Destiny Patch 1.1 Thoughts

We received a patch for Destiny that went live yesterday. Here are the patch notes and my thoughts are at the bottom:

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1.1 : The one about Exotics. And the Raid!

Today's patch includes the long-awaited arrival of Exotics weapon buffs, additional acquisition paths for destination upgrade materials, along with additional changes to exotic gear node upgrading in preparation for the soon-to-be-released expansion, The Dark Below. We're also correcting issues induced by our more recent update to the Raid.

Weapons

Exotics

Exotic Weapons are designed to look, feel, and sound overpowered. At the same time, they are not supposed to break the balance of the game. We hope these weapons challenge the way players think about their loadouts. Exotics will be a constant work in-progress!

General

• In preparation for the Dark Below, Exotic Armor and Weapons no longer require Ascendant Materials to upgrade
• The final upgrade node of all Exotic Gear will require an Exotic Shard
• Exotic Shards can be obtained by one of the following means:
• Dismantling unwanted Exotics
• Purchased from Xur for 7 Strange Coins
• Exotics now start at a higher base Attack value and have a narrowed upgrade range to compensate

Thorn

• Projectiles now briefly highlight targets on impact
• Mark of the Devourer DoT (damage-over-time) upgrade increased against PvE enemy targets
• Reload Speed increased
• Magazine Size increased
• Ammo inventory size increased
• Stability and Weapon Handling increased

Bad Juju

• Magazine Size increased to 8 bursts (was 5)
• Ammo inventory size increased
• String of Curses now also decreases the cooldown of your Super on kill
• Adjusted effects to not block first person reticle

Hard Light

• Stability increased
• Perfect Balance upgrade replaced by Fitted Stock (increases maximum possible weapon Stability)

Suros Regime

• Lowered total damage at the end of the mag on SUROS Regime upgrade to be more in line with the Glass Half Full perk on Legendary Auto Rifles

Monte Carlo

• Stability increased
• Range slightly decreased
• Monte Carlo Method upgrade now also has a chance to fully charge melee ability on kill

MIDA Multi-Tool

• MIDA rounds now have increased knockback against targets in both PvE and PvP

Hawkmoon

• Send It upgrade (which was redundant) replaced by Speed Reload

Red Death

• Rate of Fire increased slightly, but Burst Damage reduced to compensate

Plan C

• Weapon Handling speed increased
• Player Speed increased while Plan C is in hand

Pocket Infinity

• Speed Reload upgrade replaced by Extended Clip which allows the option to increase magazine size (5 bursts)

Vex Mythoclast

• Attack Power increased to 323 (from 300)
• Base Damage increased, fixing bug we introduced in previous patch
• Enhanced Battery upgrade by Extended Mag (this change still allows for a significant upgrade to Magazine Size, but less than before)

Invective

• Reload Speed increased significantly, auto fires slightly slower

Ice Breaker

• Send It upgrade replaced by Lightweight (which was redundant as Icebreaker already had maximum range) 
• New effects for enemies killed by Ice Breaker upgrade

Patience and Time

• Snapshot upgrade replaced by Custom Optics (provides a lower zoom option)

Super Good Advice

• Stability increased

Truth

• Magazine Size increased to 3 (was 1)
  

Activities

Raid

• Fixed an issue we introduced in a previous patch, in which Atheon did not correctly send 3 players through the time gates
• Fixed an exploit where the Templar could be forced off its platform

Daily Heroic Story

• Destination Materials now drop from completing the Daily Heroic

Bounties

• Removed the ‘Relic Hunter’ Bounty 
• Destination Materials now drop from completing the Daily Patrol Bounty 

 

Vendors

• Reduced Cryptarch reputation gain from Engrams, but reputation reward packages now have an increased chance for Legendary Engrams
• Players will now be able to use Vanguard Marks and Crucible Marks to purchase Spinmetal, Relic Iron, Spirit Bloom, and Helium Filaments from the Vanguard and Crucible Quartermasters in the Tower
• Xur now sells a new material, Exotic Shards, to upgrade the final node of Exotics for 7 Strange Coins
• Faction Class Items (ex: FWC Cloak, Dead Orbit Mark, etc.) are now replaced by Faction Emblems in the rank-up reward packages from Faction Vendors

Technical

• Networking fixes, which should reduce the instance of the Bee family of KTOs
• Fixed an issue in which using Xbox One party chat induced a slower frame rate

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Okay, so a lot of stuff there. Let's start at the top with the decision to remove the need for legendary ascendant materials to upgrade exotic weapons. It makes logical sense since the materials say legendary, but it's rather silly to have to get them via Xur. Yes, you can get them dismantling exotics, but let's face it, you pretty much only get exotics from Xur anyway. Sometimes you get them from the nightfall or raid but it's fairly uncommon. Now if you have everything fully upgraded you may need to wait until Friday in order to get the exotic shard you need. Hopefully it won't be too annoying. It would probably be smart to stock up on a few each week just in case. They only cost 7 strange coins so that's nice. I personally think a permanent vendor should sell them but whatever.

Now the various buffs to the exotics you can see for yourself but a couple of points are that the Thorn is finally decent! You practically couldn't use it in light of a number of other hand cannons that were flat out better in every way. But now the Thorn is a beast and I love it.It's such a cool looking gun and I'm glad to be motivated to use it. Now I just need to get an exotic shard ;).

They buffed the Bad Juju but I still don't think it's very good, which is a shame because I think it might be the coolest looking gun after the Mythoclast. The damage and impact are just too low, especially when compared to a number of other guns.

The Suros actually got a nerf, which may have been needed, but I hardly used it outside of crucible anyway. Now I definitely won't.

They actually buffed the Plan C which I am surprised, as that is pretty much universally considered to be the best fusion rifle. If you had it, you used it in crucible. Making it better is rather silly, but whatever.

They boosted the Mythoclast which was necessary. I wish they boosted it more as I am finding it hard to not use the Vision of Confluence and Ice Breaker combo, which in my opinion is the best in the game. It is nice to have a gun that does over 300 damage though, plus it looks amazing.

The Truth upgrade is a little silly since it actually has a magazine size of 2, not 1. So they just increased it by 1. That gun is not going to get used as long as the Gjallarhorn is around.

Now onto the raid fix. They fixed the teleportation glitch. Finally. You can't be too happy about stuff like that because it shouldn't have happened in the first place, but at least they did their job. I must ask why they didn't fix all the other crippling issues that the raid has though? Random minions regenerating health, the relic shield turning off or not working, the glitch where you don't get to go through the gate unless you slowly walk and take turns with people, Oracles not getting killed even though they should have, etc. Baby steps I suppose. They fixed the Templar glitch where you could push him off. That was probably necessary as it was kind of cheap. Now it will just make the raid a little more annoying. I wish they had fixed the crippling issues before fixing something that made the raid easier but it shows where Bungie's priorities are.

The daily Heroic story missions now also drop Destination Materials. And for those of you, like me, who had no clue what they were talking about: Destination Materials are the crafting materials like Spirit Bloom and Relic iron. That's a nice plus. And speaking of the crafting materials, they finally made it so you can purchase them at the Tower! That's awesome and was greatly needed. You can buy them with crucible or vanguard marks at a 2:1 ratio.

All in all it was a good patch, fixing several issues. There are still a lot of things that need to be fixed but I'm still glad for this. It does show that Bungie cares about their game. Now we just need some more content. Hopefully the DLC gives us that.

Destiny level 29 and the daily grind

Well Destiny has been out for a while and I'm still level 29....with two characters. I think a lot of people are in the same boat as I. I've gotten to the point where my destiny is now in the hands of the almighty RNG. I need a chest or head piece raid gear in order to get to 30, and the only way I can get that is dropped in the raid, and it's completely random. I would also love to get the Mythoclast but that can only be gotten for beating the final boss on hard mode. I've beaten the raid tons of times by now but just haven't had the luck. I've received the same sniper rifle 4 times in a row, and the Chatterwhite armor shader 3 times in a row, along with countless ascendant shards and energy.

This is almost identical to my Hunter. So much for looking unique...

 The RNG system is something that has bothered me a while when it comes to Destiny. Now I understand the need for it and am fine with it existing. But I have a problem when Bungie claims that they didn't put trading in the game because they wanted each item in your arsenal to tell an epic story. I don't want trading in the game but the various items that you get are hardly gotten in an epic way. It's completely random.

"AAARGHRHGHGH!!!!" -Every gamer ever

 I've gotten an exotic sniper rifle from a random grunt while on patrol. I've gotten lots of legendary items from leveling up the Cryptarch and other minor things like that. When RNG is involved, it isn't skill or an epic story, it's just dumb luck. I played with someone in the raid when it was his first time and he got 2 different raid armors. It has taken me countless times going through the raid to get 2 items. I've played the hard raid and people have gotten their 5th Mythoclast, and they are angry because that's all they get, meanwhile I'm stuck with another Chatterwhite. It's hard to feel any sense of accomplishment when everything you get is just dumb luck. The only thing that would feel like an accomplishment is your faction rank, as that actually can only be required by playing the game and isn't up to luck.

I always find it funny when people on the forums start getting angry at Xur when he sells various exotic equipment at the Tower on Fridays.

That Cthulu/Nazgul slut...

 People will claim that they earned their equipment, while others will say that it's welfare for unskilled players. I have gotten plenty of items by "earning" them in game, and I've bought several items from Xur as well. I actually would lean towards saying that people that buy items from Xur are the ones that earned them, honestly. Because of RNG I have randomly gotten exotics from the Nightfall or the Raid. I was lucky to get them, I could have just gotten ascendant materials. Meanwhile, if I bought it from Xur, I had to play long enough to earn all those Strange Coins, which aren't easy to get. But then again the RNG has a lot to say when it comes to how many Strange Coins one gets, but still.

What's strange is thinking about what Xur does with them when he gets them

 There hardly any earning in Destiny, it's all RNG, so stop complaining. I for one am glad that Xur is around because it helps to limit the negative effect of the RNG system. There are plenty of people (like my brother), who have had horrible luck with getting legendaries and exotics. If Xur or the faction venders didn't exist, my brother would be stuck at level 20 with rare gear if he was lucky. Instead, he has been able to play the game, earn the reputation or Strange Coins, and buy some stuff that has helped him level up.

So do whatever rain dance or sacrificial ceremony you think will help you on your way to becoming legendary in Destiny. Appease the RNG god!

Destiny Patches and "Improvements"

So Destiny has been out for a good while now, and Bungie has had time to take in comments, look at their game and how people are playing it, and then implement changes they think benefit their game and player base.

For the most part I have agreed with a lot of the little tweeks: Auto Rifles are too powerful and although it saddens me because they are my favorite (not just because they were powerful), it probably needed to be done. Most recently they've said they will add "baby bumpers" to the Atheon raid to prevent players from pushing him off the edge. This is a good idea. That's clearly a bug and an exploit that defeats the spirit of the raid, I'm fine with that.  Bungie has also made it so engrams will give you at least that same rarity in item (ie green engrams will give you at least a green rarity item, and so on). Before you could finally get a purple engram, only to give you a blue item. It was frustrating.

However, there have been a number of changes that I have disliked a lot. For one they have decided to make it so 3 random players are teleported during the final fight against Atheon, instead of the furthest 3. This is ridiculous in my opinion. Now they have stated that they want everyone in the raid group to be able to do everything, so it's at least in line of what they said they wanted to do, but I personally think it's a mistake. During the raid everyone has a role. You have your groups of 2 players (normally) that take care of various sections like mini fireteams. During the Templar fight you have your various roles including the dedicated relic holder and Atheon-teleporting prevent-er (worst title ever). Then for the final boss we had roles of 2 portal guardian, floater, 2 oracle killers, and a relic holder. And now Bungie has stated that they are making the last boss choose 3 randoms and now anyone can be teleported and now everyone must be able to be any one of roles. Now that does make it more difficult, and a raid should be difficult, but I think it will just cause more panic and frustration. I imagine the hatred for certain poor players, that just don't happen to be good with a relic or guarding a portal, will be so great as to turn them off to the whole thing. I now dread taking in a new player to the raid for the first time, as I will have to cram so much information into their skulls and demand so much skill for it to be enjoyable for anyone (as nobody wants to fail tons of times). We had our roles throughout the whole raid, why not allow us to continue doing that, instead of implementing yet another RNG (random number generator) aspect to the game.

Second, they nerfed the Mythoclast. The Mythoclast is the hardest gun to obtain in the game (It can only be gotten as a random drop for beating the raid on hard) and is rightly the most powerful. I personally don't have one, but I would love to. Bungie reduced it's damage by 34%. Ouch. At the time of this writing they have announced that they will modify it further saying that they didn't want to hurt the PVE aspect of using this weapon as much, as they mainly wanted to nerf the gun from a PVP standpoint, but that brings me to my next point:

It seems that Bungie is mainly listening to former CoD players and little kids. Most of the changes in the game have been in the form of modifying weapon damage because of the multiplayer aspect, but it has spread to the PVE section as well. The forums and multiplayer in general are filled with what I'm assuming are little kids (whether they are immature kids in body or mind), who just whine and complain when they get killed in a match, screaming that everything is "OP". So instead of Bungie just calming down and letting those players either learn from their mistakes and become better, or just quit the game to everyone's relief, they are catering to them and going overboard on their modifications, almost ruining the best gun in the game. As I said they are trying to fix that mistake, but it just goes to show how impulsive they are being to cater to the biggest whiners.

They are also the ones that are screaming about the RNG element in this game, and are crying because they don't have every exotic in the game. Destiny has an RNG system in place and is very similar to an MMO in that aspect. That means that getting the various good loot is random. I have run the raid many times and I've only gotten one of the raid armor pieces, and that's what has kept me stuck on lvl 29 with over 50 ascendant shards waiting. Am I crying about that? No, that's part of the game, that's part of the grind. But instead we have a bunch of immature and impatient players (the staples of the modern gamer it seems) demanding that Bungie just give them everything that they want. This is the reason the Queen's Bounty event was such a disaster. We had little kids crying over not getting any legendary armor (even though they could guarantee themselves to get armor if they just played strikes or multiplayer enough and built up the marks and just buy it). Bungie just gave it to them. And to make matters worse, they removed the only reason us veterans had for playing in the event by removing the rewards we could get by destroying the said armor for ascendant materials.

Bungie also removed the loot cave in the game. I also think this was a mistake. Or mainly I think that this has started a chain of events down a slippery slope. In games like this people will be looking for the easiest way to level up or to get materials or money or kills or whatever. That will never change. The loot cave was the easiest place to get various engrams (although personally I never got anything decent but it was nice to upgrade my Cryptarch with all the worthless green and blue engrams), but Bungie took that away because they didn't want people to exploit the game I guess? The problem with that is that it wasn't really an exploit. Players were killing enemies in the game and hoping that through killing a ton of them, they would get a couple of engrams and maybe some good gear. That's just playing the game. Now people will just find the next "loot cave" (ie the greatest concentration of enemies) and use that to get better stuff. Will Bungie keep nerfing the game to the point that enemies only spawn every hour? What do they want us to do? If you want us to play other modes or strikes then you should make it worth our while. Strikes right now take too long and the bosses are just bullet sponges. I personally still love playing them but I understand that if you are trying to get some new gear, that is not the best way to go about doing that.

This brings me to my last point, and that is that although Bungie has been making a lot of little changes in the game, it has never been about adding anything, only taking it away. All of the hotfixes and patches seem to come from Bungie saying "you are not playing the game the way we wanted, so we're going to take something from you". Games need stuff like that, and it's good that they are trying to fix bugs and glitches, but that shouldn't be the only thing. Where's the stuff that makes our game better through addition? I have seem many good suggestions on the forums from players who are honestly trying to give good feedback and info on how the game could be improved (ammo synthesis quick-use buttons or raid matchmaking for example), but stuff like that hasn't been implemented. So much of what Bungie promised us has been a huge let down. The game isn't the sprawling open world that if we see it we can go to it. They story has been very lackluster so far (almost nonexistent). And although I keep hoping they will add stuff to make it better, I have not seen it.

Despite all these complaints I have I still enjoy the game. But I want it to be better. I want it to be the game we all thought we'd be getting. I just hope Bungie actually starts putting some stuff into the game that makes it better.

Destiny Farming Issue

First off, this is my opinion, so obviously everyone can disregard it. Second, I hope that maybe I'll make some good points and that people will consider them before they get very angry. For more reference, I am not some 12 year old immature kid but rather I'm 29, married, a college graduate, with a kid and a house. I am blessed with the opportunity to work from home and take care of my infant son, who has slept so much it has allowed me to play this game a lot.

Okay, a little background when it comes to this game: I am a lvl 29 Hunter. I got to lvl 27 without "farming", and got to lvl 29 by getting through the raid. I have played this game for over 3 days (check my profile if you don't believe me. The only exotic I've ever gotten was when I bought one from Xur or when I completed an exotic bounty. So if anyone has cause to be angry at people who can quickly get through the game and use an exploit to get high end gear it is I.

I am NOT, however, angry.

In any game that exists, many people will do what is optimal over what is fun. This has been found to be fact with any number of games ranging from video games like WoW and Destiny, to even card games like Magic. People like to win, even if it is against the computer, and will do anything to do that. With that being said, it should be obvious that if there is an optimal way to play the game and "win" at it, then people will take it.

So is that a bad thing? Well it seems that Bungie has wanted people to take it slow. That makes sense as the longer it takes to play their game, the more people will stay interested. It's business, but that makes sense. So what do we want them to do? We want them to remove various exploits in the game that allow you to get stuff quickly? Now, knowing what I said before about how people will do whatever is optimal, do you really think it will be solved once the cave exploit is removed? People will just find the next best thing, and the next best thing after that.

Bungie could keep getting rid of these exploits (side note: I do mean exploits rather than glitches. Glitches need to get fixed, but an exploit is simply using the game's mechanics in order to do something optimal), but doing so will create an ever lasting cycle of patches. And to what end? When does that stop? Does it stop when the only way to get an item means to complete 3 raids and kill 2,000 enemies? Obviously there has to be a line, but my point is that we would forever be searching for that and be butting heads with the designers, rather than playing the game.

Another point: We can agree that farming for items is not the most fun thing ever. I know some people can enjoy it, but honestly it would be more fun to get items by playing missions and stuff. If that is the case, and we want Bungie to get rid of the various exploits, we are asking Bungie to make the game less fun. Keep in mind people will do the most optimal thing, no matter what.

Why do we want Bungie to make the game less fun? I can hear people now saying that farming isn't fun, but playing the game as it was meant to be played is fun. How is the game meant to be played? There is obviously farming that needs to be done. You cannot just go through and play everything once and be at the top level. So obviously Bungie has created a game that requires farming, so why are we hoping that they remove farming, or make it harder?

I think a main crux of the issue is between people who claim to have "legitimately" played the game and gotten high end gear vs people who have "exploited" to get it. It comes down to a time issue and that line is very blurred. Am I a better player because it took me 3 days to get my stuff, vs someone who got it in a couple of days? That actually sounds like the other player is smarter. It's a better spenditure of time.

As I said I have "legitimately" played the game and got my stuff, but I am not complaining. Not everyone has as much time as I do. I want people to have fun with this game, and if they have fun doing this, then why not allow it? The only other stipulation is when it comes to Iron Banner, where your gear actually matters in a PVP setting. I don't know how to fix it, but then again it simply comes down to a definition of "legitimacy" of playing, which hopefully we can agree is a very blurry line and mostly comes down to personal preference.

If you made it this far congratulations, I hope I made some good points and I hope to see you guys (who farmed and who didn't), starside. Enjoy!