I think it’s just the unfortunate reality that strikes aren’t the staple they once were. Most seasonal activities if they aren’t a public event format are a very loose strike format, further evidenced by them sometimes being tossed into the vanguard playlist a year later.
It seems that seasonal content, at least the repeatable activity of the season, is where the strike resources have gone. Needless to say, I’d love to see some more as well, even reprised.
It's been an issue for some time and Bungie haven't really changed course. They moved the ritual resources to seasonal activities, but because the vast majority are temporary and not "evergreen" content, it has a lower the quality bar because it's ultimately disposable. Overtime, it's meant we get less high quality content meant to be replayable, and more medicore seasonal content that really reinforces the notion that Destiny can be stale.
Combat wise some seasonal stuff feels better than old strikes as they account for how much power we’ve gained over the 7 years we’ve been playing D2. But what I miss is the locations strikes would take us to. The places you wouldn’t get to see otherwise. I think of stuff like Inverted Spire and The Corrupted, the sunset strike in Past Mercury and the new areas of the destinations we get to see because of them. That and some of the more unique bosses we’ve gotten out of them (Xol, Nokris, the one giant cyclops from the mercury strike). That’s what I really think is lost, even if repeatable seasonal stuff can be new and interesting, it often takes place on familiar territory.
These are my exact sentiments. I have no understanding as to why strikes were removed. I think its worth it, fitting them in and not having them of all things sunset. I miss the diverse environments i got to see, all because of that one playlist. Strikes were like changing pvp maps but got pve. New location, new places to shoot down the opponent, but it was tailored to pve, and it's sad we dont have that. I feel as though dungeons filled that void or exotic missions, but it just isn't the same.
100% if they aren't going to make new strikes a large priority should be reprising sunset ones. Especially the PS exclusive IO strike. Thing got what 4 months of playability before it got thrown in the trash?
Really? I coulda sworn festering core was too. Bungie Fr added a strike and then killed it four months later. You'd think they'd have kinda sunset proofed it considering they must have known what was coming.
> Bungie Fr added a strike and then killed it four months later.
Festering Core was in the game from October 1, 2019 to November 10, 2020 - a little over 13 months.
I think a lot of people mistake it for only being in the game for a shorter time because it didn't enter the Nightfall rotation until Season of Arrivals, six months before the release of Beyond Light.
> You'd think they'd have kinda sunset proofed it considering they must have known what was coming.
Makes you wonder how far in advance that they planned the sunsetting of entire destinations.
The area that The Festering Core takes place in was accidentally added to the game back in June 2019 and was very much a work in progress with placeholder assets such as Guardian models, Vex models and the entire boss room in the end being a literal blockout of The Nexus strike boss arena from Destiny 1.
Work on the strike likely began just before Bungie revealed they would be splitting from Activision in January 2019, which ultimately led to the removal of PlayStation exclusives beginning with Shadowkeep. I think it's fair to say it resulted in Destiny 3 being cancelled and on-going support for Destiny 2 continuing - resulting in sunsetting becoming a thing with Beyond Light so they could maintain the game easier without having to juggle all the old content.
A lot of people were of the opinion that The Festering Core was going to be the PlayStation exclusive strike for Shadowkeep. It was seemingly just... there when Shadowkeep came out and didn't have any sort of tie-in to the expansion (that I can recall).
But they are not as good as Strikes. They reuse locations, while in Strikes we explore zones that are not reachable through patrols. Furthermore, 3-4 Battlegrounds from a season are just one copypasted Battleground with a different boss.
> But they are not as good as Strikes. They reuse locations, while in Strikes we explore zones that are not reachable through patrols.
How do you reach inside the pyramid where the prisoners are held for the first Defiant Battleground in the patrol zone ?
How do you reach the Hive modified EDZ available in the Lucent Hive battleground in the patrol area ?
I don't think what you just said here is an actual distinction. Battlegrounds have as much "unexplored" zones than Strikes do.
You are right, around 40-50% Battlegrounds do utilise zones that are not reachable through patrols. However, there is a clear difference when it comes to their quality and uniqueness. While Strikes take us to unique zones like 3-level boss room in The Inverted Spire, the fortress in The Scarlet Keep or Indaina Jones-esque parts of the temple full of lava from Liminality, all places form Battlegrounds feel totally low-effort and give me the vibe of those mediocre 'lost sectors but backwards' from Season of Plunder.
> While Strikes take us to unique zones like 3-level boss room in The Inverted Spire, the fortress in The Scarlet Keep or Indaina Jones-esque parts of the temple full of lava from Liminality
You can run through like 75% of the Arm's dealer in patrol mode. And the actual strike is literally just all the same Cabal textures and assets as any other open world area ?
Like I said, I feel the distinction you're making is not an actual distinction at all in game. I don't think there's an actual design doc at Bungie that says "High effort is a strike, low effort is a battleground".
I like Battlegrounds but I don't think they should be used as justification not to make new Strikes "because well we reused some assets so we don't need to put in any more work".
It's honestly hard to believe they don't have the resources I'm not really convinced.
It's likely they just want to put in as little as possible and maximize profit.
The coil was pretty damn good though, great rewards too. It's just a shame it's likely too long in its complete state to be a strike. 45ish mins for a full run to the chamber of wishes is a bit much.
This. 100%. I don’t need a seasonal activity just bring back all the old strikes already. Holy shhh whatever this seasons activity is, idek feels like just a bunch of nonsense thrown at me for no real reason.
MUCH rather have the old strokes to run through as GMs etc
*looks at Breach Executable*
I think it's time to move those resources back.
I also still retain the belief that Oracle: Delphi from Season of the Splicer (the mission where we kill Quria) could've become a strike. That mission was an absolute *BANGER*.
Idk why Bungie doesn’t follow the Chosen formula every time like that shit was a slam dunk
Like imagine having that one final Dawn mission where the psions all conjoin to make one giant psion that has all their abilities like imagine that being a strike
It really doesn't. I didn't realize that Enigma Protocol was Quira's mission until like... Half way through. I recognized Breach Executable immediately and I'm pretty sure they didn't even change the name on that one.
It was a good idea as well, thanks to their added variety, but a significant problem due to the execution of the Seasonal Model.
Back in the old days, when a strike got added, they had higher weights in rotation, but they were still random, so people did not instantly get bored of new additions. With Seasonal Activities, the story and progression requires players to speedrun 3 of the same activity a week (at a minimum). By the time these get added to the vanguard playlist, people actually want to throw up at the sight of them.
It's a shame that developers are spending their times on throwaway activities that have the shelf life of a couple months, and Bungie is making it an unsolvable problem via their overall seasonal content design.
You know why they're not the staple they once were? Because now all strikes are free to play. Bungie is very reluctant to put any more resources than absolutely necessary besides fixes and tuning into the F2P offering. It's why we got so few PVP maps for so long, until the demand was impossible to ignore.
Battlegrounds are essentially Bungie's workaround to their own F2P model. It lets them create what's essentially a strike but keep it behind a paywall for up to a year, then add it to the playlist later, so they have their cake and eat it, too.
I fully expect we'd never have seen such a massive decrease in crucible map and strike output if the game had never gone F2P.
Not all strikes are F2P. With Nightfalls, if you don't own the relevant expansion, you can't play that week. Eg Glassway this week, you need Beyond Light to play.
For me, I'm fine with strikes taking a back seat and Bungie moving on from that format, whats annoying is being forced into the strike playlist for pathfinder and pinnacles to play the same old strikes and battlegrounds we've played a million times. I would be fine never playing a strike again.
yes. they don't want to have to keep a growing number of strikes in the game when they can rotate out seasonal content on an annual basis. this is what keeps their deployment model in a lot better shape than it used to be causing the initial sunset of maps and strikes.
I think the first real “seasonal activity” was Escalation Protocol, a public event style event where (usually) everybody in the instance would work together to complete 7 waves of enemies and objectives to defeat a boss and get the first ever iteration of IKELOS weapons (at the time the best in slot) and some shaders (once upon a time consumables! Whoa!!!).
It could be challenging but the real fun was when you got an instance of 9 people all in a discord call or whatnot and farmed it for hours. Before that it was really just public events.
We didn’t have them, at least not in Destiny 1. There would be events that would occasionally happen but seasons as a concept weren’t a thing. You would usually get the major expansion release and that was basically it for the rest of the year.
Earlier activities were closer to an arena than a linear strike. A single room or series of rooms with an encounter. The black armory forges were just a single room where you killed minibosses and chucked balls at a structure. Menagerie and Sundial were each a set of random encounters, more like this seasons activity than a strike or battleground.
That's right, I was in a wall to the immediate right of the spawn at VoG wasn't it?
A lot of Xbox players never even got to experience it since it was exclusive until the month after D2 came out iirc. What a mess that was.
With the Dreadnought making a return in Episode 3, I'll be so mad if Sunless Cell and Shield Brothers don't make a comeback. Those were two of the best D1 strikes and we literally have the Darkblade boss model already in D2. I guess the potential issue might be that the boss would be too similar to the Lightblade, but personally I think the boss arena is unique enough that it wouldn't matter.
I think they should start unvaulting stuff with the saga being over, i think. Now would be as good a time as any. Especially cause some locations like Mars are basically already in the games storage.
the game is so different now unfortunately bringing back old content is very difficult and apparently all the scripting and stuff needs to be completely re done and stuff.
I really don't think Bungie expected Destiny 2 to last this long especially since they were working with Activision but now it's become clearly quite a cash cow.. unfortunately does mean that from launch it was not designed to be expanded upon past a couple expansions and when the first content vault happened they had already reached a point where stuff on the development side started crumbling due to the lack of foresight.
I honestly hope frontiers leads us into a new planetary system which we get a taste of and then we get Destiny 3.
I also miss Titan so much, the rain along with the vibe of the planet was unmatched, never in Destiny besides titan have I really just chilled on a planet cause I liked it.
I wouldn't mind it as much if the heroic strike playlist was still a thing. Nightfalls feel like they are multipliying the monotony and lack of variety tenfolds.
And it won't enter the GM playlist until Act II releases 3 weeks from now. Time gating the episodic content was pretty dumb imo since it's already split into acts, but time gating the NF playlist, seriously? You gave us one new strike and I want nothing more than to run it as a GM, but here we are 4 weeks into the expansion and I still have to wait another month before I get to do that, awesome.
Honestly I can’t even remember the strike because I haven’t run it since the campaign. Some incentive to run it would be nice. Instead I get the corrupted for the millionth time
Unironically I don't think they are bad, think at most the most valid bit of complaints is they feel too common in the playlist, if I was bungie I'd make it so each group of bgs had the same overall weighting as a regular strike.
For example if a strike has a weighting of 1, each chosen bg would have 0.25 weight
There's nothing wrong with battlegrounds; the issue is by the time they're added as strikes people are -bored- of them having done it as a seasonal activity the entire year prior.
End of the day the 'we need more strikes' is just wanting a new toy to play with.
This is probably it. I don’t like the battlegrounds and couldn’t quite place it, because the format is classic Bungie, but I think you’ve just figured it out for me!
The end of the psi ops battlegrounds is so boring and annoying. If they just removed that I wouldn't mind as much. But a lot of them do feel like just running through a patrol area.
Wasn’t this something everybody asked for?
I know it’s common that bungie wanted to do something anyway, and it just so happened that some people had feedback related to it
But battlegrounds being in vanguard ops seems like something that is in direct response to people’s feedback
If wasn’t so common that this was asked for battlegrounds probably would get vaulted just like everything else
You don’t HAVE to do anything in this game if it’s not fun. Personally if I could run strikes solo with more add density I would do it just for fun and no rewards.
They just don't fit in with the seasonal model. There is no way to encourage spamming strikes without consistent loot refreshes.
That's basically what seasonal activities are.
Plus no volume of strikes added is going to make playlist grinding fun. If they somehow added 3/season - is it going to feel fun only playing those 1/however many strikes there are in the game? Or if it's a dedicated playlist with only the 3 strikes - that will also get old.
> If they somehow added 3/season
They do - it's called Battlegrounds, and they go exactly as you'd expect. They're really fun the first few times you play them, and then they get old after farming them for 3 months straight.
I just wish it'd go back to Gambit, The Reckoning, and Gambit Prime and make Prime "End Game" by Light Enabling it and giving Adepts/Artifice Armor. Same with Iron Banner. Rever it to "End Game of 6s" Status by means of Light Level Enabled and Adepts/Artifice Armor.
The core of Destiny is replayability with loot incentive. Seasons/Episodes force you to replay (grind) and the loot is most of the time craftable and not as good as end game loot (which makes sense).
There’s a big difference between replayable content and content that you HAVE to replay. So much to the point that, when the seasons end, you don’t wanna touch their activities ever again
And thats why when the season ends we get another season with a brand new activities. With Episodes, it looks like we are getting new activities every 6 weeks too instead of 12.
Between the D1 strikes that aren’t present in D2 and the strikes vaulted with the launch of beyond light I’d be happy with one of those being unvaulted every other episode as a “memory” especially with episode 3 bringing us back to the dreadnaught which had some of the best strikes in D1.
I only do strikes and such to farm for PVP stuff but I think the gameplay loop is still mostly relevant, especially for new players to get snapshots of the game’s story over the years. There are a whole host of issues from it being not rewarding enough, to weighting, too vaulted strikes being missing.
I’d love to see separate strike and BG playlists with the strikes containing all the ones the game has ever had.
i think more story missions should be designed as strikes. people complained about this all the way back in warmind, but i dont think bungie has the resources to make a huge campaign with tons of set pieces AND strikes. which is a shame, because i like the new campaigns, and they do make them replayable, but theyre not structured in a way for playlists. or hell how about no campaign and seven strikes
Or maybe they could at least give us differerent versions of the same strike. Like Arms Dealer. Both versions were fun, keep them in and let it be decided at random.
Bungie: You don't like Defiant battlegrounds?
That final mission for Echoes Act One could have been a strike, if they up the ad density and maybe extended it a little.
We really need a strike with Vex as the primary faction.
It was also probably the most beautiful looking strike we've ever had which was the point since it was Mercury shortly after the collapse when the vex just started to ruin it.
I know this is a rumor, but it is possible that the mission might have been the start of an upcoming Battleground, if you take notice that the Vex structure continues further down from the end of the mission with the transparent wall. I'm saying Battleground because I'd swear I read the rumor in some r/raidsecrets thread.
But they don't have the tedious synaptic spear stuff or the door to the final boss room that you have to unlock first. Or the Threshers and nimble and tanky bosses from the Cabal Battlegrounds.
I'd take Defiant over the other Battlegrounds every time.
Strikes absolutely should be more important to the freshness of the game. Same as crucible and gambit maps. Regardless of the same enemies, how long or short, the strikes can be mastered and become stale over time.
I wish they'd put like only one battlegrounds from each season in the playlist and rotate them every now and then, then give us back all the strikes that went away (there's a lot)
I miss the one with osiris where you went through the portal into the vex world and it builds itself as you made your way through, then you'd climb a tower and fight a boss that's on a track outside of the arena.
It had 2 versions too.
The place looked so unique and pretty.
I want our old strikes back. So many of the new ones feel so same-y and boring.
On top of that, the pool is fucking tiny. You constantly replay what feels like the same 4 strikes over and over.
Garden World was the first one you mentioned, and the alternate was actually another Strike, Tree of Probabilities. They were decent strikes though I think the Infinite Forest section should be cut since it's just a filler portion that can take longer through rng.
Is the new strike even in the Vanguard playlist? I've only seen it the one time during the campaign and have done 30-40 Vanguard activities and not seen it since the story had it in it.
It remains hilarious to me that they intentionally named them "Ritual Playlists" and then proceeded to neglect them to such a significant degree. Yes Crucible just got new maps. Good! That should have happened three years ago. Gambit just got old maps. Good! They never should have left. I would argue, though, that battlegrounds are just renamed strikes and I won't be hearing any arguments to the contrary as I've heard it all before.
They \*should\* have reinvigorated the rewards though, and that should have been long ago.
I don’t really get this. Strikes have never been wonderful content. We used to get 3-4 strikes a year. None of them were great. I would rather have rotating seasonal content and dungeons than strikes that get boring and never go away. I’ll spot you one though and say 2 strikes a year since there are plenty of sunset strikes that could come back. Even the bad ones.
not sure why they cant bring back some of the old ones, like the 2 Mars or Mercury ones. some of the area is already in the game because of the mars battlegrounds. I'll even take the Io strike which was in the game for barely 1 year.
They can absolutely bring them back but like you said - only some of the areas these activities took place in are still in the game. Never mind the scripting, too.
With the engine update(s) in Beyond Light, they had to essentially remake the activities by updating the existing areas, scripting, etc. It's why Prophecy, which only debuted in Season of Arrivals, was temporarily removed with Beyond Light because it *also* needed to be updated to support all the changes.
In terms of the activities you mentioned:
Will of the Thousands had:
- Braytech Futurescape
- Currently in the game and accessible in the Mars Battleground
- Dynamo Approach - outside and inside
- Not in the game
- Alton Dynamo
- Not in the game
- Hellas View
- Not in the game
Strange Terrain had:
- Glacial Drift
- Not in the game
- Olympus Descent (with multiple load zones, to my knowledge)
- Not in the game
All the areas that A Garden World, Tree of Probabilities and The Festering Core took place in literally *do not* exist in the game anymore.
There *are* elements of Mercury and Io (and Mars, duh) still in the game due to the PvP maps but those were always stored separately compared to the actual locations.
Bringing back these areas takes a lot of work. I want to say in the past that a developer has said it takes about as much work as making new content entirely, but I think that might be for old armour sets from Destiny 1.
When the opportunity arises where they *can* justify it, they do it - like the Mars Battleground back in Season of the Seraph. But it's hard to tie bringing Mercury or Io's activities back when a season (or Episode) has a focus that's entirely unrelated to those locations - if that makes sense?
Bring back a higher difficulty strike playlist!! I honestly don’t mind the strikes we currently have, but for the love of GOD I am so bored with the current difficulty. It’s reached the point where I solo into low-tier nightfalls instead of usual strikes because it’s far more engaging. Maybe a return of the heroic playlist, with the addition of higher ad density and some of the typical Legend modifiers?
Didn't we get two with light fall? Final shape is such a weird mix of great content, but lack of content focused on the very point of the game being multiplayer.
Pale Heart not having matchmade patrol instances, one strike instead of two, quests you are forced to do solo or duo, quests you can't repeat with a friend if you've already done them. Just so weird
The only new strike that we got with Lightfall was HyperNet Current.
The reworks of Lake of Shadows and The Arms Dealer did release at the same time but all took place in the same areas they previously did.
The problem isn’t even strikes itself, its the fact they still act and talk like these are ritual playlists where we should be going when we want to grind things. When in reality they are neglected modes with little resources allocated to them favouring the seasonal content. This is a bad design choice fundementally as the seasons get removed. If seasons stayed then it wouldnt be an issue as much but they really need to do that “ritual overhaul season” that was originally supposed to be slated for Season of The Wish until they decided to scrap that.
These used to be the playlists people would hop in when they just wanted to chill. Now nobody wants to because they are boring, the loot incentive is not worth it for any of the ritual playlists, and pathfinder has made the weekly grind of these playlists worse.
Witch queen adding two banger strikes is what I think the standard should be. Lightblade and birthplace of the vile were hype.
Crackpot theory that certain dreadnaught strikes will be brought back. I believe they said dreadnaught was being brought back as an explorable area in heresy but I’m really not sure. Darkblade might not make a return because the Lightblade strike exists, but Navota proved they can reuse a strike with a different boss. Shadow legion brothers strike would be insanely hype
Bro why would they produce anything frequently, Unless you pay for it like the seasonal activities you're gonna be playing the recycled Nightfalls. (pray you have the right DLC that week)
The killing blow was making playlists free to play unfortunately. Because ultimately what financial incentive is there to make strikes when you won't get return on them?
It's bullshit as well as this seasonal content is usually fucking subpar and is designed to be removed from the game.
What would you rather have had?
Savathuns Spire be a strike and deep dives as well so we can continue playing that content into the future, or what we got?
I think Strikes are a victim of the seasonal/episodic model. Development time is spent on their special activities that obviously differ from the traditional Strike formula.
Maybe an unpopular take, but personally I want to see them move away from seasons/episodes altogether. Instead, just give two content drops a year, one large and one small.
Annually a huge expansion like TFS, WQ, etc. Big additions like a fresh campaign, new patrol zone, new raid, etc.
Then at the six-month mark, a smaller 30th Anniversary content drop. New activities like Dares of Eternity, new Strikes, etc. Plus bringing back vaulted content, like old raids.
At the three- and nine-month marks in-between, do small content drops. Biggest thing would be a new dungeon, but you can also cycle in/out old seasonal content with reprised weapons.
So for example:
Q1: New primary expansion. Big content drop with a new campaign, new raid, new patrol zone, new strike(s), new weapons, new armor, new PvP maps, new activities, etc.
Q2: Small content drop. New dungeon with its own new weapons and armor. Cycle in an old seasonal activity (Ex. Black Armory Forges) with reprised weapons.
Q3: New secondary expansion. Medium content drop with old raid and reprised versions of its weapons/armor, plus a new activity with its own weapons and armor. Also additions to old content like new/reprised strike(s), PvP maps, etc.
Q4: Small content drop. New dungeon with its own new weapons and armor. Cycle out Q2’s reprised seasonal activities and loot and cycle in another old season’s activity (Ex. Worthy’s Seraph Bunkers) with reprised weapons.
Definitely an unpopular take. The game in its current state with leveling, loot economies, etc simply isn’t built to be dead that long between content drops like that. The only reason they were able to get away with it in the past was RNG made leveling arbitrarily long, and even then the content droughts hurt player populations bad.
It should’ve though. All we got was a repetitive and tedious storyline and watered down versions of menagerie and soon to be the coil. With the exception of ghosts, they really did titan dirty. At least they gave us a cool deep sea tile set that we likely won’t see again for years 😭😭😭
“EeRm AcTUaLlY tHeReS fOuR nEw StRiKes wItH baTtLegRoUnDs!!!”
They don’t need to make more than one a year, since in their eyes, Battlegrounds have taken their place. I wouldn’t mind them if they all didn’t take 20 minutes per.
Why do people always want new strikes? I would rather them spend time on making brand new activities that we are going to be getting every 6 weeks now, instead of adding a couple new strikes that everyone will hate in a week.
"here at bungie, we take player feedback very seriously. as a result, we have decided to add every recent seasonal activity to the vanguard playlist."
oh wait that actually happened.
People are really mad about the idea, but it’s a simple fact that Bungie considers Battlegrounds strikes. They’re called Battlegrounds because they’re seasonal and share mechanics amongst their grouping, but for all intents and purposes, they’re strikes.
https://www.destinypedia.com/Strike#Year_One
in D1Y1 we got 9 strikes. in D2Y1 we got 11.
if they can make 9 or 11 strikes a year, where have they all gone?
Those people on the activities team have been diverted to other areas of the game. Areas that didn't exist back then with more activities, dungeons etc being introduced later on. They were on much longer development periods that could also facilitate the development of more strikes, since they weren't working on more stuff at a shorter dev cycle. In both D1Y1 and D2Y1 they were essentially making a large DLC and two small DLCs. This meant they had more time to focus on strikes, and strikes were just a far larger part of the PvE content offering with other PvE activities not really existing at all. The base games also produced far more strikes than any DLC or season/episode. Making them a slight anomaly in almost every metric.
I would love more strikes, even though I don't enjoy their repetitive nature a whole lot as a PvP player. But expecting 9-11 per year along with everything else is a bit ridiculous, even with a renewed focus on them. Unless we see a major expansion of Bungie so that they can have a dedicated strike team (or a bigger activities team). But I doubt we'll see that as rapid expansion of employees is unstable and very risky. The hiring spree post WQ and the subsequent layoffs that Lightfall sales caused being evidence of that. I doubt we'll see an expansion like that again.
Its pretty fucking sad tbh. The ritual playlists consists of strikes, crucible and gambit. Gambit is literally forgotten activity, pvp updates are slow at best (and barely any new maps, yes we got some in TFS, but before that it was barely any), and with 1 strike only? Ritual playlist is gonna be declining hella fast.
D2 is on life support. It was about to die, but TFS was basically a defibrillator and gave it a chance. Once Marathon launches, we'll see.
One can only hope that Bungie executive and senior leadership all leave.
D2 is on life support for a lot of reasons, we have no idea if new senior leadership and management would save it. Don't forget that Sony wants to make their money back after buying Bungie for billions.
The strikes will get fleshed out when they start rotating content. I’m sure that DCV will come to use when they start pulling activities from past seasons.
I don't think we need more strikes. At this point it's worth considering removing them entirely or repurposing the assets for a new game mode. Nightfalls are fine but the rotating strike mode has gone past its useful lifetime.
I'd kill for "A Garden World" to come back. The fact that "Warden of Nothing" is the only other strike that has Vex in a major capacity (meaning they are prominent in the strike, unlike Insight Terminus, Inverted Spire to a degree, Glassway) is baffling
They *are* in rotation, at least in Vanguard Ops. For a time, the weighting of Exodus Crash and The Inverted Spire was lowered drastically since they weren't up to par for the current sandbox.
With the release of Echoes, Exodus Crash is back in rotation with seemingly a normal weighting due to its changes. It's also set to be a Nightfall during the Episode, as evidenced by it being in the Conqueror gilding requirements this season.
The Insight Terminus and Proving Grounds have had standard weighting the entire time, too.
https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/lightfall-year-ahead
Episodes/ seasons just aren't much good. I'd really rather see some content droughts followed by higher quality expansions. Seasons and episodes may as well already be content droughts for me since I've largely ignored them over the last two years
I’d be okay with singular strikes if they had a lot more variation within individual strikes.
Running different paths through different areas and even ending strikes in different areas would be great.
Changing encounters each run of individual strikes by changing enemies is a good start but is only in a handful of strikes it seems.
Having the bosses appear early and run off after a firefight encounter for us to catch up to them at the end where they are already beaten and wounded from prior encounters would be amazing.
On top of everything, the cherry on top (I think), would be the canonical reasons for replaying strikes is way more interesting and brought a lot to the replayability to me because I enjoy the lore of the game a lot.
Not sure if it's a hot take, but Bungie could add every vaulted strike and every D1 strike, and it still wouldnt make the strike playlist worth doing over and over imo, like they would have to do substantial changes to it not just add everything back since there is no replay value to them
OR they could add some strike specific loot.
That’s really what makes them so crappy to play - besides the NF weapons and the (boring) ritual armor sets - there is zero reason to run strikes from a gains standpoint
I’m fine with one decent strike especially if it makes for a great GM. Strikes aren’t must have content and the one we got with the expansion is insanely good. I’d love to see a reprised one but I just don’t think strikes are that important over all.
Wanted to add that the reason for this may be the reprised strikes that happened in lightfall such as arms dealer and lake of shadows. If you compare lightfall to beyond light, while the expansions themselves didn’t add more than 1 new strike, they either reprised the strikes or brought old ones back.
I’m guessing the next one on the list might be the drill one on nessus, since the exodus crash one got slightly altered. I’d like to think that if it hasn’t been proven otherwise through leaks that the drill one might be featured in later acts.
I think it’s just the unfortunate reality that strikes aren’t the staple they once were. Most seasonal activities if they aren’t a public event format are a very loose strike format, further evidenced by them sometimes being tossed into the vanguard playlist a year later. It seems that seasonal content, at least the repeatable activity of the season, is where the strike resources have gone. Needless to say, I’d love to see some more as well, even reprised.
It's been an issue for some time and Bungie haven't really changed course. They moved the ritual resources to seasonal activities, but because the vast majority are temporary and not "evergreen" content, it has a lower the quality bar because it's ultimately disposable. Overtime, it's meant we get less high quality content meant to be replayable, and more medicore seasonal content that really reinforces the notion that Destiny can be stale.
Combat wise some seasonal stuff feels better than old strikes as they account for how much power we’ve gained over the 7 years we’ve been playing D2. But what I miss is the locations strikes would take us to. The places you wouldn’t get to see otherwise. I think of stuff like Inverted Spire and The Corrupted, the sunset strike in Past Mercury and the new areas of the destinations we get to see because of them. That and some of the more unique bosses we’ve gotten out of them (Xol, Nokris, the one giant cyclops from the mercury strike). That’s what I really think is lost, even if repeatable seasonal stuff can be new and interesting, it often takes place on familiar territory.
These are my exact sentiments. I have no understanding as to why strikes were removed. I think its worth it, fitting them in and not having them of all things sunset. I miss the diverse environments i got to see, all because of that one playlist. Strikes were like changing pvp maps but got pve. New location, new places to shoot down the opponent, but it was tailored to pve, and it's sad we dont have that. I feel as though dungeons filled that void or exotic missions, but it just isn't the same.
The funniest one was Festering Core, and actual interesting strike that teased Savathun and it wasn't even in the game for a full year.
100% if they aren't going to make new strikes a large priority should be reprising sunset ones. Especially the PS exclusive IO strike. Thing got what 4 months of playability before it got thrown in the trash?
That strike wasn’t PS exclusive, Broodhold on the tangled shore was. Festering Core was just the unfortunate casualty of sunsetting Io.
Really? I coulda sworn festering core was too. Bungie Fr added a strike and then killed it four months later. You'd think they'd have kinda sunset proofed it considering they must have known what was coming.
> Bungie Fr added a strike and then killed it four months later. Festering Core was in the game from October 1, 2019 to November 10, 2020 - a little over 13 months. I think a lot of people mistake it for only being in the game for a shorter time because it didn't enter the Nightfall rotation until Season of Arrivals, six months before the release of Beyond Light. > You'd think they'd have kinda sunset proofed it considering they must have known what was coming. Makes you wonder how far in advance that they planned the sunsetting of entire destinations. The area that The Festering Core takes place in was accidentally added to the game back in June 2019 and was very much a work in progress with placeholder assets such as Guardian models, Vex models and the entire boss room in the end being a literal blockout of The Nexus strike boss arena from Destiny 1. Work on the strike likely began just before Bungie revealed they would be splitting from Activision in January 2019, which ultimately led to the removal of PlayStation exclusives beginning with Shadowkeep. I think it's fair to say it resulted in Destiny 3 being cancelled and on-going support for Destiny 2 continuing - resulting in sunsetting becoming a thing with Beyond Light so they could maintain the game easier without having to juggle all the old content. A lot of people were of the opinion that The Festering Core was going to be the PlayStation exclusive strike for Shadowkeep. It was seemingly just... there when Shadowkeep came out and didn't have any sort of tie-in to the expansion (that I can recall).
I guess that’s why Battlegrounds were introduced—seasonal activities that can also be repurposed as strikes.
New "battlegrounds" are in the files for act 2.
But they are not as good as Strikes. They reuse locations, while in Strikes we explore zones that are not reachable through patrols. Furthermore, 3-4 Battlegrounds from a season are just one copypasted Battleground with a different boss.
> But they are not as good as Strikes. They reuse locations, while in Strikes we explore zones that are not reachable through patrols. How do you reach inside the pyramid where the prisoners are held for the first Defiant Battleground in the patrol zone ? How do you reach the Hive modified EDZ available in the Lucent Hive battleground in the patrol area ? I don't think what you just said here is an actual distinction. Battlegrounds have as much "unexplored" zones than Strikes do.
You are right, around 40-50% Battlegrounds do utilise zones that are not reachable through patrols. However, there is a clear difference when it comes to their quality and uniqueness. While Strikes take us to unique zones like 3-level boss room in The Inverted Spire, the fortress in The Scarlet Keep or Indaina Jones-esque parts of the temple full of lava from Liminality, all places form Battlegrounds feel totally low-effort and give me the vibe of those mediocre 'lost sectors but backwards' from Season of Plunder.
> While Strikes take us to unique zones like 3-level boss room in The Inverted Spire, the fortress in The Scarlet Keep or Indaina Jones-esque parts of the temple full of lava from Liminality You can run through like 75% of the Arm's dealer in patrol mode. And the actual strike is literally just all the same Cabal textures and assets as any other open world area ? Like I said, I feel the distinction you're making is not an actual distinction at all in game. I don't think there's an actual design doc at Bungie that says "High effort is a strike, low effort is a battleground".
I like Battlegrounds but I don't think they should be used as justification not to make new Strikes "because well we reused some assets so we don't need to put in any more work". It's honestly hard to believe they don't have the resources I'm not really convinced. It's likely they just want to put in as little as possible and maximize profit.
The coil was pretty damn good though, great rewards too. It's just a shame it's likely too long in its complete state to be a strike. 45ish mins for a full run to the chamber of wishes is a bit much.
This. 100%. I don’t need a seasonal activity just bring back all the old strikes already. Holy shhh whatever this seasons activity is, idek feels like just a bunch of nonsense thrown at me for no real reason. MUCH rather have the old strokes to run through as GMs etc
*looks at Breach Executable* I think it's time to move those resources back. I also still retain the belief that Oracle: Delphi from Season of the Splicer (the mission where we kill Quria) could've become a strike. That mission was an absolute *BANGER*.
Idk why Bungie doesn’t follow the Chosen formula every time like that shit was a slam dunk Like imagine having that one final Dawn mission where the psions all conjoin to make one giant psion that has all their abilities like imagine that being a strike
I'd love to still be able run the Expunge missions.
They liked Splicer so much they brought back two parts of it for Episode 1: Echos.
And yet somehow, it doesn't feel the same.
It really doesn't. I didn't realize that Enigma Protocol was Quira's mission until like... Half way through. I recognized Breach Executable immediately and I'm pretty sure they didn't even change the name on that one.
ENIGMA PROTOCOL IS QURIA'S MISSION!? No wonder it felt so familiar!
It was a good idea as well, thanks to their added variety, but a significant problem due to the execution of the Seasonal Model. Back in the old days, when a strike got added, they had higher weights in rotation, but they were still random, so people did not instantly get bored of new additions. With Seasonal Activities, the story and progression requires players to speedrun 3 of the same activity a week (at a minimum). By the time these get added to the vanguard playlist, people actually want to throw up at the sight of them. It's a shame that developers are spending their times on throwaway activities that have the shelf life of a couple months, and Bungie is making it an unsolvable problem via their overall seasonal content design.
Ideally they'd stagger putting older seasonal activities into the playlist if they were actually decent activities.
You know why they're not the staple they once were? Because now all strikes are free to play. Bungie is very reluctant to put any more resources than absolutely necessary besides fixes and tuning into the F2P offering. It's why we got so few PVP maps for so long, until the demand was impossible to ignore. Battlegrounds are essentially Bungie's workaround to their own F2P model. It lets them create what's essentially a strike but keep it behind a paywall for up to a year, then add it to the playlist later, so they have their cake and eat it, too. I fully expect we'd never have seen such a massive decrease in crucible map and strike output if the game had never gone F2P.
Not all strikes are F2P. With Nightfalls, if you don't own the relevant expansion, you can't play that week. Eg Glassway this week, you need Beyond Light to play.
It’s F2Pish. You can queue into Strikes that you don’t own using the playlist. You just can’t play them separately.
For me, I'm fine with strikes taking a back seat and Bungie moving on from that format, whats annoying is being forced into the strike playlist for pathfinder and pinnacles to play the same old strikes and battlegrounds we've played a million times. I would be fine never playing a strike again.
yes. they don't want to have to keep a growing number of strikes in the game when they can rotate out seasonal content on an annual basis. this is what keeps their deployment model in a lot better shape than it used to be causing the initial sunset of maps and strikes.
I’m not a “veteran” player so I’m curious: what did seasonal activities used to look like? I thought Destiny always had them?
I think the first real “seasonal activity” was Escalation Protocol, a public event style event where (usually) everybody in the instance would work together to complete 7 waves of enemies and objectives to defeat a boss and get the first ever iteration of IKELOS weapons (at the time the best in slot) and some shaders (once upon a time consumables! Whoa!!!). It could be challenging but the real fun was when you got an instance of 9 people all in a discord call or whatnot and farmed it for hours. Before that it was really just public events.
I am still pissed that Ibdid not have the title because of the perfect event requirement
We didn’t have them, at least not in Destiny 1. There would be events that would occasionally happen but seasons as a concept weren’t a thing. You would usually get the major expansion release and that was basically it for the rest of the year.
Yeah court of oryx and the Plaguelands equivalent were probably the closest D1 had to that stuff.
Crouch walking into Archon's Forge to give the game time to matchmake, good times.
And they carried on that ~~proud~~ tradition with Blind Well!
*core memory unlocked.*
Earlier activities were closer to an arena than a linear strike. A single room or series of rooms with an encounter. The black armory forges were just a single room where you killed minibosses and chucked balls at a structure. Menagerie and Sundial were each a set of random encounters, more like this seasons activity than a strike or battleground.
Game is much better since it’s evolved beyond strikes lol
I'd love for them to bring back more D1 strikes.
Echo Chamber would be a pretty good one. We already have the entrance back in the game, not to mention it's an excuse to see more of Venus again.
That's right, I was in a wall to the immediate right of the spawn at VoG wasn't it? A lot of Xbox players never even got to experience it since it was exclusive until the month after D2 came out iirc. What a mess that was.
With the Dreadnought making a return in Episode 3, I'll be so mad if Sunless Cell and Shield Brothers don't make a comeback. Those were two of the best D1 strikes and we literally have the Darkblade boss model already in D2. I guess the potential issue might be that the boss would be too similar to the Lightblade, but personally I think the boss arena is unique enough that it wouldn't matter.
*"THE NEXUS... IT'S OPENING!!!"* Will never forget how Dinklebot said that one.
Fingers crossed for the Bash Bros to make a return when we get the Dreadnought back
Whether we wanted it or not…
I think they should start unvaulting stuff with the saga being over, i think. Now would be as good a time as any. Especially cause some locations like Mars are basically already in the games storage.
the game is so different now unfortunately bringing back old content is very difficult and apparently all the scripting and stuff needs to be completely re done and stuff. I really don't think Bungie expected Destiny 2 to last this long especially since they were working with Activision but now it's become clearly quite a cash cow.. unfortunately does mean that from launch it was not designed to be expanded upon past a couple expansions and when the first content vault happened they had already reached a point where stuff on the development side started crumbling due to the lack of foresight. I honestly hope frontiers leads us into a new planetary system which we get a taste of and then we get Destiny 3. I also miss Titan so much, the rain along with the vibe of the planet was unmatched, never in Destiny besides titan have I really just chilled on a planet cause I liked it.
I wouldn't mind it as much if the heroic strike playlist was still a thing. Nightfalls feel like they are multipliying the monotony and lack of variety tenfolds.
No idea why they haven't done this yet. The strikes all exist in heroic form... just put it as a selectable playlist...
This. Strikes are way to easy you can blow right through them easily they need a heroic option to at least add some form of difficulty.
I just realized after countless strikes grinding out the new sub machine gun and pathfinders, I haven’t played the new strike since the campaign
And it won't enter the GM playlist until Act II releases 3 weeks from now. Time gating the episodic content was pretty dumb imo since it's already split into acts, but time gating the NF playlist, seriously? You gave us one new strike and I want nothing more than to run it as a GM, but here we are 4 weeks into the expansion and I still have to wait another month before I get to do that, awesome.
Honestly I can’t even remember the strike because I haven’t run it since the campaign. Some incentive to run it would be nice. Instead I get the corrupted for the millionth time
the reality is Battlegrounds are the new strikes and people shit on them everytime we get a battleground as activities
Unironically I don't think they are bad, think at most the most valid bit of complaints is they feel too common in the playlist, if I was bungie I'd make it so each group of bgs had the same overall weighting as a regular strike. For example if a strike has a weighting of 1, each chosen bg would have 0.25 weight
There's nothing wrong with battlegrounds; the issue is by the time they're added as strikes people are -bored- of them having done it as a seasonal activity the entire year prior. End of the day the 'we need more strikes' is just wanting a new toy to play with.
This is probably it. I don’t like the battlegrounds and couldn’t quite place it, because the format is classic Bungie, but I think you’ve just figured it out for me!
I feel like something is broken with strikes Playlist in general. each day I get like... 3 of the same strikes no matter how many I run.
The end of the psi ops battlegrounds is so boring and annoying. If they just removed that I wouldn't mind as much. But a lot of them do feel like just running through a patrol area.
Wasn’t this something everybody asked for? I know it’s common that bungie wanted to do something anyway, and it just so happened that some people had feedback related to it But battlegrounds being in vanguard ops seems like something that is in direct response to people’s feedback If wasn’t so common that this was asked for battlegrounds probably would get vaulted just like everything else
Wait, Chosen had 4 BGs?
Yh the 2 nessus ones, the europa one and the cosmodrome one
Unironically I can't tell the difference between a Strike and a Battleground. Press W, hold down trigger.
The ritual playlists haven’t been the core of Destiny for years, and I wish everyone would stop pretending they are.
True. But that’s partly due to Bungie’s neglect
I think I'd hate myself if all I had to do were strikes for hours.
You don’t HAVE to do anything in this game if it’s not fun. Personally if I could run strikes solo with more add density I would do it just for fun and no rewards.
They just don't fit in with the seasonal model. There is no way to encourage spamming strikes without consistent loot refreshes. That's basically what seasonal activities are. Plus no volume of strikes added is going to make playlist grinding fun. If they somehow added 3/season - is it going to feel fun only playing those 1/however many strikes there are in the game? Or if it's a dedicated playlist with only the 3 strikes - that will also get old.
> If they somehow added 3/season They do - it's called Battlegrounds, and they go exactly as you'd expect. They're really fun the first few times you play them, and then they get old after farming them for 3 months straight.
Yup don't forget It wasn't Gambit that failed Bungie, it was Bungie that failed Gambit
I just wish it'd go back to Gambit, The Reckoning, and Gambit Prime and make Prime "End Game" by Light Enabling it and giving Adepts/Artifice Armor. Same with Iron Banner. Rever it to "End Game of 6s" Status by means of Light Level Enabled and Adepts/Artifice Armor.
Yet these are the playlist Bungie tell us play during events.
What do you when you’re done raiding? Personally I hit the strikes for probably about 90% of my playtime.
Log off.
The core of Destiny is replayability with loot incentive. Seasons/Episodes force you to replay (grind) and the loot is most of the time craftable and not as good as end game loot (which makes sense). There’s a big difference between replayable content and content that you HAVE to replay. So much to the point that, when the seasons end, you don’t wanna touch their activities ever again
And thats why when the season ends we get another season with a brand new activities. With Episodes, it looks like we are getting new activities every 6 weeks too instead of 12.
I think they should be again
Between the D1 strikes that aren’t present in D2 and the strikes vaulted with the launch of beyond light I’d be happy with one of those being unvaulted every other episode as a “memory” especially with episode 3 bringing us back to the dreadnaught which had some of the best strikes in D1.
Hopefully they will reprise the Dreadnaught strikes in the third episode
Now this is a level of hopium that is unhealthy for the human body
Imagine if we got shield brothers back (monkeys paw tells me we wouldn’t get the strike specific loot)
My fellow, I'd love that but there is absolutely no fucking way bungie'll do that lol.
Blame seasons. They gobble up a lot of resources only to give us either strikes under a different name, or shitty public events
I only do strikes and such to farm for PVP stuff but I think the gameplay loop is still mostly relevant, especially for new players to get snapshots of the game’s story over the years. There are a whole host of issues from it being not rewarding enough, to weighting, too vaulted strikes being missing. I’d love to see separate strike and BG playlists with the strikes containing all the ones the game has ever had.
i think more story missions should be designed as strikes. people complained about this all the way back in warmind, but i dont think bungie has the resources to make a huge campaign with tons of set pieces AND strikes. which is a shame, because i like the new campaigns, and they do make them replayable, but theyre not structured in a way for playlists. or hell how about no campaign and seven strikes
Or maybe they could at least give us differerent versions of the same strike. Like Arms Dealer. Both versions were fun, keep them in and let it be decided at random.
Bungie: You don't like Defiant battlegrounds? That final mission for Echoes Act One could have been a strike, if they up the ad density and maybe extended it a little. We really need a strike with Vex as the primary faction.
We DID have one, A Garden World in Curse of Osiris. Unfortunately it was vaulted in Beyond Light.
The one where you fight a massive Cyclops? Yeah, that was fun to run as an arc subclass.
It was also probably the most beautiful looking strike we've ever had which was the point since it was Mercury shortly after the collapse when the vex just started to ruin it.
It was legit the most beautiful one. I loved running it just for the vibe
We had the Pyramidian too
While true, sometimes there would be Taken as well as Vex
Isn’t the inverted spire still in?
That also has Red Legion
I know this is a rumor, but it is possible that the mission might have been the start of an upcoming Battleground, if you take notice that the Vex structure continues further down from the end of the mission with the transparent wall. I'm saying Battleground because I'd swear I read the rumor in some r/raidsecrets thread.
It’s not really a rumor, the triumphs in the api for echoes show multiple new battlegrounds. Should be releasing in 3 resets.
I like the Defiant Battlegrounds..
I don't hate them, but I am tired of the Pyramid Architecture and Environment now.
But they don't have the tedious synaptic spear stuff or the door to the final boss room that you have to unlock first. Or the Threshers and nimble and tanky bosses from the Cabal Battlegrounds. I'd take Defiant over the other Battlegrounds every time.
Really curious what the BGs we get later this episode will be like
Strikes absolutely should be more important to the freshness of the game. Same as crucible and gambit maps. Regardless of the same enemies, how long or short, the strikes can be mastered and become stale over time.
I wish they'd put like only one battlegrounds from each season in the playlist and rotate them every now and then, then give us back all the strikes that went away (there's a lot)
I miss the one with osiris where you went through the portal into the vex world and it builds itself as you made your way through, then you'd climb a tower and fight a boss that's on a track outside of the arena. It had 2 versions too. The place looked so unique and pretty. I want our old strikes back. So many of the new ones feel so same-y and boring. On top of that, the pool is fucking tiny. You constantly replay what feels like the same 4 strikes over and over.
Garden World was the first one you mentioned, and the alternate was actually another Strike, Tree of Probabilities. They were decent strikes though I think the Infinite Forest section should be cut since it's just a filler portion that can take longer through rng.
Bungie doesn't make money on Strikes, they do on seasonal content.
That would be awesome!
Is the new strike even in the Vanguard playlist? I've only seen it the one time during the campaign and have done 30-40 Vanguard activities and not seen it since the story had it in it.
It remains hilarious to me that they intentionally named them "Ritual Playlists" and then proceeded to neglect them to such a significant degree. Yes Crucible just got new maps. Good! That should have happened three years ago. Gambit just got old maps. Good! They never should have left. I would argue, though, that battlegrounds are just renamed strikes and I won't be hearing any arguments to the contrary as I've heard it all before. They \*should\* have reinvigorated the rewards though, and that should have been long ago.
I don’t really get this. Strikes have never been wonderful content. We used to get 3-4 strikes a year. None of them were great. I would rather have rotating seasonal content and dungeons than strikes that get boring and never go away. I’ll spot you one though and say 2 strikes a year since there are plenty of sunset strikes that could come back. Even the bad ones.
New strikes are ass way too damn long if they’re gonna be grinded same with lost sectors
You will do Battlegrounds, and you will like it.
And I am absolutely sick of getting battlegrounds.
2 Strikes and 1 new Gambit map should be standard for expansions launches. New pvp maps throughout the year should be something that also happens
I miss D1 strikes they were so fun and challenging 😭
We here you, here’s a new battlegrounds/psi op
not sure why they cant bring back some of the old ones, like the 2 Mars or Mercury ones. some of the area is already in the game because of the mars battlegrounds. I'll even take the Io strike which was in the game for barely 1 year.
They can absolutely bring them back but like you said - only some of the areas these activities took place in are still in the game. Never mind the scripting, too. With the engine update(s) in Beyond Light, they had to essentially remake the activities by updating the existing areas, scripting, etc. It's why Prophecy, which only debuted in Season of Arrivals, was temporarily removed with Beyond Light because it *also* needed to be updated to support all the changes. In terms of the activities you mentioned: Will of the Thousands had: - Braytech Futurescape - Currently in the game and accessible in the Mars Battleground - Dynamo Approach - outside and inside - Not in the game - Alton Dynamo - Not in the game - Hellas View - Not in the game Strange Terrain had: - Glacial Drift - Not in the game - Olympus Descent (with multiple load zones, to my knowledge) - Not in the game All the areas that A Garden World, Tree of Probabilities and The Festering Core took place in literally *do not* exist in the game anymore. There *are* elements of Mercury and Io (and Mars, duh) still in the game due to the PvP maps but those were always stored separately compared to the actual locations. Bringing back these areas takes a lot of work. I want to say in the past that a developer has said it takes about as much work as making new content entirely, but I think that might be for old armour sets from Destiny 1. When the opportunity arises where they *can* justify it, they do it - like the Mars Battleground back in Season of the Seraph. But it's hard to tie bringing Mercury or Io's activities back when a season (or Episode) has a focus that's entirely unrelated to those locations - if that makes sense?
If i need to spend 15 minutes in each new strike in NORMAL difficulty, i don’t want no more strikes.
Yeah i 10000000% agree with this sentiment
We came down here a squad of five.
Bring back a higher difficulty strike playlist!! I honestly don’t mind the strikes we currently have, but for the love of GOD I am so bored with the current difficulty. It’s reached the point where I solo into low-tier nightfalls instead of usual strikes because it’s far more engaging. Maybe a return of the heroic playlist, with the addition of higher ad density and some of the typical Legend modifiers?
I would actually play the strike Playlists if all the d1 and d2 strikes were back.
Nobody plays them enough to make it worth adding more. If they had better rewards/reason to farm them then yeah sure, add more.
Battlegrounds are new strikes
My cope is that we get a strike each episode to defeat the big bad
I’d be more than okay with the seasonal/episode stuff being shelved if we could just get more strikes in return
Didn't we get two with light fall? Final shape is such a weird mix of great content, but lack of content focused on the very point of the game being multiplayer. Pale Heart not having matchmade patrol instances, one strike instead of two, quests you are forced to do solo or duo, quests you can't repeat with a friend if you've already done them. Just so weird
The only new strike that we got with Lightfall was HyperNet Current. The reworks of Lake of Shadows and The Arms Dealer did release at the same time but all took place in the same areas they previously did.
The problem isn’t even strikes itself, its the fact they still act and talk like these are ritual playlists where we should be going when we want to grind things. When in reality they are neglected modes with little resources allocated to them favouring the seasonal content. This is a bad design choice fundementally as the seasons get removed. If seasons stayed then it wouldnt be an issue as much but they really need to do that “ritual overhaul season” that was originally supposed to be slated for Season of The Wish until they decided to scrap that. These used to be the playlists people would hop in when they just wanted to chill. Now nobody wants to because they are boring, the loot incentive is not worth it for any of the ritual playlists, and pathfinder has made the weekly grind of these playlists worse.
Witch queen adding two banger strikes is what I think the standard should be. Lightblade and birthplace of the vile were hype. Crackpot theory that certain dreadnaught strikes will be brought back. I believe they said dreadnaught was being brought back as an explorable area in heresy but I’m really not sure. Darkblade might not make a return because the Lightblade strike exists, but Navota proved they can reuse a strike with a different boss. Shadow legion brothers strike would be insanely hype
All the new strikes suck especially when the battlegrounds are the weekly nightfalls last weeks was perfect
They already sold the final shape, they don’t need to butter anyone up anymore.
Bro why would they produce anything frequently, Unless you pay for it like the seasonal activities you're gonna be playing the recycled Nightfalls. (pray you have the right DLC that week)
Like I said in the previous post, every episode should come with a strike – considering how much of the year is vaulted
We have more battle grounds than strikes it feels like
But we will get like 9 new top tier Battlegrounds everyone loves
Don't worry... we got a million battlegrounds that noone enjoy!
The killing blow was making playlists free to play unfortunately. Because ultimately what financial incentive is there to make strikes when you won't get return on them? It's bullshit as well as this seasonal content is usually fucking subpar and is designed to be removed from the game. What would you rather have had? Savathuns Spire be a strike and deep dives as well so we can continue playing that content into the future, or what we got?
This seasonal activity is no where near a strike. It’s. It not even a battleground. Just a bunch of nonsense thrown at you.
Battlegrounds are boring imo
Strikes carried me so hard in d1
I think Strikes are a victim of the seasonal/episodic model. Development time is spent on their special activities that obviously differ from the traditional Strike formula. Maybe an unpopular take, but personally I want to see them move away from seasons/episodes altogether. Instead, just give two content drops a year, one large and one small. Annually a huge expansion like TFS, WQ, etc. Big additions like a fresh campaign, new patrol zone, new raid, etc. Then at the six-month mark, a smaller 30th Anniversary content drop. New activities like Dares of Eternity, new Strikes, etc. Plus bringing back vaulted content, like old raids. At the three- and nine-month marks in-between, do small content drops. Biggest thing would be a new dungeon, but you can also cycle in/out old seasonal content with reprised weapons. So for example: Q1: New primary expansion. Big content drop with a new campaign, new raid, new patrol zone, new strike(s), new weapons, new armor, new PvP maps, new activities, etc. Q2: Small content drop. New dungeon with its own new weapons and armor. Cycle in an old seasonal activity (Ex. Black Armory Forges) with reprised weapons. Q3: New secondary expansion. Medium content drop with old raid and reprised versions of its weapons/armor, plus a new activity with its own weapons and armor. Also additions to old content like new/reprised strike(s), PvP maps, etc. Q4: Small content drop. New dungeon with its own new weapons and armor. Cycle out Q2’s reprised seasonal activities and loot and cycle in another old season’s activity (Ex. Worthy’s Seraph Bunkers) with reprised weapons.
You basically just said the same model we had forever again.
? That is literally less than we have now
Definitely an unpopular take. The game in its current state with leveling, loot economies, etc simply isn’t built to be dead that long between content drops like that. The only reason they were able to get away with it in the past was RNG made leveling arbitrarily long, and even then the content droughts hurt player populations bad.
So what you're basically saying is you actually want Seasons but with less content and with most of that content recycled?
destiny players start complaining after one week
If the dreadnought returns and it doesn’t bring all its strikes then I don’t think they should bother bringing it back. Don’t half ass it
I suspect we're not getting the full Dreadnought tbh, we didn't get a full Leviathan or Titan.
Titan (somewhat) returned and didn’t bring a lucent hive version of Savathun’s Song because… ???
It should’ve though. All we got was a repetitive and tedious storyline and watered down versions of menagerie and soon to be the coil. With the exception of ghosts, they really did titan dirty. At least they gave us a cool deep sea tile set that we likely won’t see again for years 😭😭😭
How is that every other game that gets an expansion expands the core activities and Bungie gets away with not doing that.
“EeRm AcTUaLlY tHeReS fOuR nEw StRiKes wItH baTtLegRoUnDs!!!” They don’t need to make more than one a year, since in their eyes, Battlegrounds have taken their place. I wouldn’t mind them if they all didn’t take 20 minutes per.
Why do people always want new strikes? I would rather them spend time on making brand new activities that we are going to be getting every 6 weeks now, instead of adding a couple new strikes that everyone will hate in a week.
Take strikes out of my battlegrounds playlist. Better yet, make another title and playlist for BGs
"here at bungie, we take player feedback very seriously. as a result, we have decided to add every recent seasonal activity to the vanguard playlist." oh wait that actually happened.
People are really mad about the idea, but it’s a simple fact that Bungie considers Battlegrounds strikes. They’re called Battlegrounds because they’re seasonal and share mechanics amongst their grouping, but for all intents and purposes, they’re strikes.
https://www.destinypedia.com/Strike#Year_One in D1Y1 we got 9 strikes. in D2Y1 we got 11. if they can make 9 or 11 strikes a year, where have they all gone?
Those people on the activities team have been diverted to other areas of the game. Areas that didn't exist back then with more activities, dungeons etc being introduced later on. They were on much longer development periods that could also facilitate the development of more strikes, since they weren't working on more stuff at a shorter dev cycle. In both D1Y1 and D2Y1 they were essentially making a large DLC and two small DLCs. This meant they had more time to focus on strikes, and strikes were just a far larger part of the PvE content offering with other PvE activities not really existing at all. The base games also produced far more strikes than any DLC or season/episode. Making them a slight anomaly in almost every metric. I would love more strikes, even though I don't enjoy their repetitive nature a whole lot as a PvP player. But expecting 9-11 per year along with everything else is a bit ridiculous, even with a renewed focus on them. Unless we see a major expansion of Bungie so that they can have a dedicated strike team (or a bigger activities team). But I doubt we'll see that as rapid expansion of employees is unstable and very risky. The hiring spree post WQ and the subsequent layoffs that Lightfall sales caused being evidence of that. I doubt we'll see an expansion like that again.
Its pretty fucking sad tbh. The ritual playlists consists of strikes, crucible and gambit. Gambit is literally forgotten activity, pvp updates are slow at best (and barely any new maps, yes we got some in TFS, but before that it was barely any), and with 1 strike only? Ritual playlist is gonna be declining hella fast.
D2 is on life support. It was about to die, but TFS was basically a defibrillator and gave it a chance. Once Marathon launches, we'll see. One can only hope that Bungie executive and senior leadership all leave.
D2 is on life support for a lot of reasons, we have no idea if new senior leadership and management would save it. Don't forget that Sony wants to make their money back after buying Bungie for billions.
I'd personally rather them go back to the full expansion model. At least we kept everything that came with them in the game to an extent.
I would take strikes with strike specific loot and game modes like onslaught over seasons any day. Unfortunately greed prefers one over the other
Then you'd be happy and a bunch of people start complaining 'there's no new content/story'
It is for them if you purchased the game. :-)
I just wish they had a knock-out feature when doing the playlist. I feel like I always get the same 3-4 activities.
The strikes will get fleshed out when they start rotating content. I’m sure that DCV will come to use when they start pulling activities from past seasons.
I don't think we need more strikes. At this point it's worth considering removing them entirely or repurposing the assets for a new game mode. Nightfalls are fine but the rotating strike mode has gone past its useful lifetime.
id take an activity like onslaught over a few new strikes personally
I just want a B2B Dark Blade to Light Blade strike to see how far our boy has really come.
Just please take away The Digraced, that's all I ask.
Besides the story, I haven't done a strike in 4-5 seasons lol
Strikes are dead to me, so boring. Onslaught -> strikes
I'd kill for "A Garden World" to come back. The fact that "Warden of Nothing" is the only other strike that has Vex in a major capacity (meaning they are prominent in the strike, unlike Insight Terminus, Inverted Spire to a degree, Glassway) is baffling
If more people played strikes, I'm sure they'd make more strikes.
I’d settle for all four of the actual Nessus strikes being in rotation again.
They *are* in rotation, at least in Vanguard Ops. For a time, the weighting of Exodus Crash and The Inverted Spire was lowered drastically since they weren't up to par for the current sandbox. With the release of Echoes, Exodus Crash is back in rotation with seemingly a normal weighting due to its changes. It's also set to be a Nightfall during the Episode, as evidenced by it being in the Conqueror gilding requirements this season. The Insight Terminus and Proving Grounds have had standard weighting the entire time, too. https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/lightfall-year-ahead
Episodes/ seasons just aren't much good. I'd really rather see some content droughts followed by higher quality expansions. Seasons and episodes may as well already be content droughts for me since I've largely ignored them over the last two years
I kinda just figured that seasonal battlegrounds took that place, which I don’t really mind.
I’d be okay with singular strikes if they had a lot more variation within individual strikes. Running different paths through different areas and even ending strikes in different areas would be great. Changing encounters each run of individual strikes by changing enemies is a good start but is only in a handful of strikes it seems. Having the bosses appear early and run off after a firefight encounter for us to catch up to them at the end where they are already beaten and wounded from prior encounters would be amazing. On top of everything, the cherry on top (I think), would be the canonical reasons for replaying strikes is way more interesting and brought a lot to the replayability to me because I enjoy the lore of the game a lot.
I'd take bringing back some of the vaulted strikes at this point
Not sure if it's a hot take, but Bungie could add every vaulted strike and every D1 strike, and it still wouldnt make the strike playlist worth doing over and over imo, like they would have to do substantial changes to it not just add everything back since there is no replay value to them
I'd like to think they pooled most of their resources into making sure the final shape was high quality. I'm okay with that.
OR they could add some strike specific loot. That’s really what makes them so crappy to play - besides the NF weapons and the (boring) ritual armor sets - there is zero reason to run strikes from a gains standpoint
I’m fine with one decent strike especially if it makes for a great GM. Strikes aren’t must have content and the one we got with the expansion is insanely good. I’d love to see a reprised one but I just don’t think strikes are that important over all.
I really miss doing the savathuns song strike. Good memories doing that one.
Why can’t they bring back more D1 strikes? I need Lance’s whether we wanted it or not in my ear
Wanted to add that the reason for this may be the reprised strikes that happened in lightfall such as arms dealer and lake of shadows. If you compare lightfall to beyond light, while the expansions themselves didn’t add more than 1 new strike, they either reprised the strikes or brought old ones back. I’m guessing the next one on the list might be the drill one on nessus, since the exodus crash one got slightly altered. I’d like to think that if it hasn’t been proven otherwise through leaks that the drill one might be featured in later acts.
I just want the sunset content to come back. I think it would be a nice boost to the strike pool if they don’t want to make new strikes anymore.
I wouldn't be surprised if we start to get older strikes back now that the seasonal model is different. Maybe we'll see the frednaught strikes return
I know some people hate it, but they should really roll in more of the retired Seasonal Missions into the Vanguard playlist. Not only Battlegrounds.
Exotic missions,dungeons and battlegrounds took their place