Hive guardians were such an interesting combat challenge in the legendary campaign that it makes me sad that stasis fallen weren't a very big factor in the beyond light campaign
i agree with this, they ha dthe ability to weild stasis, but it went no where with it and only 1 easy to beat boss got to use it mainly. like could have been more...
This dude. I was as excited as us using stasis, for fallen also having stasis and having the same tools as us. But all it ended up being was 1 extra moves for a campaign boss and didn’t even show stasis AT ALL in the raid.
Yeah I feel as if Bungie could actually reconfigure the Fallen TO act like the Lucent Brood in a future season or something. The assets are already built in. Just gotta apply those assets to different species classes Or so my backseat, armchair developer brain says!
The Legendary Campaign was a breath of fresh air from the difficulty everywhere else being 5 champions huddled in a room that require you to play weapons you probably don’t want to use without getting a seizure
It really surprised me that they didn't staple any champions onto legendary campaign considering it's what they do with literally everything else in the entire game.
Yeah definitely. Honestly, they need to just get rid of the Anti-Barrier/Unstoppable etc mods for weapon types. Just flat out implement that on the guns themselves. HC's deal with Unstops always. Autos, Subs, Scouts deal with barrier always, Everything else deals with overload. This to me would improve the "dealing" with champions a lot, as instead of seasons where you are forced to use junk you don't want to. You can always use what you want and still deal with champs.
@@TheBizzerker kinda bm to give champions in the activity they want us to do before levelling up the artifact for mods. Little did they know the game felt fun when they did it
The Legendary Campaign showed us that difficulty could be achieved without Champions and Match Game. And with elements having a unique identity with 3.0 subclasses it also shows color matching for added difficulty isn't needed anymore. Both these things just restrict player agency and are going against the current design philosophy. I agree things need to change in this department.
I never thought of it, but you're right. With elememts having their own identity, I suppose match game isn't as necessary. It would be a shame to see the shield mechanic scrapped completely.
Against the current design philosophy 🤣 you mean like the elemental well mod builds they are pushing? Which require you to not only create a well the same energy type as the gun you’re using but also use that subclass for mods like font of might to even work at all!
@@epicgamerzfail4575 To be fair that wouldn't need to scrap shields entirely just Match Game. Where color matching is required to break them or waste tons of ammo trying. But knowing game development there probably is more to it than just that. Some unforeseen consequence.
The difficulty scaling between 1 and 3 players was also really good in the legend campaign, going solo did not feel more difficult than in trio, which is great for someone that may not always have several friends online.
One thing I found the most exciting about WQ was the legendary campaign difficulty scaling based on fireteam size. I think they should implement this in more activities throughout the game.
I liked it but it scaled pretty aggressively. Honestly running solo seemed easier than running with a buddy. I think with a bit of tuning it could be perfect.
@@biggy9619 I agree with the first 2 points, but the third one is not fair to other players who just like to run solo/dont have a team/dont want to lfg this is the reason why people still want matchmaking for raids/dungeons (although thats a different topic bc i dont think that could work)
I feel like I’ve always just *put up* with Champions. I’ve never really enjoyed fighting them, unlike the Lucent Hive, which are a blast to play against
I agree, I dislike how it forces the usage of certain weapon types, and doesn’t allow for open ended gameplay with weapon choices that I would choose for any given mission..
@@9ballciety that's called "Destiny 1" where the difficulty was high on Nightfalls, Raids without that nonsense. Think the difficulty is probably the time it would take to reprogram the changes now tho
Hive Lightbearers and the Legendary Campaign showed me a game without Champions and I loved it. If we could get Hive Lightbearer-style enemies for each faction I'd be very happy. There's plenty of ways to do it, too. Vex? Full-on Combat Frames. Self-Repairing unless you destroy their head on the floor after they're defeated. Scorn? Worm-Hosts like the Caretaker, give them Hive/Darkness Powers and have you stomp on the Worm before it wriggles back into the Scorn's corpse. Taken? Call them Primevals, only dies to a headshot/melee, and spawns a Taken Rift to the Ascendant Plane that brings in another one if not destroyed. Cabal and Fallen? Give them Darkness Powers if they're aligned with either Disciple Calus or Eramis. Have them reform upon death following an explosion of Vines like Rhulk and Caretaker. Interesting enemies are ones that provide unique combat scenarios like the Hive Lightbearers, not ones that just require the correct mod like Champions.
See, I wouldn't mind seeing more of this style of combat with the ads in the game but I don't want it to be overused. I don't want to get bored of crushing hive ghosts or anything of the same nature
Why does every race need a respawn mechanic? It really didn’t add much to lightbearers gameplay wise. I was never in a position where I couldn’t crush the ghost before a respawn in Legendary campaign.
The whole deal with Scorn is that they're basically reanimated with Dark Ether, isn't it? Why isn't there some kind of Necromancer enemy that will respawn them if you don't kill him?
I've never liked champions since their inception. They only exist to force people to use certain weapons for a season. They don't add to gameplay since they're counterplay is just "use X weapon with Y mod to stop it".
Only time I liked fighting Champions was when we had that one Artifact Mod that causes an explosion every time ya disrupt a Champion. Was nice seeing a buncha enemies in a fairly wide radius just die. Now though... It's REALLY starting to feel like these mods and shit are getting bloated. I gotta worry about my Ability Recharge, Utility, Champ/Artifact mods, AND now along with Orb Generation. Feels like I'm being forced to use even more weapons that I don't want to use and feels like I'm fucking up my build. For example: I got a mod that does Orb generation on weapons that match my subclass, so not only do I also have to equip specific Champ mods to be able deal with Champions in endgame content, I'm limiting my damage types. It's always good to keep a well rounded amount of different elements in certain endgame shit. Hell Bungie even nerfed how much damage a nonmatching weapon's element can do to enemy shields even when not in Match Game. I hate what they did with Orb Generation.
I don't mind champions, what i do mind is the way anti champ mods work. Just let us slap anti champ mods on whatever gun we want, and make the mod cost the limiting factor. If i want to run unstoppable fusions from now until eternity, just let me fucking do that. Champions still require you to be on your toes because they require shields to be broken or being stunned, but just let me do that with whatever weapon i want instead of forcing me to play double primaries because glaives kinda suck
What if they set champions to certain weapon classes rather than specific weapons? Like for example Kinetic, Energy and Power weapons, and you could use any weapon in that slot to beat them.
Champions are fun. Why wouldn’t you want more ways and types of enemies to fight? Bungie shouldn’t limit the types of weapons you use so much. But the concept of having to deal with mechanics to kill an enemy is a good thing.
@@TelicSyndrome The problem is that the entire point of champions is to restrict loadouts. You could "improve" the champion mechanics by opening them up to let players use the weapons they want to use, but at that point the system no longer serves any purpose and should just be removed. As-is, there are a ton of problems with champions that have just never been fixed-stuns not working, not registering when killed, players doing TOO WELL in an encounter causing them to miss champions and lose rewards, etc.-so removing their current reason for existing but still keeping them around would just mean creating issues with no goal in mind.
"Destiny knows what it is." This statement makes me glad to have stuck around so long. After the dumpster fire of Y1 D2, maybe not solely being caused by various identity crises (gameplay, developer, or end goal), but surely having been a major reason behind the struggle.... seeing this franchise settled in to being not just playable, but actually fun.... well, that makes me very happy.
I honestly have a hard time believing I've been around since D1 day 1 and yet here I am even when all my friends left. I think it's cause many of us knew what this game had the potential to be. Bungie has that secret sauce and even as horrible as Beyond Light was when I looked around Europa I said "I want to exist in this universe".... now give me my fucking guns back. lol
At least with champion mods, I think taking them out of the season artifact and just making all forms of champion mods an interchangeable mod slot on all weapons would open up weapon choice and builds so you’re not limited to three weapons when needing to stun in higher end activities. Then replacing the slots where the champion mods used to go in the artifact with something like enhanced champion mods like “when stunning a champion with (insert weapon type here), you deal increased damage with all other weapons for a short time” or something else (idk I don’t make games) would still encourage champion mods with better building capabilities and payoff.
I feel like a big solution to this is to bake anti-champ capabilities into more abilities and exotics. I think match game would be annoying too if there were only 3 void weapons in the game to help you deal with minotaurs. Even something as simple as making pocket singularity unstoppable, smoke bomb overload, and shield throw/bash anti barrier would fix a ton of people's problems with Champs.
Now I can see certain weapon archetypes having champion mods like say rapid is overload, adaptive is anti barrier, and aggressive unstoppable Now we could change up certain weapon classes be different of course like say keeping shotguns be on anti something all around idk throwing ideas into the furnace to see if it burns
Something that struck me while watching this video in response to subbing champions for Lucent Brood where it makes sense - I think it'd be pretty cool if Immaru sent a fireteam of like 6 lightbearers to go against us as in we're the final boss of their strike or something like that where we're on the defensive. Almost like wellspring where we're under attack and we either have to keep falling back after taking out a few waves or we just have to keep defending different locations/rooms or w/e culminating with us fighting 3-6 boss or miniboss level lightbearers. They'd have some more pop to em of course than your rank and file ones we've faced already.
Thank you datto for bringing this stuff up, if you try to say stuff like this as a random guy in a comment section you get dog piled by a bunch of random people seemingly affected by Stockholm syndrome saying you’re asking for too much
What makes sense is just to split the champions by weapon archetype. Kinetic slot-Anti Barrier, Energy- Overload, Heavy- Unstoppable. Any weapon in those respective archetype can stun those specific Champs. That will free up Artifact Mods for new build/buff mods.
That would help the issue of build restrictions, but it would make champions trivial since now you always have a means to counter them. They need a rework imo
You know what would be a great seasonal activity? A horde type mode with ramping up waves. Maybe even make it endless going up to GM nightfall level enemies for the option of a seasonal weapon drop on every wave clear at the highest difficulty. And have it with the "mettle" modifier that the witch queen campaign used, so you could run it solo or up to 6 people and still have a challenge either way. THAT would be a seasonal activity that could rival menagerie!
Warframe does this well. Defense missions throw waves at you and after 5 waves you have the option to take your loot and leave with the mission complete. Experts can stay and push the wave numbers as high as they can for greater rewards. This would work great for a D2 seasonal activity as it would stay accessible but also seriously challenge veterans.
I guess you never played during the haunted forests or the revelry events of old or during Warmind for the main event ya know ESCALATION PROTOCOL aptly named. Let me give you a hint, people didn’t like it, it was overturned and nerfed and janky and wasn’t favored by the playerbase hence the reason it was only around in season 2. The seasonal events were complained about just as much on the forums. Definitely not a good idea. Edit: Bungie also admitted these types of activities cause massive server issues and hence the reason for many problems and changes.
I really think the WQ legendary campaign showed how you can have a fantastic experience without Champions. Hopefully Bungie takes strides in that direction
Champions should have unique abilities/challenges. Instead it's rock paper scissors where we are told what we need to pick if we want to have a chance, instead of letting the players come up with their own ways to overcome the challenge. Defs agree that the wq campaign solved the problem of fun/good difficulty without forcing restrictions on the player. If they want to change seasonal metas, add in fun/punishing modifiers or give seasonal mods that rewards certain gunplay/class play. Or unique mods like how warmind cells use to be. Like they could make and come up with unique game changing mods like that, then bring them back a couple of seasons later .
It's easy to see that you've been around for long enough to know what you're talking about, and you are very-VERY good at these "bird-eyes-views" videos/essays. You hit every nail on the head, every time...all we can do is hope for the best for the future of D2. Thanks for all the great content (P.S. Whish you could clean my vault, I've been between 498 and 500 since before the 30th anniversary ~season~).
I want new mobs to fight. Like more unique and different from the ones we fight now. I've only been playing for about a year total but I feel like I've been fighting the same mobs this whole time no matter where I go. As for crafting, I think they should really take a deeper look into MMORPG's in the fantasy setting. They have a lot of cool stuff they can do that allows players to collect mats to build things. Both for harder content and for when you just wanna turn your brain off and farm mats.
I seen someone talk about a rework to Champs where instead of a mod that stuns them, there’s a certain way you have to shoot them to stop an attack or movement. I think I remember someone saying an overload will teleport around and every time they teleport they regen health. To stop the teleport you have to shoot him in his face then his back like Caretaker. I think that’s a good start. Champs have always felt annoying, mostly because of being forced to use certain weapons each season EDIT: yes, this would obviously be pretty difficult in a master or GM where far range combat is necessary. Why I said it was a good start, not the solution. How about people come up with better ideas instead of just trashing a “good start” one. Solutions people
Ok but how would you stun it solo, I honestly don’t see the problem with the champion mods as it. If I was to make a change though I would have a non-artifact version of the mod that goes into to weapon mod slot that changes it to that kind of stun. Like a unstoppable round mod that you could put into any gun.
@@nikoclesceri2267 then bungie just has to modify it where it can be done solo and have multiple weak spots open on every side and u need to hit a certain amount to stun.
@@nikoclesceri2267 it was just an idea that I saw someone suggest. Again, I said it was a good start, not the solution. The main point being that actual mechanics would be more interesting than just shooting them with a mod so they stun
Thanks for the video! Appreciate your perspective as always, Datto. Regarding the "add innovative content" point, I think this is one case where a comparison to Warframe is worth making. Not in terms of the "Warframe is better/worse" argument which is pointless because of how different the games are, but because Warframe is an example of a long-standing live service game that has regularly shaken up its new content in extremely fundamental ways. E.g. open world content with Plains/Fortuna/Deimos, squad-based space combat with railjack, endgame lich hunting, new meta demands with steel path, etc. I think it's a worthwhile comparison point here, because it shows what the pain points look like on the other end of that spectrum. Returning Destiny vets have complained about it being hard to catch up on Destiny's new systems, but their pain honestly pales in comparison to Warframe where your knowledge of the game's core loop (go into mission solo or with squad, follow mission objective, get loot at the end) is honestly thrown out of the window or a tiny fraction of what you need to know in order to be useful to your squad. It's very easy to feel like your lack of knowledge is an active detriment to your team, even in "early" missions that are supposed to be introducing you to these mechanics. Also, "progression" in a game like Warframe is a lot more difficult to map out as a result. What's considered progression? Getting my vendor levels up in the open world? Making my railjack stronger? Just crafting more weapons and frames? Unlike in Destiny, there's not an easy answer to this question, and not knowing what sort of player progression goal I should be aiming for is the biggest thing I struggle with when returning to Warframe (which I've done at least 3 times now over the years). At least in Destiny, the Number Go Up power/XP grind is a clear goal that players can approach in a variety of ways. "Powerful gear" and "XP++" as a reward is a clear signal to me as a returning player that "I should probably do this activity." The upside to Warframe's more innovation-driven content approach is that, if you take on the burden of learning all the new mission types, there is just that much more variety in activities for you to do which can feel really satisfying. But I think Destiny's approach, where your mechanical knowledge of "shoot alien with gun" is enough to get you back into the game's core grind, helps it avoid a lot of those returning player pitfalls that a more content-diverse game like Warframe struggles with. Thus ends my extensive rambling about live service game design. Hope someone found this interesting, and I will *not* be engaging in any further "Destiny vs. Warframe" discussion in the replies lol
Majority of what you said about wf is lacking content wise, liches suck, the open worlds are more of a wow factor with not that much content, railjacks suck
@@sheluvprada I don't understand how "I don't like these types of content" means "Warframe is lacking content-wise". Maybe Warframe is lacking in terms of content that you, Xeno, personally enjoy. I can only speak to my own experiences, and I had fun grinding out Liches after they put in a few months of updates. I haven't gotten into Railjack because I don't like squad spaceship combat, but that's on me - there is a lot to do in Railjack if you enjoy that sort of thing. And my tens of hours spent doing missions, fishing/mining, gathering collectibles, and leveling up vendor rep in the open worlds would like to disagree with your suggestion that the open worlds have "not that much content". Does that mean this content is objectively good or whatever? No, and I don't care about trying to convince anyone that they are. My point is that the content is in the game for anyone who's willing to invest time into it.
I'm very excited for the future of Destiny, assuming that content is around the level of Witch Queen and Season of the Riven. ESPECIALLY the story telling
Same, it feels like old Bungie storytelling quality again. I was always interested in Destiny's story, but nothing ever stuck with me. Now I'm here for the long haul now
The story telling was excellent but I'd rather have more things to do. Content is very light and bungie uses way too many reused assets in all their expansions. I'm putting destiny down because of this.
I'd like to point out that Season of the Hunt was an attempt to experiment (wasnt matchmade, could be done solo), and it was so boring that I only did it like 4 times after maxing out the lure. I'll take more season of the chosen/risen style seasonal activities if experimenting means the dogwater stuff we got with hunt/worthy
Gah to think the menagerie was the pinnacle of season's is crazy to me and Bungie knows it too, but yet they don't even try to bring something similar.
I think that's why I love raids and dungeons so much bc the champions are at least rarer and not part of every encounter. Gives the chance to use new builds and try things out in content that still feels challenging
champions were interesting in Shadowkeep, and were kinda interesting to see each new champion for different races each season. Are they fun? No, not really at all. I would much rather mechanic based champions, like imagine shooting oracles a certain way to be able to kill a yellow bar Hydra
That would actually be really cool, getting specific mechanics for champion like enemies. Kinda how the lightbearer hive are. Could you imagine fighting against a brig that has specific crit spots that you must hit to break his face and do damage? Or really anything like that .... actual mechanical differences between each ultra enemy would be awesome !
@@Zerba- yea that would be sweet, mini raid esque mechanics for individual enemies !!! Like a taken night that flashes a specific symbol after getting stunned for the first time then when he's almost dead he does a final stand mechanic and shows multiple symbols and you have to shoot the right one to kill him or else he regens health. Something simple like that would drastically improve the day to day endgame experience
I'm a new light and thos video is MORE than what I needed to see/hear.... if they make the changes suggested I see myself sticking w this franchise for a long time. And that solo shredding part at the end is what I finally truly got a taste of this past wk w Iron Banner and I need more of it 😤😤
i would REALLY like to have a game mode that's tower defense, that plays like a tower defense. literally hoards of ads come and attack the city and as the wall takes damage you have to fall back to the tower and then the tower can fall as well (doesnt have to be the tower were in, could be d1 tower) and have the mode be truly limitless, just increasingly difficult with more and more harder and harder enemies. do a different enemy type each week. say you clear 5/10 waves during the hive week and then crota comes out and slaps some people up. limited revive tokens would make this challenging as well as different places on the wall/tower to defend (think first encounter in vow)
Speaking of the D1 tower, I feel like it'd be nice to see shit actually changing in the world by having construction on it be completed. I feel like nothing in the game is actually going anywhere outside of contrived new "story" reasons for planets getting deleted and then nothing much actually being changed. Like, Mars is fucking back in-universe right now but we don't even get to go there.
Moving forward I think we need some sort of invasive combatants in any given activity. For example: The Division 1 & 2 had these unique enemies, called Hunters. They had similar kits to the player, and would randomly 'invade' your mission, stopping mission progress until you killed it. If you wiped, it left, and if you killed it, it'd drop good loot. I think the Lucent Brood would fit perfectly in this role. Imagine you're doing a nightfall, and all the sudden you get a notification that Lucent forces are hunting you. Then, somewhere in the activity, they ambush you and you have to defeat them to continue. A similar system could be used with Stasis wielding Fallen. The fun thing about this was it was rare, and when it happened the fight was incredibly challenging. The Hunters were tanky, hit hard, and had great AI. In fact most of my deaths to hunters were because I stopped paying attention long enough for them to flank me. I think a system similar to this would be really interesting, and perhaps they could be hosts to some extra rare exotics.
Hot take: every exotic should have an intrinsic champion stun type (example ace should be anti barrier when momento mori is active or wardcliff can stop overloads by hitting a direct with at least 3 rockets)
@@MetroidPurples Alot of Exotic Heavies can get weird. Also stunning a champion with a heavy isn't practical anyways due to Ammo. Ops suggestion of this is fantastic. But I think this only fits Primaries and Special. It's a great way of making Primaries even more powerful which is a massive + aswell as giving more freedom with load outs with specials.
Wow. All of this just reminds me why I quit after a week of witch queen. I'm just so tired. Maybe I'll be back in the summer. 🤷♀️ Thanks for the video. It was a good one. 💕
I think that the crafting system is a better use of the champion system. In order to progress it, you just swap to a weapon for a bit, kill stuff for a bit, get the stuff, swap back. It's not restrictive and it encourages constant change up of your loadout
I think the fallacy here is people assuming that encouraging constant change of loadout, solely for the sake of changing your loadout, as being a good thing. I don't want to be encouraged to change my loadout outside of when it would otherwise be appropriate for an encounter. I deliberately farmed for the weapons that I use and enjoy, and those are the weapons that I want to use. That's how I enjoy playing the game, and doing shit like taking away my guns or requiring X, Y, and Z for content isn't going to make me change my gear, it's going to make me stop playing because you're deliberately hindering my enjoyment of the game. This was even one of the stated reasons for Sunsetting btw. Luke Smith said that he had a friend who abolutely loved Breakneck, and that there was no way they were going to get him to stop using it outside of taking it away from him. Taking away the thing his friend loved to make him use something he doesn't was one of the actual, stated goals.
I’ve been doing build videos on my channel and I agree with what you’re saying. It’s always lurked in the back of mind, how a lot of the end game content or harder content is focused around champions, meaning everyone may not be able to use some of these builds in the content they would want to use it. Hopefully bungie is working on some kind of a solution to this.
“There only so many ways to make jump on the plate do stuff with the ball and push the thing interesting.” True but also what else is there for bungie to do. At least they have somewhat mechanics most games don’t.
Maybe, but other games often have difficulty options that Destiny lacks. Your seasonal activity might have more mechanics than a Doom 1 playthrough, but Doom 1 can be cranked up so lots of details matter. Your ammo, your armor, saving powerups for later, enemy spawns, using Rad suits effectively, keys and doors, enemy prioritization, how you should dodge in the next room. In a battlegrounds, I just... mash my way through, and occasionally throw a ball at a thing. Fun the first time, less so the third or fifth.
Very much agree on the build thing. I've made so many fun builds, but I get jaded on builds that need more setup now because all it takes is for one person, be that friend or random, to swoop in with a single grenade or something and clear the entire room. Stuff is so damn easy, or require such specific thing and things just casually one shot you that there doesn't feel like any overly good places to really let build crafting shine.
I’d like to see weapons (all of them) roll with a random intrinsic champion mod. This way you can use whatever you want on top of the seasonal highlights. This would help allow for more build crafting because if let’s say the seasonal weapons are bows, sidearms, pulses, and glaves, you could grab your smg with intrinsic anti barrier rounds and not have to worry about it. By giving players the ability to use legendaries more broadly it allows for more use of exotics and less restraints on players wanting to do endgame content that for whatever reason don’t have certain weapons needed (new/returning players) we already have weapon crafting so this can be added to the crafting set up pretty easily I would assume. Not to mention if someone has a favorite weapon (sorrows verse, or extraordinary rendition) they can still have the option to use that weapon in endgame content without hurting the fire team by not having a champion mod. Keep in mind this is in addition to the seasonal mods. So this gives players the option to change up their weapons are if they have a work hours weapon they love, they can continue to use that.
That’s what I was thinking cause at the moment once you’ve got the god roll thats it every other version of it is dismantled but with a random champion mod attached? That might make you think “I should check what champion perk this full auto scout with vorpal rolls has cause im in need of one with overload”
I've definitely hit a wall as a returning player when it comes to the whole "lock and key" issue. I'll get a sweet new weapon and wanna try it out with some other stuff, but then I realize I'm being gatekept from having the curiosity to try a new weapon while actively leveling and knocking things out. I really feel like, for me personally, if they dropped this tedious mechanic, I'd play a lot more than I have post legendary campaign and some seasonal content. Really glad you spoke up about this because I haven't even been back long and it already kills the vibe of endgame PVE stuff.
I would love the option to turn off matchmaking for Strikes. Sometimes I just want to run through a Strike on my own or with one other friend(that’s not a Legend Nightfall) and complete bounties at my pace and what not. Would be a fantastic QoL improvement.
IMO I think Lucent Hive were so good and fun to play against because they actually had abilities that competed with ours, especially to a degree where they could nearly one tap you in Legendary Campaign. No other enemy really has any abilities whatsoever other than different types of shooting (after 7 years I think we all know each individual enemy types shooting style since they haven't changed). Dregs can throw shock nades, Hydras explode.. only when they die.., Centurion's can propel nades, Wizards create their fog, Chieftans have their lanterns and Ravagers sometimes have their freezing ability (only with stasis). If the majority of them had different and powerful abilities or combos that could compete against ours, I think the game would not only be more fun, but there would be more incentive for us to buildcraft against their individual fighting styles.
Describing Champion activities as “Lock and Key” because they force players to use alternate loadouts is fair enough, but if that system wasn’t in place players would complain about content becoming stale and/or repetitive due to meta loadouts i.e. Recluse/Mountaintop.
which is why he/ we want something that isn’t lock and key, something fresh, like Lightbearing Hive, champions fucking suck because your weapon elements and weapon types have to be specific to deal with champs, Arbelast has been a breathe of fresh air and div will never not be the overload king, bows coming in close second. but being forced to use weapons you dont enjoy, because they fit the ‘lock’ is not fun
@@NobleVI_343 I think you make a good point with Lightbearing Hive. It would be nice to have endgame content without Champions, but I still enjoy the idea of being pushed into using off-meta weapons. I would never have taken a scout rifle into the Master Nightfall if I had a choice, but it was still interesting having to adapt my play style to a new loadout, keeping the game fresh
I personally think AyyItsChevy came up with the best solution for champs talking about it in his stream yesterday. keeping the seasonal champion mods in the artifact, but also making all weapon champion mods we've had permanent unlocks, but slotting them has an increased Energy cost compared to the ones in the artifact for the season. so people can still play with what they want and how they want, but bungie still gets to push the seasonal meta thru the artifact mods
i wanna bring up something people might not think about: ghost of tsushima multiplayer in the higher difficulties the game actually introduce mechanic-based enemies. For example, different shield types of enemies that require you to use the matching enchants in the mission to kill, enemies that continue to heal a wide radius of other enemies unless killed, and linked enemies that revive in full health if they aren’t killed simultaneously or in quick succession. I really want the champions to evolve into something like this, these mechanics not only free up the champion mods, but also give players challenges without limiting their loadouts
god i miss that Taeko-3 strike on Titan. was such an awesome experience listening to a guardian in real time and then hearing there last words and finding that crystal. To this day that was one of Destiny's heaviest strikes and it did so well at not even trying to be heavy the player rarely felt it. One had to stop and think critically about what just happened in that strike. Genius stuff.. would love more of that.
Champions at the moment are high value targets that require you to approach them differently. This element can easily be retained whilst removing champion mods, as others have said. An interesting was to change them that I thought up was that for overload, sustained fire should stun them, no matter from what weapon. This makes Smgs and ars good for quick stuns, but focused fire from a team should also do the job. For unstoppable, a powerful single shot should stun them, eg. glaives, snipers, slug shotties, erianas etc. Barrier champs are a little harder to fix, but a way to do it would be to just dump damage into the shield before damaging the enemy, but this isn’t really any different to normal shielded enemies, but I’m just throwing ideas around anyways.
I definitely think that new exotic ARMOR that gives champion stunning. My mind goes to secant filaments. Great job on that one but others would be nice as well.
I like champions, and how they make you think about the situations you're in and how to counter them. However, I don't like how champions lock you into certain weapons/abilities for months on end. For example Bows. I do not like using bows, and both season 15 and 16 include bows as champion mods; where bows where the only option for overload from weapons in season 15. These restrictions on player load outs locks you out of player agency and that I think where the Lucent Hive differs to champions. You still have to think, you still have to strategize. But they don't lock you into specific load outs to deal with champion mods. Allowing us to unlock all of the artifact is a step in the right direction, but we're still limited in our choices for endgame. These restrictions are what need to change.
Absolutely loved the campaign and the option to run a Legendary version. I love Void 3.0 and like the crafting (to an extent) but the limitations to variety ultimately loses my interest. I am also bored of having to use the same weapons for champions through an entire season. Then there’s the post pinnacle cap bounty farm which I’m tired of.
"I am also bored of having to use the same weapons for champions through an entire season." This is the worst part of the shitty system. People say they like them because it "forces them to use new weapons," but what in practice what it actually does is force you to try a new handful of weapons and then use nothing else for an entire season.
As a "returning" player who really only skipped the majority of last season, what I really find terrible is having all the CWL and Warmind mods that I already had be completely gutted. So now I'm missing a few of the new "good" Well mods, and have essentially lost the use of several dozen of the other combat mods that I already had.
@@NobleVI_343 noble, he means new / returning as in the player who is indeed at endgame (1560+) but didn’t play last season, or maybe the season before that etc. they are locked out of mods because ada is a cunt and needs to become Ada-2
As a primarily solo player I'd love to see more activities to strive for and reasonably tackle week in and week out. I have heard good things about the scaling difficulty per fireteam count in the story quests of witch queen, I would love to see this, if possible applied to things like nightfalls and dungeons. I think there definitely should be some middle ground between "I'm doing a basic activity (campaign mission/lost sector/etc) by myself" and "I'm doing a 3-player activity alone and having to output 3 guardian's worth of damage and deal with 3 guardian's worth of enemy damage/aggro".
I feel like champions could stay if the weapons used against them were broader and maybe stayed that way forever. Let's say like barrier now only breaks to single shot guns, overloaded is stunned by high or consistent fire rate, and unstoppable maybe should just be stunned by hitting weak points. This would allow builds to be broader and stay more consistent each season for weaponry and if they feel the need to they can just switch it around (i.e. barrier fire rate, unstoppable single shot, and overload weak points) to mix it up a little.
Swap weapons for overload and barrier. Overload auto/smg is too unreliable, it was so much better when it was an anti-barrier in season of the splicer.
That's even worse. It'd just be an eternal lockout from ever being able to freely choose your loadout. The ONLY way it gets better is by entirely removing all loadout requirements outside of what's naturally required based on the content and environment, e.g. a longe-range weapon for content with long hallways or wide open encounters, area denial for content with lot's of add waves, etc.
if it was just me, I would make it where you can only have a champ mod on gernade and on one weapon but it can be anything. Unstopable rocket fuck it why not. Overload fusion, sure. Then I would like the cost to to be outrageous like previous seasons, 4 or 5 max.
You nailed it with this video. Hopefully, the devs listen and adjust accordingly. Edit side note, my friend and I, on the weekends play together at my house with 2 xbox series X consoles but have an extremely difficult time getting on the same fire team. We constantly get the cabbage error. Before WQ we didn't have this problem. This needs fixed ASAP before we lose interest and don't invest in D2 further.
The biggest thing we need is the ability to optimise gear stats. With stats numbers being pure RNG, even the high roles, getting that build together hitting the tier levels you want/need is still a game of RNG, and a protracted one at that. Let us have the ability to optimise stats, so we can then hit the tiers we want, so we can truly enjoy build crafting.
I hear you. I completed 54 Legend Lost Sectors (BACK TO BACK) just to get an "OKAY" roll for Verity's Brow. I spent so long doing that Lost Sector I memorised the enemies' fucking breathing patterns!
i don’t mind having some “lock and key” activities because they can be fun especially with the shifting metas thanks to the artefact. but i desperately want to see high level endgame content that is just you vs waves of strong enemies that get more difficult as you progress. no champions. maybe match game would be fine idk but the game desperately needs somewhere that is challenging and allows you to put your builds to the test rather than using them in the strike playlist where it is complete overkill and you have to literally compete against your teammates to get your build flowing
Seeing you describe Champions as a stagnating process really shined a light on how I view the game, it’s a really nice way of putting it that I didn’t think of before. Most of the silly builds I’d like to use in endgame content like GMs or Raids are simply impossible to use because of the mandated requirements or lock-and-key I need to bring in order to succeed, unless the weapons I have in mind magically coincide with the artifact mods. I know these endgame level activities are designed for you to sweat your mind out, but the legendary campaign showed how difficulty in a mission can exist without huddling five champions in a room with match game and allowing players to have flexibility in their builds and solely choosing what can and cannot work. I’m not against the season artifact, I actually really like how Bungie forces a meta switch every few months. Because let’s be real, in late D1, everybody ran primary, ex machina, sleeper (or dark drinker). Forsaken era? Mountaintop, recluse, anarchy. I like being forced to use often underutilized weapons and subclasses to allow some fluidity within metas. We will always have a meta regardless of the artifact allowing other classes or weapons to shine, but forcing players to run specific champion mods can become very restrictive and frustrating in the hardest level of content where players want to try out their new builds with unconventional load outs/weapons in the only places where enemies won’t die in just a few seconds.
WQ Story was 10/10 finished it solo and loved the challenge and the satisfaction of completing it first time in a whole I felt accomplished doing something in destiny besides acquiring conqueror, the hive guardians are a great feature and hope they stay for a long while, champions are hit or miss I get the idea but they are past due in all honesty, I look forward to this season and this year, I’m excited for guardian games and solstice, primarily solstice bc of the 2019 armor returning but Im Ready to see the build up to light fall and final shape and see when and where Xivu will finally make her appearance aswell as Calus
Some great thoughts re build crafting and ongoing limitations. Some thoughts: Completing resonance weapon drops diminishes build in same way, simply by having to equip weapons that don't fit. E.g. an arc auto rifle on your void subclass. I also generally think bounties are a problem in a similar vein and part of that is being limited by xp gains you need to hit on the artifact. Use a sidearm to get more xp or play an ungodly amount of time to reach xp gains for content you are otherwise good enough for.
Something I've been saying for years that would add to the build crafting side of the game is the ability to wear multiple exotics, combine perks on exotics through crafting, or perfect-roll armors like primal ancients in diablo 3. This would add SO MUCH creative freedom to the game. Would obviously need to be limited in some ways for PVP but for the PVE sandbox the possibilities would be endless for builds and tuning could be introduced over time.
What if champion mods changed week on week? That's a simple fix that would allow for a lot of interesting build diversity given each week you have to build around something else? Just a thought
Something that I really hated since the launch of Witch Queen is that Bungie has been pushing us to use Well mods a lot now. They have been bad since its introduction and majority of us are now starting to use it because they nerfed the crap out of CWL and Warmind Cell mods. Well mods encourages matching elements gameplay but the PvE endgame discourages that. It made no sense to me why Bungie was pushing so hard on this narrative. But not only do we have to match elements, the effects of it when we do match, are average at best. Removing Match Game from all activities might eliminate this problem for me since there will be no reason to having to run certain damage types anymore.
I for one would like to see all champion mods available all of the time one of the biggest limiting factors for build-crafting in pve is campion mods for the season. Obviously the permanent ones would have increased cost in terms of mod slots but a lot of weapons just haven't been viable in pve exclusively because of seasonal champion mods
A possible change could be to make Champion armor mods into weapon mods. You could make put Overload, Barrier or Unstop on any weapon. That'd make room for tons of buildcrafting but naturally, the "meta option" will always come up and one loadout will soar far above others
I think the best way forward for champs is to give everyone 3 new weapon mods: barrier spec, overload spec, and unstoppable spec. When you equip the mod on the gun, it is granted the respective anti-champion capability. Then, the artifact can still offer anti-champion mods for gauntlets, but they would still be low cost (1 for primaries, 2-3 for special, 5-6 for power). This way, you are picking between bonus damage (assuming most people normally have minor/major/boss spec on their guns in PvE) or anti-champion ability of your choice. This would protect build-crafting, keep exotics with intrinsic anti-champ relevant, and prevent champs from being so terrible when there is only 1 mod for them and it's trash (looking at you, overload auto/smg), but it wouldn't solve champs altogether. New enemies being the base for champs could be nice too, like barrier shanks or unstoppable wyverns.
7 years and we still can't auto-dismantle blues(a QoL feature that was in the original Destiny). Bungie went out their way to advertise the reduction of blue drops for witch queen and I feel like I can't spend 15 minutes in a patrol zone without accumulating a dozen of them. It's nice not getting blues from playlist drops, but it's far from a solution to a problem they already solved almost a decade ago in the first iteration of the game.
The rareity system in destiny is outdated there are only 2 actual rareities. What bungie needs to do is turn all the existing blues into greens and make them auto dismantle after you hit the soft cap. Then they need to turn some of the seasonal guns and some of the world drops into blues. Theres no reason pointed inquiry or the ogma need to be legendary make the less desirable guns blues so they drop from random activities more and then the legendary pool is smaller so your more likley to get the drops of those guns you want it sounds like a win win. Imagine if snorri fortisimo or funnelweb dropped at the blue rareities rate so these guns with massive perk pools drop way more frequently from any activity no stadia specfic farmin required.
I really want hard mode raids back. Or weekly raids, just to incentivize playing older raids, they're so good and there's so much content just sitting there. Would add coming back each week more rewarding as well
In case you didn’t hear, Bungie stated this in the last TWAB: “Speaking of raids, tune in next Thursday for some fun news concerning an upcoming rotator of sorts in Season 17.” Maybe they are planning on rotating raids or something which I too think would be great.
I left for the majority of 2021 after burning myself out S1 of Beyond Light. Very happy to what I came back to. 3.0 is amazing. Transmog is an underrated feature STILL. I spend hours crafting cool looks. Good stuff for me who doesn't play a lot, but enough.
For me a true innovation will be an in-game loadout system and a player queue that takes into account player loadouts similar to other MMOs do with classes as a way of pairing players together based on their kits (heck, even a pre-activity lobby that lets players check what they're missing before launching in), that way these end game activities can actually explain to a player what they'll need to start doing more than just letting a player run into a champion they may not even have the mod for, or let a player know they might not have a survivability mod in a strike that has an arena type setting where that would be useful. That way an activity could rotate different enemy types in more regularly to freshen up even the most basic of activities like they used to. That and the dream of a proper story archive that brings back old campaigns in a 'Best of-' series of playable and story cutscene highlights in the legends tab, because as far as I'm concerned, almost every seasonal activity could have been repurposed as a strike in some way following their vaulting. Yeah, the champion system is kind of dull now between Hydras, Brigs and Lucent Hive (and heck even Rhulk) providing a type of enemy that while not particularly complex, requires more attention from the player or they'll get roughed up. I vastly prefer them to bake the champion mods into modifiers for the activity itself rather than making them mods, and rotating them out more regularly that way. Though the dream would be to make champion stunnable outside the mods through certain actions like Gahlran's raising of his hands or the Insurrection Prime's shield nodes, with the champion mods working more like the anti-barrier one, providing a more blanket benefit such as with scorn and vex shields but not being required.
I've been saying pretty much since they were added that Champions and automatic Matchgame were terrible for the game. Instead of looking at all your options and trying to cleverly put together a loadout based on various encounters in an activity, you're just given a list of things that you have to bring to win. It's like playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, but you're told ahead of time what the other guy is going to pick. One of the most common arguments that I see in favor of Champions is "they keep loadouts from stagnating/make me try new things that I wouldn't otherwise," but I don't think that really holds up. For one thing, those things are always options to use otherwise. For another, while they might make you try new weapons to use for that particular season, once you have for the season that's pretty much it. You pick a handful of guns to match each Champion configuration and then that's it, you're pretty much locked to those weapons for that season. In terms of innovation/buildcrafting I'd say that for one thing, no, the new Aspect/Fragment system is NOT innovative. They're adding more class customization to classes, but we already had that in D1 and it was entirely removed when we moved to D2. Trying to get back to where we were isn't innovating. They've just reinvented the wheel in terms of class customization, and some of the side effects are that A) they've removed some things we used to be able to do that were core elements of previous subclass clusters, and B) flattened out a lot of the difference between subclasses by giving everybody the same fragments, which really kills the feeling of classes being unique. Finally, I'd argue that buildcrafting is in a worse place than it was just a couple of seasons ago. Revamping void added some "new" options for void subclasses, but at the same time removed some old ones that were core to those subclasses. CWL and Warmind Cell mods have also been gutted with a machete in terms of nerfing cells, increasing cell mod costs, nerfing protective light, completely removing orb generation from MW weapons, cranking up the cost of Scavenger mods, and probably more that I'm forgetting. As a result I've personally gone from really looing at various mod options, looking at their potential, and slotting them all together in a way that I think will be most effective; to just slapping on finder and scavenger and then whatever is cheapest and least intrusive for Combat mods. No more extensive CWL-reliant builds, no more crazy intricate Warmind Cell builds, just shit like "get +20 Str" and "spawn wells sometimes".
This is one of those things I've been harping on Destiny for for the last couple years. Additions are nice, but ultimately the best way to prevent fatigue like this is more mechanics, especially ones that don't just require you to stand on a plate or shoot something.
Something they can try to do to alleviate some of the Champion pain is to have “Primary Anti-Barrier” “Special Overload” “Unstoppable Heavy” one season and then swap them to be “Anti-Barrier special” “Overload and Unstoppable Primary” etc… I know stuff like special overload wouldn’t really work but who knows
13:32 Unless you're Ehoar or Esoterikk who A: Can always get into a solo strike queue or B: Can do the 6 player activity/endgame 3 player activity yourself.
We've made it to a point where (at least pve anyway) where content isn't a problem it's the gameplay loop of light level and champions. Things need to change for sure because the WQ is such a great expansion it shouldn't just be "more destiny"
The only PvE change I really want right now is the option to run the strike playlist without matchmaking. I don't want to have to run legend nightfalls, be forced to used an optimized build for it, just so I can play some strikes I enjoy.
We need enemies which incentivize build crafting. Marcostyle made a video with a great point about how enemies either fold like paper or literally don't die. Rather than champions needing specific weapons to stun them they needed specific status effects like needing to weaken an Overload, blind an unstoppable repeatedly, or deal AoE damage to Barrier (spitballing here). While were at it while it'd be nice to get a new enemy for each faction that required a little more than shooting it to kill it, I think there just needs to be more majors around or higher enemy health in general so that it's actually hard to kill groups of enemies with a boss dps build so that other builds start to become needed.
I love the concept of champions and having to stun them, but like you’re saying, it’s too tedious and restrictive to make a build simply based off of said champions. I would love to run around end game content with a gl in every slot, not because they’re super strong, but because it’s fun to just mess around and try different things within the game. There are so many different ways you can make your builds but we are being restricted to certain weapons which gets very boring by the end of the season. Something else to consider is replacing champions with something more similar to lucent hive for their respective enemy type, I’d like that just as much if not better than revamping champions.
I feel like a way they could improve the champion fatigue is to incorporate champion mods into build crafting. I remember back in season 13 or 14 we had a seasonal mod where destroying a warmind cell would stun overload and unstoppable champions. I think the trick here is to give us options to defeat champions without it being tied to specific weapons each season. The seasonal champion weapons should be a backup option, not the primary method of taking out specific champions. Interesting mods I can think of off the top of my head could be; picking up a matching elemental well gives you anti-champion damage for a brief time, the warmind cell one from a couple seasons ago, maybe something like radiant light where casting your super gives nearby allies champion stunning abilities(this is coming from an Ursa Titan main). Just something like these would allow us to focus on buildcrafting in endgame content without having to waste development time of redesigning endgame activities to not have champions at all.
Another big issue with buildcrafting for many players is that the mods are gated behind timegated RNG (ADA-1) with no bad luck protection. It's nearly impossible to start experimenting for newer players due to that
I'd enjoy if bungie gave us the option to Run the "Vanguard Playlist" Solo. Imagine going into the strike playlist and being able to test your new "Make Everything Explode because Void" build without having to worry about others taking your kills and losing any buffs you've built up and being able to test what YOU can do. Also doing the Legendary Campaign Solo is an Experience I would advise everyone tries, a real breath of fresh air and a true challenge but the way it scales with Fireteam means it's equally a challenge as a 2 or 3. Bungie just need to keep up the good work, Witch Queen is awesome so far.
Being able to run Vanguard stuff solo would be great, at least 6 out of 10 games i join are usually half done or everyone else is nuking everything and end up just running through the map after everyone
I think a lot of the problems you speak about in the game could be resolved with a horde mode. Locked equipment, and different modifiers active each wave. You can spend a mode currency to activate red jacks, rebuild walls, set traps or to increase your power within the mode to stay effective for longer. Any currency leftover upon either ‘completion’ or failure is stored in a kiosk that allows you to upgrade the levels you can increase your defensive or offensive capabilities in the mode specifically. Allows for build potential to be seen from top to bottom in one activity, with rewards scaling to your progression tiered at five round increments. They could literally copy and paste Gears of War 3s horde mode and it’s mechanics and I think Bungie would have an incredible base form for a game mode we’d all love to see implemented.
In regards to champions I saw an idea a while ago. The idea was that the anti-unstoppable/barrier/overload should be moved to high-caliber/ armor piercing/ ricochet rounds respectively. Would be an amazing change in my mind
To fix champion specific weapons could adding an equip able spec unlockable by masterworking said weapon which allows you to add it on at the cost of master working
Hive guardians were such an interesting combat challenge in the legendary campaign that it makes me sad that stasis fallen weren't a very big factor in the beyond light campaign
i agree with this, they ha dthe ability to weild stasis, but it went no where with it and only 1 easy to beat boss got to use it mainly. like could have been more...
This dude. I was as excited as us using stasis, for fallen also having stasis and having the same tools as us. But all it ended up being was 1 extra moves for a campaign boss and didn’t even show stasis AT ALL in the raid.
Yeah I feel as if Bungie could actually reconfigure the Fallen TO act like the Lucent Brood in a future season or something. The assets are already built in. Just gotta apply those assets to different species classes
Or so my backseat, armchair developer brain says!
they underutilised hive guardians too, not a single one in the raid??????????
@@luckiex makes sense considering its inside a Darkness Pyramid
The Legendary Campaign was a breath of fresh air from the difficulty everywhere else being 5 champions huddled in a room that require you to play weapons you probably don’t want to use without getting a seizure
Light hive are so perfect for the role too. But we cant just give every race a respawn mechanic.. cant we?
It really surprised me that they didn't staple any champions onto legendary campaign considering it's what they do with literally everything else in the entire game.
@@TheBizzerker same, I did a prep for wq just in case the legend campaign had any champions in it. Liteally caught me offguard day one
Yeah definitely. Honestly, they need to just get rid of the Anti-Barrier/Unstoppable etc mods for weapon types. Just flat out implement that on the guns themselves. HC's deal with Unstops always. Autos, Subs, Scouts deal with barrier always, Everything else deals with overload. This to me would improve the "dealing" with champions a lot, as instead of seasons where you are forced to use junk you don't want to. You can always use what you want and still deal with champs.
@@TheBizzerker kinda bm to give champions in the activity they want us to do before levelling up the artifact for mods. Little did they know the game felt fun when they did it
The Legendary Campaign showed us that difficulty could be achieved without Champions and Match Game. And with elements having a unique identity with 3.0 subclasses it also shows color matching for added difficulty isn't needed anymore. Both these things just restrict player agency and are going against the current design philosophy. I agree things need to change in this department.
I never thought of it, but you're right. With elememts having their own identity, I suppose match game isn't as necessary. It would be a shame to see the shield mechanic scrapped completely.
God I hope champions get vaulted...
Against the current design philosophy 🤣 you mean like the elemental well mod builds they are pushing? Which require you to not only create a well the same energy type as the gun you’re using but also use that subclass for mods like font of might to even work at all!
@@epicgamerzfail4575 To be fair that wouldn't need to scrap shields entirely just Match Game. Where color matching is required to break them or waste tons of ammo trying. But knowing game development there probably is more to it than just that. Some unforeseen consequence.
The difficulty scaling between 1 and 3 players was also really good in the legend campaign, going solo did not feel more difficult than in trio, which is great for someone that may not always have several friends online.
One thing I found the most exciting about WQ was the legendary campaign difficulty scaling based on fireteam size. I think they should implement this in more activities throughout the game.
I liked it but it scaled pretty aggressively. Honestly running solo seemed easier than running with a buddy. I think with a bit of tuning it could be perfect.
What are you talking about it was terrible! Every enemy just took far too long to kill. It wasn’t challenging it was just tedious and boring
@@jerryballstein
I think it should be like this:
More players = harder content = more/better loot
But it doesn't have to apply to every activity
Specifically, Lost Sectors! They could make exotics drop all the time, and just increase the scaling so it’s not piss easy with a fireteam
@@biggy9619 I agree with the first 2 points, but the third one is not fair to other players who just like to run solo/dont have a team/dont want to lfg
this is the reason why people still want matchmaking for raids/dungeons (although thats a different topic bc i dont think that could work)
I feel like I’ve always just *put up* with Champions. I’ve never really enjoyed fighting them, unlike the Lucent Hive, which are a blast to play against
I agree, I dislike how it forces the usage of certain weapon types, and doesn’t allow for open ended gameplay with weapon choices that I would choose for any given mission..
I never put up with champions, props to you for doing so lol.
i love flying in, blowing them up and smushing the ghost, but i bet that'd be challenging enough to accomplish in high end content
Never heard anyone say they enjoy champions
@@9ballciety that's called "Destiny 1" where the difficulty was high on Nightfalls, Raids without that nonsense. Think the difficulty is probably the time it would take to reprogram the changes now tho
Hive Lightbearers and the Legendary Campaign showed me a game without Champions and I loved it. If we could get Hive Lightbearer-style enemies for each faction I'd be very happy. There's plenty of ways to do it, too.
Vex? Full-on Combat Frames. Self-Repairing unless you destroy their head on the floor after they're defeated.
Scorn? Worm-Hosts like the Caretaker, give them Hive/Darkness Powers and have you stomp on the Worm before it wriggles back into the Scorn's corpse.
Taken? Call them Primevals, only dies to a headshot/melee, and spawns a Taken Rift to the Ascendant Plane that brings in another one if not destroyed.
Cabal and Fallen? Give them Darkness Powers if they're aligned with either Disciple Calus or Eramis. Have them reform upon death following an explosion of Vines like Rhulk and Caretaker.
Interesting enemies are ones that provide unique combat scenarios like the Hive Lightbearers, not ones that just require the correct mod like Champions.
See, I wouldn't mind seeing more of this style of combat with the ads in the game but I don't want it to be overused. I don't want to get bored of crushing hive ghosts or anything of the same nature
These are fantastic ideas, I'd love to see something like this!
Why does every race need a respawn mechanic? It really didn’t add much to lightbearers gameplay wise. I was never in a position where I couldn’t crush the ghost before a respawn in Legendary campaign.
No more respawn mechanics though. Something new.
The whole deal with Scorn is that they're basically reanimated with Dark Ether, isn't it? Why isn't there some kind of Necromancer enemy that will respawn them if you don't kill him?
I've never liked champions since their inception. They only exist to force people to use certain weapons for a season. They don't add to gameplay since they're counterplay is just "use X weapon with Y mod to stop it".
Only time I liked fighting Champions was when we had that one Artifact Mod that causes an explosion every time ya disrupt a Champion. Was nice seeing a buncha enemies in a fairly wide radius just die.
Now though... It's REALLY starting to feel like these mods and shit are getting bloated. I gotta worry about my Ability Recharge, Utility, Champ/Artifact mods, AND now along with Orb Generation.
Feels like I'm being forced to use even more weapons that I don't want to use and feels like I'm fucking up my build.
For example: I got a mod that does Orb generation on weapons that match my subclass, so not only do I also have to equip specific Champ mods to be able deal with Champions in endgame content, I'm limiting my damage types. It's always good to keep a well rounded amount of different elements in certain endgame shit. Hell Bungie even nerfed how much damage a nonmatching weapon's element can do to enemy shields even when not in Match Game. I hate what they did with Orb Generation.
I don't mind champions, what i do mind is the way anti champ mods work. Just let us slap anti champ mods on whatever gun we want, and make the mod cost the limiting factor. If i want to run unstoppable fusions from now until eternity, just let me fucking do that. Champions still require you to be on your toes because they require shields to be broken or being stunned, but just let me do that with whatever weapon i want instead of forcing me to play double primaries because glaives kinda suck
What if they set champions to certain weapon classes rather than specific weapons? Like for example Kinetic, Energy and Power weapons, and you could use any weapon in that slot to beat them.
Champions are fun. Why wouldn’t you want more ways and types of enemies to fight? Bungie shouldn’t limit the types of weapons you use so much. But the concept of having to deal with mechanics to kill an enemy is a good thing.
@@TelicSyndrome The problem is that the entire point of champions is to restrict loadouts. You could "improve" the champion mechanics by opening them up to let players use the weapons they want to use, but at that point the system no longer serves any purpose and should just be removed. As-is, there are a ton of problems with champions that have just never been fixed-stuns not working, not registering when killed, players doing TOO WELL in an encounter causing them to miss champions and lose rewards, etc.-so removing their current reason for existing but still keeping them around would just mean creating issues with no goal in mind.
"Destiny knows what it is." This statement makes me glad to have stuck around so long. After the dumpster fire of Y1 D2, maybe not solely being caused by various identity crises (gameplay, developer, or end goal), but surely having been a major reason behind the struggle.... seeing this franchise settled in to being not just playable, but actually fun.... well, that makes me very happy.
I actually enjoyed yr1 more than several seasons over the past couple years. not all, but definetly some.
@@douglaspianta4187 same
We made it am I right
I honestly have a hard time believing I've been around since D1 day 1 and yet here I am even when all my friends left. I think it's cause many of us knew what this game had the potential to be. Bungie has that secret sauce and even as horrible as Beyond Light was when I looked around Europa I said "I want to exist in this universe".... now give me my fucking guns back. lol
At least with champion mods, I think taking them out of the season artifact and just making all forms of champion mods an interchangeable mod slot on all weapons would open up weapon choice and builds so you’re not limited to three weapons when needing to stun in higher end activities. Then replacing the slots where the champion mods used to go in the artifact with something like enhanced champion mods like “when stunning a champion with (insert weapon type here), you deal increased damage with all other weapons for a short time” or something else (idk I don’t make games) would still encourage champion mods with better building capabilities and payoff.
I feel like a big solution to this is to bake anti-champ capabilities into more abilities and exotics. I think match game would be annoying too if there were only 3 void weapons in the game to help you deal with minotaurs. Even something as simple as making pocket singularity unstoppable, smoke bomb overload, and shield throw/bash anti barrier would fix a ton of people's problems with Champs.
No that’ll just make high level content trivial aka boring. Anti barrier Galley, Unstoppable Galley, Overload Galley, that just sounds absurd.
Now I can see certain weapon archetypes having champion mods like say rapid is overload, adaptive is anti barrier, and aggressive unstoppable
Now we could change up certain weapon classes be different of course like say keeping shotguns be on anti something all around idk throwing ideas into the furnace to see if it burns
tbh they just need to have more guns/abilities with built in champion mods
@@Allimusion LMAO😂
Something that struck me while watching this video in response to subbing champions for Lucent Brood where it makes sense - I think it'd be pretty cool if Immaru sent a fireteam of like 6 lightbearers to go against us as in we're the final boss of their strike or something like that where we're on the defensive. Almost like wellspring where we're under attack and we either have to keep falling back after taking out a few waves or we just have to keep defending different locations/rooms or w/e culminating with us fighting 3-6 boss or miniboss level lightbearers. They'd have some more pop to em of course than your rank and file ones we've faced already.
After almost 5 yrs into Destiny 2, I just wish I could place a Barricade, Rift, Well of Radiance or a Ward of Dawn on a moving platform...
you can, it'll stay while you go but you can
@@berylbell8452 😂😂😂
Such useless feedback. Go ****************
@@ceoofmilk2756 Who hurt you?
Thank you datto for bringing this stuff up, if you try to say stuff like this as a random guy in a comment section you get dog piled by a bunch of random people seemingly affected by Stockholm syndrome saying you’re asking for too much
What makes sense is just to split the champions by weapon archetype. Kinetic slot-Anti Barrier, Energy- Overload, Heavy- Unstoppable. Any weapon in those respective archetype can stun those specific Champs. That will free up Artifact Mods for new build/buff mods.
That would help the issue of build restrictions, but it would make champions trivial since now you always have a means to counter them. They need a rework imo
That’s a genius idea my dude
I like the idea but I'd rather use heavy for barrier since they won't move and I won't waste heavy ammo missing a stun
I think they need to have unique offensive abilities instead of defensive. that's why the 3 lucent hive types are so much better.
@@luxie8097 yep I think that’s a great idea
You know what would be a great seasonal activity? A horde type mode with ramping up waves. Maybe even make it endless going up to GM nightfall level enemies for the option of a seasonal weapon drop on every wave clear at the highest difficulty. And have it with the "mettle" modifier that the witch queen campaign used, so you could run it solo or up to 6 people and still have a challenge either way. THAT would be a seasonal activity that could rival menagerie!
Warframe does this well. Defense missions throw waves at you and after 5 waves you have the option to take your loot and leave with the mission complete. Experts can stay and push the wave numbers as high as they can for greater rewards. This would work great for a D2 seasonal activity as it would stay accessible but also seriously challenge veterans.
This!!!!
Escalation protocol?
I guess you never played during the haunted forests or the revelry events of old or during Warmind for the main event ya know ESCALATION PROTOCOL aptly named. Let me give you a hint, people didn’t like it, it was overturned and nerfed and janky and wasn’t favored by the playerbase hence the reason it was only around in season 2. The seasonal events were complained about just as much on the forums. Definitely not a good idea. Edit: Bungie also admitted these types of activities cause massive server issues and hence the reason for many problems and changes.
@@Modioman69 that's not it chief, he wants waves on enemies that get harder not just 7 waves
I really think the WQ legendary campaign showed how you can have a fantastic experience without Champions. Hopefully Bungie takes strides in that direction
Champions should have unique abilities/challenges. Instead it's rock paper scissors where we are told what we need to pick if we want to have a chance, instead of letting the players come up with their own ways to overcome the challenge.
Defs agree that the wq campaign solved the problem of fun/good difficulty without forcing restrictions on the player.
If they want to change seasonal metas, add in fun/punishing modifiers or give seasonal mods that rewards certain gunplay/class play. Or unique mods like how warmind cells use to be.
Like they could make and come up with unique game changing mods like that, then bring them back a couple of seasons later .
@@bananabread9877 that would require them to make new animations
I still hate the revive token gimmick though. Revives are like a core part of the game and fucking with them really detracts from the experience IMO.
Did it though? It was only hard because of contest.
@@TheBizzerker i mean its fine, but for the campaign, ii agree. especially if your running it solo.
It's easy to see that you've been around for long enough to know what you're talking about, and you are very-VERY good at these "bird-eyes-views" videos/essays. You hit every nail on the head, every time...all we can do is hope for the best for the future of D2.
Thanks for all the great content (P.S. Whish you could clean my vault, I've been between 498 and 500 since before the 30th anniversary ~season~).
I just returned after a 5 year break. Keep in mind I had well over 3K hours in D1. Witch queen made me come back and I'm loving it
I want new mobs to fight. Like more unique and different from the ones we fight now. I've only been playing for about a year total but I feel like I've been fighting the same mobs this whole time no matter where I go. As for crafting, I think they should really take a deeper look into MMORPG's in the fantasy setting. They have a lot of cool stuff they can do that allows players to collect mats to build things. Both for harder content and for when you just wanna turn your brain off and farm mats.
I seen someone talk about a rework to Champs where instead of a mod that stuns them, there’s a certain way you have to shoot them to stop an attack or movement. I think I remember someone saying an overload will teleport around and every time they teleport they regen health. To stop the teleport you have to shoot him in his face then his back like Caretaker. I think that’s a good start. Champs have always felt annoying, mostly because of being forced to use certain weapons each season
EDIT: yes, this would obviously be pretty difficult in a master or GM where far range combat is necessary. Why I said it was a good start, not the solution. How about people come up with better ideas instead of just trashing a “good start” one. Solutions people
mechanics on them would be so much more interesting than just mods
Ok but how would you stun it solo, I honestly don’t see the problem with the champion mods as it. If I was to make a change though I would have a non-artifact version of the mod that goes into to weapon mod slot that changes it to that kind of stun. Like a unstoppable round mod that you could put into any gun.
@@nikoclesceri2267 then bungie just has to modify it where it can be done solo and have multiple weak spots open on every side and u need to hit a certain amount to stun.
impossible in a gm, I’ll stick to shitty overload rounds over SOTP vandals anyday
@@nikoclesceri2267 it was just an idea that I saw someone suggest. Again, I said it was a good start, not the solution. The main point being that actual mechanics would be more interesting than just shooting them with a mod so they stun
Daito was very good in articulating my feelings in words in such a awesome narration.
Thanks for the video! Appreciate your perspective as always, Datto.
Regarding the "add innovative content" point, I think this is one case where a comparison to Warframe is worth making. Not in terms of the "Warframe is better/worse" argument which is pointless because of how different the games are, but because Warframe is an example of a long-standing live service game that has regularly shaken up its new content in extremely fundamental ways. E.g. open world content with Plains/Fortuna/Deimos, squad-based space combat with railjack, endgame lich hunting, new meta demands with steel path, etc.
I think it's a worthwhile comparison point here, because it shows what the pain points look like on the other end of that spectrum. Returning Destiny vets have complained about it being hard to catch up on Destiny's new systems, but their pain honestly pales in comparison to Warframe where your knowledge of the game's core loop (go into mission solo or with squad, follow mission objective, get loot at the end) is honestly thrown out of the window or a tiny fraction of what you need to know in order to be useful to your squad. It's very easy to feel like your lack of knowledge is an active detriment to your team, even in "early" missions that are supposed to be introducing you to these mechanics.
Also, "progression" in a game like Warframe is a lot more difficult to map out as a result. What's considered progression? Getting my vendor levels up in the open world? Making my railjack stronger? Just crafting more weapons and frames? Unlike in Destiny, there's not an easy answer to this question, and not knowing what sort of player progression goal I should be aiming for is the biggest thing I struggle with when returning to Warframe (which I've done at least 3 times now over the years). At least in Destiny, the Number Go Up power/XP grind is a clear goal that players can approach in a variety of ways. "Powerful gear" and "XP++" as a reward is a clear signal to me as a returning player that "I should probably do this activity."
The upside to Warframe's more innovation-driven content approach is that, if you take on the burden of learning all the new mission types, there is just that much more variety in activities for you to do which can feel really satisfying. But I think Destiny's approach, where your mechanical knowledge of "shoot alien with gun" is enough to get you back into the game's core grind, helps it avoid a lot of those returning player pitfalls that a more content-diverse game like Warframe struggles with.
Thus ends my extensive rambling about live service game design. Hope someone found this interesting, and I will *not* be engaging in any further "Destiny vs. Warframe" discussion in the replies lol
Majority of what you said about wf is lacking content wise, liches suck, the open worlds are more of a wow factor with not that much content, railjacks suck
@@sheluvprada I don't understand how "I don't like these types of content" means "Warframe is lacking content-wise". Maybe Warframe is lacking in terms of content that you, Xeno, personally enjoy.
I can only speak to my own experiences, and I had fun grinding out Liches after they put in a few months of updates. I haven't gotten into Railjack because I don't like squad spaceship combat, but that's on me - there is a lot to do in Railjack if you enjoy that sort of thing. And my tens of hours spent doing missions, fishing/mining, gathering collectibles, and leveling up vendor rep in the open worlds would like to disagree with your suggestion that the open worlds have "not that much content".
Does that mean this content is objectively good or whatever? No, and I don't care about trying to convince anyone that they are. My point is that the content is in the game for anyone who's willing to invest time into it.
Thank you for mentioning Cruible, means alot for the 5 of us that love it
I'm very excited for the future of Destiny, assuming that content is around the level of Witch Queen and Season of the Riven.
ESPECIALLY the story telling
Same, it feels like old Bungie storytelling quality again. I was always interested in Destiny's story, but nothing ever stuck with me. Now I'm here for the long haul now
@@cyber_ninja121 by old bungie story telling you mean pre destiny right lol
Season of the Riven? Yes please
The story telling was excellent but I'd rather have more things to do. Content is very light and bungie uses way too many reused assets in all their expansions. I'm putting destiny down because of this.
@@colby8104 what reused assets. Please, enlighten me
Great thoughts, Datto. Especially agree with you on the Champion system and overall stagnation.
I'd like to point out that Season of the Hunt was an attempt to experiment (wasnt matchmade, could be done solo), and it was so boring that I only did it like 4 times after maxing out the lure. I'll take more season of the chosen/risen style seasonal activities if experimenting means the dogwater stuff we got with hunt/worthy
Gah to think the menagerie was the pinnacle of season's is crazy to me and Bungie knows it too, but yet they don't even try to bring something similar.
I think that's why I love raids and dungeons so much bc the champions are at least rarer and not part of every encounter. Gives the chance to use new builds and try things out in content that still feels challenging
champions were interesting in Shadowkeep, and were kinda interesting to see each new champion for different races each season. Are they fun? No, not really at all. I would much rather mechanic based champions, like imagine shooting oracles a certain way to be able to kill a yellow bar Hydra
That would actually be really cool, getting specific mechanics for champion like enemies. Kinda how the lightbearer hive are. Could you imagine fighting against a brig that has specific crit spots that you must hit to break his face and do damage? Or really anything like that .... actual mechanical differences between each ultra enemy would be awesome !
@@Wencater they could make the like insurrection prime. Shoot weak points around body to open face plate
@@Zerba- yea that would be sweet, mini raid esque mechanics for individual enemies !!! Like a taken night that flashes a specific symbol after getting stunned for the first time then when he's almost dead he does a final stand mechanic and shows multiple symbols and you have to shoot the right one to kill him or else he regens health. Something simple like that would drastically improve the day to day endgame experience
Kujay has a whole video on that idea
Yeah Kujay’s champions seem more engaging to the player than the standard ADS and shoot champs
I'm a new light and thos video is MORE than what I needed to see/hear.... if they make the changes suggested I see myself sticking w this franchise for a long time. And that solo shredding part at the end is what I finally truly got a taste of this past wk w Iron Banner and I need more of it 😤😤
i would REALLY like to have a game mode that's tower defense, that plays like a tower defense. literally hoards of ads come and attack the city and as the wall takes damage you have to fall back to the tower and then the tower can fall as well (doesnt have to be the tower were in, could be d1 tower) and have the mode be truly limitless, just increasingly difficult with more and more harder and harder enemies. do a different enemy type each week. say you clear 5/10 waves during the hive week and then crota comes out and slaps some people up. limited revive tokens would make this challenging as well as different places on the wall/tower to defend (think first encounter in vow)
Hoard modes aren’t fun in destiny
@@omensoffate id enjoy it
@@omensoffate when did we last have a hoard mode which wasnt fu
@@omensoffate ah yes all those horde modes we had....
Speaking of the D1 tower, I feel like it'd be nice to see shit actually changing in the world by having construction on it be completed. I feel like nothing in the game is actually going anywhere outside of contrived new "story" reasons for planets getting deleted and then nothing much actually being changed. Like, Mars is fucking back in-universe right now but we don't even get to go there.
I'm glad you made this video. I've been over the "manufactured meta" for multiple seasons at this point.
Moving forward I think we need some sort of invasive combatants in any given activity.
For example: The Division 1 & 2 had these unique enemies, called Hunters. They had similar kits to the player, and would randomly 'invade' your mission, stopping mission progress until you killed it. If you wiped, it left, and if you killed it, it'd drop good loot.
I think the Lucent Brood would fit perfectly in this role. Imagine you're doing a nightfall, and all the sudden you get a notification that Lucent forces are hunting you. Then, somewhere in the activity, they ambush you and you have to defeat them to continue. A similar system could be used with Stasis wielding Fallen.
The fun thing about this was it was rare, and when it happened the fight was incredibly challenging. The Hunters were tanky, hit hard, and had great AI. In fact most of my deaths to hunters were because I stopped paying attention long enough for them to flank me.
I think a system similar to this would be really interesting, and perhaps they could be hosts to some extra rare exotics.
I remember how nervous they made me during survival!
Rogue agents ahhhh man talk about a fight I’d definitely enjoy seeing something like that in destiny 2 cause literally the main game I play 😂
Imagine doing GMs and a fireteam of Lucent Brood invades...
arbalest has done wonders in terms of putting a bandage on the wound. taking out all elemental shields and being anti-barrier is huge
Hot take: every exotic should have an intrinsic champion stun type (example ace should be anti barrier when momento mori is active or wardcliff can stop overloads by hitting a direct with at least 3 rockets)
Actually hard agree with this
Not a bad idea!
I agree. But I'd not include heavies they would probably be hard to implement.
@@JBonjubia Just add the intrinsic perk??
@@MetroidPurples Alot of Exotic Heavies can get weird. Also stunning a champion with a heavy isn't practical anyways due to Ammo.
Ops suggestion of this is fantastic. But I think this only fits Primaries and Special. It's a great way of making Primaries even more powerful which is a massive + aswell as giving more freedom with load outs with specials.
Wow. All of this just reminds me why I quit after a week of witch queen. I'm just so tired. Maybe I'll be back in the summer. 🤷♀️
Thanks for the video. It was a good one. 💕
Would still love to see some type of horde/survival mode where each wave increases in difficulty
You must have never played during holloween
Yes! More solo stuff! Thank you Datto! That and the champion stuff, well he covered both the things I wanted.
I think that the crafting system is a better use of the champion system.
In order to progress it, you just swap to a weapon for a bit, kill stuff for a bit, get the stuff, swap back. It's not restrictive and it encourages constant change up of your loadout
I think the fallacy here is people assuming that encouraging constant change of loadout, solely for the sake of changing your loadout, as being a good thing. I don't want to be encouraged to change my loadout outside of when it would otherwise be appropriate for an encounter. I deliberately farmed for the weapons that I use and enjoy, and those are the weapons that I want to use. That's how I enjoy playing the game, and doing shit like taking away my guns or requiring X, Y, and Z for content isn't going to make me change my gear, it's going to make me stop playing because you're deliberately hindering my enjoyment of the game.
This was even one of the stated reasons for Sunsetting btw. Luke Smith said that he had a friend who abolutely loved Breakneck, and that there was no way they were going to get him to stop using it outside of taking it away from him. Taking away the thing his friend loved to make him use something he doesn't was one of the actual, stated goals.
I’ve been doing build videos on my channel and I agree with what you’re saying. It’s always lurked in the back of mind, how a lot of the end game content or harder content is focused around champions, meaning everyone may not be able to use some of these builds in the content they would want to use it. Hopefully bungie is working on some kind of a solution to this.
“There only so many ways to make jump on the plate do stuff with the ball and push the thing interesting.” True but also what else is there for bungie to do. At least they have somewhat mechanics most games don’t.
Maybe, but other games often have difficulty options that Destiny lacks. Your seasonal activity might have more mechanics than a Doom 1 playthrough, but Doom 1 can be cranked up so lots of details matter. Your ammo, your armor, saving powerups for later, enemy spawns, using Rad suits effectively, keys and doors, enemy prioritization, how you should dodge in the next room. In a battlegrounds, I just... mash my way through, and occasionally throw a ball at a thing. Fun the first time, less so the third or fifth.
Very much agree on the build thing. I've made so many fun builds, but I get jaded on builds that need more setup now because all it takes is for one person, be that friend or random, to swoop in with a single grenade or something and clear the entire room. Stuff is so damn easy, or require such specific thing and things just casually one shot you that there doesn't feel like any overly good places to really let build crafting shine.
I’d like to see weapons (all of them) roll with a random intrinsic champion mod. This way you can use whatever you want on top of the seasonal highlights. This would help allow for more build crafting because if let’s say the seasonal weapons are bows, sidearms, pulses, and glaves, you could grab your smg with intrinsic anti barrier rounds and not have to worry about it. By giving players the ability to use legendaries more broadly it allows for more use of exotics and less restraints on players wanting to do endgame content that for whatever reason don’t have certain weapons needed (new/returning players) we already have weapon crafting so this can be added to the crafting set up pretty easily I would assume. Not to mention if someone has a favorite weapon (sorrows verse, or extraordinary rendition) they can still have the option to use that weapon in endgame content without hurting the fire team by not having a champion mod. Keep in mind this is in addition to the seasonal mods. So this gives players the option to change up their weapons are if they have a work hours weapon they love, they can continue to use that.
This could be very interesting, a way to further diversify random rolls and weapon crafting
That’s what I was thinking cause at the moment once you’ve got the god roll thats it every other version of it is dismantled but with a random champion mod attached? That might make you think “I should check what champion perk this full auto scout with vorpal rolls has cause im in need of one with overload”
@Solidarity Forever hmm that’s a possibility
I've definitely hit a wall as a returning player when it comes to the whole "lock and key" issue. I'll get a sweet new weapon and wanna try it out with some other stuff, but then I realize I'm being gatekept from having the curiosity to try a new weapon while actively leveling and knocking things out. I really feel like, for me personally, if they dropped this tedious mechanic, I'd play a lot more than I have post legendary campaign and some seasonal content. Really glad you spoke up about this because I haven't even been back long and it already kills the vibe of endgame PVE stuff.
I would love the option to turn off matchmaking for Strikes. Sometimes I just want to run through a Strike on my own or with one other friend(that’s not a Legend Nightfall) and complete bounties at my pace and what not. Would be a fantastic QoL improvement.
Been dying for that for years now
Love that idea!
IMO I think Lucent Hive were so good and fun to play against because they actually had abilities that competed with ours, especially to a degree where they could nearly one tap you in Legendary Campaign. No other enemy really has any abilities whatsoever other than different types of shooting (after 7 years I think we all know each individual enemy types shooting style since they haven't changed). Dregs can throw shock nades, Hydras explode.. only when they die.., Centurion's can propel nades, Wizards create their fog, Chieftans have their lanterns and Ravagers sometimes have their freezing ability (only with stasis). If the majority of them had different and powerful abilities or combos that could compete against ours, I think the game would not only be more fun, but there would be more incentive for us to buildcraft against their individual fighting styles.
Describing Champion activities as “Lock and Key” because they force players to use alternate loadouts is fair enough, but if that system wasn’t in place players would complain about content becoming stale and/or repetitive due to meta loadouts i.e. Recluse/Mountaintop.
which is why he/ we want something that isn’t lock and key, something fresh, like Lightbearing Hive, champions fucking suck because your weapon elements and weapon types have to be specific to deal with champs, Arbelast has been a breathe of fresh air and div will never not be the overload king, bows coming in close second. but being forced to use weapons you dont enjoy, because they fit the ‘lock’ is not fun
@@NobleVI_343 I think you make a good point with Lightbearing Hive. It would be nice to have endgame content without Champions, but I still enjoy the idea of being pushed into using off-meta weapons. I would never have taken a scout rifle into the Master Nightfall if I had a choice, but it was still interesting having to adapt my play style to a new loadout, keeping the game fresh
@@user-ls4ck9xf6m see, if they buffed scouts, you wouldnt have that reservation, scouts are goated for gms
I personally think AyyItsChevy came up with the best solution for champs talking about it in his stream yesterday. keeping the seasonal champion mods in the artifact, but also making all weapon champion mods we've had permanent unlocks, but slotting them has an increased Energy cost compared to the ones in the artifact for the season. so people can still play with what they want and how they want, but bungie still gets to push the seasonal meta thru the artifact mods
i wanna bring up something people might not think about: ghost of tsushima multiplayer
in the higher difficulties the game actually introduce mechanic-based enemies. For example, different shield types of enemies that require you to use the matching enchants in the mission to kill, enemies that continue to heal a wide radius of other enemies unless killed, and linked enemies that revive in full health if they aren’t killed simultaneously or in quick succession.
I really want the champions to evolve into something like this, these mechanics not only free up the champion mods, but also give players challenges without limiting their loadouts
god i miss that Taeko-3 strike on Titan. was such an awesome experience listening to a guardian in real time and then hearing there last words and finding that crystal. To this day that was one of Destiny's heaviest strikes and it did so well at not even trying to be heavy the player rarely felt it. One had to stop and think critically about what just happened in that strike. Genius stuff.. would love more of that.
I agree
I really love seeing Myelin getting recognized after all this time
Champions at the moment are high value targets that require you to approach them differently. This element can easily be retained whilst removing champion mods, as others have said. An interesting was to change them that I thought up was that for overload, sustained fire should stun them, no matter from what weapon. This makes Smgs and ars good for quick stuns, but focused fire from a team should also do the job. For unstoppable, a powerful single shot should stun them, eg. glaives, snipers, slug shotties, erianas etc. Barrier champs are a little harder to fix, but a way to do it would be to just dump damage into the shield before damaging the enemy, but this isn’t really any different to normal shielded enemies, but I’m just throwing ideas around anyways.
you dont necesarilly have to get rid of the shield to kill shielded champions. its hard, but possible
I definitely think that new exotic ARMOR that gives champion stunning. My mind goes to secant filaments. Great job on that one but others would be nice as well.
I like champions, and how they make you think about the situations you're in and how to counter them.
However, I don't like how champions lock you into certain weapons/abilities for months on end. For example Bows. I do not like using bows, and both season 15 and 16 include bows as champion mods; where bows where the only option for overload from weapons in season 15. These restrictions on player load outs locks you out of player agency and that I think where the Lucent Hive differs to champions. You still have to think, you still have to strategize. But they don't lock you into specific load outs to deal with champion mods.
Allowing us to unlock all of the artifact is a step in the right direction, but we're still limited in our choices for endgame. These restrictions are what need to change.
Your first and second paragraphs seems contradictory
@@erichall090909No they dont
Thanks for a shout out to the solo community.
Absolutely loved the campaign and the option to run a Legendary version. I love Void 3.0 and like the crafting (to an extent) but the limitations to variety ultimately loses my interest. I am also bored of having to use the same weapons for champions through an entire season. Then there’s the post pinnacle cap bounty farm which I’m tired of.
"I am also bored of having to use the same weapons for champions through an entire season."
This is the worst part of the shitty system. People say they like them because it "forces them to use new weapons," but what in practice what it actually does is force you to try a new handful of weapons and then use nothing else for an entire season.
@@TheBizzerker doesn't even force new weapons, just stuff you vaulted for the next mod rotation
Kujay had a great video talking about how to improve champions. He had some fantastic ideas!
Hype in chat for datto being awesome
I quit playing this game last year, but I still like hearing dattos input about the game.
Build crafting is great and all, if you can craft a build. Having Ada sell 0-2 combat mods a day is terrible for people who are new or returning
we are talking about endgame here
As a "returning" player who really only skipped the majority of last season, what I really find terrible is having all the CWL and Warmind mods that I already had be completely gutted. So now I'm missing a few of the new "good" Well mods, and have essentially lost the use of several dozen of the other combat mods that I already had.
@@NobleVI_343 is making a good build not part of endgame?...
@@NobleVI_343 noble, he means new / returning as in the player who is indeed at endgame (1560+) but didn’t play last season, or maybe the season before that etc. they are locked out of mods because ada is a cunt and needs to become Ada-2
Fortunately for you, most of the combat mods are bad now, so they don't matter too much. Hooray!
As a primarily solo player I'd love to see more activities to strive for and reasonably tackle week in and week out. I have heard good things about the scaling difficulty per fireteam count in the story quests of witch queen, I would love to see this, if possible applied to things like nightfalls and dungeons. I think there definitely should be some middle ground between "I'm doing a basic activity (campaign mission/lost sector/etc) by myself" and "I'm doing a 3-player activity alone and having to output 3 guardian's worth of damage and deal with 3 guardian's worth of enemy damage/aggro".
I feel like champions could stay if the weapons used against them were broader and maybe stayed that way forever. Let's say like barrier now only breaks to single shot guns, overloaded is stunned by high or consistent fire rate, and unstoppable maybe should just be stunned by hitting weak points. This would allow builds to be broader and stay more consistent each season for weaponry and if they feel the need to they can just switch it around (i.e. barrier fire rate, unstoppable single shot, and overload weak points) to mix it up a little.
Swap weapons for overload and barrier. Overload auto/smg is too unreliable, it was so much better when it was an anti-barrier in season of the splicer.
That's even worse. It'd just be an eternal lockout from ever being able to freely choose your loadout. The ONLY way it gets better is by entirely removing all loadout requirements outside of what's naturally required based on the content and environment, e.g. a longe-range weapon for content with long hallways or wide open encounters, area denial for content with lot's of add waves, etc.
if it was just me, I would make it where you can only have a champ mod on gernade and on one weapon but it can be anything. Unstopable rocket fuck it why not. Overload fusion, sure. Then I would like the cost to to be outrageous like previous seasons, 4 or 5 max.
Champions aren’t interesting. I want enemies with actual mechanics
You nailed it with this video. Hopefully, the devs listen and adjust accordingly. Edit side note, my friend and I, on the weekends play together at my house with 2 xbox series X consoles but have an extremely difficult time getting on the same fire team. We constantly get the cabbage error. Before WQ we didn't have this problem. This needs fixed ASAP before we lose interest and don't invest in D2 further.
The biggest thing we need is the ability to optimise gear stats. With stats numbers being pure RNG, even the high roles, getting that build together hitting the tier levels you want/need is still a game of RNG, and a protracted one at that. Let us have the ability to optimise stats, so we can then hit the tiers we want, so we can truly enjoy build crafting.
I hear you. I completed 54 Legend Lost Sectors (BACK TO BACK) just to get an "OKAY" roll for Verity's Brow.
I spent so long doing that Lost Sector I memorised the enemies' fucking breathing patterns!
@@ZeusGamingAOM Yep. Getting the stat roles you need on exotics, that enable you to build craft, are the worst.
I took a shot for every Champion in the Master VOX Mission,i am dead now.
i don’t mind having some “lock and key” activities because they can be fun especially with the shifting metas thanks to the artefact. but i desperately want to see high level endgame content that is just you vs waves of strong enemies that get more difficult as you progress. no champions. maybe match game would be fine idk but the game desperately needs somewhere that is challenging and allows you to put your builds to the test rather than using them in the strike playlist where it is complete overkill and you have to literally compete against your teammates to get your build flowing
this right here.
I miss EP
Like getting stoke the flame for the fourth time?
Seeing you describe Champions as a stagnating process really shined a light on how I view the game, it’s a really nice way of putting it that I didn’t think of before. Most of the silly builds I’d like to use in endgame content like GMs or Raids are simply impossible to use because of the mandated requirements or lock-and-key I need to bring in order to succeed, unless the weapons I have in mind magically coincide with the artifact mods. I know these endgame level activities are designed for you to sweat your mind out, but the legendary campaign showed how difficulty in a mission can exist without huddling five champions in a room with match game and allowing players to have flexibility in their builds and solely choosing what can and cannot work.
I’m not against the season artifact, I actually really like how Bungie forces a meta switch every few months. Because let’s be real, in late D1, everybody ran primary, ex machina, sleeper (or dark drinker). Forsaken era? Mountaintop, recluse, anarchy. I like being forced to use often underutilized weapons and subclasses to allow some fluidity within metas. We will always have a meta regardless of the artifact allowing other classes or weapons to shine, but forcing players to run specific champion mods can become very restrictive and frustrating in the hardest level of content where players want to try out their new builds with unconventional load outs/weapons in the only places where enemies won’t die in just a few seconds.
WQ Story was 10/10 finished it solo and loved the challenge and the satisfaction of completing it first time in a whole I felt accomplished doing something in destiny besides acquiring conqueror, the hive guardians are a great feature and hope they stay for a long while, champions are hit or miss I get the idea but they are past due in all honesty, I look forward to this season and this year, I’m excited for guardian games and solstice, primarily solstice bc of the 2019 armor returning but Im Ready to see the build up to light fall and final shape and see when and where Xivu will finally make her appearance aswell as Calus
Some great thoughts re build crafting and ongoing limitations. Some thoughts:
Completing resonance weapon drops diminishes build in same way, simply by having to equip weapons that don't fit. E.g. an arc auto rifle on your void subclass.
I also generally think bounties are a problem in a similar vein and part of that is being limited by xp gains you need to hit on the artifact. Use a sidearm to get more xp or play an ungodly amount of time to reach xp gains for content you are otherwise good enough for.
I like the concept of weapon crafting, I just want the enhanced perks to make the time and item currency worth the investment.
Love these state-of-the-game videos you make. Very thoughtful and I hope the right people at Bungie watch them.
Where’s the Witch Queen Retrospective video 😭? Don’t break the streak now
Oh my god just let the man exist for a bit
@@theoneandonlyjs19 No.
it’s not even been a month
Something I've been saying for years that would add to the build crafting side of the game is the ability to wear multiple exotics, combine perks on exotics through crafting, or perfect-roll armors like primal ancients in diablo 3. This would add SO MUCH creative freedom to the game. Would obviously need to be limited in some ways for PVP but for the PVE sandbox the possibilities would be endless for builds and tuning could be introduced over time.
What if champion mods changed week on week? That's a simple fix that would allow for a lot of interesting build diversity given each week you have to build around something else? Just a thought
That would make the problem worse, because now you constantly have to be updating your builds to accomodate for the new champion mods
The legendary campaign was a breath of fresh air. I felt like I actually had to think about my build going into different encounters
Something that I really hated since the launch of Witch Queen is that Bungie has been pushing us to use Well mods a lot now. They have been bad since its introduction and majority of us are now starting to use it because they nerfed the crap out of CWL and Warmind Cell mods.
Well mods encourages matching elements gameplay but the PvE endgame discourages that. It made no sense to me why Bungie was pushing so hard on this narrative. But not only do we have to match elements, the effects of it when we do match, are average at best.
Removing Match Game from all activities might eliminate this problem for me since there will be no reason to having to run certain damage types anymore.
I for one would like to see all champion mods available all of the time one of the biggest limiting factors for build-crafting in pve is campion mods for the season. Obviously the permanent ones would have increased cost in terms of mod slots but a lot of weapons just haven't been viable in pve exclusively because of seasonal champion mods
Came back last spring during chosen.....great time to come back. 😃
A possible change could be to make Champion armor mods into weapon mods. You could make put Overload, Barrier or Unstop on any weapon. That'd make room for tons of buildcrafting but naturally, the "meta option" will always come up and one loadout will soar far above others
I think the best way forward for champs is to give everyone 3 new weapon mods: barrier spec, overload spec, and unstoppable spec. When you equip the mod on the gun, it is granted the respective anti-champion capability. Then, the artifact can still offer anti-champion mods for gauntlets, but they would still be low cost (1 for primaries, 2-3 for special, 5-6 for power). This way, you are picking between bonus damage (assuming most people normally have minor/major/boss spec on their guns in PvE) or anti-champion ability of your choice. This would protect build-crafting, keep exotics with intrinsic anti-champ relevant, and prevent champs from being so terrible when there is only 1 mod for them and it's trash (looking at you, overload auto/smg), but it wouldn't solve champs altogether. New enemies being the base for champs could be nice too, like barrier shanks or unstoppable wyverns.
7 years and we still can't auto-dismantle blues(a QoL feature that was in the original Destiny). Bungie went out their way to advertise the reduction of blue drops for witch queen and I feel like I can't spend 15 minutes in a patrol zone without accumulating a dozen of them. It's nice not getting blues from playlist drops, but it's far from a solution to a problem they already solved almost a decade ago in the first iteration of the game.
The rareity system in destiny is outdated there are only 2 actual rareities. What bungie needs to do is turn all the existing blues into greens and make them auto dismantle after you hit the soft cap. Then they need to turn some of the seasonal guns and some of the world drops into blues. Theres no reason pointed inquiry or the ogma need to be legendary make the less desirable guns blues so they drop from random activities more and then the legendary pool is smaller so your more likley to get the drops of those guns you want it sounds like a win win. Imagine if snorri fortisimo or funnelweb dropped at the blue rareities rate so these guns with massive perk pools drop way more frequently from any activity no stadia specfic farmin required.
I really want hard mode raids back. Or weekly raids, just to incentivize playing older raids, they're so good and there's so much content just sitting there. Would add coming back each week more rewarding as well
In case you didn’t hear, Bungie stated this in the last TWAB: “Speaking of raids, tune in next Thursday for some fun news concerning an upcoming rotator of sorts in Season 17.”
Maybe they are planning on rotating raids or something which I too think would be great.
I left for the majority of 2021 after burning myself out S1 of Beyond Light. Very happy to what I came back to. 3.0 is amazing. Transmog is an underrated feature STILL. I spend hours crafting cool looks. Good stuff for me who doesn't play a lot, but enough.
For me a true innovation will be an in-game loadout system and a player queue that takes into account player loadouts similar to other MMOs do with classes as a way of pairing players together based on their kits (heck, even a pre-activity lobby that lets players check what they're missing before launching in), that way these end game activities can actually explain to a player what they'll need to start doing more than just letting a player run into a champion they may not even have the mod for, or let a player know they might not have a survivability mod in a strike that has an arena type setting where that would be useful. That way an activity could rotate different enemy types in more regularly to freshen up even the most basic of activities like they used to.
That and the dream of a proper story archive that brings back old campaigns in a 'Best of-' series of playable and story cutscene highlights in the legends tab, because as far as I'm concerned, almost every seasonal activity could have been repurposed as a strike in some way following their vaulting.
Yeah, the champion system is kind of dull now between Hydras, Brigs and Lucent Hive (and heck even Rhulk) providing a type of enemy that while not particularly complex, requires more attention from the player or they'll get roughed up. I vastly prefer them to bake the champion mods into modifiers for the activity itself rather than making them mods, and rotating them out more regularly that way. Though the dream would be to make champion stunnable outside the mods through certain actions like Gahlran's raising of his hands or the Insurrection Prime's shield nodes, with the champion mods working more like the anti-barrier one, providing a more blanket benefit such as with scorn and vex shields but not being required.
Thanks Dad always on point always well said
I've been saying pretty much since they were added that Champions and automatic Matchgame were terrible for the game. Instead of looking at all your options and trying to cleverly put together a loadout based on various encounters in an activity, you're just given a list of things that you have to bring to win. It's like playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, but you're told ahead of time what the other guy is going to pick.
One of the most common arguments that I see in favor of Champions is "they keep loadouts from stagnating/make me try new things that I wouldn't otherwise," but I don't think that really holds up. For one thing, those things are always options to use otherwise. For another, while they might make you try new weapons to use for that particular season, once you have for the season that's pretty much it. You pick a handful of guns to match each Champion configuration and then that's it, you're pretty much locked to those weapons for that season.
In terms of innovation/buildcrafting I'd say that for one thing, no, the new Aspect/Fragment system is NOT innovative. They're adding more class customization to classes, but we already had that in D1 and it was entirely removed when we moved to D2. Trying to get back to where we were isn't innovating. They've just reinvented the wheel in terms of class customization, and some of the side effects are that A) they've removed some things we used to be able to do that were core elements of previous subclass clusters, and B) flattened out a lot of the difference between subclasses by giving everybody the same fragments, which really kills the feeling of classes being unique.
Finally, I'd argue that buildcrafting is in a worse place than it was just a couple of seasons ago. Revamping void added some "new" options for void subclasses, but at the same time removed some old ones that were core to those subclasses. CWL and Warmind Cell mods have also been gutted with a machete in terms of nerfing cells, increasing cell mod costs, nerfing protective light, completely removing orb generation from MW weapons, cranking up the cost of Scavenger mods, and probably more that I'm forgetting. As a result I've personally gone from really looing at various mod options, looking at their potential, and slotting them all together in a way that I think will be most effective; to just slapping on finder and scavenger and then whatever is cheapest and least intrusive for Combat mods. No more extensive CWL-reliant builds, no more crazy intricate Warmind Cell builds, just shit like "get +20 Str" and "spawn wells sometimes".
Hit some great points…And yes the legendary campaign was a huge breath of fresh air
This is one of those things I've been harping on Destiny for for the last couple years. Additions are nice, but ultimately the best way to prevent fatigue like this is more mechanics, especially ones that don't just require you to stand on a plate or shoot something.
Something they can try to do to alleviate some of the Champion pain is to have “Primary Anti-Barrier” “Special Overload” “Unstoppable Heavy” one season and then swap them to be “Anti-Barrier special” “Overload and Unstoppable Primary” etc…
I know stuff like special overload wouldn’t really work but who knows
13:32 Unless you're Ehoar or Esoterikk who A: Can always get into a solo strike queue or B: Can do the 6 player activity/endgame 3 player activity yourself.
We've made it to a point where (at least pve anyway) where content isn't a problem it's the gameplay loop of light level and champions. Things need to change for sure because the WQ is such a great expansion it shouldn't just be "more destiny"
The only PvE change I really want right now is the option to run the strike playlist without matchmaking. I don't want to have to run legend nightfalls, be forced to used an optimized build for it, just so I can play some strikes I enjoy.
We need enemies which incentivize build crafting. Marcostyle made a video with a great point about how enemies either fold like paper or literally don't die. Rather than champions needing specific weapons to stun them they needed specific status effects like needing to weaken an Overload, blind an unstoppable repeatedly, or deal AoE damage to Barrier (spitballing here). While were at it while it'd be nice to get a new enemy for each faction that required a little more than shooting it to kill it, I think there just needs to be more majors around or higher enemy health in general so that it's actually hard to kill groups of enemies with a boss dps build so that other builds start to become needed.
I love the concept of champions and having to stun them, but like you’re saying, it’s too tedious and restrictive to make a build simply based off of said champions. I would love to run around end game content with a gl in every slot, not because they’re super strong, but because it’s fun to just mess around and try different things within the game. There are so many different ways you can make your builds but we are being restricted to certain weapons which gets very boring by the end of the season.
Something else to consider is replacing champions with something more similar to lucent hive for their respective enemy type, I’d like that just as much if not better than revamping champions.
I feel like a way they could improve the champion fatigue is to incorporate champion mods into build crafting. I remember back in season 13 or 14 we had a seasonal mod where destroying a warmind cell would stun overload and unstoppable champions. I think the trick here is to give us options to defeat champions without it being tied to specific weapons each season. The seasonal champion weapons should be a backup option, not the primary method of taking out specific champions. Interesting mods I can think of off the top of my head could be; picking up a matching elemental well gives you anti-champion damage for a brief time, the warmind cell one from a couple seasons ago, maybe something like radiant light where casting your super gives nearby allies champion stunning abilities(this is coming from an Ursa Titan main). Just something like these would allow us to focus on buildcrafting in endgame content without having to waste development time of redesigning endgame activities to not have champions at all.
I think adding more of the duel mods such as the current Auto/Smg Overload could help. It would open up more freedom in building for endgame.
Another big issue with buildcrafting for many players is that the mods are gated behind timegated RNG (ADA-1) with no bad luck protection. It's nearly impossible to start experimenting for newer players due to that
I'd enjoy if bungie gave us the option to Run the "Vanguard Playlist" Solo. Imagine going into the strike playlist and being able to test your new "Make Everything Explode because Void" build without having to worry about others taking your kills and losing any buffs you've built up and being able to test what YOU can do.
Also doing the Legendary Campaign Solo is an Experience I would advise everyone tries, a real breath of fresh air and a true challenge but the way it scales with Fireteam means it's equally a challenge as a 2 or 3.
Bungie just need to keep up the good work, Witch Queen is awesome so far.
Being able to run Vanguard stuff solo would be great, at least 6 out of 10 games i join are usually half done or everyone else is nuking everything and end up just running through the map after everyone
I think a lot of the problems you speak about in the game could be resolved with a horde mode.
Locked equipment, and different modifiers active each wave. You can spend a mode currency to activate red jacks, rebuild walls, set traps or to increase your power within the mode to stay effective for longer. Any currency leftover upon either ‘completion’ or failure is stored in a kiosk that allows you to upgrade the levels you can increase your defensive or offensive capabilities in the mode specifically.
Allows for build potential to be seen from top to bottom in one activity, with rewards scaling to your progression tiered at five round increments. They could literally copy and paste Gears of War 3s horde mode and it’s mechanics and I think Bungie would have an incredible base form for a game mode we’d all love to see implemented.
In regards to champions I saw an idea a while ago. The idea was that the anti-unstoppable/barrier/overload should be moved to high-caliber/ armor piercing/ ricochet rounds respectively. Would be an amazing change in my mind
To fix champion specific weapons could adding an equip able spec unlockable by masterworking said weapon which allows you to add it on at the cost of master working