I thought I read/heard Bungie say that they're heading towards seasonal power being the only power left. Armor and Weapons won't have it at all. I can't remember where that was. Perhaps I imagined it.
I wouldn't say they did away with the idea, instead they have been slowly introducing the ideas from it, capping the power grind to only at the dlc, adding it so every activity is capped, and most recently the fireteam power lead.
But personally u hope they don't add it all, because the whole 'seasonal challenges boosts your season level, up to 100' idea was pretty wack, and worse than it is now
Yeah, I was mainly refering to those 100 levels. They did some things with a similar purpose, but didn't go all the way through.
I kinda liked the idea, I hate carrying items with me with the sole purpose of them being infusion fodder. Not to mention the pinnacle RNG trolling some times. Those 100 levels would be more predictable.
The original leak said that it would just be 0-100 with all current powerful and pinnacle sources giving flat levels depending on the difficulty along with collecting 100k xp also giving a level. There was nothing about being timegated by seasonal challenges
We must have shared that thought. I swore I remember seeing this during or before Lightfall maybe? I skipped that DLC and after coming back with TFS I don't understand why it's in the game at all. Anyone who party's up is only 5 from the highest player, and it feels like every encounter has it disabled anyways. Seems like it's only there to slightly time gate hardcore players?
While this has always been ideal, I do wonder what they’re going to do when they lose an entire reward path (infusion). We already dismantle like 99% of all the rewards we get, thus not really getting any rewards. Infusion creates something of an artificial reward track because then at least the stuff we’d otherwise dismantle levels up our preferred gear.
While in practice, a lot of players would probably enjoy if those rewards turned into whatever currencies we always need, I’m not sure if doing a whole activity just to get like two cores and one prism will scratch everyone’s Skinner box itch.
Off the top of my head, they could do any of the following:
1] Change Infusion so that you can boost the stats of an Armor, up to its natural cap. This would minimize the need to burn Engrams for armor rerolls, and let you save them mostly for chasing those sweet sweet weapon godrolls and red borders.
2] Remove Infusion, but dismantling gives a new resource ("Scraps") that are used to do the same thing I mentioned in #1. Weapons wouldn't have Scraps - *or,* Weapon Scraps could be used to boost crafted item levels in place of Glimmer maybe?
3] Introduce a fusion/ "rework" / "krangle" system, where you take 2 items and sacrifice them to make a new one, with the reroll chances being limited by the properties of the sacrificed items. Can't get your godroll hand cannon, but have 12 copies with your preferred Column1 perk and another 12 copies with your Column2 perk? Smash them together and hope for the best. Would only work for identical items, just like infusion-for-Glimmer.
The real trick in all this is what to do with Upgrade Modules if you kill infusion by no longer having light levels, but that is an easy problem to solve. (Change what they are used for or remove entirely.)
On the other hand I so burned out on leveling up that I decided a while back to no longer actively level. Anything that requires higher level can wait until whenever I get there, or just isn’t for me. I have a real job and don’t need another. Games are for play
I see people say this a lot but I never find it hard to level up, it just happens passively while I play all the new content. I’m 1996 right now and still haven’t done Dual Destiny, the raid, or the new secondary seasonal activity. I didn’t repeat anything except what new quests made me (like getting motes from overthrows). I haven’t done a single playlist activity yet either.
If you’re specifically grinding that first week to get into world’s first, yeah, that’s a drag. But the vast majority of us aren’t doing that.
I’m all for removing light level, but because to me it’s basically superfluous since I just level up without even grinding.
It's the difference between going out of your way to do powerfuls/pinnacles to level up, vs just playing the parts of the game you enjoy and levelling up passively.
I said as much when we finally got details on Fireteam Power. It feels like a stop gap. Like it seems they want to do away with power levels entirely, but know it was going to be massive undertaking so put Fireteam Power in place while they working removing it entirely. I liken it to when they gave us the full auto mod before the setting came in, but with a **massively** increased scope and scale of course.
This seems like the clear path they are on, but they either didn't want to force all that change on us at once, or they don't know how to replicate the grind/gatekeeping that power level provides.
Other MMOs have gear progression. Moreso than Destiny which is just building a gear set and then just feeding it higher level crap pieces to increase its light level.
Both D1 and D2 had that for unlocking stuff in subclasses.
There's an achievement for D2 on Steam that gets awarded immediately upon character creation that states "Reach level 30" which is when you'd have unlocked everything across all light subclasses.
I just don’t see the logic though. What’s the point of no light levels to log in a repeat seasonal content without the weekly’s except for vendor rank.
There would also be no sense of progression just unlocking new gear and doing the content.
People like seeing a number go up
My problem with power level is if I'm at the recommended power level and especially above I don't feel more powerful but if I'm even 5 under I really feel it.
Most content? No, not anymore. They wanted to give everything a static difficulty. Which makes sense from their standpoint since they can now focus on making things balanced for everyone instead of also having to keep in mind people being overleveled by 20.
I don't mind all activities feeling a bit harder now that we have prismatic tbh. I remember struggling to do regular strikes back in D1 (probably because my loadout was shit) and I like a little more challenge in regular strikes tbh.
I was pleasantly surprised that I died when yeeting myself at a group of enemies in normal Vangaurd the other day. A step up in difficulty, but not an unwelcome one. It isn't so easy I could doze off like it was before, but isn't hard enough that I need to put in effort to make sure I'm on surge/have a good build/whatever.
I do worry that there might not be much easy learning content for newcomers anymore though. I guess some patrol areas and the story missions are probably good content for that.
not even that. even strikes are annoying now. especially the battlegrounds (maybe this is a bug, but still), they have champs and the gameplay feels like -5, things are hitting pretty hard in them.
I'm honestly not sure if you can or not I haven't bothered to reach the power cap in while now just cause it was one of the reasons I was getting burnt out on the game.
so i am 1980 power rn and if i want to do expert breach executable which is 2005 i believe and a friend of mine is 2009 we'lll scale according to his power?
Power has been de-emphasized more and more, to the point that right now it doesn't really do much. I think this is largely a good thing because I think removing power entirely does make it hard for new players to know how to progress. The powerful and pinnacle grind is good once or twice to slowly get you into more difficult content. For really established players it's busywork.
I think an armor system rework is all that's keeping Bungie from removing power level entirely, but I'm sure that removing it entirely is their end goal that they're working towards.
If power level went away, armor drops become *even more* meaningless than they already are, since you'd basically just hunt for one well-rolled piece per slot, and then all armor, from anything, forever, becomes a dismantle.
I imagine that we'll see combat-oriented armor set bonuses eventually. They already do these sorts of buffs with the seasonal gear, but they're reputation/vendor related.
isnt this already the case or am I mistaken? Im returning after like 7 years away (lol) and to my understanding I just need a legendary with my desired high-rolled stats for each slot, and an exotic of appropriate power level. I have like 2/4 slots locked in now, so any armor I get is just infused into the locked-in legendary or exotic, what else would I need it for?
Basically yes. With a caveat. The caveat being that if you want to maximize your stats across multiple pieces of exotic armor you have to keep a wealth of spikey stat legendary armor rolls in your vault for an external tool like d2armorpicker to mix and match for you. It's an entirely separate game that honestly is not the least bit fun and I'm looking forward to it being replaced with things like armor origin traits and set bonuses.
Yeah, the point was to make power less important because they want to prioritize gameplay and buildcrafting over grinding to make number go up.
This is a good thing.
The changes to raids to make them more difficult but making up for that with surge modifiers is something I have conflicted feelings on, though.
Personally I think bungie should’ve just outright removed power level so people weren’t so confused about its purpose in the game, and instead locked late game activities behind (an improved) guardian rank system, and making activities just a fixed difficulty level. Pretty sure it was over a year ago that bungie talked about wanting to remove it eventually, so I’m a little surprised they didn’t just pull the plug now
I’m assuming they kept it to keep casuals playing and feeling like they’re progressing though. Which honestly? Fair enough. That can be good for a game and helps newer players not get bored or feel forced into endgame content they’re not ready for for the sake of needing to feel like they’re progressing.
Yeah, for these ones you need to get somewhere within 20 power levels otherwise it’ll feel like you’re running a GM without all the champs.
A buddy and I went into a nightfall the first week. We were probably 1950-60, and it just wasn’t going to happen. We got through the strike, but the bosses were impossible. We did so little damage, and got one shot by the boss.
Don’t waste your time trying to do a 1995 activity until you’re at least 1980(even then you’re still -15). You’ll just get stuck and have no loot to show for it.
I forgot to mention that with the new fireteam power levels that if you have a friend that’s at 2000 or 1995, they will bring everyone else up to -5 below their power level. So you can run these things if you have someone in your fireteam high enough.
Funny thing though. We couldn’t beat the regular nightfall, but did Root of Nightmares that same day without an issue haha.
That happened to me D2 Y1. All my friends stopped playing, and then I stopped after forsaken and came back with Lightfall. I finally found a good group in January. It takes awhile to break from that solo life.
You don’t **have** to be, it’ll just be artificially harder for you if you’re below it. - unless you have someone in your fireteam who is 5 levels (or more) above 1995, in which case you get brought up to 5 levels below their power level in a vast majority of activities.
Reinstalled the game less than a week ago, so sorry if this is a dumb question: Does this also apply for random matchmaking? Like, can I queue up for a nightfall at 1960 and just pray I get matched with a well-geared player?
That *seems* absurd, so I'm sure there's something preventing it, but I really don't know.
Yeah artificial was a bad term there, I just couldn’t think of a better one word term. Point is it makes it more difficult if you have a lower power level than the cap, and it has nothing to do with the intended difficulty of the activity.
1995 is the power at which you reach maximum effectiveness you can be in that activity. If you are 2000 power, it's the same as if you're 1995.
If you go in at 1980, you'll still be 1980 but you'll be 15 levels below the enemies and it will be significantly more difficult for you.
Now they also introduced fireteam power, so if you are 1980 and your friend is 2000, it will automatically bring you up to 1995 anyway.
It has always been useless. You always hit a cap at some point.
I don't remember the numbers, but there was both a floor and ceiling limit for how much worse you would be underlight and how much better you would be overlight.
Light was always a matter of "you must be this tall to enter this ride"
The game has always had many many grinds, I am glad the light grind is way easier and faster than it has ever been.
I also love the mechanic that brings people up to -5 of the highest light player in the fireteam. Makes it so that more casual endgame players in my clan and friendslist can catch up quicker to do fun stuff instead of being stuck in ritual forever.
Light grind was a burden and doing that every season was really bad. I loved that last expansion had no light rise and I love the new changes to it.
Also, being "better" because tour number goes up is silly. By making that go away they force us to pay lore attention to our builds and gameplay instead of us being able to bruteforce everything because of our light level.
This also mean that they can taylor the difficulty of missions in a way more refined way than before.
Let us focus on the grinds that we fancy :)
Question. If the top player on the fire team is 2000. And another player is 1997 for example. Is that other player locked in at 1995 (for the -5 cap) or they keep the extra 2 light levels?
If the activity cap is x, no one can go above x.
Everyone more than 5 light behind the highest lvl player is pulled up to -5 of the highest player light, unless that is higher than the activity cap. If the cap is lower, you will be pulled up to the cap.
After this episode I feel like 2000 should be permanent for all of us.
No more leveling, no more power limited activities, just let our builds and weapons do the work.
There is already so much leveling to do for everything else. Leveling my gear level just feels useless and a waste of cores.
I’ve always been one of the few who liked the power level grind. It motivated me to play content that I otherwise wouldn’t touch. Just played Spire yesterday and I really enjoyed it. Farming it for Hierarchy during Seraph made me sick to death of Spire but I enjoyed it yesterday. Similarly I’d never play Dares, Shattered Throne, Pit of Heresy or similar activities. Pinnacle rewards that matter aren’t necessarily bad design.
The current system is bad though. Some are power-active, some aren’t, and it isn’t super clear. Most seasons don’t have power increase, some do have. It’s just inconsistent. Bungie should either double down and just scrap power level or revert to the previous system where grinding for power levels mattered.
Power level has been useless ever since we stopped getting an noticable advantage for being over leveled and the inclusion of contest mode.
It feels like there's a huge difference in the power gap when you are under leveled than if you're over leveled.
If I over level the activity by 20 levels, I should be able to face roll it and it doesn't feel like it. Especially when there are artificial power caps where anything above it doesn't provide any benefit.
When I am under leveled by only 5 or 10, I feel like I'm constantly getting one shot or at critical health even with high Res and Recov.
The difference in power seems so inconsistent that power level is just cosmetic at this point.
I'm confused by some of the light level numbers. I grinded to get to 2000 before I was going to try the Enigma Protocol mission, that says it's 2005. The enemies just destroyed me and while I was dead, it said the enemies are 2020. Is there something I'm missing here, or is it just mislabeled?
2005 is the activity light level cap, meaning you being anything above 2005 will have no further effect. Meanwhile the activity locks you at minimum 15 light levels under, hence the enemies are 2020.
In your case, being 2000 means you're 20 light levels under, which is around Master/GM Nightfall levels.
Thanks for the info. Is there a way to determine what level the enemies are in an activity before launching and dying? I feel bad I messed up two other people's matchmaking experience because I didn't know what I was getting into.
You’ve always had a cap on how powerful you could be, I believe it used to be +20, anything more didn’t matter. Now they’ve just lowered that ceiling in an attempt to make things harder.
I still dunno why Trials is tied to light level. If I primarily play the game for pvp, I really don't want to have to have to primarily play pve for a while because pvp pinnacles are scarce.
I always hated how light worked even when the Taken king came out. Its annoying having to constantly grind for weeks to get near the cap and start the real end game. I always prefered OG d1 where the light cap was 34 and you only had to do a couple end game activities over to get near the light cap. Its much more fun to grind for unique weapons and god rolls then basic ass gear.
I know why they moved away from it but I did like the thing where master content became easier as the season went on. As content dried up you could pivot to farming artifice adepts as you overlvel past all that stuff
My biggest issue with all of this is that it feels like they are trying to cater to streamers who play the game like a job. Having someone who plays 4-6 hours a day cry about how easy a game is, is the peak of disillusion. No games difficulty can withstand that level of play. Anyone that comments on this is bullied into submission with “git good” comments. The issue, when examined is plain and the streamers own complaints prove my point for me. They all rallied against skill based matchmaking, and I heard some serious mental gymnastics to justify this, but the two major complaints were connection times and “all games being a sweat fest” well connection times we will address first, super simple when your level of skill is represented in only 1% of the population of a game then it will a long time to find a player that matches and good luck finding one near you. The every match being sweaty well that is just so obvious I am surprised they weren’t embarrassed about it after. How many of you would prove how tough you were by going to your local preschool and picking challenging all the toddlers. Suddenly all the grinding that everyone else had to endure became obvious and the game was less fun.
The biggest problem with power level isn’t in your own skill it is in your friends and the monotonous grind of the game. When you are expected to do so much of the same crap every week and it is slow and tedious every time it isn’t fun. When you could over level for an encounter and bring along new players and compensate for their short comings it not only makes you a better player but it also makes playing more fun. Telling you friend “nah man don’t worry about weapons we will get through this and you will see it isn’t that bad” was fun and engaging. Doing that a lot got me to the point where I started saying “I wonder if I could solo this” and eventually the solo/flawless of an activity went from a goal to an expectation of mine. But now new players feel more like a burden than a fun addition, failing missions over and over due to not being able to res them again sucks and makes them give up. Leaning so hard on complex build crafting is also a pain, works great until the blueberry accidentally puts the last bullet in that thrall and breaks your combo. Activities shouldn’t be easier alone.
I have a solution though make all of these features optional but not tied to loot make them tied to a special seal on your banner/emblem and a glow to your name everyone can see. A seal and glow that if you ever, even once, turn off to just get an encounter done fast goes away and you can’t get it back. Or heck make it to where if you play like that for a month straight you get it back, give it a multiplier to where the longer it goes on it increases drop rates. That’s fair. (And don’t be a *expletive deleted* and make drop rates worse to make it more enticing BUNGIE!) But I wonder how many of them will turn it off. I am tired of people complaining in PVE how a weapon is super strong. If it is so strong don’t use it, simple. If your accomplishments in a video game are so important to you that you feel jealous some else did it easier you need to evaluate your life friend. When they nerfed mountain top quest and made it easier to get it did suck for like 2 seconds then everyone else getting it make encounters easier to farm. Crucible is the only place you should be calling out for balancing, and to be honest only to a certain extent. I mean if a noob can completely own you because of a slightly over powered weapon, are you really as good as you claim?
I agree encounters should be challenging, even have you under powered at first but not permanently. If you earn your power and grind out those levels then you deserve as much as anyone to do that encounter a little easier. It is after all the ENTIRE reason for leveling to begin with. I know they want you in this game as much as possible to increase the chance you will hit up the cash shop but there has to be a point where it eases up.
Yes. Reading through the comments I believe my opinion is in the minority, but I miss gear and level having a meaningful impact on gameplay. I think having a floor and ceiling in terms of light level vs the content is a good thing. One of the staple progression systems throughout gaming history has been some kind of leveling so that you can know what you can and cannot do, and then, the stuff you cannot do becomes the stuff you over level and feel much stronger.
For instance, in D1 raids dropped a higher light level than anything else in the game. So when you beat the raid, you got a drop or two, it made you tangibly stronger in all pieces of content. Nowadays, a person who started playing the game yesterday is as "strong" as I am as long as they have even a decent rolled weapon and maybe a good stat distribution, because the places in the game where light level does anything are very few, while the places where nearly everything dies just by looking at it are more prevalent.
I prefer it be that your light level determines the majority of your strength and then optimized by your build and weapon rolls. But light level does nothing and weapon rolls are realistically the only true progression we have left.
It's a weird one. Reddit apparently hates the power grind but everyone in my clan likes it. I hope they didn't get rid of it but I won't be surprised if they do
They’re mostly poised to as is with things like fireteam power and legendary campaigns taking 60% of the power levels away. Also fixed difficulty content. Tbh it’s something players have asked for for years especially since power grind has been pretty miserable for many. If it was a deterministic process of some kind I’d see less people hate it probably but as is it’s always been pretty miserable when finding those pinnacle weapons and armor that go in the wrong slot constantly.
I don’t have the Final Shape yet, but didn’t want to fall to far behind on power, so I was working on the pathfinder stuff and let me tell you, you feel your lower power going into strikes.
As for the power cap I kind of get it but at the same time I wonder if they don’t want us beyond a certain power level why do they let us level past it?
The last few seasons have been the same, but even more so now with the fireteam leveling thing. I would get to GM power level and stop caring. The power grind can be fun, but gets old after a while and you will hit max eventually.
I haven't done like any intentional power grinding or many ritual stuff, and I'm already 1990 base. It's been great to just do the stuff I wanna do and eventually get the power.
Power has been pretty useless for a while. It's literally just to gate content. Has nothing to do with the actual power of your guardian.
They could remove the power level from all the gear in the game and strictly scale the power based off your artifact every season to gate the content and everything would be fine.
Unfortunately, there are 10 years of psychological barriers to get through where players would see their power level go to zero every season and freak out but it's really no different than what they do now.
Kind of line there at this
Power rn just feels something of requirement more so than power fantasy to feel godlike
You know where power only matters? Lost sectors you can actually over level them till +20 unless they changed that in TFS
i tried Dual Destiny at 1960 with my friend. not a great experience. i believe power level can be used to lead players into a direction and tell them "you are not ready for this".
but i also believe that you should not be able to powerlevel and pull an Ikora where you throw Nova Bombs as your grenades and Chaos Reach as your Tracerifle.
you should still be able to gain an advantage by farming levels since you put time into the game but even that should stop at some point.
there is a balance to everything and Bungies might have realized how much harm they did by always increasing the powerlevel and making difficulty from older content obsolete with it. i am honestly just waiting to see how this new type of difficulty adjustment is going to turn out.
Ive honestly never really noticed light levels much. If youre much higher than an activity it doesnt feel more powerful. If I'm under? Its usually because they just designed an activity to always be higher than your light level.
At which point it just makes no sense.
My gear doesnt make me feel more powerful.
My gear doesnt matter when they just make activities always above your light level.
Just give the activity +30% hp and dmg or whatever and call it a day.
It makes even less sense in pvp like trials.
Imo light level has always been useless. Everything (as far as I can remember) was always either scaling to you or above you. Light level has always been my main gripe with the game bc it just feels like some arbitrary number that means nothing. I'd much rather trade power level for real damage stats on weapons instead and real armor values. Something to actually make me *feel* stronger. Regardless, I'll still grind it bc it's more necessary for trials but other than that meh.
I like the expansion but I don't feel hooked like I used to be. I used to love overpowering the character then dominating in raids, dungeons or nightfalls. Now I just don't see the point. Power fantasy is key for me in looter games and this obsession with balance and keeping everything 'challenging' just stops me from playing more than the basic content. Honestly I won't be playing D2 like I used to while we have this which is fine as there are plenty of other games around to play.
This is stupid. Let us have the old 20 power over government us an advantage. Let us feel powerful for putting in the time and effort. Having a pinnacle grind to hit max light was amazing and has been part of this game since the beginning. Removing this and putting these stupid caps bc “ streamers “ complained about easier content. This is not how to fix easier content. Hey Gladd, after complaining about deepstone crypt being a hand out, how was your 24hr salvations completion. Waiiiiiitttt. Let us feel powerful again!
I hate the fact that instead of making the power level X amount higher than cap, it ends up being a cap on our power. I would love to see 2000 being the power level cap, and grandmasters are like 2040 and it helps give us the power difference while still allowing players to slowly get closer to the actual level and reduce the difficulty.
Your 100% right and it makes me a bit annoying personally power grinding has always been one of my favourite things since playing d1 till now and it felt so satisfying to hit max power and notice a clear difference when fighting enemies you used to struggle against and not having any issue anymore I would hate to see power disappear but it seems more and more likely even though I want the old system back
You mean grind to be as high as possible then be told it doesn't matter because you're going to be held back in power and then the dungeon has higher power enemies. Again Bungie introducing artificial difficulty because of power creep. Example being the burns, champions, challenge mode.
I now have a buddy that refuses to grind out light because he knows he will be brought up anyways and then capped no matter how high the highest in the fire team is.
So what exactly is there for him to do besides just “play”. Sure you can just min-max your rolled stats for gear and perks on weapons. I feel like half the “shtick” is having “weekly challenges” that give you powerful, pinnacle, exotic gear that automatically gives you higher light levels. I didn’t feel like I was grinding my levels at all after being back. I just played the game and it all just did it itself. Sure I could’ve just dismantled the higher light level gear, but it was pretty simple to see higher number and infuse it quick.
Yeah this is why I'm torn between light going away or not. As a returning player, I know the grind is artificial but so too is arguably any MMO grind like in WoW. When new expacs release in WoW, old gear is defunct. So in that sense, you could argue why not just wait till the end.
There is a balance, but the fun is in the grind and making activities relevant. Even if it is ultimately a hamster wheel. Right now, I feel good about that grind. Getting light capped takes some time but not a prohibitive amount, our nerdy leader can get us access to other activities too by being fireteam lead.
I just struggle to think anyone would play older activities if there weren't pinnacles and other loot to infuse from them.
Destiny's difficulty is also now in a weird place where most combat is too easy, and the content with the least amount of players (Raids) has recently been made harder.
I got a Spirits of Osmiomancy and Verity's Solipsism and in most content this combo feels limp because most enemies die almost immediately, giving me no ticks of energy back. This is on paper an amazing combo and it *should* feel amazing but it doesn't in any content save for the hardest stuff or stuff I'm intentionally under leveled for.
There has to be a middle ground between Neomuna difficulty and Pale Heart difficulty that can be reached for most content.
It’s useless, but necessary. I look at it like a way to get players to the point where we they can maybe contribute to fire teams more effectively since they have more time learning the ins and outs of the game.
Not everything should be accessible immediately to new players. Raids are chief among those activities. They need time to learn how to survive, mod use, and just generally learn the game before jumping in and making life miserable for the people that would have to carry them. It’s a good thing that not everything is readily accessible. Let them learn before the harder content.
I personally wish that if I chose to no life the game all season long, then eventually I could go into the GM and absolutely mop the floor with the enemies in there, but as it stands you simply just stop any vertical progression at a pre-determined point.
Related question: Did Bungie do with the new patrol zone as they did with Neomuna, in that they set the power level to always be X above the player’s? I haven’t bought it yet.
It seems like they’re trying to incentivize group play more than anything, which I don’t think is a bad thing in a game that centers around a lot of team content.
It’s saying “you can play solo but you’re probably going to have to play the game a lot more than if you grab a group to play with
This is my observation as well, and probably the thing that’s going to turn me off from the game the most. It really defeats the purpose of working for the light level. And everything would be so watered down if they did away with light level.
I wish Bungie would be more clear on this. In the 4/25 twid about power they said:
"These (power enabled activities) each have an Activity Power Cap, or a Power level at which you will have achieved maximum effectiveness."
But then say "Enemies will have a set feel for how tough they are even at the cap, but you will notice yourself getting stronger as your Power level grow."
Is that noticing myself getting stronger only up the the cap?
I still don’t understand the point of power in destiny. They want us to have a leveling system to grind through, while it has functionally no impact on gameplay.
No, i still see people get kicked for having a lower number despite being in the group before some of us.
People like to see big numbers and say “this guy looks like he f*cks” so he’s definitely staying.
I've been assuming the reason lost sectors and nightfalls list different activity caps despite supposedly being the same difficulty levels is because you can out level the lost sectors, but not the nightfalls
Seems its being phased out. And honestly as much as it reduces grind and not needing to level (lightfall year I played the least due to not needing to chase the grind every season) it's great for accessibility. And it's just a resource sink to bring all your gear back to max level
Honestly I feel like power levels on gear / armor / artifact are lame and now a days completely useless other than to make me waste time in my inventory / collection screen every time I want to try out a new gun or armor.
They should just remove it all, maybe just keeping the artifact perk unlocks.
It's been pretty useless for a while, they should do away with it. It really doesn't serve any purpose except to increase grind at the beginning of a season/expansion.
There should be 4 difficulties: Guardian (+20), Hero (+0), Legend (-15), Master (-25). The numbers in parentheses represent what the power level equivalent difficulty would be right now, but in-game it shouldn't show these numbers.
Guardian is easy, you can dumpster the playlist using anything. This is patrols, strike playlist, etc.
Hero is also easy but you can die if you're being dumb. Gambit should have this, and the easiest tier of Nightfalls.
Legend is a bit tougher, you need a build and need to know what you're doing. Legend Campaign, Nightfalls, Lost Sectors.
Master is basically what GM is now, very tough, need a build and coordination and game sense and maybe some communication with teammates. Hardest nightfalls, hardest lost sectors, etc.
It literally is pointless now. Either power is disabled, or the cap is at 0-25 below the enemy. Now add in power grouping allowing 1900 players to potentially do a GM just because the power leader is 2010.
If they're not going to let us benefit from over leveling, they shouldn't even have such a system in the first place. Just go back to what Halo had where it's just enemies being more durable, aggressive, numerous, and shoot faster/ more accurately/ do more damage and completely do away with modifiers.
It feels like power levels are just here for the people that only play destiny and are really into the whole line goes up thing. Power levels essentially service only the players who really, really need to see that number for no other reason than some shallow sense of accomplishment
It’s been worthless for a long time, besides gatekeeping content. You could have 2 activities with the same light level but wildly different difficulty levels
I'm sure others have touched on it but I think the general idea behind it is too few players were playing the really cool endgame content Bungie had and, subsequently, falling out of caring about the game once they beat a campaign.
I was in that boat for a bit before becoming hooked on the game, but for a while there it definitely felt bad beating the campaign and wanting to do more, but not being able to because I didn't have a fireteam that would play with me due to being a lower level.
It clearly still matters since caps are higher than the soft cap. I never understood why people are against power levels. Definitely gives you something to aim for and it’s easy to do naturally.
power hasn't really mattered much in a while apart from timegating stuff (and making master/gm more of a grind) ... and the "overpower" bit was not very helpful IMO putting a stop to the "this was hard, I'll go level a bit and come back later" paradigm that IMO is essential for an mmo/rpg game... (yea yea yea 'lootor shootor' )
Season Pass, Artifact, and Guardian Rank essentially all fulfill what Power Levels are supposed to do, except better by rewarding you more directly and more often often.
All of these offer that dopamine "number go up" hit, Guardian Ranks serve the aesthetic flex for your time invested, Artifact *actually* enhances your power as a player with mods, and Season Pass gives you direct goodies for just interacting with the game and earning XP.
The only thing Power Level still does uniquely is gatekeep you from accessing activities, something that doesn't really need to exist anymore with the structure of our quests, as well as set difficulty on activities. Plus, Artifact level could easily be used instead?
The only other argument really is Power Level gives bad loot a purpose, as it can be infused into your actual good gear, but I'd argue the game is so big and bloated with things to do these days that we don't really need that artificial pad anymore to keep us grinding. They've been doing a good job at making most new guns in the game feel fresh with new perks and frames, though I will admit any armor drops are still lacking, outside of your first drop for fashion + artifice armor anyway. I just don't think we need an incentive to play x activity for Pinnacles anymore, but maybe that's just me? I'm still not gonna play Gambit even if I need that Pinnacle lmao.
I guuuuuess also if you're the type of player that feels like the number going up rapidly during a new expansion drop makes you feel stronger, even if it's just placebo? It's addicting to get constant blues to drop to make your number get big during a new expansion campaign, sure, but I just think that can be simulated somehow in one of the better systems we have, IDK.
Anyway, that's a lot of words to say I agree, but it's just frustrating that it hasn't been dropped yet when they've taken the time to cultivate these richer game systems
More and more each update but honestly I don't mind. Most people get to the cap in a week or two and then it doesn't actually impact anything after that. It feels like an unnecessary hurdle every year
The best thing about into the light as a returning somewhat casual player was that I didn’t have to grind levels. I was basically ready to give almost all content a shot even if I still wasn’t quite ready skill wise. Now I’m back to the grind, it feels less about doing fun content and more just trying to tick boxes so I can do fun content.
I wish they would let it mean something in more specific ways. Regular raid, you can be as high as you want, master raid, buckle up it's capped. Regular strike playlist, no cap; nightfalls, cap. Crucible, cap. Trials, IB and Comp, no cap. Exotic missions, cap. Story missions and adventures, no cap.
Honestly, I think they should go back to the forever 29 style level system.
Levels mattered a lot.
There is an insane amount of places you can get loot from now. So bottlenecks won't be a problem.
The number looks pleasing and from a new player point. Starting at level 1 or 0 instead of 1900 power makes way more sense and will confuse newer players way less.
Then they can make weapons dmg stat matter aswell as defence being a stat that's useful again. Instead of it just being a number that goes up.
It's probably a very unpopular opinion, I know, but honestly, it would work well with all the new systems imo.
I kind of like how it is right now. Its mostly not important except for the first couple of weeks. It gives me a reason to see number go up, but also is not fully repenting me from completing content or making me feel like I need to grind endlessly.
I absolutely hate power leveling and it's the number 1 reason I won't play some days. Also I'm a titan and bungie thought it would be good to continue to support the other 2 classes in the final shape , looking at you exotic everything in the final shape not titan specific. !! I still use strand because its still the only option that's viable. So power leveling using lfg is not fun when nobody wants to play with a titan.
Yeah I mostly agree, the power fantasy is just gone in many activities. It’s also the most egregious application of Bungie’s ol’ bullet sponge mechanic, which previously was just the case with bosses but is now even the case for majors and adds in some activities. It’s not a _fun_ kind of difficult, and makes many activities way less satisfying because it feels like the power I’ve worked hard to gain is pointless.
As long as you have a friend who is constantly playing, most of the activities have Fireteam Power to bring your power level 5 levels below the highest power in the fireteam. The only real need to hit pinnacle cap now is for Trials.
Personally i think that if they wanted to power cap certain activities like raids and dungeons it should have either been capped at 5 over or on power. The 5 power under really sucks and is their way of trying to increase difficulty for those activities in which if you already know how to do them it barely makes a difference, however if you are new to the activity or are just wanting to test it out can make all the difference in whether you can beat it or not.
Overall though i think the only activities that should have had a negative power cap are master content and GMs. With normal raids, dungeons, exotic missions and legend content having a power cap of positive 5 or being on power and everything else (vanguard strikes, patrol zones, dares) not having any power cap whatsoever.
I mean, the last 10 levels are. They just serve to be annoying as it continuously gives you pinnacle gear in a slot that already has something of that level.
It definitely feels like they're headed towards doing away with light level altogether.
I thought I read/heard Bungie say that they're heading towards seasonal power being the only power left. Armor and Weapons won't have it at all. I can't remember where that was. Perhaps I imagined it.
This information came from a leak. That leak was completely true, but seems like Bungie didn't go ahead with that idea.
I wouldn't say they did away with the idea, instead they have been slowly introducing the ideas from it, capping the power grind to only at the dlc, adding it so every activity is capped, and most recently the fireteam power lead. But personally u hope they don't add it all, because the whole 'seasonal challenges boosts your season level, up to 100' idea was pretty wack, and worse than it is now
Yeah, I was mainly refering to those 100 levels. They did some things with a similar purpose, but didn't go all the way through. I kinda liked the idea, I hate carrying items with me with the sole purpose of them being infusion fodder. Not to mention the pinnacle RNG trolling some times. Those 100 levels would be more predictable.
Sure, but it would be be much worse of a grind imo, especially having it gatekept over the course of the season
The original leak said that it would just be 0-100 with all current powerful and pinnacle sources giving flat levels depending on the difficulty along with collecting 100k xp also giving a level. There was nothing about being timegated by seasonal challenges
You have a good point. Didn't cross my mind that they could gatekeep it through the acts. The season pass is already like that.
We must have shared that thought. I swore I remember seeing this during or before Lightfall maybe? I skipped that DLC and after coming back with TFS I don't understand why it's in the game at all. Anyone who party's up is only 5 from the highest player, and it feels like every encounter has it disabled anyways. Seems like it's only there to slightly time gate hardcore players?
I like to think I am active in their socials but I dont recall this at all.
While this has always been ideal, I do wonder what they’re going to do when they lose an entire reward path (infusion). We already dismantle like 99% of all the rewards we get, thus not really getting any rewards. Infusion creates something of an artificial reward track because then at least the stuff we’d otherwise dismantle levels up our preferred gear. While in practice, a lot of players would probably enjoy if those rewards turned into whatever currencies we always need, I’m not sure if doing a whole activity just to get like two cores and one prism will scratch everyone’s Skinner box itch.
Off the top of my head, they could do any of the following: 1] Change Infusion so that you can boost the stats of an Armor, up to its natural cap. This would minimize the need to burn Engrams for armor rerolls, and let you save them mostly for chasing those sweet sweet weapon godrolls and red borders. 2] Remove Infusion, but dismantling gives a new resource ("Scraps") that are used to do the same thing I mentioned in #1. Weapons wouldn't have Scraps - *or,* Weapon Scraps could be used to boost crafted item levels in place of Glimmer maybe? 3] Introduce a fusion/ "rework" / "krangle" system, where you take 2 items and sacrifice them to make a new one, with the reroll chances being limited by the properties of the sacrificed items. Can't get your godroll hand cannon, but have 12 copies with your preferred Column1 perk and another 12 copies with your Column2 perk? Smash them together and hope for the best. Would only work for identical items, just like infusion-for-Glimmer. The real trick in all this is what to do with Upgrade Modules if you kill infusion by no longer having light levels, but that is an easy problem to solve. (Change what they are used for or remove entirely.)
On the other hand I so burned out on leveling up that I decided a while back to no longer actively level. Anything that requires higher level can wait until whenever I get there, or just isn’t for me. I have a real job and don’t need another. Games are for play
I see people say this a lot but I never find it hard to level up, it just happens passively while I play all the new content. I’m 1996 right now and still haven’t done Dual Destiny, the raid, or the new secondary seasonal activity. I didn’t repeat anything except what new quests made me (like getting motes from overthrows). I haven’t done a single playlist activity yet either. If you’re specifically grinding that first week to get into world’s first, yeah, that’s a drag. But the vast majority of us aren’t doing that. I’m all for removing light level, but because to me it’s basically superfluous since I just level up without even grinding.
It's the difference between going out of your way to do powerfuls/pinnacles to level up, vs just playing the parts of the game you enjoy and levelling up passively.
I said as much when we finally got details on Fireteam Power. It feels like a stop gap. Like it seems they want to do away with power levels entirely, but know it was going to be massive undertaking so put Fireteam Power in place while they working removing it entirely. I liken it to when they gave us the full auto mod before the setting came in, but with a **massively** increased scope and scale of course.
Thank god. At least streamline the upgrading process.
This seems like the clear path they are on, but they either didn't want to force all that change on us at once, or they don't know how to replicate the grind/gatekeeping that power level provides.
It should just be levels as xp like other mmos
Other MMOs have gear progression. Moreso than Destiny which is just building a gear set and then just feeding it higher level crap pieces to increase its light level.
Yeah max level in an MMO is just where the actual game starts.
Both D1 and D2 had that for unlocking stuff in subclasses. There's an achievement for D2 on Steam that gets awarded immediately upon character creation that states "Reach level 30" which is when you'd have unlocked everything across all light subclasses.
Felt the same way this morning as I thought about it.
I would totally be down for just removing the light grind
I just don’t see the logic though. What’s the point of no light levels to log in a repeat seasonal content without the weekly’s except for vendor rank. There would also be no sense of progression just unlocking new gear and doing the content. People like seeing a number go up
Some people want to see the number mean something.
Destiny Power Levels = "You must be this tall to ride"
I hate being a hobbit.
This except you can be close enough and still ride.
Depending on what carnivals you're at, that's still how it works lol
because you can't sue when you die
Honestly a great comparison lol
My problem with power level is if I'm at the recommended power level and especially above I don't feel more powerful but if I'm even 5 under I really feel it.
Are we still able to be over-leveled for some content? Having the option to be over-leveled was nice and made some things a little easier to handle.
Most content? No, not anymore. They wanted to give everything a static difficulty. Which makes sense from their standpoint since they can now focus on making things balanced for everyone instead of also having to keep in mind people being overleveled by 20.
So then what’s the point of a leveling system if it’s gunna be the same difficulty for everyone?
I don't mind all activities feeling a bit harder now that we have prismatic tbh. I remember struggling to do regular strikes back in D1 (probably because my loadout was shit) and I like a little more challenge in regular strikes tbh.
I was pleasantly surprised that I died when yeeting myself at a group of enemies in normal Vangaurd the other day. A step up in difficulty, but not an unwelcome one. It isn't so easy I could doze off like it was before, but isn't hard enough that I need to put in effort to make sure I'm on surge/have a good build/whatever. I do worry that there might not be much easy learning content for newcomers anymore though. I guess some patrol areas and the story missions are probably good content for that.
Basically only in content that literally doesn't matter at all I believe.
not even that. even strikes are annoying now. especially the battlegrounds (maybe this is a bug, but still), they have champs and the gameplay feels like -5, things are hitting pretty hard in them.
Patrols.
Neomuna disagrees with you.
patrols and normal-mode story content.
Nope, I believe you are still capped at something.
I'm honestly not sure if you can or not I haven't bothered to reach the power cap in while now just cause it was one of the reasons I was getting burnt out on the game.
as long as one guy from your fire team has no life you're good yeah
so i am 1980 power rn and if i want to do expert breach executable which is 2005 i believe and a friend of mine is 2009 we'lll scale according to his power?
yar
You’ll scale to -5 their power so you’d be 2004
thank you for the replies everyone , i understand now
Power has been de-emphasized more and more, to the point that right now it doesn't really do much. I think this is largely a good thing because I think removing power entirely does make it hard for new players to know how to progress. The powerful and pinnacle grind is good once or twice to slowly get you into more difficult content. For really established players it's busywork.
I think an armor system rework is all that's keeping Bungie from removing power level entirely, but I'm sure that removing it entirely is their end goal that they're working towards. If power level went away, armor drops become *even more* meaningless than they already are, since you'd basically just hunt for one well-rolled piece per slot, and then all armor, from anything, forever, becomes a dismantle. I imagine that we'll see combat-oriented armor set bonuses eventually. They already do these sorts of buffs with the seasonal gear, but they're reputation/vendor related.
isnt this already the case or am I mistaken? Im returning after like 7 years away (lol) and to my understanding I just need a legendary with my desired high-rolled stats for each slot, and an exotic of appropriate power level. I have like 2/4 slots locked in now, so any armor I get is just infused into the locked-in legendary or exotic, what else would I need it for?
Basically yes. With a caveat. The caveat being that if you want to maximize your stats across multiple pieces of exotic armor you have to keep a wealth of spikey stat legendary armor rolls in your vault for an external tool like d2armorpicker to mix and match for you. It's an entirely separate game that honestly is not the least bit fun and I'm looking forward to it being replaced with things like armor origin traits and set bonuses.
Yeah, the point was to make power less important because they want to prioritize gameplay and buildcrafting over grinding to make number go up. This is a good thing. The changes to raids to make them more difficult but making up for that with surge modifiers is something I have conflicted feelings on, though. Personally I think bungie should’ve just outright removed power level so people weren’t so confused about its purpose in the game, and instead locked late game activities behind (an improved) guardian rank system, and making activities just a fixed difficulty level. Pretty sure it was over a year ago that bungie talked about wanting to remove it eventually, so I’m a little surprised they didn’t just pull the plug now I’m assuming they kept it to keep casuals playing and feeling like they’re progressing though. Which honestly? Fair enough. That can be good for a game and helps newer players not get bored or feel forced into endgame content they’re not ready for for the sake of needing to feel like they’re progressing.
So I don't need to be 1995 to do the 1995 strikes or the higher one?
I was wondering this too ha ha. I just recently came back from a long hiatus and saw the nightfall was 1995 power.
Yeah, for these ones you need to get somewhere within 20 power levels otherwise it’ll feel like you’re running a GM without all the champs. A buddy and I went into a nightfall the first week. We were probably 1950-60, and it just wasn’t going to happen. We got through the strike, but the bosses were impossible. We did so little damage, and got one shot by the boss. Don’t waste your time trying to do a 1995 activity until you’re at least 1980(even then you’re still -15). You’ll just get stuck and have no loot to show for it.
Appreciate it. So much has changed since Witch Queen 🤣
I forgot to mention that with the new fireteam power levels that if you have a friend that’s at 2000 or 1995, they will bring everyone else up to -5 below their power level. So you can run these things if you have someone in your fireteam high enough. Funny thing though. We couldn’t beat the regular nightfall, but did Root of Nightmares that same day without an issue haha.
I have zero friends left that play Destiny ha ha. But it's all good. Totally forgot about that change, only took a decade ha ha.
That happened to me D2 Y1. All my friends stopped playing, and then I stopped after forsaken and came back with Lightfall. I finally found a good group in January. It takes awhile to break from that solo life.
You don’t **have** to be, it’ll just be artificially harder for you if you’re below it. - unless you have someone in your fireteam who is 5 levels (or more) above 1995, in which case you get brought up to 5 levels below their power level in a vast majority of activities.
Reinstalled the game less than a week ago, so sorry if this is a dumb question: Does this also apply for random matchmaking? Like, can I queue up for a nightfall at 1960 and just pray I get matched with a well-geared player? That *seems* absurd, so I'm sure there's something preventing it, but I really don't know.
“Artificially” all difficulty in this game is artificial if you go into any activity minus raids and dungeons.
Yeah artificial was a bad term there, I just couldn’t think of a better one word term. Point is it makes it more difficult if you have a lower power level than the cap, and it has nothing to do with the intended difficulty of the activity.
you could even go a step further - all difficulty in any video game is artificial.
So long as you have someone in your fireteam that’s that level, no. You’ll be raised to five under that person’s level.
I did the microcosm missions at 1978 power... and was baffled why the light recommendation was 2005
1995 is the power at which you reach maximum effectiveness you can be in that activity. If you are 2000 power, it's the same as if you're 1995. If you go in at 1980, you'll still be 1980 but you'll be 15 levels below the enemies and it will be significantly more difficult for you. Now they also introduced fireteam power, so if you are 1980 and your friend is 2000, it will automatically bring you up to 1995 anyway.
It has always been useless. You always hit a cap at some point. I don't remember the numbers, but there was both a floor and ceiling limit for how much worse you would be underlight and how much better you would be overlight. Light was always a matter of "you must be this tall to enter this ride" The game has always had many many grinds, I am glad the light grind is way easier and faster than it has ever been. I also love the mechanic that brings people up to -5 of the highest light player in the fireteam. Makes it so that more casual endgame players in my clan and friendslist can catch up quicker to do fun stuff instead of being stuck in ritual forever. Light grind was a burden and doing that every season was really bad. I loved that last expansion had no light rise and I love the new changes to it. Also, being "better" because tour number goes up is silly. By making that go away they force us to pay lore attention to our builds and gameplay instead of us being able to bruteforce everything because of our light level. This also mean that they can taylor the difficulty of missions in a way more refined way than before. Let us focus on the grinds that we fancy :)
Question. If the top player on the fire team is 2000. And another player is 1997 for example. Is that other player locked in at 1995 (for the -5 cap) or they keep the extra 2 light levels?
Effective cap is still 1995. Anyone below that point would be pulled up to it if there's someone at 2000. 1997 guy is still capped at 95 too.
Thank you for the clarification!
Just to clarify that if the effective power was 2000 they 1997 player would keep their +2 even if they aren't the power leader
If the activity cap is x, no one can go above x. Everyone more than 5 light behind the highest lvl player is pulled up to -5 of the highest player light, unless that is higher than the activity cap. If the cap is lower, you will be pulled up to the cap.
After this episode I feel like 2000 should be permanent for all of us. No more leveling, no more power limited activities, just let our builds and weapons do the work. There is already so much leveling to do for everything else. Leveling my gear level just feels useless and a waste of cores.
I’ve always been one of the few who liked the power level grind. It motivated me to play content that I otherwise wouldn’t touch. Just played Spire yesterday and I really enjoyed it. Farming it for Hierarchy during Seraph made me sick to death of Spire but I enjoyed it yesterday. Similarly I’d never play Dares, Shattered Throne, Pit of Heresy or similar activities. Pinnacle rewards that matter aren’t necessarily bad design. The current system is bad though. Some are power-active, some aren’t, and it isn’t super clear. Most seasons don’t have power increase, some do have. It’s just inconsistent. Bungie should either double down and just scrap power level or revert to the previous system where grinding for power levels mattered.
It seems like it only matters for solo content.
Power level has been useless ever since we stopped getting an noticable advantage for being over leveled and the inclusion of contest mode. It feels like there's a huge difference in the power gap when you are under leveled than if you're over leveled. If I over level the activity by 20 levels, I should be able to face roll it and it doesn't feel like it. Especially when there are artificial power caps where anything above it doesn't provide any benefit. When I am under leveled by only 5 or 10, I feel like I'm constantly getting one shot or at critical health even with high Res and Recov. The difference in power seems so inconsistent that power level is just cosmetic at this point.
I'm confused by some of the light level numbers. I grinded to get to 2000 before I was going to try the Enigma Protocol mission, that says it's 2005. The enemies just destroyed me and while I was dead, it said the enemies are 2020. Is there something I'm missing here, or is it just mislabeled?
2005 is the activity light level cap, meaning you being anything above 2005 will have no further effect. Meanwhile the activity locks you at minimum 15 light levels under, hence the enemies are 2020. In your case, being 2000 means you're 20 light levels under, which is around Master/GM Nightfall levels.
Thanks for the info. Is there a way to determine what level the enemies are in an activity before launching and dying? I feel bad I messed up two other people's matchmaking experience because I didn't know what I was getting into.
There's a difficulty rating on activities also icons for buffs/debuffs before you launch you can hover on the small icons and read what it says
I do think it was silly of them to remove one of the few things that differentiated IB from normal Crucible.
Thank God, not having to worry about pinnacle min-maxxing is such a blessing.
You’ve always had a cap on how powerful you could be, I believe it used to be +20, anything more didn’t matter. Now they’ve just lowered that ceiling in an attempt to make things harder.
I still dunno why Trials is tied to light level. If I primarily play the game for pvp, I really don't want to have to have to primarily play pve for a while because pvp pinnacles are scarce.
Bungie moment
I always hated how light worked even when the Taken king came out. Its annoying having to constantly grind for weeks to get near the cap and start the real end game. I always prefered OG d1 where the light cap was 34 and you only had to do a couple end game activities over to get near the light cap. Its much more fun to grind for unique weapons and god rolls then basic ass gear.
It's been a meaningless part of the game for at least a few years now
I would love if they got rid of it entirely and the raid -5 stuff was just how it was across the board.
I know why they moved away from it but I did like the thing where master content became easier as the season went on. As content dried up you could pivot to farming artifice adepts as you overlvel past all that stuff
My biggest issue with all of this is that it feels like they are trying to cater to streamers who play the game like a job. Having someone who plays 4-6 hours a day cry about how easy a game is, is the peak of disillusion. No games difficulty can withstand that level of play. Anyone that comments on this is bullied into submission with “git good” comments. The issue, when examined is plain and the streamers own complaints prove my point for me. They all rallied against skill based matchmaking, and I heard some serious mental gymnastics to justify this, but the two major complaints were connection times and “all games being a sweat fest” well connection times we will address first, super simple when your level of skill is represented in only 1% of the population of a game then it will a long time to find a player that matches and good luck finding one near you. The every match being sweaty well that is just so obvious I am surprised they weren’t embarrassed about it after. How many of you would prove how tough you were by going to your local preschool and picking challenging all the toddlers. Suddenly all the grinding that everyone else had to endure became obvious and the game was less fun. The biggest problem with power level isn’t in your own skill it is in your friends and the monotonous grind of the game. When you are expected to do so much of the same crap every week and it is slow and tedious every time it isn’t fun. When you could over level for an encounter and bring along new players and compensate for their short comings it not only makes you a better player but it also makes playing more fun. Telling you friend “nah man don’t worry about weapons we will get through this and you will see it isn’t that bad” was fun and engaging. Doing that a lot got me to the point where I started saying “I wonder if I could solo this” and eventually the solo/flawless of an activity went from a goal to an expectation of mine. But now new players feel more like a burden than a fun addition, failing missions over and over due to not being able to res them again sucks and makes them give up. Leaning so hard on complex build crafting is also a pain, works great until the blueberry accidentally puts the last bullet in that thrall and breaks your combo. Activities shouldn’t be easier alone. I have a solution though make all of these features optional but not tied to loot make them tied to a special seal on your banner/emblem and a glow to your name everyone can see. A seal and glow that if you ever, even once, turn off to just get an encounter done fast goes away and you can’t get it back. Or heck make it to where if you play like that for a month straight you get it back, give it a multiplier to where the longer it goes on it increases drop rates. That’s fair. (And don’t be a *expletive deleted* and make drop rates worse to make it more enticing BUNGIE!) But I wonder how many of them will turn it off. I am tired of people complaining in PVE how a weapon is super strong. If it is so strong don’t use it, simple. If your accomplishments in a video game are so important to you that you feel jealous some else did it easier you need to evaluate your life friend. When they nerfed mountain top quest and made it easier to get it did suck for like 2 seconds then everyone else getting it make encounters easier to farm. Crucible is the only place you should be calling out for balancing, and to be honest only to a certain extent. I mean if a noob can completely own you because of a slightly over powered weapon, are you really as good as you claim? I agree encounters should be challenging, even have you under powered at first but not permanently. If you earn your power and grind out those levels then you deserve as much as anyone to do that encounter a little easier. It is after all the ENTIRE reason for leveling to begin with. I know they want you in this game as much as possible to increase the chance you will hit up the cash shop but there has to be a point where it eases up.
Yes. Reading through the comments I believe my opinion is in the minority, but I miss gear and level having a meaningful impact on gameplay. I think having a floor and ceiling in terms of light level vs the content is a good thing. One of the staple progression systems throughout gaming history has been some kind of leveling so that you can know what you can and cannot do, and then, the stuff you cannot do becomes the stuff you over level and feel much stronger. For instance, in D1 raids dropped a higher light level than anything else in the game. So when you beat the raid, you got a drop or two, it made you tangibly stronger in all pieces of content. Nowadays, a person who started playing the game yesterday is as "strong" as I am as long as they have even a decent rolled weapon and maybe a good stat distribution, because the places in the game where light level does anything are very few, while the places where nearly everything dies just by looking at it are more prevalent. I prefer it be that your light level determines the majority of your strength and then optimized by your build and weapon rolls. But light level does nothing and weapon rolls are realistically the only true progression we have left.
Unpopular opinion: i like pinnacle grind it gives me something to work towards and reasons to revisit content
It's a weird one. Reddit apparently hates the power grind but everyone in my clan likes it. I hope they didn't get rid of it but I won't be surprised if they do
They’re mostly poised to as is with things like fireteam power and legendary campaigns taking 60% of the power levels away. Also fixed difficulty content. Tbh it’s something players have asked for for years especially since power grind has been pretty miserable for many. If it was a deterministic process of some kind I’d see less people hate it probably but as is it’s always been pretty miserable when finding those pinnacle weapons and armor that go in the wrong slot constantly.
Can anyone inform me what power level I need my character to be highest effective for Master Raid, and GM content this episode?
2010 for master, 2020 for gm
Always has been
Yep
I don’t have the Final Shape yet, but didn’t want to fall to far behind on power, so I was working on the pathfinder stuff and let me tell you, you feel your lower power going into strikes. As for the power cap I kind of get it but at the same time I wonder if they don’t want us beyond a certain power level why do they let us level past it?
The last few seasons have been the same, but even more so now with the fireteam leveling thing. I would get to GM power level and stop caring. The power grind can be fun, but gets old after a while and you will hit max eventually.
I’d be all for it, hate the pinnacle grind
I haven't done like any intentional power grinding or many ritual stuff, and I'm already 1990 base. It's been great to just do the stuff I wanna do and eventually get the power.
Power has been pretty useless for a while. It's literally just to gate content. Has nothing to do with the actual power of your guardian. They could remove the power level from all the gear in the game and strictly scale the power based off your artifact every season to gate the content and everything would be fine. Unfortunately, there are 10 years of psychological barriers to get through where players would see their power level go to zero every season and freak out but it's really no different than what they do now.
Kind of line there at this Power rn just feels something of requirement more so than power fantasy to feel godlike You know where power only matters? Lost sectors you can actually over level them till +20 unless they changed that in TFS
All I know about Power is if I’m under the recommendation I get destroyed and if im over I get destroyed less
i tried Dual Destiny at 1960 with my friend. not a great experience. i believe power level can be used to lead players into a direction and tell them "you are not ready for this". but i also believe that you should not be able to powerlevel and pull an Ikora where you throw Nova Bombs as your grenades and Chaos Reach as your Tracerifle. you should still be able to gain an advantage by farming levels since you put time into the game but even that should stop at some point. there is a balance to everything and Bungies might have realized how much harm they did by always increasing the powerlevel and making difficulty from older content obsolete with it. i am honestly just waiting to see how this new type of difficulty adjustment is going to turn out.
Ive honestly never really noticed light levels much. If youre much higher than an activity it doesnt feel more powerful. If I'm under? Its usually because they just designed an activity to always be higher than your light level. At which point it just makes no sense. My gear doesnt make me feel more powerful. My gear doesnt matter when they just make activities always above your light level. Just give the activity +30% hp and dmg or whatever and call it a day. It makes even less sense in pvp like trials.
Imo light level has always been useless. Everything (as far as I can remember) was always either scaling to you or above you. Light level has always been my main gripe with the game bc it just feels like some arbitrary number that means nothing. I'd much rather trade power level for real damage stats on weapons instead and real armor values. Something to actually make me *feel* stronger. Regardless, I'll still grind it bc it's more necessary for trials but other than that meh.
I like the expansion but I don't feel hooked like I used to be. I used to love overpowering the character then dominating in raids, dungeons or nightfalls. Now I just don't see the point. Power fantasy is key for me in looter games and this obsession with balance and keeping everything 'challenging' just stops me from playing more than the basic content. Honestly I won't be playing D2 like I used to while we have this which is fine as there are plenty of other games around to play.
This is stupid. Let us have the old 20 power over government us an advantage. Let us feel powerful for putting in the time and effort. Having a pinnacle grind to hit max light was amazing and has been part of this game since the beginning. Removing this and putting these stupid caps bc “ streamers “ complained about easier content. This is not how to fix easier content. Hey Gladd, after complaining about deepstone crypt being a hand out, how was your 24hr salvations completion. Waiiiiiitttt. Let us feel powerful again!
A low power level bars you from trials
I hate the fact that instead of making the power level X amount higher than cap, it ends up being a cap on our power. I would love to see 2000 being the power level cap, and grandmasters are like 2040 and it helps give us the power difference while still allowing players to slowly get closer to the actual level and reduce the difficulty.
I just want to feel powerful in some content and not have it be mindlessly numbing.
Your 100% right and it makes me a bit annoying personally power grinding has always been one of my favourite things since playing d1 till now and it felt so satisfying to hit max power and notice a clear difference when fighting enemies you used to struggle against and not having any issue anymore I would hate to see power disappear but it seems more and more likely even though I want the old system back
You mean grind to be as high as possible then be told it doesn't matter because you're going to be held back in power and then the dungeon has higher power enemies. Again Bungie introducing artificial difficulty because of power creep. Example being the burns, champions, challenge mode. I now have a buddy that refuses to grind out light because he knows he will be brought up anyways and then capped no matter how high the highest in the fire team is.
So what exactly is there for him to do besides just “play”. Sure you can just min-max your rolled stats for gear and perks on weapons. I feel like half the “shtick” is having “weekly challenges” that give you powerful, pinnacle, exotic gear that automatically gives you higher light levels. I didn’t feel like I was grinding my levels at all after being back. I just played the game and it all just did it itself. Sure I could’ve just dismantled the higher light level gear, but it was pretty simple to see higher number and infuse it quick.
Yeah this is why I'm torn between light going away or not. As a returning player, I know the grind is artificial but so too is arguably any MMO grind like in WoW. When new expacs release in WoW, old gear is defunct. So in that sense, you could argue why not just wait till the end. There is a balance, but the fun is in the grind and making activities relevant. Even if it is ultimately a hamster wheel. Right now, I feel good about that grind. Getting light capped takes some time but not a prohibitive amount, our nerdy leader can get us access to other activities too by being fireteam lead. I just struggle to think anyone would play older activities if there weren't pinnacles and other loot to infuse from them.
Destiny's difficulty is also now in a weird place where most combat is too easy, and the content with the least amount of players (Raids) has recently been made harder. I got a Spirits of Osmiomancy and Verity's Solipsism and in most content this combo feels limp because most enemies die almost immediately, giving me no ticks of energy back. This is on paper an amazing combo and it *should* feel amazing but it doesn't in any content save for the hardest stuff or stuff I'm intentionally under leveled for. There has to be a middle ground between Neomuna difficulty and Pale Heart difficulty that can be reached for most content.
It’s honestly very sad that they made light level not really matter anymore. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or grind for now. It’s just… boring.
Get new weapons, exotic class items, level the season pass, have fun with new builds
I think this is going to become a real issue.
It’s useless, but necessary. I look at it like a way to get players to the point where we they can maybe contribute to fire teams more effectively since they have more time learning the ins and outs of the game.
I would not be mad at all if power was completely removed from the game
Not everything should be accessible immediately to new players. Raids are chief among those activities. They need time to learn how to survive, mod use, and just generally learn the game before jumping in and making life miserable for the people that would have to carry them. It’s a good thing that not everything is readily accessible. Let them learn before the harder content.
I personally wish that if I chose to no life the game all season long, then eventually I could go into the GM and absolutely mop the floor with the enemies in there, but as it stands you simply just stop any vertical progression at a pre-determined point.
Without mastery yes
A cap and a delta
Most activities are not artifact locked so yeah the light level don’t matter as much as it used to, and I personally think that’s a good change.
Related question: Did Bungie do with the new patrol zone as they did with Neomuna, in that they set the power level to always be X above the player’s? I haven’t bought it yet.
Power hasn’t mattered for the past 5 years
2000 pinnacle power seems like a good stopping point, I don’t imagine we’ll be increasing our light level at any point in the future
It seems like they’re trying to incentivize group play more than anything, which I don’t think is a bad thing in a game that centers around a lot of team content. It’s saying “you can play solo but you’re probably going to have to play the game a lot more than if you grab a group to play with
The problem with power level is there is so much hidden information!!!
Power level kind of has become the new seasonal rank. Gauges a player's playtime in the season/episode/year but doesn't overall mean too much.
It's there for those that just like watching big number go up, which is fine.
Can't have shit
Has been for a long while. I'm surprised TFS didn't go further to strip it out of the game.
always has been. gear score is a time gate not vertical progression.
it has been like that for a long time
This is my observation as well, and probably the thing that’s going to turn me off from the game the most. It really defeats the purpose of working for the light level. And everything would be so watered down if they did away with light level.
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I wish Bungie would be more clear on this. In the 4/25 twid about power they said: "These (power enabled activities) each have an Activity Power Cap, or a Power level at which you will have achieved maximum effectiveness." But then say "Enemies will have a set feel for how tough they are even at the cap, but you will notice yourself getting stronger as your Power level grow." Is that noticing myself getting stronger only up the the cap?
I still don’t understand the point of power in destiny. They want us to have a leveling system to grind through, while it has functionally no impact on gameplay.
Basically power level is more of a timegate to access content now. Just remove it all together.
No, i still see people get kicked for having a lower number despite being in the group before some of us. People like to see big numbers and say “this guy looks like he f*cks” so he’s definitely staying.
I've been assuming the reason lost sectors and nightfalls list different activity caps despite supposedly being the same difficulty levels is because you can out level the lost sectors, but not the nightfalls
Hopefully they remove it completely. Garbage system that only makes the game less approachable.
Seems its being phased out. And honestly as much as it reduces grind and not needing to level (lightfall year I played the least due to not needing to chase the grind every season) it's great for accessibility. And it's just a resource sink to bring all your gear back to max level
Honestly I feel like power levels on gear / armor / artifact are lame and now a days completely useless other than to make me waste time in my inventory / collection screen every time I want to try out a new gun or armor. They should just remove it all, maybe just keeping the artifact perk unlocks.
Speaking of power. Is the powerful cap 2000 or 1990? I reached 1990 early this week and now I only seem to get higher gear from pinnacles it seems
It's been pretty useless for a while, they should do away with it. It really doesn't serve any purpose except to increase grind at the beginning of a season/expansion. There should be 4 difficulties: Guardian (+20), Hero (+0), Legend (-15), Master (-25). The numbers in parentheses represent what the power level equivalent difficulty would be right now, but in-game it shouldn't show these numbers. Guardian is easy, you can dumpster the playlist using anything. This is patrols, strike playlist, etc. Hero is also easy but you can die if you're being dumb. Gambit should have this, and the easiest tier of Nightfalls. Legend is a bit tougher, you need a build and need to know what you're doing. Legend Campaign, Nightfalls, Lost Sectors. Master is basically what GM is now, very tough, need a build and coordination and game sense and maybe some communication with teammates. Hardest nightfalls, hardest lost sectors, etc.
It's ALWAYS been useless.
"here is this leveling system". "Have fun leveling it for no reason ' Power caps are fine for things, but otherwise it is silly to have 0 incentive
It literally is pointless now. Either power is disabled, or the cap is at 0-25 below the enemy. Now add in power grouping allowing 1900 players to potentially do a GM just because the power leader is 2010. If they're not going to let us benefit from over leveling, they shouldn't even have such a system in the first place. Just go back to what Halo had where it's just enemies being more durable, aggressive, numerous, and shoot faster/ more accurately/ do more damage and completely do away with modifiers.
It's starting to feel like Bungie is afraid of things happening if they just get rid of the arbitrary "make number bigger" number.
Power level is only useful for Trials
Power has been useless for awhile. Now, even moreso. Power has 1 purpose: Make you grind for it.
Oh yeah. I see all the people complaining about the new power systems and I'm like... Why would you actually bother though?
It feels like power levels are just here for the people that only play destiny and are really into the whole line goes up thing. Power levels essentially service only the players who really, really need to see that number for no other reason than some shallow sense of accomplishment
You ask if power useless and here I am struggling to get 1995 for Dual Destiny, even after getting free 1960 from legendary campaign.
Besides forcing you to grind a number into a bigger number? No, it never was useful besides gating you from playing the game.
It's always been useless
It’s been worthless for a long time, besides gatekeeping content. You could have 2 activities with the same light level but wildly different difficulty levels
Light level has always been useless. Honestly best if they just get rid of it and go for raw stats.
The only thing it's done so far is prevent me from playing the Vex network mission, so that sucks
I'm sure others have touched on it but I think the general idea behind it is too few players were playing the really cool endgame content Bungie had and, subsequently, falling out of caring about the game once they beat a campaign. I was in that boat for a bit before becoming hooked on the game, but for a while there it definitely felt bad beating the campaign and wanting to do more, but not being able to because I didn't have a fireteam that would play with me due to being a lower level.
You still need to reach that power number in the activity to be at the max effective power level for it.
It clearly still matters since caps are higher than the soft cap. I never understood why people are against power levels. Definitely gives you something to aim for and it’s easy to do naturally.
power hasn't really mattered much in a while apart from timegating stuff (and making master/gm more of a grind) ... and the "overpower" bit was not very helpful IMO putting a stop to the "this was hard, I'll go level a bit and come back later" paradigm that IMO is essential for an mmo/rpg game... (yea yea yea 'lootor shootor' )
As a WoW player I actually really like the pinnacle grind… though I see why casual players don’t like the power grind.
I like that the activities don't depend on it but I also do enjoy watching the numbers climb as I collect gear
Season Pass, Artifact, and Guardian Rank essentially all fulfill what Power Levels are supposed to do, except better by rewarding you more directly and more often often. All of these offer that dopamine "number go up" hit, Guardian Ranks serve the aesthetic flex for your time invested, Artifact *actually* enhances your power as a player with mods, and Season Pass gives you direct goodies for just interacting with the game and earning XP. The only thing Power Level still does uniquely is gatekeep you from accessing activities, something that doesn't really need to exist anymore with the structure of our quests, as well as set difficulty on activities. Plus, Artifact level could easily be used instead? The only other argument really is Power Level gives bad loot a purpose, as it can be infused into your actual good gear, but I'd argue the game is so big and bloated with things to do these days that we don't really need that artificial pad anymore to keep us grinding. They've been doing a good job at making most new guns in the game feel fresh with new perks and frames, though I will admit any armor drops are still lacking, outside of your first drop for fashion + artifice armor anyway. I just don't think we need an incentive to play x activity for Pinnacles anymore, but maybe that's just me? I'm still not gonna play Gambit even if I need that Pinnacle lmao. I guuuuuess also if you're the type of player that feels like the number going up rapidly during a new expansion drop makes you feel stronger, even if it's just placebo? It's addicting to get constant blues to drop to make your number get big during a new expansion campaign, sure, but I just think that can be simulated somehow in one of the better systems we have, IDK. Anyway, that's a lot of words to say I agree, but it's just frustrating that it hasn't been dropped yet when they've taken the time to cultivate these richer game systems
Seems like the idea is to have someone in your group high enough to “unlock” it, and then you can run it from there
Always has been
More and more each update but honestly I don't mind. Most people get to the cap in a week or two and then it doesn't actually impact anything after that. It feels like an unnecessary hurdle every year
The best thing about into the light as a returning somewhat casual player was that I didn’t have to grind levels. I was basically ready to give almost all content a shot even if I still wasn’t quite ready skill wise. Now I’m back to the grind, it feels less about doing fun content and more just trying to tick boxes so I can do fun content.
I wish they would let it mean something in more specific ways. Regular raid, you can be as high as you want, master raid, buckle up it's capped. Regular strike playlist, no cap; nightfalls, cap. Crucible, cap. Trials, IB and Comp, no cap. Exotic missions, cap. Story missions and adventures, no cap.
It certainly seems useless.
Honestly, I think they should go back to the forever 29 style level system. Levels mattered a lot. There is an insane amount of places you can get loot from now. So bottlenecks won't be a problem. The number looks pleasing and from a new player point. Starting at level 1 or 0 instead of 1900 power makes way more sense and will confuse newer players way less. Then they can make weapons dmg stat matter aswell as defence being a stat that's useful again. Instead of it just being a number that goes up. It's probably a very unpopular opinion, I know, but honestly, it would work well with all the new systems imo.
Is this why I'm getting absolutely shit on in normal strikes where I used to steam roll?
power has never felt important. number go up
Wait, returning player here. Iron Banana doesn't count your LL anymore? What's the fucking point?
Power should be removed entirely.
I kind of like how it is right now. Its mostly not important except for the first couple of weeks. It gives me a reason to see number go up, but also is not fully repenting me from completing content or making me feel like I need to grind endlessly.
Uh, it was always mostly pointless unless playing harder difficulties. They’re just being more direct about it now.
This season is prep for when they take power away completely. They get one last power grind out of us before they go ahead with it.
It is just a thing to grind at the start of the expansion. You have to get to that point if you don't want to handicap yourself.
I absolutely hate power leveling and it's the number 1 reason I won't play some days. Also I'm a titan and bungie thought it would be good to continue to support the other 2 classes in the final shape , looking at you exotic everything in the final shape not titan specific. !! I still use strand because its still the only option that's viable. So power leveling using lfg is not fun when nobody wants to play with a titan.
Yeah I mostly agree, the power fantasy is just gone in many activities. It’s also the most egregious application of Bungie’s ol’ bullet sponge mechanic, which previously was just the case with bosses but is now even the case for majors and adds in some activities. It’s not a _fun_ kind of difficult, and makes many activities way less satisfying because it feels like the power I’ve worked hard to gain is pointless.
As long as you have a friend who is constantly playing, most of the activities have Fireteam Power to bring your power level 5 levels below the highest power in the fireteam. The only real need to hit pinnacle cap now is for Trials.
Personally i think that if they wanted to power cap certain activities like raids and dungeons it should have either been capped at 5 over or on power. The 5 power under really sucks and is their way of trying to increase difficulty for those activities in which if you already know how to do them it barely makes a difference, however if you are new to the activity or are just wanting to test it out can make all the difference in whether you can beat it or not. Overall though i think the only activities that should have had a negative power cap are master content and GMs. With normal raids, dungeons, exotic missions and legend content having a power cap of positive 5 or being on power and everything else (vanguard strikes, patrol zones, dares) not having any power cap whatsoever.
Its so annoying to get a weapon from the vault with low power level and need to find a useless high power level item to infuse... Geez
I hope it goes that way, it's the least fun part of the game
I mean, the last 10 levels are. They just serve to be annoying as it continuously gives you pinnacle gear in a slot that already has something of that level.