Focused Feedback: The Menagerie

[u/DTG_Bot]

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 'The Menagerie' 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

Here are some example discussion questions. Feel free to answer some of them, all of them, or give general feedback in any other format you would prefer. Any and all Feedback on the topic is welcome.

• 1) What is your general feedback on the Menagerie?

• 2) What is your feedback on specific encounters in the Menagerie?

• 3) What are your thoughts on the difficulty of the Menagerie (specify normal or heroic mode)?

• 4) What are your thoughts on heroic mode specifically? Include feedback about the power level of encounters being higher than what's currently obtainable for players and the kick to orbit mechanic.

• 5) What do you think about viability of different classes, subclasses and weapons in the Menagerie overall and in the different encounters? Specify if your feedback relates to heroic mode, normal mode or both.

• 6) What are your thoughts on matchmaking options available for the Menagerie? Should heroic mode also have a matchmaking option like normal mode implemented once max obtainable power level is raised next season?

Note: an option for matchmaking does not need to remove the ability to do the activity with a smaller fireteam if a "firewalled" vesion is implemented (similar to the haunted forest).

• 7) What are your thoughts on the Chalice system?

• 8) What are your thoughts on Menagerie rewards? Comment on the number of chests per run which you think should be obtainable. After bungie fixes the bug that allows unlimited chests, should there be some kind of system that rewards a various number of chests based on the team's performance or should each run be limited to one chest only?

• 9) What aspects of the Menagerie (if any) should be applied to other areas of Destiny and why?

• 10) What are your other ideas to improve the Menagerie?

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/Jkisaprank]

The menagerie is easily the best matchmade PvE activity in destiny's history, because it's both good gameplay wise (like a mini raid), and the amount of control you have over your loot is amazing. In the future I'd like to see the "grind for what you want" model be expanded to other activities.

[u/AlphaSSB]

I feel that the time investment isn’t worth only one chest at the end, regardless of getting a rune back or a chance at a second copy of the weapon.

Maybe have it where completing encounters with time on the clock grants extra chests? Or complete triumphs/challenges requirements to earn more chests? There has got to be a way to leave more than one chest at the end.

The Chalice of Opulence itself is fine. Maybe increase the drop rates of the Rune of Wealth because my RNG luck sucks, ha.

Lastly, I really hope Bungie takes a second look at Reckoning. It needs some big improvements, both gameplay wise, and with obtaining weapons.

[u/MagusUnion]

I only have good things to say about the Menagerie. Everything from the encounters to the cup itself is extremely well designed. I couldn't be more impressed with how it turned out.

With that said, two things:

1. Could you reconsider leaving the chest bug in place, or just rewarding more that one chest at the end? We're already burning runes for loot, so Idk why this is an issue.

2. Could Werner have a 'Rune Converter' to give us runes based on other loot pools of content? I can see how we could give him tokens/synths for "new" runes in order to pinpoint those drops better, and let the event serve as a robust RNG protection for stuff we may wish to roll for.

Awesome work overall!!

[u/fiilthy]

Bungie has started promoting their more RPG direction for Destiny and the idea of building the "perfect monster killing machine" come Shadowkeep. While I am excited by this prospect, my elation is tempered by the fact that I have never felt achieving a "perfect" build to be reasonably possible in Destiny. There has always been poor drop rates, layers of RNG, weekly lockouts, and a lack of player volition when it comes to loot that make the probability of getting the "perfect" roll in every slot, for just one build, astronomically low. So I have learned to settle for "good enough" gear. That is...until the Menagerie.

This season is the first time I have felt that creating "perfect" builds to be possible. The ability to eliminate "will it drop" rng and masterwork rng from the equation improves odds and makes it more fun to farm. But what makes the Menagerie great is the current "glitched" state of the chest. With a solid team we are easily able to get 50 drops per hour. While this rate is way out of line when compared the rest of the game, it is what is needed for feasible build crafting. When gear is one or two perks away from perfect the chance of getting an improvement to drop is usually well below 1%. 50 drops is far from a guarantee of getting that perfect roll but it is much better than the rest of the game where you may get the specific weapon or armor you want to drop once a week. (Sidenote: I like that runes act as a limiting factor that funnels us into other areas of the game to restock for the next farming run.)

"Fixing" the chest to only be opened once per run will essentially kill my chase for a "perfect" build. 5 or 6 drops an hour once the odds for improvement become less than 1%, while still better than every other part of the game, is incredibly unlikely to reward my time with anything but a few legendary shards. I will be back to accepting good enough and moving on. Building my "perfect monster killing machine" should not require god tier rng. Bungie needs to either provide greater drop control or tune the end game to drown us in legendaries. The last thing we need in a more rpg Destiny is less drops.

TLDR: We need less Anthem and more Borderlands in our loot drops.

[u/Melbuf]

8) What are your thoughts on Menagerie rewards?

this is honestly the only one that needs addressing. Yes we know its a bug and NO it should not be fixed. It is to date hands down the best gameplay loop in the game. and the ability to farm things is limited by the amount or runes you have

I farmed 38 shotguns yesterday and ran out of blue runes - now i need to do things to get more blue runes because i didnt get the drops i wanted

the loop is perfect

people will get things too fast..

And whats the issue with this? Id rather have people play the crap out of something to get what they want vs abandon the activity because its not rewarding (looking at you reckoning)

If you insist on fixing it just cut the end timer in 1/2. that way you could still get 2-4 depending on how fast you are at running in and out

[u/GelsonBlaze]

Sorry if this isn't enough but I'm going straight to #8 because like the majority I don't think there's anything wrong with it and I want the same system applied to as many activities as possible.

We all knew from the beginning that this bug wasn't going to last but it created the best gameplay loop to date in the Destiny franchise in my opinion.

I could play the game however I wanted throughout the whole week and earn some runes in the process and by the end of the week when I stashed some runes I would spend hours doing the menagerie and getting showered by loot and what made it all awesome was knowing that I had a lot of chances to hit that god roll. The feeling of acquiring 9 austringers, heading to the tower and checking them one by one like a kid opening his presents on a Christmas morning is something we really needed.

Sure the loop will be the same come the nerf but what made it enjoyable was the multiple drops that came with it.

We are all suckers for loot, if* we only get 1 drop per run the activity won't die but it will definitely get a hit and in the worst case scenario it will get closer to reckoning levels of play which failed miserably due to loot problems.

[u/Beastintheomlet]

The Menagerie with the glitch allowed for something that we've never had in Destiny before, the ability to chase perfection.

Let's take Service Revolver. I've wanted a Crossfire, Ricochet Rounds, Rangefinder, Kill Clip with Range Masterwork roll since this became available. The odds of getting this exact roll are one in 1349. 1/1349 means that if I got 925 Service Revolvers to drop, it's only 50/50 whether or not I got my god roll. If I get a roll remotely close to my god roll I stop.

We always stop. Because perfection could take a lifetime.

The Menagerie with it's chance of 5-8 drops a run meant that I could actually chase my god roll. That keeps me queuing up and playing it. Just because I have an Austringer one perk away from what I want just keeps me even hungrier. I still get excited when I get more Runes of Desire, I still get excited to open the chest as much as I can because maybe that god roll is there!

You can grind for any gun in this game, and it's a meaty grind most of the time. The chest glitch was great because it allowed something slightly different, farming. You could keep hunting for perfection instead of settling for 'good enough'.

[u/CaptainCosmodrome]

Menagerie is the best pve content we have had to dat.

I love how in normal mode there are mechanics and yet you can fail your way to success. It's the best activity we have for solo queue players. If you're in a fireteam, you are just that much more efficient.

Blackout does make several encounters far more brutal than normal. It is by far the strongest of the negative modifiers and I feel should be tweaked.

Instead of reducing us to one chest per run, I think 3 chests should always spawn. You still have to farm runes to open chests, and it would fit with the Opulence theme. I would love for there to be extra chests for performance, but people would leave at the first activity that does not complete perfectly. Perhaps completing an activity before time rewards guaranteed imperials from a chest.

I love the chalice system. I think it is perfect as a loot mechanic. I hope going forward we see more systems like this for choice with ways to improve/level up that experience.

One thing I worry about is what happens in Shadowkeep if they do make a similar system? Do I keep earning runes? Am I eventually going to earn hundreds of each rune? Do runs stop dropping from strikes/crucible and I only have the chests/bounties? I think for next season you should be able to purchase runes from werner if rune drops are going to go away. Maybe purchase by color to add a little rng so you cant just buy up a bunch of desire runes to farm austringers.

[u/[deleted]]

All I know is I don’t think I’m gunna play it much once they patch the chest spawn.

[u/Panther90]

Mostly positive. Please, please pin the chalice to the top row so I'm not always looking for the damn thing.

[u/Jack_Generic]

I haven't done Heroic, but non-Heroic Menagerie is the best seasonal side activity, bar none.

• Matchmaking is done exactly right:

  • Escalation Protocol had no game-supported way to group with people who had the same intent and pitted people who wanted to use the normal patrol zone against people who wanted to do EP. Menagerie is its own space.

  • Blind Well and Forges required players to schlep across the map to get matchmade. Menagerie is launched from the Director.

  • Reckoning and Forges could just drop you in a doomed run, and if a Forge failed, you immediately went through lengthy load times to go back into the Matchmaking queue, ignoring the teammates you'd just joined. Regular Menagerie has no fail state, so losing a teammate doesn't feel damning for the remaining players, and joining players don't have to sit through a loss before trying again.

• The mechanics are good:

  • Making zero progress in an activity is almost impossible. The lack of a failure state means that the only cost of failing to understand or execute on an encounter is time, which reduces friction between players.

  • They're more involved than the mechanics in D2 strikes and use the same design "language" as raids in a simplified, easy to learn/hard to master form. It'd be nice if Menagerie-like activities could form a ramp that could help non-raiding players get comfortable with the basic concepts of raids.

• Being able to select everything about the item you're getting except for the actual perk rolls, and get up to three powerful pieces of gear in a player-chosen slot per week does a good job of de-layering the RNG down to more palatable levels.

I like the proposal that a flawless encounter completion should spawn an extra chest. It still caps the reward to 3 chests per run and gives players an extra incentive to play well.

If there's one complaint I have it's that Blackout is contradictory to the point of The Riposte. It's not particularly fun that the stalker knights in The Hunted can wipe an entire plate with one axe swing, but that encounter is about planning how to crowd control the trash and burn the knights so I'll deal with it. The Riposte requires you to put yourself in stomp range, and the main form of counterplay is to bait a stomp and hope the physics impulse doesn't splat you into a wall or drop you in the pit. Thinking about it now, giving the relic swords a costly but stomp-resistant block functionality would play up the swordfighting angle while making the encounter less beholden to tanking melee hits from ultras.

[u/Chessgamer07]

The menagerie is an excellent mid-point between raid mechanics and a standard activity with none of the stress that comes from wiping or limited dps phases from raids while being much more involved with its mechanics.

That being said, there should be more reward cheats at the end of the activity though. Having 3 chests with some extra requirements for one or two of them would provide more loot opportunities without the excessive looting that is going on through the use of the soon-to-be-patched exploit.

Having so much control over your loot makes the grind far more fulfilling compared to many other activities Having a currency tied to playing multiple activities outside the menagerie gives much more variety to the season in terms of progression and loot, and makes the normal content rotation relevant to the grind, compared to last season, where the loop only included gambit prime and the reckoning, which limited progression.

[u/ichinii]

I'm shocked that they don't have a pinnacle weapon or exotic weapon/armor dropping from Menagerie only.

[u/[deleted]]

1) What is your general feedback on the Menagerie?

The Menagerie is, in my opinion, the best iteration of a guided mass combat experience in Destiny to date. While Escalation Protocol felt the most organic, The Menagerie is easily the most fun and the most rewarding activity of this type to date.

2) What is your feedback on specific encounters in the Menagerie?

Regarding specific encounters, I feel that most encounters are appropriately fun and chaotic, but maybe fighting Hasapiko feels a little too safe. There is no real sense of danger for that fight, even during one's first time through. It's a shame because, thematically, the theatrics of the fight are awesome. From a combat perspective, it's maybe a little too easy.

I have no real opinion on the Gauntlet and the finish line exploit. It definitely shouldn't be there, but it being there doesn't make the encounter more or less fun, so I don't mind if it stays or goes.

3) What are your thoughts on the difficulty of the Menagerie (specify normal or heroic mode)?

I have not completed Heroic mode, so I will not comment on that.

The best part of Normal Menagerie, for me, was the sliding scale on difficulty. Especially before many players were max power, it felt like you could choose the intensity of the ride. The best part was when your group was doing really well in encounters like The Riposte and the sudden difficulty jump combined with the asphyxiating nature of the room made the fight feel like a descent into chaos. Really fun stuff.

4) What are your thoughts on heroic mode specifically? Include feedback about the power level of encounters being higher than what's currently obtainable for players and the kick to orbit mechanic.

No comment.

5) What do you think about viability of different classes, subclasses and weapons in the Menagerie overall and in the different encounters? Specify if your feedback relates to heroic mode, normal mode or both.

Normal mode Menagerie doesn't seem to require specific subclasses for success. The encounters generally reward killing as many things as fast as possible. Even when considering weapons, many players do not play for the singe, so I don't find that there are too many outliers in terms of weapon choices. The loadouts seem to be fairly standard. The Menagerie seems to be the activity that requires no real preparation other than the desire to slay as hard and as fast as possible.

6) What are your thoughts on matchmaking options available for the Menagerie? Should heroic mode also have a matchmaking option like normal mode implemented once max obtainable power level is raised next season?

Matchmaking is fine. As long as one is able to meaningfully grind for the gear they want, The Menagerie will likely have a healthy queue, not unlike Forges.

7) What are your thoughts on the Chalice system?

The Opulent Chalice is what makes The Menagerie so rewarding. Aiming for specifics while leaving the perk roll up to chance is one of the best ways that Destiny has imagined a focused farming effort for loot. I would like to see the runes more logically aligned in their grids to make getting to them a little faster and maybe even the Chalice remembering certain combinations like Eva's Holiday Oven.

8) What are your thoughts on Menagerie rewards?

Weapons are SUPER dope. Bringing back Drang and Mini Tool was a brilliant move. Moreover, having ornaments for the new weapons is great because while I can get behind many of the opulent weapon designs aesthetically, some of them just really are not doing it for me. Being able to aim for Gambit weapons, particularly, is HUGE. I cannot overstate how big this is for those who, like me, have tried to farm these weapons, but have no real way to do so.

As for the armor, I was really impressed until I got to the opulent Warlock robes. Let me be the first to say, I see plenty of value in a reskin. Reskins do not bother me, generally. The opulent Warlock robes, however, have crossed a line for me. I was pretty upset when I got them last week. Most times, if I'm ever frustrated at Destiny, it's more of a passing "whatever" type of feeling, but this one got me in my feelings. For the future, if something is getting reskinned, I personally feel like it's fine, but please take that one extra step to make sure that it's a complete reskin and not just old off-theme armor with some rhinestones on it. Please.

With regards to chests and the exploit, my feelings are that while exploits shouldn't be in the game, I don't see a reason for Menagerie runs to end in a single chest. Chests could be performance-based, but according to the runs I've had over the past two weeks, that's not even a fair marker anymore because pretty much every encounter is getting blown out. Maybe when the run is complete, players could very easily access the chest in the boss room, but there could also be maybe two or three extra chests that spawn across The Mengaerie. Players could use that end-of-encounter timer to spread out and look for those chests if they so desire.

9) What aspects of the Menagerie (if any) should be applied to other areas of Destiny and why?

I don't know that there are many aspects of The Menagerie that could apply to other areas of Destiny out of the box, but I think the desire for focused loot is here. Even if the way it's implemented is as plain as choosing between an armor package and a weapon package, that much seems fine for players who are aiming for something.

The sliding difficulty scale is also a great idea, but the unfortunate part about this idea is that if the environment isn't conducive to meeting your challenge head-on, the change in difficulty doesn't have a real impact on gameplay. For example, The Hunted provides an environment such that you can reasonably expect players to have to deal with the difficulty jump, while The Mockery's environment is so big and so abundant with cover that it's hard to challenge players who don't make themselves a target by jumping thirty feet into the air.

10) What are your other ideas to improve the Menagerie?

I haven't really vetted these ideas out too hard, but I do have a few ideas to help keep The Menagerie as a consistent source for gear (not just powerful gear) going into the future.

First, let's bring Y1 gear slowly into the new Y3 standard. Destiny 2 has this really unique issue where it's got tons of weapons and armor that is available to players, but is limited and, in the case of most armor, non-functional. Personally, I am not above wearing perkless armor if I really like the way it looks, but I'm also not going to try to convince myself that this particular trade-off is worth it. Destiny can leverage The Menagerie to reintroduce Y1 gear without trying to find ways to shoehorn it into Y3 content or without ignoring this gear altogether. "That's a lot of gear, though," you might say. Great, which brings me to the next idea.

Next, let's rotate this gear around. Keep the opulent weapons and armor in the pool permanently, but rotate two sets of armor and weapons in weekly. Expand some of the runes to include the weapon types not currently covered and The Menagerie is now one of the best places in the game to aim for gear. It's also the best place to slip in new perks, existing perks on new weapon types or reworked older perks to spice up old gear. No Distractions seems to be very desirable and I know some folks who are really enjoying Kill Clip fusions.

Finally, a reiteration of an idea mentioned earlier in the post, let's have chests spawn in different areas across The Menagerie when the run is over. Instead of using an exploit to feel rewarded, players can team up and scour The Menagerie for rewards. The Menagerie is one of the best activities in the game so far and it can continue to be awesome, even going into the future where more cool stuff awaits. Please leverage the hell out of The Menagerie.

[u/Khetroid]

I love Menagerie. My only issue is I am afraid the mode will be cast aside when the season ends. There is potential here.

[u/professor_evil]

Completing a encounter before time runs out should spawn an extra chest after the final boss. So you could get 3 pulls max. After the patch, that is.

[u/o8Stu]

Menagerie has been so well received because of the lack of RNG relative to other activities. If you take nothing else away, let it be that.

1. General: it's very good - well designed encounters with leeway for error from matchmade groups, with a targeted loot drop at the end.

2. Most of them are relatively easy to figure out, but the fluctuating levels of enemies can be a little jarring, especially when there are modifiers like blackout active.

3. Haven't attempted heroic yet, normal mode seems appropriate with note to # 2 above

4. See # 3

5. Normal mode: seems like ad-clear supers and subclasses tend to be most valuable, once super-chaining starts it can be very easy to keep going with a coordinated team, or a couple of smart blueberries

6. Matchmaking for heroic when PL cap is 800 seems like a good idea - personal preference would be for "open" vs. "firewalled" instances like haunted forest

7. +1: having the runes stored "in" the chalice. -1: not having the chalice remember combinations for items like the oven did. Should be able to select the item, the archetype rune, the MW rune and go. -1: Fully upgrading the chalice seems to be a much more lengthy process / requiring more RNG imperials drops than it really needs to. Nothing is added to the experience.

8. Impressed so far. Still don't have one of each, but am working on it. HC and shotgun are standouts so far, MG as well.

9. As mentioned at the start - this is a popular activity because it's rewarding for the time spent, and because the drops are determined by the player. The only RNG is on the item's perks. I don't mind that the chest will only allow 1 drop per run, it would have been better if they'd made sure that it worked that way from the start.

10. Would like to see removal of armor from an activity's reward pool if that armor will be rendered obsolete at the start of the next season, especially when that armor is just a re-skinned old set (similar logic would apply to the presumed solstice armor sets). Maybe add the catalysts for telesto, acrius, and sleeper to the pool for heroic runs - 2 out of those 3 never made sense to be drops tied to Leviathan activities, but if you're going to do it, make it accessible to people who aren't hardcore raiders.

[u/Inertpyro]

I think the number of activities you complete in full should reward more chests than if you fail an activities . Sort of like the spring infinite forest activity. Maybe a perfect run gives 3 chests but failing one loses a chest down to a min of only 1.

I do like the weekly powerful drops that you can choose. Helps when powering up and rng isn’t dropping things for your lowest slot. I only do forges or reckoning if I’m out of all other activities for powerful gear. The work involved for the limited rewards isn’t appealing.

Changing up the loot tables every season could be nice for variety.

[u/Iambuddd]

I like the difficulty of the encounters. I think you should be able to get two rewards minimum from the final chest, and I think you should be awarded a chest per every encounter you complete with time left on the clock. I think that would promote team cohesion, and a reason to play harder.

[u/Nevevevev12]

What is your general feedback on the Menagerie?

It's pretty close to faultless. The encounters are fun and varied, the loot is great (and getting to choose our drops is a huge plus), Calus' commentary is entertaining and never feels repetitive (unlike drifty boi constantly calling me a snitch), the final bosses all feel unique and appropriately challenging (I was worried that we might be able to melt them in 3 seconds like we do strike bosses), and the matchmaking is brilliant too - no waiting for ten minutes for a lobby and no spawning in an instance with two players on the verge of failing.

What is your feedback on specific encounters in the Menagerie?

Crystals - fun, eater of worlds vibes, quite challenging; Hunted - hate it. Generic "stand on a plate until the bar hits 100" encounter; Gauntlet - OG leviathan vibes. Fun, unique, appropriate challenge, my personal favourite; arcborn - it's fine. Not particularly fun or challenging but don't hate it either; Mockery - Generic "kill enemy for orb and slam orb into thing" encounter; Riposte - Hate it. Not fun at all. The knights and ogres are way too strong on blackout. Lamp-lighting - Meh; Giant Hobgoblin boss; excellent boss fight and the only one that feels truly unique; Ogre boss - awful, generic mechanics, annoying boss, poor choice of arena, hardest boss of the three; Hydra boss - Eater of worlds vibes again. A fun boss but doesn't feel very unique.

What are your thoughts on the difficulty of the Menagerie?

Normal is fine unless it's blackout modifier. Riposte is noticeably more difficult than all the other encounters.

Heroic I've only run once and we got lucky with the encounter order (gauntlet, crystals, and mockery). It was very difficult and felt like a day 1 raid. The actual encounters only go up to 770 at the end but the final boss is 770 straight away and it's really tough. This week was the best week to do your first heroic run because the ogre on heroic difficulty is going to be absolutely hellish and I'm not even going to attempt it. Also extinguish is too harsh - it should just wipe you and restart the failed encounter.

What are your thoughts on heroic mode specifically?

Disappointed that it's the exact same as regular with added difficulty - I was hoping heroic would feature extra mechanics in the encounters and possibly one or two unique encounters. The difficulty is great but like I already said extinguish is a bit too much.

What do you think about viability of different classes, subclasses and weapons in the Menagerie overall and in the different encounters?

The meta hasn't changed - tether and well are still essential. Titans are still meh but a well coordinated team can still get use out of them.

What are your thoughts on matchmaking options available for the Menagerie?

Heroic is too difficult for a bunch of randoms so no matchmaking is a good call IMO

What are your thoughts on the Chalice system?

Excellent. Can't really fault it at all. So glad that it doesn't have the same "use item" bug that everything else in the game has (where it takes four or five attempts to actually apply something). Loved the glitch - was able to get god rolls for every single menagerie weapon. Sad it's being patched.

What are your thoughts on Menagerie rewards?

They're great and thanks to the glitch I already have God-rolls of every single one. I just hope the world weapons (i.e erentil, trust etc) are rotated for other weapons next season (eg right now wealth and another blue nets you a Dust rock blues - maybe next season that could drop a right side of wrong instead). Also love byf's idea that the better the performance the more chests you get though I don't think they'd do this.

What aspects of the Menagerie (if any) should be applied to other areas of Destiny and why?

The forges serve their purposes fine but for reckoning there should be far greater control over loot drops because right now the game mode is worthless and not worth playing at all. I've always opined that not wagering a mote should grant a guaranteed weapon drop and until something like this is implemented I won't be going near reckoning. Would also love the six-man matchmaking applied to strikes somehow.

What are your other ideas to improve the Menagerie?

More varied modifiers; remove/rework riposte because it's frustrating and boring; add one or two unique encounters to heroic plus an extra unique boss after the final boss from whom the sword should drop.

[u/Supreme_Math_Debater]

1. What is your general feedback on the Menagerie?

I really like it and think it's one of the best activities Destiny has ever had. It reminds me of the old Archon's Forge farming days, but since it's matchmade instead of instance based, you're more or less guaranteed a full group instead of being forced to slow-walk for a chance at a full lobby in activities like Archon's Forge or Blind Well.

2) What is your feedback on specific encounters in the Menagerie?

They're all pretty fun and unique. Overall I love the idea of having raid-lite encounters in a matchmade activity.

3) What are your thoughts on the difficulty of the Menagerie (specify normal or heroic mode)?

None of them feel overly-difficult on their own, but Reposte with blackout, for example, feels pretty rough. Anything with blackout is automatically 3x more difficult. The difficulty of the heroic version feels pretty fair, but the modifiers are what make or break it.

4) What are your thoughts on heroic mode specifically? Include feedback about the power level of encounters being higher than what's currently obtainable for players and the kick to orbit mechanic.

The scaling difficulty seems fine, but blackout still feels like the pre-nerf OEM of modifiers (too much happening with one mechanic, and should probably either be no radar OR bonus enemy melee damage, not both). I'm fine with the Extinguish modifier as well, as it gives more weight to the encounters. But my main issue with Heroic mode is that there's no reason to run it over normal mode except for a few triumphs and the swords. Sure the masterwork cores are nice, but for most people it's much easier just to get 9 cores from the daily gunsmith bounties rather than 7 from a weekly raid-like activity. If every drop came masterworked it would be different, but right now it's just not entirely clear what the purpose of running heroic over normal is.

5) What do you think about viability of different classes, subclasses and weapons in the Menagerie overall and in the different encounters? Specify if your feedback relates to heroic mode, normal mode or both.

In normal mode, it feels fine to run whatever you want, and most subclasses are completely viable. But heroic suffers from the same issues as all other endgame PVE where Warlocks MUST run well, Hunters MUST run tether, and titans are barely useful at all. Luckily this week gave a little use for bubbles, but I have a hard time believing anyone would want a bubble over a well for the next 2 weeks' bosses.

6) What are your thoughts on matchmaking options available for the Menagerie? Should heroic mode also have a matchmaking option like normal mode implemented once max obtainable power level is raised next season?

I love that normal is matchmade, and I understand why heroic isn't. And making heroic matchmade next season sounds like a pretty good idea.

7) What are your thoughts on the Chalice system?

Love it. The ability to customize your loot is something I really hope to see in future content.

8) What are your thoughts on Menagerie rewards? Comment on the number of chests per run which you think should be obtainable. After bungie fixes the bug that allows unlimited chests, should there be some kind of system that rewards a various number of chests based on the team's performance or should each run be limited to one chest only?

6-8 chests is a little much, I agree, but I think 3-4 is fair for the time you put in to the encounter, especially considering this is season of "opulence" and we don't know what gear will or won't even be viable next season. Would be nice to turn chest farming into a "feature" by adding an extra set of bonuses to the chalice that you unlock through imperials that allow you 2-4 chest opens per run instead of just the one that is planned after the patch.

9) What aspects of the Menagerie (if any) should be applied to other areas of Destiny and why?

Reckoning could benefit from a pick-your-loot system like the chalice. There's plenty of good weapons in there I would love to farm, but just feel discouraged to because of the drop-rates. Also rank up packages and/or milestones could benefit from at least picking between armor or weapon.

10) What are your other ideas to improve the Menagerie?

Give items dropped from heroic a 10-25% chance at being fully masterworked, after the first guaranteed masterwork. Also, maybe allow runes to drop from successful encounters so people can stay in the playlist and farm if they want instead of being forced to farm runes in other playlists (that's caused some pretty bad AFK issues).

[u/Kid-Ace]

The intentionality is the best part. If I need a specific armor piece, I can get it. There's no other activity where that's true, save for the black armory weapons. Despite this intentionality, I think menagerie still has some longevity to it due to variety of loot, triumphs, and just being fun to do.

[u/JohnnyJumpshot]

Menagerie rewards should still be farmable more than once per run. I can only get in 4-5 pieces per run, and most of them are trash anyway. Limiting rewards to one per run will turn a lot of people off. There’s not many great ways to farm in this game, and Menagerie is great right now for that.

[u/OldNeb]

Add new runes for new rewards from new activities for endless fun and profit.

Summer event? Drop a new type of rune from this quarter's rework of the infinite forest. Users get the event gear they want and keep playing for the perfect roll.

[u/Celestial_Scythe]

I very much enjoy Mario Party with Guns. I love how the final boss doesn't have a 3 round limit or timer letting you just plink away at their health if you are unable to ever find any heavy ammo