They say they don't want to put matchmaking in the game because playing with randoms would be too hard for their content. Then they encourage you to join their forums and make posts about joining raids with randoms. So instead of the game just quickly grabbing a few guys to put in your party you get to spend time reading and posting on their forum to try and find people.
That kind of stuff and the lack of chat filters in The Tower and everywhere else just seem like the walled garden is a little too secure. "Man, if only I could communicate with these players other than pointing wildly at something, like, say, using my voice." "Man, I need to find someone to fill out this party. None of my clan is on, and none of my friends are at an appropriate level. If only there were a way to find someone in the game right now (because everyone's online) to fill that void, even for a short time, just so I can experience something."
They say they don't want to put matchmaking in the game because playing with randoms would be too hard for their content. Then they encourage you to join their forums and make posts about joining raids with randoms. So instead of the game just quickly grabbing a few guys to put in your party you get to spend time reading and posting on their forum to try and find people.
That kind of stuff and the lack of chat filters in The Tower and everywhere else just seem like the walled garden is a little too secure. "Man, if only I could communicate with these players other than pointing wildly at something, like, say, using my voice." "Man, I need to find someone to fill out this party. None of my clan is on, and none of my friends are at an appropriate level. If only there were a way to find someone in the game right now (because everyone's online) to fill that void, even for a short time, just so I can experience something."
So, I played the beta on a PS3 (only game I have ever played on it - I HATE the controller) without a mic. I was assuming I couldnt hear other players because I had it set up wrong. On the 360/XB1can you really not talk to someone you are standing next to?
If so, that seems a bit fracking insane. They should give you an option to opt in/out of such a thing, but that certainly shouldnt be the only choice.
This close to launch, a lot of the chatter in the community is about endgame content. It’s one of the few very closely guarded secrets about Destiny that remain. As much as the Raids that await the most vigilant Guardians are shrouded in mystery, there are some things about them that should be known prior to Day One.
Thus, Design Lead Luke Smith has become uncharacteristically chatty about them. Through a contrived question and answer session under the hot lights, he’s spilling the first of the beans that lie between you and the completion of the toughest content Bungie has built to date. Check out the debriefing that he offered up voluntarily:
Q: I read somewhere that it took 45 minutes just to open the door to the Raid, what's the deal with that?
Luke: Sounds like that group (it was DeeJ’s!) had some communication issues.
For the majority of Raid encounters, you're going to need to work as a group. That group of six is trying to form a metaphorical key which opens a given encounter's lock.
By design, we don’t provide much in the way of information to groups in Raids. There aren’t waypoints to follow, or objectives explaining what to do in a given situation. Realistically, for many players, they’ll be turning to the Internet for help on how to do a bunch of the Raid.
There's an old Bungie quote about not wanting players to go to the Internet to figure out solutions. That quote certainly wasn't about Raiding in Destiny.
We fully expect players to either publish strategy guides on the Internet or keep their group's secrets guarded close to the vest in an effort to keep their rewards even more exclusive.
Once your group understands how to open the Vault, it's not going to take anywhere near 45 minutes.
Q: What about the rumor that some “clan” spent 16+ hours playing the Raid and didn't beat it, what's the deal with that?
Luke: There's a whole bunch of missing information in that sentence. So let's just talk about that particular weekend.
In March 2014, we brought an organized clan of folks in to playtest the Raid. This would be one of the only times the Vault of Glass would be played by external participants.
These folks are shooter players, not -- for the most part -- Raiders from other games. They are a group of people used to working together primarily in competitive multiplayer games, and hadn't been exposed to an experience like this before.
We arranged the 24 visitors into four teams.
We put them through a pretty lengthy UR study, filmed them, datamined their adventures, and watched them play it live. Later, the Raid team spent a bunch of time watching player perspective films we captured during the day.
We did not offer them help, tips or tricks during their time here. We didn't clarify mechanics for them. We watched, listened and learned.
In two days of playing - where they broke for meals and had some ramp up time with the game on day 1, here's what happened:
Two groups made it to the final encounter. Neither group defeated it.
One group made it to the final encounter, but had to be skipped through an earlier encounter.
One group washed out and elected to go back to playing Strikes, Missions and Patrols.
With the goal of as many players beating the Normal Raid as were willing to organize, cooperate and communicate, we made a bunch of tuning changes through the rest of the Spring.
Q: A “Normal Raid?” What is that? How does difficulty work in Destiny Raids?
Luke: There are two difficulties for Raiding: Normal and Hard. Upon finishing a Raid on Normal, players can attempt the Hard-mode version of the Raid.
Normal mode is about learning the mechanics, working together as a team and building strategies to overcome the encounters.
For instance: I’ve gotten a handful of Bungie groups through the Raid on Normal, and you guys (the playerbase) are inevitably better at the game, smarter tacticians, and more clever than we are.
Hard modes demand execution.
In addition to deadlier combatants, tighter tuning windows for encounter mechanics and a handful of targeted differences, Hard-mode encounters leverage an even harsher death penalty than the Normal modes.
Were we to track things like World Firsts, we'd be verifying Hard-mode kills instead of completing the Raid on Normal.
Q: Seriously, how long will it take, I have a life.
Luke: Because we store your progress in a given week, you don't need to clear the activity in one-go. Your group could simply make your way into the Vault and call it an evening, reconvene later in the week and pick up where you left off.
However, your progress for the week is reset each Tuesday at the Weekly Reset.
Q: What's kind of loot will I get in the Raid?
Luke: Each class has an entire set of gear to chase across the two difficulties.
And of course, there are Raid weapons. Each of Destiny’s nine weapon archetypes (Auto Rifle, Hand Cannon, Pulse Rifle, Fusion Rifle, HMG, Rocket Launcher, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun and Scout Rifle) has a Legendary version that has been created specifically for the Raid.
The armor and weapons are completely unique to the Raid activity. They are visually and thematically connected to the combatants you'll fight in the Vault of Glass.
And of course, there are more rewards behind the Vault’s door that we won’t detail today.
Q: How does looting work in Destiny Raids?
Luke: The loot you get is private to you - just like the rest of the game.
Obtaining loot from a given encounter means that character is not eligible to receive loot from the same encounter again in a given calendar week. This is often referred to as a "Lockout."
I italicized “character” above, because if you have multiple Raid-ready characters, you can run the Raid again on a different character - and the Lockout isn't applied to it.
Each encounter has a fixed inventory of items it can award to players, e.g., certain pieces of gear or weapons can only drop from certain encounters.
Lockouts are cleared at the Weekly Reset.
Q: Would you give an example of a mechanic that we'd face in a Destiny Raid?
Luke: Absolutely not.
Hey. I never promised he would tell you everything.
You’ll have the chance to discover all of this pain, and suffering, heart-pounding action, and mind-blowing cyphering under fire from the nastiest beasts we can imagine. Soon.
One more weekly update, friends. Then, Destiny is yours.
My concern is, will we get to choose to accept the piece of loot we get? Just for example, Final Fantasy 14 does their dungeons just like that. Every class has a specific set of gear you can get, you're allowed one piece a week. But there, you have to roll for it. So if I'm the healer and the healer gloves come up, I can choose to roll against the other healer to get em, or pass and wait for something else I want. Since your Destiny character has a vacuum in his pocket and picks up everything automatically, will we get stuck getting boring gloves when we really want the weapon instead?
The way I understand is that everyone get's loot only for them. There is no way to pass it and you can only get each thing once.
Correct. No trading. But you can put items in your vault and it's shared among your characters. If you get a fancy gun but update to something else, you can pass it down to one of your alternate characters!
The PAX panel was absolutely worthless. 30 min. of boring nothing then the stream broke. The next I saw, it was over.
If one speck of info was in the panel, I didn't see it. I'm very disappointed. Wasted my effing time, except the Halo 2A PAX Showdown was on too and it was perfectly exciting. Even the commercial breaks were excellent.
HALO beats everything! Sorry, just cranky. Destiny will be good too, as long as I don't have to see and hear Luke Smith.
Sort of my main block to ever going to a game related PAX-type event is every panel I have ever watched.
Even the ones where I have a vested personal interest (knowing the participants) and where the material is incredibly interesting to me have tipped me directly into comatose mode.
Maybe they are better in person, but I can't imagine not just yelling out in the middle of them "what's a Nubian!"
Auorifles getting a nerf. This is good. The rest was kinda a waste.
Agreed. I used Scout Rifles and did well, but definitely felt like Auto Rifles were strong. Glad to see them balancing things a bit, may even give the hand cannons a try. But, I have a feeling SRs will be right where I feel at home.
Auorifles getting a nerf. This is good. The rest was kinda a waste.
Agreed. I used Scout Rifles and did well, but definitely felt like Auto Rifles were strong. Glad to see them balancing things a bit, may even give the hand cannons a try. But, I have a feeling SRs will be right where I feel at home.
think they have already announced new balancing to HCs (one extra round) and PR (reduced recoil).
but yea - I liked the scout rifle the most. I started using the HC the last day in pve stuff just for kicks - worked pretty well
Auorifles getting a nerf. This is good. The rest was kinda a waste.
Agreed. I used Scout Rifles and did well, but definitely felt like Auto Rifles were strong. Glad to see them balancing things a bit, may even give the hand cannons a try. But, I have a feeling SRs will be right where I feel at home.
think they have already announced new balancing to HCs (one extra round) and PR (reduced recoil). but yea - I liked the scout rifle the most. I started using the HC the last day in pve stuff just for kicks - worked pretty well
You are correct sir! I still think the recoil HCs have will still place them behind SRs for me though. I felt like I could consistently nail headshots with SRs. But maybe the difference between weapons will be a different ballgame at level 20.
That kind of stuff and the lack of chat filters in The Tower and everywhere else just seem like the walled garden is a little too secure. "Man, if only I could communicate with these players other than pointing wildly at something, like, say, using my voice." "Man, I need to find someone to fill out this party. None of my clan is on, and none of my friends are at an appropriate level. If only there were a way to find someone in the game right now (because everyone's online) to fill that void, even for a short time, just so I can experience something."
So, I played the beta on a PS3 (only game I have ever played on it - I HATE the controller) without a mic. I was assuming I couldnt hear other players because I had it set up wrong. On the 360/XB1can you really not talk to someone you are standing next to?
If so, that seems a bit fracking insane. They should give you an option to opt in/out of such a thing, but that certainly shouldnt be the only choice.
Just reading now myself.
So, weekly Raiding activities ending on Tuesdays.
My concern is, will we get to choose to accept the piece of loot we get? Just for example, Final Fantasy 14 does their dungeons just like that. Every class has a specific set of gear you can get, you're allowed one piece a week. But there, you have to roll for it. So if I'm the healer and the healer gloves come up, I can choose to roll against the other healer to get em, or pass and wait for something else I want. Since your Destiny character has a vacuum in his pocket and picks up everything automatically, will we get stuck getting boring gloves when we really want the weapon instead?
The way I understand is that everyone get's loot only for them. There is no way to pass it and you can only get each thing once.
Correct. No trading. But you can put items in your vault and it's shared among your characters. If you get a fancy gun but update to something else, you can pass it down to one of your alternate characters!
The PAX panel was absolutely worthless. 30 min. of boring nothing then the stream broke. The next I saw, it was over.
If one speck of info was in the panel, I didn't see it. I'm very disappointed. Wasted my effing time, except the Halo 2A PAX Showdown was on too and it was perfectly exciting. Even the commercial breaks were excellent.
HALO beats everything! Sorry, just cranky. Destiny will be good too, as long as I don't have to see and hear Luke Smith.
Sort of my main block to ever going to a game related PAX-type event is every panel I have ever watched.
Even the ones where I have a vested personal interest (knowing the participants) and where the material is incredibly interesting to me have tipped me directly into comatose mode.
Maybe they are better in person, but I can't imagine not just yelling out in the middle of them "what's a Nubian!"
Auorifles getting a nerf. This is good. The rest was kinda a waste.
Agreed. I used Scout Rifles and did well, but definitely felt like Auto Rifles were strong. Glad to see them balancing things a bit, may even give the hand cannons a try. But, I have a feeling SRs will be right where I feel at home.
You are correct sir! I still think the recoil HCs have will still place them behind SRs for me though. I felt like I could consistently nail headshots with SRs. But maybe the difference between weapons will be a different ballgame at level 20.
One week!