Today (2.13.23) 5,300 Words: Lightfall and the Year Ahead (Destiny)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Monday, February 13, 2023, 11:30 (655 days ago) @ cheapLEY

https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/lightfall-year-ahead

And here are some of the things which jumped out for me. This is not a summary.

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So, with the issues laid out in front of us, we created four big goals for Destiny 2 leading up to >The Final Shape:

• Expand players’ imaginations
  
• Bring challenge back to Destiny
  
• Enrich our content
  
• Connect our Guardians

These points are the core ideas of the Devs as we go about the year.

In short, to spend more time playing and less time trying to understand what they are supposed to do.

Sounds good, but this context is about gameplay, not inventory so... anyway...

To create independent chases for both crafted and non-crafted weapons starting with Lightfall, fewer of our total weapons will be craftable and more of our weapons with long term sources will get value from random perk rolls.

NO! NO NO NO!

Weapon Crafting is, whole cloth and with out question, one of the BIGGEST & BEST gameplay choices ever put into this game. I'm not going to spend time right now to write out fully why. I get y'all are having to parse out demands from the idiots like me who want to play not grind, and idiots who like the glittering bullshittery that is the RNG Slot Machine — but, not to discount what is also mentioned but not quoted here (such has a plan to "enhance" certain RNG rolls), this is not the way.

Weapon Crafting has, single-handedly, allowed my Vault to still exist and myself to still play - because now if I need a gun with a set of perks for a Build (which is where some of the fun still lives for me) it doesn't necessarily NEED to be in my vault, simply be available for my access. That's IT! That's what this is ultimately all about... access. And while it's not as easy as simply pulling a weapon out of my Vault, I feel the tradeoff is a fair compromise.

From words alone, I do NOT like this change. I do NOT like that fewer of our total weapons will be craftable, and please note this as my protest.

We’ve also noticed that enemy combatants just aren’t hitting as hard as we want them to, especially against max resilience Guardians, so we’re adjusting the amount of damage resistance granted by resilience and increasing the energy cost of resilience mods from 1 to 2 for minor mods and 3 to 4 for major mods.

Well, welcome to my world Titans. (I'm a Warlock Main.)

But I promised a two-sided approach to challenge, so let’s talk about how things will be shaking up with enemy difficulty. Recently, we’ve been happy with the level of challenge present in the base Heist Battlegrounds playlist. To achieve this, we used a difficulty knob that enforces just how over-leveled we will let players be compared to the enemies they are fighting. This knob has always been present across our activities, and it’s adjusted based on how evergreen we want the challenge to be in those missions.

We were pretty aggressive with this adjustment in Season of the Seraph and it produced great results, so the base Battlegrounds playlist in Season of Defiance will use the same settings. Carrying this approach over, we are also going to be adjusting this same difficulty tweak on the Vanguard Ops playlist. We aren’t going to set this playlist knob to a level quite as intense as the Battlegrounds playlist, but we do want to use this setting to make Vanguard Ops a lot more engaging to the average Guardian starting in Lightfall. This approach to Power and difficulty is also going to be present when players are roaming around Neomuna, and while we don’t want the entire game to feel like it's turned up to 11, we think these changes will help the enemy forces patrolling Neomuna feel dangerous and worth your attention.

!... so... D1 Beta Skill bad guys? Am I reading this right? Will Patrol have parts of the map that are a "hard mode"?

You may have noticed that we have been experimenting a lot with our Power settings over the last few seasons, and we are planning on taking on even more experiments this year. We think that there are some major issues with Power in Destiny 2 and how it prevents players from seeing some of our best content, so we’d like to make a big change to the system in The Final Shape. However, to understand more about how our changes could be improved, we want to keep tweaking our Power settings over the year of Lightfall.

Some of these tweaks might be found in our back end with little transparency to the average Guardian, while others will be front and center. For example, when Lightfall launches, we will have a Power climb that is very similar to that in The Witch Queen, but later in Season of the Deep, we don’t plan to raise the Power or pinnacle cap at all.

IN-nnnnnnnnnnnnteresting. I think... I mean we still have a light system, but if there is no movement of a cap, than it's like its not there yea? I dig it. It'll do for now.

As we get further away from Lightfall in our seasonal schedule, we are going to make some targeted changes to ritual content based on what we’ve observed about why players engage in this content. While we don’t expect these changes to make it in for Season of Defiance, over time we want to start pushing both more rewards to ritual content and more options to engage with our ritual content. This will include changes such as moving the initial source of obtaining Exotic armor away from Lost Sectors and back into the core rituals, no longer asking players to earn all three of the ritual pursuit ornaments in seasonal challenges, and allowing players to earn more new rewards and complete more of their weekly challenges by playing content of their choice, not just in the newest seasonal activity playlist.

:(

Man. So then... what's the point to Lost Sectors then? It was a GOOD change, and fun. And it's so rare to have a proper LONE WOLF Challenge that actually had an objective at the end of it worth going for. Worse part about it was the RNG, but this doesn't address that so... ugh. Mannn. :/

Connect Our Guardians

A lot of what we have planned for this year is right around the corner, including big features like Commendations and Guardian Ranks with the launch of Lightfall. The Commendations system is the first step in creating stronger connections between Guardians this year.

It can be hard to reach out to someone you don’t know. Commendations are an icebreaker – a simple way of saying thanks to players that you appreciated playing with. Over time, players will accumulate a ton of different commendations that help build a story for how others in Destiny 2 perceive you.

Certain commendations like “Pacesetter” and “Saint’s Favorite” are only available to be given in Trials of Osiris, while others like “Perceptive” and “Knowledgeable” are given out in raid and dungeon content. Eventually, the commendations you earn will become a history for where you’ve been and what you’ve done.

With the Commendations system, those at the highest levels of Guardian Ranks will have proven to be folks that are consistently appreciated by others in the community. Sometimes it will be because they are the kinds of people willing to do the heavy lifting when organizing a large group of players. Sometimes it will be because, even if they aren’t the kinds of people comfortable speaking up, they are always doing what needs to be done to help the group overcome the obstacle in front of them.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing a bunch of Heist Battlegrounds, and every so often I’ll get matched with a pair of folks that I have a lot of synergy with, and we will end up absolutely crushing the Hive infestation. This joy has come with this tiny sense of regret that I’m not living just a few weeks in the future and able to pass along a couple of commendations to show my thanks. I can’t wait for Lightfall to be in everyone’s hands so we can all have the opportunity to show gratitude to our fellow Guardians.

I really feel this last paragraph. It's a shame this didn't come about sooner, as I was helping so many folks... but now? My schedule is totally different and now I'm just another blueberry. Eh. Ah well.

...and then there is some chatter about, well, In-Game Chatter... but I need to just post what I have here and go about life stuff so, here's what I've got for now! :D