Honestly the nessus changes should be permanent regardless of how far along people are in the story. The leviathan is still in the moon’s skybox even if your playing old content from shadowkeep when it was supposed to be at Nessus. It’s a cool addition and it should stick around to freshen the space up
I can’t help but think they droped a cabal land tank on nesses but can’t have the echos cause permanent damage. Like sure maybe The Inverted Spire may need to be reworked as it relies on the patrol space but it would breath new life into the strike. Wont lie I was disappointed with the reworked Exodus crash strike. Felt like they took the feedback from Lake of Shadows and decided to do QOL improvements insted of reworking it to tie into the echos story line. Maybe act 2 will change the landscape but im not holding my breath
Might still change nessus with the launch of act 2. That being said, the changes here are bigger and more numerous than changing the skybox or adding an extra little bit to the map. Also I've got a feeling these changes wont be permanent in story, after we finish the episode, so in that case, they might not be worth it for bungie. Who knows🤷♂️
@@aljazslemc9569Yeah sure there is an entire strike that would be impacted by this changed but its worth the effort to make this work. I really hope it gets changed in act 2 but im not holding my breath If the DCV is still hungry the changes are not permanent at all.
@@wall57805Just beat it an hour ago. Best dlc in the series with some of the deepest lore under the hood. It explains how the erdtree/elden ring was created etc... so cool
@@3DaDon. I think some people have just come to hate anything even somewhat goofy/fun. Like MCU started leaning in to the goofiness a little more, and when general sentiment turned on that whole style of humor, people leaned away from it... and then just KEPT leaning further and further away, until they started getting unreasonably angry about it. Obviously I don't mean that's EVERYONE, there are valid criticisms for everything. It's just something I notice now. Ever since people started disliking MCU's humor, that sentiment has spread to most other things, and it has also grown by a LOT. It became "cool" to hate on that kind of humor, and as with ANYTHING that becomes "cool" on the internet, it spiraled out of control and people started WAY overdoing it, and now we get a portion of the vocal minority (IE, internet people) who just hate anything in the realm of goofy/silly.
They might edit terrain based on what phase the story is. Currently we have default Nessus for patrol, with like four areas with coral vex, so during act 2 maybe we see the terrain change. Then in act 3 we have extreme change, but we don’t see those changes until each act activates. Would make sense for the opening of the next act in the episode to evolve or change the area to match the story, so we see the pace of the change in chronological order, rather than sudden changes as the first person who completes act 2 for everyone to see (this would likely help prevent spoilers in the episode as well.)
I really hope they change the terrain more massively, like please put the drained cistern in as the new patrol version, it's so cool. Just wasting it on a single mission just sucks.
@@FireStriker_ they could do it, like they did in season of the haunted, but it'd come at the cost of other new activities in that episode. Given the reaction of some of the community rn, i don't know that i wish it upon bungie to have to listen to complaints of "all they give us for act 2 is a public event?! This is worse than __________ or something like that
@@aljazslemc9569 haunted didnt given us a new public event? And im not asking for a repeat of season of the worthy but using some of the ideas in the breach protocol as new public events. even if its a reskin of an existing public event this would come a long way to make the patrol space feel fresh and inviting to long term players and not just a year 1 location that is timelocked to the red war
It just feels like the same quality and quantity but over a longer time frame, but this did come with TFS and we are only in act one so im hoping it turns around for the better :)
@@lucienmoolman8017 he aint wrong, narrative in seasonal content has been hot garbage and if you think otherwise then you probably dont want to accept it
@@lucienmoolman8017 I think some people are just so mad at the game that they just cannot see that the game has had some changes in recent years that have made the game a lot better. Game's not perfect, but it's not bad.
I'm honestly fine with the new structure, micro droughts of a few weeks offer up a chance to catch up on other things and progressing other characters, and if they sprinkle in stuff like iron banner I'm more likely to engage in it. Will definitely wait until we see it finished to judge. My only real critique is the end of act 1 of a 3 act story I would have liked an introduction to the villain, even a small cut scene to set the rest of the chapter up.
I kind of feel people were expecting episodes to be something different compared to seasons of years past. I mean I'm not upset as most people, but I would love to see some different to spice up the episodes compared to seasons. I know this came out with final shape so I hope Revenant and Heresy can be more fleshed out and interesting to play compared to seasons.
From the ‘journey ahead’ video destiny released, they mentioned another crafting system in revenant? I think it was called, as well as a ‘monster hunter/vampire hunter’ theme for the episode. For Heresy they mentioned that we’d become ‘the navigator’ and they threw around the word ‘eldritch’ a lot.
I learned years ago to not really expect anything unless it's explicitly and clearly confirmed by Bungie themselves, since they never really went into detail about how it would actually be different from seasons I just expected the differences to be a bunch of very minor things that are ultimately meaningless and that the core seasonal loop some people dislike would be basically unchanged.
I mean, what are we actually expecting other than for them to release the entire act in 1 day? Enigma Protocol's entrance was like whisper levels of secret. Was a change up. I honestly don't know what people are expecting if it's not just "give us all the quests at once"
I think it's impossible to tell the quality of episodes vs seasons until we've had at least one full episode. We've had 15 seasons, and we've had 1/3rd of an episode so far.
@@marko0os_first impressions are everything to people who will leave well enough alone if something isn’t to their taste, not to people who have a stake in something already, if you watch datto you’re invested in destiny and will give bungie the benefit of the doubt whenever they goof because they can come back from their mistakes later and be hailed as saving destiny over and over again
I think the biggest problem is that Bungie promised us something different. What we’ve gotten is good enough for the old seasonal standard, but Bungie still hasn’t delivered on the promise of something new
They changed the timeframes and are bringing back old, beloved weapons with the new seasonal weapons. You get the same amount of content but spread further, with more gear, a better activity, so we're not sat for 1, 2 or 3 months with nothing new to do in the season. I prefer this drip-fed method, let's you breathe so you can get other stuff done.
@@Dynasty1818 hmm, the issue is that we're still sitting here for weeks at a time with nothing to do. Previously it was just weekly drip fed story 5 minutes at a time with some seasonal content to play before the story. Now it's exactly the same but only 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off. We aren't getting *more* story for those 3 weeks, it's 1 activity, a bit of patrol and 5 minutes of story at most.
@@krackawoody2556 I agree that we should wait for all 3 acts to decide whether they delivered, I do also think however that its important to give feedback on how it feels along the way. Especially if that means future episodes can be adjusted in *some* way.
Yeah, I just can't summon the energy to get as upset as people seemingly are online. Even if absolutely nothing else changed beyond having it be 3 seasons a year instead of 4... is the story/content quality remained totally the same, I'd be FINE. Especially if it means whatever the next expansion is, assuming there's another expansion, rivals TFS or WQ in quality because Bungie isn't breaking their back trying to ship a Season every three months. There's so much other shit out there to play, got 0 qualms with that. I do think Episodes may have a bit more in store than what we've seen so far, but I also am not expecting it to be a great deal more / surprising.
I really do wish the seasonal activities that change the geometry would actually change the geometry in patrol. I remember thinking this back in season of the chosen and with each season that want has only grown.
it would of been perfect to give Nessus the pale heart patrol treatment during this episode, it was an easy layup for the studio to do but dropped the ball on that. could of had its own pathfinder tree as well.
Might have been a studio resource issue. I agree that they should implement pathfinder trees for whatever zone the episodic focus is, though. It would give players a reason to actually spend free time there.
I think this is still moving in the right direction, just painfully slowly Byf pointed out the best week-by-week seasons were Chosen and Splicer, and while Haunted was strong in story and Witch, Deep, and Wish had strong activities, they all suffered from the week-by-week pacing. This is “better” but not by much, yet
Week by week pacing really isn't the issue of seasons. It's bungie's reluctance to just innovate the delivery. They did a little with enigma protocol, but they need to go further. Just giving us all the content in 1 day is only going to end in 99 days of content drought coz no lifes beat it all in 24 hours.
@@oxsila Yeah youre right, thats not the issue, the issue is Bungies piss poor story team. They have no idea what they are doing other than making obscure lore entries. I mean really. Act 1 could be summed up into the last mission. You know the one that lead to our main character being conveniently taken and spoke to the big bad of the week. 3 weeks and all we got is some guy is doing some thing and the Vex are corrupted somehow...But like Saint was just stolen from the plot to tell us this. Its shite writing. Edit: The pacing is still an issue tho, because like Byf said in his video, if you do it week by week its so painfully slow that you either forget, or get annoyed by the "Failsafe is doing x, please wait" but if you do it all in the last week things just happen out of the blue straight away with...no............pacing.
Oh damn! Having locations properly evolve throughout the story would be awesome! I bet it would feel like Meridia in Helldivers 2 where the place went from a lush green jungle, to a bug-infested hellscape, to a black hole/wormhole thing!
That’s what we were promised by Luke smith way back when seasons were first made a thing. He kind of fulfilled on it but a lot of what “evolved “ de-evolved after the season.
I’m impressed that the destiny community managed to be happy for 2 weeks before we went back to hating the game. Maybe in 10 years, when the next X and Y saga is over, we can do it again
People just need to stop thinking seasonal content will be good and only play the expansions. But they can't. They're addicted so they'd rather just be moany little f'ers 24/7 365.
@@oxsilaThis. Bungie is not capable of making consistently good live service content. Their strength has always been big boxes of content. The expansions are the closest we will get to that.
@@115zombies935so then don’t release anything at all if it’s going to be garbage? Why do something if you aren’t going to try and put your all into it… it’s people like you that are the reason this game gets shield from necessary criticism, if the content is bad the game is bad. No exceptions.
@@thanos3163 Not gonna lie, this is a stupid reply. People like you who defend this garbage content is why this game will never live up to its potential and why Bungie will always deliver the minimum whenever possible. Yes, they shouldn’t make anything if it’s going to be garbage. Make something good, or don’t make anything at all.
I’m fine with. I realise it might not be perfect for content creators but for someone who can’t play all day every day, I’ve been very happy with it. I’ve got through it now but have still been able to play some crucible, run some strikes etc. it didn’t take over everything which I kind of like.
I think Bungie just needed to go into more specifics when they explained how the episodic structure would be. When they announced it, I thought all the story for the act 1 would drop on day 1... then it dropped, and I looked at the quest steps and triumphs, I realized it was going to be this "3 weeks on, 3 weeks off." thing. It makes sense to me, a season would pretty much only have story for half the weeks, so it's basically that way with acts, but I don't think it's what anybody was expecting from how they sold it. If they'd just explained how the structure was going to go instead of giving all the empty marketing speak... well people would still have been mad... but at least they could have explained the thinking behind it, and people would have been prepared.
Heck we don’t know when the dungeons release, if there is a reprised raid or even if episodes enter the Dcv after a year. They told us it was new, hyped it up and marketed it to us then stoped taking about whats new and expect us to guess how it’s going to work.
Youre talking about a company that said the Beta for Destiny 1 was 10% of the overall content for the game....but later came to find out that the beta was more like 65-70%.
I think Episodes and acts would benefit from an A and B plot kind of situation. The A plot is dumped whole sale at the beginning of an episode and would be the story missions while the B plot provides exposition and introduces the various mechanical pieces for the seasonal activity (New encounter, collecting materials and samples) this wouldnt then have as many dialogue sections where we have several character standing together and talking but instead just the seasonal vendor delivering a monologue
They are seasons but slightly worse because there is even more time gating and even more padding. I dont see why people are saying they are basically seasons because so far, it feels like we've barely gotten anything, both storytelling and gameplay wise. When compared to previous launch seasons within the same timeframe. Like are you really going to try and convince me that this is on par with risen or defiance? It doesnt help that the past year for seasonal story telling can be summed up with "listen to the same character say the same thing theyve said each week, then go do the activity, then go do the same thing you did in freeroam last week but in a different area, then listen to characters talk about how what happened this week was so baffling even though its the same thing that happened last week but in a differentarea, then tease next week, rinse repeat".
people wanted a non-stop story with no lulls in story telling. Act 1 slowed us down, let us catch our breath after the non-stop of Final shape while also setting up a new threat with the vex.
Isnt even a new threat tho. Just more of the same but with a different cause. Vex are like insects, and im pretty sure the old vex are solo thinkers...this is just more of the same hive mind that isnt the vexes. Nothing relates to us tho nor why we care other than being an invasive military group who "Inspect" things and act upon them. Which, you know, wouldnt even happen if not for the heavily convenient kidnapping of one of our best titans the world has ever seen.
WALL OF TEXT BELOW I think it's been good so far. The activities aren't groundbreaking or anything, but they've got a decent amount of variety in what you're doing minute-to-minute. It's good that we're finally getting a reason for them keeping Nessus in the game, compared to something like Titan or the Tangled Shore. We'll have to see how well they'll deliver their promises of more frequent and deeper storytelling, and they're obviously experimenting with a longer-form storytelling format. With any luck, the coming Acts won't just bring more story content as we expect, but will also include either new activities or evolve the current activities. I also like that they're trying to expand on the Vex and make them more narratively compelling. Without any sort of face or personality to latch onto, our allies have had to carry the entirety of the exposition and emotional core of the story. Compared to antagonists like Skolas and Eramis, Gaul, Calus, and temporarily Caiatl, the Hive gods, the Scorned Barons and Uldren, the Nightmares on the Moon and Derelict Leviathan, Rhulk, Nezarec, and especially the Witness, the Vex have never had anything for the player to latch onto. There's never been a real story to them, just another generic doomsday threat that needs to be dealt with. This 'Conductor' and the change that they're invoking upon the Vex is a breath of fresh air, especially with the doubts they have seeded within Saint, who had previously been so sure of his own place in the world. Even when Mithrax brought the House of Light into the fold and forced him to understand the fear he inflicted upon the Eliksni in his past, he was able to quickly reconcile with it and accept that he needs to be better. He made an effort to understand and made fast friends with the people he had previously seen as sworn enemies of humanity. This existential crisis is completely different from anything we've seen from him thus far, and it's especially tragic given that it comes on the heels of the defeat of the Witness, which is the opportunity that he and Osiris had been waiting for to strike out and explore the universe together. The only real problem I've had so far is Failsafe. I have never liked Failsafe. I can sympathize with her plight, but to this day, I detest the direction they took with her, both the split personality and the flippant word choices in what should be serious moments. In Forsaken and especially Final Shape, we saw them course-correct with Cayde, where he regained the cavalier charm of his D1 self that allowed him to make jokes without ruining a serious moment, and we saw him get deadly serious and even melancholy several times in Final Shape. Failsafe is a remnant of D2Y1 writing that they are only just now in the process of correcting, and she's a lot better comparatively, but to me they have not yet hit the balance that she needs to be endearing. That's my unsolicited opinion.
When you get off a roller coaster, you can't get right back on another one and expect to feel that same rush. You have to hop off and let yourself come down from that high for a bit.
I love this change. It allows us to have a simple activity to farm for a couple of weeks and then give us a break to go play other games. I’m tired of feeling like I need to constantly play the game to stay caught up. This is ultimately just going to create a healthier relationship with the game for many players. Of course my opinion could change if the next two acts are mid.
I'm seconding this, so far I have been enjoying being able to come to and from the game while focusing on my life outside of video games and not having to worry that I am going to be missing things.
Breach Executable is fine... if you're a semi-competant player. I've noticed that it gives much less obvious hints as to what to do during the encounters to the point that if you get even one, let alone two people who don't know what to do, then you simply will not be able to get the activity done in a reasonable time. I'm all for making things just a little more difficult, but having more blueberries on after an expansion launch, as well as not being able to quickly communicate as easily if you're on console like I am, then BE can be quite the unfortunate drag. Hopefully this gets better with time, but right now, whilst the activity itself is fine, the current experience isn't.
I tend to be more of an end game player and mostly still play for day 1s, low mans, and flawless raids, so I may be out of touch, but legitametly how are people struggling? Im not being like"oh how are people so bad that they cant even do this lmfao," like I have a friend who started midway through lightfall, I have nothing against new people or those who don't know as much, just legitametly how can you get stuck there?
This is how I feel as well. Enjoying both of the activities and feel like there’s enough stuff to keep busy between post Final Shape stuff and the episodic content so far. Also don’t mind having some down time to catch up on things
Because its not the same, in GI you can play every act from the begining of their version. In Destiny you need to wait not only for the next act to start, but wait to continue the current arc, weekly. For example, Genshin Impact latest chapter, "Chapter IV, Act VI - Bedtime Story" is divided by three missions (one of the shortest), if Hoyoverse had the same narrative model as Bungie those 3 mission would take 3 whole weeks to play them. Also there are Legendary Missions, Events and Side-Quest to fill the gaps. And yes, GI also have time gated content, even when I still don't like that, you just need to wait... one week. Its not the same.
I think they have done a small amount of partitioning what players see in-game based on how they've progressed in the story, so doing something similar with the appearance of Nessus may be possible. It took me a long time last season to beat the exotic mission that was required to progress the story and unlock the Astral Cloister location within the Coil. When running the Coil, I never saw the Astral Cloister section until I personally had unlocked it several weeks after it was available, so the game must have been matchmaking me exclusively with other players who had not unlocked that area either.
The thing is, I think most of the issue stems from Act I coinciding with the launch of TFS, offset by only a week. You cannot make your Act I content more compelling than the expansion, because then youre forcing your playerbase to make a choice between the compelling seasonal content not being spoiled and the expansion itself not being spoiled. Echoes isn't the BEST, but I do think theres already some bright spots. Just the fact that they already broke up the "do activity go back to Vendor" stuff with Saint being hijacked is a huge departure from the previous pacing. The timing builds tension and suspense while Iron Banner goes on, and then the next Act starts innediately after it ends.
I would argue the offset week positively impacts act 1, next act we finish on week 3 and not week 4 like we did in act 1. The gap is gonna feel larger in act 2 as a result
i feel like act 1 is lean on purpose to give you time to do stuff in the new destination etc, returning players have a lot of stuff to get done also, im guessing the other acts will be a lot more impactful
@@wrythe777 sadly that is not the case because acts 2 and 3 are the same 3 week on 3 weeks off. Act 2 and by extension Act 3 will have at most 2 story missions divided by a filler fetch quest like act 1 was. Besides Its not like act 1 is void of content or any leaner then the typical season. If anything Echoes has more content then Undying, Hunt, Risen or Defiance. We got 2 seasonal activities and the weekly story bits are the same predictable fetch quests. The issues stem from the fact bungie can’t even comfortably make 3 weeks of content without useless filler. Week 2 can be skipped entirely. I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking why didnt saint get brainwashed in week 2 and not week 3. We could atleast get another week to move the story forward learning more about the conductor and gathering intel for failsafe to process over the next few weeks. As it stand act 1 ends with us wanting to get revenge on the conductor but Ikora pops up and says not so fast. There isn’t even a narrative reason for this break
Yeah its a departure from previous pacing because the third mission is literally "Main character is taken and is told everything you need to know" which is odd, unbelievable and heavily convenient. Youre telling me to believe that our beast of a warrior main character was just corrupted and kidnapped? Show me. Youre telling me that he is talking with someone who openly told him he was behind everything? Great story telling 👍 Cant wait for the next Act where the first 2 missions do nothing then in the last The Conductor tells us everything we need to know for the plot to move along again..
@@FireStriker_ Getting revenge? Why? Nothing about this story is revengeful or engaging in anyway. The vex are corrupted and we have no idea what that means, why its happening or why we even care. The conductor may have kidnapped Saint and spoke to him but thats no more insidious as a religious person trying to open a gullible atheists minds eye...but that doesnt mean we should go out and actively try and kill the guy. I feel like youre creating more of a story than what is here because the writers dont seem to care..
Petition to make eververse itself have a bright engram pathfinder with hard objectives, and the more you collect the better your chances for better stuff. No paying. Previous seasonal gear/ornaments included.
One thing id love with the episodes, now that the saga concluded, is big changes to destinations like now with nessus it would be cool to have that part that changed for the story mission being part of the patrol zone. At this point nessus and the EDZ are kinda pointless beacuse the Red War campaing dont exist anymore so they could change zones and not lose much while giving them new purposse instead of just being remmenants of the past with nothing going on
Also so far I see the vibe they’re going with and it seems like it’s gonna try and emulate the continuous rollout that we got from March 5th forward to final shape. If it’s story for a few weeks then a week then iron banner for the first two acts then the event after act three then well basically always be in a stage of having something new to go acquire. We’re getting more Guns more activities and content at this point and we need to take far more time to judge the episode as a whole.
Any time people have complained about it, my default answer is "We are literally one third into our first episode. Give it a bit of time." Right now the community is just giving off the vibe that they want all of their favourite 22-season TV shows condensed into 180 hour movies XD
If there was no time gating like Datto says people would blow through the content in a day, resulting in comments of "nothing to do for 3 months, dead game" etc. Bungie really can't win here.
@@AWatson87watch the my name is byf video on this. Timegating is good for that reason but only if it fits the narrative. Two weeks of no story progression is ridiculous for something that is currently happening to the vex in real time. I’m fine with waiting a week for new story but when the little bit of story they give me is only good every other three weeks it’s really disappointing. I love all other aspects of this season but that
@@AWatson87 but with timegating you get people like me that dont even want to fucking bother with the timegated stuff each week because its such little content, trust me, they win less with timegating
My 2 main gripes about Echoes so far are simply story-related: 1. we already know who the Conductor is, it’s Maya/Lakshmi, and yet we have to wait 3 weeks to confirm something we already mostly know (unless they pull a complete 180 and make the Conductor be someone unexpected, which i dont think id personally like) 2. In the Saint mission, Saint is having a severe identity crisis, and yet he goes along with everything too easily. It makes it feel like these revelations for him aren’t as impactful as i feel they should be
I'm still working through Pale Heart items, and trying to progress my Ritual Play list path finder items so I can work on maxing out my gear levels. With only a few hours a week to play, you have to make priorities. A week or so to try and catch up will be nice. I also had no large expectations for episodes to be much different than seasons. I've been enjoying the parts I've play of everything in the Final Shape.
My problems with Breach Executable are that the Cabal encounter is kinda buggy, the Hydra boss is just obnoxius with the modifiers on a boss type that's already bottom of the barrel for me and on more than one occasion the end dialogue hasn't triggered so while I can loot the chests, the activity never ends and I don't get a completion towards my weekly pinnacle. Also the weekly challenge of completing it 3 times on ANY difficulty only works on normal so if I want both pinnacles it's 3 normal clears & 3 expert clears when based on wording 3 experts should do. My problem with Enigma is that while I enjoy the seasonal activity being a tightish timer speedrun, Bungo for some reason decided to make the main mechanic of extending time a knowledge check. If you're doing it match made good luck trying to get through if you don't already know where the extenders are because nobody else sure as hell ain't even looking. Once you know where they all are, you just know. At least in my experience the main mech being hidden caused this to be a "watch a YT guide to learn the spots and carry or you ain't clearing this shit". Why not just use points of progression as time extenders?
I think some people just can't be happy unless the collective Internet they engage with is happy. The episode is good content to engage with weekly. I play the seasonal for the rewards then hit the pale heart, do Nightfalls, a dungeon or two. More of my friends are on and I'm having a blast. Just play the content you have fun with then get off, or play another game until reset. There's a lot of good stuff out there!
Me personally I'm pretty indifferent. I have other games I want to play so it's nice to have a broader episode/season so they can have long story elements and I can play something else
I thought it was fine, given it's alongside an expansion launch (they're always smaller), plus development takes time so i expect later acts and episodes to be bigger. I do wish we got a bit more from the Conductor directly to close out act 1 though
once again, people who thought episodes weren't gonna be seasons 2 need a big reality check. Episodes are just seasons but with content that's more self-contained vs. tying into one-another. But the seasonal model was always gonna stay. Which is why bungie shot themselves in the foot marketing episodes as this big deal when in reality they should've just stuck with seasons if they didn't plan on changing much
It's not that we thought they'd be different, we knew they wouldn't. But seasons or episodes, call them whatever people want, aren't good enough for 2/3 of Destiny's player base.. which is why 2/3 of the player-base leaves in the months following the major expansions. Edit: Oh, and ofc Datto thinks they're okay, he barely cares about the story and makes millions of dollars playing the game. It was a fun expansion, nothing has changed, most of us will see you all at Frontiers.
Bungie went on camera in multiple interviews specifically saying that Episodes would be different from seasons. That set some expectations that I think are completely reasonable. Episodes are literally seasons, there's no difference between them. But now we're all stupid for having expectations and we should just assume nothing Bungie says is ever true? They were the ones who decided to hype them up. They could have called it Season of the Echoes and nobody would have known or cared.
I mean by Bungies own words they said the content delivery would be different, but its the same, just timegated and more spaced out over a longer period of time. Byf made a great video on the Episodes recentl, which explains peoples dislike for them.
@@BrocKelley Personally I feel like the actual season/episode activity is just not interesting enough most of the time. All you really are doing is just dismantling all the gear because all of it can be crafted anyway unless you get a good armor roll. So it might as well auto dismantle your weapon drops and the activity itself is most of the time not interesting enough in terms of mechanics and usually feels like more of the same. Some times people say that the loot is insane during this season and so on(in terms of how much loot you get), but if the loot is basically auto dismantle anyway is it really that exciting. Also the narrative might get something new each week, but after that you are basically back to the same old seasonal activity or the same content you have been doing for years already. It just gets repetitive.
Datto: "I don't know where this idea came from that people felt like Episodes would be drastically different from Seasons. *Proceeds to quote Bungie, describing why players felt like things would be drastically different.* It's not wrong for people to not like how Seasons/Episodes are done. They're terribly presented, the content is spread far too thin, it's the bare minimum to care about week to week. I get it, Bungie wants SOMETHING for people to login for. But instead of it being a weekly cliffhanger of content, it ends up being "chores chores chores to find out 'what happens,' only to get led along with nothing of substance." MAYBE something big happens at the end of a Season, or...Bungie pulls a name out of the lore, assigns it to a random faction-based big dude that players then kill. And again, same question I always ask...if this content gets removed after a year of being in the game...why on earth should I bother caring to log in? Bungie treats it as temporary, they clearly don't want us to invest in it long term as concrete story that they WANT people relive or see for the first time.
I think the change to the area that we see at the end of act 1 will Come into the environment in act 2 maybe? (To give people time to get caught up on the story)
It's weird that people are being so hard on Episodes considering we're literally only one act deep in the first Episode. Some people are way too impatient to reserve judgement until we at least get through act 3. Like this Episode came with the expansion and historically seasons that drop with expansions are always light on content.
i have to agree with this because, like, the end of this act is a pretty big deal, right? We have this vex(?) consciousness that seems to have some pretty intense power with a motive that is very different from any bad-guy we've shot up before in Destiny. I'm enjoying the seasonal activities so far and the weapons are incredible. Literally some of the best seasonal weapons we've ever gotten and we don't yet have what will probably be the best of the seasonal weapons yet. We also don't have the seasonal exotic (if, in fact, we're going to get one). I've not enjoyed the activity as much as like The Coil or Deep Dive but it's released next to an expansion so let's compare apples to apples... I think it's very fair to say this is the best expansion-timed season we've gotten.
First impressions matter and if it doesn't hook you from the start then most of the people are already gone or onto another game before anything else can launch.
good luck seeing much of anything changing in episode 2 cuz I'd wager most of that is already halfway into production and probably would take till episode 3 for any significant changes. Change that Episodes are supposed to do in the first place replacing seasons
Bungie: We want to shake things up a bit and bring more surprises in the future. Average Destiny 2 player when the new episode isn't IMMEDIATELY the greatest thing in the history of gaming: BUNGIE LIED PEOPLE DIED
More like, Bungie when their producers make asinine statements and the content moto remains the same; both in delivery and quality: The communities' actual reaction to the poor quality content and Bungie's marketing of said content: "lol" Same shit, different day bud.
Based on an infographic you might've seen going around a while back, there's at least one new activity in act 2 and 3 of each episode. (I think it was screenshotted from TFS Showcase last year, but not sure.) We have two dungeons confirmed this year (because they're selling a Dungeon Key and that's what it says), I'm expecting a reprised raid but don't have any official confirmation, and I don't know how much of any of that overlaps with the things we do know we're getting.
I do wish later on in the acts that Nessus gets terraformed again and we got something closer to Pale Heart type destination, but it might be too much to ask for
The problem i have isn't the timegating in general, that's just how it's always been. It's how we've now got a three week break just as they story just found its footing, and apparently that's how it is going to be between act 2 and 3 as well, 3 weeks story 3 weeks break. It just feels actually worse than seasons because i could just play at the beginning of the season and chill for the rest, now it's a weird feeling of on-off.
My only gripe is what you said about the patrol space, been wanting a quest progressed patrol space for a while, haven’t done x part of y quest, loaded into here, have done x of y, progressed instance and if people party, I’d just say leader takes influence based on their progress. Thought it was a great start to the year
When you mentioned things changing based on where you are based on a quest at 4:23. A bunch of times for the tower during the story it puts you in a different tower if you complete the campaign or not. So theyve done it before, guess a social space is easier than a planet
Usually, it's a season or, in this example, an episode right after a big expansion is a little lackluster. I hope that going forward, more resources are put into them, and the content starts feeling different than seasons.
This is Word Soup, TL:DR, i am enjoying the episode both in terms of story and content im still doing TFS stuff, helping friends get stuff (i even have a jez moment where 3 of said friends all have no Gally which also lets me finally get all them bottles and finish that vidmaster title), so im glad we have these 16 days inbetween act 1 and 2 currently. Hell its lets me take breaks id normally save for in-between seasons or during whole runs of seasonal content like skipping Deep and Witch in lightfall or Seraph and most of Arrivals in Shadowkeep. I have my season rank at 100 with a Bright engram bonus of 4 and can easily grab the first 4 levels of act 2 in 16 days.
It would be SO sick if "the Conductor" was the original Saint- 14. That's why he couldn't ignore the voice and that's why the Vex are using Vanguard battle tactics
The main thing people expected as "a fresh and new way to tell stories" was getting the entire episode dumped on everyone day 1. So they can then run through it and complain it was too short. Or not enough. And if its not having an entire episode available day 1, then its having more cutscenes and more actual missions akin to a campaign. But in this case a mini campaign. That would be fresh for the game. Like develop a story for the episode and then create missions that take us through that story. With cutscenes. All that. Thats most likely what everyone wants.
I have two main issues with the episode. one was that i don't really like Breach Executable, so the number of times we have to do it for the episode quest line was a disappointment. it was do story mission, do seasonal activity, do story mission do seasonal activity, and so on. and I know that is a common formula for season quests, but this was marketed as being a different structure for the game. I didn't actually expect it to be different, but I was slightly hopeful. the second issue for me was that certain "story" missions were just "go do a slightly remixed strike and also go hold the activate button five times in three different old areas". the middle portion of the episode was just paced extremely poorly, while I think the opening and ending were pretty good! especially when compared to the middle and breach executable😂
Vex are not supposed to retreat. The whole thing is that they see themselves as expendable for the goal. Its what makes them predictable. This change is...worrying.
I like that they're time gating the acts of the episodes, because whenever I'm done with the seasonal content, until the next act i can focus on playing other games and making progress there.
The biggest problem with episodes seems to be that we were told it's not a season and it would be better, but it is a season, just with more time gating
For me, the worst part of Echoes was that the mirror "puzzle" was solved for you by them just waypointing the correct place to stand. Lame. Otherwise, I love having Failsafe back, and I think people aren't understanding that this is just PART ONE, not the end of what we used to call a season.
I'm actually enjoying the more spaced out timeframe, personally. FS was fucking baller but since I'm in the middle of moving and finding a new job after graduating, I really don't have the time to dedicate myself to something as heavy as a campaign like I did in the short window I had post-graduation. Plus Shadow of the Erdtree coming out means that I have even more games to catch up with outside of D2. The space between acts gives me wiggle room to catch up, which is what I liked about Season of the Wish. My biggest beef with seasons prior was that the story beats always felt like they were way too short/condensed to fit the seasonal time limit, so I'm mainly hoping that gets addressed here.
Failsafe's "Beep boop" thing seems like a harmless bit but I think theres a deeper point to it. She is so desperate to be helpful to us, to prove shes a useful and indispensable part of the team that she'll do any little thing to try and help because shes afraid. Shes afraid of being abandoned again. Her writing this time around is great and shes an actual character with flaws, fears, and ambitions.
I'm hopeful things will pick up in Act 2. I'm also hopeful Bungie will use the time they'll get from this change from seasons to episodes to really work on that "Frontiers" stuff that'll come next year. Fingers crossed.
I was hoping we could play all the missions for an act at once or at least a couple mini-campaign-like missions but in the back of my head I was thinking it’s just gonna be the same thing😂 But of course I’m still gonna play😂
My problem with it is that we're Week 3 in and we haven't even met the Villian of the episode. It's basically been nothing for 3 weeks. So next Act (2) is going to be spent on establishing the Villian and their motivations, only for in the following Act (3) that we just kind of defeat them. So you've got the Curse of Osiris problem where we're introduced to a massive threat and then defeat it within 2 hours of actual gameplay and story. It just kind of feels like we've done this before.
I think you missed the mark here. With the Witness in the TFS, you’d have a competing villain here, it’s just too close to fully introduce the villain of the episode while the Witness is still so fresh. Stories need room to breathe. They’ve hinted at the next villain that’s arising in the power vacuum of the fall of the Witness. I think it feels appropriately paced. With that said, the episode activity does feel a bit like past seasons, but I’m going to withhold judgment till we complete act 2 and act 3.
I mean yeah, you said it yourself, the reason I, and many others, and pissed isn't because the content we have had is bad or worse than before, but they put SO much effort into telling us thats its going to be different, fresh, whatever way you wanna describe it. But the only REAL difference so far is that now I have to wait 3 weeks for more story instead of one.
For changing the patrol zone just have it be different at reset. Like the same week you get the episode where they talk about how nessus is changing the patrol zone has changed. People who don't have access to episodes see the area is completely changed and wonder what happened and find out about episodes and possibly go check it out. Everyone not up to that quest step see's nessus has changed which might get them to re engage with the quest line to find out why. And people who are at that step and find out about it at the same time as it happened that week feel satisfied and that the world actually changes.
My biggest issue so far has been that Episodes were marketed to be a new fresh take on seasons, but so far Act 1 has been a mini-season. It gives the impression that instead of getting 4 seasons a year, we will be getting 9 small seasons and I don't like that.
I hope the changes will be updated with every act or at the end of the episode, so everyone can catch up, but we still have the changes active. They also changed a strike to make it suit the situation. I can't wait to see what they'll do to Terminus Horizon and that drill strike. Come to think of it, all leftovers from D2 vanilla vanish and are replaced with up to date versions of their content. It feels like the world is slowly progressing, and I like that
I’d rather have the full act available on the same day of release, sure split each act up across multiple months. But I’m tired of getting small amounts each week…
Im actually happy with it. I love the vex as a faction and the new vex wrapons look so cool (just wish the hand cannon wasnt a 180) and they are mostly amazing
EDIT: I wrote this before watching the video. I honestly think we've got another "season launching with expac" situation so far. The expansion was such a high that the episode cannot compete at that level. With that said though, I find it...fine...so far? The activities presented in act 1 aren't anything to write home about, but they're not bad either. I like the variety with the timed one. The only flaws so far are: 1.They maintain this stubborn, "come at reset to get the rest of the story" model. If they knew act 1 had 3 chapters...why not space them out more and at irregular intervals? Simply launching chapter 1 one week after TFS, chapter two week 3 on a Friday and chapter 3 on a random Sunday night(as to amount for a, HOLY SHIT, SAINT'S MISSING EMERGENCY) would go a long way to maybe shake the predictable nature of it to keep it fresh. 2. The Nessus changes were so pretty to look at but for some reason Bungo doesn't want to propagate the changes to the patrol space. I don't know if it's a technical limitation, or an oversight. I can't imagine nobody at Bungo thought "Hey, maybe we should replace Nessus' landscapes with these new assets we're making" The loot's great so far, both the gun models, the new frames and the perk offerings. The Radiolaria pick-up system ,akin to fishing is also cool,albeit with initial hiccups involving blueberries running forward and pulling everyone picking up the stuff, an issue that a fix has been announced for. The loot for dunking those is very generous however. There really isn't anything to HATE so far. The feeling I have is a solid, "whelmed". It is a slow start...again. And it was bound to feel that way. We just got a conclusion for the Witness ffs, a 10 year saga...of course whatever came after wasn't going to feel as bold and grand in scale.
Dude I haven't touched the season apart from the opening mission we got on reset week two. I've got so much to do in the game there's no point starting it yet. I'm not at max light I'm just taking my time and enjoying the ride
Honestly the nessus changes should be permanent regardless of how far along people are in the story. The leviathan is still in the moon’s skybox even if your playing old content from shadowkeep when it was supposed to be at Nessus. It’s a cool addition and it should stick around to freshen the space up
I can’t help but think they droped a cabal land tank on nesses but can’t have the echos cause permanent damage. Like sure maybe The Inverted Spire may need to be reworked as it relies on the patrol space but it would breath new life into the strike.
Wont lie I was disappointed with the reworked Exodus crash strike. Felt like they took the feedback from Lake of Shadows and decided to do QOL improvements insted of reworking it to tie into the echos story line. Maybe act 2 will change the landscape but im not holding my breath
Might still change nessus with the launch of act 2. That being said, the changes here are bigger and more numerous than changing the skybox or adding an extra little bit to the map. Also I've got a feeling these changes wont be permanent in story, after we finish the episode, so in that case, they might not be worth it for bungie. Who knows🤷♂️
@@aljazslemc9569Yeah sure there is an entire strike that would be impacted by this changed but its worth the effort to make this work. I really hope it gets changed in act 2 but im not holding my breath
If the DCV is still hungry the changes are not permanent at all.
Maybe the permanent patrol space change will happen when Act 2 launches.
@@FireStriker_nop
Insert obligatory opinion comment
I think the ontological statement of the season greatly affects the gameplay as a whole.
Finally some pro gamer takes
My comment has arrived!
I disagree😡
❤
Seasonal content sure exists.
Does it tho? (shadow of the erdtree)
@@wall57805What does the elden ring DLC have to do with seasonal content?
@@wall57805Just beat it an hour ago. Best dlc in the series with some of the deepest lore under the hood. It explains how the erdtree/elden ring was created etc... so cool
@@Plagiarismm "something something" i could be playing that [aditional yapping]
@@Depression_timelost Fair enough.
I actually liked the beep boop. Especially when she adds the politeness filter to it
The best dialogue failsafe had up until that point
I really liked that too. It really should of been tied to the proximity sensor and not pre recorded
i really dont see how some people dislike her so much, she’s the only character i’ll actively listen to
@@3DaDon. I think some people have just come to hate anything even somewhat goofy/fun. Like MCU started leaning in to the goofiness a little more, and when general sentiment turned on that whole style of humor, people leaned away from it... and then just KEPT leaning further and further away, until they started getting unreasonably angry about it.
Obviously I don't mean that's EVERYONE, there are valid criticisms for everything. It's just something I notice now. Ever since people started disliking MCU's humor, that sentiment has spread to most other things, and it has also grown by a LOT. It became "cool" to hate on that kind of humor, and as with ANYTHING that becomes "cool" on the internet, it spiraled out of control and people started WAY overdoing it, and now we get a portion of the vocal minority (IE, internet people) who just hate anything in the realm of goofy/silly.
@@3DaDon.Its because she sounds like she belongs in Borderlands 3, her dialogue is just so cringe inducing most of the time.
They might edit terrain based on what phase the story is. Currently we have default Nessus for patrol, with like four areas with coral vex, so during act 2 maybe we see the terrain change. Then in act 3 we have extreme change, but we don’t see those changes until each act activates. Would make sense for the opening of the next act in the episode to evolve or change the area to match the story, so we see the pace of the change in chronological order, rather than sudden changes as the first person who completes act 2 for everyone to see (this would likely help prevent spoilers in the episode as well.)
I really hope they change the terrain more massively, like please put the drained cistern in as the new patrol version, it's so cool.
Just wasting it on a single mission just sucks.
@@nobodyuwu3970 I just wish we got a new public event or some new secrets. If the patrol space got an overhaul I wouldn’t be so totally underwhelmed
@@FireStriker_ they could do it, like they did in season of the haunted, but it'd come at the cost of other new activities in that episode. Given the reaction of some of the community rn, i don't know that i wish it upon bungie to have to listen to complaints of "all they give us for act 2 is a public event?! This is worse than __________ or something like that
@@aljazslemc9569 haunted didnt given us a new public event? And im not asking for a repeat of season of the worthy but using some of the ideas in the breach protocol as new public events. even if its a reskin of an existing public event this would come a long way to make the patrol space feel fresh and inviting to long term players and not just a year 1 location that is timelocked to the red war
lol
It just feels like the same quality and quantity but over a longer time frame, but this did come with TFS and we are only in act one so im hoping it turns around for the better :)
I hope you're right but at the same time I just have to believe we are smoking that copium right now
The game has been going for years with no improvements, you’re absolutely coping
@@slackstarfish8133 dear lord you are about to get flamed to hell saying that. No improvements? Wild...
@@lucienmoolman8017 he aint wrong, narrative in seasonal content has been hot garbage and if you think otherwise then you probably dont want to accept it
@@lucienmoolman8017 I think some people are just so mad at the game that they just cannot see that the game has had some changes in recent years that have made the game a lot better. Game's not perfect, but it's not bad.
I'm honestly fine with the new structure, micro droughts of a few weeks offer up a chance to catch up on other things and progressing other characters, and if they sprinkle in stuff like iron banner I'm more likely to engage in it. Will definitely wait until we see it finished to judge.
My only real critique is the end of act 1 of a 3 act story I would have liked an introduction to the villain, even a small cut scene to set the rest of the chapter up.
I kind of feel people were expecting episodes to be something different compared to seasons of years past. I mean I'm not upset as most people, but I would love to see some different to spice up the episodes compared to seasons.
I know this came out with final shape so I hope Revenant and Heresy can be more fleshed out and interesting to play compared to seasons.
From the ‘journey ahead’ video destiny released, they mentioned another crafting system in revenant? I think it was called, as well as a ‘monster hunter/vampire hunter’ theme for the episode. For Heresy they mentioned that we’d become ‘the navigator’ and they threw around the word ‘eldritch’ a lot.
Seeing as in a vidoc they said episodes were meant to change up the feeling of seasons, people should expect that
I was expecting it when bungie specifically said they would change the formula for episodes. Turns out the change was just more timegating
I learned years ago to not really expect anything unless it's explicitly and clearly confirmed by Bungie themselves, since they never really went into detail about how it would actually be different from seasons I just expected the differences to be a bunch of very minor things that are ultimately meaningless and that the core seasonal loop some people dislike would be basically unchanged.
I mean, what are we actually expecting other than for them to release the entire act in 1 day? Enigma Protocol's entrance was like whisper levels of secret. Was a change up. I honestly don't know what people are expecting if it's not just "give us all the quests at once"
I think it's impossible to tell the quality of episodes vs seasons until we've had at least one full episode. We've had 15 seasons, and we've had 1/3rd of an episode so far.
What’s important is how it feels at the start. Episodes feel worse at their start than seasons did at their start of the seasons
@@aidenboyle3573I agree but I’m wondering how the future episodes will feel without the dlc to headline it
First impressions are everything
@@marko0os_ if first impressions were truly everything destiny 1 would have never made it out of year 1. Give it time.
@@marko0os_first impressions are everything to people who will leave well enough alone if something isn’t to their taste, not to people who have a stake in something already, if you watch datto you’re invested in destiny and will give bungie the benefit of the doubt whenever they goof because they can come back from their mistakes later and be hailed as saving destiny over and over again
I think the biggest problem is that Bungie promised us something different. What we’ve gotten is good enough for the old seasonal standard, but Bungie still hasn’t delivered on the promise of something new
They changed the timeframes and are bringing back old, beloved weapons with the new seasonal weapons. You get the same amount of content but spread further, with more gear, a better activity, so we're not sat for 1, 2 or 3 months with nothing new to do in the season. I prefer this drip-fed method, let's you breathe so you can get other stuff done.
Shouldnt we at least wait until we have experienced all 3 acts before we judge whether they delivered or not?
Can't even say what they're trying or not trying to shake up, we literally just got the story set up.
@@Dynasty1818 hmm, the issue is that we're still sitting here for weeks at a time with nothing to do. Previously it was just weekly drip fed story 5 minutes at a time with some seasonal content to play before the story.
Now it's exactly the same but only 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off. We aren't getting *more* story for those 3 weeks, it's 1 activity, a bit of patrol and 5 minutes of story at most.
@@krackawoody2556 I agree that we should wait for all 3 acts to decide whether they delivered, I do also think however that its important to give feedback on how it feels along the way. Especially if that means future episodes can be adjusted in *some* way.
I enjoyed it, and thought it was brief enough to get me interested but also not burnt out because there’s so much other stuff to do in this game rn.
Yeah, I just can't summon the energy to get as upset as people seemingly are online. Even if absolutely nothing else changed beyond having it be 3 seasons a year instead of 4... is the story/content quality remained totally the same, I'd be FINE. Especially if it means whatever the next expansion is, assuming there's another expansion, rivals TFS or WQ in quality because Bungie isn't breaking their back trying to ship a Season every three months.
There's so much other shit out there to play, got 0 qualms with that. I do think Episodes may have a bit more in store than what we've seen so far, but I also am not expecting it to be a great deal more / surprising.
I really do wish the seasonal activities that change the geometry would actually change the geometry in patrol. I remember thinking this back in season of the chosen and with each season that want has only grown.
So i haven't even started TFS yet. Will i be able to still play the first episode after the second ep. Starts? Or am i gonna miss anything story wise?
it would of been perfect to give Nessus the pale heart patrol treatment during this episode, it was an easy layup for the studio to do but dropped the ball on that. could of had its own pathfinder tree as well.
Might have been a studio resource issue. I agree that they should implement pathfinder trees for whatever zone the episodic focus is, though. It would give players a reason to actually spend free time there.
I think this is still moving in the right direction, just painfully slowly
Byf pointed out the best week-by-week seasons were Chosen and Splicer, and while Haunted was strong in story and Witch, Deep, and Wish had strong activities, they all suffered from the week-by-week pacing. This is “better” but not by much, yet
Week by week pacing really isn't the issue of seasons. It's bungie's reluctance to just innovate the delivery. They did a little with enigma protocol, but they need to go further. Just giving us all the content in 1 day is only going to end in 99 days of content drought coz no lifes beat it all in 24 hours.
@@oxsila Yeah youre right, thats not the issue, the issue is Bungies piss poor story team. They have no idea what they are doing other than making obscure lore entries. I mean really. Act 1 could be summed up into the last mission. You know the one that lead to our main character being conveniently taken and spoke to the big bad of the week. 3 weeks and all we got is some guy is doing some thing and the Vex are corrupted somehow...But like Saint was just stolen from the plot to tell us this. Its shite writing.
Edit: The pacing is still an issue tho, because like Byf said in his video, if you do it week by week its so painfully slow that you either forget, or get annoyed by the "Failsafe is doing x, please wait" but if you do it all in the last week things just happen out of the blue straight away with...no............pacing.
@@oxsila Then that will be the nolifers problem. Let them create that problem for themselves if they wish.
Oh damn! Having locations properly evolve throughout the story would be awesome! I bet it would feel like Meridia in Helldivers 2 where the place went from a lush green jungle, to a bug-infested hellscape, to a black hole/wormhole thing!
That’s what we were promised by Luke smith way back when seasons were first made a thing. He kind of fulfilled on it but a lot of what “evolved “ de-evolved after the season.
Saint: "I just need some time to process this. I'm thinking I'll need exactly 3 weeks. See you then!"
I’m impressed that the destiny community managed to be happy for 2 weeks before we went back to hating the game. Maybe in 10 years, when the next X and Y saga is over, we can do it again
People just need to stop thinking seasonal content will be good and only play the expansions. But they can't. They're addicted so they'd rather just be moany little f'ers 24/7 365.
@@oxsilaThis. Bungie is not capable of making consistently good live service content. Their strength has always been big boxes of content. The expansions are the closest we will get to that.
@@115zombies935so then don’t release anything at all if it’s going to be garbage? Why do something if you aren’t going to try and put your all into it… it’s people like you that are the reason this game gets shield from necessary criticism, if the content is bad the game is bad. No exceptions.
@@thanos3163 Not gonna lie, this is a stupid reply. People like you who defend this garbage content is why this game will never live up to its potential and why Bungie will always deliver the minimum whenever possible.
Yes, they shouldn’t make anything if it’s going to be garbage. Make something good, or don’t make anything at all.
@@thanos3163ud rather not have new content to play even if its mid?
I’m fine with. I realise it might not be perfect for content creators but for someone who can’t play all day every day, I’ve been very happy with it. I’ve got through it now but have still been able to play some crucible, run some strikes etc. it didn’t take over everything which I kind of like.
I think Bungie just needed to go into more specifics when they explained how the episodic structure would be. When they announced it, I thought all the story for the act 1 would drop on day 1... then it dropped, and I looked at the quest steps and triumphs, I realized it was going to be this "3 weeks on, 3 weeks off." thing. It makes sense to me, a season would pretty much only have story for half the weeks, so it's basically that way with acts, but I don't think it's what anybody was expecting from how they sold it.
If they'd just explained how the structure was going to go instead of giving all the empty marketing speak... well people would still have been mad... but at least they could have explained the thinking behind it, and people would have been prepared.
Heck we don’t know when the dungeons release, if there is a reprised raid or even if episodes enter the Dcv after a year.
They told us it was new, hyped it up and marketed it to us then stoped taking about whats new and expect us to guess how it’s going to work.
Youre talking about a company that said the Beta for Destiny 1 was 10% of the overall content for the game....but later came to find out that the beta was more like 65-70%.
@@scotttimbrell8632 Oh so like 3 patrol zones were 70% of the game huh? :P
@@scotttimbrell8632 I mean expecting overdelivery for seasonal content is a bit delusional given the direction the Bungie company has gone.
@@mrhawkyy1 Any amount of content is over delivery at this point.
What pulse is he using in this? 5:50
I think Episodes and acts would benefit from an A and B plot kind of situation. The A plot is dumped whole sale at the beginning of an episode and would be the story missions while the B plot provides exposition and introduces the various mechanical pieces for the seasonal activity (New encounter, collecting materials and samples) this wouldnt then have as many dialogue sections where we have several character standing together and talking but instead just the seasonal vendor delivering a monologue
They are seasons but slightly worse because there is even more time gating and even more padding. I dont see why people are saying they are basically seasons because so far, it feels like we've barely gotten anything, both storytelling and gameplay wise. When compared to previous launch seasons within the same timeframe. Like are you really going to try and convince me that this is on par with risen or defiance? It doesnt help that the past year for seasonal story telling can be summed up with "listen to the same character say the same thing theyve said each week, then go do the activity, then go do the same thing you did in freeroam last week but in a different area, then listen to characters talk about how what happened this week was so baffling even though its the same thing that happened last week but in a differentarea, then tease next week, rinse repeat".
people wanted a non-stop story with no lulls in story telling. Act 1 slowed us down, let us catch our breath after the non-stop of Final shape while also setting up a new threat with the vex.
Isnt even a new threat tho. Just more of the same but with a different cause. Vex are like insects, and im pretty sure the old vex are solo thinkers...this is just more of the same hive mind that isnt the vexes. Nothing relates to us tho nor why we care other than being an invasive military group who "Inspect" things and act upon them. Which, you know, wouldnt even happen if not for the heavily convenient kidnapping of one of our best titans the world has ever seen.
Is the destiny app its listened under season 24 not episode 1
Hey Datto, a bit off topic, but are you going to check out The First Descendant?
WALL OF TEXT BELOW
I think it's been good so far. The activities aren't groundbreaking or anything, but they've got a decent amount of variety in what you're doing minute-to-minute. It's good that we're finally getting a reason for them keeping Nessus in the game, compared to something like Titan or the Tangled Shore. We'll have to see how well they'll deliver their promises of more frequent and deeper storytelling, and they're obviously experimenting with a longer-form storytelling format. With any luck, the coming Acts won't just bring more story content as we expect, but will also include either new activities or evolve the current activities.
I also like that they're trying to expand on the Vex and make them more narratively compelling. Without any sort of face or personality to latch onto, our allies have had to carry the entirety of the exposition and emotional core of the story. Compared to antagonists like Skolas and Eramis, Gaul, Calus, and temporarily Caiatl, the Hive gods, the Scorned Barons and Uldren, the Nightmares on the Moon and Derelict Leviathan, Rhulk, Nezarec, and especially the Witness, the Vex have never had anything for the player to latch onto. There's never been a real story to them, just another generic doomsday threat that needs to be dealt with.
This 'Conductor' and the change that they're invoking upon the Vex is a breath of fresh air, especially with the doubts they have seeded within Saint, who had previously been so sure of his own place in the world. Even when Mithrax brought the House of Light into the fold and forced him to understand the fear he inflicted upon the Eliksni in his past, he was able to quickly reconcile with it and accept that he needs to be better. He made an effort to understand and made fast friends with the people he had previously seen as sworn enemies of humanity. This existential crisis is completely different from anything we've seen from him thus far, and it's especially tragic given that it comes on the heels of the defeat of the Witness, which is the opportunity that he and Osiris had been waiting for to strike out and explore the universe together.
The only real problem I've had so far is Failsafe. I have never liked Failsafe. I can sympathize with her plight, but to this day, I detest the direction they took with her, both the split personality and the flippant word choices in what should be serious moments. In Forsaken and especially Final Shape, we saw them course-correct with Cayde, where he regained the cavalier charm of his D1 self that allowed him to make jokes without ruining a serious moment, and we saw him get deadly serious and even melancholy several times in Final Shape. Failsafe is a remnant of D2Y1 writing that they are only just now in the process of correcting, and she's a lot better comparatively, but to me they have not yet hit the balance that she needs to be endearing.
That's my unsolicited opinion.
When you get off a roller coaster, you can't get right back on another one and expect to feel that same rush. You have to hop off and let yourself come down from that high for a bit.
I never got my specimen 003 quest. Is there something I missed or has noone gotten it yet?
It was supposed to ship this week, but due to a bug isn't actually accessible. Bugfix shipping next week. Per a reddit comment from a Bungie employee.
I love this change. It allows us to have a simple activity to farm for a couple of weeks and then give us a break to go play other games. I’m tired of feeling like I need to constantly play the game to stay caught up. This is ultimately just going to create a healthier relationship with the game for many players. Of course my opinion could change if the next two acts are mid.
That’s a good point it could be better but allowing time in between to play or take a break is a good thing
I'm seconding this, so far I have been enjoying being able to come to and from the game while focusing on my life outside of video games and not having to worry that I am going to be missing things.
Breach Executable is fine... if you're a semi-competant player. I've noticed that it gives much less obvious hints as to what to do during the encounters to the point that if you get even one, let alone two people who don't know what to do, then you simply will not be able to get the activity done in a reasonable time. I'm all for making things just a little more difficult, but having more blueberries on after an expansion launch, as well as not being able to quickly communicate as easily if you're on console like I am, then BE can be quite the unfortunate drag. Hopefully this gets better with time, but right now, whilst the activity itself is fine, the current experience isn't.
I tend to be more of an end game player and mostly still play for day 1s, low mans, and flawless raids, so I may be out of touch, but legitametly how are people struggling? Im not being like"oh how are people so bad that they cant even do this lmfao," like I have a friend who started midway through lightfall, I have nothing against new people or those who don't know as much, just legitametly how can you get stuck there?
This is how I feel as well. Enjoying both of the activities and feel like there’s enough stuff to keep busy between post Final Shape stuff and the episodic content so far. Also don’t mind having some down time to catch up on things
Does anyone know what Titan mark he is wearing in the beginning of the video?
yes, its called the john bungie mark.
Its the abyssal reliance mark from a couple of seasons ago
I mean, Genshin Impact's own archon quests happens every 6 weeks, and people don't mind waiting until the next patch comes.
I never even thought of that
I wanna assume mostly because you don't have to pay for it and the fact it doesnt get sunset (except maybe Albedo's first event)
I mean the difference is the archon quest lasts for at most 3-4 hours as opposed to 30 minutes a week
Because its not the same, in GI you can play every act from the begining of their version. In Destiny you need to wait not only for the next act to start, but wait to continue the current arc, weekly.
For example, Genshin Impact latest chapter, "Chapter IV, Act VI - Bedtime Story" is divided by three missions (one of the shortest), if Hoyoverse had the same narrative model as Bungie those 3 mission would take 3 whole weeks to play them.
Also there are Legendary Missions, Events and Side-Quest to fill the gaps. And yes, GI also have time gated content, even when I still don't like that, you just need to wait... one week. Its not the same.
That’s fair point
Honestly faislafe’s voiceacting was worth the season already she’s such an interesting and lovable character
She's not glados, well tbh noone can beat that machine in fantastic writing
the piston changes are a must. i can never seem to find the hammers, when i do, someone else got it or if i do i often get a chance to hit
I think they have done a small amount of partitioning what players see in-game based on how they've progressed in the story, so doing something similar with the appearance of Nessus may be possible. It took me a long time last season to beat the exotic mission that was required to progress the story and unlock the Astral Cloister location within the Coil. When running the Coil, I never saw the Astral Cloister section until I personally had unlocked it several weeks after it was available, so the game must have been matchmaking me exclusively with other players who had not unlocked that area either.
The thing is, I think most of the issue stems from Act I coinciding with the launch of TFS, offset by only a week. You cannot make your Act I content more compelling than the expansion, because then youre forcing your playerbase to make a choice between the compelling seasonal content not being spoiled and the expansion itself not being spoiled.
Echoes isn't the BEST, but I do think theres already some bright spots. Just the fact that they already broke up the "do activity go back to Vendor" stuff with Saint being hijacked is a huge departure from the previous pacing.
The timing builds tension and suspense while Iron Banner goes on, and then the next Act starts innediately after it ends.
I would argue the offset week positively impacts act 1, next act we finish on week 3 and not week 4 like we did in act 1. The gap is gonna feel larger in act 2 as a result
i feel like act 1 is lean on purpose to give you time to do stuff in the new destination etc, returning players have a lot of stuff to get done also, im guessing the other acts will be a lot more impactful
@@wrythe777 sadly that is not the case because acts 2 and 3 are the same 3 week on 3 weeks off. Act 2 and by extension Act 3 will have at most 2 story missions divided by a filler fetch quest like act 1 was.
Besides Its not like act 1 is void of content or any leaner then the typical season. If anything Echoes has more content then Undying, Hunt, Risen or Defiance. We got 2 seasonal activities and the weekly story bits are the same predictable fetch quests.
The issues stem from the fact bungie can’t even comfortably make 3 weeks of content without useless filler.
Week 2 can be skipped entirely. I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking why didnt saint get brainwashed in week 2 and not week 3. We could atleast get another week to move the story forward learning more about the conductor and gathering intel for failsafe to process over the next few weeks.
As it stand act 1 ends with us wanting to get revenge on the conductor but Ikora pops up and says not so fast. There isn’t even a narrative reason for this break
Yeah its a departure from previous pacing because the third mission is literally "Main character is taken and is told everything you need to know" which is odd, unbelievable and heavily convenient. Youre telling me to believe that our beast of a warrior main character was just corrupted and kidnapped? Show me. Youre telling me that he is talking with someone who openly told him he was behind everything? Great story telling 👍 Cant wait for the next Act where the first 2 missions do nothing then in the last The Conductor tells us everything we need to know for the plot to move along again..
@@FireStriker_ Getting revenge? Why? Nothing about this story is revengeful or engaging in anyway. The vex are corrupted and we have no idea what that means, why its happening or why we even care. The conductor may have kidnapped Saint and spoke to him but thats no more insidious as a religious person trying to open a gullible atheists minds eye...but that doesnt mean we should go out and actively try and kill the guy. I feel like youre creating more of a story than what is here because the writers dont seem to care..
Petition to make eververse itself have a bright engram pathfinder with hard objectives, and the more you collect the better your chances for better stuff. No paying.
Previous seasonal gear/ornaments included.
One thing id love with the episodes, now that the saga concluded, is big changes to destinations like now with nessus it would be cool to have that part that changed for the story mission being part of the patrol zone. At this point nessus and the EDZ are kinda pointless beacuse the Red War campaing dont exist anymore so they could change zones and not lose much while giving them new purposse instead of just being remmenants of the past with nothing going on
Also so far I see the vibe they’re going with and it seems like it’s gonna try and emulate the continuous rollout that we got from March 5th forward to final shape. If it’s story for a few weeks then a week then iron banner for the first two acts then the event after act three then well basically always be in a stage of having something new to go acquire. We’re getting more Guns more activities and content at this point and we need to take far more time to judge the episode as a whole.
Any time people have complained about it, my default answer is "We are literally one third into our first episode. Give it a bit of time."
Right now the community is just giving off the vibe that they want all of their favourite 22-season TV shows condensed into 180 hour movies XD
Episodes are already weak at the knees because of the sheer volume of timegating involved. Everything has a time gate on it.
If there was no time gating like Datto says people would blow through the content in a day, resulting in comments of "nothing to do for 3 months, dead game" etc. Bungie really can't win here.
@@AWatson87watch the my name is byf video on this. Timegating is good for that reason but only if it fits the narrative. Two weeks of no story progression is ridiculous for something that is currently happening to the vex in real time. I’m fine with waiting a week for new story but when the little bit of story they give me is only good every other three weeks it’s really disappointing. I love all other aspects of this season but that
@@AWatson87 but with timegating you get people like me that dont even want to fucking bother with the timegated stuff each week because its such little content, trust me, they win less with timegating
But like, just don’t play the game for like a month or two and then you come back, refreshed, not burnt out, and with a lot of content to do.
@AWatson87 So, because people have no life, i should be punished with time gate after time gate? Is that what you're saying?
My 2 main gripes about Echoes so far are simply story-related:
1. we already know who the Conductor is, it’s Maya/Lakshmi, and yet we have to wait 3 weeks to confirm something we already mostly know (unless they pull a complete 180 and make the Conductor be someone unexpected, which i dont think id personally like)
2. In the Saint mission, Saint is having a severe identity crisis, and yet he goes along with everything too easily. It makes it feel like these revelations for him aren’t as impactful as i feel they should be
I'm still working through Pale Heart items, and trying to progress my Ritual Play list path finder items so I can work on maxing out my gear levels. With only a few hours a week to play, you have to make priorities. A week or so to try and catch up will be nice.
I also had no large expectations for episodes to be much different than seasons. I've been enjoying the parts I've play of everything in the Final Shape.
2:43 that is the best summery of the scene XD
Its really as simple as episodes feel the exact same, if not worse, when bungie said they would be different and better.
Can't wait to speed run the episode in a few weeks
My problems with Breach Executable are that the Cabal encounter is kinda buggy, the Hydra boss is just obnoxius with the modifiers on a boss type that's already bottom of the barrel for me and on more than one occasion the end dialogue hasn't triggered so while I can loot the chests, the activity never ends and I don't get a completion towards my weekly pinnacle.
Also the weekly challenge of completing it 3 times on ANY difficulty only works on normal so if I want both pinnacles it's 3 normal clears & 3 expert clears when based on wording 3 experts should do.
My problem with Enigma is that while I enjoy the seasonal activity being a tightish timer speedrun, Bungo for some reason decided to make the main mechanic of extending time a knowledge check. If you're doing it match made good luck trying to get through if you don't already know where the extenders are because nobody else sure as hell ain't even looking. Once you know where they all are, you just know. At least in my experience the main mech being hidden caused this to be a "watch a YT guide to learn the spots and carry or you ain't clearing this shit". Why not just use points of progression as time extenders?
I think some people just can't be happy unless the collective Internet they engage with is happy. The episode is good content to engage with weekly. I play the seasonal for the rewards then hit the pale heart, do Nightfalls, a dungeon or two. More of my friends are on and I'm having a blast. Just play the content you have fun with then get off, or play another game until reset. There's a lot of good stuff out there!
Me personally I'm pretty indifferent. I have other games I want to play so it's nice to have a broader episode/season so they can have long story elements and I can play something else
I thought it was fine, given it's alongside an expansion launch (they're always smaller), plus development takes time so i expect later acts and episodes to be bigger. I do wish we got a bit more from the Conductor directly to close out act 1 though
one of the episode activities literally being the expunge seasonal activities but backwards is incredibly telling
Months without story vs 3 weeks without story, just shows how many people aren’t very good at math and just like to complain
once again, people who thought episodes weren't gonna be seasons 2 need a big reality check. Episodes are just seasons but with content that's more self-contained vs. tying into one-another. But the seasonal model was always gonna stay. Which is why bungie shot themselves in the foot marketing episodes as this big deal when in reality they should've just stuck with seasons if they didn't plan on changing much
It's not that we thought they'd be different, we knew they wouldn't. But seasons or episodes, call them whatever people want, aren't good enough for 2/3 of Destiny's player base.. which is why 2/3 of the player-base leaves in the months following the major expansions.
Edit: Oh, and ofc Datto thinks they're okay, he barely cares about the story and makes millions of dollars playing the game. It was a fun expansion, nothing has changed, most of us will see you all at Frontiers.
I just dont get this take, why call people dumb for believing what bungie said, bungie should just do better full stop.
Bungie went on camera in multiple interviews specifically saying that Episodes would be different from seasons. That set some expectations that I think are completely reasonable.
Episodes are literally seasons, there's no difference between them. But now we're all stupid for having expectations and we should just assume nothing Bungie says is ever true?
They were the ones who decided to hype them up. They could have called it Season of the Echoes and nobody would have known or cared.
I mean by Bungies own words they said the content delivery would be different, but its the same, just timegated and more spaced out over a longer period of time. Byf made a great video on the Episodes recentl, which explains peoples dislike for them.
@@BrocKelley Personally I feel like the actual season/episode activity is just not interesting enough most of the time. All you really are doing is just dismantling all the gear because all of it can be crafted anyway unless you get a good armor roll. So it might as well auto dismantle your weapon drops and the activity itself is most of the time not interesting enough in terms of mechanics and usually feels like more of the same. Some times people say that the loot is insane during this season and so on(in terms of how much loot you get), but if the loot is basically auto dismantle anyway is it really that exciting. Also the narrative might get something new each week, but after that you are basically back to the same old seasonal activity or the same content you have been doing for years already. It just gets repetitive.
Datto: "I don't know where this idea came from that people felt like Episodes would be drastically different from Seasons.
*Proceeds to quote Bungie, describing why players felt like things would be drastically different.*
It's not wrong for people to not like how Seasons/Episodes are done. They're terribly presented, the content is spread far too thin, it's the bare minimum to care about week to week. I get it, Bungie wants SOMETHING for people to login for. But instead of it being a weekly cliffhanger of content, it ends up being "chores chores chores to find out 'what happens,' only to get led along with nothing of substance." MAYBE something big happens at the end of a Season, or...Bungie pulls a name out of the lore, assigns it to a random faction-based big dude that players then kill.
And again, same question I always ask...if this content gets removed after a year of being in the game...why on earth should I bother caring to log in? Bungie treats it as temporary, they clearly don't want us to invest in it long term as concrete story that they WANT people relive or see for the first time.
I think the change to the area that we see at the end of act 1 will Come into the environment in act 2 maybe? (To give people time to get caught up on the story)
It's weird that people are being so hard on Episodes considering we're literally only one act deep in the first Episode. Some people are way too impatient to reserve judgement until we at least get through act 3. Like this Episode came with the expansion and historically seasons that drop with expansions are always light on content.
You really think act 2 and 3 are going to be different? Ha!
i have to agree with this because, like, the end of this act is a pretty big deal, right? We have this vex(?) consciousness that seems to have some pretty intense power with a motive that is very different from any bad-guy we've shot up before in Destiny. I'm enjoying the seasonal activities so far and the weapons are incredible. Literally some of the best seasonal weapons we've ever gotten and we don't yet have what will probably be the best of the seasonal weapons yet. We also don't have the seasonal exotic (if, in fact, we're going to get one). I've not enjoyed the activity as much as like The Coil or Deep Dive but it's released next to an expansion so let's compare apples to apples... I think it's very fair to say this is the best expansion-timed season we've gotten.
What's weird about that to you? Bungie overhyped it, they made it sound like something it's not, so they deserve all the criticism they're getting
First impressions matter and if it doesn't hook you from the start then most of the people are already gone or onto another game before anything else can launch.
good luck seeing much of anything changing in episode 2 cuz I'd wager most of that is already halfway into production and probably would take till episode 3 for any significant changes. Change that Episodes are supposed to do in the first place replacing seasons
Bungie: We want to shake things up a bit and bring more surprises in the future.
Average Destiny 2 player when the new episode isn't IMMEDIATELY the greatest thing in the history of gaming: BUNGIE LIED PEOPLE DIED
More like, Bungie when their producers make asinine statements and the content moto remains the same; both in delivery and quality:
The communities' actual reaction to the poor quality content and Bungie's marketing of said content: "lol"
Same shit, different day bud.
I just wanna see what the other acts wll have beyond story missions. Feels like if there's gonna be an actual difference it'll be there.
Based on an infographic you might've seen going around a while back, there's at least one new activity in act 2 and 3 of each episode. (I think it was screenshotted from TFS Showcase last year, but not sure.)
We have two dungeons confirmed this year (because they're selling a Dungeon Key and that's what it says), I'm expecting a reprised raid but don't have any official confirmation, and I don't know how much of any of that overlaps with the things we do know we're getting.
I do wish later on in the acts that Nessus gets terraformed again and we got something closer to Pale Heart type destination, but it might be too much to ask for
Datto being an apologist shill like usual
The problem i have isn't the timegating in general, that's just how it's always been. It's how we've now got a three week break just as they story just found its footing, and apparently that's how it is going to be between act 2 and 3 as well, 3 weeks story 3 weeks break. It just feels actually worse than seasons because i could just play at the beginning of the season and chill for the rest, now it's a weird feeling of on-off.
My only gripe is what you said about the patrol space, been wanting a quest progressed patrol space for a while, haven’t done x part of y quest, loaded into here, have done x of y, progressed instance and if people party, I’d just say leader takes influence based on their progress. Thought it was a great start to the year
A wet fart was basically what i expected after the final shape. My main reason i didnt buy it.
When you mentioned things changing based on where you are based on a quest at 4:23. A bunch of times for the tower during the story it puts you in a different tower if you complete the campaign or not. So theyve done it before, guess a social space is easier than a planet
Usually, it's a season or, in this example, an episode right after a big expansion is a little lackluster. I hope that going forward, more resources are put into them, and the content starts feeling different than seasons.
This is Word Soup, TL:DR, i am enjoying the episode both in terms of story and content
im still doing TFS stuff, helping friends get stuff (i even have a jez moment where 3 of said friends all have no Gally which also lets me finally get all them bottles and finish that vidmaster title), so im glad we have these 16 days inbetween act 1 and 2 currently. Hell its lets me take breaks id normally save for in-between seasons or during whole runs of seasonal content like skipping Deep and Witch in lightfall or Seraph and most of Arrivals in Shadowkeep. I have my season rank at 100 with a Bright engram bonus of 4 and can easily grab the first 4 levels of act 2 in 16 days.
It would be SO sick if "the Conductor" was the original Saint- 14.
That's why he couldn't ignore the voice and that's why the Vex are using Vanguard battle tactics
Datto, thoughts on the Villanova Knicks?
The main thing people expected as "a fresh and new way to tell stories" was getting the entire episode dumped on everyone day 1.
So they can then run through it and complain it was too short. Or not enough. And if its not having an entire episode available day 1, then its having more cutscenes and more actual missions akin to a campaign. But in this case a mini campaign.
That would be fresh for the game. Like develop a story for the episode and then create missions that take us through that story. With cutscenes. All that.
Thats most likely what everyone wants.
I have two main issues with the episode. one was that i don't really like Breach Executable, so the number of times we have to do it for the episode quest line was a disappointment. it was do story mission, do seasonal activity, do story mission do seasonal activity, and so on. and I know that is a common formula for season quests, but this was marketed as being a different structure for the game. I didn't actually expect it to be different, but I was slightly hopeful.
the second issue for me was that certain "story" missions were just "go do a slightly remixed strike and also go hold the activate button five times in three different old areas". the middle portion of the episode was just paced extremely poorly, while I think the opening and ending were pretty good! especially when compared to the middle and breach executable😂
Yeah the episode so far is about what I expected. I'm actually surprised we got 2 activities instead of 1 in Act 1.
Vex are not supposed to retreat. The whole thing is that they see themselves as expendable for the goal. Its what makes them predictable.
This change is...worrying.
What if seasonal content was community driven? That way we could have access to content sooner depending on how much people played.
I like that they're time gating the acts of the episodes, because whenever I'm done with the seasonal content, until the next act i can focus on playing other games and making progress there.
I still haven’t done the raid yet
if you think about how much money everyone dumped in this game the last 10 years, its crazy that er is not a steady stream of content week after week
The biggest problem with episodes seems to be that we were told it's not a season and it would be better, but it is a season, just with more time gating
For me, the worst part of Echoes was that the mirror "puzzle" was solved for you by them just waypointing the correct place to stand. Lame. Otherwise, I love having Failsafe back, and I think people aren't understanding that this is just PART ONE, not the end of what we used to call a season.
I'm actually enjoying the more spaced out timeframe, personally. FS was fucking baller but since I'm in the middle of moving and finding a new job after graduating, I really don't have the time to dedicate myself to something as heavy as a campaign like I did in the short window I had post-graduation. Plus Shadow of the Erdtree coming out means that I have even more games to catch up with outside of D2. The space between acts gives me wiggle room to catch up, which is what I liked about Season of the Wish.
My biggest beef with seasons prior was that the story beats always felt like they were way too short/condensed to fit the seasonal time limit, so I'm mainly hoping that gets addressed here.
i only got the exotic class item a couple days ago, I haven't even touched the episode yet because of how much stuff is in TFS
Failsafe's "Beep boop" thing seems like a harmless bit but I think theres a deeper point to it.
She is so desperate to be helpful to us, to prove shes a useful and indispensable part of the team that she'll do any little thing to try and help because shes afraid.
Shes afraid of being abandoned again.
Her writing this time around is great and shes an actual character with flaws, fears, and ambitions.
I'm hopeful things will pick up in Act 2. I'm also hopeful Bungie will use the time they'll get from this change from seasons to episodes to really work on that "Frontiers" stuff that'll come next year. Fingers crossed.
I was hoping we could play all the missions for an act at once or at least a couple mini-campaign-like missions but in the back of my head I was thinking it’s just gonna be the same thing😂
But of course I’m still gonna play😂
My problem with it is that we're Week 3 in and we haven't even met the Villian of the episode. It's basically been nothing for 3 weeks.
So next Act (2) is going to be spent on establishing the Villian and their motivations, only for in the following Act (3) that we just kind of defeat them. So you've got the Curse of Osiris problem where we're introduced to a massive threat and then defeat it within 2 hours of actual gameplay and story.
It just kind of feels like we've done this before.
I think you missed the mark here. With the Witness in the TFS, you’d have a competing villain here, it’s just too close to fully introduce the villain of the episode while the Witness is still so fresh. Stories need room to breathe.
They’ve hinted at the next villain that’s arising in the power vacuum of the fall of the Witness. I think it feels appropriately paced.
With that said, the episode activity does feel a bit like past seasons, but I’m going to withhold judgment till we complete act 2 and act 3.
It would be more interesting if the dormant siva on the ship activated and started wreeking havoc on Nessus will the vex are trying fix it.
I mean yeah, you said it yourself, the reason I, and many others, and pissed isn't because the content we have had is bad or worse than before, but they put SO much effort into telling us thats its going to be different, fresh, whatever way you wanna describe it. But the only REAL difference so far is that now I have to wait 3 weeks for more story instead of one.
I think with might see the benefit of episodes overtime. For exemple with acts, for now we are just at the beginning.
For changing the patrol zone just have it be different at reset. Like the same week you get the episode where they talk about how nessus is changing the patrol zone has changed. People who don't have access to episodes see the area is completely changed and wonder what happened and find out about episodes and possibly go check it out. Everyone not up to that quest step see's nessus has changed which might get them to re engage with the quest line to find out why. And people who are at that step and find out about it at the same time as it happened that week feel satisfied and that the world actually changes.
Yea I see act 1 as a warm up and honestly I appreciate the break I feel like I can do more hardcore things
My biggest issue so far has been that Episodes were marketed to be a new fresh take on seasons, but so far Act 1 has been a mini-season. It gives the impression that instead of getting 4 seasons a year, we will be getting 9 small seasons and I don't like that.
I hope the changes will be updated with every act or at the end of the episode, so everyone can catch up, but we still have the changes active. They also changed a strike to make it suit the situation. I can't wait to see what they'll do to Terminus Horizon and that drill strike.
Come to think of it, all leftovers from D2 vanilla vanish and are replaced with up to date versions of their content. It feels like the world is slowly progressing, and I like that
I’d rather have the full act available on the same day of release, sure split each act up across multiple months. But I’m tired of getting small amounts each week…
I’m personally just taking a break until act two, which I’m happy for… That might be a pro or a con for some people 🤷🏻♀️
Im actually happy with it. I love the vex as a faction and the new vex wrapons look so cool (just wish the hand cannon wasnt a 180) and they are mostly amazing
Inception time gate: time gating within time gating. They kept the old quest time gate method and added episode time gates.
EDIT: I wrote this before watching the video.
I honestly think we've got another "season launching with expac" situation so far.
The expansion was such a high that the episode cannot compete at that level.
With that said though, I find it...fine...so far?
The activities presented in act 1 aren't anything to write home about, but they're not bad either. I like the variety with the timed one.
The only flaws so far are:
1.They maintain this stubborn, "come at reset to get the rest of the story" model.
If they knew act 1 had 3 chapters...why not space them out more and at irregular intervals?
Simply launching chapter 1 one week after TFS, chapter two week 3 on a Friday and chapter 3 on a random Sunday night(as to amount for a, HOLY SHIT, SAINT'S MISSING EMERGENCY) would go a long way to maybe shake the predictable nature of it to keep it fresh.
2. The Nessus changes were so pretty to look at but for some reason Bungo doesn't want to propagate the changes to the patrol space. I don't know if it's a technical limitation, or an oversight. I can't imagine nobody at Bungo thought "Hey, maybe we should replace Nessus' landscapes with these new assets we're making"
The loot's great so far, both the gun models, the new frames and the perk offerings. The Radiolaria pick-up system ,akin to fishing is also cool,albeit with initial hiccups involving blueberries running forward and pulling everyone picking up the stuff, an issue that a fix has been announced for. The loot for dunking those is very generous however.
There really isn't anything to HATE so far. The feeling I have is a solid, "whelmed". It is a slow start...again. And it was bound to feel that way. We just got a conclusion for the Witness ffs, a 10 year saga...of course whatever came after wasn't going to feel as bold and grand in scale.
Dude I haven't touched the season apart from the opening mission we got on reset week two. I've got so much to do in the game there's no point starting it yet. I'm not at max light I'm just taking my time and enjoying the ride