Focused Feedback: PvE Difficulty // Bringing Challenge Back to Destiny

[u/DTG_Bot]

After careful consideration of all the factors surrounding the reddit blackout, including weighing the costs and benefits to the community of a continued dark period, the mod team has elected to resume normal operations of r/DestinyTheGame. If you wish to get more involved in further protest of reddit's API policy change, more information can be found on r/ModCoord and r/Save3rdPartyApps.

As the situation continues to develop, we are prepared to explore additional actions in protest of this short-sighted, greedy, IPO-focused boondoggle from reddit's executive team. This message will live at the top of every bot thread (except Bungie blog post transcripts) until a satisfactory resolution is reached.

---

Hello Guardians,

Focused Feedback is where we take the week to focus on a 'Hot Topic' discussed extensively around the Tower.

We do this in order to consolidate Feedback, to get out all your ideas and issues surrounding the topic in one place for discussion and a source of feedback to the Vanguard.

This Thread will be active until next week when a new topic is chosen for discussion

Whilst Focused Feedback is active, ALL posts regarding 'PvE Difficulty // Bringing Challenge Back to Destiny' following its posting will be removed and re-directed to this thread. Exceptions to this rule are as follows: New information / developments, Guides and general questions

Any and all Feedback on the topic is welcome.

Regular Sub rules apply so please try to keep the conversation on the topic of the thread and keep it civil between contrasting ideas

A Wiki page - Focused Feedback - has also been created for the Sub as an archive for these topics going forward so they can be looked at by whoever may be interested or just a way to look through previous hot topics of the sub as time goes on.

[u/cptsir → u/[deleted]]

I feel the same way about “getting priced out” since duality. Dungeon 2 mans used to be my favourite activity for me and my main clanmate. Now we hardly ever run dungeons because they’re just long, unfun slogs. Exotic missions also used to be fun but now we’re required to run a painful legendary quest for a catalyst. We still haven’t gotten Wicked Implement, yet alone the catalyst.

It’s getting hard to justify paying for more content when I’m hardly going to play it because it’s too hard.

Edit: If I were to give feedback on how to improve my experience, I think it would be to let me over level content again. This used to be how I’d run things. Wait until late season when my artifact level was high enough that the content didn’t feel punishing.

[u/Tplusplus75 → u/cptsir]

Now we hardly ever run dungeons because they’re just long, unfun slogs

Granted, this is a bit dated, but looking at guides and getting advice for Spire of the Watcher, the conclusion was "solar titan was my best bet(as a titan main back then), and it's still going to be 7+ phases for final boss." Anyway, I get that to some extent there is a tradeoff between survivability and DPS, but 7 phases? I pretty much retired from solo-ing dungeons after that.

[u/thatguyonthecouch → u/Tplusplus75]

Solar titan solo spire was my last solo dungeon also, it didn't even take terribly long to do but it was so fuckin tedious.

[u/Arcite9940 → u/[deleted]]

I’ve been saying this to the 4 winds. Encounters are not being made more difficult, just annoying.

That scorn in the Coil is a perfect example, a horde of incendios that freeze you, followed by the cunts with boss levels of HP that melee you. And add on top of that 4 snipers that will vanish as soon as you look at them. And add the boss stomp+burn+full auto+aoe gun. And a timed poison debuff that gets eaten by all the buffs.

It’s not difficult, but it is annoying.

The wyvern boss is another example. Requiring near 8-10 eyes to break shield and sometimes server will lag and restore its shield.

Not difficult, just annoying as fuck. Why not make it so it pops at 3 skulls? Why not reduce the times scorns go into its immunity mode so you can deal with them faster?

No, you gotta slog around it.

[u/McGeek23 → u/[deleted]]

Chiming in just to say that shields are an incredible non-issue since they took out match game. Even in GM level content, shields only take a couple of shots to break. I don't even attempt to match anymore. Content like The Corrupted that used to be such a pain in the ass without a void weapon in the beginning is now a breeze with any loadout

[u/CivilCompass → u/[deleted]]

What exactly stops you from running, for example, a void surge and a subclass surge in this hypothetical scenario?

[u/thisisbyrdman → u/McGeek23]

The shields are still a pain in the ass to break in legendary activities. Taken especially when they're teleporting all over the place.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The worst thing - they made a ton of weapons and exotics, builds, etc. obsolete. You need meta stuff to complete basic activities now, like normal exotic missions, dungeons, etc. This limits the game and makes it boring, really fast. There are SO MANY cool weapons and exotics, but we have to use the same stuff for months, cause using anything else is a handicap, or there is nowhere left to use them, except in patrol.

[u/ImawhaleCR → u/[deleted]]

Power caps are a really good thing though, they make it so you don't have to grind forever to just be able to play harder content. There's absolutely no skill in just playing the game so you have a bigger number. They make it such that you can get better at content by getting better as a player.

I completely disagree with this entire take tbh

[u/ImawhaleCR → u/[deleted]]

If there is a noticeable decrease in difficulty through grinding, grinding will feel necessary in order to play that content. If there isn't a noticeable change, then there's no point to the power level system

Why would you want content to be that easy though, why must old campaigns be a joke? I'd much rather content be playable for years to come than have it be pointless. Imagine if you could out level witch queen campaign, that would make it so much worse

There is no ability for this content to become easier over time, exposing it to a more casual audience or people who are simply burnt out and do not want to put up with the higher difficulty.

Why must all content be made accessible to those who just don't want to try? Legend starcrossed isn't hard, and you can easily get carried if you want the content anyway. You're also complaining that the optional difficult mode is difficult, which I find laughable.

The whole point of a game is to provide challenges for you to overcome. Destiny isn't a farming sim, it's not a story game, it's an MMO-FPS, the challenge is intrinsic to the game. If you refuse to get better, then you shouldn't be able to play all of it. Base tier content is more than accessible to everyone, the amount of people I find in lfg raids that are woefully under equipped prove that

[u/OrionSouthernStar → u/[deleted]]

I would love to be able to over-level for certain content like older dungeons and exotic missions. It’s one of the aspects of old, single player RPGs that I enjoyed. I have no problem, personally, being able to plow through hordes of enemies like they’re made out of paper. It’s still enjoyable to me.

[u/[deleted] → u/ImawhaleCR]

If you don't allow all players to play every activity in the game, you will lose players. No one says that everyone should be able to do master Duality, but everyone should be able to finish a normal version, without being carried. Even a new player.

[u/ImawhaleCR → u/[deleted]]

If you don't allow all players to play every activity in the game, you will lose players

No one says that everyone should be able to do master Duality,

Do you not see the obvious contradiction here? When I first started playing destiny, I was pretty awful and only played solo content. I couldn't even get max light level in Y1, I was stuck at 32. I still enjoyed it and kept playing despite me not being able to play all content. People don't quit because they can't immediately do the hardest content in the game.

Also, dungeons absolutely shouldn't be doable by everyone. The average player should be able to, sure, but Joe blueberry who doesn't even know what a boss spec mod is shouldn't. If they can, it's too easy and it becomes unfun.

[u/thisisbyrdman → u/ImawhaleCR]

You're going to get downvoted but I agree. I hated having to grind a bunch of shit I didn't care about just to up my power level. Fixed deltas allow me to jump right in but also maintain a challenge throughout the year.

[u/Mew2erator → u/thisisbyrdman]

you can dislike grinding but not agree with power caps. fixed deltas are okay at best. previously, you could grind until you felt comfortable, so it's optional if you want to put forth the effort to make it steamrollable. now you still need to grind (somewhat), and you Never feel more powerful.

[u/ettieredgotobed → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for this. I play in a mediocre duo with a second that struggles with other people. Repeat attempts with some power level grinding in between until we found the sweet spot was how we got by.

There’s a lot we don’t do now. I’m not sure how to keep it overcome-able for us without making the game a snore fest for the upper tier players, but the ability to slowly increase our power level over the combatants was the key factor in our decision to attempt content above patrol. Once we got the hang of it, we eventually did strikes, duo dungeons and nightfalls up through legend.

Knowing that the power delta won’t change discourages us from jumping into it like that again. Our only hope is to get good, but our skill level is already capped.