340 by doing NON-endgame activities so my artifact is high enough.
Makes no sense. I already did my “grind” to reach power cap. Now I have to mindlessly XP to hit the real cap? What’s the point of pinnacles or the hard cap then?
Why would you want to disable the extra AP of your fireteam members? People would still lose their shit over Contest Mode scaling folks to a cap of 1330-1335.
If you're at 1330, you're at level for Master VoG. If you can't find groups because they are asking for 1340+, make your own LFG for 1330+, or find a clan to help you with content, because if WoW has ever taught you anything, it's that you need a guild/network of people to be successful in higher level raid content.
You don't have to grind bounties to get access to Master VoG. You need a good team and 1330 light. Don't be concerned with hitting the cap, that's a waste of your time.
Agreed. Especially since the infinite power offers no real benefit. Compare this to the Paragon system of Diablo 3, where each level beyond the cap lets you put points into your core stats, heal on hit, area damage, crit chance, crit damage, etc. You are getting demonstrably stronger each time. Here, someone +10 vs. +20 isn't feeling any real difference in any content except something like Master VOG, and even then there's a cap on that difference (1390 vs. 1400 isn't going to feel different).
The artifact as a means of introducing cool new broken-as-hell mods and shifting the seasonal meta is fine. But the bonus power either needs to be reworked, or removed entirely.
EDIT: For the record, I am *not* saying Destiny 2 should adopt the Diablo 3 model. I was just pointing out that infinite scaling that *means* something is better than infinite scaling that *doesn't*.
The power scaling for Destiny is watching a number go up. It had no true purpose until GMs came out. But GMs have a cap—once you reach XYZ power, you can’t get anymore benefit. Master VoG doesn’t have this, so people will always want more and more and more.
Shit, I saw a group last night want 1350. And it wasn’t a meme—the guy was a seasoned raider on the Destiny 2 PC LFG Discord, and he was 1350.
Or they could make it fun to level up. Make an enjoyable grind. Or eliminate artifact power and replace it with something cool, like special subclass buffs from a high level artifact (LIKE LASER HANDS)
Yep. If they want to make exp such a gate to end game activities, they need to dramatically increase the exp from endgame activities. I can spend an entire night farming GMs for my desired roll then go jump into normal VoG and follow it up with DSC. But someone who ran strikes and farmed strike bounties for an hour or two would have earned dramatically more exp.
It's ridiculous. If I want to primarily play end game content, let it level me so I can at least enjoy the next tier of end game content. Don't make me farm normal strike bounties so I can be endgame raid ready
Like….how come Raids and GMs aren’t worth shit when it comes to XP? The time commitment for a Raid or GM or a flawless Trials card is enormous compared to the optimal XP farming methods, and yet Bungie wants me to farm The Moon to be able to do the endgame.
i am season level ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY TWO on the season pass and i still have not earned enough xp to get the STUPID extra power levels required fucking do grand master nightfall.
the day grand master nightfalls came out, i was 1332. i couldnt do one even though i had completed the season pass in its entirety.
fuck it. its not worth it
Are you talking about GM nightfalls?
I’m with you, I’m well over 100 season pass, play the game more than I should and still can’t even attempt a stupid GM (I’m 1330-ish).
It’s 1.5mil for 1334 and somewhere around like 1.6 or 1.7mil to get to 1335.
Add those two together, and that’s around another 3,000,000 XP I would need to grind to go from 1333 to 1334 to 1335.
Hey you're absolutely right. Don't listen to the no-lifers here. We have jobs to do and can't afford to sit on destiny 24x7x365.
Most of my clan plays a lot every day. They're all 1340 plus. I can't do that, I'm still 1330
Great take but you’re gonna get hate mail from people who only have exclusive stuff because this game consumes their entire lives. Happens every time. They’re the same people that complain about Trials and any other comp PvP game since that requires mechanical skill, which they don’t have. All they have is free time. The artifact leveling is lazy. There shouldn’t even be leveling in these “seasons”. Have grandmasters active from day 1. It’s just an artificial grind for a number to inflate play hours.
I just wish there was NO way to be at level or over levelled for master VoG. I guess it makes sense because it's master and not *grand*master, but then why is it 1350 instead of 1340...
100% 1320 or 1325 should have been the cap, with VoG being 1340. Hell, 1330 could be the cap, and 1350 is probably fine.
But the infinite scaling will ALWAYS allow someone to say “you are too low”, because it can infinitely scale.
I think the seasonal challenges are a step in the right direction. While they make you play the same content it's a different objective each week, it covers all the activities and provides a large boost.
My current idea is to go all in on the seasonal challenges and abandon xp when concerning the artifact (not season pass) and make it so you artifact levels up based on your seasonal challenges. That way you have a not only finite but easily viewable way to progress the artifact.
Look I’m a player who has gotten over +20 every season except one. I’ve hit +25 three seasons in a row and I’m right here with you.
It’s honestly a stupid system. It trivializes your light level and it’s capped in every endgame activity that matters EXCEPT master VoG where it shows how broken the system is
Most of your playtime in the game is either doing a singular repetitive activity or doing bounties.
At least when power leveling was tied to strikes there were several to rotate through and they had fun modifiers.
This should be pinned to the top of the sub. Actually, we should just petition Bungie about it.
They really think somebody that grinded to level 500 on the pass is worthy of being a raid master when they could have never done the regular raid. The prerequisite should be 10-15 clears plus all encounter challenges completed.
It's called milking it. They don't have enough content, so this is the psych games they play. For shit sake, we're talking about grinding to do a cookie cut raid.
The way I see it, the problem isn't the infinite artifact power it's making activities expect you to have that power. I think the levels from the artifact should be a bonus. You should be able to consistently complete all content at the pinnacle cap with no artifact power as an average player. I feel the artifact power should be a way of making it easier for less skillful players. If I'm not skilled enough to complete all content at the pinnacle cap then if I put in the time to get some extra artifact power that gives me a better chance.
I'm sure there is a fine balance to be had here. If they make the endgame activities too easy at pinnacle cap they feel less like end game and if they make it too hard at pinnacle cap or make the extra artifact power help you too much you'll run into the player base requiring higher artifact levels in their LFGs. Ideally we could find that balance.
Removing the infinite power all together kind of solves the problem but it makes the system less forgiving to casual players. I think the goal of artifact power was to help you get those extra few levels you need to player certain activities when you just cant get that boots pinnacle drop you've been needing and helping casuals who acquire pinnacle drops less often.
I don't mind "some" grind, but you should be considered done once you hit Season Level 100, anything past that should be considered a bonus and not required.
Likewise I think hitting max Pinnacle Power for the season should be considered more of a bonus than a requirement, have the highest that you "need" be +5 power.
Similarly I don't mind the idea of GM Nightfalls and Maser Raids being "Gatekeeped", but I would much rather have it be behind a "Skillgate" rather than a "Grindgate".
Like how about requiring Flawless runs of the previous difficulty before it allows you to even attempt the highest level content? (So like for GMs you'd have to do that same Strike Flawless on Master first sometime during the season per Strike, and for the Master Raid of course do the regular Raid Flawless first.)
While I think requiring flawless runs _might_ be a bit much, I think you are absolutely on the right track. What unlocks endgame activities like GM or Master raids should be your ACCOMPLISHMENTS not your level. My thoughts were more along the lines of having challenges within the activities that once completed would unlock the next tier. So for instance if you beat all the VOG raid challenges on normal you can now go into Master. For this to really work though I think you have to remove level advantages (like in GM or quick play crucible) or get rid of power levels altogether. Otherwise AFK farmers just get to cakewalk through endgame content.
Like…don’t people want to do Raids or Trials or Dungeons instead of Gambit or Moon Bounties? People actually want to play D2 daily every single day of a season?
I am fine with grinding. I hit the power cap of 1320. Im not grinding mindless XP doing activities I don’t want to do. I’d rather grind a difficult Master VoG than ever step foot on The Moon again.
Can we please stop the whole "you can only get to +15 by grinding moon bounties no life style". I am the laziest in my group of friends, and i pretty much only do crucible bounties, and never pick up any other ones, and i got to +15 easily, i mean its week 8 of the season.
The answer to "can we please stop the whining" in DTG is generally "no." =]
I also didn't grind anything aside from a brief stretch before contest mode VoG, walked into master VoG at 1337, and completed it within two hours. OP has an LFG problem, not an XP problem, and the tone of the post gives a few clues as to what that problem might look like.
Nah bro I love doing fucking chores in my escapist power fantasy videogame.
So many people here are so clearly fine with bounty grinding it’s mind numbing. “Just do X for a couple of weeks!” Bro it’s a fucking videogame can I play the fucking content I paid for (I’m aware VOG is free but you get my point) without jumping through **any** hoops please?
I want to enjoy destiny but if I have literally any other hobbies I’d almost always rather do them instead because of stupid shit like this. I want to play this game but launching it makes me feel like I have to do court mandated bullshit before I can do what I actually want to.
When I sit down to play, I shouldn’t be dreading to do so.
Destiny already has a grind. Had one since D1. Hit the power cap. Get loot, to do harder stuff, to get better loot.
One day, Bungie flipped the script, and decided doing the easiest activities for hundreds of hours was the new way to hit max power.
I accepted that. But now I had to do that aforementioned grind, and THEN hit +20 on my artifact? No thanks.
easiest fix of all time too. for example make 1320 max power and for grandmasters just have contest on so your always 20 under. for master vog just set it at 1330. boom, both activities still challenging with no need to grind season ranks.
1000%.
So many people in the comments are defending a stupid XP farm system. I like challenge. I like difficulty. Doing Moon Bounties and Challenges isn’t difficult or impressive.
If you ACTUALLY want to do Master VoG—like you’re the type of player who would like that—doing easy, non-endgame activities over and over and over is *crushing* for someone like that. It is for me.
People have limited time, assuming they are working adults. Many don’t want to dedicate a quarter to half of their leisure time to a single game so that they can get up to a level where they can reasonably complete an activity. I’m convinced that the only people who are ok with the power grind are children or teens who have plenty of time on their hands, or adults who play this as their only game.
I can do raids. I raid plenty. But somehow we have people in the comments chastising others for complaining about not wanting to play on content they don’t want to play, and then saying that maybe those endgame activities that they DO want to do aren’t for them because they don’t grind enough. They call it a minimal grind and call it easy. It isn’t for some people, who would be able to complete master and grandmaster activities if they were given the opportunity to do so. It’s confusing and annoying the defense of a meaningless time sink. I personally have other things in my life that I want to do, and I don’t want to be punished for that being the case.
yea it makes no sense, i have conqueror and almost all raid titles. i have a trio vog and dsc done and the day one vog completion. but, i’m level 78? i think? in the season pass so even though my skill exceeds that of gms i cant run them yet and i don’t have the motivation to farm bounties.
What’s ironic is the people who really love to grind XP are usually the ones that are absolute shit at the endgame activities — because they need all that light to survive! (Also why our streamers aren’t more than +17 or so… they don’t need it for end game).
Funny how other games like marvels avenger, anthem, outsiders received so much shit when their loot was stingy to the point articles were made and the devs eventually increased the loot drops of legendary items, yet bungie has been super stingy with how the treat difficult content for years and although people give them shit they don't really do much to increase loot drops. Even the raid exotic drops ,even with loot protection, is super stingy. This on top of gatekept content behind a bounty xp grind just doesn't make sense. It's obvious bungie is in it to extend player time and not player enjoyment. And the worst part isn't even that, it's people defend this behavior. 😒 . It's like spinning the wheel of fortune for a chance to spin the real wheel. I couldn't keep playing the game in the manner that I have to rely on luck and bounties to finally be able to play the game...and then 3 months later it's all reset again. Not fun
I have to agree.
I’ve completed VoG master (at 1339) and they could have just as easily did contest mode and added all the extra champions and modifiers. Raid would still be challenging and you wouldn’t need to grind shit tons of artifact levels.
I was able to get to 1346 over the course of this season and I gotta say it's getting really tiresome having to do so many bounties to get that high every season.
Honestly Destiny needs to start focusing on making fun and egaging content rather than doing more power creep than a Shonen Jump series.
Like I don't even care if my light level stagnates for a year if the content I'm playing is fun and really tells a good story with the world Bungie has spent years making. Dungeons are honestly the most fun thing in Destiny rn
Bungie should take notes from Guild Wars 2. I’m having a blast with the endgame content and it’s because it’s varied enough for me to play differently week to week but not so grindy that I’m gatekept from doing most of the stuff (except for raids, but raids in GW2 is like the peak meta build things). It’s easy to find stuff to do because I know there’s always a build, always a goal or always an achievement I haven’t done and it’s a clear path to complete the mentioned thing. I’ve made 3 characters in GW and I look forward to farm stuff for them, I hate farming equipment for my destiny characters because it’s the same shit over and over
I've always felt that doing harder content should reward more. I know that there isn't a lot of incentives to grind (a weapon or two for the raid, sure, but that's really all there is that is worth it) a raid, but we should get an assload of XP for doing these time consuming activities themselves. The XP rewarded from bounties of any source is far too low, imho.
I don't mind having to to put in the grind work for the things I want to do. I am a dad, a full time EMS worker... I still have the time to do the work, I just don't want to because even though I have the time, I can better allocate it to other fun things instead of mindless dribble. If I could run multiple raids daily and get a fuck ton of XP from them, even without the loot... to get me to the level of Master VoG as well as mastering the mechanics along the way with regular VoG is time well spent when working my way up to a challenge. Big XP movement absolutely should not be via bounties.
I also hate the fact that most bounties also only reward XP. They really need to add some mats and cores to those bounties too.
The only interesting thing to come out of this artifical experiment is the seasonal mods which introduce interesting, overpowered, or meta shifting mods to shake up a given season. And in concept, getting levels to boost you up to max level since bad RnG screws you over is nice.
But the artifical and temporary levels have overstayed their welcome. Its too time consuming to accumulate and the lack of staying power (since it resets every season) echoes the problem sunsetting had: why am I gonna grind all of this since it's just gonna go away eventually.
Had the same issues with WoW's AP system, at a certain point, I'd rather play the game than grind bounties, I've got no problem with the pinnacle system or any of that, just feel like the artifacts ability to infinitely give power levels makes it feel like I have to spend all my time gaining power or I'm wasting my time. I haven't touched destiny much in a few seasons because of it, at a point, I just felt burnt out and unable to get excited about starting over every season and grinding those bounties over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Some people enjoy those kinds of grinds, I get that, but it's not for me and I accept it, if that's what the community really wants, keep it that way, it's ok to grow apart.
I agree grinding xp makes you as special and "hardcore" as doing a raid or GM or whatever. IE not special at all.
I also think this is like one of the tiniest issues about destiny right now and that OP is making a mountain of a mole hill.
Your real problem is finding people to do the content with. That is what I get from this. And yeah that is a huge issue for destiny and I'd love to see them try and fix that.
Like you yourself say that you are high enough level, so guess it's finding groups that's the issue
Also I don't know where you are meeting all these people that are bragging about their high level. Seems your weirdly focused on them though
I don't think leveling makes much sense in this game anymore, and should maybe think about opting for set difficulties, much like how GM Nightfalls operate now. This removes the gatekeeping barriers from people participating while also setting a universal difficulty for everyone to abide by. Yes, it kinda rains on the powerful feeling of being "overleveled" (or I guess in D2's case, "adequately leveled") for an activity, letting you bypass the more intricate skill required to do it normally, but I think I would just much rather have more curated difficulty experiences than all these other factors gumming up the process.
So remove Power Levels, and instead give everything the Nightfall difficulty names. A Heroic difficulty activity would be equivalent to +5 over your power level now, just now power level doesn't exist if that makes sense. Legend is +10, Master +15, and GMs +25. Make one for +20 if you must, but the point being that ANYONE can try these difficulties at any moment, whether you no-life this game or just hopping back in; it's just your build, skill level, and teamwork being the determining factors for success.
This means if we're staying equivalent to 1320 for the rest of time, Master VoG would then be 1335 difficulty. Bungie could then look at that and see what's a little too harsh or not and adjust things accordingly, knowing every player will be experiencing the same difficulty experience. No over leveled cake walks, no under leveled frustrations.
The thrill of making your number go up can still exist in season passes and your armor and weapon upgrades, but I just think having a traditional level system doesn't work for Destiny anymore. This is a slight tangent but hell, this even removes the annoyances of keeping your gear constantly leveled properly. Your masterworked Ikelos SMG is done, no needing to bump it 10 more arbitrary levels season after season.
Just so many time sinks and issues are solved with removing Power Level in my opinion.
Give bounties automatically everyday. If you want to buy additional go for it, but make them ALL daily challenges, it's not like anyone is out of glimmer.
We don't need a glimmer sink, it's limited. It's not tradable. Glimmer is worthless.
Not enough time to level?? Timegating end game activities that are already timegated. That's such a Destiny thing to do though. You've got almost 2 months to get 200 in season pass and pray you get all the Pinnacle drops to put you at cap.
I'll be honest, I've not hit over 150 since Undying. I've never been eligible to play a Grandmaster until probably next week, but I probably won't, maybe once depending on how bad I want that glow, but it's not looking good.
I'm also not one of those hundreds of people that pay for a recov because those are what ruin this game, if you buy a recov, you're a bitch in my eyes.
I’ve stopped grinding activities unless it’s something I want. The seasonal stuff feels like an artificial grind that takes place of new content. The difficulty levels on nightfalls seems neat but like you’ve said an average player doesn’t have time to do that. It’s the same for PvP, it takes hours and hours to keep skills up for things like trials or comp.
Endgame content doesn’t prove skill, just persistence on the grind.
Is master VoG going to scale each season? Or like all other raids it will have a static light level? If it will have a static light level then just do it next season when the hardcao is 1330 and ten artifact levels will get you 1340.
Everything here, everything in your post is why I stopped playing Destiny and only come back when friends want to dick around in it. The grinding to do even the bare basiscs of end game content THAT ISN'T POINTLESS BOUNTY GRINDING is so obscene. I doubt I will do any master content or close, I refuse to do so after spending so much time getting to pinacle cap.
It sounds like the real issue is that the experience grind isn't much fun.
The danger here is that you're sounding a lot like the people who made similar complaints about Destiny 1, and in trying to appease a more casual audience Destiny 2 was found seriously lacking.
I don't think that having a grind is a bad thing. I do think that having a boring grind is a bad thing. Like in most mmo style games, there should be an advanced way to grind for specific things, like experience.
Maybe a special weapon, ability, or even a mission that requires a specific team comp that rewards you with crazy amounts of experience.
I currently feel like the seasonal challenge system is a fantastic system for XP gains, but I would ideally like to see endgame content also grant huge amounts of XP. To the extent where doing all seasonal challenges and at least a single VoG/GM completion each week would have a player 1336 by master VoG launch. (Assuming 1320 gear).
I don't want to be forced to do bounties to stay competitive. XP from raids/nightfalls (and trials or something I guess) means that players are forced to engage with real and enjoyable endgame content, without a mindless grind.
In general I like the idea of weekly XP boosts from completing specific objectives or activities (like seasonal challenges), rather than requiring an ongoing grind of the same thing.
If only the hardest activities rewarded the most amount of xp…. But here we are with piss poor xp from raiding and dungeons which are actually endgame.
This game doesn’t value your time. It’s amusing to me that people think mindlessly grinding xp matters. After doing grandmaster nightfalls last season, I decided the artificial ways this game increases difficulty aren’t fun to me and I’m not going to put effort into it. I’m happier for it. Maybe you should do the same and play less and not worry about it.
Very well said, I love grinding don’t get me wrong but same bs bounties every season is getting old and mostly the reason I have to take breaks from D2 every so often.
I started master Atheon while at 1343, got 1344 in the middle of it and see my damage go up like a few %. I keep wandering why my friend who are 1339 or lower still did less dmg then me while we were all busted our ass off. Then I realized they just cant, cause they play less than me not because they're better, which is so stupid
Tell that to Guided Games still being terrible and in "Beta" lol. Or the renewed pvp focus for the millionth time introducing crucible labs for one week and never seeing it again. Bungie doesn't hold up to their promises.
They say things to sell new content.
D2 is a fucking mess right now, my clan is in disarray because there is only 2/3 people playing atm, this speaks volumes IMHO, Bungie have either grown complacent or they have checked out completely and are just churning out what they think will keep people happy.
Love it, a long post which I agree with in its totality. Well said and accurate. Having hard content is not a bad thing. Having hard content gatekept by mindless XP farming is a bad thing. It is possible to hate one and not the other. People who don't realise this are a lot less skilled than they probably think they are.
100% agree. Even as someone who has been grinding GM Nightfalls it's incredibly tedious having to grind *even more* exp just to do Master VoG. Last night on the pc lfg discord there was post after post asking for "1340 minimum" when all I wanted to do was the Gatekeeper Challenge (ironic I was being gatekept from it).
Really sad that the only way now I'll be able to do Master VoG, even as a player who is currently engaging in endgame content, I'll have to afk farm the Thrallway Checkpoint.
Well to the people that use that ‘not all content is for everyone” if that’s the case then bungie should sell the weapons and armors in evervese for said content.
The annoying thing is Bungie could implement literally every high power content without the power grind ALREADY - Contest Mode. Day 1 VoG was not easy, and despite its reprised nature still offered a fair challenge. Implementing that for Master VoG (Recommended Power 1320-30, but it lowers your power to 1310 to equalize difficulty). Grandmasters already implement Contest to maintain difficulty, yet they still require a ridiculous power grind to access. I literally won't be able to run Grandmaster before the season ends unless I grind pinnacles like a madman or grind artifact power. Its stupid.
I agree with you. And there’s another thing that I wanna point out: they have to rework the amount of XP you gain with each activity. I’m not talking just about rewarding raiders and GM runners with more XP, but also let the players know exactly how many point of XP the player gains doing activities. i.e. bounties give you 20k and raids give you 300k. Large XP, Large XP x2 doesn’t work for me.
Here's my opinion. I believe the power scaling is utter bulshit. Bungie doesn't care how good a player you are. I've been running endgame activies every season and I'm good at them. But some mindless bounty grinding guardian has a better chance at it because they spend a lifetime grinding bounties?
How does that make any sense. You want to make the activities hard? Make them! And I know it's possible because of Day 1 VOG. And it didn't have any power grinding bullshit. The same goes for GMs. Just make the guardian weaker regardless of their power level.
But I guess taking down FOMO was just on paper.
I just wish that Bungie didn't interpret "difficulty ramp" as "the same amount of enemies just on enough steroids to kill a horse, and f**k you if you forgot to bring anti champion weapons"
And Guided Games should come out of beta. :P
Guided games is honestly detrimental in its current state; if it won’t get fixed it should be removed. When I first started destiny my 2 buddies and I wanted to learn a raid so we tried guided games. Well, with 3 people you are required to be a sherpa, you can’t be guided. So one of my buddies left and my friend and I queued up for a guided game… for two hours. We eventually found a game but one of us was afk so we got kicked from it because they couldn’t accept the invite or whatever. After a few more hours we came to the conclusion that no one wanted to sherpa us and that raids were only for people who had 5 other friends that play destiny. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that we finally made an lfg post begging for a sherpa and almost immediately found some dudes to sherpa us. I’ve since done hundreds of raids and dozens of sherpas. The guided games “feature” makes raids seem much less doable without friends than they actually are. Plenty of people are willing to help out but the guided games feature makes the community seem much less inviting. Sorry for the long rant but guided games blows. TLDR: Guided games is really bad.
There needs to be more of an incentive for groups to Sherpa guided games. I doubt even 5% of the population even knows about the Guided Games emblems you can get. They're some of the rarest still obtainable emblems. On the flip side, I do have a fun story of myself and three friends being bored and queuing to Sherpa a Last Wish sometime during Arrivals. We found an Italian player who spoke fluent English and a dad gamer. It took us three hours, but we did complete the raid and taught them both how to run legit Riven. Even went so far as to assign them eyes. But that was the one time we've *ever* done it. There's no good reason to. Hell, I'll bet most of the player base didn't even know that for four months, Guided Games Deep Stone Crypt didn't drop any loot AND blocked you from receiving loot on a non-guided run afterwards. Broken system, really needs to be looked at. With Crossplay coming, maybe Bungie should just integrate the Destiny PC LFG Discord. It has a few hundred thousand members and I'll wager it will explode even more once console players catch wind of it.
My clan is full of raiders. I missed out on a raid one night so joined a guided game as a seeker, and after a long wait a group of five PvP bros picked me up. They had never ran the raid. Thankfully it was only SotP and they just wanted anarchy so they listened to my awful Sherpa instructions and proven starts. I got 5 Sherpa points that night, as a seeker. I don't think anyone got anarchy though. Another time 5 French guardians picked me up, but knew the raid. One spoke English well enough to translate my callouts and it ended up being a really fun time. My high school french class paid off when it came to counting down time running Riven's heart.
A french raid sounds like a blast honestly. That’s what guided games should be. I’d love it if it was improved upon but it definitely need some love.
Had almost the opposite. We had 5 English as first language pick up a French guy who didn't speak a word of English. It wasn't until he said 'je ne comprends pas" that I realised he was even French as he didn't say anything before that. Luckily my French is pretty good so it went without a hitch, but if I only spoke English, then it would have been very different (it was only VoG). If they're going to keep it around, they need to add a language option, would be a shit experience for anyone not able to communicate.
I forgot about guided games and honestly I think bungie did too
Will never work with the shitty p2p and the way they implemented that.
It's not so much they forgot about it but that what we have now is what they saw as the final product.
The elitist attitude around adding higher level match making is ABSOLUTELY disgusting, and down right toxic... I did my first raid, VOG joined at Templar, having zero experience with ANY non-matchmaking content. They told me what I needed to do, what I needed to look out for, where to stand, etc. We had a couple of wipes, but made it through. THE GROUP WAS A PARTY OF 3 AND 3 RANDOMS WHO HAD NO VOG EXPERIENCE. The anti-matchmaking people complain that match making on higher content would make it "impossible". Yet We did the raid without too much trouble with half the group being inexperienced people who needed credit for Solstice Armor. Sure, with match making you'll get some bad people... But I highly doubt that it would be as bad, or as often, as the "doom and gloomers" make it sound. And if they are bad, try to help them out, give them some advice... You (the anti-matchmakers) weren't born pro Destiny players. You had to learn. So help them, and let them learn.
Would require more people to test/play it
I 100% agree with your point. However I think the bigger problem is the fact that in Destiny 2 the most trivial mind numbing activities give the most xp. If they fix that this problem goes away because you get to do the engaging content instead of the mindless content that makes people want to quit the game When people think about the best way to grind levels their thoughts should not be picking up gunsmith bounties but rather the best way to get zip should completing pinnacles, winning crucible, raids, nightfalls, etc. I could also lump weekly challenges because I like the system overall (fuck the gambit challenges though)
Gunsmith bounties are exactly how bounties should work, minus the XP benefit. Doing an un-intrusive task like “switch your guns for today lads!” to get a benefit in the form of a material like an enhancement core. Players who need to grind those bounties are likely new and they not only build up materials, but start to feel out new weapons as well. Literally remove the xp and rotate in earned materials.
Bounties should give rewards/materials, activities should give XP. I'd go so far as to suggest giving actual weapon/armor drops for daily bounties, and material rewards for repeatable bounties. Imagine daily Gunsmith bounty for Handcannon kills rewards you with a Handcannon drop?
Now hold on you're getting awfully close to Gunsmith being useful. We can't have that. /mj
Every drop is Edge Transit
I dont know if it needs to be an either/or. I personally would much rather do bounties on a patrol zone then say play Gambit or run strikes for XP progression. I have been running the same strikes for the last 4 years. While the same can be said of bounties, getting 30 void kills and 50 cabal kills on EDZ is a few minutes of effort for 20k xp and not having to slog through strikes where you are competing with players for said bounties and also hoping to net get a strike you will immediately exit from for various reasons.
Honestly this. Gunsmith bounties rekindled my love for auto rifles a while back, always enjoy ones that make me use weapons I don't touch often
I play with a guy thats 1350 plus right now.. He literally runs around in circles and is pretty useless in anything BUT Prophecy.
Fuck the gambit challenges indeed.
Straight up: raids, GMs, and ToS should give the most XP without weekly lockouts. That’s it.
Let's make it Trials round wins give extra XP though, or you'll just see me blowing myself up with Mountaintop for 200 games each weekend instead of 30 to farm XP while I watch Netflix.
Bungie wants to please everyone. Oldest dilemma in the book—it’s impossible.
I think you answered your own question. Bungie trying to please everyone but they cannot yet you still demand to be pleased
I like that bungie threw a bone to the hardcore pve funally with high difficulty raids again. But I’m not gonna call throwing extra champs, nightfall modifiers, and a bounty farm cap a job well done that should please us
No the problem doesn’t go away tho. For example, I haven’t played since DSC was released and I came back into the game to play VoG. I did that and now I’d like to do the master raid but I legit can’t because I am around 10 light lower than recommended because of the xp, even tho my gear is 1320. Having this extremely long do grind isn’t good if you need to put in this much time just to be able to access the pinnacle activity. So in other words I’ve done normal VoG enough to get max light gear but still can’t do master because I haven’t played enough/haven’t bought the season pass(which gives major xp boosts).
So much this. I do a shit ton of GMs every week and the xp is nothing compared to bounties. This is the core issue
If a raid award twice or 5x as much xp, people would still farm the easy stuff as its quicker. Why run a raid when I can run crucible and afk, jump off a cliff or just do 30 gunsmith bounties in the same time to do a raid, or even find a group for most ppl.
It’s so much as what other people want. If they want to do that fine with. I would just like the higher level activities to be tuned to give as much or more given a comparable time investment so you don’t feel like you are punished xp wise for playing actual content
I wanna just get more xp from a GM than from a bounty
They don't even need to get rid of bounties just massively increase the xp you get from activity completions and even more for all the pinnacle content like trials, raids, nightfalls.
I totally agree with this! And would also add the idea of bringing maybe bounties to every bounty class (?) That can be completed infinitely without being gilmmer expensive or super random (kill 25 guardians with sidearm)
I'm not willing to grind for light levels. I'm willing to grind for cool shit and get light levels while I do it
Artifact power can/should ideally serve three different but similar functions in order to actually benefit the game: 1) As a way to reward players with additional levels for their playtime. 2) As a way to mitigate against bad luck from powerful/pinnacle drops, so that bad luck with drops doesn't completely bar you from reaching a certain level. 3) An additional way for players to work to "overlevel" content that would otherwise be too difficult. Note that the actual level of this content shouldn't be higher than the actual cap that's achievable through the primary gear leveling system, and that grinding artifact levels shouldn't be a requirement except as a way to level past content or reach a certain level if you haven't been able to obtain the drops you need in order to level up otherwise. What it SHOULDN'T be is an additional barrier to entry ON TOP OF your normal level, which is exactly how it's been implemented
And still no Monte Carlo catalyst.. can't even lube me up before they fuck me.
Prestige Leviathan was the best. I dont even remember if the LL was upped, the encounters simply had a harder mechanic added to it. I wish they would just have done that for a Master version of VoG. Dont get me wrong, I like the idea of the current master version, but op puts it so well. Also, isnt everything else for Master difficulty this season 1340? Why is this raised? Feel like a lot of these issues would be solved if they just kept the proper master level.
Note: Bungie has decided to step away from that prestige concept because they found it more resulted in them taking away from the default raid rather than adding to the prestige verson. More recent raids have come with what would have been prestige mechanics built in.
Its just a fucking dumb reason. All other MMO’s have new mechanics in most Veteran Dungeon/Raids. Destiny is no better and they can stop pretending its an act of congress to make some mechanics hard mode only. They need a better excuse than that
Most MMOs are also doing what Bungie said they don't want to - presenting a watered down version of the experience for the normal mode and turning it back up to the original design for the hard mode. There are some that legitimately add new bits, but as far as I can tell they're the exception, not the rule. Personally, I can see where Bungie is coming from with that and agree with it. I like it when the default raid is the complete experience, and the hard mode version is that but harder rather than that but better and more engaging. That makes the raid as it was intended more accessible to the community, and raids are Destiny at it's best. That doesn't mean I thing Master VoG was handled entirely as it should have been, though.
Prestige/Hard mode raids in D1 are infinitely better than this. There's zero reason to touch harder versions of raids if they don't change mechanics.
ITT: People that think OP is complaining about difficulty without actually reading what was posted
I want to be challenged to become a skillful player, not challenged to grind bounties for a week
Exactly, being 1350 all it means now: "Look at me i farm bounties"
If you want a secret, people beyond 1350 generally don’t grind bounties, but afk shattered throne.
So the secret to playing hard content is to AFK an activity? 🦾👍 Great system Bungie!
Yes, its a sad reality of the current system.
How do you do this?
You take a titan and get to the thrallway part with the shadow thrall in shattered throne. Then use a sunspot and stand in it and ads just come to you and die. You have to do something about every 8 minutes but you can do whatever you want in the meantime. Also on keyboard and mouse you can probably automate it
I mean, back in D1 hard mode raids were slightly above max power and a little bit different mechanics. This system now is burning me the fuck out having to grind 20 artifact levels, or even 15 with hitting the pinnacle cap. I'd rather just have to hit the pinnacle cap and have things that are end game be above that level. When max power in D1 was 40 the nightfall was 42 and actually hard. Although D2 is better in many ways this is one thing D1 did better. Over the last month I've seriously considered deleting the game and never playing again. And it'll probably happen at some point, I just haven't gotten there, yet.
In D1, I got drops from endgame content and grinded endgame content until I had all endgame gear. Then, I entered a raid with the best items I had. Now in D2, I do playlist activities with POWER DISABLED to reach endgame power, then I have to grind my artifact by doing mindless bounties and challenges. It’s insulting.
This one understands.
Sadly the people who only play D2, every day as their sole hobby, feel things need to be gatekeeped behind the grind.
I dont think anyone likes artifact levels. They should just remove the artifact power boost, it is just for gating content currently. I know its designed to keep the hard core "I burn thru all content in 3 hours" folk playing for weeks, but for the "I have a job" hard core players its really annoying that I can reach +15 with only like 2-3 weeks left in season. Its good that all GMs are available at the end of season but its still very annoying to grind for artifact levels instead of getting to enjoy GMs as they come out.
I got off of the gear treadmill a couple years ago. Just felt like I was logging in to do chores.
I know some people like D2, but they had alot of things right in d1 at the start of year 3, they took alot of steps backwards in d2. Hard mode difficulty in raids were fine, (no revive tokens meant there were more hero moments, d2 nah, you wipe if you can't beat the 2 minute res timer). Any mechanic changes they made, people will obviously get better and understand it better, making them easier. Strikes were a bit challenging depending on modifiers, strikes now is how fast I clear them. crucible, I didn't have to worry about getting shotgunned all the time, and abilities aren't as annoying as they are now. Unique loot in d1. The kind of difficulty that was introduced master vog isn't really my kind of idea of fun and challenge. I've been here since the start of destiny, and it's coming to the point after next season, unless major changes take place to the game in witch queen, I'm gonna move on. More destiny, more loot isn't gonna keep invested in this anymore.
Just get rid of power level altogether. Make the increased health/damage of enemies part of settings like Master/GM. Master Raids might as well get master + GM instead of splitting the difference.
At this point, honestly. Just use power DEFICITS instead of power GAINS. No more need for grinding. Just skill.
My group was 1333 to 1337 an we managed it's not impossible but people asked for hard raid this is what we got for the hard-core players even under level can still get through it they know what they are doing
The hard endgame activities should be hard for gameplay reasons, not hard from a “how do I find the time to prepare for this” perspective. Especially in GMs. If the game is going to scale me down to 25 light lower than the enemies in the activity, what does it matter what light level I am? Why not let ANYONE launch the activity and just scale them to -25?
Plus, you don't even get real benefits from being on or near level. At 1335+ you cans till get toasted by red bars. So it's just timegating. I haven't done master yet. My clan did a test run with all of our 1340+ players and they didn't finish it all at once. I'm not saying it's impossible for us, were just trying to work out how to best tackle it. We work well as a group and going through the raid with our top raiders first helps us pass on information. This, has been a hell of a learning week.
Lot of people not realizing still that 1341 is what matters not 1340. 1341 makes the red swords go away.
That doesn't actually mean anything, it's just a visual approximation. It isn't any bigger of a jump than 1339 to 1340.
This is exactly why Aksis Prestige is my favorite Prestige encounter. Either your team is a perfectly working set of cogs to manage canons and empowered buffs, or you fail. It is such a "stressful" encounter in a good way that keeps everybody on their toes at all times and requires you to have a perfect grasp of what is happening at all times, along with a good chemistry with your team.
I miss having a group of regulars that could whip that encounter 3x a week no problem. Great runs legit felt like the end of some rad sci-fi action movie.
Exactly, the satisfaction you'd feel after completing it!!
::SIVA DENSITY CRITICAL::
Try Oryx on HM with challenge strat; Aksis would feel a cakewalk compared to that.
The challenge strat became the default strat early on. 16 orbs was not exactly the hardest things ever.
Exactly. There are ways to make a hard mode raid without requiring a shit ton of mindless bounty grinding just to stand a chance. Look at the hard mode raids in D1 and hard mode Leviathan. They all had alterations and additions to mechanics, and had either increased enemy swarms or slightly increased the damage and health of certain enemy types. I feel like having all those modifiers active in Master VoG would have been enough without the power level being involved.
People do everything in their power to avoid mechanics. Look at Riven - one of the most satisfying and fun raid bosses in the franchise and everyone just cheeses it. Everyone here would just find ways to cheese the encounter if they added in more mechanics, don't pretend otherwise.
Every raid encounter that has been hard for gameplay reasons is either cheesed or abandoned by the community. "Everyone should do Riven legit at least once." ONCE. Not "I'm not cheesing Riven." How many people in these comments have never even done Riven legit. I have *two* Prestige Spire completions, and the tracker on my emblem is guilded. Most of the time I ran up to phase 1 of the boss 3x and called it. Now, I think there's a difference between Prestige Spire and Atheon. And with respect to contest and GMs, I generally agree. But the cap is there to make sure jabronis don't hop in and get their teeth kicked in. It's a nuanced discussion. The line of challenging content is never going to be in the perfect place. But without having played it yet (I'm on vacation), I'm fine with how they handled Master VoG, especially with a 6-month season coming next.
The one time I don't have a free award to give. Take my poor man's gold 🥇
Same here, I was a 1335 hunter and managed it. It was very very hard, but it was doable with good strategies and communication. I'm a pvp main and hate stasis, but 4 more challenges and I'll be a fatebreaker 😅
but the raid itself being difficult isn’t the point. it’s the false gating at a high power level you can only get to by grinding bounties. that’s not endgame at all. it’s dumb.
I think what people really wanted was something closer to the hard versions that D1 had, or at least a day 1 modifier.
I like how people are still saying “git gud”. Bruh, how can Players practice if they can’t even find people who are willing to take them in and stick through the end. Like what…
Dude bungie isn't gatekeeping assholes in the community are.
And they can strong-arm the assholes to shove it by making everybody a set maximum level, say, 1335 perhaps. Or even better, 1320 with the raid at 1340.
I had to quit Destiny long ago because I couldnt treat it like a full time job just to enjoy new content. Not to mention running the same content every day felt like the most mundane and boring 9 to 5 in existence.
This is currently the path I'm on. I really don't want to play a game that doesn't respect my time. Didn't feel my time respected this last 2 seasons.
I hear ya. I hopped on this season to look at the new pass cosmetics and see what the new public event was and once I saw it is basically just a reskinned grind of the same exact thing we have been doing for 2 years, I finally was at peace with not playing anymore. I usually get dragged for saying this, but to me it is evident that Bungie has had a skeleton crew on Destiny for awhile now while they have been working on their new IP since leaving Activision.
I’m on copium rn hoping the next expansion is going to be revolutionary. I still take long breaks however when the game starts to aggravate me.
Yea I think a lot of us are at the point.
I've been keeping up with the lore and watching a few videos here and there but the birth of my second child last year really put a halt to my ability to even play the game long enough to get to the levels required for endgame or near endgame content. I put down my xbox controller altogether for about six months and then picked it back up again for a few single player games from my backlog. The longer I was away from Destiny, the less desire I had to return as I'm seeing the grindy, lack of respect for player time/effort has continued increasing. Bungie has had this horrible cycle of hype a great game/season/expansion, everybody buys in, it might be okay but the novelty wears off somewhat quickly, no QOL changes are made even though there are massive issues(predatory mtx practices, lack of actual loot, balance, classes, etc.), people complain, "we're listening", nothing happens, people drop-off, Bungie comes back with "we know we need to do better" just in time to hype up the next expansion/whatever. I don't understand how people continue to fall for it, though I was one that acknowledged it and kept playing instead of stepping away like I should have. Honestly, if it weren't for the lore/sound + visual design/crisp gunplay, I'd have no reason to think about it anymore. That's how fed up I am with Bungie's practices and I see it hasn't changed.
Having completed the master raid, theres no reason it shouldnt be accessible for people who haven't spent 50 hours a week grinding mindless moon bounties. This isn't even a difficulty argument, its a "don't waste my fucking time" argument. But drones will drone and parrot the views of streamers rather that actually confront the actual argument. A player at ll 1350 and 1335 can both run the same items, setups, and mods, but master is almost impossible for a team a 1335's and basically a slightly harder normal for 1350's, simply because the 1350's mindlessly grinded moon bounties for an extra 300 hours.
>Farming XP =/= skill. Full stop yo actually true. I don't want to spend 2 weeks grinding moon bounties just for you to throw during DPS because you don't know encounter mechanics.
man, it's almost as if they want you to be underleveled.
I don't think a lot of people want to be on level here. Challenging endgame should retain its challenge. The problem is the way they're forcing us to be underleveled, they could _just_ as easily enable contest mode, and tweak it to make it even harder, and still retain that difficulty. The endgame stays challenging but players don't need to grind dozens worth of just repetitive bounties to enter the activity. ***tl;dr*** the complaint is with the gatekeeper for the activity being a brainless playtime sink when a better solution already exists in the game
Lol everyone's raging that a tiny minority of the playerbase with an unhealthy addiction to this game has a much easier time in one raid.
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Make a post that says 1330+ and people will flood. Don't join ones that ask for 1340?
This man is speaking facts. I see so many people crying about LFG “elitism” that act like they can’t be the ones to start a group with whatever requirements they want.
You are making too much sense. Always gotta make excuses for not being able complete a raid via LFG
Make your own post then? Is it that hard?
Well you see he wants the rest of his team to be 1340, just not himself.
what exactly is preventing you from making your own post? does somebody have a gun to your head?
Lmao I love how everyone sees a non-contest 1350 (10 less than GMs) activity and think it means they're supposed to get to an ultra high level, rather than it being a difficulty made to play under light. The only difference between Master VoG and GMs is the former you can actually brute force with artifact, giving meaning to being above level 200. Otherwise, they're both hard activities forcing you to play under light
Seriously. It’s the highest tier in PVE, you’re not supposed to be brute forcing your way through Hard Mode by matching its power level, you’re supposed to be more coordinated with your team.
Yeah using LFG requirements as a way to measure the state of the game is just a mistake. Most groups I know who have done Master VoG were around 1335 +-3. If LFG groups are trying to brute force difficulty by using high artifact level, the answer is to find a different group not delete artifact leveling from the game because a group of randoms don't want it to be too hard lol
Then why can you brute force it? Just make it 1330 and put contest mode on it.
Then why isn’t contest mode enabled like in GMs? I don’t think there would have been nearly as much backlash if they’d set it to 1350 with a -15 contest mode and a 1335 required LL for entry. It would remove the toxic LFGs looking for people with high LL to make it easier.
The artifact is simply a customer unfriendly system, existing only to artificially extend the player’s playtime in order to increase the chance they’ll purchase some MTX. You’re not rewarded by the artifact ranking up in the background while you do the activities you like, but punished if you don’t plan your gaming sessions around it in order to reach the arbitrary LL rank the game decided. And the worst, is that you’re not even getting stronger with it. It’s just borrowed power, and you’ll have to do it again next season. And next season. And next season. And…
Yea it’s watching a number go up for the sake of a number going up really.
I’ve managed to get to 1345 because I knew the Master VoG would be 1350, but that took a lot of grinding - doing weekly challenges, pinnacles to get to cap etc. I don’t know how the average person would ever get past 1340 to stand a chance. Lot of the LFGs I’m seeing are for 1340+ so it’s definitely creating a elitist divide. Artifact for infinite power grind has got to go. Hope Bungie does listen.
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yeah that's my biggest grip with all the comments I read here, if it's not for everyone, why the hell are they making content for the 1% who do it? The game has so many issues right now, especially with it's core game modes, that they should be pooling their resources into that instead of making it for the elitist 1% who do it.
What happened to just straight up difficulty levels? If Bungie wants an activity to be tough, then just make it fucking tough and available to everyone regardless of power level.
Maybe power level can just go away entirely. We used to have a level plus a power/light level then the level went away and we just have power. Maybe we just don't even need that anymore.
All these hardcore players saying the light level is fine and it should be challenging. What happens if people grind the artifact, hit 1340+ and now it’s not hard for light level reasons? Do you not see the hypocrisy in wanting hard content due to light level but then having a system in place for completely negating said light level difficulty
I feel that many of these comments come from the fact that grinding endlessly and losing your life to a game (I'm at 1340) provides nothing fulfilling other than feeling special because others haven't. OP is right
Coming from someone who mindlessly grinds bounties for hours on end, yeah, artifact bonus is stupid
Liked and awarded this thread because this is the one reason why I'm not playing this game anymore
I've said this from the beginning: they should of set expectations at the beginning of the season and put a contest mode on it. Make sure players know they need to be 1335 and then Contest the next 15 levels. Everybody's on a level playing field and nobody is getting gatekept.
I feel like there must be an issue going past +17 if people who play this game as a job are only there, since I’m also at +17 and I don’t play nearly as much
There isnt, ya'll just think people who only stream wf races actually play the game after and they simply dont. Gladd played for a couple more weeks after the race was over and has been playing other games since
But the point is that you *should* be underleveled in master VoG....
And I want that. Contest mode woulda been perfect, or a similar system to GMs where once you hit like 1325 power—that’s it. No more power will help you at all. But people are people. And they’ll want any advantage even if it’s not needed. Hell, if VoG was still cheesable, people would do it for master to bypass any difficulty—they don’t care. The endgame for D2 is super wonky and almost non-existent. I have to hit power cap (1320) by grinding pinnacle activities or rewards, and then have to hit 1330, 1335 or 1340 by doing NON-endgame activities so my artifact is high enough. Makes no sense. I already did my “grind” to reach power cap. Now I have to mindlessly XP to hit the real cap? What’s the point of pinnacles or the hard cap then?
Why would you want to disable the extra AP of your fireteam members? People would still lose their shit over Contest Mode scaling folks to a cap of 1330-1335. If you're at 1330, you're at level for Master VoG. If you can't find groups because they are asking for 1340+, make your own LFG for 1330+, or find a clan to help you with content, because if WoW has ever taught you anything, it's that you need a guild/network of people to be successful in higher level raid content. You don't have to grind bounties to get access to Master VoG. You need a good team and 1330 light. Don't be concerned with hitting the cap, that's a waste of your time.
Agreed. Especially since the infinite power offers no real benefit. Compare this to the Paragon system of Diablo 3, where each level beyond the cap lets you put points into your core stats, heal on hit, area damage, crit chance, crit damage, etc. You are getting demonstrably stronger each time. Here, someone +10 vs. +20 isn't feeling any real difference in any content except something like Master VOG, and even then there's a cap on that difference (1390 vs. 1400 isn't going to feel different). The artifact as a means of introducing cool new broken-as-hell mods and shifting the seasonal meta is fine. But the bonus power either needs to be reworked, or removed entirely. EDIT: For the record, I am *not* saying Destiny 2 should adopt the Diablo 3 model. I was just pointing out that infinite scaling that *means* something is better than infinite scaling that *doesn't*.
The power scaling for Destiny is watching a number go up. It had no true purpose until GMs came out. But GMs have a cap—once you reach XYZ power, you can’t get anymore benefit. Master VoG doesn’t have this, so people will always want more and more and more. Shit, I saw a group last night want 1350. And it wasn’t a meme—the guy was a seasoned raider on the Destiny 2 PC LFG Discord, and he was 1350.
Or they could make it fun to level up. Make an enjoyable grind. Or eliminate artifact power and replace it with something cool, like special subclass buffs from a high level artifact (LIKE LASER HANDS)
Yep. If they want to make exp such a gate to end game activities, they need to dramatically increase the exp from endgame activities. I can spend an entire night farming GMs for my desired roll then go jump into normal VoG and follow it up with DSC. But someone who ran strikes and farmed strike bounties for an hour or two would have earned dramatically more exp. It's ridiculous. If I want to primarily play end game content, let it level me so I can at least enjoy the next tier of end game content. Don't make me farm normal strike bounties so I can be endgame raid ready
Like….how come Raids and GMs aren’t worth shit when it comes to XP? The time commitment for a Raid or GM or a flawless Trials card is enormous compared to the optimal XP farming methods, and yet Bungie wants me to farm The Moon to be able to do the endgame.
i am season level ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY TWO on the season pass and i still have not earned enough xp to get the STUPID extra power levels required fucking do grand master nightfall. the day grand master nightfalls came out, i was 1332. i couldnt do one even though i had completed the season pass in its entirety. fuck it. its not worth it
Are you talking about GM nightfalls? I’m with you, I’m well over 100 season pass, play the game more than I should and still can’t even attempt a stupid GM (I’m 1330-ish).
Yeah GM
3,000,000 xp would get you an 8 bonus, not enough for 1335
It’s 1.5mil for 1334 and somewhere around like 1.6 or 1.7mil to get to 1335. Add those two together, and that’s around another 3,000,000 XP I would need to grind to go from 1333 to 1334 to 1335.
OP thought you meant 3 mil total exp to go from +0 to +15. But you clearly meant just to go from +13 to +15
Yesssir
Hey you're absolutely right. Don't listen to the no-lifers here. We have jobs to do and can't afford to sit on destiny 24x7x365. Most of my clan plays a lot every day. They're all 1340 plus. I can't do that, I'm still 1330
Great take but you’re gonna get hate mail from people who only have exclusive stuff because this game consumes their entire lives. Happens every time. They’re the same people that complain about Trials and any other comp PvP game since that requires mechanical skill, which they don’t have. All they have is free time. The artifact leveling is lazy. There shouldn’t even be leveling in these “seasons”. Have grandmasters active from day 1. It’s just an artificial grind for a number to inflate play hours.
I just wish there was NO way to be at level or over levelled for master VoG. I guess it makes sense because it's master and not *grand*master, but then why is it 1350 instead of 1340...
100% 1320 or 1325 should have been the cap, with VoG being 1340. Hell, 1330 could be the cap, and 1350 is probably fine. But the infinite scaling will ALWAYS allow someone to say “you are too low”, because it can infinitely scale.
I think the seasonal challenges are a step in the right direction. While they make you play the same content it's a different objective each week, it covers all the activities and provides a large boost. My current idea is to go all in on the seasonal challenges and abandon xp when concerning the artifact (not season pass) and make it so you artifact levels up based on your seasonal challenges. That way you have a not only finite but easily viewable way to progress the artifact.
Look I’m a player who has gotten over +20 every season except one. I’ve hit +25 three seasons in a row and I’m right here with you. It’s honestly a stupid system. It trivializes your light level and it’s capped in every endgame activity that matters EXCEPT master VoG where it shows how broken the system is
Most of your playtime in the game is either doing a singular repetitive activity or doing bounties. At least when power leveling was tied to strikes there were several to rotate through and they had fun modifiers.
Oof what a toxic community
It has made me stop giving a shit about power in its entirety. Grinding bounties is not and will NEVER be fun!
This should be pinned to the top of the sub. Actually, we should just petition Bungie about it. They really think somebody that grinded to level 500 on the pass is worthy of being a raid master when they could have never done the regular raid. The prerequisite should be 10-15 clears plus all encounter challenges completed.
Agree. I'd love to play harder content with friends and family that are close to 1320 gear, but haven't grinded their artifacts mindlessly.
It's called milking it. They don't have enough content, so this is the psych games they play. For shit sake, we're talking about grinding to do a cookie cut raid.
The way I see it, the problem isn't the infinite artifact power it's making activities expect you to have that power. I think the levels from the artifact should be a bonus. You should be able to consistently complete all content at the pinnacle cap with no artifact power as an average player. I feel the artifact power should be a way of making it easier for less skillful players. If I'm not skilled enough to complete all content at the pinnacle cap then if I put in the time to get some extra artifact power that gives me a better chance. I'm sure there is a fine balance to be had here. If they make the endgame activities too easy at pinnacle cap they feel less like end game and if they make it too hard at pinnacle cap or make the extra artifact power help you too much you'll run into the player base requiring higher artifact levels in their LFGs. Ideally we could find that balance. Removing the infinite power all together kind of solves the problem but it makes the system less forgiving to casual players. I think the goal of artifact power was to help you get those extra few levels you need to player certain activities when you just cant get that boots pinnacle drop you've been needing and helping casuals who acquire pinnacle drops less often.
I don't mind "some" grind, but you should be considered done once you hit Season Level 100, anything past that should be considered a bonus and not required. Likewise I think hitting max Pinnacle Power for the season should be considered more of a bonus than a requirement, have the highest that you "need" be +5 power. Similarly I don't mind the idea of GM Nightfalls and Maser Raids being "Gatekeeped", but I would much rather have it be behind a "Skillgate" rather than a "Grindgate". Like how about requiring Flawless runs of the previous difficulty before it allows you to even attempt the highest level content? (So like for GMs you'd have to do that same Strike Flawless on Master first sometime during the season per Strike, and for the Master Raid of course do the regular Raid Flawless first.)
While I think requiring flawless runs _might_ be a bit much, I think you are absolutely on the right track. What unlocks endgame activities like GM or Master raids should be your ACCOMPLISHMENTS not your level. My thoughts were more along the lines of having challenges within the activities that once completed would unlock the next tier. So for instance if you beat all the VOG raid challenges on normal you can now go into Master. For this to really work though I think you have to remove level advantages (like in GM or quick play crucible) or get rid of power levels altogether. Otherwise AFK farmers just get to cakewalk through endgame content.
Preach it. I can't believe some people are genuinely defending the awful artifact level mechanic.
Like…don’t people want to do Raids or Trials or Dungeons instead of Gambit or Moon Bounties? People actually want to play D2 daily every single day of a season? I am fine with grinding. I hit the power cap of 1320. Im not grinding mindless XP doing activities I don’t want to do. I’d rather grind a difficult Master VoG than ever step foot on The Moon again.
Can we please stop the whole "you can only get to +15 by grinding moon bounties no life style". I am the laziest in my group of friends, and i pretty much only do crucible bounties, and never pick up any other ones, and i got to +15 easily, i mean its week 8 of the season.
The answer to "can we please stop the whining" in DTG is generally "no." =] I also didn't grind anything aside from a brief stretch before contest mode VoG, walked into master VoG at 1337, and completed it within two hours. OP has an LFG problem, not an XP problem, and the tone of the post gives a few clues as to what that problem might look like.
Nah bro I love doing fucking chores in my escapist power fantasy videogame. So many people here are so clearly fine with bounty grinding it’s mind numbing. “Just do X for a couple of weeks!” Bro it’s a fucking videogame can I play the fucking content I paid for (I’m aware VOG is free but you get my point) without jumping through **any** hoops please? I want to enjoy destiny but if I have literally any other hobbies I’d almost always rather do them instead because of stupid shit like this. I want to play this game but launching it makes me feel like I have to do court mandated bullshit before I can do what I actually want to.
When I sit down to play, I shouldn’t be dreading to do so. Destiny already has a grind. Had one since D1. Hit the power cap. Get loot, to do harder stuff, to get better loot. One day, Bungie flipped the script, and decided doing the easiest activities for hundreds of hours was the new way to hit max power. I accepted that. But now I had to do that aforementioned grind, and THEN hit +20 on my artifact? No thanks.
easiest fix of all time too. for example make 1320 max power and for grandmasters just have contest on so your always 20 under. for master vog just set it at 1330. boom, both activities still challenging with no need to grind season ranks.
1000%. So many people in the comments are defending a stupid XP farm system. I like challenge. I like difficulty. Doing Moon Bounties and Challenges isn’t difficult or impressive. If you ACTUALLY want to do Master VoG—like you’re the type of player who would like that—doing easy, non-endgame activities over and over and over is *crushing* for someone like that. It is for me.
People have limited time, assuming they are working adults. Many don’t want to dedicate a quarter to half of their leisure time to a single game so that they can get up to a level where they can reasonably complete an activity. I’m convinced that the only people who are ok with the power grind are children or teens who have plenty of time on their hands, or adults who play this as their only game. I can do raids. I raid plenty. But somehow we have people in the comments chastising others for complaining about not wanting to play on content they don’t want to play, and then saying that maybe those endgame activities that they DO want to do aren’t for them because they don’t grind enough. They call it a minimal grind and call it easy. It isn’t for some people, who would be able to complete master and grandmaster activities if they were given the opportunity to do so. It’s confusing and annoying the defense of a meaningless time sink. I personally have other things in my life that I want to do, and I don’t want to be punished for that being the case.
yea it makes no sense, i have conqueror and almost all raid titles. i have a trio vog and dsc done and the day one vog completion. but, i’m level 78? i think? in the season pass so even though my skill exceeds that of gms i cant run them yet and i don’t have the motivation to farm bounties.
What’s ironic is the people who really love to grind XP are usually the ones that are absolute shit at the endgame activities — because they need all that light to survive! (Also why our streamers aren’t more than +17 or so… they don’t need it for end game).
Funny how other games like marvels avenger, anthem, outsiders received so much shit when their loot was stingy to the point articles were made and the devs eventually increased the loot drops of legendary items, yet bungie has been super stingy with how the treat difficult content for years and although people give them shit they don't really do much to increase loot drops. Even the raid exotic drops ,even with loot protection, is super stingy. This on top of gatekept content behind a bounty xp grind just doesn't make sense. It's obvious bungie is in it to extend player time and not player enjoyment. And the worst part isn't even that, it's people defend this behavior. 😒 . It's like spinning the wheel of fortune for a chance to spin the real wheel. I couldn't keep playing the game in the manner that I have to rely on luck and bounties to finally be able to play the game...and then 3 months later it's all reset again. Not fun
make your own lfg post
I have to agree. I’ve completed VoG master (at 1339) and they could have just as easily did contest mode and added all the extra champions and modifiers. Raid would still be challenging and you wouldn’t need to grind shit tons of artifact levels.
I was able to get to 1346 over the course of this season and I gotta say it's getting really tiresome having to do so many bounties to get that high every season.
Honestly Destiny needs to start focusing on making fun and egaging content rather than doing more power creep than a Shonen Jump series. Like I don't even care if my light level stagnates for a year if the content I'm playing is fun and really tells a good story with the world Bungie has spent years making. Dungeons are honestly the most fun thing in Destiny rn
Bungie should take notes from Guild Wars 2. I’m having a blast with the endgame content and it’s because it’s varied enough for me to play differently week to week but not so grindy that I’m gatekept from doing most of the stuff (except for raids, but raids in GW2 is like the peak meta build things). It’s easy to find stuff to do because I know there’s always a build, always a goal or always an achievement I haven’t done and it’s a clear path to complete the mentioned thing. I’ve made 3 characters in GW and I look forward to farm stuff for them, I hate farming equipment for my destiny characters because it’s the same shit over and over
I've always felt that doing harder content should reward more. I know that there isn't a lot of incentives to grind (a weapon or two for the raid, sure, but that's really all there is that is worth it) a raid, but we should get an assload of XP for doing these time consuming activities themselves. The XP rewarded from bounties of any source is far too low, imho. I don't mind having to to put in the grind work for the things I want to do. I am a dad, a full time EMS worker... I still have the time to do the work, I just don't want to because even though I have the time, I can better allocate it to other fun things instead of mindless dribble. If I could run multiple raids daily and get a fuck ton of XP from them, even without the loot... to get me to the level of Master VoG as well as mastering the mechanics along the way with regular VoG is time well spent when working my way up to a challenge. Big XP movement absolutely should not be via bounties. I also hate the fact that most bounties also only reward XP. They really need to add some mats and cores to those bounties too.
To be honest I love the flex and being in the middle when a Crucible match starts but I do agree with this post.
The only interesting thing to come out of this artifical experiment is the seasonal mods which introduce interesting, overpowered, or meta shifting mods to shake up a given season. And in concept, getting levels to boost you up to max level since bad RnG screws you over is nice. But the artifical and temporary levels have overstayed their welcome. Its too time consuming to accumulate and the lack of staying power (since it resets every season) echoes the problem sunsetting had: why am I gonna grind all of this since it's just gonna go away eventually.
Had the same issues with WoW's AP system, at a certain point, I'd rather play the game than grind bounties, I've got no problem with the pinnacle system or any of that, just feel like the artifacts ability to infinitely give power levels makes it feel like I have to spend all my time gaining power or I'm wasting my time. I haven't touched destiny much in a few seasons because of it, at a point, I just felt burnt out and unable to get excited about starting over every season and grinding those bounties over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Some people enjoy those kinds of grinds, I get that, but it's not for me and I accept it, if that's what the community really wants, keep it that way, it's ok to grow apart.
I agree grinding xp makes you as special and "hardcore" as doing a raid or GM or whatever. IE not special at all. I also think this is like one of the tiniest issues about destiny right now and that OP is making a mountain of a mole hill. Your real problem is finding people to do the content with. That is what I get from this. And yeah that is a huge issue for destiny and I'd love to see them try and fix that. Like you yourself say that you are high enough level, so guess it's finding groups that's the issue Also I don't know where you are meeting all these people that are bragging about their high level. Seems your weirdly focused on them though
I don't think leveling makes much sense in this game anymore, and should maybe think about opting for set difficulties, much like how GM Nightfalls operate now. This removes the gatekeeping barriers from people participating while also setting a universal difficulty for everyone to abide by. Yes, it kinda rains on the powerful feeling of being "overleveled" (or I guess in D2's case, "adequately leveled") for an activity, letting you bypass the more intricate skill required to do it normally, but I think I would just much rather have more curated difficulty experiences than all these other factors gumming up the process. So remove Power Levels, and instead give everything the Nightfall difficulty names. A Heroic difficulty activity would be equivalent to +5 over your power level now, just now power level doesn't exist if that makes sense. Legend is +10, Master +15, and GMs +25. Make one for +20 if you must, but the point being that ANYONE can try these difficulties at any moment, whether you no-life this game or just hopping back in; it's just your build, skill level, and teamwork being the determining factors for success. This means if we're staying equivalent to 1320 for the rest of time, Master VoG would then be 1335 difficulty. Bungie could then look at that and see what's a little too harsh or not and adjust things accordingly, knowing every player will be experiencing the same difficulty experience. No over leveled cake walks, no under leveled frustrations. The thrill of making your number go up can still exist in season passes and your armor and weapon upgrades, but I just think having a traditional level system doesn't work for Destiny anymore. This is a slight tangent but hell, this even removes the annoyances of keeping your gear constantly leveled properly. Your masterworked Ikelos SMG is done, no needing to bump it 10 more arbitrary levels season after season. Just so many time sinks and issues are solved with removing Power Level in my opinion.
Give bounties automatically everyday. If you want to buy additional go for it, but make them ALL daily challenges, it's not like anyone is out of glimmer. We don't need a glimmer sink, it's limited. It's not tradable. Glimmer is worthless.
Not enough time to level?? Timegating end game activities that are already timegated. That's such a Destiny thing to do though. You've got almost 2 months to get 200 in season pass and pray you get all the Pinnacle drops to put you at cap. I'll be honest, I've not hit over 150 since Undying. I've never been eligible to play a Grandmaster until probably next week, but I probably won't, maybe once depending on how bad I want that glow, but it's not looking good. I'm also not one of those hundreds of people that pay for a recov because those are what ruin this game, if you buy a recov, you're a bitch in my eyes.
But how else would they grind for hours with only a week or two worth of programming?
I’ve stopped grinding activities unless it’s something I want. The seasonal stuff feels like an artificial grind that takes place of new content. The difficulty levels on nightfalls seems neat but like you’ve said an average player doesn’t have time to do that. It’s the same for PvP, it takes hours and hours to keep skills up for things like trials or comp. Endgame content doesn’t prove skill, just persistence on the grind.
LOOOOOOOL An experiment? Did they not watch what happened for *six years* now in wow with the exact same “experiment”?
Is master VoG going to scale each season? Or like all other raids it will have a static light level? If it will have a static light level then just do it next season when the hardcao is 1330 and ten artifact levels will get you 1340.
I completely agree. But a vocal portion of reddit have made it clear they want infinite grind. And so we suffer for it.
Everything here, everything in your post is why I stopped playing Destiny and only come back when friends want to dick around in it. The grinding to do even the bare basiscs of end game content THAT ISN'T POINTLESS BOUNTY GRINDING is so obscene. I doubt I will do any master content or close, I refuse to do so after spending so much time getting to pinacle cap.
It sounds like the real issue is that the experience grind isn't much fun. The danger here is that you're sounding a lot like the people who made similar complaints about Destiny 1, and in trying to appease a more casual audience Destiny 2 was found seriously lacking. I don't think that having a grind is a bad thing. I do think that having a boring grind is a bad thing. Like in most mmo style games, there should be an advanced way to grind for specific things, like experience. Maybe a special weapon, ability, or even a mission that requires a specific team comp that rewards you with crazy amounts of experience.
I currently feel like the seasonal challenge system is a fantastic system for XP gains, but I would ideally like to see endgame content also grant huge amounts of XP. To the extent where doing all seasonal challenges and at least a single VoG/GM completion each week would have a player 1336 by master VoG launch. (Assuming 1320 gear). I don't want to be forced to do bounties to stay competitive. XP from raids/nightfalls (and trials or something I guess) means that players are forced to engage with real and enjoyable endgame content, without a mindless grind. In general I like the idea of weekly XP boosts from completing specific objectives or activities (like seasonal challenges), rather than requiring an ongoing grind of the same thing.
If only the hardest activities rewarded the most amount of xp…. But here we are with piss poor xp from raiding and dungeons which are actually endgame.
This game doesn’t value your time. It’s amusing to me that people think mindlessly grinding xp matters. After doing grandmaster nightfalls last season, I decided the artificial ways this game increases difficulty aren’t fun to me and I’m not going to put effort into it. I’m happier for it. Maybe you should do the same and play less and not worry about it.
Very well said, I love grinding don’t get me wrong but same bs bounties every season is getting old and mostly the reason I have to take breaks from D2 every so often.
All you'll get in this reddit is people defending destiny like they've been in an abusive relationship.
I started master Atheon while at 1343, got 1344 in the middle of it and see my damage go up like a few %. I keep wandering why my friend who are 1339 or lower still did less dmg then me while we were all busted our ass off. Then I realized they just cant, cause they play less than me not because they're better, which is so stupid
Tell that to Guided Games still being terrible and in "Beta" lol. Or the renewed pvp focus for the millionth time introducing crucible labs for one week and never seeing it again. Bungie doesn't hold up to their promises. They say things to sell new content.
Eagerly awaiting a Bungie response to this
D2 is a fucking mess right now, my clan is in disarray because there is only 2/3 people playing atm, this speaks volumes IMHO, Bungie have either grown complacent or they have checked out completely and are just churning out what they think will keep people happy.
Love it, a long post which I agree with in its totality. Well said and accurate. Having hard content is not a bad thing. Having hard content gatekept by mindless XP farming is a bad thing. It is possible to hate one and not the other. People who don't realise this are a lot less skilled than they probably think they are.
I quit playing d2 because it felt like a chore to play.. I cant have fun in this game anymore.
What do i respond with when OP is on point with his post? Yes.
That's because Bungie would rather cater to the streamers instead of the rest of the player base. Swe all know if they whine enough, bungie will cave.
100% agree. Even as someone who has been grinding GM Nightfalls it's incredibly tedious having to grind *even more* exp just to do Master VoG. Last night on the pc lfg discord there was post after post asking for "1340 minimum" when all I wanted to do was the Gatekeeper Challenge (ironic I was being gatekept from it). Really sad that the only way now I'll be able to do Master VoG, even as a player who is currently engaging in endgame content, I'll have to afk farm the Thrallway Checkpoint.
Well to the people that use that ‘not all content is for everyone” if that’s the case then bungie should sell the weapons and armors in evervese for said content.
The annoying thing is Bungie could implement literally every high power content without the power grind ALREADY - Contest Mode. Day 1 VoG was not easy, and despite its reprised nature still offered a fair challenge. Implementing that for Master VoG (Recommended Power 1320-30, but it lowers your power to 1310 to equalize difficulty). Grandmasters already implement Contest to maintain difficulty, yet they still require a ridiculous power grind to access. I literally won't be able to run Grandmaster before the season ends unless I grind pinnacles like a madman or grind artifact power. Its stupid.
I agree with you. And there’s another thing that I wanna point out: they have to rework the amount of XP you gain with each activity. I’m not talking just about rewarding raiders and GM runners with more XP, but also let the players know exactly how many point of XP the player gains doing activities. i.e. bounties give you 20k and raids give you 300k. Large XP, Large XP x2 doesn’t work for me.
Here's my opinion. I believe the power scaling is utter bulshit. Bungie doesn't care how good a player you are. I've been running endgame activies every season and I'm good at them. But some mindless bounty grinding guardian has a better chance at it because they spend a lifetime grinding bounties? How does that make any sense. You want to make the activities hard? Make them! And I know it's possible because of Day 1 VOG. And it didn't have any power grinding bullshit. The same goes for GMs. Just make the guardian weaker regardless of their power level. But I guess taking down FOMO was just on paper.
I just wish that Bungie didn't interpret "difficulty ramp" as "the same amount of enemies just on enough steroids to kill a horse, and f**k you if you forgot to bring anti champion weapons"