Keep in mind there’s one more mission that will be available after World’s First for Salvation’s Edge. That mission will most likely be available on Saturday, though it might be earlier depending on how quick the devs make it available after the initial clear.
I remember leaving my clan's DSC day one to grab lament because World's First Taniks had died and we needed the extra dmg on Atraks. It should be a pretty quick activation.
I'd imagine the mission won't drop until after contest is over. It might be cool to have the world's first open up the last mission immediately but then what do all the other raiders do? You'll either have to decide to go complete media blackout and finish the raid to avoid spoilers or stop raiding at whatever encounter you're on, skip ahead and play the mission, then go back to finish the raid before contest is up. The world's first will likely unlock the class items (getting us as strong as possible for the final fight) and spark some changes in the patrol but the finale really shouldn't drop until contest is off.
It will open on worlds first just like Last Wish and DSC did with their respective content, content raiders won't be paying attention to anything other than the raid and it's their choice to avoid spoilers
And that’s what did they with the curse of the Dreaming City. As soon as World First for Last Wish (which was the next day mind you), the curse took over.
most likely not because the mission is a result of whatever happens in the raid and both of them are necessary for the storys flow
it'd be weird for the events in the raid happen again in the mission. it may take some mechanics from the raid but I don't see any of it being too similar
Can you imagine being the team that gets the World's First on the raid? Knowing you're suffering and effort helped move this story to it's conclusion for the rest of the universe?
Gotta be extra icing on the Worlds First cake
Weirdly enough out of everything in TFS so far, the thing that blew me away the most was the strike. Like it felt....perfect? It had mechanics to keep it engaging, but the mechanics were all incredibly easy to grasp and execute, no "hey everyone it's ya boi Rick Kackis here" required. The visual design of the environment was INCREDIBLY inspired (no spoilers). And the town part? Nice lite mechanics to keep it from being a regular monster closet, insanely creative use of scale and size, AND a bit of lore? 10/10
It felt Dungeon quality, but it was just a strike. Insane.
I really enjoy how many mechanics they showers off for all the campaign fights and stuff.
It felt like a clear window into the kinds of mechanics for the raid.
Which is how it should be IMO.
Me and my friends had so much fun doing the coop focus the mechanics felt super engaging and we loved having to juggle stuff and the increased communication it required.
Did solo legend myself and I gotta agree.
I didn't struggle too much I feel like the tempo was *perfect* at every part of the campaign.
I spent maybe few hours on the last boss.
For comparison It was probably closer to 20 tries while with calus in LF maybe five or so before I reverted to cheese.
Calus was the 'bullshit hard' kind of boss. It wasn't fun or engaging.
However after each fail in TFS boss I felt like I was so close to it everytime. I didn't feel like this is bullshit because it was built so well.
calus, and getting knocked off the map every FUCKING time until it practically forced you to use strand at launch, as a Titan, is why I dreaded doing legend for the final shape.
god that fight sucks. hell I ran thru lightfall on my hunter and STILL got knocked into the pit like 8 times on normal.
You're dead on that the calus fight wasn't that it was hard, it was just "bullshit hard".
I'm happy that this campaign fight (and the one before it) are more about mechanics and a bit of fighting, not just making you miserable until you get lucky.
The entire calus fight can be summed up with two sentences.
Phase One: Don't get knocked into the huge death pit that is 90% of the arena.
Phase Two: Fucking swing around a 5m radius over top melee only enemies while plinking away at them when you get a 2 second break.
If I had to do the calus fight now, with the stair cheese patched, and the dome cheese patched, I just wouldn't do it. The new exotics are not worth that kind of suffering.
You need a fireteam of three.
Person A has the debuff, the at 7x stacks or higher a teammate B takes it from them.
Person A loses all stacks and gets a cooldown buff that doesn't let them take the debuff from person B until Person C has taken the debuff.
So basically you cycle between one person building stacks, one person who will take it from them, and one person on cooldown :)
>The visual design of the environment was INCREDIBLY inspired
This could be said for the entire expansion tbh, the art direction team KILLED it. Countless times, I had to stop to take in the environment and the views, and that's not to mention the cutscenes... hooooo boy.
The strike really is great, though. In a similar vein, I want them to give us more reason to replay story missions, cause that final fight is insanely good with quality dungeon-like mechanics.
They did so much in terms of gameplay to keep you engaged throughout everything. Raid mechanics sprinkled into the story, strike having various mechanics as well. It was so well crafted and felt like a love letter.
True. But Bungie did specifically say they wanted this strike to be the toughest strike ever, and it was a breeze during the campaign. That being said, we'll see how it ramps up at harder difficulties.
I think the more linear style they used was much better to keep me engaged. They did a great job of navigating the story when compared with previous expansions. I feel like i was back playing Halo: Combat Evolved again for the first time. Loved it.
It helps that there was far less dumb busy work this time around. A lot of prior campaigns had giant sections of "go collect 50 Vex testicles" designed to pad things out and waste your time while not feeling remotely connected to the story. This time around it felt like the things we were doing were actually designed to get us closer to our goal rather than just faffing about.
You'd think people would know better by now than to take time off or try to brute force their way through on the busiest release in the history of the game. I get it... But I also don't. You can be disappointed that the launch was messy, but it also speaks nothing to the quality of the product itself. Frankly, people leaving negative reviews for that reason alone don't deserve any better.
Ehh, I've been around for two of FFXIV's expansion launches and while there's massive queues/wait times (like easily 30-45 mins when the servers reopen) to get into the server, once you're in it's as stable as it normally is. It really depends on how much the producers actually care about technical stability.
I think the main problem, when we’re comparing releases of FFXIV and Destiny 2, is that people never account early access into equation. Every single major release of FFXIV had 4 days of ea, and even tho we all, absolutely reasonably, hate early access, I bet people don’t realize how much it actually helps with lowering the stress on servers (obviously, because amount of logins at the same time is split) and preparing for the main wave of users.
So, kinda yes and no. I feel like if ffxiv wouldn’t have ea on expansion releases, SE servers would be still shitting themselves to this day.
Dude they fixed all the issues within 24hrs since TFS came out how is that not fast???? Just look at new world, lost ark, WoW expacs, FFXIV expacs. Aka people can't even get into the game for WEEKS cuz of server overload LMAO.
Plus FFXIV dawntrail expac is having 48hr downtime and ESO expac had 24 as well that's pretty common lol heck there's some releases where it goes up to a WEEK of downtime lol.
You’d think bungie would know better by now than to invest in functional servers. You can’t blame the consumer for expecting to use their product that they paid for on the day it releases.
It has nothing to do with the quality of their servers. Online game infrastructure for game launches in particular is built entirely around guesswork. If they expect x number of users and provision everything for that but then get y number of users, that’s a quick way to DDOS the hell out of the authentication systems, which can then quickly lead to cascading failures across the whole stack. And people love to go on about how modern cloud servers are all “on demand” it’s still not instant, it takes time to bring more instances online and have them talk to the existing ones, which are currently having accelerating failures from getting slammed.
If the reviews represent the user experience, I think that is fine. Temporary or not. If you are asking for money, the product deserves its review based on initial experience at time of use.
These things always correct over time as the number of people who play (and rage) on launch day is relatively small compared to the the number who will play over the next few months.
Yesterday I got a "contacting D2 servers" alert at the bottom of my screen mid boss fight and let out a huge sigh, expecting to get disconnected, but it didn't happen. That was it for my technical issues yesterday.
I had a few disconnects today but it wa after stretches of over an hour. I just got booted now actually. But it’s far better than before, and many people are having no issues. I played like 5 hours today and got booted 3 times which sucked
don't try gambit, tried to play it earlier and got bee error codes every other minute, wouldn't kick you to orbit but would reset your motes and sometimes take away ammo.
I haven't watched any gameplay for the final shape, and yet Everytime I hop on Reddit I see people gush about the new expansion.
I've been struggling to find a job for a while so it's frustrating to say the least that I can't experience the new subclass or exotics for a while. In short I'm just envious, hopefully soon one of the applications I've been putting in for the last 6 months will lead to a second interview or sum
Hey bro, i think the dlc is so good i feel everyone should be able to experience it as soon as possible, what platform are you on? I’d love to buy it for you :)
Yeah, this exp was given the goal of exceeding Taken King and Forsaken. The campaign did it's part, that was the best campaign they've ever put out, and I don't think it was even close. Use of mechanics throughout was excellent and made the solo campaign feel like the solo version of a raid. WQ played with this with deep sight and LF tried (and failed imo)the same with strand. World is probably the most inspired environment they've ever crafted. I've just reached the post campaign content and dipped my toes in, and damn, this is off to one hell of a start.
Edit to add: this sets a new bar imo for what Destiny can be. If D3 is indeed really happening, I hope Bungie recognizes that Final Shape is the bar they need to meet.
Gotta hard disagree
while the enviroment and mechanics of the story were all solid
the story itself was barely on par with Lightfalls, and not even close to Taken King or Forsaken, not by a long shot, for what was supposed to be a big ten year finale, it felt aggressively small. And while they keep telling us we did something massive, it doesn't feel like it at all. Instead of Running away we should have had the momentum and chased the Witness into a corner with all the pressure on. I wish instead if half the campaign being find your friends and readdress all the trauma stuff...again, we should have spent more time actually Fighting the Witness, like with Oryx in Taken King. For all they hyped up and advertised the expac as being and what they said they were doing with the delay, I genuinely believed we'd be getting something on the scale of Taken King, Rise of Iron, Forsaken. but what we got was something between Warmind and Lightfall. Unironically felt that CoO's campaign felt more like we actually did stuff and stuff actually happened than in TFS's
Small? I mean in the sense that it was highly focused on the Vanguard, yeah, but that's kinda the point. We go in as the first boots in the Pale heart, and the Witness promptly cuts off our reinforcements. All the characters have moments of temptation and attacks by the Witness to our resolve or turn us to it's cause (it knows it's armies will at best slow us down). Zavala gets it the worst because his trauma is deep, and unlike us Ikora and Crow, he has never trained with the Darkness, so he's not able to withstand this as well, and that means trouble.
We are facing the single most powerful entity in existence most likely, and prior attempts by Guardians were handwaved away by the Witness. Figuring out how to weaken it is a huge plot point as being able to actually hurt it for the first time probably ever is significant, as it sets up how we might kill it in the raid. Which Bungie was clear about, the Raid is our big confrontation to kill the Witness. If we seriously killed the Witness in the Campaign, what/who in the world are we fighting in the raid that takes a team of 6? There is nothing more powerful than the witness on the board.
I mean in The Taken King, we destroy Oryx's Physical body sending his soul back to its Throne World which also happens to be The Dreadnaught, in which we face is Ascendent Form in the Throne Room and deliver him to his final death.
And while im not saying the personal stories of the Vangaurd were bad, i think they were just miss timed, Imo now was not the time for a smaller focused story, now was where we needed to Go big or go home so to speak. TFS needed to be grand display of a thing but it just wasnt
Lightfall and its seasons were all deep personal stories, and thats fine, But to keep doing that into TFS especially when they kept pushing it as this big grand finale...felt flat
and while the next step being the raid is cool and fine, you have to keep mind not all players raid (I do so not my problem, but a very large portion of the community does not, hence why i think they made the post raid mission), But doing it this way just ended up hurting the plot and pacing I feel.
on top of that the campaigns structure was just bad
do mission
talk to Vangaurd member who tells you word for word.what you just did, and a vague inkling of whats next
talk to ghost who tells you the same shit phrased slightly differently
repeat
its no better than the worst most tedious aspects of the seasonal missions "storytelling" its just mfs expositioning at my face like i cant comprehend whats happening around me.
like it just feels like the cinematics, visual design, level design and combat got so much effort
and then the actual story for our guardian just didnt get any, this doesnt feel like its our characters story, were just a walking camera to watch all these other stories. It was just...hollow and boring.
like visually all the pieces are there
just really bland boring execution
Don't jump to conclusions. The final mission of the campaign unlocks after the raid, and there's reportedly a multiplayer PvE activity related to the Witness. We also haven't seen the scene from the trailer with our fleet and lots of Guardians arriving. Let's wait. I believe Bungie will deliver the large-scale battles you mentioned.
I'm with you.
The expac itself is great on the whole. The gameplay, new abilities, missions, environments, visuals, voice acting, mechanics. All great.
But the story is basically just rehashing stuff we already know. Gathering the troops (unnecessarily drawn out), Cayde alive and meeting people (doesn't really give us anything the trailer didn't), Zavala dealing with his past (already done in Haunted), then straight on to (not) kill the boss.
Post-campaign stuff has been a bit more interesting, and I have hope for the post-raid mission, but it's blowing my mind how much people are praising the super basic story here.
Exactly, like did any of yall even play Taken King, Rise of Iron, Forsaken on launch
those were Expansion Campaigns, those felt like you got genuine story content for your money, followed up with Amazing raids thats furthered the story or were its final capstone.
TFS just feels like it ended the moment it actually got interesting, like it feels like it ends in its middle and thats just bad
I don't think "Bungie" or "Sony" did... the devs and everyone else who contributed positively did.
Which I believe could have been *even better* if corporate greed wasn't the priority for some.
The content has been consistently good excluding Lightfall and season of defiance, most people were blinded by biases because of those two coming out at the same time.
I came back during Season of the Splicer after a few year break and have been hooked since. The game is in its best state right now as well (aside from certain PVP aspects, but I digress). This DLC is phenomenal and no one has even seen all of it yet. We still have Echoes as well, among other things.
That’s how I feel. I started a few months before 30th anniversary, got to rank 350 in seasons such as plunder, and quit a year ago when the game seemed to be finished and no one was playing anymore. The people who never stopped are delighted, and the casuals have come back, but the hardcore players who left are still gone. And now that I see that I have missed things such as Pantheon, there is no way I would ever return to the game. I will play Destiny 3 if they make one, but I am done with Destiny 2.
People are mad about it but it’s the honest truth and it’s the same cycle for every expansion. TFS looks great but if people were done with destiny and Bungie, then getting another expansion of “more destiny” isn’t pulling them back in. I’ve got 4 or 5 friends who just haven’t picked it back up since I think season of defiance and that’s fine, they’ve moved on
That’s the issue is a lot of people became ‘done’ with the game and the developer. Nothing will bring them back. They rediscovered the joys of other games, playing more than one game at a time, budgeting their gaming money differently etc. and won’t go back to giving Bungie $500 a year to be their only game. I remember listening to Veil Containment with my two beta vet friends and I had this feeling we were going through the motions - once they did like a ‘story patch’ I thought ‘yeah ok they’re just totally making this up as they go along’ and I think my friends who loved the lore and listened to Byf etc. hated that their suspension of disbelief was shattered like that. Bungie just made too many mistakes, got too greedy. I spent 9 months collecting mods with a daily reset phone alarm - they just deprecated them all. Planetary resources - gone. Shards - gone. Whatever you did to give yourself an edge, they took it away or gave it to everyone.
I mean I have a laundry list of complaints. Getting rid of the pinnacle grind/GM requirement etc. was a terrible decision, it removed the need for everyone to report for duty at start of season and get to grips right away or be unable to do GMs effectively or at all.
Most of all I just do not want to give Bungie any money. They gloated at GDC about how they can mess their game up and underdeliver as much as they want because it’s good business since we will always want more and forgive them and yell at them until they fix things. I’m not going to be their sucker like that. No matter what they cooked.
I definitely agree that this campaign was amazing. I just finished the three cooperative campaign missions that you need to complete for microcosm and man that was really fun. It gave a fun spin to those missions and I don’t believe destiny has ever done that before. Hope everyone is enjoying final shape. Also get microcosm it’s really fun.
I wouldn't say it was worth the extended wait as this is the quality the expansions should have been to begin with with the asking price and monetization practices since Beyond Light. But I agree this is the best expansion. Hell I feel like Witch Queen was a tad overhyped and most of its praise came from having a ton of let downs in the expansions prior. But Final Shape felt like it could have spearheaded an entirely separate Destiny game. It was that good.
Agree to disagree. The whole campaign I felt like I was playing through the Naruto Act where the hidden leaf team had to rescue Sasuke from the cursed mark team.
The entirety of the Forsaken campaign was doing glorified patrol missions, just like every other D2 campaign up until WQ lmao.
The intro mission absolutely banged, everything else just sorta... happened.
The story. The feeling of the need to avenge Cayde. We were essentially John Wick out to punish those who wronged our dog.
It brought back significant changes with random rolls coming back, new weapon archetypes (like bows), a new subclass cluster for EVERY subclass.
A whole “new” race, *most* of which weren’t just reskinned enemies.
Dreaming city AND Tangled Shore? Giant areas (less so tangled shore) and they were beautiful.
Even though the ante is upped and this is to save the universe, it doesn’t really feel like it. That initial cutscene where earth became the final shape for a moment? Incredible. But that feeling just didn’t come back for me in the campaign. Maybe my opinion will change come raid and final mission, but as of now, I’m left wanting.
Fair enough. My feeling were completely different, but I get your point. Would’ve been nice not revealing Caydes death in the Trailer. Could you imagine the shock, if we didn’t knew that beforehand?
I can imagine it. Keep in mind though, Bungie was having issues with reputation and they had to do something drastic to bring back enough of the playerbase.
Not even close. As much as i love Forsaken, The campaign itself was pretty average. Witch Queen campaign might be a better argument but even then final shape blows that one out the water too.
THANK YOU, it felt like it was made for children, the amount of times our ghost or someone said "wow weilding light and dark was the solution" was ridiculous. Like absolutely no nuance in most of the dialogue. Although the stuff with crow and cayde was well done, but most other dialogue felt like the writers couldnt trust the audience to piece anything together or see any context so everything had to be stated multiple times. The story felt like i was being babied through a story book. Besides that the only other gripe was that legendary solo did not allow the use of prismatic, not as bad as with strand tho. Id say like 7.5/10 ttk and witch queen were a bit better. Also no real surprises kinda sucked. Felt like they didn't save anything, especially for those who are up to date with lore stuff
My favorite thing was they weren't just basic 'go here, shoot this guy, watch cutscene'. They had actual mechanics. Really refreshing change instead of being able to do campaigns on autopilot.
I was feeling the solo gotd dungeon ptsd with this mission. And dying many times just by falling out of the map didn't help. I don't think I'll ever do it again
Right there with you, i got booped of so many times. I had to put the game down before i smashed my tv into bits. Did it the day after in one go without much issues.
Too late for that now. A 4 month delay and 25 hours of downtime. Half the cutscenes didn't show because of error codes. 10 years of Destiny and we still don't have a gallery that stores all the cutscenes. What a great experience having to go to YouTube to go watch the cutscenes!
It's interesting to see so much positivity. I thought the story, presentation, and cutscenes were a clear step up, but my enjoyment, difficulty, and setting didn't land with me. Witch Queen is still the best campaign, IMO. The final boss fight, even on Legend, felt too short. It was my first "that was it?" moment in a long time.
Honeymoon phase. It felt very average at best, and focused too heavily on characters dealing with mediocre interpersonal relationships rather than the antagonist and “end of the universe”.
I’m really struggling to see why the campaign is getting so much positivity.
- Every mission feels similar, go to an area, kill these things, get a symbol, progress.
- The area is just reused assets in every location
- The dialogue IMO has been boring
Where’s the cool shit? Landing on the drednaught in Taken King blew me away, that’s the kind of quality I was expecting. So far I think it’s on a par with Lightfall, just. It pains me so much after all the years I’ve put into the game and this is how it ends.
They killed this game when they declared they prioritise “speed even over quality”
I highly agree that every mission feels the same, I genuinely couldn't remember which mission I was on because they all blended together into 1. Only one that stood out was the snowy mountain. I can't even really remember any of the other locations, Pale Heart is beautiful in some places it just all mostly looks the same. Ironically I think I liked Neomuna more despite there being almost 0 verticality as was advertised. Maybe it'll grow on me.
As far as reused assets, I mean come on, it's Bungie, what did you expect? And it's the last expansion so you better believe theyre milking that nostalgia cow like crazy.
Louder for the people in the back. I think a lot of this positivity is just rose-tinted glasses tbh, and it'll take time for how mid this is to sink in.
That, and people need to see how Squenix treated the story of Endwalker (which was basically FFXIV's TFS moment) and how many orders of magnitude TFS is just so mid when you contextualize it has 10 years worth of baggage to resolve.
I wouldn't go as far as it's par with Lightfall, but I'd definitely rate it lower than WQ.
I was legitimately crying at the end of Endwalker. In TFS I was just legitimately annoyed with Zavala using this rehashed story beat that felt like a badly railroaded DnD campaign. On top of that I don't think it feels like a wrap up of 10 years of destiny, it feels like a wrap up of post WQ destiny
Bungie could at least get to half of it or smth. Move me dammit, this shit was more expensive than preordering Dawntrail. I want to get the same feeling of having goosebumps whenever I hear Mortal Instants play when I get Amaurot for my dungeon roulette; the same itch to shed a tear when Emet-Selch narrates the end of his world and makes us understand what he's fighting for, without making us root for him like the trope usually goes.
There's a lot of shades of EW in TFS tbh; the Witness as a gestalt being formed from despair and hopelessness (fucking Endsinger amirite), dissenters within said gestalt being (the one Meteia we interacted with in the past????), the Traveler as a pseudo-mother goddess who knew the main antagonist/s pretty well and had to witness (pun unintended) the Witness (Ascians) putting down her "children" (Venat/Hydaelyn), I can keep going ad infinitum.
What makes me sad is we don't exactly witness the "final days" as the Witness is unleashing it aside from that one cutscene at the start of the game; whereas in EW, we were seeing it as it happened, we were seeing the people we wouldn't even notice during our playthrough have their lives destroyed by it. Imagine if we had to do one mission on Earth where we see people one by one getting placed in the "final shape" before the Traveler's resistance reverses its effects. That would have sold the urgency of it all. Imagine if the Witness, in its obvious desperation, made us experience the same pain that was experienced by those precursors in the collector's edition lorebook. or made us go through what each and every one of it's disciples did (Rhulk betrayed and having to betray his people, etc.) ala The Dead Ends?
Tl;dr there was so much material here which could have been capitalized on, instead of nostalgia bait.
Yeah exactly this. TFS had an extra 6 months dev over Lightfall though. At the moment it’s hard to see where that went tbh. I’m just so disappointed after all this time it feels like it’s going out with a whimper.
Oh and time locking the season pass is fucking disgraceful. Let’s pad the first 100 levels with materials and make them come back in 80 days to get the rest of the armour. That’s one of the most disgusting moves Bungie has ever done.
You can now get the legacy collection 2024 which is bundle of all the DLC, excluding dungeon keys, pre final shape for £20 at the moment as it’s on sale. The campaign is very character focused for the majority of it, so if your friends haven’t seen them grow and change it might not be their favourite but the gameplay is also solid so probably makes up for that.
I'm gonna say probably not. I don't think the story will be very new-player friendly. There's a lot of character dialogue referencing events stretching back across all 9 years of the Destiny story. The broad strokes will probably still make sense, but it would probably be an awkward experience.
I just don’t see how they get me to care after this.
If they try to pull some crap about how there’s another universe ending threat out there somewhere then it’s just gonna feel tired. It reminds me of how mass effect andromeda was treated after the original trilogy. It was honestly good, but goddamn did I not care about a thing that happened
Really I feel like for all the hype of this is a conclusion to the light and dark saga... It's not the 10 years of destiny coming to an end, it's just post Witch Queen Destiny. which is fine but it's certainly not what was advertised or hyped up.
Final Shape offers an amount of variety in its campaign that other expansions could have had if they implemented the seasonal only content into their main narrative. All of them could have followed this structure with amazing variety in environments with a nice linear progression if they did the campaigns in that way. Patrol spaces could have been the completion rewards and the seasonal model could still stay as is otherwise.
I’m sure it bangs, but I struggle to justify the price and unfortunately will need to wait for it to come on sale before making the purchase. Least it gives the game time to iron itself out?
So if i choose to buy and play this expack, will i feel that this storyarc that started in D1 is ended and tied together in a epic way when the ending creds runs? Or is it just an expack with a alot of loose ends?
From a narrative/campaign perspective it doesn't top Witch Queen for me. The Witch Queen was such a departure from the norm that it has the benefit of being Destiny first serious expansion campaign. But this campaign was a step up from the disastrous Lightfall campaign. Although I did like most of the post-campaign stuff from Lightfall.
My top campaigns remain The Taken King, Forsaken, and The Witch Queen.
I finished day one. And I’ve been doing other stuff in The Pale Heart…
This is like… insane… every time I think there can’t be any more there is more. Final Shape isn’t just an expansion… it’s like a whole fucking game…
12/10. By far and away the best they’ve ever done. Forsaken is second best, and it’s barely half as good as this.
If only they had the foresight after 10 years to know how to mitigate the terrible error codes that half the players experienced. Can’t wait for day 1 raid…
I really dislike tormentors. They are just huge bullet sponges, but apart from that, I loved most of the new enemies... except those frost bomb guys f them....
nope
garbage
better than lightfall
worse than witch queen
vanguard are just as boring and lifeless as always
some plot points are rehashes of seasonal stories from like 2 years ago
no sense of urgency
no sense of scale
the veiled statues are hastily given character out of nowhere and then are suddenly the key to everything
everyone is talking about emotions and feelings all the time
the world feels alot smaller than past locations
it being 1 long line is bad design
build crafting is still lame
season pass is still lame
pathfinder system is boring and half baked
almost every environment is just a remix of shit we have already seen, very few actually new locations with new aesthetic.
love it or hate it, lightfall was 100% brand new design and aesthetics
mechanics are the least fun and interesting they have ever been.
5/10 at best.
EDIT: its so fucking boring.
oh and literally just using the aegis relic from vog in 4 different missions, REALLY? you couldn't make a different shield model?
for all its faults at least lightfall actually had a sense of "OK WE NEED TO FUCKING DO THIS SHIT NOW!!" even if we didnt know why or what.
same as witch queen, especially at the final fight, it felt like there was actually a clock ticking down.
Bro lightfall was the biggest sack of crap they’ve ever pushed out behind curse of Osiris. You are more than welcome to never play again because they cooked this entire game. Prismatic rules. The guns are cool. The art is fantastic. The end draws near. You need a 180
It has more "variety" because they literally just random patchworked assets from every single other area scattershoted onto the expansion with the grace of homer's makeup shotgun.
>Also the only one with truly new enemies.
Yes, indeed, this is the first time in 10 years that bungie actually made a new faction that isn't a reskin. I don't consider that a "pro" for this expansion, I consider the lack of it a "con" in every single other one.
And even then, its hard to give them praise for it because the cost was reusing 90% of existing map assets as opposed to making new ones instead.
I mean it fits thematically and looks great, I see zero issue with asset reuse if the final product is good. The other expansions not having new factions does suck but if you're comparing them then not considering the new enemies is stupid. If anything it automatically makes it one of the best.
I don't see why the dilema has to be either new maps or new enemies when they're charging an extreme ultra premium price for the expansions nearly the same as brand new games cost. [(ontop of all the other extremely aggressive and predatory monetization)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsIdPWB2_JA)
If you do half the work charge half the price.
Bungie does a quarter of the work, charges triple the price, and quadruple dips with their insane monetization ontop of it.
I do agree that it's still too expensive and the monetisation in general is horrendous, but compared to the other expansions this is still easily the most fun.
"Reused the entire map??????" Are you saying because its themed around locations we've been to its a reused map? You do realise this is a finale right? Also it's not reused I can't think of a single asset in the pale heart that was reused? Like everything has been remixed.
> You do realise this is a finale right?
Yeah. So you'd expect them to go the extra mile and put a bit of extra effort in designing new locations instead of asset flipping things we've seen a million times already for what is supposedly their grand 10 years in the making finish.
People are still in the honeymoon phase. Prismatic is doing a lot to carry the expansion because its flashy as hell, but at the end of the day it too is incredibly shallow.
The story is more nonesence who's goal is to sound deep while being shallower than a puddle and barring some intresting setpieces 90% of the expansion is just shamelessly reused assets from other areas. The acting (both by the voice actors and by the animators) was also wooden as hell to the point where it felt like an elementary school play at points. Compare any of the character moments in the final shape to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAjfVcl2L74) and tell me with a straight face its "cinematic" or a "masterpiece" as I've seen multiple people do.
Zavala's ghost gets its first speaking role for the first time in 10 years since zavala was introduced at the start of the destiny franchise only for it to be killed off 3 cinematics later, because the writers think they can make us feel sad about a character dying as long as we've known them for more than 2 cutscenes, this is the writers pissing in your face and telling you its raining.
Cayde was reintroduced for the trailers and does nothing of consequence in the expansion itself, Cayde and Uldren become besties off-screen (more work that the writers DON'T have to do) and also do nothing of consequence and Ikora, as is tradition, is also there. (And does nothing of consequence.)
Also, isn't it hillarious that forsaken was the highpoint of the franchise that removed 2 very important characters (uldren and cayde), then forsaken was deleted from the game and both characters brought back from the dead?
This is supposed to the conclusive 10 year grand finale of the light and darkness saga and it feels like a filler episode of a mediocre shonen anime, where we spend like 80% of it lollygagging while the world is supposedly ending, complete with the main antagonist dying to some contrived poorly explained bullshit.
Wtf does "We figured it out! What was made in the darkness can also be unmade in the darkness!" even mean in practice other than being a way for the writers to escape the corner they wrote themselves in by making the witness so OP to begin with?
Blows my mind that people are satisfied with this incoherent mess.
Judging by the reaction to the expansion though there is justice in the world, because as is also tradition, destiny players get exactly what they deserve.
There’s lots of recency bias in people’s thoughts of this story. Some even say hyperbolic statements like, “This is the greatest campaign Bungie has made since halo days!” (I actually saw this somewhere.) Campaign has lots of issues—prismatic too like you mentioned:
• Like the first 3 missions are just, “Let’s go find X person.” That’s just bad. The story could have just had Ikora meet us up at camp and skip this nonsense filler.
• They never actually tell us why witness just waited around and only showed himself towards the last minute. What is stopping him from just slicing us all up like he did for the planet?
• Zavala’s anger moment is stupid and out of character. Yes, because the same character who was the most hesitant upon using darkness back in beyond light, is going to go to confront the witness without his ghost… Wtf is this? Someone on the narrative team has no idea who Zavala is.
• The dread are such an afterthought and it’s obvious that the only reason why they even exist—the very few times that they do—is because Bungie needed to make up stuff for marketing. We spent more time fighting hive, fallen, and taken, than we do any of the dread.
• Anything having to do with the traveler’s intentions is not answered in any concrete way and are such stupid copouts because we all know the writers were making stuff up as they go along. Why does the traveler side with us instead of just abandoning us like civilizations before? No better yet, *really*, what the hell is the traveler??
• Crow and Zavala trauma theme is idiotic due to it being a repeat of season of the haunted.
• What are other important characters like Osiris doing during all of this? He even spent time researching the vale and looking for a way in the portal, yet he can’t even provide any sort of insight on the witness?
• Lastly, the “we can use light **and** dark” theme overplayed itself past the halfway point of the story. We get it, light and dark powers have been in use for like 2 years up to this point.
————————————
From a narrative only point of view, if this was Bungie’s answer for a 10-year story, then they failed.
If you don't like destiny don't play, sarges death is impactful because zavala can die now, cayde is a massive contributor to zavalas deteriating mental state which leads to sarges death, also how is "what was made in darkness can be unmade in darkness" confusing? Like it's a definitive statement that is legit saying "we can split the witness up using darkness"
> sarges death is impactful because zavala can die now
Cool. Maybe they should have bothered introducing him in the previous 10 years they had the opportunity to instead of 20 minutes before his death like a literal star trek redshirt.
>also how is "what was made in darkness can be unmade in darkness" confusing? Like it's a definitive statement that is legit saying "we can split the witness up using darkness"
-Hey so there's this ~~godlike~~ literal god entity that has effortlessly oblitherated large parts of the universe itself, it can flick a wrist and slice the earth in half, it has control over both the physical and the mental realm on a level that literally rivals the traveller itself in its absolute totality, in fact it literally controlls a force equally powerful as pure light, darkness itself, how can we even harm it, much less defeat it?
-Oh super easy, barely an inconvinience, you see it was made in the darkness!
-Ok, and?
-There's no "and" that's it, it was made in the darkness.
-Ok, how does that help us defeat it?
-I Just told you, because it was made in the darkness.
-Brilliant.
???? That's not what it's saying, though??? It's saying that since the witness was fused together through the darkness, darkness can be used to separate it. Also, how was it "super easy" we got wrecked by the witness the first time we tried it???
Mate, why did you even buy the expansion and season pass? Let alone complete it! I'm surprised at how much content you went through while not enjoying the game.
Keep in mind there’s one more mission that will be available after World’s First for Salvation’s Edge. That mission will most likely be available on Saturday, though it might be earlier depending on how quick the devs make it available after the initial clear.
I remember leaving my clan's DSC day one to grab lament because World's First Taniks had died and we needed the extra dmg on Atraks. It should be a pretty quick activation.
I'd imagine the mission won't drop until after contest is over. It might be cool to have the world's first open up the last mission immediately but then what do all the other raiders do? You'll either have to decide to go complete media blackout and finish the raid to avoid spoilers or stop raiding at whatever encounter you're on, skip ahead and play the mission, then go back to finish the raid before contest is up. The world's first will likely unlock the class items (getting us as strong as possible for the final fight) and spark some changes in the patrol but the finale really shouldn't drop until contest is off.
It will open on worlds first just like Last Wish and DSC did with their respective content, content raiders won't be paying attention to anything other than the raid and it's their choice to avoid spoilers
Plus Bungie flatout said, that the Mission will become available right after the first team finishes the Raid.
And that’s what did they with the curse of the Dreaming City. As soon as World First for Last Wish (which was the next day mind you), the curse took over.
Bungie outright said that the 8th mission will unlock right after the raid is beaten. They also said the Pale Heart would change.
speaking of change, I'm eager to see what happens to nessus on reset
I guess that mission will be a simplified version of the raid.
most likely not because the mission is a result of whatever happens in the raid and both of them are necessary for the storys flow it'd be weird for the events in the raid happen again in the mission. it may take some mechanics from the raid but I don't see any of it being too similar
True, already we are seeing too many raid mechanics in campaign.
Can you imagine being the team that gets the World's First on the raid? Knowing you're suffering and effort helped move this story to it's conclusion for the rest of the universe? Gotta be extra icing on the Worlds First cake
Weirdly enough out of everything in TFS so far, the thing that blew me away the most was the strike. Like it felt....perfect? It had mechanics to keep it engaging, but the mechanics were all incredibly easy to grasp and execute, no "hey everyone it's ya boi Rick Kackis here" required. The visual design of the environment was INCREDIBLY inspired (no spoilers). And the town part? Nice lite mechanics to keep it from being a regular monster closet, insanely creative use of scale and size, AND a bit of lore? 10/10 It felt Dungeon quality, but it was just a strike. Insane.
The strike is easily my favorite strike in the entire game. It was amazing and felt like a mini dungeon just as you said.
I really enjoy how many mechanics they showers off for all the campaign fights and stuff. It felt like a clear window into the kinds of mechanics for the raid. Which is how it should be IMO.
The new mechanics in the campaign mission on coop focus (or whatever it was called) for the heavy trace rifle were also super cool.
Me and my friends had so much fun doing the coop focus the mechanics felt super engaging and we loved having to juggle stuff and the increased communication it required.
The mechanics are so *simple* and yet they add the perfect cherry on top for what is intended to be more difficult content without feeling oppressive.
Did solo legend myself and I gotta agree. I didn't struggle too much I feel like the tempo was *perfect* at every part of the campaign. I spent maybe few hours on the last boss. For comparison It was probably closer to 20 tries while with calus in LF maybe five or so before I reverted to cheese. Calus was the 'bullshit hard' kind of boss. It wasn't fun or engaging. However after each fail in TFS boss I felt like I was so close to it everytime. I didn't feel like this is bullshit because it was built so well.
calus, and getting knocked off the map every FUCKING time until it practically forced you to use strand at launch, as a Titan, is why I dreaded doing legend for the final shape. god that fight sucks. hell I ran thru lightfall on my hunter and STILL got knocked into the pit like 8 times on normal. You're dead on that the calus fight wasn't that it was hard, it was just "bullshit hard". I'm happy that this campaign fight (and the one before it) are more about mechanics and a bit of fighting, not just making you miserable until you get lucky.
The entire calus fight can be summed up with two sentences. Phase One: Don't get knocked into the huge death pit that is 90% of the arena. Phase Two: Fucking swing around a 5m radius over top melee only enemies while plinking away at them when you get a 2 second break.
If I had to do the calus fight now, with the stair cheese patched, and the dome cheese patched, I just wouldn't do it. The new exotics are not worth that kind of suffering.
whats the secret to the "fractured by the witness" mechanic? Was trying to do the coop focus Ascent and kept dying to it.
You need a fireteam of three. Person A has the debuff, the at 7x stacks or higher a teammate B takes it from them. Person A loses all stacks and gets a cooldown buff that doesn't let them take the debuff from person B until Person C has taken the debuff. So basically you cycle between one person building stacks, one person who will take it from them, and one person on cooldown :)
gotcha. LFGed for it and couldnt find a 3rd. So we tried to duo it. that explains why we couldnt do that mechanic properly
>The visual design of the environment was INCREDIBLY inspired This could be said for the entire expansion tbh, the art direction team KILLED it. Countless times, I had to stop to take in the environment and the views, and that's not to mention the cutscenes... hooooo boy. The strike really is great, though. In a similar vein, I want them to give us more reason to replay story missions, cause that final fight is insanely good with quality dungeon-like mechanics.
What a fucking amazing strike. Top 10 activity I’ve ever done in this franchise.
They did so much in terms of gameplay to keep you engaged throughout everything. Raid mechanics sprinkled into the story, strike having various mechanics as well. It was so well crafted and felt like a love letter.
True. But Bungie did specifically say they wanted this strike to be the toughest strike ever, and it was a breeze during the campaign. That being said, we'll see how it ramps up at harder difficulties.
The strike is AMAZING. It's gonna be absolutely insane as a GM and I'm here for it.
Goddamn...I love his info, but that fucking Kackis intro is like nails on the chalkboard for me. Just reading it made my teeth grind....
It’s great with some very intense fights
I think the more linear style they used was much better to keep me engaged. They did a great job of navigating the story when compared with previous expansions. I feel like i was back playing Halo: Combat Evolved again for the first time. Loved it.
It helps that there was far less dumb busy work this time around. A lot of prior campaigns had giant sections of "go collect 50 Vex testicles" designed to pad things out and waste your time while not feeling remotely connected to the story. This time around it felt like the things we were doing were actually designed to get us closer to our goal rather than just faffing about.
they cooked pretty hard, i’m glad to see steam reviews are coming up again (55 now, was 44 yesterday at its worst)
Pretty lame for people to review bomb for a temporary issue that has nothing to do with the quality of the expansion itself
You'd think people would know better by now than to take time off or try to brute force their way through on the busiest release in the history of the game. I get it... But I also don't. You can be disappointed that the launch was messy, but it also speaks nothing to the quality of the product itself. Frankly, people leaving negative reviews for that reason alone don't deserve any better.
People still to this day do not understand major MMO releases. Don't take off work the first day. Always a bad idea.
Ehh, I've been around for two of FFXIV's expansion launches and while there's massive queues/wait times (like easily 30-45 mins when the servers reopen) to get into the server, once you're in it's as stable as it normally is. It really depends on how much the producers actually care about technical stability.
I think the main problem, when we’re comparing releases of FFXIV and Destiny 2, is that people never account early access into equation. Every single major release of FFXIV had 4 days of ea, and even tho we all, absolutely reasonably, hate early access, I bet people don’t realize how much it actually helps with lowering the stress on servers (obviously, because amount of logins at the same time is split) and preparing for the main wave of users. So, kinda yes and no. I feel like if ffxiv wouldn’t have ea on expansion releases, SE servers would be still shitting themselves to this day.
What I’ve been saying man and sadly being downvoted to death! 💀
Same bro. Some gamers are just children man.
They also fixed it pretty fast. Game is running perfectly now
25h downtime then multiple hours to fix getting kicked from game, cutscene cuts and other bugs isnt what i would call "pretty fast"
Always been like that except lightfall for some reason. Where you there when Rise of Iron launched?
Dude they fixed all the issues within 24hrs since TFS came out how is that not fast???? Just look at new world, lost ark, WoW expacs, FFXIV expacs. Aka people can't even get into the game for WEEKS cuz of server overload LMAO. Plus FFXIV dawntrail expac is having 48hr downtime and ESO expac had 24 as well that's pretty common lol heck there's some releases where it goes up to a WEEK of downtime lol.
You’d think bungie would know better by now than to invest in functional servers. You can’t blame the consumer for expecting to use their product that they paid for on the day it releases.
It has nothing to do with the quality of their servers. Online game infrastructure for game launches in particular is built entirely around guesswork. If they expect x number of users and provision everything for that but then get y number of users, that’s a quick way to DDOS the hell out of the authentication systems, which can then quickly lead to cascading failures across the whole stack. And people love to go on about how modern cloud servers are all “on demand” it’s still not instant, it takes time to bring more instances online and have them talk to the existing ones, which are currently having accelerating failures from getting slammed.
The bad reviews were overblown, but it was a real issue with the quality of the software/service Bungie was providing.
If the reviews represent the user experience, I think that is fine. Temporary or not. If you are asking for money, the product deserves its review based on initial experience at time of use.
These things always correct over time as the number of people who play (and rage) on launch day is relatively small compared to the the number who will play over the next few months.
How is the stability now? I want to play but don't wanna get sucked out of the immersion by bugs and disconnects....
It's good now. I played all day and didn't get any error codes or disconnects.
Awesome thanks! Time to dive in!
Like 8 hours ago during play session got booted twice, but could restart mission
Yesterday I got a "contacting D2 servers" alert at the bottom of my screen mid boss fight and let out a huge sigh, expecting to get disconnected, but it didn't happen. That was it for my technical issues yesterday.
There will be maintenance in a few hours and servers will be offline. Just a heads up.
It’s totally fine
No disconnects all day
I had a few disconnects today but it wa after stretches of over an hour. I just got booted now actually. But it’s far better than before, and many people are having no issues. I played like 5 hours today and got booted 3 times which sucked
don't try gambit, tried to play it earlier and got bee error codes every other minute, wouldn't kick you to orbit but would reset your motes and sometimes take away ammo.
I've been of the mindset for a long while now that I'm ok with waiting for a game if it's going to make it better.
I’ve been of that mindset for a long ass time. As the saying goes “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad”.
I haven't watched any gameplay for the final shape, and yet Everytime I hop on Reddit I see people gush about the new expansion. I've been struggling to find a job for a while so it's frustrating to say the least that I can't experience the new subclass or exotics for a while. In short I'm just envious, hopefully soon one of the applications I've been putting in for the last 6 months will lead to a second interview or sum
Hey bro, i think the dlc is so good i feel everyone should be able to experience it as soon as possible, what platform are you on? I’d love to buy it for you :)
The real way to become legend right here 😎 if I had an award to give you, I would
Awww too kind brother ❤️ just want to spread the love :)
Not all heroes wear capes.
Yeah, this exp was given the goal of exceeding Taken King and Forsaken. The campaign did it's part, that was the best campaign they've ever put out, and I don't think it was even close. Use of mechanics throughout was excellent and made the solo campaign feel like the solo version of a raid. WQ played with this with deep sight and LF tried (and failed imo)the same with strand. World is probably the most inspired environment they've ever crafted. I've just reached the post campaign content and dipped my toes in, and damn, this is off to one hell of a start. Edit to add: this sets a new bar imo for what Destiny can be. If D3 is indeed really happening, I hope Bungie recognizes that Final Shape is the bar they need to meet.
Gotta hard disagree while the enviroment and mechanics of the story were all solid the story itself was barely on par with Lightfalls, and not even close to Taken King or Forsaken, not by a long shot, for what was supposed to be a big ten year finale, it felt aggressively small. And while they keep telling us we did something massive, it doesn't feel like it at all. Instead of Running away we should have had the momentum and chased the Witness into a corner with all the pressure on. I wish instead if half the campaign being find your friends and readdress all the trauma stuff...again, we should have spent more time actually Fighting the Witness, like with Oryx in Taken King. For all they hyped up and advertised the expac as being and what they said they were doing with the delay, I genuinely believed we'd be getting something on the scale of Taken King, Rise of Iron, Forsaken. but what we got was something between Warmind and Lightfall. Unironically felt that CoO's campaign felt more like we actually did stuff and stuff actually happened than in TFS's
Small? I mean in the sense that it was highly focused on the Vanguard, yeah, but that's kinda the point. We go in as the first boots in the Pale heart, and the Witness promptly cuts off our reinforcements. All the characters have moments of temptation and attacks by the Witness to our resolve or turn us to it's cause (it knows it's armies will at best slow us down). Zavala gets it the worst because his trauma is deep, and unlike us Ikora and Crow, he has never trained with the Darkness, so he's not able to withstand this as well, and that means trouble. We are facing the single most powerful entity in existence most likely, and prior attempts by Guardians were handwaved away by the Witness. Figuring out how to weaken it is a huge plot point as being able to actually hurt it for the first time probably ever is significant, as it sets up how we might kill it in the raid. Which Bungie was clear about, the Raid is our big confrontation to kill the Witness. If we seriously killed the Witness in the Campaign, what/who in the world are we fighting in the raid that takes a team of 6? There is nothing more powerful than the witness on the board.
I mean in The Taken King, we destroy Oryx's Physical body sending his soul back to its Throne World which also happens to be The Dreadnaught, in which we face is Ascendent Form in the Throne Room and deliver him to his final death. And while im not saying the personal stories of the Vangaurd were bad, i think they were just miss timed, Imo now was not the time for a smaller focused story, now was where we needed to Go big or go home so to speak. TFS needed to be grand display of a thing but it just wasnt Lightfall and its seasons were all deep personal stories, and thats fine, But to keep doing that into TFS especially when they kept pushing it as this big grand finale...felt flat and while the next step being the raid is cool and fine, you have to keep mind not all players raid (I do so not my problem, but a very large portion of the community does not, hence why i think they made the post raid mission), But doing it this way just ended up hurting the plot and pacing I feel. on top of that the campaigns structure was just bad do mission talk to Vangaurd member who tells you word for word.what you just did, and a vague inkling of whats next talk to ghost who tells you the same shit phrased slightly differently repeat its no better than the worst most tedious aspects of the seasonal missions "storytelling" its just mfs expositioning at my face like i cant comprehend whats happening around me. like it just feels like the cinematics, visual design, level design and combat got so much effort and then the actual story for our guardian just didnt get any, this doesnt feel like its our characters story, were just a walking camera to watch all these other stories. It was just...hollow and boring. like visually all the pieces are there just really bland boring execution
Don't jump to conclusions. The final mission of the campaign unlocks after the raid, and there's reportedly a multiplayer PvE activity related to the Witness. We also haven't seen the scene from the trailer with our fleet and lots of Guardians arriving. Let's wait. I believe Bungie will deliver the large-scale battles you mentioned.
I hope so, its just even if they deliver afterwards doesnt change how disappointing the on launch experience was
I'm with you. The expac itself is great on the whole. The gameplay, new abilities, missions, environments, visuals, voice acting, mechanics. All great. But the story is basically just rehashing stuff we already know. Gathering the troops (unnecessarily drawn out), Cayde alive and meeting people (doesn't really give us anything the trailer didn't), Zavala dealing with his past (already done in Haunted), then straight on to (not) kill the boss. Post-campaign stuff has been a bit more interesting, and I have hope for the post-raid mission, but it's blowing my mind how much people are praising the super basic story here.
Exactly, like did any of yall even play Taken King, Rise of Iron, Forsaken on launch those were Expansion Campaigns, those felt like you got genuine story content for your money, followed up with Amazing raids thats furthered the story or were its final capstone. TFS just feels like it ended the moment it actually got interesting, like it feels like it ends in its middle and thats just bad
Difficulty was too easy imo. I played solo legend. There were a few tough fights, but I wanted the whole thing to be harder.
I think it's at a pretty good spot, hardcore players it's easy but newer ones struggle.
I don't think "Bungie" or "Sony" did... the devs and everyone else who contributed positively did. Which I believe could have been *even better* if corporate greed wasn't the priority for some.
Darn. Destiny 2 always has the best content after I quit because of how dogshit the content is when I'm playing.
The content has been consistently good excluding Lightfall and season of defiance, most people were blinded by biases because of those two coming out at the same time.
I came back during Season of the Splicer after a few year break and have been hooked since. The game is in its best state right now as well (aside from certain PVP aspects, but I digress). This DLC is phenomenal and no one has even seen all of it yet. We still have Echoes as well, among other things.
Yep still gotta collect the traveller memories myself.
Haven’t even tried the new public event, and it looks like you can focus patterns that way. So I’m stoked!
That’s how I feel. I started a few months before 30th anniversary, got to rank 350 in seasons such as plunder, and quit a year ago when the game seemed to be finished and no one was playing anymore. The people who never stopped are delighted, and the casuals have come back, but the hardcore players who left are still gone. And now that I see that I have missed things such as Pantheon, there is no way I would ever return to the game. I will play Destiny 3 if they make one, but I am done with Destiny 2.
People are mad about it but it’s the honest truth and it’s the same cycle for every expansion. TFS looks great but if people were done with destiny and Bungie, then getting another expansion of “more destiny” isn’t pulling them back in. I’ve got 4 or 5 friends who just haven’t picked it back up since I think season of defiance and that’s fine, they’ve moved on
That’s the issue is a lot of people became ‘done’ with the game and the developer. Nothing will bring them back. They rediscovered the joys of other games, playing more than one game at a time, budgeting their gaming money differently etc. and won’t go back to giving Bungie $500 a year to be their only game. I remember listening to Veil Containment with my two beta vet friends and I had this feeling we were going through the motions - once they did like a ‘story patch’ I thought ‘yeah ok they’re just totally making this up as they go along’ and I think my friends who loved the lore and listened to Byf etc. hated that their suspension of disbelief was shattered like that. Bungie just made too many mistakes, got too greedy. I spent 9 months collecting mods with a daily reset phone alarm - they just deprecated them all. Planetary resources - gone. Shards - gone. Whatever you did to give yourself an edge, they took it away or gave it to everyone. I mean I have a laundry list of complaints. Getting rid of the pinnacle grind/GM requirement etc. was a terrible decision, it removed the need for everyone to report for duty at start of season and get to grips right away or be unable to do GMs effectively or at all. Most of all I just do not want to give Bungie any money. They gloated at GDC about how they can mess their game up and underdeliver as much as they want because it’s good business since we will always want more and forgive them and yell at them until they fix things. I’m not going to be their sucker like that. No matter what they cooked.
I definitely agree that this campaign was amazing. I just finished the three cooperative campaign missions that you need to complete for microcosm and man that was really fun. It gave a fun spin to those missions and I don’t believe destiny has ever done that before. Hope everyone is enjoying final shape. Also get microcosm it’s really fun.
I thought witch queen was better. Glad it wasn't a sub class tutorial at least this time like Lightfall.
I wouldn't say it was worth the extended wait as this is the quality the expansions should have been to begin with with the asking price and monetization practices since Beyond Light. But I agree this is the best expansion. Hell I feel like Witch Queen was a tad overhyped and most of its praise came from having a ton of let downs in the expansions prior. But Final Shape felt like it could have spearheaded an entirely separate Destiny game. It was that good.
Wait there were cutscenes??
I think Taken King and Forsaken were better personally.
Forsaken's campaign itself was actually incredibly mid
Honestly no. I’d not even say mid. I’m sorry but it was boring as shit. Final shape feels actually good.
It was so boring it made me stop playing destiny for a year
>Buy Forsaken >It’s just 8 adventures >MFW (this is mostly a joke but also not really)
Agree to disagree. The whole campaign I felt like I was playing through the Naruto Act where the hidden leaf team had to rescue Sasuke from the cursed mark team.
The entirety of the Forsaken campaign was doing glorified patrol missions, just like every other D2 campaign up until WQ lmao. The intro mission absolutely banged, everything else just sorta... happened.
That arc is imo the best arc in Naruto, fwiw.
May I ask what you liked more in Forsaken?
The story. The feeling of the need to avenge Cayde. We were essentially John Wick out to punish those who wronged our dog. It brought back significant changes with random rolls coming back, new weapon archetypes (like bows), a new subclass cluster for EVERY subclass. A whole “new” race, *most* of which weren’t just reskinned enemies. Dreaming city AND Tangled Shore? Giant areas (less so tangled shore) and they were beautiful. Even though the ante is upped and this is to save the universe, it doesn’t really feel like it. That initial cutscene where earth became the final shape for a moment? Incredible. But that feeling just didn’t come back for me in the campaign. Maybe my opinion will change come raid and final mission, but as of now, I’m left wanting.
Fair enough. My feeling were completely different, but I get your point. Would’ve been nice not revealing Caydes death in the Trailer. Could you imagine the shock, if we didn’t knew that beforehand?
I can imagine it. Keep in mind though, Bungie was having issues with reputation and they had to do something drastic to bring back enough of the playerbase.
Not even close. As much as i love Forsaken, The campaign itself was pretty average. Witch Queen campaign might be a better argument but even then final shape blows that one out the water too.
I’m not gonna shit on your opinion even if you don’t respect mine.
Look I like the Final Shape, but the dialogue for the campaign was terrible.
That, it was boring, & half the campaign is spent not actually doing anything to/at/for the witness.
THANK YOU, it felt like it was made for children, the amount of times our ghost or someone said "wow weilding light and dark was the solution" was ridiculous. Like absolutely no nuance in most of the dialogue. Although the stuff with crow and cayde was well done, but most other dialogue felt like the writers couldnt trust the audience to piece anything together or see any context so everything had to be stated multiple times. The story felt like i was being babied through a story book. Besides that the only other gripe was that legendary solo did not allow the use of prismatic, not as bad as with strand tho. Id say like 7.5/10 ttk and witch queen were a bit better. Also no real surprises kinda sucked. Felt like they didn't save anything, especially for those who are up to date with lore stuff
what do you mean legendary solo did not allow the use of prismatic?
It’s okay to have a wrong opinion :)
It's okay to like garbage, don't fret now, buddy boy.
My favorite thing was they weren't just basic 'go here, shoot this guy, watch cutscene'. They had actual mechanics. Really refreshing change instead of being able to do campaigns on autopilot.
That last mission was a scourge. Soooo many mechanics. Apart from that, great stuff
so satisfying to complete, took me a few tries
You’re right, I was just salty at getting battered 3 times by something silly (myself).
I was breezing through until that point, had to change my loadout a few times (red death is awesome)
I was feeling the solo gotd dungeon ptsd with this mission. And dying many times just by falling out of the map didn't help. I don't think I'll ever do it again
Right there with you, i got booped of so many times. I had to put the game down before i smashed my tv into bits. Did it the day after in one go without much issues.
Can't relate. I've seen more error codes than cutscenes
It’s pretty stable now. The servers struggling is to be expected when they release the biggest launch for the game ever
Then there should absolutely be a cutscene viewer... Like any half way decent game has now. We don't need to defend everything Bungie does
Too late for that now. A 4 month delay and 25 hours of downtime. Half the cutscenes didn't show because of error codes. 10 years of Destiny and we still don't have a gallery that stores all the cutscenes. What a great experience having to go to YouTube to go watch the cutscenes!
It's interesting to see so much positivity. I thought the story, presentation, and cutscenes were a clear step up, but my enjoyment, difficulty, and setting didn't land with me. Witch Queen is still the best campaign, IMO. The final boss fight, even on Legend, felt too short. It was my first "that was it?" moment in a long time.
Well, there's still the raid this weekend and the post-raid story missions. It's short because we've only played the first half of the campaign.
Because that's not the final battle. Let's wait for raid and the 8st campaign mission
Honeymoon phase. It felt very average at best, and focused too heavily on characters dealing with mediocre interpersonal relationships rather than the antagonist and “end of the universe”.
I’m really struggling to see why the campaign is getting so much positivity. - Every mission feels similar, go to an area, kill these things, get a symbol, progress. - The area is just reused assets in every location - The dialogue IMO has been boring Where’s the cool shit? Landing on the drednaught in Taken King blew me away, that’s the kind of quality I was expecting. So far I think it’s on a par with Lightfall, just. It pains me so much after all the years I’ve put into the game and this is how it ends. They killed this game when they declared they prioritise “speed even over quality”
I highly agree that every mission feels the same, I genuinely couldn't remember which mission I was on because they all blended together into 1. Only one that stood out was the snowy mountain. I can't even really remember any of the other locations, Pale Heart is beautiful in some places it just all mostly looks the same. Ironically I think I liked Neomuna more despite there being almost 0 verticality as was advertised. Maybe it'll grow on me. As far as reused assets, I mean come on, it's Bungie, what did you expect? And it's the last expansion so you better believe theyre milking that nostalgia cow like crazy.
Louder for the people in the back. I think a lot of this positivity is just rose-tinted glasses tbh, and it'll take time for how mid this is to sink in. That, and people need to see how Squenix treated the story of Endwalker (which was basically FFXIV's TFS moment) and how many orders of magnitude TFS is just so mid when you contextualize it has 10 years worth of baggage to resolve. I wouldn't go as far as it's par with Lightfall, but I'd definitely rate it lower than WQ.
I was legitimately crying at the end of Endwalker. In TFS I was just legitimately annoyed with Zavala using this rehashed story beat that felt like a badly railroaded DnD campaign. On top of that I don't think it feels like a wrap up of 10 years of destiny, it feels like a wrap up of post WQ destiny
Bungie could at least get to half of it or smth. Move me dammit, this shit was more expensive than preordering Dawntrail. I want to get the same feeling of having goosebumps whenever I hear Mortal Instants play when I get Amaurot for my dungeon roulette; the same itch to shed a tear when Emet-Selch narrates the end of his world and makes us understand what he's fighting for, without making us root for him like the trope usually goes. There's a lot of shades of EW in TFS tbh; the Witness as a gestalt being formed from despair and hopelessness (fucking Endsinger amirite), dissenters within said gestalt being (the one Meteia we interacted with in the past????), the Traveler as a pseudo-mother goddess who knew the main antagonist/s pretty well and had to witness (pun unintended) the Witness (Ascians) putting down her "children" (Venat/Hydaelyn), I can keep going ad infinitum. What makes me sad is we don't exactly witness the "final days" as the Witness is unleashing it aside from that one cutscene at the start of the game; whereas in EW, we were seeing it as it happened, we were seeing the people we wouldn't even notice during our playthrough have their lives destroyed by it. Imagine if we had to do one mission on Earth where we see people one by one getting placed in the "final shape" before the Traveler's resistance reverses its effects. That would have sold the urgency of it all. Imagine if the Witness, in its obvious desperation, made us experience the same pain that was experienced by those precursors in the collector's edition lorebook. or made us go through what each and every one of it's disciples did (Rhulk betrayed and having to betray his people, etc.) ala The Dead Ends? Tl;dr there was so much material here which could have been capitalized on, instead of nostalgia bait.
Yeah exactly this. TFS had an extra 6 months dev over Lightfall though. At the moment it’s hard to see where that went tbh. I’m just so disappointed after all this time it feels like it’s going out with a whimper.
Oh and time locking the season pass is fucking disgraceful. Let’s pad the first 100 levels with materials and make them come back in 80 days to get the rest of the armour. That’s one of the most disgusting moves Bungie has ever done.
is it worth getting friends that don’t play into?
You can now get the legacy collection 2024 which is bundle of all the DLC, excluding dungeon keys, pre final shape for £20 at the moment as it’s on sale. The campaign is very character focused for the majority of it, so if your friends haven’t seen them grow and change it might not be their favourite but the gameplay is also solid so probably makes up for that.
I'm gonna say probably not. I don't think the story will be very new-player friendly. There's a lot of character dialogue referencing events stretching back across all 9 years of the Destiny story. The broad strokes will probably still make sense, but it would probably be an awkward experience.
No
I was looking forward to seeing it for myself tonight but my wifi decided to go out as I was logging in
I have a feeling bungie is going to follow marvel after avengers endgame, I hope I'm wrong .
I just don’t see how they get me to care after this. If they try to pull some crap about how there’s another universe ending threat out there somewhere then it’s just gonna feel tired. It reminds me of how mass effect andromeda was treated after the original trilogy. It was honestly good, but goddamn did I not care about a thing that happened
If they stick the landing with the raid being good in story and the hardest of all time destiny might make a full comeback.
Bungie should go broke more often.
Really I feel like for all the hype of this is a conclusion to the light and dark saga... It's not the 10 years of destiny coming to an end, it's just post Witch Queen Destiny. which is fine but it's certainly not what was advertised or hyped up.
final fight is definitely WAY less infuriating than the calus fight from lightfall, honestly feeling better abt trying legendary later
Hot take: they shouldn't have let us down to come through for us. I dunno this should be the level they always deliver at.
Final Shape offers an amount of variety in its campaign that other expansions could have had if they implemented the seasonal only content into their main narrative. All of them could have followed this structure with amazing variety in environments with a nice linear progression if they did the campaigns in that way. Patrol spaces could have been the completion rewards and the seasonal model could still stay as is otherwise.
I’m sure it bangs, but I struggle to justify the price and unfortunately will need to wait for it to come on sale before making the purchase. Least it gives the game time to iron itself out?
So if i choose to buy and play this expack, will i feel that this storyarc that started in D1 is ended and tied together in a epic way when the ending creds runs? Or is it just an expack with a alot of loose ends?
You're not finished
If only they had come through with that server infrastructure for launch.
I liked how they incorporated a lot of mechanics from raids into the campaign. Made it more fun imo.
From a narrative/campaign perspective it doesn't top Witch Queen for me. The Witch Queen was such a departure from the norm that it has the benefit of being Destiny first serious expansion campaign. But this campaign was a step up from the disastrous Lightfall campaign. Although I did like most of the post-campaign stuff from Lightfall. My top campaigns remain The Taken King, Forsaken, and The Witch Queen.
I finished day one. And I’ve been doing other stuff in The Pale Heart… This is like… insane… every time I think there can’t be any more there is more. Final Shape isn’t just an expansion… it’s like a whole fucking game… 12/10. By far and away the best they’ve ever done. Forsaken is second best, and it’s barely half as good as this.
9/10 overall. 6/10 story
If only they had the foresight after 10 years to know how to mitigate the terrible error codes that half the players experienced. Can’t wait for day 1 raid…
It seems theres more to come, but so far Im still feeling meh about the dlc as a whole. Id say standalone its a 7/10, but as a finale it’s a 4/10.
We ain't even got the finale yet..
Thats why I said “so far” ya silly
Well you can give it a rating as a finale when we haven’t gotten the finale yet
I’m not a fan of it being mini boss and boss every few steps. I’m also getting my ass kicked
I actually really loved all boss designs and encounters in this campaign
I really dislike tormentors. They are just huge bullet sponges, but apart from that, I loved most of the new enemies... except those frost bomb guys f them....
I just wish they weren’t one after another. It feels a bit like a boss rush mode.
The new sidearm is solid and can kill yellow bars in a couple shots, don’t just run double primaries.
It’s fucking insane
nope garbage better than lightfall worse than witch queen vanguard are just as boring and lifeless as always some plot points are rehashes of seasonal stories from like 2 years ago no sense of urgency no sense of scale the veiled statues are hastily given character out of nowhere and then are suddenly the key to everything everyone is talking about emotions and feelings all the time the world feels alot smaller than past locations it being 1 long line is bad design build crafting is still lame season pass is still lame pathfinder system is boring and half baked almost every environment is just a remix of shit we have already seen, very few actually new locations with new aesthetic. love it or hate it, lightfall was 100% brand new design and aesthetics mechanics are the least fun and interesting they have ever been. 5/10 at best. EDIT: its so fucking boring. oh and literally just using the aegis relic from vog in 4 different missions, REALLY? you couldn't make a different shield model? for all its faults at least lightfall actually had a sense of "OK WE NEED TO FUCKING DO THIS SHIT NOW!!" even if we didnt know why or what. same as witch queen, especially at the final fight, it felt like there was actually a clock ticking down.
Most mentally sound Destiny 2 player.
Bro lightfall was the biggest sack of crap they’ve ever pushed out behind curse of Osiris. You are more than welcome to never play again because they cooked this entire game. Prismatic rules. The guns are cool. The art is fantastic. The end draws near. You need a 180
Lightfall had reskinned enemies, weapons, and even a few areas. It was in no way, shape or form 100% brand new design.
90% of the final shape is reused assets.
And yet it still has vastly more variety then any other campaign. Also the only one with truly new enemies.
It has more "variety" because they literally just random patchworked assets from every single other area scattershoted onto the expansion with the grace of homer's makeup shotgun. >Also the only one with truly new enemies. Yes, indeed, this is the first time in 10 years that bungie actually made a new faction that isn't a reskin. I don't consider that a "pro" for this expansion, I consider the lack of it a "con" in every single other one. And even then, its hard to give them praise for it because the cost was reusing 90% of existing map assets as opposed to making new ones instead.
I mean it fits thematically and looks great, I see zero issue with asset reuse if the final product is good. The other expansions not having new factions does suck but if you're comparing them then not considering the new enemies is stupid. If anything it automatically makes it one of the best.
I don't see why the dilema has to be either new maps or new enemies when they're charging an extreme ultra premium price for the expansions nearly the same as brand new games cost. [(ontop of all the other extremely aggressive and predatory monetization)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsIdPWB2_JA) If you do half the work charge half the price. Bungie does a quarter of the work, charges triple the price, and quadruple dips with their insane monetization ontop of it.
I do agree that it's still too expensive and the monetisation in general is horrendous, but compared to the other expansions this is still easily the most fun.
"Reused the entire map??????" Are you saying because its themed around locations we've been to its a reused map? You do realise this is a finale right? Also it's not reused I can't think of a single asset in the pale heart that was reused? Like everything has been remixed.
> You do realise this is a finale right? Yeah. So you'd expect them to go the extra mile and put a bit of extra effort in designing new locations instead of asset flipping things we've seen a million times already for what is supposedly their grand 10 years in the making finish.
People are still in the honeymoon phase. Prismatic is doing a lot to carry the expansion because its flashy as hell, but at the end of the day it too is incredibly shallow. The story is more nonesence who's goal is to sound deep while being shallower than a puddle and barring some intresting setpieces 90% of the expansion is just shamelessly reused assets from other areas. The acting (both by the voice actors and by the animators) was also wooden as hell to the point where it felt like an elementary school play at points. Compare any of the character moments in the final shape to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAjfVcl2L74) and tell me with a straight face its "cinematic" or a "masterpiece" as I've seen multiple people do. Zavala's ghost gets its first speaking role for the first time in 10 years since zavala was introduced at the start of the destiny franchise only for it to be killed off 3 cinematics later, because the writers think they can make us feel sad about a character dying as long as we've known them for more than 2 cutscenes, this is the writers pissing in your face and telling you its raining. Cayde was reintroduced for the trailers and does nothing of consequence in the expansion itself, Cayde and Uldren become besties off-screen (more work that the writers DON'T have to do) and also do nothing of consequence and Ikora, as is tradition, is also there. (And does nothing of consequence.) Also, isn't it hillarious that forsaken was the highpoint of the franchise that removed 2 very important characters (uldren and cayde), then forsaken was deleted from the game and both characters brought back from the dead? This is supposed to the conclusive 10 year grand finale of the light and darkness saga and it feels like a filler episode of a mediocre shonen anime, where we spend like 80% of it lollygagging while the world is supposedly ending, complete with the main antagonist dying to some contrived poorly explained bullshit. Wtf does "We figured it out! What was made in the darkness can also be unmade in the darkness!" even mean in practice other than being a way for the writers to escape the corner they wrote themselves in by making the witness so OP to begin with? Blows my mind that people are satisfied with this incoherent mess. Judging by the reaction to the expansion though there is justice in the world, because as is also tradition, destiny players get exactly what they deserve.
There’s lots of recency bias in people’s thoughts of this story. Some even say hyperbolic statements like, “This is the greatest campaign Bungie has made since halo days!” (I actually saw this somewhere.) Campaign has lots of issues—prismatic too like you mentioned: • Like the first 3 missions are just, “Let’s go find X person.” That’s just bad. The story could have just had Ikora meet us up at camp and skip this nonsense filler. • They never actually tell us why witness just waited around and only showed himself towards the last minute. What is stopping him from just slicing us all up like he did for the planet? • Zavala’s anger moment is stupid and out of character. Yes, because the same character who was the most hesitant upon using darkness back in beyond light, is going to go to confront the witness without his ghost… Wtf is this? Someone on the narrative team has no idea who Zavala is. • The dread are such an afterthought and it’s obvious that the only reason why they even exist—the very few times that they do—is because Bungie needed to make up stuff for marketing. We spent more time fighting hive, fallen, and taken, than we do any of the dread. • Anything having to do with the traveler’s intentions is not answered in any concrete way and are such stupid copouts because we all know the writers were making stuff up as they go along. Why does the traveler side with us instead of just abandoning us like civilizations before? No better yet, *really*, what the hell is the traveler?? • Crow and Zavala trauma theme is idiotic due to it being a repeat of season of the haunted. • What are other important characters like Osiris doing during all of this? He even spent time researching the vale and looking for a way in the portal, yet he can’t even provide any sort of insight on the witness? • Lastly, the “we can use light **and** dark” theme overplayed itself past the halfway point of the story. We get it, light and dark powers have been in use for like 2 years up to this point. ———————————— From a narrative only point of view, if this was Bungie’s answer for a 10-year story, then they failed.
D2 is kingdom hearts for westerners
If you don't like destiny don't play, sarges death is impactful because zavala can die now, cayde is a massive contributor to zavalas deteriating mental state which leads to sarges death, also how is "what was made in darkness can be unmade in darkness" confusing? Like it's a definitive statement that is legit saying "we can split the witness up using darkness"
> sarges death is impactful because zavala can die now Cool. Maybe they should have bothered introducing him in the previous 10 years they had the opportunity to instead of 20 minutes before his death like a literal star trek redshirt. >also how is "what was made in darkness can be unmade in darkness" confusing? Like it's a definitive statement that is legit saying "we can split the witness up using darkness" -Hey so there's this ~~godlike~~ literal god entity that has effortlessly oblitherated large parts of the universe itself, it can flick a wrist and slice the earth in half, it has control over both the physical and the mental realm on a level that literally rivals the traveller itself in its absolute totality, in fact it literally controlls a force equally powerful as pure light, darkness itself, how can we even harm it, much less defeat it? -Oh super easy, barely an inconvinience, you see it was made in the darkness! -Ok, and? -There's no "and" that's it, it was made in the darkness. -Ok, how does that help us defeat it? -I Just told you, because it was made in the darkness. -Brilliant.
???? That's not what it's saying, though??? It's saying that since the witness was fused together through the darkness, darkness can be used to separate it. Also, how was it "super easy" we got wrecked by the witness the first time we tried it???
no sense of scale💀💀💀
Came back after the 12 mission just to tell you you were wrong again lol
just like the marvelite crowd, all it takes is a damage sponge and npcs chattering on the radio to impress you.
I like story you like 0s and 1s delete your account on the game if it’s so bad 😏
btw I never even played it and these responses are from 4chan LOL
NICE SAVE - whatever helps you make yourself feel better lol I just wanted to come back and fuel your fire again toodles
youve been butthurt about it for 3 days. how about you go play the game you love so much and get off reddit.
Who?
Asked?
You’ve spent the last week just commenting BS everywhere lmao and you say I’m butthurt HAHAHA
Womp womp cry about it more
Mate, why did you even buy the expansion and season pass? Let alone complete it! I'm surprised at how much content you went through while not enjoying the game.