You're shitting me right? Whats in it?

http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/75512563/0/0

Posted by: DeeJ

So, the update just went live. Atheon can no longer be pushed off his platform. He'll also select people at random to be thrown across time. He's a real bastard, eh?

I talked a lot to the developers about your opinions on the matter. You don't want to be selected at random. You want to choose who gets to fetch the Relic under fire from those nasty Oracles. I spoke on your behalf. Your voice was heard. We discussed your concerns.

I even said "Why not just change Hard Mode and leave Easy Mode alone?"

I was told "The Raid is never supposed to be easy."

At that point, I recalled all the times I stood and delivered the line "...the most challenging encounter we've ever created." It was hard to disagree. As a veteran of Cairo Station on Legendary in Halo, I had to admit that I had been carried through the Raid like luggage assigned to my clan. I did my own carrying later, but carrying had been done.

This is an activity that was designed to be undertaken by a hardcore team that is ready and willing to adapt and improvise to changing battle conditions. Like the moment when the Templar shields random players, the Final Boss was supposed to be extremely dangerous. While we've been working on some of the other things for which you've been asking (i.e. better exotics, voice chat in matchmaking, more bounties), the designers who made the Raid have plugged the holes that you showed them.

If you got in on the ground floor of this thing, we thank you. If you understand the mechanics for how to beat Atheon, it's still a thing you can teach your friends. If you're all up to the challenge, the Raid is waiting for you.

Let's talk about it. Please sound off in this thread, and know that I'll be reading.

Pro tip: Hey deej, next time say "normal mode"--don't imply that the Raid is easy. That gave the bastiches a rhetorical opening. I say bastiches affectionately.

- No text -

...that there are other more pressing bugs (actual bugs, not a "bug" like this random teleporting nonsense) that are not addressed; however, players choosing roles during the encounter is addressed.

What about:

• The Minotaur regaining health?
  
• Being teleported to an empty instance when leaving the Timestream?
  
• The relic being randomly dropped?
  
• Succumbing to the Oracles despite all Oracles being destroyed? (do you "kill" Oracles?)
  
• Atheon's ambiguous critbox?

These are actually game breaking and will cause a wipe, despite a perfect run up until that point in the encounter. The item that was addressed makes the encounter easier, but doesn't break it. This sends a message to me that Bungie prioritizes players playing the game how they want it to be played over fixing items that actually break the game.

So Bungie heard the community response to the teleport randomization's impact to the raid difficulty, considered it, and ardently decided to give us the middle finger and ignore us. For no other reason than "we want it to be even harder and don't care about your opinion." Thanks for demonstrating that despite protestations, Bungie has no regard for their community. You clearly place more value on your own desire to make the game more difficult, random and frustrating than on our desire for a consistent and fun experience. The Cryptarch screws us. RNG screws us. Atheon screws us. Bungie screws us.

November 3rd can't get here fast enough - the old Bungie knew how to make a fun game.

Also, that was my first run through. It was amazing. Super glad I got to experience it.

Honestly, the patches didnt seem to be an issue for my group. I can see how sitting on the Sniper perches would make life easier, but it really wasnt so bad to fight the Templar as he was. Same goes for the random teleports. We still had designated roles, we just had more than one depending on where we were at the time. It was actually super fun not knowing what to expect.

Shame Destiny's servers seem to be made out of wet paper tonight. So many disconnects.

I beat it last night with the randomness. It took us about six teleports to kill Atheon. We had three people who felt very confident dealing with the relic and one of them was always in the teleport group. We had one raid newb who picked up the relic and started to do work before the Minotaur literally punched him off the venus platform leading to a raid wipe.

Comparing this to my first pass where we had a dedicated home and away team, it felt a little more chaotic but overall not really a big deal. We wiped more on the prior part with the two relics and the conflux then we did on Atheon.

The only comment from the veteran raiders in the group is that they felt the change was interesting, as now people got to see the whole event rather then just half of it.

Also, I don't need to change gear between the two modes. Zombie Apocalypse works in any situation, and I pretty much only used it and GG on Atheon.