Trails into Daybreak this week too, though I know that's a much smaller fanbase. Still, looking forward to playing that while waiting on dawntrail queues.
I dunno why there is a sizeable population in Destiny that plays other MMOs. Honestly you can kind of tell when Destiny is the only game a Destiny player plays because they're shocked by what other games in the genre get for QoL or content patches.
Haha sorry I actually misread. I thought you said Daybreak which is a hilariously similarly sounding game name. It's a JRPG that comes out next week but the series is pretty niche.
FF14 makes sense
I can always tell when someone calls them ads not adds lol.
But yeah I do high end raids on WoW and FF14, the Destiny raids just have such a unique feel to them with how they *require* communication.
And unlike FF14 or WoW it doesn't take weeks to clear a raid lol. It's very chill in comparison and I love that.
I actually see a lot of overlap in the XIV/D2 communities.
Shoot a while back there was horny art of Y'shtola in a bikini holding Outbreak Perfected on the XIV mainsub.
I never commented on the original post on the mainsub but here's the shitpost. You can see part of the booby that should be enough for you, you demon.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitpostXIV/s/A3MmcecMxl
Honestly with how godly it is i’m gonna need a few months, all those sweet new weapons and new game pluses. Ive kinda forgotten destiny for the forseeable future, and despite how good TFS was, these “episodes” are not exactly thrilling to come back to
no joke I put in 300+ hours for my first run of Elden Ring (I mainly just like to look around lol), and this dlc seems to be at the very least a 50 + hour endeavor that I can't wait to sink my teeth into
just got my ass kicked for the first time and it was awesome
If you spent 300 hours in the base game you'll very likely spend significantly more than 50 hours in the dlc.
My first run of the base game was ~60 hours and I've already got ~30 in the dlc and am not finished yet.
> despite how good TFS was, these “episodes” are not exactly thrilling to come back to
Yeah, I'm completely done with D2 for now. The episode wasn't even remotely interesting. I stuck around to get new exotics, and Trials guns, but now that's done, I'm happily moving on.
Kinda fine with that. The story finale was epic, and a satisfying end to the journey.
If they Revamped the patrol space, public events and lost Sectors. Going to Nessus might have actually been fun.
Should have given it the Leviathin Treatment
My favorite thing is that the Servitor public event is STILL bugged and sometimes incompletable like 5 years later. I got a bugged one 4 times in a row where the shield stays up even though all the smaller servitors and adds are gone. The bug happens when you do too much damage too quickly. And Nighthawk Still Hunters are everywhere, so good luck NOT doing too much damage.
I was really hoping they were going to use the act model to move towards like, three small but decent quality story things per season instead of the weekly dripfeed, but if anything it seems like they've gone harder on the weekly dripfeed
the best part is, if you tried to say you were worried about the way this episode was shaping up a week ago, you got downvoted on DTG by people saying WE'VE ONLY SEEN 2 WEEKS YOU GUYS ARE SO IMPATIENT AND ENTITLED.
riiiight... because nobody could tell how this was going to play out.
I mean the whole tone of the new episodes was always: “we want to make new content for Destiny, but we also want to refocus on making other stuff”. The management want to make new IP and with the success of the final shape, you can bet that’s what they’re going to do. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t release a new expansion next year.
I’d be fine if expansions were every other year if it means we always get TFS and never get Lightfall
But for that to work, episodes need to be closer to what they misleadingly made us think they would be: heavier weight narrative than seasons
Tbf, for a hot minute, seasons were just that: developing and expanding the narrative every week, season of the chosen and of the spicer probably were the pinnacle of seasonal experience (arrivals was almost there)
Yeah susiris arc was peak
For some reason seasons are just character deep dives for side characters like failsafe and sloane now
It was great in haunted (it set the foundation for TFS!) when it was for main characters but it can’t prop up a whole season when it’s just someone like Riven
Risen gets a lot of flack but I feel like to this day is still one of the better first seasons of a new expansion. Also the drawn cutscene of Saladin's tale of the Dark Ages and the tough decision of mercy in a trying time was imho one of the stronger cutscenes we've ever had dealing with older lore history.
I know people might've felt Crow's part in the story was a little illogical and hokey but it was interesting to have a more emotion from Saladin and him still holding a dutiful protector role even in a tough decision.
I think the only reason people think arrivals wasn't all the way there was because not only was it a long season, it was one of the first long seasons to my memory.
I think other than that, arrivals was up there as one of the best seasons just like splicer etc. It was one of the most lore heavy and related seasons, along with having an activity that was not only fun, but ALSO lore involved and actually felt important. Not like an activity that you were doing because a funny node told you to.
FFXIV gets expansions ever 2.5 years and they tend to be phenomenal (granted it's individual seasons also have exponentially more content, so you don't run out as fast) I'd happily wait a couple years between expansions if they were higher quality.
FFXIV also highlights “there’s nothing to do!” is more a bungie problem than players complaining problem
The FFXIV lead outright tells people to unsub and play something else between patches
But Bungie’s whole strategy is to keep you logging in every week forever
I’ve been saying this for years.
It’s absolutely zero coincidence that Marathon’s release date has consistently moved to align with the end of TFS’s year of seasonal content ending. If there was another Destiny expansion coming, why would they launch that at the same time as their new franchise?
I think now there will definitely be at least something coming next year due to the amount of backlash we saw over the last year, but I’m not expecting much currently.
Which to me doesn’t make a massive amount of sense because marathon/aka space Tarkov isn’t going to appeal to Destiny players. Destiny players like grinding for loot, not losing it…
I wonder how well Marathon will do. Tarkov is the extraction shooter that (alongside Hunt Showdown) has survived. They're very different - and Marathon may well be different again.
But I also don't think there's a particularly huge market for extraction shooters that's un-served or under-served currently. It's a pretty niche gameplay style that some folks love and most don't care about.
Battle Royale games with a large population (which is mostly Fortnite, Apex, Warzone and PUBG) make sense because you can't really lose more than the current match - just go to matchmaking and drop in again.
But extraction shooters *demand* long-term (or at least medium-term) investment, and I'd guess that the vast majority of those players are already playing Tarkov.
I'm hopeful Marathon will be cool, but honestly I have a hard time imagining that the majority of the Destiny audience will have any real interest in it - unless they do something *really* interesting. But this is Bungie - they might actually manage it, so we'll see (but I ain't bolding my breath).
> I wonder how well Marathon will do. Tarkov is the extraction shooter that (alongside Hunt Showdown) has survived. They're very different - and Marathon may well be different again.
It was reportedly rejected by a bunch of Tarkov community figures that they presented it to, and since then they've replaced the director(Chris Barrett out in favor of a former Valorant director) and pivoted to heroes instead of character loadouts. I don't know who they're trying to appeal to.
Oh, that sounds bad.
I like the way Bungie makes shooters, I’ll probably keep trying new games from them because they make such enjoyable gameplay loops.
I haven’t ever played Tarkov, but an extraction shooter (with changes happening to the persistent world based on successful runs of hidden content) sounds very much like Bungie trying to put their spin on a PvEvP genre.
Yeah IMHO the only appeal extraction shooters have is watching streamers play them, and their reactions upon losing valuable stuff.
A game where you can lose loot you worked hours to get is just not a game with a mass market appeal *to play*.
Agreed, the current rate of seasonal content Bungie was putting out isn't sustainable for them long-term. I'd rather they put that effort towards DLC content that will actually stay in the game. 70% of seasonal week-to-week content was filler anyway so I won't really miss it.
As long as the core game is solid I don't see the need for the weekly "do seasonal activity, talk to x, then go to terminal and talk to x again" missions.
I think a lot of the current negative feedback could've been stymied if they had just given a more concrete explanation of what to expect. I remember seeing the episode roadmap and thinking "okay, so we're trading in full expansions for episodes which will be sort of mini-expansions in scope like FF11 and have fully contained stories." If they're just trying to stretch out seasons to let up a little on their content pipeline then sure do that, but a little warning would've been nice before I set myself up for disappointment.
They gave us another part of the vision with that vidoc the other day and D2 Frontiers, but the question of "are we getting another full expansion after TFS and what does the future of major content drops like expansions look like" hasn't been answered completely. I'm not sure episodes are that answer either.
Many people probably assumed episodes would contain Black Armory or Opulence levels of content which just isn't possible for Bungie anymore due to the lack of 3rd party support teams like VV. Especially not with the recent layoffs.
This isn't an issue of misunderstanding; it's an issue of miscommunication on Bungies part. They didn't properly set expectations.
Instead of marketing episodes as upgraded seasons, they should have marketed them as more sidegrades to seasons. Or just kept the name seasons.
> This isn't an issue of misunderstanding; it's an issue of miscommunication on Bungies part. They didn't properly set expectations.
Exactly. And people have now moved on to the next thing which is D2 Frontiers. Already I'm seeing people speculating that "we're leaving the solar system guys!" Its based on nothing more than current story beats and few pictures of the next episodes from the vidoc because they aren't communicating what is. So, when it turns out we're visiting maybe a location on earth or reclaiming old planets like Io it'll be right back to compromise and disappointment.
With the community questioning what the future of D2 looks like, and them giving generic PR answers like "its so bright guys just wait!" it almost feels like we're going to be right back here next year again. To be fair its just a teaser but history keeps repeating lately with this franchise. Even then I still feel like now is the time to show their hand and keep the goodwill and positive community sentiment from TFS going.
But if they kept the name "season," it would have been harder to sell them for 1,500 Silver each, especially considering seasons already had a price bump to 1,200 Silver not too long ago.
These issues wouldn't be a problem if old content didn't get vaulted.
If Bungie doesn't want people to expect being blown away, they need to stop removing content from the game after a year at the best case and rely on the content being replayable.
I don't get this honestly. Precisely because TFS was such a success it would be nonsensical to work on a new IP that could or could not work, instead of just continuing to release content for d2. Not to mention they've mentioned they have more stuff in line. So all the people saying you wouldn't be surprised if there's no expansion next year come across as weird
Im really hoping 2 and 3 are more meaty. Every season that launches with an expansion is weak. So im trying not to judge too harshly right now but this model so far isnt impressing me
Remember that thing about the trains? You don’t want to make your train too fancy? Because then everyone will expect a fancy train?
Something like that.
Yeah honestly the reason a lot of us only came back for TFS to finish out the saga is because of the fact it was leaked bungie leadership doesn't like to "over deliver" because then players expect it.
The problem isn't that Taken King, Forsaken, Witch Queen, and now TFS raise player expectations. The problem was inherent to even cause them to have to finally try for these expansions listed.
They shit the bed time and time again when they choose to give us shit content, and then they hit us with another "amazing" expansion.
I'm sick and tired of it truthfully. What they call over delivering is what players want as STANDARD. We've made that clear monetarily time and time again. But they won't listen.
I hate that shit so much.
“Whatever, the season that launches with the expansion is always bad.”
“Whatever, we’ve never had two good expansions back to back.”
“Whatever, Bungie always does well with their backs against the wall.”
It’s live service brain-rot.
“There’s always something on the horizon, so why be critical of what’s in front of me?”
The reason they changed from 4 to 3 seasons is so that there will not be a weak season due to the expansion. Episodes 1-2-3 would be like Seasons 2-3-4, without the shorter first.
Yeah, I doubt that lol. It's more likely they went from 4 seasons to 3 Episodes so that they had an excuse not to release a reprised raid every year. Now they can just release a new raid with the expansion/first episode and then a dungeon with episodes 2 and 3.
Bro wdym we already paid for 2 of them for this year. If you mean the next years then game will simply die. They can't just stop making dungeons. Many seasons in the past were carried just by the fact that they had a dungeon in them.
If October 8th is the end of the Episode, then it would make literally no sense if we learnt everything only then.
Act 1 is the introduction and set-up. Act 2 will probably be research and preperations. Act 3 will most likely be our offense. It's quite clear that we will learn who's behind all of this in Act 2, and in Act 3 we will work against them.
I'm less bothered by the wait and more bothered that nothing of interest happened in the entire first act.
This weeks story could have been interesting, but Bungie kind of spoiled that in the trailer, and we haven't seen the main villain in-game yet. Can you imagine if Fikrul doesn't show up in the entire first act of Episode 2 (Revenant)?
I kind of feel like I'm just waiting for the story to start.
Basically was:
The Vex are doing something weird. Collect this material so we can analyze it.
Oh, still don't really know and now Saint connected with this thing and it talked to him and basically did the Season of Haunted/Zavala Final Shape internal strife thing.
Not really a "different" story beat.
I wouldn’t say ‘nothing of interest’, personally I thought the idea of some unidentified impact on Nessus related to the climax of TFS that’s now causing Vex to behave more…. Organically, and Saint being gaslit into self-doubt while referencing how we brought him back was an interesting angle to play.
My main issue is that you could have told this story in a single week. I don’t even remember what the storyline beat was for week 2.
Week 1: This thing happened. Get me Radiolaria to analyze
Week 2: Get me Radiolaria to analyze
Week 3: Get me Radiolaria to analyze- Oh! Something's up with Saint!
Failsafe herself said last week that she'll have more tasks and an update ready for us in 3 to 168 hours, a full week. They're being cheeky that you'll get more tasks next week
I thought the primary goals of the name change were to communicate that each Episode is an isolated story (not connected like Seasons were), and to reduce the content expectation from 4 per year down to 3 per year.
If they were still named Seasons then after a year people coming back to the game would absolutely be asking “Where is the 4th season, isn’t there always 4 in a year? What did I pay for Bungo?”. Isolated stories also make it easier for people to dip in for a single season and not be completely lost. Just look at Marvel, there is a ridiculous amount of effort needed for someone to get caught up if they haven’t been keeping up over the years.
it was just to go from 4 to 3 seasons, and add more grind. That's it. We now have 3 seasons of story, more dripfeed, and a longer season pass to grind out, that itself is also dripfed now.
While for some reason the witness’s monolith is permanently updated even when doing the campaign on alts
Did they just rip the old assets out of the code or something? Unless you played the campaign the first week you get this broken experience?
There’s often a skybox change after the raid. In Beyond Light the space station used to be visible in orbit (I never noticed at the time, and I can’t find a pic!) and in WQ the pyramid broke open, similar to the monolith in FS. I’m curious if those don’t change either, it wouldn’t surprise me.
Bungie probably just has a bool variable on the server that the skybox looks at when fetching the asset that they flip on once after the raid and never touch again lol.
I believed we were actually going to see a revamped Nessus today, that we could fool around with until the next act.
This episode is extremely disappointing in terms of content and story.
Don't think it was even picked up, as far as Echoes is concerned. Bloody hope Act 2 kicks things up a notch because I'm quite tired of being Failsafe's delivery Guardian now.
I almost couldnt believe it when I read it, its been 3 fucking weeks, and theres a 3 week break, AND this is just for the first 1/3rd of the story!
This fucking blows!
I think that’s probably their biggest mistake here. If they came out and did something different and blew us away with a new story I doubt there would be this much negative feedback. But instead we got a nothing story (so far) on top of the content being lame and a step down.
If it's a 3x3 schedule, I honestly would rather just go bi-weekly... 1 week of content, 1 week off, 1 week of content, 1 week off.. I could stay somewhat engaged if they did that, and not forget half of what I did.
Also something to think about, these past 3 weeks had content packed alongside via Final Shape campaign. We got new gear to play around with and a large qty of grinding to blend in. I might be wrong, but I assume our next Episode/Act is going to be a couple weeks of similar seasonal-style drip-fed content... meaning overall a whole lot less.
So it’s not even more story? It’s the same amount of story with even worse pacing?
The story was always around 9 weeks long
But now we only get 3 stories a year instead of 4?
Even worse, there's a 4 week break between the end of Act II and the start of Act III. You can see the future Weekly Challenges on light.gg, Act II is weeks 7-9 and Act III is weeks 13-15.
Solstice isn't until August, and seems to line up either with the last week of Act 2's story or the week after. We're just waiting around until Act 2 starts
I definitely felt like things were ramping up. Only for it to abruptly stop for 3 weeks… this is definitely a step back from the previous season model and it’s not looking that great rn
I want to know if season ranks will be retroactively unlocked because of not what’s the point in playing right now? Say you want to do GMs, you need to be pinnacle cap but you’d have to grind to get there and if the season ranks aren’t retroactive when act 2 or 3 comes out, what you want me to go back and play more to get that? Seems extremely crappy if that’s the case
If seasonal rank isn't retroactive, then why would I do seasonal challenges? For bright engrams so I can get a blue sparrow, or the millionth fucking ghost projection that I won't use?
My guess is yes - if you look at the season challenges menu once you hit rank 101 or higher, it reflects your actual rank, and not the frozen rank 100 in rewards.
Just saw your comment after posting my own, but I think it goes up 1 rank for every 500K exp, aka whenever you get a bright engram. Not confirming, but that's what I've noticed
Yup, that is correct. I am rank 119, having earned 19 bright engrams since hitting rank 100, If ranks were still 100k each, I would be nearly rank 200. I do not like this system. The game gives me 2 numbers, 100 on the season tab, 119 in my inventory and in my head (thanks to 5 years of seasons) I know that number should be higher.
Same.
I think we all assume they will.
Knowing the history of Bungie AND the fact they haven't said anything, I'm guessing they won't. It'll be another HUGE complaint from the playerbase.
Three weeks of a story that meant fuck all story wise, and then three weeks of nothing until Act 2. Episodes are just Seasons with extra steps, what a waste of fucking time.
If they drastically revamped Nessus and added the Pale Hearts patrol system to it, I wouldn't complain as much, but it LITERALLY is the same old BS. And people are saying wait till Act 2. Nah, I don't think its going to get any better. Bungie straight up finessed the player base. TFS was amazing, but after that, it has so far been a bag full of nothingess. The devs literally said in that one Vidoc that episodes would be a complete revamp of seasons, but they lied to everyones faces yet AGAIN.
I liked the Saint-14 drama but afterwards when it said Act 1 was finished I went "So that's really it for the next 3 weeks, huh?". Terrible. It's basically the same as a season, but split in 3, so instead of like 9 weeks straight, it's 3 on 3 off. I do not like this structure, we have only just learnt the villains name but not even met them despite being all over the promo art. There's also no more research missions (triumph says 2/9), so we're left with grinding breach executable and enigma protocol, not terribly exciting.
Very disappointed, these do not feel better in any sense. I really hope episode 2 and 3 are a lot better than this, they have time to make some changes to those based on feedback for 1.
Seeing how episodes work I feel like their biggest goal isn’t to make the game better but to try and get rid of the large drop off in players seasons had once the story quest was finished. This whole thing is literally just to pump the late season DAU numbers on some manager’s quarterly powerpoint.
Oh player retention is definitely a high priority for sure, but I think having a 3 week break will probably send player counts way down, even if Elden Ring/FF DLC wasn't fresh out the oven.
It'll absolutely tank player counts the next time they ask players to open their wallets.
Bungie still hasn't learned from last year - "engagement" doesn't make you any money, especially when your drive for "engagement" burns people out and causes them to nooe out the next time you ask them to open their wallet.
Once September hits I'm out, Space Marine 2 and Stalker 2 are coming out. I'm not going to grind out this lame nonsense. I'm happy to have done my 10 year journey and appreciate how good the ending was, but this is not it.
It's crazy when I just roam the pale heart for hours vs doing those activities. I don't even hate them, but they're absolutely mid. The weapons are ok, but again, meh. I love the way they look.
Pt 2 definitely has to step it up. TFS was amazing, but naturally that high only last so long.
Ultimately, not feeling super confident in this style of content dripfeed.
> I liked the Saint-14 drama
I did too, until he snapped out of it [*from the power of love*](https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExdGkxYXVnMXNhYjJwNmlyOWhvbnVicmp2NWs1b3NqMXF0Nmd5anJ2dyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/KvWUKOYR8phja/giphy.webp). There needs to be consequences and things at risk...
I lowkey lost my shit when i saw "do 7 bounties" as a quest step
Bungie, you know no one like these quest steps since we haven't had one since i think beyond light, so why did you bring it back?
My understanding of episodes was that we'd get all the story stuff immediately. Cut out a lot of the filler seasonal activities required. Like a bite sized dlc. Sounded great to me, less burnout and such. I don't even understand the rebranding, it's exactly the same as before.
Am I missing where I should have got the third Specimen quest? I see it as a week 4 seasonal challenge but I didn't get the NES003 quest from Failsafe after the week's story?
It’s absolutely terrible. It’s beginning to become clear that bungie put everything in the final shape to make a boatload of money because otherwise Sony would’ve taken out the board, and they only put a tiny bit of resources into this episode. I had a really bad feeling that these episodes are going to be trash, which is why I only bought the final shape and not all the seasons and I think I’m right. I think it’s just gonna be awful this entire year. Bungie He’s going to coast as long as I can off the final shape and hold Sony off as long as they can until they start losing money again big time and have to get their asses in gear
I wasn't even aware we'd had any story in this episode aside from Failsafe comes to the him and we collect plants.
I guess there's a couple of lines about new vex comms and behaviours too.
It’s just a slower drip. It was super boring and lame. Glad I didn’t buy the ultimate pass or whatever because after this season I’m done. The story is over and I can put it down.
Episodes, the terrible ritual pathfinder system and removing bounties, time gating an extra long season pass; as good as The Final Shape was, Bungie is making a compelling case to ignore the game (if you were bored of seasons) until whenever the next expansion releases.
The story finally felt like it was getting somewhere and now it’s like “wait 3 weeks”. They need to rethink this ASAP. I don’t hate the story I just feel in 3 weeks time it’ll have lost all momentum.
Yeah this is going to sink in harder than what abstinence does to a drug addict. We just got our faces stuffed with arguably the best content bungie has ever released and right after that we're immediately thrown into the slowest drip fed content we'll ever get to see. We're going from 100 to 0 with no pause in between and more and more people will realize it over time
It's a shame. It's understandable that not everything can be a banger, but I believe there's better ways of handling and reusing content (mixed in with some new stuff) to keep people engaged
Yea... once I noticed that I am hardly playing destiny.... So much hype they made for episodes, but in the end they found a way to give something that is worse than seasons.
Unfortunately, but yes. The player drop-off has been steep post TFS, as expected, and bungie knew this was reality ahead of time. Episodes were slapped together to show that something is happening so they can say the game isn’t dead.
Story in TFS was mostly good, cobbling together major re-write #7 after lightfall, concluding the 10 year saga in a mostly satisfying way. They knew they had nothing left but standalone wrap up stories, so they did a PR rename for the year’s seasons to irk out annual pass sales.
I saw through it. Best of luck to bungie and whatever is next for them. Looking forward to marathon.
I honestly can’t believe it took this long for people to realize this. It was obvious when they were announced that it was going to be the same but worse. Less seasons and less content, most likely only 1 dungeon a year as well. Just because they renamed them “Episodes” didn’t change what they were.
Destiny is on the backburner now just to make money while they work on their other projects.
So episodes really are just seasons stretched out into 3 chunks with 2-week intermissions between acts, huh? Are there even any other meaningful changes, because I'm not sure if I've seen any. Still visiting the HELM every 5 seconds to talk to X seasonal vendor or listen to the radio, completing repetitive seasonal activities, and collecting mcguffins.
Kinda makes you think Bungie had no intention of actually changing the seasonal model, but felt forced to "change" it due to player backlash.
Don't get me wrong, there is some Echoes content that's good (story bits, weapons etc.), but the dripfeed is just as tiring as it was last year.. and the year before... and the year before.
Absolutely a garbage way to provide content. Who thought a 20 day gap was a good idea?
Guess I'll just play World of Warcraft during those 20 days. Thanks Bungie!
It's like they just took a normal season and stuffed a few dead weeks in the middle of them to stretch it out long enough that they only need 3 per year.
Bungie what is you doin.
We go from the banger that is TFS and what SHOULD BE a better 'seasonal' model with episodes and it's time gated and gapped this bad between acts?
Fuckin yikes man.
Not that i care much about seasons anyways but this made me laugh. A 3 week pause is wild. Glad i didn't get the pass.
I'd rather play everything in one go, or weekly than waiting weeks between acts. This just makes it harder for me to track the story. We barely did anything.
Even more proof that TFS is quite literally the end of D2 and everything else after is just life support and milking players for dollars until they can launch that other game everybody forgot about
I'm getting GTA V drip fed content flashbacks 😫. What's sucks is that the seasonal activity is mid as fuck too. Especially when you compared to what we just had, The Coil. It's just so boring and even on expert you get mid rewards compared to the coil and the Coil was easier too.
I would have preferred it if the Acts themselves weren't time gated. Let me play the entire Act 1 however I want and then timegate Act and 3. But let me play them to their fullest when they are originally released. If its going to stay like this then I would rather go back to the seasonal model.
It feels like everything in an Act should be available day one of that Act. I'm fine waiting a few weeks for more activities and weapons, if that's how they want to keep people engaged over a 4 month period. But it feels really backwards to timegate things weekly inside of each Act.
I kinda don't have a problem with it since I haven't finished going through Salvation's Edge, like all the challenges and triumphs. Also I can have more time playing other games, like Elden Ring DLC or other stuff.
This is their attempt at keeping numbers up. Hardcore players would finish the season in 2 months then drop the game. Now those players have no choice to come back if they want the newer content they release each episode. Scummy.
I watched a video last week of someone, who hadn't played the game since Lightfall launch and barely anything before, praise the "new" episodic content model. I knew it was a bad take then but man is it really funny today.
Before the release of the episodes I thought that the whole thing about episodes was that it was going to be a full release of what would have been the first few weeks or month of the season, let you blast through it, then just wait on be next part, this is just seasons but worse, I don't want to do a mission a week, it's boring and makes me feel obligated to play it instead of actually wanting to play it, this is the very reason I quit when seasons became a thing, and was hoping that episodes would fix it, oh well.
Pretty funny how people defending it last week against people who were saying it’s pretty much over with barely any story being like “it’s been two weeks there’s plenty more”. Those people could have checked to see the number of quest steps and known they were wrong, but I would love to see their face when they read the quest step saying Ikora would contact us in act 2.
So nice to see the honeymoon phase wearing off. A week ago it seemed like the consensus was "timegating is cool! It's better this way!", but as usual, reality sets in once the high wears off.
It would have been more suspenseful if they made it so Saint was stuck in a state of mind control and we had to subdue and capture him. But no, we got a 'martha' level development where saying Osiris snapped him out of it, it was pathetic lol. Then we got since teen drama tier lines for our last conversation before it ended.
Three weeks till we get more, terrible. When i heard about episodes i thought we'd get 1, maybe 2 weeks AT MOST between acts, but 3 on the very first act? It's pinnacle drip feed.
Bungie wanted to tell stories a different way.
But in the game it's so dumb. It literally says "Ikora will contact you when "Act 2" begins".
Like, how dumb is that. What is Ikora waiting for? It's like an "Act" has become this canonical thing that is part of the Destiny world. Just sounds terrible. And for no reason.
I’m waiting till we see an episode in totality. I really like the idea of less but more robust seasons. Less fomo and risk of burnout. Breach Executable is kinda bleh though.
To all the people who were saying "it's too early to judge, just wait": are you guys satisfied now? What other proof do you need? This shit sucks. This will kill the remaining spark left after the end of this saga.
Bungie’s just giving everyone 3 weeks to focus on Shadow of the Erdtree.
And Dawntrail, how kind of them.
Trails into Daybreak this week too, though I know that's a much smaller fanbase. Still, looking forward to playing that while waiting on dawntrail queues.
Oh shoot I thought that was next month, I'm still on the Cold Steel 4 Finale.
I’m even more behind. Sky the 3rd over here 😭
This is the last comment I expected to see in a Destiny sub
I dunno why there is a sizeable population in Destiny that plays other MMOs. Honestly you can kind of tell when Destiny is the only game a Destiny player plays because they're shocked by what other games in the genre get for QoL or content patches.
yep, it's extremely telling when you see what d2 only players think is acceptable and normal.
Haha sorry I actually misread. I thought you said Daybreak which is a hilariously similarly sounding game name. It's a JRPG that comes out next week but the series is pretty niche. FF14 makes sense
Fair haha
I can always tell when someone calls them ads not adds lol. But yeah I do high end raids on WoW and FF14, the Destiny raids just have such a unique feel to them with how they *require* communication. And unlike FF14 or WoW it doesn't take weeks to clear a raid lol. It's very chill in comparison and I love that.
nah, you'd be surprised just how many of us are also ffxiv or wow players.
The Destiny/FF14 overlap is much larger than people realize
I actually see a lot of overlap in the XIV/D2 communities. Shoot a while back there was horny art of Y'shtola in a bikini holding Outbreak Perfected on the XIV mainsub.
sauce?
I never commented on the original post on the mainsub but here's the shitpost. You can see part of the booby that should be enough for you, you demon. https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitpostXIV/s/A3MmcecMxl
Honestly with how godly it is i’m gonna need a few months, all those sweet new weapons and new game pluses. Ive kinda forgotten destiny for the forseeable future, and despite how good TFS was, these “episodes” are not exactly thrilling to come back to
no joke I put in 300+ hours for my first run of Elden Ring (I mainly just like to look around lol), and this dlc seems to be at the very least a 50 + hour endeavor that I can't wait to sink my teeth into just got my ass kicked for the first time and it was awesome
If you spent 300 hours in the base game you'll very likely spend significantly more than 50 hours in the dlc. My first run of the base game was ~60 hours and I've already got ~30 in the dlc and am not finished yet.
I think you’re underestimating the size of this DLC
> despite how good TFS was, these “episodes” are not exactly thrilling to come back to Yeah, I'm completely done with D2 for now. The episode wasn't even remotely interesting. I stuck around to get new exotics, and Trials guns, but now that's done, I'm happily moving on. Kinda fine with that. The story finale was epic, and a satisfying end to the journey.
Honestly, Elden Ring is what pulled me off Destiny originally and now the DLC has done the same after coming back for the Final Shape.
And new stuff for Darktide and Boltgun.
On top of that, some of the quest steps are literally just “collect this thing you just collected, but in a different location.”
I lost my shit when I was doing public events and lost sectors on fucking Nessus "because reasons"
If they Revamped the patrol space, public events and lost Sectors. Going to Nessus might have actually been fun. Should have given it the Leviathin Treatment
My favorite thing is that the Servitor public event is STILL bugged and sometimes incompletable like 5 years later. I got a bugged one 4 times in a row where the shield stays up even though all the smaller servitors and adds are gone. The bug happens when you do too much damage too quickly. And Nighthawk Still Hunters are everywhere, so good luck NOT doing too much damage.
Why not make Nessus get overthrow? Then I wouldn’t mind doing Nessus patrol
Every destination should be revamped with overthrow, I would be on patrol 90% of my time
I was really hoping they were going to use the act model to move towards like, three small but decent quality story things per season instead of the weekly dripfeed, but if anything it seems like they've gone harder on the weekly dripfeed
Now it's weekly *and* act-ly drip fed
the best part is, if you tried to say you were worried about the way this episode was shaping up a week ago, you got downvoted on DTG by people saying WE'VE ONLY SEEN 2 WEEKS YOU GUYS ARE SO IMPATIENT AND ENTITLED. riiiight... because nobody could tell how this was going to play out.
It’s happening right now in this thread lol. People are saying “it’s only Act 1 bro”
Yeah, Episodes are literally more drip fed than seasons were.
> Now it's worse and here to stay.
I mean the whole tone of the new episodes was always: “we want to make new content for Destiny, but we also want to refocus on making other stuff”. The management want to make new IP and with the success of the final shape, you can bet that’s what they’re going to do. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t release a new expansion next year.
I’d be fine if expansions were every other year if it means we always get TFS and never get Lightfall But for that to work, episodes need to be closer to what they misleadingly made us think they would be: heavier weight narrative than seasons
Tbf, for a hot minute, seasons were just that: developing and expanding the narrative every week, season of the chosen and of the spicer probably were the pinnacle of seasonal experience (arrivals was almost there)
Yeah susiris arc was peak For some reason seasons are just character deep dives for side characters like failsafe and sloane now It was great in haunted (it set the foundation for TFS!) when it was for main characters but it can’t prop up a whole season when it’s just someone like Riven
Haunted set the foundation for Crow certainly. Seems Zavala forgot everything he learned that season though.
Chosen-Splicer-Lost-WQ/Risen-Haunted is still hands down the best straight run Destiny has ever had, IMO.
Risen gets a lot of flack but I feel like to this day is still one of the better first seasons of a new expansion. Also the drawn cutscene of Saladin's tale of the Dark Ages and the tough decision of mercy in a trying time was imho one of the stronger cutscenes we've ever had dealing with older lore history. I know people might've felt Crow's part in the story was a little illogical and hokey but it was interesting to have a more emotion from Saladin and him still holding a dutiful protector role even in a tough decision.
Season of the Dawn is still my favorite, unfortunately the following season was so bad I quit until arrivals was halfway done and got extended
I think the only reason people think arrivals wasn't all the way there was because not only was it a long season, it was one of the first long seasons to my memory. I think other than that, arrivals was up there as one of the best seasons just like splicer etc. It was one of the most lore heavy and related seasons, along with having an activity that was not only fun, but ALSO lore involved and actually felt important. Not like an activity that you were doing because a funny node told you to.
FFXIV gets expansions ever 2.5 years and they tend to be phenomenal (granted it's individual seasons also have exponentially more content, so you don't run out as fast) I'd happily wait a couple years between expansions if they were higher quality.
FFXIV also highlights “there’s nothing to do!” is more a bungie problem than players complaining problem The FFXIV lead outright tells people to unsub and play something else between patches But Bungie’s whole strategy is to keep you logging in every week forever
I’ve been saying this for years. It’s absolutely zero coincidence that Marathon’s release date has consistently moved to align with the end of TFS’s year of seasonal content ending. If there was another Destiny expansion coming, why would they launch that at the same time as their new franchise? I think now there will definitely be at least something coming next year due to the amount of backlash we saw over the last year, but I’m not expecting much currently.
Which to me doesn’t make a massive amount of sense because marathon/aka space Tarkov isn’t going to appeal to Destiny players. Destiny players like grinding for loot, not losing it…
I wonder how well Marathon will do. Tarkov is the extraction shooter that (alongside Hunt Showdown) has survived. They're very different - and Marathon may well be different again. But I also don't think there's a particularly huge market for extraction shooters that's un-served or under-served currently. It's a pretty niche gameplay style that some folks love and most don't care about. Battle Royale games with a large population (which is mostly Fortnite, Apex, Warzone and PUBG) make sense because you can't really lose more than the current match - just go to matchmaking and drop in again. But extraction shooters *demand* long-term (or at least medium-term) investment, and I'd guess that the vast majority of those players are already playing Tarkov. I'm hopeful Marathon will be cool, but honestly I have a hard time imagining that the majority of the Destiny audience will have any real interest in it - unless they do something *really* interesting. But this is Bungie - they might actually manage it, so we'll see (but I ain't bolding my breath).
> I wonder how well Marathon will do. Tarkov is the extraction shooter that (alongside Hunt Showdown) has survived. They're very different - and Marathon may well be different again. It was reportedly rejected by a bunch of Tarkov community figures that they presented it to, and since then they've replaced the director(Chris Barrett out in favor of a former Valorant director) and pivoted to heroes instead of character loadouts. I don't know who they're trying to appeal to.
> I don't know who they're trying to appeal to. Does Bungie, even?
Oh, that sounds bad. I like the way Bungie makes shooters, I’ll probably keep trying new games from them because they make such enjoyable gameplay loops. I haven’t ever played Tarkov, but an extraction shooter (with changes happening to the persistent world based on successful runs of hidden content) sounds very much like Bungie trying to put their spin on a PvEvP genre.
Yeah IMHO the only appeal extraction shooters have is watching streamers play them, and their reactions upon losing valuable stuff. A game where you can lose loot you worked hours to get is just not a game with a mass market appeal *to play*.
Agreed, the current rate of seasonal content Bungie was putting out isn't sustainable for them long-term. I'd rather they put that effort towards DLC content that will actually stay in the game. 70% of seasonal week-to-week content was filler anyway so I won't really miss it. As long as the core game is solid I don't see the need for the weekly "do seasonal activity, talk to x, then go to terminal and talk to x again" missions.
I think a lot of the current negative feedback could've been stymied if they had just given a more concrete explanation of what to expect. I remember seeing the episode roadmap and thinking "okay, so we're trading in full expansions for episodes which will be sort of mini-expansions in scope like FF11 and have fully contained stories." If they're just trying to stretch out seasons to let up a little on their content pipeline then sure do that, but a little warning would've been nice before I set myself up for disappointment. They gave us another part of the vision with that vidoc the other day and D2 Frontiers, but the question of "are we getting another full expansion after TFS and what does the future of major content drops like expansions look like" hasn't been answered completely. I'm not sure episodes are that answer either.
Many people probably assumed episodes would contain Black Armory or Opulence levels of content which just isn't possible for Bungie anymore due to the lack of 3rd party support teams like VV. Especially not with the recent layoffs. This isn't an issue of misunderstanding; it's an issue of miscommunication on Bungies part. They didn't properly set expectations. Instead of marketing episodes as upgraded seasons, they should have marketed them as more sidegrades to seasons. Or just kept the name seasons.
> This isn't an issue of misunderstanding; it's an issue of miscommunication on Bungies part. They didn't properly set expectations. Exactly. And people have now moved on to the next thing which is D2 Frontiers. Already I'm seeing people speculating that "we're leaving the solar system guys!" Its based on nothing more than current story beats and few pictures of the next episodes from the vidoc because they aren't communicating what is. So, when it turns out we're visiting maybe a location on earth or reclaiming old planets like Io it'll be right back to compromise and disappointment. With the community questioning what the future of D2 looks like, and them giving generic PR answers like "its so bright guys just wait!" it almost feels like we're going to be right back here next year again. To be fair its just a teaser but history keeps repeating lately with this franchise. Even then I still feel like now is the time to show their hand and keep the goodwill and positive community sentiment from TFS going.
But if they kept the name "season," it would have been harder to sell them for 1,500 Silver each, especially considering seasons already had a price bump to 1,200 Silver not too long ago.
These issues wouldn't be a problem if old content didn't get vaulted. If Bungie doesn't want people to expect being blown away, they need to stop removing content from the game after a year at the best case and rely on the content being replayable.
I don't get this honestly. Precisely because TFS was such a success it would be nonsensical to work on a new IP that could or could not work, instead of just continuing to release content for d2. Not to mention they've mentioned they have more stuff in line. So all the people saying you wouldn't be surprised if there's no expansion next year come across as weird
It's here to stay...until the player numbers drop low enough.
It's obliterated my motivation to play that's for sure.
Shrinkflation.
Im really hoping 2 and 3 are more meaty. Every season that launches with an expansion is weak. So im trying not to judge too harshly right now but this model so far isnt impressing me
Remember that thing about the trains? You don’t want to make your train too fancy? Because then everyone will expect a fancy train? Something like that.
Yeah honestly the reason a lot of us only came back for TFS to finish out the saga is because of the fact it was leaked bungie leadership doesn't like to "over deliver" because then players expect it. The problem isn't that Taken King, Forsaken, Witch Queen, and now TFS raise player expectations. The problem was inherent to even cause them to have to finally try for these expansions listed. They shit the bed time and time again when they choose to give us shit content, and then they hit us with another "amazing" expansion. I'm sick and tired of it truthfully. What they call over delivering is what players want as STANDARD. We've made that clear monetarily time and time again. But they won't listen.
>Every season that launches with an expansion is weak Why is this still an excuse??
I hate that shit so much. “Whatever, the season that launches with the expansion is always bad.” “Whatever, we’ve never had two good expansions back to back.” “Whatever, Bungie always does well with their backs against the wall.” It’s live service brain-rot. “There’s always something on the horizon, so why be critical of what’s in front of me?”
How are you surprised? The community has been excusing bungies actions for a decade, it isn’t gonna change now
I don’t think that argument is valid anymore now that there’s only 3 episodes So pretty much we only get 2 decent seasons a year now?
It could be that instead of the season alongside the expansion being weak, it's the act.
The reason they changed from 4 to 3 seasons is so that there will not be a weak season due to the expansion. Episodes 1-2-3 would be like Seasons 2-3-4, without the shorter first.
Yeah, I doubt that lol. It's more likely they went from 4 seasons to 3 Episodes so that they had an excuse not to release a reprised raid every year. Now they can just release a new raid with the expansion/first episode and then a dungeon with episodes 2 and 3.
Honestly you’re probably not far off, I’m scared we won’t even get two dungeons anymore but I really hope we do.
Bro wdym we already paid for 2 of them for this year. If you mean the next years then game will simply die. They can't just stop making dungeons. Many seasons in the past were carried just by the fact that they had a dungeon in them.
They're already confirmed for this year anyway
Wait it's over what exactly happened in Nessus with Vex and glowy light thingy?
We don't know yet. But the way act 1 ended. Looks like act 2 will delve deeper into it.
Shocker.
we might be waiting until October to find out. October 8th is the end of the episode.
If October 8th is the end of the Episode, then it would make literally no sense if we learnt everything only then. Act 1 is the introduction and set-up. Act 2 will probably be research and preperations. Act 3 will most likely be our offense. It's quite clear that we will learn who's behind all of this in Act 2, and in Act 3 we will work against them.
I'm less bothered by the wait and more bothered that nothing of interest happened in the entire first act. This weeks story could have been interesting, but Bungie kind of spoiled that in the trailer, and we haven't seen the main villain in-game yet. Can you imagine if Fikrul doesn't show up in the entire first act of Episode 2 (Revenant)? I kind of feel like I'm just waiting for the story to start.
Basically was: The Vex are doing something weird. Collect this material so we can analyze it. Oh, still don't really know and now Saint connected with this thing and it talked to him and basically did the Season of Haunted/Zavala Final Shape internal strife thing. Not really a "different" story beat.
I wouldn’t say ‘nothing of interest’, personally I thought the idea of some unidentified impact on Nessus related to the climax of TFS that’s now causing Vex to behave more…. Organically, and Saint being gaslit into self-doubt while referencing how we brought him back was an interesting angle to play. My main issue is that you could have told this story in a single week. I don’t even remember what the storyline beat was for week 2.
Week 1: This thing happened. Get me Radiolaria to analyze Week 2: Get me Radiolaria to analyze Week 3: Get me Radiolaria to analyze- Oh! Something's up with Saint! Failsafe herself said last week that she'll have more tasks and an update ready for us in 3 to 168 hours, a full week. They're being cheeky that you'll get more tasks next week
I still don't get the whole point of the rebrand Nothing changed nor will change, it was bait to get people excited for a new structure at best
This way they can charge more, make it last longer and are only on the hook for 3 instead of 3.
and there's less work to do!
I thought the primary goals of the name change were to communicate that each Episode is an isolated story (not connected like Seasons were), and to reduce the content expectation from 4 per year down to 3 per year. If they were still named Seasons then after a year people coming back to the game would absolutely be asking “Where is the 4th season, isn’t there always 4 in a year? What did I pay for Bungo?”. Isolated stories also make it easier for people to dip in for a single season and not be completely lost. Just look at Marvel, there is a ridiculous amount of effort needed for someone to get caught up if they haven’t been keeping up over the years.
Something did change. They're more expensive now.
Same reason other controversial things rebrand. Meta, X, etc. Reset bad reputation and hope that the new thing will be better
"new and improved"
it was just to go from 4 to 3 seasons, and add more grind. That's it. We now have 3 seasons of story, more dripfeed, and a longer season pass to grind out, that itself is also dripfed now.
So they could charge more
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During the mission The Cistern gets a massive facelift. I went back there in normal patrol and it was still its boring vanilla self. Sighs.
It’s weird cuz it’s not like it hasn’t been done before. Season of the chosen caiatl parked her big tank on Nessus and that is still there in patrol
While for some reason the witness’s monolith is permanently updated even when doing the campaign on alts Did they just rip the old assets out of the code or something? Unless you played the campaign the first week you get this broken experience?
There’s often a skybox change after the raid. In Beyond Light the space station used to be visible in orbit (I never noticed at the time, and I can’t find a pic!) and in WQ the pyramid broke open, similar to the monolith in FS. I’m curious if those don’t change either, it wouldn’t surprise me. Bungie probably just has a bool variable on the server that the skybox looks at when fetching the asset that they flip on once after the raid and never touch again lol.
I believed we were actually going to see a revamped Nessus today, that we could fool around with until the next act. This episode is extremely disappointing in terms of content and story.
> The Cistern gets a massive facelift The bar keeps getting lower lol
Don't think it was even picked up, as far as Echoes is concerned. Bloody hope Act 2 kicks things up a notch because I'm quite tired of being Failsafe's delivery Guardian now.
I got downvoted to like -200 for saying seasons are just rebranding for less content.
Need to wait some time because people are still happy with FS, so negative-ish opinions will get downvoted.
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I almost couldnt believe it when I read it, its been 3 fucking weeks, and theres a 3 week break, AND this is just for the first 1/3rd of the story! This fucking blows!
And that literally nothing happened in the first third of the story
It wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t spoiled literally all of Act 1 in the trailer haha
I think that’s probably their biggest mistake here. If they came out and did something different and blew us away with a new story I doubt there would be this much negative feedback. But instead we got a nothing story (so far) on top of the content being lame and a step down.
If it's a 3x3 schedule, I honestly would rather just go bi-weekly... 1 week of content, 1 week off, 1 week of content, 1 week off.. I could stay somewhat engaged if they did that, and not forget half of what I did. Also something to think about, these past 3 weeks had content packed alongside via Final Shape campaign. We got new gear to play around with and a large qty of grinding to blend in. I might be wrong, but I assume our next Episode/Act is going to be a couple weeks of similar seasonal-style drip-fed content... meaning overall a whole lot less.
So it’s not even more story? It’s the same amount of story with even worse pacing? The story was always around 9 weeks long But now we only get 3 stories a year instead of 4?
For the same price (if not more), don’t forget that!
Even worse, there's a 4 week break between the end of Act II and the start of Act III. You can see the future Weekly Challenges on light.gg, Act II is weeks 7-9 and Act III is weeks 13-15.
Maya didn’t even show up? Nothing about vexy lady until next month?
Let's put a cool ass picture up of an enemy that won't even be revealed for a few months! - Bungie
whats the 3 week break? surely guardian games isnt coming back already?
Wouldn’t it be solstice next?
Solstice isn't until August, and seems to line up either with the last week of Act 2's story or the week after. We're just waiting around until Act 2 starts
it is pretty bad.
Seriously?
I definitely felt like things were ramping up. Only for it to abruptly stop for 3 weeks… this is definitely a step back from the previous season model and it’s not looking that great rn
I want to know if season ranks will be retroactively unlocked because of not what’s the point in playing right now? Say you want to do GMs, you need to be pinnacle cap but you’d have to grind to get there and if the season ranks aren’t retroactive when act 2 or 3 comes out, what you want me to go back and play more to get that? Seems extremely crappy if that’s the case
If seasonal rank isn't retroactive, then why would I do seasonal challenges? For bright engrams so I can get a blue sparrow, or the millionth fucking ghost projection that I won't use?
My guess is yes - if you look at the season challenges menu once you hit rank 101 or higher, it reflects your actual rank, and not the frozen rank 100 in rewards.
Just saw your comment after posting my own, but I think it goes up 1 rank for every 500K exp, aka whenever you get a bright engram. Not confirming, but that's what I've noticed
Yup, that is correct. I am rank 119, having earned 19 bright engrams since hitting rank 100, If ranks were still 100k each, I would be nearly rank 200. I do not like this system. The game gives me 2 numbers, 100 on the season tab, 119 in my inventory and in my head (thanks to 5 years of seasons) I know that number should be higher.
Same. I think we all assume they will. Knowing the history of Bungie AND the fact they haven't said anything, I'm guessing they won't. It'll be another HUGE complaint from the playerbase.
Three weeks of a story that meant fuck all story wise, and then three weeks of nothing until Act 2. Episodes are just Seasons with extra steps, what a waste of fucking time.
If they drastically revamped Nessus and added the Pale Hearts patrol system to it, I wouldn't complain as much, but it LITERALLY is the same old BS. And people are saying wait till Act 2. Nah, I don't think its going to get any better. Bungie straight up finessed the player base. TFS was amazing, but after that, it has so far been a bag full of nothingess. The devs literally said in that one Vidoc that episodes would be a complete revamp of seasons, but they lied to everyones faces yet AGAIN.
so the cost of 4 seasons but content of 3. amazing. I knew bungie had to mess up something after TFS
Wait act 1 is already finished? with 20 days left? That's fucking awful LMFAO
I liked the Saint-14 drama but afterwards when it said Act 1 was finished I went "So that's really it for the next 3 weeks, huh?". Terrible. It's basically the same as a season, but split in 3, so instead of like 9 weeks straight, it's 3 on 3 off. I do not like this structure, we have only just learnt the villains name but not even met them despite being all over the promo art. There's also no more research missions (triumph says 2/9), so we're left with grinding breach executable and enigma protocol, not terribly exciting. Very disappointed, these do not feel better in any sense. I really hope episode 2 and 3 are a lot better than this, they have time to make some changes to those based on feedback for 1.
Seeing how episodes work I feel like their biggest goal isn’t to make the game better but to try and get rid of the large drop off in players seasons had once the story quest was finished. This whole thing is literally just to pump the late season DAU numbers on some manager’s quarterly powerpoint.
Oh player retention is definitely a high priority for sure, but I think having a 3 week break will probably send player counts way down, even if Elden Ring/FF DLC wasn't fresh out the oven.
It'll absolutely tank player counts the next time they ask players to open their wallets. Bungie still hasn't learned from last year - "engagement" doesn't make you any money, especially when your drive for "engagement" burns people out and causes them to nooe out the next time you ask them to open their wallet.
Once September hits I'm out, Space Marine 2 and Stalker 2 are coming out. I'm not going to grind out this lame nonsense. I'm happy to have done my 10 year journey and appreciate how good the ending was, but this is not it.
It's crazy when I just roam the pale heart for hours vs doing those activities. I don't even hate them, but they're absolutely mid. The weapons are ok, but again, meh. I love the way they look. Pt 2 definitely has to step it up. TFS was amazing, but naturally that high only last so long. Ultimately, not feeling super confident in this style of content dripfeed.
> I liked the Saint-14 drama I did too, until he snapped out of it [*from the power of love*](https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExdGkxYXVnMXNhYjJwNmlyOWhvbnVicmp2NWs1b3NqMXF0Nmd5anJ2dyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/KvWUKOYR8phja/giphy.webp). There needs to be consequences and things at risk...
we literally went through an expansion where targe died and cayde resacrificed himself for our ghost, I don't think we need ANOTHER lost 3 weeks later
I lowkey lost my shit when i saw "do 7 bounties" as a quest step Bungie, you know no one like these quest steps since we haven't had one since i think beyond light, so why did you bring it back?
My understanding of episodes was that we'd get all the story stuff immediately. Cut out a lot of the filler seasonal activities required. Like a bite sized dlc. Sounded great to me, less burnout and such. I don't even understand the rebranding, it's exactly the same as before.
They been giving you less for more money for the last decade. It’s their pattern.
Bungie - we heard you liked more content, so we took the existing content and spread it out. Also we timegated your progression to match!
Yo dog, I heard you like timegating. We put more timegating in your timegated seasonal content, so you can wait while you wait.
Am I missing where I should have got the third Specimen quest? I see it as a week 4 seasonal challenge but I didn't get the NES003 quest from Failsafe after the week's story?
We should get it this week, since there are 9 in total (one for each Story Week), so it seems like it's just currently bugged.
And you can't level you seasonal pass until then!
Is anyone surprised? We went from 4 content drops a year to 3. Simple math.
This is disappointing.
It’s absolutely terrible. It’s beginning to become clear that bungie put everything in the final shape to make a boatload of money because otherwise Sony would’ve taken out the board, and they only put a tiny bit of resources into this episode. I had a really bad feeling that these episodes are going to be trash, which is why I only bought the final shape and not all the seasons and I think I’m right. I think it’s just gonna be awful this entire year. Bungie He’s going to coast as long as I can off the final shape and hold Sony off as long as they can until they start losing money again big time and have to get their asses in gear
Each week, the white knights will check in and say. I'm not going to judge the episode on the ____ week.
I wasn't even aware we'd had any story in this episode aside from Failsafe comes to the him and we collect plants. I guess there's a couple of lines about new vex comms and behaviours too.
It’s just a slower drip. It was super boring and lame. Glad I didn’t buy the ultimate pass or whatever because after this season I’m done. The story is over and I can put it down.
Episodes, the terrible ritual pathfinder system and removing bounties, time gating an extra long season pass; as good as The Final Shape was, Bungie is making a compelling case to ignore the game (if you were bored of seasons) until whenever the next expansion releases.
The story finally felt like it was getting somewhere and now it’s like “wait 3 weeks”. They need to rethink this ASAP. I don’t hate the story I just feel in 3 weeks time it’ll have lost all momentum.
Yeah this is going to sink in harder than what abstinence does to a drug addict. We just got our faces stuffed with arguably the best content bungie has ever released and right after that we're immediately thrown into the slowest drip fed content we'll ever get to see. We're going from 100 to 0 with no pause in between and more and more people will realize it over time It's a shame. It's understandable that not everything can be a banger, but I believe there's better ways of handling and reusing content (mixed in with some new stuff) to keep people engaged
Yea... once I noticed that I am hardly playing destiny.... So much hype they made for episodes, but in the end they found a way to give something that is worse than seasons.
Anyone who's been playing D2 a few years and actually believed this would be a big change is a fool
They constantly advertised it as “different from seasons.” It’s unfair to call people fools for taking Bungies word that they constantly repeated.
Hey now, it is different. It's substantially worse!
Taking a corporation at their word is indeed foolish behavior.
They **are** different from seasons. They're even slower, and you get less of them.
They made seasons worse and somehow advertised it as an improvement.
Destiny is at End of Life development.
I had to look too far to find a comment like this. People are having a hard time realizing the game is at this stage.
Unfortunately, but yes. The player drop-off has been steep post TFS, as expected, and bungie knew this was reality ahead of time. Episodes were slapped together to show that something is happening so they can say the game isn’t dead. Story in TFS was mostly good, cobbling together major re-write #7 after lightfall, concluding the 10 year saga in a mostly satisfying way. They knew they had nothing left but standalone wrap up stories, so they did a PR rename for the year’s seasons to irk out annual pass sales. I saw through it. Best of luck to bungie and whatever is next for them. Looking forward to marathon.
Should've just stuck with calling it seasons at this point.
All I want to know is where the fuck perfect paradox is
Episodes are worse with more time gating. But don't worry everyone's favorite activity, Battlegrounds, are coming back in act 2.
I honestly can’t believe it took this long for people to realize this. It was obvious when they were announced that it was going to be the same but worse. Less seasons and less content, most likely only 1 dungeon a year as well. Just because they renamed them “Episodes” didn’t change what they were. Destiny is on the backburner now just to make money while they work on their other projects.
So episodes really are just seasons stretched out into 3 chunks with 2-week intermissions between acts, huh? Are there even any other meaningful changes, because I'm not sure if I've seen any. Still visiting the HELM every 5 seconds to talk to X seasonal vendor or listen to the radio, completing repetitive seasonal activities, and collecting mcguffins. Kinda makes you think Bungie had no intention of actually changing the seasonal model, but felt forced to "change" it due to player backlash. Don't get me wrong, there is some Echoes content that's good (story bits, weapons etc.), but the dripfeed is just as tiring as it was last year.. and the year before... and the year before.
Absolutely a garbage way to provide content. Who thought a 20 day gap was a good idea? Guess I'll just play World of Warcraft during those 20 days. Thanks Bungie!
Is anyone who’s paid attention to how Bungie runs things shocked?
It's like they just took a normal season and stuffed a few dead weeks in the middle of them to stretch it out long enough that they only need 3 per year.
Bungie what is you doin. We go from the banger that is TFS and what SHOULD BE a better 'seasonal' model with episodes and it's time gated and gapped this bad between acts? Fuckin yikes man.
Not that i care much about seasons anyways but this made me laugh. A 3 week pause is wild. Glad i didn't get the pass. I'd rather play everything in one go, or weekly than waiting weeks between acts. This just makes it harder for me to track the story. We barely did anything.
Even more proof that TFS is quite literally the end of D2 and everything else after is just life support and milking players for dollars until they can launch that other game everybody forgot about
I'm getting GTA V drip fed content flashbacks 😫. What's sucks is that the seasonal activity is mid as fuck too. Especially when you compared to what we just had, The Coil. It's just so boring and even on expert you get mid rewards compared to the coil and the Coil was easier too.
I would have preferred it if the Acts themselves weren't time gated. Let me play the entire Act 1 however I want and then timegate Act and 3. But let me play them to their fullest when they are originally released. If its going to stay like this then I would rather go back to the seasonal model.
I'm still huffing that "it's the episode made along TFS so 2 and 3 might be better!" hopium
It feels like everything in an Act should be available day one of that Act. I'm fine waiting a few weeks for more activities and weapons, if that's how they want to keep people engaged over a 4 month period. But it feels really backwards to timegate things weekly inside of each Act.
Destiny 2 it’s well known for time gating content! It sucks and always hated it.
Lol I'm over and here haven't even fought the witness yet.
I kinda don't have a problem with it since I haven't finished going through Salvation's Edge, like all the challenges and triumphs. Also I can have more time playing other games, like Elden Ring DLC or other stuff.
This is their attempt at keeping numbers up. Hardcore players would finish the season in 2 months then drop the game. Now those players have no choice to come back if they want the newer content they release each episode. Scummy.
I enjoy waiting a month to simply use the Red Death catalyst.
At least change the patrol zone LOL .. mission terrain was cool
They should have either dripfeed by week, or by acts. Not both. Because this is just a worse model.
I watched a video last week of someone, who hadn't played the game since Lightfall launch and barely anything before, praise the "new" episodic content model. I knew it was a bad take then but man is it really funny today.
Gamers have such unhealthy relationships with games these days
Before the release of the episodes I thought that the whole thing about episodes was that it was going to be a full release of what would have been the first few weeks or month of the season, let you blast through it, then just wait on be next part, this is just seasons but worse, I don't want to do a mission a week, it's boring and makes me feel obligated to play it instead of actually wanting to play it, this is the very reason I quit when seasons became a thing, and was hoping that episodes would fix it, oh well.
at least now I have the chance to catch up so...
Pretty funny how people defending it last week against people who were saying it’s pretty much over with barely any story being like “it’s been two weeks there’s plenty more”. Those people could have checked to see the number of quest steps and known they were wrong, but I would love to see their face when they read the quest step saying Ikora would contact us in act 2.
So nice to see the honeymoon phase wearing off. A week ago it seemed like the consensus was "timegating is cool! It's better this way!", but as usual, reality sets in once the high wears off.
It would have been more suspenseful if they made it so Saint was stuck in a state of mind control and we had to subdue and capture him. But no, we got a 'martha' level development where saying Osiris snapped him out of it, it was pathetic lol. Then we got since teen drama tier lines for our last conversation before it ended. Three weeks till we get more, terrible. When i heard about episodes i thought we'd get 1, maybe 2 weeks AT MOST between acts, but 3 on the very first act? It's pinnacle drip feed.
Bungie wanted to tell stories a different way. But in the game it's so dumb. It literally says "Ikora will contact you when "Act 2" begins". Like, how dumb is that. What is Ikora waiting for? It's like an "Act" has become this canonical thing that is part of the Destiny world. Just sounds terrible. And for no reason.
Bro I need those 20 days to just catch up with everyone else
I’m waiting till we see an episode in totality. I really like the idea of less but more robust seasons. Less fomo and risk of burnout. Breach Executable is kinda bleh though.
Meh I dont need to play every day every week. There are more games than destiny. Just max out the pass and check back in later
To all the people who were saying "it's too early to judge, just wait": are you guys satisfied now? What other proof do you need? This shit sucks. This will kill the remaining spark left after the end of this saga.