QuickTidal, on 08 July 2016 - 12:41 PM, said:
Silencer, on 08 July 2016 - 11:12 AM, said:
Haha, it was a bit underwhelming. I plan to get it filled out - the first MoT was a pain in the ass but nothing a bit if lfg and determination couldn't solve
Incidentally, the new Prison of Elders, despite being recommended Light 320, was handily completed by two people around Light 303 - I was surprised it was so easy, just a bit of a slog. Only three rounds and none of them anything we couldn't handle despite the Light difference. If you tried Skolas 10+ levels too low without a full fireteam you'd never make it. O.o
I mean, not like I was rocking a high score or anything, but in terms of just "getting it done" it was practically a casual experience.
The real fight for this year's MoT will be the Crucible quest line (ugh) and maybe the Exotic sword one (largely because I haven't progressed that very far yet out of disinterest). Everything else is either a case of just lfg or some small effort.
The exotic sword quest, while long...is pretty easy if your 300light or more. I never finished the last act of it (which was killing two guys at the end of a certain strike [I forget the names or the strike]) because in any given strike I was a lone wolf and you need to kill the guys in a specific succession within seconds of one another, so you need a coordinated fireteam to pull it off. But yeah, the whole thing is just a grind, and not particularly difficult.
The Crucible questline (Which I did complete) is also a grind, but not particularly hard, and opens up the Shaxx bounties which always deliver nice stuff each week.
It's funny, I look at that list of MoT and I did half of them already, just out of searching for questlines to run a few months back.
For me, any Destiny questline that is a grind is the worst. I'd rather play one hard, honest fight than spend hours doing vaguely repetitive tasks to complete some arbitrary set of criteria - and the Crucible is, uhm, not my favourite thing to do in Destiny to begin with, shall we say?
Personally, I just don't understand the diversity on the list - "equip one fully leveled year two class" is gonna be a gimme for basically any current player. Next to that is Hard Mode Oryx and PoE Elder Sigil completion, both of which are difficult for anyone not endowed with a fireteam or two to play with, and the Crucible questline which is both notoriously long/frustrating and is a huge turnoff for anyone either not good at PvP or not interested in it. Those things sit at VERY opposite ends of the scale with very little middle ground.
Don't get me wrong - I don't dislike the idea of Moments of Triumph, and it's good to get players to try something new, but in a game already bloated with grind and activities that either lock out or are forced upon players to raise their Light, the list is not awesome, imnsho. The only reason I'm going to subject myself to this particular grind is basically to say I did it and because I'd be remiss in not getting Y2 after I went to the effort of getting Y1 (including *barely* beating Skolas HM on like the day it (would have) expired).
I guess my problem is that I view most of this stuff as chores, now, not as entertainment. And there's almost nothing in it for me, really. I mean, two average shaders and emblems that I won't use, plus minor bragging rights? Well, OK, guess I'll grind it out, then. XD
In a way it's like the later levels of Halo: Reach ranks. I busted up to Colonel Grade 2 - and my main wingman pushed all the way up to General (this was when he had a LOT more free time to play than I did) because he wanted the GUNGNIR helmet and Emile's Kukri shoulder piece. But there came a point in that ascension where earning the weekly commendations became a chore, where there was a diminishing point of returns for effort - namely, you ran out of stuff you actually wanted for your Spartan, and the daily and weekly challenges were either frustrating or too heavily focused on one area of gameplay to make it viable for someone who primarily played SWAT or campaign to obtain. It was *work*, instead of play. That was fine though, because I could still just play the game and have fun in SWAT or chatting away while playing the campaign. In Destiny, it's all so...samey. Whether I'm working for it or playing to kill time, it feels the same.
Personally, I blame the levels. The levels/Light levels and the RNG loot are
Skinner Boxes of the highest order. If dat gameplay wasn't so smooth I doubt I'd still be playing. Firing up Reach the other day to run some coop still just felt so good - every enemy was an earned kill, the campaign was a stellar story (despite being relatively plot-lite), and the little touches like NPCs, AI teammates with dialogue and personalities, something tangible being at stake, epic assassination animations for backstab kills, and the fact that the campaign actually felt like a legit war, plus the much more flexible customisation of your character (that had no impact on the game, so you could wear what looked the coolest without sacrificing major in-game benefits)....dayum. The only issues I had were the lag (because backwards compatibility is pretty average, apparently) the fact that the controls were not as smooth as Destiny (and before Destiny was a thing, obviously this was not a comparison that could be made), and that no-one is online so I can't play some SWAT.
Even then, I wonder if the controls feeling less-than-instinctive was actually a good thing? Like, in Destiny the controls and the motion is *so* fluid that you kinda forget about it, which is theoretically great but might actually be a drawback because it means everything feels too easy? I dunno. Just spitballing. Coupled with the point you reach level-wise where 90% of activities are below your level, it just makes the PvE content empty. Then again, the remaining 10% of PvE is just damage sponges, so....
Anyway, TL;DR - don't really expect either of you to respond to my little rant there (feel free to, though), but I just think that there's so much more Destiny could have been to prevent grindy stuff like this. Goddamn progression systems and their
Skinner Box tendencies. I really need to take a long break from the game, I think, and just not play. MoT will stop me from doing that sadly and it's such an easy game to default to for killing time - but I might make a concerted effort to knock out the MoT this month, then leave the game alone until Rise of Iron drops in September. Hopefully by then I'll be less "over it". (Though I must confess I fear for Destiny 2 given Bungie seems to think the game is currently perfect and happy and not at all needing revision in the next DLC....god I hope they got to make the game Staten imagined back in the pre-reboot development...open spaces...great story...customisable gear and differentiated classes...bloody Activision...)
But yes, they won't be *that* hard. Just the hardest part of the offerings for me to grind through.
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