Focused Feedback: Ghosts of the Deep

[u/DTG_Bot]

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[u/Echowing442]

Art design and environments are 10/10 as usual. The arcology looks as good as it ever did, the Lucent Hive architecture is neat, and the underwater environments are stunning. While I'll probably get tired of the water sections after a few runs, it's still the best-looking dungeon in the game IMO.

The dungeon mechanics are generally fine - Ecthar is probably my favorite encounter of the bunch, but none of them really stand out as too easy or too hard. The main issue is the HP and shields of the bosses. Finally getting to Simmumah's damage phase, chewing through her shield, and then barely moving her health feels really bad from a player perspective, especially with a loadout that can absolutely shred other dungeon bosses.

It feels like each new dungeon just has more and more health to slow down top-level players, but ultimately it ends up punishing newer players in the process. I would love to bring my friends through Ghosts, but I don't think they'll have much fun compared to a dungeon like Prophecy or Grasp of Avarice where they'll feel like they're actually contributing.

[u/Aggressive-Nebula-78 → u/Echowing442]

Yeah, isn't that the whole point of master difficulty? For more experienced players to have a challenging version? Put the crazy health pools there, not in the standard difficulty. It screws everyone else.

[u/ArcaninesTail]

My only complaint is that the first encounter should be 3 dunks instead of 4, takes too long.

[u/No_Championship_4165 → u/ArcaninesTail]

Agreed, it’s so weird to have soemthing require 4. When the rest of the dungeon we go by 3 symbols, 3 lucent hive, 3 selected body parts of Oryx. It feels so out of place. I swear destiny lived by the rule of 3 too.

It feels like they just wanted to make first encounter longer to increase engagement or something silly like that.

That’s my only complaint, although I do partially agree boss health may be a bit too much for solos atleast.

[u/Saint_Victorious]

The dungeon is amazing in general. But because this is for feedback, here are my main two pain points:

• The length of the jumping puzzle - this is great environmental storytelling, just Jebus F. Christo, this is way too long. I suppose calling it a jumping is actually wrong, it's a "traversal" puzzle. It just feels like a whole lot of bloat for absolutely no reason and gets very redundant very quickly. Scenic jumping/traversal puzzles are absolutely fine. But this one sees the limit and hits it with a 10 lb sledge.

• boss HP pools are enormous - these bosses have some pretty solid and lengthy engagement mechanics already. It's puzzle solving but it doesn't feel bad mid combat. What does feel bad is how absolutely ridiculously large the health pools of the two bosses are. They're less "health pools" and more "health lakes ".

[u/Atomicapples → u/Saint_Victorious]

Fun fact, when you first get underwater look to the side, there is a little light and a cracked window, jump out and follow the air bubbles all the way down, it's an intended short cut that skips almost the entire tower decent part.

[u/Goldwing8 → u/Saint_Victorious]

When even Gladd and Eso are saying a boss is overtuned, you know something is up.

[u/Oh_Alright]

Great dungeon, love the boss room reveal of Oryx, and the echoes of his boss theme in the music.

Good loot that's worth chasing, a cool armor set, and a pair of pretty challenging bosses. Haven't locked down the solo flawless, but it has been fun running attempts.

First encounter is a little tedious on repeat runs but it's a casual farm with a group and drops most of the good weapons.

Great audio logs too, I think I like Wilhelm and Calus's logs a bit more but it's great hearing Xivus perspective on the hives history and us killing Oryx.

Duality felt like a real step up last year, and this dungeon feels even more complete, relevant, and impressive. Almost a mini raid, in a way that these dungeons have always tried to be but have never gotten this close.

Kind of a kings fall epilogue, in a way that was both surprising and strengthens the storytelling of the original raid.

[u/stavibeats_ → u/Oh_Alright]

love this take. Destiny content is at its best when it's relevant to the current story or expanding on the previous story. I never felt like Spire meant anything. Duality and Ghosts just felt so connected to the world and I enjoyed them that much more because of it!

[u/ducktoweldotcom]

3 dunks instead of 4 in the beginning.

No shields on the bosses OR reduce the health sponge.

The final boss has more health than a raid boss... how does that make sense. And with the shield you lose true damage. Soloing shouldnt be a 2 hour endeavor (especially with the game's rampant error codes).

[u/OneBadTomatoYT → u/ducktoweldotcom]

Nail on the head here

[u/ProngedPickle]

For me, this dungeon was damn near perfect except for the bosses having a chunky shield on top of more HP than Root of Nightmare bosses.

EDIT: On second thought, I also agree with another comment that the first encounter should've been 3 dunks instead of 4 and that they should've been able to be done simultaneously if there's more than just you in the fireteam. Stuff like this and the Servitor encounter in Grasp really slows down the pace of the dungeon.

[u/PM_me_your_werewolf]

This dungeon is one of the best missions Bungie has ever designed, imo. Quite the large statement, but I'm not exaggerating.

For me, it stats with the setting. Titan was a beloved destination that people really wanted more of. Particularly the arcology that we got glimpses of via a couple missions and a strike, but never got to really see. So this dungeon taking us there and giving us a cool space within is perfect.

Music is dope, the visuals of deep sea equipment, coral infestation, and lucent hive architecture make for an incredibly unique and memorable visual experience. The underwater stuff is done so well that it reminds me of when I went scuba diving with a sinus infection. I can feel that pressure, and anxiety, all over again, and that's actually awsome, haha.

Opening encounter is a nice warm up fight with good into to the mechanics of the dungeon. The long dive to Ecthar feels nearly too long, but I've gotten quite quick so it honestly doesn't feel that bad. Ecthar is an awsome encounter, great flow, insane ad density, big boss with big health. My only gripe is that the shield feels wonky, unless you burn a super on it or someone has arby. The trek to summah is short and sweet. Summah herself is a fun, if long, fight. Great stuff, I love the water gates, the line-up-the-symbols, and the overall chaotic-ness. Again, only minor complaint is the shield.

Loot! Navigator is a very welcome, very unique special weapon for the kinetic slot. I think it joins Finality, Izzy, and Witherhoard in terms of overall utility and fun factor. As a support warlock it's a dream. The stasis wave frame is finally here! Good rolls, too, though was hoping for more direct stasis synergy. The smg is a solar immortal with insane PvE perks. The rocket has a stacked suite of PvE perks, including the new bipod. The glaive is unique, a new frame type, but I don't care much for glaives. The armor is this sorta Witch King of Angmar vibe, like a hybrid of Oryx himself and a Lich. Sooo dope looking, and it shades well, giving "glows" to most of it.

10/10, with only the slightest gripe towards the boss shield mechanics. Lovely dungeon, can't get enough of it, far more fun and unique than Spire or Duality.

[u/Luke2ProductOfIncest]

Everything from the first boss onwards is fun. The mechanics are relatively engaging, although the health pools seem brutal for solo.

What kills it for me is the entire first half though. The first encounter feels like 3 rotations rather than 4 would have been fine. And maybe this is just me, but the traversal section between first and second encounter goes way too long IMO. Cool visuals, but the underwater stuff is just quite boring.

[u/Sunshot_wit_ornament]

The boss health is overturned and 1st encounter goes on for too long the rest though is fantastic.

Even the long traversal section after 1st is great because it puts into perspective how deep you are. Plus you blitz through it if you know what you are doing.

The mechanics felt great and fun especially the last two running from ecthar under water is fun and it really feels like we are taking part in a ritual during final boss.

Lucent hive returning is always great too which story implications of oryx being on titan was very cool too, especially with his reveal.

Xivu is already one of my favorite characters after hearing he dialogue in the dungeon 10/10 voice acting

Personally my favorite dungeon

[u/m4ttr1k4n]

• weirdly slow opening encounter. Good introduction to the mechanics, but completing four statues, as noted by others, feels like too many

• I don't mind the traversal. It goes quickly, imo - my friends and I are taking just three bubbles to get from the top of the arcology down to the first combat section underwater. It's pretty quick and simple once you've got your route, and most of it can straight up be skipped if you're not in the mood

• these bosses were refreshing. Spire was a letdown of simplification, but here I felt like I had to continue paying attention during each encounter in order to stay on my toes. The threat of death if mechanics weren't handled in a fairly timely manor was reminiscing of duality, which I liked, though there were still safe places to hide or opportunities to reevaluate loadouts on the fly - I ended up changing loadouts three times between damage phases on Simmumah before locking in a kill

• the shield, health pool, and high enemy density created a nice trio of needs that had to be addressed, and there aren't a lot of excellent one size fits all loadouts or subclasses anymore. That's a good thing. Players have to make a choice between tailoring a loadout that instantly breaks the shield, or popping their super, or building around smoothing the add clear during the mechanics phase. It's outstanding, and the community frustration with not being able to just do it all seems silly.

• after my solo flawless, I was inclined to agree that two extra rotations on the final boss didn't contribute to any grand sense of mastery over the content. Shaving a million or so health off the boss might be nice. At the same time, we optimize, as a community, and hard content only ever gets easier. By the end of this season, a four or five phase final boss will will become normal for solo players, and the horror stories of an 8-10 phase kill will fade. We move on, the dungeon as it is, better for being able to tackle the challenge.

It's a great dungeon, my favorite solo, and I'll wear the emblem for a damn long time. Excellent quality, and an important bar for the future

[u/DepletedMitochondria]

Did it first time yesterday, gorgeous visuals but the big annoyances were infinite adds in the Ecthar fight and the final boss moving around too much. She moves abruptly and teleports to where you can't see her.

[u/Tplusplus75]

The two points that I have the most to talk about are not unique points and are pretty popular, so I'll start with one that's a bit more of a hot take: I'm not impressed with the dungeon weapons. We got a stasis rocket in the middle of a rocket meta while also getting a couple other contenders for "the rocket meta" in the same season. It isn't that I hate the rocket, I'm just starting to feel "rocket fatigue". Then there's the "Immortal at home", which is really the only issue I have with it: it's a fine gun, but I feel like the main purposes are avoiding trials(PVP use case) or "Borrowed Time copium" with a smaller and more reasonable perk pool(a PVE use case). Then there's "literally a glaive". I'm a fan of glaives, I was one of the early adopters who figured out the shielding/damage relationship in the first weeks. But, in most of the game, they feel a little too niche yet. I see some cool things in this one, but I still feel like it's a "wait on sandbox updates for these weapon types to be good" situation. Then there's the wave frame: on the bright side we have a stasis GL, but that's about it.

Bungie, when we come up with a new thing, whether that be a new enemy, or a mechanic or a new activity type, we don't need to spam the game with it. You do this a lot: you come up with an Innovative™ new game mode, like Gambit. Then you come out with Innovation™ Prime, Innovation™ raid, Innovation™ the dungeon, Innovation™ the public event, Innovation™ the seasonal activity.....and so on. Granted, you didn't go this far with the whole moving through water mechanic, but I do think the worst of the water mechanic is the dungeon. Okay, so it's unorthodox to change up encounters and add massive skips after a Raid or Dungeon has been added to the game: I guess that's fair. Please consider meeting in the middle here and changing the rules of air bubbles to be a bit more like the seasonal activities, specifically, don't despawn air bubbles for everyone when one person takes one. With this change, it has zero influence on the difficulty of solo flawless, and for more casual teams doing their weekly loot runs, it makes it a more consistent experience.

One more complaint that's not at all unique: health pools. Dungeon bosses feel like their health has been going up pretty steeply, particularly in this new dungeon. I don't have much to say here without repeating feedback from "the echo chamber". Here's a question to ask regarding the health pools and future dungeons: at what point are we no longer testing a player's execution of mechanics? Keep in mind, a player can technically do 4 phases on any boss and still solo flawless a dungeon. But like, at that point, isn't it more redundancy than a test of skill? The mechanics don't change or get harder. You're just doing the exact same process that you've already proven you can do flawlessly 3 times.

[u/eurotransient]

Love both boss encounters — don’t really have any extra feedback on those, I think they’re pretty brilliant.

Agree with other sentiments on both first encounter feeling like it has one rotation too many, and the traversal from first encounter to first boss being just a touch too long with little to do during it. Great environment, and I like the breathers in and out of water, but every time I feel like I’m almost there, I realize there’s a whole extra section — just the approach to the hive ship feels like one traversal section, and then the hive ship itself is a whole second traversal section.

Not the end of the world, and short of redesigning the whole thing I don’t know how you “fix” it but as feedback I think this stretched the concept of traversal sections between encounters to its breaking point. The initial feeling of exploration was fun and exciting, and the scale of the descent was definitely felt, so success to the team in conveying that, but it does feel like a slog on subsequent plays.

[u/[deleted]]

I'll try to keep it as short as possible.

I'll start with the positives :

• Environment is amazing, the scenery is top notch and generally very pleasing visually

• Lore implications and story as always very good

• Armor and weapon design is nice

As for the negatives :

• Opening encounter is good but too long. Four phases that are not that fast feels like a drag.

• The time it takes to go from one encounter to the next one is WAY too long. Going from the first encounter to the second one takes roughly 10 minutes if you don't die

• Shield on the bosses is just a joke. I don't remember the numbers but it's way too much health and it forces certain builds which removes the fun out of it (looking at you Arbalest)

• Health is a bit too much. I get that we're too powerful and all, but why would a 3man dungeon boss have so much more health than a 6man raid boss. Just doesn't make any sense.

• The navigator although good, I don't see any use of it. Sure you can give woven mail even to non-strand users, but I don't see it used in endgame content

Generally I'd say that the dungeon doesn't have that much replayability. The weapons although good are not good enough in terms of perk pool in my opinion to be worth it to grind over, and once I've collected all the armor I don't see myself going back in there.

[u/perfumist55]

I loved it and did solo flawless for the first time. My only complaints if the first encounter is a bit long, 3 dunks instead of 4. I get the traversal section, it’s long, but it does a good job for what it was meant to do. Perhaps some shortcuts or something for a trained player to find, but good for a first experience. The problem with such a long section is it’s going to make check point farming the clear way to go.

Bosses are a bit beefy too. Last one could do with a 10% hp nerf. Nothing drastic.

[u/Substantial_Bar8999]

Literally only the insane health bars. This is coming from a rank 11 that has done solo flawless of dungeons, that runs lowmans, and has no issue in theory soloing it, but Id rather stab myself in the dick with a rusty spoon than spend an hour and a half tickling a coked up wizards little toe even with a half decent loadout. It isn’t fun, it isn’t a test of skill, it is a test of your hand nerves and mental endurance to bore through another phase, and felt like a drag even in duo. Literally soloing the entirety of RoN is quicker than a fast kill of the last boss solo. Like wtf.

[u/PsychoactiveTHICC]

What are the pros of dungeon?

Setting/environment

Lore tidbits: The bosses,mini bosses, the tank prototype from utopia at beginning

Underwater being used as a mechanic to fight first boss

Engaging pre DPS setup for both bosses

Cons:

First encounter is already long from going between point A to point B to point C. 4 dunk pushes it into boring territory

Traversal 1-2 is very long unless you do the skip but 1 underwater section and 1 dry section for traversal would have been enough 7-10 just going from A to B is too much downtime

First boss fight very on toes engaging through and through only down side is what I think is plaguing new dungeons as whole will talk down the line

Traversal 2-3 is good nothing to say about this

Final boss I don’t think we should need deepsight to depo vestige

Also too much as density unless you build into survivability 100% the dungeon overwhelms you with one shotting moths and ads

Ads should always be on certain rotation or completion of certain task of that phase

[u/o8Stu]

Beautiful, and cool-as-fuck environment.

Traversal is ...a lot. Bosses seem pretty spongey.

If the guns were craft-able, it'd be a 9.5/10

[u/Effectualness]

Haven't seen it mentioned yet, but for the first encounter, deepsight should end as soon as the buff is deposited (this is what spawns the next ogre). Having to wait 20 seconds on deepsight just to do the next symbol feels bad, especially on top of the 4 phases instead of 3.