You can only pick up a single Invitation per week. If you don't finish the previous Invitation by reset, that Invitation will count for the current week, too. So finish them by Tuesday!

That seems like a rather poor decision, and I can't honestly think of a good reason for them to limit how many you can do per week until you do catch up, but that's Destiny for you.

They are character based, so you have to start from the beginning on every character.

New This Week at Bungie is up.

Starts off talking about Invitations of the Nine, and nice bit of info:

Everyone who accepted the first invitation last Friday will have a new experience this week. If you missed it last week, don’t worry. You can pick it up this Friday. There won’t be a cutscene every week, but that definitely wasn’t the last one you’ll see.

So it seems like, unlike the Offering to the Oracle stuff with Mara, if you missed it, you can catch up.

THARB

Is there a means by which I can actively play catchup?

I play one Primary Character and have 2 alternate characters that have only played enough to get to the Farm and hold my excess inventory items like a backpack - my Titan has access to the EDZ

I accepted the first invitation the other Friday (Week 1) on my Primary Character. I completed all the steps but stopped before visiting The Reckoning side mission with the cutscene. (limited play time, Life commitments, etc.)

Last Friday (Week 2) I went to Xûr and he had an invitation with a red bar at the top that basically said "you can only hold one of these at a time" and the greyed out mission steps seem like the Week 1 Bounty steps.

Last Night, I completed The Reckoning side mission and watched the cutscene (Week 1). After that I visited Xûr and he now has No Invitations. When I visit on my Titan character it looks like I can maybe accept the Week 1 Invitation again?

Ikora’s group is literally called The Hidden. Sounds dangerously close to secret police to me.

Yeah, but "The Praxic Fire" are not "The Hidden" as far as I know. There might be hidden in the Praxic Fire. So far I'm okay with how Aunor has handled herself in her investigations.

Sorry. Yes, I know that they aren’t the same. It’s just an illustration that the Vanguard have their own questionable practices. Enough to make me question them, enough that The Drifter doesn’t seem quite as bad as the status quo. He has is own questionable motives, obviously, but he also raises good points. I’m not convinced the way of the Vanguard is the way forward. Fighting to protect the people has a funny way of turning into oppression, and talk of The Hidden, and our small glimpse at the way Aunor operates doesn’t paint a great picture for me.

I love this quest because of the fact that it enabled this discussion. Until The Drifter made a case, I had only ever viewed the Vanguard as the good guys. I still think they are—I don’t think Bungie is likely to take the series in a direction where they’re not. But it is interesting to think about.

Ikora’s group is literally called The Hidden. Sounds dangerously close to secret police to me.

We don’t know enough about how the Vanguard operates. We don’t know enough about the politics of the City. What little we know about the Hunter Vanguard selection process doesn’t paint a great picture of how leadership of humanity is selected. Where’s actual representation for the average citizen?

From the little we’ve seen of Zavala, he acts like his word is law.

The more I think about it, the less I actually trust or like the Vanguard. I do not doubt that they believe they are “good,” that they’re doing the best they can, or what they think is best. That doesn’t make them actually good or worth following though.

I really enjoyed this quest and it’s implications, but nobody is able to make an actually informed decision. We need more real information to really make a judgment.

Is it possible that The Vanguard is just as confused about everything as we are? During the Red War we saw Ghaul kill the Speaker, essentially steal power from the Traveler then the Traveler "wake up".

There was some lore card where the Vanguard was having a meeting, and people were calling out Zavala for doing so without the Speaker and Zavala was trying to figure out how to handle things without the Speaker.

So it could be that Zavala and Ikora are starting to realize that maybe the Traveler isn't what they thought and The Speaker was a "fraud" (just like Ghaul learned)

During the Warmind campaign, when we begin to enter Rasputin and Zavala is already there...perhaps he wasn't there to stop us, maybe he was just already there and he didn't catch us, we caught him! In the cutscene Ana asked "What were you trying to do with Rasputin" and Zavala responds "Rasputin is Vanguard business, not yours."

Zavala and Ikora have something going on in the background that involves the Drifter.

There was another lore card (or something) where Zavala and Ikora are having a private conversation and both admitting they aren't sure how to proceed.

So yeah, it seems like the narrative is that everyone, across the board, is questioning who is good, who is bad, what is what and who is whom.

Ikora’s group is literally called The Hidden. Sounds dangerously close to secret police to me.

Yeah, but "The Praxic Fire" are not "The Hidden" as far as I know. There might be hidden in the Praxic Fire. So far I'm okay with how Aunor has handled herself in her investigations.

We don’t know enough about how the Vanguard operates. We don’t know enough about the politics of the City. What little we know about the Hunter Vanguard selection process doesn’t paint a great picture of how leadership of humanity is selected. Where’s actual representation for the average citizen?

From the little we’ve seen of Zavala, he acts like his word is law.

The more I think about it, the less I actually trust or like the Vanguard. I do not doubt that they believe they are “good,” that they’re doing the best they can, or what they think is best. That doesn’t make them actually good or worth following though.

I really enjoyed this quest and it’s implications, but nobody is able to make an actually informed decision. We need more real information to really make a judgment.

I agree with you here. We need more information. However, from the information I have so far, the vanguard seem like a much better choice to me than the drifter.

I did read it all. I trust Aunor about as much as I trust the Drifter (or the Traveler, for that matter). I’m not a big fan of secret police.

Secret was the wrong choice :D They are really just the police in my eyes. Or I guess more like Military Police as we are basically humanities army.

As for trust... Yeah, I see Aunor, the Praxic fire, and the Vanguard as an established order that has been working well, maybe not great as you mentioned, but well for quite some time now. Yes, there are still mysteries out there, but to trust a guy that is letting guardians die in an experiment/test for his own gain is not someone I want to side with.

Um... now you're believing the false info that got her started in the first place. There's no evidence that any guardians have died in this experiment, and she (grudgingly) admitted that in one of the messages.

If I believe the lore/stories that have come out, then yes there is evidence. There is a story between the drifter and a guardian (Titan?) who was only 1 of 4 guardians that lived through a gambit match. Rightly so, the guardian was not happy with the drifter even though they all signed up for it.

But you are right, from what I remember, that Aunor has no evidence on the drifter. Yet.

We don’t know enough about how the Vanguard operates. We don’t know enough about the politics of the City. What little we know about the Hunter Vanguard selection process doesn’t paint a great picture of how leadership of humanity is selected. Where’s actual representation for the average citizen?

From the little we’ve seen of Zavala, he acts like his word is law.

The more I think about it, the less I actually trust or like the Vanguard. I do not doubt that they believe they are “good,” that they’re doing the best they can, or what they think is best. That doesn’t make them actually good or worth following though.

I really enjoyed this quest and it’s implications, but nobody is able to make an actually informed decision. We need more real information to really make a judgment.

I did read it all. I trust Aunor about as much as I trust the Drifter (or the Traveler, for that matter). I’m not a big fan of secret police.

Secret was the wrong choice :D They are really just the police in my eyes. Or I guess more like Military Police as we are basically humanities army.

As for trust... Yeah, I see Aunor, the Praxic fire, and the Vanguard as an established order that has been working well, maybe not great as you mentioned, but well for quite some time now. Yes, there are still mysteries out there, but to trust a guy that is letting guardians die in an experiment/test for his own gain is not someone I want to side with.

Um... now you're believing the false info that got her started in the first place. There's no evidence that any guardians have died in this experiment, and she (grudgingly) admitted that in one of the messages.

I did read it all. I trust Aunor about as much as I trust the Drifter (or the Traveler, for that matter). I’m not a big fan of secret police.

Secret was the wrong choice :D They are really just the police in my eyes. Or I guess more like Military Police as we are basically humanities army.

As for trust... Yeah, I see Aunor, the Praxic fire, and the Vanguard as an established order that has been working well, maybe not great as you mentioned, but well for quite some time now. Yes, there are still mysteries out there, but to trust a guy that is letting guardians die in an experiment/test for his own gain is not someone I want to side with.

I am firmly in the camp that the Vanguard is doing what they can, but they’re doing it pretty incompetently. There are still too many secrets in the Destiny universe, and I’ll play the Drifter’s games to bring them to light.

Ahhh, so you're siding with the drifter because you believe he is the only one capable of exposing all those secrets? I can understand that.

I am firmly in the camp that the Vanguard is doing what they can, but they’re doing it pretty incompetently. There are still too many secrets in the Destiny universe, and I’ll play the Drifter’s games to bring them to light.

It’s not a choice between Drifter or Vanguard. The Vanguard is explicitly okay with what the Drifter is doing.

Also, what’s the choice matter? Why are we choosing? There isn’t some showdown happening. Just the Drifter doing his thing and one lone sanctimonious dipshit Warlock meddling to feel important.

Did you read Aunors notes? The lore? Who we all believe the drifter to be? If you did you would know that Aunor is the Guardian's secret police. She isn't some dipshit warlock (yes, I'm defending a warlock), she is a defender of the light by stopping any guardian who would dabble in darkness. And guess what? the drifter is a VERY suspicious fellow. Yes, she comes off as a zealot, but she is just doing her due diligence as the law in this land. And not only that, she investigated US, the only witness that was there during Cayde's death and she didn't find any evidence to help with the death of Cayde so she let it go.

This whole thing is a choice between siding with pure light (Traveler) and the hope that it is enough to fight back the bad guys or if dabbling in with darkness will give us an edge (Drifter).

I personally like Aunor. I like the drifter as a character but I would never trust the drifter. Ever. I respect his mentality, but I would never do what he does. But, I still don't know enough about either of them, so I will continue to wait to see what else is out there.

Also, what’s the choice matter? Why are we choosing? There isn’t some showdown happening. Just the Drifter doing his thing and one lone sanctimonious dipshit Warlock meddling to feel important.

The problem with the Vanguard side is Bungie didn't give players any real understanding of why they might make once choice or the other. You have to read the notes from Aunor which I'm guessing most players didn't. Since they didn't have a good reason to pick the Vanguard (really it's not even the Vanguard - it's the praxic order) they chose the option that had a voice-acted character behind it.

I went both ways, using multiple characters, but I'm not gonna lie, I was expecting to feel better about the Vanguard choice. Turns out I surprised myself; after reading all of Aunor's notes, and listening to all of Drifter's tapes... I kinda feel like Drifter made the better case. (Aunor was pretty full of herself all the way through... but the note that killed it for me was the surveillance transcript that actually took meaning from the 'explosives metaphor'. My eyes rolled so far up I could see the back of my skull.)

Ditch power levels completely. If they must include levels, make it purely XP based so we can just level up as we do stuff.

We’re talking about fundamentally changing Destiny at a base level at this point. I’d settle for ditching Infusion cost.

Next they address Enhancement Cores. They spew a bunch of bullshit that I read as catering to the people who want the game to waste everybody's time (some stuff about inherent value of rare resources feeling good about leveling up and other inane horseshit). At the end of the day, they land here:

Enhancement cores are a pain in the butt so hopefully they can make it better. I FINALLY got my armor set up 2 weeks before SotD and now I'm right back to just wearing ugly stupid rolls for highest light. I've hated my guardian ever since D2 launched and it's all because of the enhancement mechanic. (and ridiculous shader system)

So, glad to see they are tweaking this one.

I hate having to wear ugly armor just because of light level and/or perks. I wish cosmetic choices were disconnected from light level and perks but instead perks were just mods applied to whatever armor you liked.

I still wish you could upgrade all armor by adding perks. Just give us blank armor with zero attributes, zero perks, zero light. As we play, we unlock all those things. Add one perk, your white chest piece turns green. Add 2 things, it turns blue. 3 things, it's purple now. And so on. You could also unlock light orbs or something to install that increases your over all power. This way we can have whatever armor we want and custom build them to suit our play style. This way we can utilize ALL of the usable content in the game instead of just the standard 5 legendary outfits.

Or, along the similar lines, just make the perks, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary, Exotic.

This is a good idea and anyone who defies it can kick rocks, pound sand and shove off.

Next they address Enhancement Cores. They spew a bunch of bullshit that I read as catering to the people who want the game to waste everybody's time (some stuff about inherent value of rare resources feeling good about leveling up and other inane horseshit). At the end of the day, they land here:

Enhancement cores are a pain in the butt so hopefully they can make it better. I FINALLY got my armor set up 2 weeks before SotD and now I'm right back to just wearing ugly stupid rolls for highest light. I've hated my guardian ever since D2 launched and it's all because of the enhancement mechanic. (and ridiculous shader system)

So, glad to see they are tweaking this one.

I hate having to wear ugly armor just because of light level and/or perks. I wish cosmetic choices were disconnected from light level and perks but instead perks were just mods applied to whatever armor you liked.

Next they address Enhancement Cores. They spew a bunch of bullshit that I read as catering to the people who want the game to waste everybody's time (some stuff about inherent value of rare resources feeling good about leveling up and other inane horseshit). At the end of the day, they land here:

Enhancement cores are a pain in the butt so hopefully they can make it better. I FINALLY got my armor set up 2 weeks before SotD and now I'm right back to just wearing ugly stupid rolls for highest light. I've hated my guardian ever since D2 launched and it's all because of the enhancement mechanic. (and ridiculous shader system)

So, glad to see they are tweaking this one.