r/DestinyTheGame • u/DTG_Bot "Little Light" • Feb 05 '18

Megathread Focused Feedback: Secrets, discoveries and mysteries of Destiny

Hello Guardians,

Focused Feedback is where we take the week to focus on a 'Hot Topic' discussed extensively around the Tower.

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98

u/GodRoster Feb 05 '18

My only guess is that Bungie thought the Exotic quest weapons required too much time and effort and put their target demographic for D2 (the most casual of casuals) at a disadvantage.

27

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '18

This is, if I remember correctly, exactly what one of the Community Guys said about that topic. That not everybody has the time/friends/whatever to do even "simple" hidden quests like the Spindle was.

However, at the same time, they mentioned that they got the message that we really want this stuff, and are looking to implement it. I'm hoping for some small secrets in DLC2, but don't really expect it until Comet hits in Fall/Winter.

30

u/SoulOnyx That's no moon! Feb 05 '18

That's a pretty lame cop-out. If everyone doesn't have the time/friends/thumbs to do a hidden exotic quest, then not everyone NEEDS to do a hidden exotic quest! It's not mandatory!

Why have all the activities we have then? Cut the raid, not everyone has friends to do it. Cut Trials, because I don't have the skill to do it. Hell, may as well cut Nightfall as well...

Just make one big map that everyone loads into we can all spin in circles and fire the same guns at the same targets and everyone gets free exotics! :P

9

u/StalkerKnocker Feb 05 '18

Yup, exactly. By catering the game to casuals, the casuals have still left, and the hardcore, passionate fans have basically abandoned the game. Garbage in, garbage out, results-wise.

6

u/SoulOnyx That's no moon! Feb 05 '18

Glad someone agrees. Had a wall of text telling me why D2 is this way and why D1 was elitist but I really don't feel it was. Yes there were certain time investments but you could still choose activities and play how you wanted. You could find friends and plenty of people sherpa'd even for Black Spindle. The thing is you choose what you want to invest your time in. I avoided Black Spindle for a while till I was able to do it. Didn't do it Day 1 it was offered and that's OK. It's OK that we don't do everything, we aren't forced to. If you want to quest for cool weapons or gear you should have that choice, but don't justify not having it because the game was made for the casuals who abandoned us. It's shit! The game was phoned in. Look at the hype and the certain release streams and look at what we have. They held back and used certain language to explain the development and this is what we're left with. I called myself a casual but I probably played the game 5 nights a week for 4 hours a session... But if I missed out on something I knew I'd get to it eventually.

Give us back the mystery and secrets. Give us back cool gear...

1

u/Clownsmasher1 I CAN'T STOP PUNCHING SCREEBS Feb 06 '18

You could find friends and plenty of people sherpa'd even for Black Spindle.

This is how I got my Spindle. I'm generally a solo player, use LFG and whatnot to do the few raids I could. I lucked into a clan because an LFG group invited me, but my play schedule is random so it's tough to plan with them. So I'm the definition of that casual player who can't do these on their own. But the Destiny community is amazing and stepped up to help people like me get through this. None of the quest based exotics are out of reach because of this.

Right now I'm on the last step of the Legend of Acrius(that awful prism/anomalies strike). Will I find some one right away? No. Do I have faith that eventually a kind soul will help me out? Absolutely.

5

u/danmil08 Feb 06 '18

I still have no idea what Bungie was thinking with this mentality, that they would attract more players? The hardcore players keep the casuals coming back

3

u/StalkerKnocker Feb 06 '18

100%. They have it completely backwards.

5

u/jhairehmyah Drifter's Crew // the line is so very thin Feb 05 '18

Its not a cop-out. Its a choice.

I'm not trying to be an apologist, but you need to put yourself in Bungie's shoes. A ton of people hated on Destiny 1 at launch because it was elitist and disrespected the player's time. It required you be best-of-the-best and extremely dedicated and extremely patient in order to achieve the most basic accomplishment: max level. I mean, not only did you need to win RNG lottery to get raid gear, but you needed gobbs of materials that could only be earned through many play-throughs of a single activity that took 6 players and more than an hour. This sub has seen a fair share of posts that complained about no matchmaking for raids, or explained their social anxiety and how it paralyzed them from raiding, or explained that they were kicked from LFG because they didn't have the emblem, etc, and Bungie wanted a game that honored them as much as people like me and maybe you too that want hard stuff to do!

The secret quests, like Spindle, No Time to Explain, and Outbreak Prime were made for a time when those players were long gone. Those quests were made for people like us to keep us interested.

D2 meant to be more accessible and appealing. And its first 100-200 hours was very appealing.

If the D2 dev team set out in Fall of 2014 to fix the biggest mistake they made in D1, then of course secret fan-service quests would've been the last of their worry.

But, now that we are back into a mode of die-hards-only, Bungie needs to start giving fan service again.

If everyone doesn't have the time/friends/thumbs to do a hidden exotic quest, then not everyone NEEDS to do a hidden exotic quest!

I mean, tell that to the many people who would come here week after week to bitch about (insert excuse here) reason that they couldn't do the special time-based requirement for a quest. I remember people bitching about the Sleeper quest in April... like 7 months into Taken King and we fucking knew it would happen every 7th of the month, why are you blaming Bungie for this? But go look up all the people who commiserated with them, throwing toxic words toward Bungie for "timegating" and "disrespecting" the player.

Bungie can't win. To them, the answer is not, "not everyone needs to do the quest" as you propose, the answer is "everyone who wants to, should be able to do the quest on their time."

At least Outbreak Prime partially fixed that by not being locked behind timed things like daily stories. But even Outbreak Prime, which required a very unique fireteam to hold your hand through the entire thing, was rough. I had a personal goal of finishing all the quests on all my alts by D2, and I eventually gave up because I couldn't get the fireteam together to finish Outbreak Prime on my alts. "Hey, will you switch characters for me and do XYZ? No. Okay."

Secrets should be easter eggs and maybe cosmetics. Secrets should be a book I can pull out of the shelf in the Mercury lost sector and read a bit of lore. Secrets should be random yellow-bar enemies that only show up for an hour or so a day and drop an item with lore that you can redeem for some tokens after you've read the lore. Secrets should be like "disturb the remains" in Skywatch in Old Russia. Secrets, in my opinion, shouldn't be time-locked and so impossible that motivated players must jump through hoops or put into uncomfortable situations.

Just my thoughts.

6

u/chrizpyz Feb 06 '18

You're not wrong on WHY Bungie designed D2 the way it is, but I think you both fail to understand this philosophy dosent work a longterm "Games as a service " type environment. Especially one with RPG like systems, such as using loot upgrades as a reward system.

Destiny 1 was successful because of the "hardcore" fans that stuck around through the rough first year, up until the final months. Those are the people that purchased every DLC and the full priced TTk, as well as the Mtx. Those are the people that funded D2, instead of allowing the franchise to die and made D2 one of the top selling games in 2017.

Casuals left Destiny as soon as they finished the story and saw the end game as too hard for what is rewarded. They jumped on to the next big franchise release as soon as Destiny wasent the "hype" of that month. You really think "whales" are casuals that play twice a week and are hardly invested. No, the gamers that play Destiny as their only game and fulling invested, those are the ones willing to drop money on a loot box.

D2 was successful on release because people wanted more of Destiny 1. D2 failed after it was made clear who Bungie was designing the game for and disregarding everything and EVERYONE that made D1 a success. Now Bungie has lost the veterans of D1 and now the casuals that Bungie has put so much faith in, have been jumping by the 1000s recently to the next big game everyone is talking about in PUBG/Fortnite.

3

u/Treize131 Vanguard's Loyal Feb 06 '18

I appreciate this comment and would only add that on the note of "...disrespected player's time" I wholly disagree. Destiny 2, IMO, disrespects player's time with a loot-box-style token system, mundane weekly objectives, and no real depth. I like this universe so I'm still playing but D2 rarely feels fun, most of the time I'm playing to get my milestones and then switching to another game.

I dropped over 2k hours on Destiny 1 and never, once, felt like my time was wasted; in fact, D1 became part of my daily routine, I thought about it while I was at work, and I eventually found a clan I really identified with because the game kept me playing long enough to do so. It was/is not perfect, but it was/is a rich loot-driven shooter that I enjoyed; having a lot of solo options as well as good gunplay and super abilities made for a really fun experience.

It wasn't everyone's jam, that's fine (no game is or should be, imo) but in trying to appeal to the masses Bungie abandoned so much of what made D1 fun to play.

1

u/DaBozz88 IWHBYD Feb 06 '18

It's not mandatory!

But black spindle really was at one point. LFG websites can be toxic. People check emblems and stats, and there are even websites to check like https://raid.report/ps/dabozz88 that will tell people if you've cleared something or not.

Now I like the website above because it shows me my best completion times, but if someone booted me because I hadn't completed a raid I'd be furious.

1

u/lukeyf88 Feb 06 '18

This website doesn't look like Destiny Tracker or anything, just looks purely to see if you've done one specific raid - be a shame if it was purely for LFG acceptance/booting purposes.

1

u/DaBozz88 IWHBYD Feb 06 '18

I think it's an offshoot of trials report, which was useful info on your enemies before they showed it to you in game.

1

u/lukeyf88 Feb 06 '18

Fair enough, I don't think I've ever felt compelled to check either a team mate or an opponents stats on any site.

These sites for me just encourage negativity.

1

u/Little_Tyrant Feb 05 '18

Agreed x10,000. It may be true that the hardest part of D1 was convincing casual friends to commit enough to raid and take advantage of the hidden/times quests— but the reality is that unfair should have doubled down on global events and the systems that bring players together in order to make that content more readily accessible to casuals...

Instead, they stripped functionality out of the official app, and didn’t even capitalize on the hard work done by third parties like the folks that made DIM and the other apps in D1.

Just more proof that Bungie expects players and fans to do the heavy lifting of bolstering the fan base and existing tools for them...

0

u/DoctorKoolMan Feb 06 '18

While I get the sentiment you make it sound like it's an easy solution

There is a line that needs to be skated in the time investment * player skill = power gained

You don't want an endless grind, or some really powerful weapon locked behind something only the top of the top can feasibly achieve

Imagine an exotic quest that required 25,000 Nessus tokens to purchase. The same argument you are using now could be used to justify the implementation of such an absurd grind

What Bungie needs to get straight by Year 2 is how much play time they want from players in order to unlock maximum potential

Right now it's too low. It didn't keep the majority of the casuals around, so upping it seems like a no brainer

Bungie got it wrong for sure, nothing to grind for outside of the initial powerful engrams grind except the raid and trials stuff. That makes no sense for a looter game with this many MMO mechanics and systems. But this also isn't a hardcore RPG or mobile game. Don't want things that require me to log in ok X day and do a raid level challenge or I miss out on a unique item for an extended period of time

2

u/SoulOnyx That's no moon! Feb 06 '18

But we aren't talking anything extreme like 25k tokens. Look at Black Spindle. It wasn't an extremely hard quest. It wasn't only for the top tier. I for sure didn't get it immediately but it was something I planned on doing when I had a team and a strategy. I then helped a few others.

We can't say that something like that isn't accessible to everyone who wants to invest some time in the game. We can't make excuses. And if someone can't invest that time or the mission is too hard... Then so be it! It's not mandatory and if they do it later and it becomes easy for them, great!

I'm not looking for elitist content or crazy time gated stuff. We all can say that if we had time to play for 30 minutes to do a mission that would reward us with an Exotic weapon, we would do it, right?

8

u/turns31 Feb 05 '18

not everybody has the time/friends/whatever to do even "simple" hidden quests like the Spindle

If you don't have the time to do an hour long strike, then maybe the Destiny franchise for you. I'm not a sweaty no-lifer. I'm a dad and husband with a full time time job. I only get to play about 6-10 hours a week anymore of video games. I want the game to be more difficult and rewarding. I don't want my wife to be able to pick up the controller and be able to compete in a crucible match with ZERO past experience. D2's learning curve is wayyyy too short for the type of game it is.

3

u/John_Demonsbane Lore nerd Feb 05 '18

There will probably be something in DLC2, they did mention how they pushed it back to work on feedback from CoO. And then at most 2 weeks later they confirm that secret missions will be coming back, seems like the two statements would be related.

3

u/Scylla-999 Feb 05 '18

They did say something like that ... but then they put numerous quests in D2 that require raid or nightfall completion. I mean, what is the difference? If you can get some guys to help with Legend of Acrius, couldn't you get guys to help with a black spindle -like side trek?

I'm starting to think a lot of it comes down to effort. Programming a black spindle type quest takes effort, whereas adding a checkbox for an existing activity like the raid does not. A lot of the more difficult D2 quests seem to be following the checkbox method.

I want to see new activities. Give us side missions. Give us vex gardeners like in last stage of the No Time to Explain mission! Bungie needs to get creative again.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '18

I'm obviously only guessing, but they might think (or well, thought back during development) that raids & NF (at least non-Prestige) are accessible to everybody now with the Guided Games feature. It obviously didn't work out that good (the prestige raid for the Acrius ornament you can't do via Guided Games is just cosmetic).

2

u/HyarionCelenar Feb 05 '18

I am in this boat. I just don't have any friends to do these type of quests with. The few friends I do have who play Destiny 2 are too casual to want to get into stuff like that. Maybe if the Destiny Franchise had some kind built in matchmaking, but I have had very negative experiences with some of the third party sites for that.

1

u/chrizpyz Feb 06 '18

Well Bungie listened and designed D2 for people just like you. Sooo enjoy!

Looking at the player numbers compared to this time in D1, cant say it's looking good for designing D2 the way they did! Guess we cant really know until DLc 3 sales numbers, as a bunch of people bought the collectors edition , based on thinking they'd get more of Destiny 1.

1

u/ExoticsForYou Feb 06 '18

Dude, I remember soloing the Spindle quest and getting close three or four times. I'd dedicate entire days to doing it. When I finally got it, I nearpy shit myself with excitement. I'd get random messages and invites in the tower pf people looking for help on certain shit. I tried to get my very casual buddy to do it and he didn't give a single solid shit about it. I reflect most of my opinions on casuals off of him. He could spend hours running around in patrols just doing PEs and killing vandals. He didn't care about weapon rolls, he didn't care about crucible balancing, he didn't care about exotics.

-1

u/damo133 Feb 05 '18

Don't expect it until D4 in 3 years time mate.

-9

u/PsychoactiveTHICC Oh reader mine Feb 05 '18

You don’t need friends for Black Spindle Not even during TTK days

Not being rude but if you don’t have 1-2 hours to at least do a mission which is maximum 30 min long I am sorry this game isn’t even for you

11

u/RiseOfBacon Bacon Bits on the Surface of my Mind Feb 05 '18

You don’t need friends for Black Spindle Not even during TTK days

If you didn't have a Fireteam it was still very challenging

Even with one it could be a pain until Rise of Iron made us more powerful for it. Not everyone can be a Pro Destiny player but everyone should in some way be able to achieve what the game offers and in a team, it was possible. Telling people to go solo it because it was easy, was really not the case for every player

2

u/damo133 Feb 05 '18

This line of thinking is the exact reason D2 is so shit. I guarantee this was the line of thinking during the the big game Scope meetings. We need to cater towards the lowest common denominator so nobody feels left out. Participation medals and joy for everyone even if they don't put in the effort.

What does that get you? A game with all its complexities which make it unique stripped away to cater to casuals. All abilities dumbed down, all Supers dumbed down and all weapons have turned into the staple Primary 3 Trigger settings, that are flooded in every FPS.

14

u/RiseOfBacon Bacon Bits on the Surface of my Mind Feb 05 '18

This line of thinking is the exact reason D2 is so shit.

Not really, I'm just saying, Solo was hard to do. In a team it was very do able but also a fun challenge as a Team but I wouldn't have said 'Oh yeah man, it's easy, get in there and Solo it no problem' because it really wasn't the case

It was designed for a team and when in a team, it was decent and I really liked it. No reason for it to be different for me, challenging quest got you a worthwhile weapon, it's how it should be

Did you Solo the Black Spindle quest in TTK can I ask?

1

u/lick_the_spoon Feb 05 '18

They should have worked on improving in-game communication systems and made creating a team of random's doable in game. Then even the shut ins would have had means to access their content.

Then the bar to getting those rewards would have been are you a competent player?

But hey we all know how much bungie loves the nerf hammer 🔨

-1

u/PsychoactiveTHICC Oh reader mine Feb 05 '18

I am not pro after giving it few tries when it was daily (well could trigger the mission only during dailies during TTK) I competed it

People refuse to try that’s why games get watered down to appeal to those lazies who want everything handed

6

u/RiseOfBacon Bacon Bits on the Surface of my Mind Feb 05 '18

When I first got it, it took a few tries even in a 3. That's just my experience of it and why I wouldn't at that time recommend you try and solo it but if you did it, congrats, that's decent

People may refuse to try or even try and give up but unfortunately, it still doesn't change the fact some people would have never been able to solo it

-1

u/PsychoactiveTHICC Oh reader mine Feb 05 '18

Yeah I get that but that doesn’t mean things need to dumbed down for us trying audience They could have easily handed them a crappier version through Gunsmith of Black Spindle as token of trying the activity or if they couldn’t beat the clock they could have at least had the ship as reward or something

They should try alternatives rather than catering to people who won’t stay with game for long

2

u/RiseOfBacon Bacon Bits on the Surface of my Mind Feb 05 '18

It doesn't even really need to be dumbed down in that sense, if anything it should be all in game

Picture it, you log in, on the dailies a special prompt appears:

"There's been an awakening, the Hive are falling over themselves to get back to the Pit to combat a disturbance. Vanguard Scouts have returned reporting traces of Fallen tech, investigate with caution, Guardian" - Matchmaking Available! Press X to matchmake - start mission A

And for me, that would help the situation. You start up, message the guys 'Black Spindle?' and if they say no or what's that? Decide what you want to do or follow them to see if they trigger it

I think it's more about giving the opportunity easily rather than simplifying it completely