r/DestinyTheGame • u/Grogonfire • 2d ago
Discussion Dungeon Lairs feel absurd when we literally just had Explorer/Ultimatum Mode.
It's genuinely crazy how fast we went from what felt like the perfect solution for dungeons going forward, to what feels like a last minute band aid attempt for making them relevant to the new portal mod system. Explorer versions weren't perfect but they were a great starting point for getting new players who never even considered that content was made for them to give it a shot, and Ultimatum gave veterans a solid challenge and shakeup to content they've already played a million times. Hell even Eternity mode versions were almost objectively just upgrades to the overall experience of playing each dungeon (only 3 rounds on opening of GotD was a godsend lol).
But now after RotN ended and EoF/The Portal began... we need to settle for modified single encounters ripped from dungeons? Seriously? We really gotta keep removing content from its context and cohesion? Idk man, this current direction for Destiny is just sooo off the mark for what makes the game great. Or sure maybe Hefnd with Locked Loadout/No Hud/Brawn/Caltrops/Slow&Small/Blindfold/Hands-tied-behind-back at -50 will be peak or whatever lol.
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u/SrslySam91 1d ago
Idk what's going on internally at bungie right now but they clearly don't have the time or work hours to do anything meaningful. And id like to know why that is. Smaller studios with far less employees manage to pump out more quality and quantity, in a much faster time period.
I get dowmvoted for saying this but I feel like last Gen consoles are difficult to apply updates too and that's part of the problem.
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u/overthisbynow 1d ago
They're trying to figure out wtf is going to happen when Marathon flops completely or gets flat out canceled 💀
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u/VeshWolfe 1d ago
This. I feel like currently the entire studio is mostly focused on Marathon to try and not have it be DoA. Copium says maybe some sort of PvE mode as that was a huge criticism towards the IP being adapted the way it has been.
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u/xXNickAugustXx 1d ago
They could have had a doom rival, but instead its just a hybrid hero extraction shooter with a battle bass and eshop.
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u/RC_0001 God is dead, and we have nuked Him with ghorn. 1d ago
I was gonna say that I don't understand how that decision ever got made...
But I do. Extraction shooters were the new hotness, Bungie was strapped for cash, and the c-suite guys have proven time and again that they have the foresight of a mayfly. Fucking of course they'd use a super unique singleplayer shooter IP and turn it into a generic PvPvE extraction shooter. It's the obvious move, if you're an out of touch exec.
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u/Halo_cT 1d ago
Absolutely correct. This decision was made when The Division was the new hotness and every out of touch C-level decided this was obviously the future and now they're completely and utterly married to a trend that died years ago. Sunk-cost fallacy in full effect. They're screwed.
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u/International-Low490 1d ago
The division was a looter shooter just like Destiny though...the extraction element in the dark zone clearly wasn't the inspiration here. Couldn't be further from it if they tried.
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u/Pokemonzu Drifter's Crew 1d ago
Development started in 2019, Tarkov also got popular about 5 years ago
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u/Redthrist 1d ago
What's funny is that Marathon isn't really a well-known IP. So people who actually know and love Marathon would hate that it's now an extraction shooter. Meanwhile, people who care about extraction shooters probably have zero attachment to Marathon.
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u/RC_0001 God is dead, and we have nuked Him with ghorn. 20h ago
If I had to guess, even the idea that an IP is getting a revival tends to drum up interest, even if you had no idea what Marathon was beforehand. I'd bet that MandaloreGaming got a nice spike in views after Marathon got announced from people wanting to know what all the fuss was about. Hopefully they stopped after the second video. You know, for their sanity.
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u/TheChunkyBoi 1d ago edited 1d ago
Let's be real, a bungie boomer shooter when ID is pumping out 10/10 after 10/10 DOOM games would be a flop.
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u/pen15_club_admin 1d ago
Would make more sense to create a single player marathon campaign to bring people into that world with the extraction element being the multiplayer component.
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u/CaptainPandemonium 1d ago
Not a complete flop, if anything mildly successful.
I love the new doom games, but having a boomer shooter with Bungie gunplay + abilities is almost everything I could hope for. Throw in a roguelike mode at launch or part of a DLC later and I would have my time split 50/50 with destiny 2 and this new game.
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u/Slugdge Ding 1d ago
I would drool over a single player, narrative focused game with Bungie movement and shooting mechanics...which could then be opened up with maybe an extraction mode...which could further be fleshed out into it's own game.
Marathon is like "we have that at home" since it's been decades since Marathon has been truly relevant. Should have made it that bad-ass boomer shooter first, then expanded.
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u/atttibet196953 1d ago
Atleast it would be damn better game than what marathon is and you could never know they can actually cook, dont get me wrong it cant definitely not pull DOOM numbers but it wouldnt be DOA like marathon.
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u/TheChunkyBoi 1d ago
Bungie doesn't have the cohesive vision to pull off a game like Doom. Also, we have seen a very early build of marathon, and I'll reserve judgment until it's out. Though I am not hopeful lol
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u/VeshWolfe 1d ago
If you think Marathon will be to any measurable degree different than that was seen in the Alpha…
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u/International-Low490 1d ago
They literally decided to showcase an 'extremely' early version of the game, with the original launch date being six months from when they did that. If you think it was going to be much different fundamentally in six months, that's crazy. They fully intended to launch it that way. You don't go from alpha that looks like pre alpha to launch in six months. They're likely still going to target at least March next year so they can hit Q1 and get their bonuses before c suite dips. Games not going to change that much in the time between now and then. They need a literal miracle in a situation where miracles can't be fostered.
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u/Dangerous-Employer52 1d ago
Bungie has 600+ employees currently. It sure does not feel like Destiny is the game taking up all the resources.
If it is what are they spending it on!?
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u/Redthrist 1d ago
I don't think Destiny has been taking up all their resources since like Y2. They've been desperately trying to become a multi-game studio for years now, siphoning resources away from Destiny to make other games.
So far, none of them are out, with Marathon being the only one that got officially announced. And even that looks like a flop.
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u/thatguyindoom Drifter's Crew 1d ago
They should just cancel marathon, it's too late to the genre and it's riled in controversy already. They really just need to focus on getting destiny back to a solid cadence of content that's manageable and is meeting players expectations (for the most part).
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u/havingasicktime 1d ago
Canceling Marathon would likely sink the entire studio and Destiny with it at this point.
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u/atttibet196953 1d ago
I dont think releasing it will not make any good too lol and maybe if they cancel maybe they can get some tax cut or something idrk.
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u/havingasicktime 1d ago
The money to develop it is already spent, mostly, so releasing it will at the least make some amount of money back. Tax writeoffs aren't what Bungie needs right now, they need revenue
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u/Terce 1d ago
If only they had a preexisting futuristic shooter in desperate need of good, NEW, content. 🤔
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u/havingasicktime 1d ago
Doesn't save them to put energy back into Destiny, any scenario where Marathon is cancelled or flops is terrible for their future.
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u/SloppityMcFloppity 1d ago
With how the general gaming community feels towards bungie and the project, marathon could be a 10/10 game and it will still be poorly recieved. It's a loose-loose situation.
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u/Ausschluss 1d ago
Sticking to Marathon will also sink the studio, but I guess some managers can't just admit that an extraction shooter was a mistake.
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u/Nukesnipe Drifter's Crew 1d ago
This argument is dumb as hell. Games don't get this close to release only to get canceled, at worst they'd shove it out in a mostly finished state.
And no, it's not too late to the genre. The only big extraction shooters are what, tarkov and the hunt? And if marathon is late, why aren't you saying the same thing about arc raiders?
And quite frankly, most people don't know or care about the controversy. Your average gamer isn't a terminally online nerd obsessing over every piece of news.
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u/therealkami 1d ago
Games don't get this close to release only to get canceled, at worst they'd shove it out in a mostly finished state.
It's happened before to quite a few games. Games that were in playable beta forms like Fable Legends or Star Wars: Battlefront 3.
This year saw Football Manager 2025 cancelled. Even what's normally a money printer game in a sports game isn't immune to it. NBA Live 2013 was cancelled just before release as another sports game example.
There's no marketing going on for Marathon after it's lukewarm test and controversy. You may think it doesn't matter, but the fact of the matter is that people who play extraction shooters are fairly niche. Similar to an even bigger genre in MOBAs, most of them find their favourite game and lock on to it, then negatively compare any competition to it.
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u/thatguyindoom Drifter's Crew 1d ago
The film Batgirl ring any bells? Literally a finished product shelved for eternity...
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u/therealkami 1d ago
I didn't bring it up, because someone would go "ACKSHUALLY that's a movie not a game, and the person you're replying to specified games"
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u/Nukesnipe Drifter's Crew 1d ago
Films getting canceled for tax purposes isn't uncommon and it is shitty as hell. Batgirl, however, wasn't a finished product, please don't spread misinformation. It wasn't even done filming and it hadn't even started VFX.
A better example you should have used is Coyote vs. Acme, a movie that was absolutely finished and ready for distribution and was instead canceled for a tax write off, but is now actually getting a release because people screamed at the company enough.
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u/International-Low490 1d ago
Yep. Extraction shooters are super niche and this played too close to it's genre for non extraction shooters to consider it for forty dollars while extraction shooter lovers who routinely play these games, have ones that they are already enjoying a lot. It offers them very little.
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u/Nukesnipe Drifter's Crew 1d ago
Battlefront 3 was, as far as I can tell, largely just a development of Battlefront 2. The game industry was also extremely different 20 years ago. Also, EA is EA.
Fable Legends was canceled in an early beta state. Games die in beta all the time, having a beta doesn't mean your game is almost complete. And before you say "well then Marathon isn't complete" keep in mind that we're right on top of the planned initial release date, so they sure as hell thought it would be complete by now.
Football Manager 2025 seems to have been mired in development hell and constantly missed deadlines and intended release dates. Considering it's a yearly series and was getting close to the middle of the year, I'm not surprised they canceled 2025 to focus on 2026. Same goes for NBA Live, 2014 came out just fine so it was likely just schedule slip.
None of these were in development for as long as Marathon, in the same game era as Marathon.
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u/gojensen PSN 1d ago
Heard of Concorde? Or Hyenas? One cancelled weeks after release, the other cancelled weeks before release. Both finished games that are gone.
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u/Redthrist 1d ago
And if marathon is late, why aren't you saying the same thing about arc raiders?
The difference is that so far, people who've played Arc Raiders have absolutely loved it. Meanwhile, with Marathon it seems to be the exact opposite. They keep doing internal tests and the result is that people simply don't like the game.
The fact that they were planning to release Marathon this month, but delayed it shows just how bad it is. You don't just delay the release of your game a few months prior to launch unless the development is an absolute clusterfuck. Doubly so if your issue is that your testers hate the core gameplay loop months before the game is set to launch.
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u/Nukesnipe Drifter's Crew 1d ago
Delays are perfectly normal lol. One delay is fine, the problems only start when a game gets delayed multiple times.
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u/Redthrist 1d ago
It's not very fine when you announce the game's September release date in April, then have a player test that goes so badly that you have to delay a game a month later without giving a new release date.
While it's quite common to announce a release date and then delay the game a while later, it usually doesn't happen a month after you announce it. This, to me, says that the development is such a clusterfuck that they themselves don't even know how fucked it is.
Especially when you consider that, supposedly, a lot of the negative feedback was focused on the core loop of the game, which is a really bad sign for a game that was meant to be released this year. That, plus the fact that they couldn't commit to a new release date(all we know is that it'll launch before end of March 2026).
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u/Oofric_Stormcloak 1d ago
"It's too late to the genre" except it's not, and the attitude around Arc Raiders proves that "It's riled in controversy" doesn't matter, as unfortunately consumers do not care. The best evidence of this is the biggest gaming studios are always in controversy. Canceling Marathon will only be bad for Destiny. Sony will lose out on a large part of what they spend billions of dollars on, Bungie will go through layoffs again which will almost definitely effect the devs on Destiny, and we'll yet again be in the phase of saying how Destiny is doomed.
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u/BNEWZON Drifter's Crew 1d ago
For Marathon specifically, the controversy absolutely does matter. The fact that a "new" (for all intents and purposes) IP had such a god awful reveal only to be surrounded by accusations of art theft will leave a stink on them that will last until the game comes out at the very least. I don't think the game should be canceled, cause that's ridiculous. There's also been some leaks of the closed tests that seem rather promising. The fact of the matter is this is a new IP in a niche genre where both the game and it's company have a constant stink on them, and it's expected to succeed. They've got a long uphill battle to fight
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u/AgentUmlaut 1d ago
I'm genuinely curious what they're going to do with Marathon revisions because the constant question of who exactly is it for did ring pretty true when I put time in the Alpha and it did just swing a bit too BR-like with not really much breathing room for usual extraction trappings. I'm not expecting mil-sim hide in a bush for an hour hardcore thing but I was surprised how once you knew spawns and could have coordination with certain heroes setups, sprinting towards other teams like it's a BR hot spot really could pay off.
I don't think Joe Ziegler was out of line reiterating that it won't be a game for everyone but I def don't see it being something that will be a gateway game for people on the fence especially when Bungie's fan base for the past decade or so hasn't been too crazy on pvp. There also wasn't a ton I saw that I could see most people who play FPS pvp games rolling over for.
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u/Cassp0nk 1d ago
As someone who enjoys Destiny PVP, Marathon was really not it. From being excited to getting into the beta, I then couldn't be bothered to play it for more than an hour or so.
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u/International-Low490 1d ago
I absolutely agree that they can't afford to cancel the game, but there's also virtually nothing they can do to save this game as an extraction shooter. They needed to be transformative to get people who don't normally play these games and they didn't, while stating that they weren't making it for extraction shooter players. It's not good enough to pull folks that already have other extraction games taking their time. Especially for a forty dollar price tag.
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u/Dangerous-Employer52 1d ago
I still cannot believe the Marathon game is an extraction shooter!!!
That universe is absolutely ripe for a "destiny style" looter shooter. I am old enough to remember when it came out lol.
To me it's just a corpo designed product from top to bottom....hoping for the best though.
Over the years I had more fun playing Destiny than not. Many great memories
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u/Fenixfiress 1d ago
100% a corpo trend chasing move, Marathon started production around 5 years ago, do you know what went trough a huge popular peak 5 years ago? Tarkov... funny how that lines up.
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u/Redthrist 1d ago
I'm surprised they didn't try to go for a PvE extraction/looter hybrid. It's still about killing enemies to get to loot, but you have to extract with your loot, and the further you push the better loot/harder enemies you encounter.
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u/Dangerous-Employer52 1d ago
Yes especially if they want 40 bucks. PVP extraction only severely limits my interest in paying for it.
Even pvp focused games like COD, ARC raiders, fortnight and battlefield offer more for people to get engrossed in the game universe.
- If it's free far more people would try it out.
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u/Dangerous-Employer52 1d ago
Just watch GTA6 get released the same month Marathon does lol.
- Of course then they can use that as an excuse huh? Hmm.....
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u/GameSpawn For Ghosts who make their own luck. 1d ago
Is Marathon even still a thing? Since they updated the website and showed some teasers for it, it seems it has completely blipped off everyone's radar. I have a feeling it is going to have an extremely lackluster launch. Maybe they'll beat the advertising drum around Dec-Jan to build some hype, but general reactions seem to be "meh".
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u/anewfoundmatt 1d ago
I feel like part of it is definitely because of all the layoffs they’ve had. But it’s clear product management (and likely senior management) are playing a huge role in the constant whiplash
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u/Zayl 1d ago
Aren't the layoffs at least in part because they pissed away money on a ton of projects they ended up mismanaging and killing off?
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u/anewfoundmatt 1d ago
Oh I’m sure that played a part for sure. It’s crazy to me that Bungie continually loses their identity as a studio. They know what works for Destiny, and they constantly throw it out the window under the guise of reinventing the game only to change course and attempt to right the ship.
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u/CruffTheMagicDragon 1d ago
That and COVID boosted income declined once the world went back to normal.
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u/Fenixfiress 1d ago
i'll forever hold a grudge against a game named Gummy Bears that took ressources that could've went to Destiny.
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u/th3jerbearz 1d ago
They took a large portion of the proceeds from the last 5 years of Destiny and pumped them into seperate projects that are now defunct. Then they laid off a large portion of the studio to make ends meet when those projects didn't come to fruition. Then Marathon, the only project that actually got anywhere, was revealed and immediately delayed due to negative reception.
Essentially, management and leadership siphoned money from Destiny which could have and should have been reinvested into Destiny and we now get to watch them pick up the pieces with about half of the workforce they once had.
Fuck Pete Parsons.
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u/Noclock22 1d ago
They clearly have the hours if they're still trying to rework blight ranger and putting up the absolutely necessary stronghold rework lol
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u/SrslySam91 1d ago
Lol yeah which makes it seem like priorities just are so far out of wack. But id have to imagine those were pre-worked on updates that they have to push out because they would rather anything go out than nothing sort of deal.
It just amazes me they act as if they still have the cache and clout of past yet act as if the game isnt falling to pieces and player outlook is as negative as it's ever been.
There's just no way that they think bringing out a fucking sturm buff for pve that's useless and also adding more useless exotics to the featured list will do any good. Not to mention not a single word about class items being featured on top of dungeons not dropping their old loot as tiered or even fucking pinnacle level...
It's why I have hardly played this season. I'm enjoying silksong too much atm to care about ash and iron anyway.
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u/whereismymind86 1d ago
Nah, last gen definitely isn’t the problem, the engine is.
It’s pretty clear that there are backend issues that make even tiny changes a colossal ordeal. This has persisted long before we had ps5/series x versions, it’s just exacerbated by the now tiny team
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u/SrslySam91 1d ago
So I genuinely am just asking this as a question, don't you think at least a lot of qol stuff we can't have like vault space is due to last Gen limits? Or stuff like tether causing that Vesper boss to crash the game, id imagine that's due to last Gen.
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u/Unfair-Category-9116 1d ago
Well the vault stuff is kind of irrelevant because they are working on a new solution which will work with old gen. A new long term solution is better than just 100 spaces every DLC. Because it might actually fix the problem long term.
Bungie told us in D1 they were dropping xbox 360 and PS3 and they told us why they were doing it. They have not done that now because they don't think last gen is a problem to what they want to do.
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u/SrslySam91 1d ago
True but I feel like the solution is harder because it has to work with last Gen too.
As for why they haven't dropped it i imagine it's because they can't afford to lose that player count right now. I feel if the game was in a better stats and new players were coming along they would be able to do it.
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u/Unfair-Category-9116 1d ago
I mean its fine if its a harder solution as long as its long term, so they don't need to keep thinking of vault space issues going forward as much
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u/SrslySam91 1d ago
I do get what you're saying and I agree with it entirely, but the issue is that we've had a vault space problem for a long time now. It's super magnified now due to tiered gear and separate armor sets, but it's been a problem since witchqueen and more people complained when lightfall dropped and with into the light into TFS with class items it really spilled over and everyone was complaining.
However I don't know if this would have been completed faster even if last Gen wasn't a concern, so im just using it as an example if it would be true sort of deal.
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u/Unfair-Category-9116 22h ago
Oh yeah no doubt it's a bigger problem now than it has ever been. Sure I know, I have a vault at 600 even after deleting all my old armor and many of my old exotics. Maybe it could have been done quicker without last gen but it's impossible to say without knowing what exactly their bottleneck would really be. For all we know, it's low end PCs or the minimum PC spec holding it back as well. Because the minimum PC spec is 8gb ram and we've known for some time that ram is a concern when they try to implement more client features. Like when they said they couldn't do orbs on masterwork + origin traits at the same time for weapons because there were memory limits. So it really could be anything
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u/East-Dog2979 1d ago
this is what im thinking too. the game is famously difficult to dev for. look at how long that rng bug persisted for that got noticed during Vesper's Host.
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u/Nukesnipe Drifter's Crew 1d ago
That's not a case of the engine being hard to work on, you can tell because it was actually fixed very quickly after it was noticed. It was just a very esoteric bug that went unnoticed. We didn't have any guns with an ideal perk combo that fell into the bugged range until Vesper, so when it turned out to be way rarer than it was supposed to be, people finally noticed and ran the math.
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u/ripshitonrumham Brot Boy 22h ago
Lmao what, can non-gamedevs not talk about stuff they have no clue about? That is a terrible example because if it was “famously difficult to dev for” then why was it fixed so quickly after it was discovered? No one even knew about it until the Reddit posts were made so why even pretend that was something they were trying to fix for a long time?
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u/trevaftw 1d ago
I think a lot of it is one hand not talking to the other. So many new systems that don't interaft properly, or at all. It's like the three monkeys trying to communicate with each other:
🙈🙉🙊
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u/JaylisJayP 1d ago
Its a culture there. Because Hello Games just rocketed themselves into the top 10/15 on Steam with the Voyagers update to No Man's Sky...and they've already also put out 3 or 4 major patches.
....and, of course, it was all free.
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u/ARedWalrus 1d ago
I've gotten down voted for saying it in the past, and Im sure I will again in the future, but; Bungie need to have people kn staff who play the game. Not people who played an encounter or mission one time and said it works; but people who regularly play the game for the sake of playing the game, not just testing it.
So much of the out of touch changes and updates they have made are very clearly being made by people who likely have less than 10 hours in the game since EoFs launch.
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u/Halo_cT 1d ago
It's more than that. Their internal team cleared desert perpetual on contest mode. That was a Herculean task.
The problem is that all the in-house decisions have one explicit goal, how to keep people playing as much as possible while spending the least possible money on new content. If that was the driving factor behind everything you'd have a system that looks exactly like what we have today. Retexture and recolor Venus and Io assets, add a half-assed campaign with a ball mode and make one new raid with bosses that look like scaled-up redbar adds.
Outside of new exotics and one raid boss that is a spinning sphere with eyes, everything is repolished old stuff, all of it.
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u/MeateaW 1d ago
Their internal team cleared desert perpetual on contest mode. That was a Herculean task.
Their internal team that included worlds first winners. And then the devs banned the weapons they used to do it.
Having said that, I got the impression their internal team was not a long term hire, and was on a contract basis. But I haven't seen anywhere they were permanent QA hires.
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u/360GameTV 1d ago
Looks like so which for me another really weird decision. Destiny is your Cash cow even Bungie did not like it anymore but it is probably still so true. So why in the hell you want to kill your onw Cash cow? :(
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u/Dragon_Tortoise 1d ago
Im guessing a majority of their resources are invested into Marathon and thats the problem. They just dont have much of budget or manpower going into Destiny, its all going into marathon. With all the negative reception, delays, theyre doing everything they can to make it not like concord.
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u/VVenture2 1d ago
Bungie have lost over 30% of their staff over the last 18 months
They’re desperately trying to make Marathon a good game so most of their time and effort is focused into that dead on arrival product (and I’m pretty sure everyone at Bungie working on it knows it’s dead on arrival.)
Bungie’s Tiger engine is notoriously awful to work with, to the point that environment artists have to leave their work PC’s on overnight just so they can load up a map on the level editor.
However, this feels like an awful excuse now that Destiny Rising has shown that either:
A) a team that actually gives a shit can produce lots of content
Or
B) It’s possible to recreate the Destiny experience authentically in a different engine (or a heavily retooled engine) which is much easier to create content in.
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u/order_of_the_beard 1d ago
I used to be a big Sea of Thieves player and it was the same story. Last-gen console support meant that a lot of amazing development opportunities were completely hamstrung.
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u/Saint_Victorious 1d ago
There's been a ton of reporting on just how bad Bungie's own Tiger engine is. During the early days there are reports that it would take up to 8 hours to boot up a map for editing, and then just as long to compile and save any changes.
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u/pheldegression 1d ago
They work on a propietary engine that has historically been a massive problem in doing effective work quickly. Even if they hired 100 devs tomorrow we wouldnt see any improvements for at least twelve but probably 18 months because of it.
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u/International-Low490 1d ago
Last gen is certainly a problem, but it's not the whole one. The tiger engine is notoriously ancient and difficult to update on. They can slap bandaids and fix up pipes with patchwork shit over the years. Upgrade what they will, but the foundation is horrible and until they get a new one, this game is going to continue to suffer.
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u/Dangerous-Employer52 1d ago
Currently Bungie has 600+ employees. Do you feel that Destiny and even what we have seen of Marathon content reflect this?
- Also don't forget Bungie like most companies also outsources work as well.....you can look this up yourself if you were not aware.
Absolutely not saying a single dev is "lazy" (I hate that myself) more that Bungie is incredibly mismanaged and unorganized apparently.
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u/RiotPelaaja 1d ago
It isn't last-gen consoles. It's losing hundreds of people, even if mostly on the publishing side, the dev team has still been hit hard, and it's really tough to maintain the game with all the expectations people have here.
I do not understand how fans here don't take into account that there are far fewer people developing this game than before. People throw around "billion dollar company lol", but the reality is fewer and fewer people are making this game, because for years, the big expansion per year model, while great for us, just wasn't making enough business.
All AAA devs feel this squeeze. Sure, smaller teams that dont have 10+years of code, infrastructure, tech limitations in place, can move fast.
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u/SrslySam91 1d ago
The employee cuts is obviously going to have an effect, however they have ALWAYS taken a longer time to pump out updates even before any layoffs were made the first go around.
Not saying last Gen is the sole reason either, but there's got to be a lot of limitations on what they can do because of them.
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u/Cassp0nk 1d ago
They also have a game engine that is very unproductive to work on but never made the major investment needed to fix it.
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u/RedExile13 1d ago
I with Destiny was managed like Path of Exile. GGG pump out content left and right. It's all free too...
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u/theoriginalrat 1d ago
Remember, a far less Destiny-experienced and far smaller company produced Taken King a decade ago.
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u/Naive-Archer-9223 1d ago edited 22h ago
It's absolutely not the fault of last gen. It's the fault of Bungie not being able to manage their time.
Imagine how much time they spent on the portal alone.
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u/radbebop 22h ago
It has been stated the Destiny 2 game engine is complicated to work with and over the years the experienced employees who understood it have dwindled. That would explain why there are constant bugs/issues and we keep getting re-used assets. The game needs to be retired before it alienates it's entire fanbase from the Frankenstein mess its becoming. Sony needs to step in and green light Destiny 3 and ensure it's foundation is built on a game engine that can be supported long into the future.
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u/DinnertimeNinja 1d ago
I do think that's part of it, but i also think their game engine is a lumbering giant that makes making any changes both overly time-consuming and unpredictable. I mean, can you imagine how much more they could accomplish if they didn't have a backlog of a ever-increasing glitches to deal with?
Old gen consoles probably exacerbate the issue, but I'm not sure there's anything they can do to completely fix it at this point.
I also feel like they kind of cultivate more of a "wouldn't it be cool if..." atmosphere instead of one that has a strong guiding vision that they're all working towards. As such, a lot of the work they do is kind of all over the place which makes Implementing it that much more inefficient.
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u/Jealous_Platypus1111 1d ago
I assume that theyve shifted resources onto Marathon to make sure it launches well and due to that Destiny is temporarily having less devs than usual
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u/Brave-Combination793 1d ago
And they chose 2 lackluster encounters and a decent boss fight
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u/Quantumriot7 1d ago
They chose boss encounters with a run up mini semi encounter thing.
Opening to ghalran, post chamber of suffering to zulmak and pre hefnd vengeance to final. You know with the taken orb parkour bit beforehand. They've got a consistent structure.
And i feel that you'd be able to predict where they'd also go for the other dungeons using it.
throne from after vorgeth to dul incaru.
prophecy rainbow road to kell echo.
grasp opening to phrizae.
spire post harpy to final.
gotd water section to ectar.
vespers realistically could be either but servitor deposit to boss fits best.
sundered worm light puzzle to final.
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u/throwntosaturn 1d ago
I think in vespers post servitor to final boss wouldnt work simply because its so long. Thats a long ass traversal section AND a long ass boss fight, especially since with locked loadout theres very little overlap between how you'd want to do the jumping puzzle and what weapons are good on the boss.
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u/DepletedMitochondria 1d ago
I thought it was Necropolis from Pit?
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u/Quantumriot7 1d ago
Its called under the necropolis which matches the area in run upto zulmak, which also was shown in the trailer so id lean towards that.
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u/Disastrous-Ad6021 1d ago
Having dungeon encounters as Pinnacle loot in portal will not make the game better. Current system sucks. Dungeon encounter with crap modifiers will not make them better
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u/Grogonfire 1d ago
I know some ppl like it but I will say the Portal has overall made the game worse in my experience.
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u/Zayl 1d ago
Can't believe anyone would look at the whole world of destiny with all its diversity and 8 years of content (what wasn't cut anyways) and say "no I prefer this box instead".
The portal has shrunk the game considerably. It has made me quit and I really didn't want to. I keep lurking around hoping they'll do a huge 180 and fix a bunch of shit asap but it's looking like I'm just wasting my time lol.
Probably healthier to just stop paying attention to this company altogether.
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u/JMR027 1d ago
You say this, but the grind before was just play the new seasonal activity and grind old content for pinnacles and old gms for materials… The argument people make about the portal is just grinding the same shit over and over again, are delusional to think the system before wasn’t just that. At least this is more variety imo
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u/Zayl 1d ago
It's not more variety and it pigeonholes you into certain content while making old gear all but irrelevant.
I used to run strikes if I wanted to turn my brain off, GMs for golf balls, raids/dungeons for pinnacles, teaching, and crafted weapons. I used to do the seasonal activities for new weapons, there were multiple seasonal stories per year, crucible/gambit when I was bored of the rest or down time between new content. The biggest thing for me was always doing dungeon runs teaching, or helping people farm for exotics, same with raids. Could also run exotic missions for craftable weapons.
Now there's solo ops, Fireteam ops, pinnacles and crucible.
Solo ops - fine, but ultimately pretty boring and far too few given there's sooo many lost sectors in the game.
Fireteam Ops - it's all strikes. No one runs anything else because it takes too long and has too many points of failure that just feel bad. My wife and I ran the coil on GM few weeks back and made it to the final loop with 11 rez. We lagged a bit and both got killed by a spike trap as a result. Got orbited, and means zero loot. Zero.
Pinnacle - these were actually fun for a while, but my god has it gotten boring.
Crucible is crucible and gambit is non-existent.
All in all my biggest problem with this is modifiers and timers. Everything has become about speed running. There's not a single relaxing thing to do in the game anymore. And running dungeons? Boy I'd still love to run them for fun and teach people but LFG is absolutely dead. No new players (or even long time players that never dove into them) is gonna spend money on them NOW when it's $20 for outdated loot.
So of course there's a half assed solution. Bring 3 measly encounters into the portal with same loot as other pinnacle shit. Why would you do that when RotN just happened and is a perfect template for dungeons in the new system?
It is all just such a huge waste of content it's mental to me anyone can defend this. It's not just that it isolates you from so much other content, but once stuff is added to the portal the modifiers and timers make it all feel so homogeneous and samey. It doesn't feel like you're running different activities anymore it just feels like some take longer and some are shorter. It is devoid of any creativity.
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u/Lyrcmck_ 1d ago
This comment deserves all the upvotes because it basically points out every flaw with something like the Portal and now the rest of the game in general
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u/Grogonfire 1d ago
lord it's good to see someone who really gets it lol, also had the same exact experience with my gf in the coil lmao.
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u/JMR027 1d ago
Sorry but your second paragraph just sums up everyone’s awful argument… All that shit was running the same content for new shit and materials. You would grind the same GM, which ever was the quickest, over and over again, but this is the system to complain about lol.
Now you can run way more shit for pinnacles, they are improving the raid drops to make it better as well.
Also sorry but 2 expansion a year the size of edge of fate is actually pretty good imo
One last thing. Grinding pinnacles for fucking what lol? They didn’t even matter before. I enjoy the new system of grinding for higher tiers way more then before
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u/LegitimaDfs 1d ago
Also sorry but 2 expansion a year the size of edge of fate is actually pretty good imo
Oh yeah, many things to do in game related to the expansion. * checks notes * Campaign, a single activity and a raid (no one is caring to run) Yeah, top-tier expansion, directly from Neomuna
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u/order_of_the_beard 1d ago
The old way at least made it feel like a game. Fly your spaceship around to different worlds, run to the mission starts, pew pew some enemies along the way, do some quests - it felt interactive and engaging.
Now it's like a really confused Netflix that has only the lame holiday special episodes from your favourite shows.
I started playing in maybe April or May, midway through Final Shape, and I honestly have no idea who most of the characters other than the Vanguard are who talk to you on these missions. Or why I'm even doing the missions, or what they're related to. It feels very hollow.
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u/Slazerith 1d ago
The portal experience is cool, throwing on random modifiers and playing to play is fun. The portal grind is not, stacking a bunch of negatives to maybe get +1 power in a random slot (usually getting it in the slot you don't need) after an hour of the same thing will always be a blight.
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u/starfihgter 1d ago
The only good part of the portal does not necessitate the portal at all. We could have just had a modifier button on activity launch screens & solo ops as an alternative to the strike playlist in the vanguard node.
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u/Zelwer 1d ago
Just curious, but in what place?
As far as I remember, few people played the strike playlist and I don't believe that most players just farmed dungeons. I know that nightfalls were popular. Farmed the same nightfall over and over again.
The portal is certainly not perfect, but at least it refshares old content (who even played Empire Hunt last time?) If you don't optimize everything like a goblin, then you can farm a pretty decent list of activities
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u/Grogonfire 1d ago
I just prefer the director and the pinnacle system we already had personally. It needed work sure but not nearly as much as The Portal currently does imo. Mods and grading have not added to my joy from the game at all.
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u/Zelwer 1d ago
I appreciate an honest answer, even if our opinions differ in some ways.
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u/Grogonfire 1d ago
I'm hoping at least the Reclaim activity is close to Nether-level good, not having a true new activity certainly wasn't helping my opinion. I know DTG is full of hyperbole and 10 IQ takes often but I think there's genuine truth to the frustration this time around. Hopefully it gets sorted out but I understand the lack of faith in Bungie rn.
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u/Zelwer 1d ago
All we know is that it's a new "type" of activity (which is REDACTED) and it has resource management. It also comes with a new event (New Territories, which Bungie hasn't even talked about yet). And it has "missions", so I suspect it's something like strikes, but yeah, I hope it's good.
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u/JMR027 1d ago
Exactly lol. People preferring the old system just clearly don’t want to use their brain. If anything we have more variety in the portal.
You would grind the seasonal activity and old content like gms, for material, gear, and pinnacles lol. But yea the system where at least we have more variety is worse…
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u/ripshitonrumham Brot Boy 22h ago
With some tweaks, the portal could be a very welcome addition to the game but they had to half ass implement it lol. I’m sure it’ll be good eventually but we shouldn’t have to keep waiting for systems to get good time and time again
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u/Blaike325 1d ago
Unless they drop way more loot than other pinnacles I just won’t be doing them, what’s the point? The same loot for more mechanically complex encounters that for consistent clears I need a fireteam to do? Yeah nah
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u/HotMachine9 1d ago
They have 3 dungeons, with 3 unique difficulties, with banes already in them and loot that is almost the equivalent of the tier system from ROTN
And yet, we get Dungeon Lairs for 3 different dungeons, 1 encounter from each, with no new rewards.
It makes no sense
- well actually it does. Can't be giving the players free to play content in the portal when we still have a needless pay wall on the dungeons
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u/Narfwak sunshot is funshot 1d ago
It makes about as much sense as Warlord's Ruin weapons not being enhanced when TFS came out despite being more recent than a lot of things that were.
Which is to say it doesn't make a ton of sense but it follows a pattern of immediately neglecting the dungeons that just released.
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u/A_Hideous_Beast 1d ago
In a perfect world, all old dungeons would of had their armor and weapons all refreshed into the new system, with armor getting passive perks.
But I don't expect that to happen. Especially with new dungeons coming.
Dungeon lairs is what I expected ngl. But I wish they brought at least two weapons back from each encounter.
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u/RGPISGOOD 1d ago
It feels like Bungie downsized internally from a 200+ team to 10 people working there.
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u/Ifuqaround 1d ago
10 managers in USA based offices, 10 interns with LLM's actually working on the game overseas.
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u/Necrolance Warlock main for life 1d ago
Not to mention they're bringing in the old loot without updates, especially with pit of heresy... Who tf wants to use pit of heresy guns in today's sandbox?
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u/ZavalasBaldHead Gambit Classic // Baldy OG 1d ago
This game will stop dying if Bungie gives players what they want. Listen to your playerbase for once FFS
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u/Riablo01 1d ago
It's another example of Bungie's really bad project management. All the time/effort put into Explorer dungeons only to be replaced with Dungeon lairs.
They need to stop reinventing the wheel. The wheel is perfectly fine. It doesn't need to be replaced.
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u/Disastrous-Double484 1d ago
Explorer dungeons with weapons and armor integrated into the new system is all we needed. But we got this lair garbage instead. What a joke 😂
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u/Fleshfeast 1d ago
None of the explorer mode dungeons were new to me, but I was soloing them in explorer mode just because I enjoy them. I enjoy the dungeons, and want to just experience them in a casual setting at my own pace. Lessened rewards is fine too. (Though I wish I could’ve farmed my missing armor pieces in explore mode.)
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u/xDidddle 1d ago
It's a fine addition IF updated dungeons were also included in that.
Portal version of the encounters for people to try out, and then the dungeon itself to get the actual good loot.
Unfortunately, that last part just wasn't in the equation for some reason??? I really don't get the vision here. If there is even one.
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u/GavinatorTheGr8 1d ago
I just dont get why they didn't just add a RaD opps, litterly just slap tiers onto the weapons and armor and make some armor set bonuses. That is what would have made me so happy. Not choping up content into more bite-sized sections with pinicle opps loot. that's so lame.
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u/Grogonfire 1d ago
Portal is free-to-play only. So not sure what the plan is, if there even is one.
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u/404-User-Not-Found_ 1d ago
not sure what the plan is
https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/raids_and_dungeons
- Every year will kick off with a brand new raid, as part of the first Expansion.
- The following Major Update will then expand on this raid, adding new challenge, twists, and rewards.
- The second Expansion each year will deliver a new dungeon, with an expanded reward offering.
- The fourth and final Major Update of the year will launch an Event that leverages legacy raid and dungeon content along the lines of The Pantheon.
Dungeon lairs is what the portal gets for dungeons.
No mention of full dungeons and raids being updated with the new system. Doubt it since that would take development resources and time from new stuff.
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u/Grogonfire 1d ago
Rereading this after like a year I’m realizing they aren’t updating the old RaD content/loot so it can be temporarily updated or “leveraged” for the pantheon-clone event….god dammit Bungie.
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u/MitchumBrother 1d ago
They've been misleading as usual.
https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/article/theportal
Pinnacle Ops: Three-player activities featuring some more challenging content, including Dungeons, Exotic missions, and full-length Onslaughts. Pinnacle Ops have an exclusive reward pool to claim, but success is not guaranteed.
But then later in the same article...
Will Raids and Dungeons be in the Portal?
Dungeon content will be featured in the Pinnacle Ops Category, with some alterations to support Challenge Customization and Reward Rating.
No mention of "Dungeon Lairs" back then for obvious marketing reasons.
Looking forward to the reveal tomorrow lol. Gamer dads and content creators gonna drown in their own drool while whipping their wallets out for all the totally just inspired by Star Wars licensed Star Wars merch.
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u/r0flwaffles 1d ago
They only put dungeon lairs in to shut up the community, they don’t actually want to give this to us which is why it’s so half assed
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u/Diddizz 1d ago
I think they're just so out of touch with their entire playerbase tbh. I get that they now implemented an entirely new system (the portal) which in theory might've been a good thing, but in reality it's just poorly made/designed with how little there is from the start and no, idc if they add all that stuff later, it should already be there to some degree...i think they just executed everything so poorly and the fact that they now have to re-model (idk? Im no game developer) all of the already existing guns and armor including all of the new stuff they're adding to the game to have the new tier system which obviously takes time but that should've been done before they even introduced this new system.
And the fact now that they once again (as per usual lol) dripfeed us content but this time they made it a whole lot worse considering in this cenario we already had these massive dungeons and now we're getting small portions of them until they can give us the entire dungeon when they have the ability to re-do all the old gear/weapons from old content and turn it into what now is tierd loot.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk lol 🐤
Ps. I dont hate the game whatsoever, i've played it since the D1 beta but this is by far the most greedy stuff ever and i just hope they realize that they are just going to keep losing their playerbase if they keep this up and it's just sad to see. This game is truly special in some weird way.
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u/Alakazarm election controller 1d ago
i think the actual problem here is conflating "addition to the portal" with "addition to the game"
people see this and think it's about modernizing dungeons or bringing them up to speed or whatever. it isn't; it's about bringing more variety to the portal.
whether you like that angle or not, the portal is not and should not be the entire game. what bungie needs to do to fix the game rn is not to make the portal more interesting; the portal is fine. they need to add tiered loot to content that doesn't have it. (not because the distinction actually matters, fwiw, but because they've let the five-diamonds genie out of the bottle, players expectations for "usable guns" have changed.)
its possible this would have changed in renegades when players were deciding between old t5 gear and new t2 gear. no longer, i guess.
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u/starrmanquik 1d ago
I’m fairly certain at this point they just don’t have enough of a workforce to do anything meaningful, quickly. The game is slowly (well quickly actually) becoming a heavily monetised FTP game almost entirely, and not a profitable one at that so we don’t seem to see the benefits.
I’m really trying to use Borderlands 4 as a scapegoat because I am addicted to D2 but it’s no longer a good game.
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u/TheAwesomeMan123 Gambit Prime // There can only be one! 1d ago
The game is getting mobile-ification and you’ll like it one way or the other. If it takes longer than 30mins then you won’t be playing it. We need to condense and regurgitate content down till it can be done on your toilet break or lunch. We need you logging in daily to complete your weeklies but only if it’s less than 15-30mins. This is the new destiny, where shallow content meets bare minimum effort.
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u/JaylisJayP 1d ago
I dont in amy way see the point in running these if theyre not going to drop the dungeon specific weapons as "new" gear. Or did I miss something and they will?
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u/SwervoT3k 1d ago
They are actively trying to sabotage the game. Not the devs, the company and it’s not to end the game. It’s to make money. And anyone who doubts that can check in next year when one of two things happen:
They get what they want which is new agreement from Sony to pay out current contracts and get rid of a failing company
Or much less likely,
Sony burns money like fools and brings on new staff to prop Bungie up for another year.
In both instances, Bungie management doesn’t have to do ANYTHING but keep making the game a mess through seeming incompetence.
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u/Electrical-Pitch-297 1d ago
There’s no vision behind Destiny, and there hasn’t been for a while. Joe Blackburn was close at some points.
The people in leadership positions at Bungie are all probably relatively new to the role due to the constant turnover and layoffs. The effect is tonal inconsistency and scaled back ambition.
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u/East-Dog2979 1d ago
i remember hearing that internally a lot of content takes literal hours to load into their various dev tools, and i wonder if cutting things up into smaller pieces across the whole game is somehow helping with that. i would wonder these things if i wanted to shill for bungie to fit in around the destiny 2 subs, but its painfully clear to me that the game is over and i should unsubscribe from these subs lmao
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u/HatredInfinite 1d ago
I just want farmable Vesper so I can buckle in and finally get my damn Icebreaker 😭
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u/JakeSteeleIII Just the tip 1d ago
I don’t think Bungie wants new players, so explorer mode had to go.
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u/Real-Humans-Bot 1d ago
ROTN and the dungeon lairs are free, the point is to try and get people to want to purchase dungeon keys to buy them. They’re essentially in game ads
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u/Pokemonzu Drifter's Crew 1d ago
And they won't even have the dungeon loot, just more pinnacle ops stuff, so what's even the point lol
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u/MintyFitOnAll 1d ago
We REALLY need to stop catering to old gen consoles. I think it’s holding the game back. Or bungie higher ups really are just this incompetent. The game has nothing to do. Adding this crap to the portal is not going to boost numbers. People are fed up with everything it’s bad.
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u/Squatting-Turtle Praise the Sun 1d ago
They still aren't relevent because bungie is trying to drip feed us the new tier system.
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u/odine1980 1d ago
Didn’t update loot to the new tiering system. They should of just set everything in the portal to drop current season gear or whatever u wanna call it instead of sunsetting everything on us again which at this point im almost ready to test if they keep legally doing this to customers!!!
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u/ggamebird 1d ago
I think it's absurd that all that the creation of Dungeon Lairs achieves is too pull resources away from actually porting the dungeons to the portal. Like dang, just update the loot so it's not capped at 200, and put a shortcut to it in the portal.
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u/Cassp0nk 1d ago
They've changed the game into a shopping list.
The enshitification continues. It has become a solo game with no sense of place.
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u/Ausschluss 1d ago
Taking away your chess game and giving you one piece back at a time, hyping it up like crazy.
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u/Slyder768 1d ago
The most logical answer would be that 3/4 of bungie are trying to save Marathon leaving Destiny with a reduced crew so limited ressources and lack of time
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u/thestillwind 1d ago
It's so trash. We had Pantheon that was great but was removed (why?) and Rite of the Nine that was a good evolution for dungeon and nothing is playable anymore. Why waste all this work for nothing ? Ah, Bungie way or no way.
Let them tank boys, let them tank.
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u/BBFA2020 11h ago
Raid and Dungeon loot should be evergreen with tiers too.
But of course, it is "too much work".
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u/Zombie_X 5h ago
What's crazy is you can still buy the dungeon keys and get outdated rewards... Give them out for free already Bungie.
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u/Quantumriot7 1d ago
Think theres a big difference between event and permanent addition especially when considering case of not invalidating purchase, lairs are meant to be a core game ftp option, do think something akin to the rotator with guaranteed primes/ farmable exotic should come back as well as explore/ eternity changes in style if epic raids/dungeon but lairs and explorer aren't trying to solve same issues is the main point
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u/Thejax_ Rarer then legendarys 2d ago
I kinda feel easier difficulty “might” have explorer mode systems.
Might
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u/Grogonfire 1d ago
"Wow that single encounter of Pit of Heresy was great! I will now purchase the $20 Shadowkeep Pack to access the full experience and acquire the Premonition Pulse Rifle!" - not a single soul.
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u/NegativeCreeq 1d ago
People liked the raid Gauntlet. Bungie adds a way to play Dungeon encounters without the Traversal.
People hate it
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u/RobMFurious Drifter's Crew // Trust. 1d ago
The funniest part to me is they are SELLING these dungeons with gear that drops from it that is useless.