I put story in the title just for those who'd like to grouse about it, but I think most reasonable people can agree: fine, whatever, some of the adventures and lost sectors are turning out to be harder than anything in the campaign but only by so much. Ghaul's last scene was probably the one legitimately good scene in the game; honestly most of the Ghaul cutscenes were enjoyable and everything else was kind ignorable at best. His final words before the boss fight were probably the cringiest of the year, though.

How do you feel about how the endgame is playing out so far? I already have four exotic energy weapons, an exotic gauntlet and an exotic chest armor and I beat the story about two hours ago. Not giving you the sparrow until you've finished the story is, IMO, a little bit malicious, but if you mainline the story it's also fairly short (obviously, as so many people have completed it already) and you don't really wind up dealing with all the open space on offer.

Which, by the way, man was it easy to underestimate how sizable these worlds are. Brad mentioned on the Quick Look that he doesn't like these areas much and I tended to agree with him, but now that I have the Sparrow I find that that lack of speed really turned me off exploring these areas, and I quickly had a lot of fun manually boosting around the EDZ hunting down my challenges from Ikora and mopping up the Patrol-related quest. By the way, is it weird if I say I'm glad to see patrols are in the game? It's weird, right?

I like the idea of Ikora being a server of upper level remixes of the story missions, though I haven't played one yet so I'm curious how much changes. I felt like a lot of the missions had potential but then I just cakewalked through them due to the common enemy types and all that muscle memory I'd built up from Destiny 1.

I think the new way they're handling rewards and drops is great. Did they wind up going with a similar system the last year of Destiny or this all new? The idea that the rep you earn towards gunsmith, the factions, the different planets all build in different ways, build relatively rapidly and gift great content means, at least right now, I'm constantly feeling like I'm making progress and getting cool new stuff. It was awesome how quickly my equipment went from blue to purple (though I still have rare boots...), anyone who still has lingering PTSD from that first year of Destiny should've felt great during that sequence.

That said, it does make me wonder how they'll keep stoking the fires. Sports games that work on a similar loop of redeeming rep for card packs often just keep adding new cards and versions of existing cards and I wonder if that's ultimately where this game will go?

Anyway, what are you enjoying most about the endgame so far? Curious about? Disappointed by? Hoping for? Especially hardcore Destiny veterans looking forward to the raid, how is The Real Destiny 2© treating you so far? I'm still that dummy wandering around checking off patrols and open world challenges while listening to baseball podcasts and Desus & Mero, so we could be having wildly different experiences.

So for the non spoiler stuff, as small it as it might seem, I love the Headshot mechanics they introduced to each race now. It looks incredibly satisfying, especially the first time you see the Fallen turning into Ghost Mist in that relatively misty space. That looked fantastic. Hive look pretty great as well being all headshot explody. While I wish Lost Sectors were a little bit more involved they are pretty cool little jaunts that you can often accidentally run into. I know me and a couple friends did 2 by accident at one time. Adventures are actually somewhat more involved Side Missions than I think anyone was expecting, but I often find myself wishing they would actually go faster. With Public Events, figuring out how to activate the Heroic versions has been tricky but now that I do know, it's pretty frustrating when you can't get randoms to do the objectives, especially when they rush the actual Public Event a mere 2 seconds before you finish the Heroic objective you had been working on by yourself so it doesn't activate (this has happened to me far too many times now). I do like the concept of Heroic Public Events though, it should get better as more players figure out how to do them. My one complain about PE's would be that they almost spawn too frequently, making them easy to catch, but often nobody is doing them. As far as the open world Loot Chests Treasure Hunts, I haven't done those yet, so I can't speak to them, but I hear they are one of the fastest ways to Level post 200 Power, so I will be trying them soon. As far as the World Quest's go, I'm saving those for later, but I do love the idea that there are 16 more Story Quests available to me (4 on each planet) as soon as I'm ready to tackle them with my peeps.

Outside of all that, I'm personally just trying to grind up Power Levels to the Softcap (260) so that I will be Raid ready next Wednesday. I plan on waiting to touch my 2nd and 3rd characters until I hit that Power Level due to the system in place that will automatically make them that level once they hit Level 20 and I get 1 piece of gear in every slot for them. I'm also kind waiting Poptarts to finally send me those XP codes so going through to 20 will be easier on them. Before the end of the week though I will hit up the Nightfall and Flashpoint and let you guys know how Power Leveling is post Softcap. Anything else you guys want to know feel free to ask.

I think Ghaul would've been a decent villain and this game had a decent story if they didn't add in the stuff about the sun. A villain wanting to blow up the sun if he doesn't get what he wants sounds like something a 10 year old would write... the same goes for this light/dark stuff. I will give them credit for doing cutscenes and having a story in the game, which wasn't really the case in the first game. The vex, hive, taken, and fallen just feel thrown in. I was hoping the game would have us try to work with the other enemy factions, since none of them would want Ghaul to get the light or to blow up the solar system. That would've been far more interesting to me. Finding and teaming up with the 3 main vanguards wasn't that interesting and they weren't very useful.

I rented the game (glad I didn't buy it) so I don't really care about the endgame. I'll try it out a little bit. I did think it was weird that I beat the game with mostly blue items, a few yellow ones, but no purple at all when yellow is more rare. I got a bunch of purple when I turned 20 from the field leaders, but that was after I beat the game.

The only truly good story bit is the Traveller waking up, which was a legit great moment, and then the consequence of it being the Darkness turning their attention towards the galaxy.

That's the Darkness right? I remember concept art for Destiny 1 coming out and it was generally accepted that those pyramid ships are the actual ships of the "Darkness," and that the enemy that's been chasing the Traveller isn't some vague metaphysical force, but an actual tangible collective.

I said it in the impressions thread, but I'll reiterate here: that ending feels like a strong endpoint for something you'd call "Destiny 1." The way they set up the dormant Traveller there makes the damn thing waking up a strong endpoint to your introduction to the world, and a compelling signal for the start of bigger things to come. Instead, the end of the first game was basically "hey, stay tuned for more adventures," followed by more adventures. Of those more adventures I think this "Red War" of Destiny 2 fits right in. Granted it's more like the Taken King in terms of having some actual consequence in the world, but like the Taken King it doesn't carry much forward throughout its narrative. They're more like pips on a timeline than interesting narratives.

But anyways, I'd be interested to see how they deal with the Traveller being awake in the DLC; whether we'll get more meaningful story stuff or just the same ol' adventure packs.

As for the actual Red War stuff, it had a strong start but quickly falls into your typical Destiny fare. There are probably three interesting levels in the whole campaign (the first mission, the tank one, and the Almighty which was like that Call of Duty level and the end of Halo) and a couple that aren't the most exciting but feature some pretty locales (the dead forest and the agriculture zone or whatever on Titan). Story-wise, the best stuff is probably the Speaker talking with Ghaul, but there isn't enough to flesh out their back and forth and it sort of ends abruptly with Ghaul undramatically killing whats-his-face adoptive father scholar, and then heading off to get ready for being the final boss.

Speaking of abrupt, was there any set up for the Almighty? Because I just played through the main missions (none of the adventures) and all of the sudden there was a cutscene explaining what the Almighty does, and that hey by the way it's at Sol now. Pretty bad introduction to a major plot point, unless there's a Ghost quip I missed over the sound of shooting things in the face. [e: just played through that mission again, the set up is a few offhand remarks about a Cabal transmission]

The final fight with Ghaul was a bit goofy. Hey, now he's got his own supers, and they're like your supers, cause it's the Light. Didn't do much for me. At least they filled it with those Light pads so you could just unload your own supers and get it over with.

There are a handful of good character moments, the biggest one being the cutscene where you reunite with Cayde. Unfortunately they're sparse, and a lot of the rest is either completely forgettable objective pointing or just grating. Failsafe is terrible. That Awoken scientist guy is terrible. Sloan's kinda cool, and Suraya and Devrim are fine (though Devrim's closer to being boring like Zavala and Ikora).

Really the story's a lot less of a proper narrative and more just people talking a lot about where you should go and what you should do. I'd be disappointed if I expected anything moderately compelling, but I didn't, which ended up working out because again that ending was kinda rad. What there is in terms of plot is either cute (reuniting the Vanguard fireteam à la some Naruto shit), rote (stop imminent destruction of solar system; storm bad guy's hangout), or undercooked (Ghaul and the Speaker, the feeling of losing everything).

So yeah, it's not great. It's a mediocre campaign with a handful of bright spots and a good ending that's good for reasons that really have nothing to do with the story that immediately preceded it.

The endgame stuff seems fun though. Diggin the changes made to the patrol stuff. Lots of adventures and things to do. Though it does seem like they let you plow through the main story so you've got all the side stuff left afterwards to break up the monotony of the grind, which is fine. Kinda bummed that the strikes weren't integrated into the story at all and just unlock as playlists. Some of them (or at least one) seems to have a bit of variety to it as well, which is fantastic to see. Actually being able to see public events on an actual map is nice. Hopefully the flashpoints help keep those zones (and their content) from feeling perpetually dead.

I've gotten a surprising amount of exotics so far (five, but two are from the campaign IIRC), so that's cool I guess. The drops seem to come fairly quick (though I'm only like 220 iLvl, so I expect that'll stop at some point), and the rep stuff also seems like a quicker grind than the old marks thing. I do miss being able to save for a particular item, but it's a fair trade-off I think, getting stuff more frequently but not necessarily getting to choose.

It's not a great game all-around, but I'm enjoying it for what it is.

Also I got that Salty emote from a free bright engram and am now part of the problem. Seasoning for everyone.

Finished it and got my first questline for an exotic. This about destiny is why I find it so off-putting. Go do this, then eat a dick, then jump the mountain, swim the ocean, visit granny, pick up a dandelion, give it to the fairy and grab her dust pout, theeeen drink from the fountain of soya milk, crawl the dungeon of gypsy tears, collect the sweat of a wild boar genetically spliced with a sky rabbit, pour it over xur's cereal and recieve a tooth from a cabal warrior, trade it for a kitten mitten at the speakers office, then sow it on to oryxs ass while he's asleep, then wait three months for it to grow mold spores and collect them after killing 80 billion of his lackeys, then hand the spores to some schmuck at the social area and wait another three months, then get the flower, it mutated into, which you passed several of during the now 1000 hours invested in the game but for some reason aren't allowed to collect, and trade it for a gun that can't shoot, then use that gun to get 50 raid boss kills consecutively without anyone on your team dying and then, finally, collect that engram only to discover that you could have bought it via Micro transactions all this time...fuck this dlc disguised as a game and fuck aaa companies swindling people over and over again.

Brad's tweet got my hopes up that the campaign story would end strong... but I can't say I am impressed.

At first the setup had potential: What happens when all guardians lose their light? Were the non-guardians on earth treated poorly? Why did the traveler choose us? Why is the traveler's fragment corrupting but gave us the light back? Is the speaker a fraud all along?

Anything interesting and maybe mildly disturbing gets dropped. In the end we got a one-man action hero story where the boss says, unironically, "I have become legend". Also for all the atmospheric stuff in the beginning about the pain and suffering, it seems only 1 named character died through this whole invasion. That about sums up the lame story.

Sometimes I want a game to be thought provoking. I think I want my loot shooter to be a dumb saturday morning cartoon romp and that's what this is and I like it a lot.

Also when characters lean heavily into shit like 'I have become Legend' I feel like we're all in on it as opposed to the first game where I definitely felt like everyone wanted us to think this was all very somber and austere.

I really didn't like the final fight that much. It was fine up until the second phase where boundless light wells kept spawning. That made the fight feel too easy for me as I was able to just super Ghaul to death. Other than that I enjoyed my time with the story but I really didn't like Failsafe at all. The whole "evil" side of her was just plain stupid and not written well at all. I get Cayde is supposed to be the comedy relief character but I don't he needs another comedy relief character as a sort of sidekick.

Now that I am finished with the story stuff I am excited to do all the milestone and adventure stuff as well as sinking my teeth into strikes and the quickplay portion of the crucible.

I really like Failsafe and wish she were my Ghost instead.

Sorry Nolanbot.

The best thing about the story was the post credits scene with those weird pyramids glowing up. Cant wait to spend a other 100 bucks to find out what it is .....

@efesell: Failsafe felt like forced humor, humor for humor sake not really my thing. Getting a dumb portal vibe from her.

Just want to say that one of my favorite missions was a part of the World Quest after the Campaign. I can't remember which one, I think it was the one on IO with the Pyramids, but a Fallen Captain totally Emoted us, and I was dying when it happened. That whole mission was rather good. Other than the Tank mission on Titan, it was easily my favorite mission in the entire game and both were better than anything Destiny has ever done before (even if that isn't the tallest bar to jump over).

@hestilllives19: That was the last thing I did yesterday and yeah it was super good.

I also think the end has some weird unexpected player choice to it, or maybe it plays out the same either way but I definitely helped it along.

Destiny 2 overall is a much better especially its structure despite a mediocre campaign at least its straight forward and makes sense.

But Destiny 2 has a few baffling niggles,

1. You can't see your Fireteam on the map and their icon disappears altogether after a short distance.
2. The vault lacks filters or tabs for kinect, energy and power etc and you can't sort by type and none of the current options pair dups.
3. The same mods being restricted to armour an type seems bizarre.
4. You can't check challenges without being in said activity or at a location.
5. I can live with consumable shaders but they should drop multiples of 4 so you can at least outfit you guy dropping 2/3 are borderling usless.
6. Destiny 1 often felt like a movie set or postcard having the same enemies in the same location at the same place, D2 doesn't fix this the world is already starting to feel mechanical.
7. Getting to the tower renders the farm usless.
8. Bungie server are shank enemies teleport and pop out of thin air shots don't always register and free roam is never full the most players I've seen is about half a dozen outside the tower/farm.
9. Pro tip press the touchpad and options together to instantly bring up the map or view and menu on XB.

My biggest issue with the story was how the Vanguard reacted after learning we got our light back. We're just Guardians who lost their light, and got it back by visiting the Shard. You're telling me the Vanguard can't do the same thing? Why the hell not? The first thing out of their mouths should've been "Take me to the Shard." or "I came to this place seeking another Shard of the Traveler. Since you have your light will you help me?" I think they missed a good opportunity to develop the Vanguard by having some quests where we help them as individuals to get their light back.

Ghaul saying "now I am become Legend" was super dumb.

@spamfromthecan: I disagree, I thought it was a nice call back to the first game.

@thepanzini it makes zero thematic sense for enemies to constantly be shifting around. I would also argue that 3/5 of the races are in several spots. They couldn't constantly change that stuff without heavily sharding off content even more than they already do.

I feel like there was some sort of justification for this, something like the Shard had called to you specifically. But considering it calls to you two more times, and some sort of Essence of Zavala and Friends is narrating the history of these subclasses to you pre- and post-fight, and during the final push and all throughout the campaign you are seeing other guardians with their light running around as well, whatever excuse I seem to remember them giving is a bit flimsy. The whole story was scaffolding, which is fine; I honestly felt like it was distracting me from progressing my character and wanted to get on with what I consider the actual game of Destiny.

It didn't help that I felt the entire campaign was far easier than Destiny's original campaign (perhaps adding the strikes into the progression would've helped with this; in some ways, Destiny did actually have a more robust campaign than this game's despite the completely vague storytelling) and so the big set piece moments just felt like power fantasy and sort of missing the point of what I found fun about the first run through the original Destiny, the mystery and surprise of what's around the corner. Instead, this game was filled with auto-supers and put you in vehicles you had to pretty much actively try to lose more than half your health bar in before you were given another tank spawn. I found it very strange that the enemy airships were basically designed to give you an unfair advantage as well.

I'll be curious to see how Ikora's Meditations alter those missions, but for now I've found more challenge in several of the adventures than I found in any of the main campaign stuff. Surely some of that is due to so much of the game's interactions coming down to muscle memory (this is something that could've been alleviated by new races, or at least far more entirely new behaviors like the Fallen's creepy crawling moves) from all my time with Destiny 1 but I recall how intense the Sepiks Prime strike was for the first several weeks of my time with Destiny 1 and it never got old as you kept refining strategies and getting better weapons to improve your time and efficiency through the strike. Sure, Phogoth is looked back on as a bit of a joke now but for the longest time that was also a fun, engaging fight until you were just far too OP for it to be relevant. The Nexus Mind really never got old for me, the core loop of it was just stressful enough no matter how powerful you were. So much of Destiny 2, while incredibly fun, does not feel like a surprise beyond how much more interesting and detailed the environments are, and I can count on one hand the number of tasks I failed the first time I was asked to do them.

@sammo21: Call back? It was their marketing slogan "Become Legend". He referenced the marketing slogan for the first game. That isn't a call back. Its breaking the 4th wall. Which is super dumb. I couldn't stop laughing at how silly it was for him to say that. Also because you are about to murder him.

I'll preface this by saying that I haven't played any of the post-story quests that unlock after the end of the campaign, and I left the majority of the adventures uncompleted, so I could possibly be overlooking any key story found inside these.

I enjoyed the campaign, but it has some pretty glaring issues. Weirdly enough, as much of an improvement as it is over Destiny 1 (and it really is) it has the same problem, its not enough. It sets up a lot of really interesting premises - Guardians losing their light, the story of Dominus Ghaul and his rise to power, a few quick glimpses into the vanguard characters, what the Vex are doing, a new taken king - and doesn't develop any of them. It just hits the note, and moves on. Frankly, the Almighty ruins the story. It plays too central a role and allows all the other interesting developments to fall by the wayside, in an attempt to focus the story on its conclusion.

All that being said, there are a ton of very good moments within the campaign. I loved the opening. Seeing the city destroyed, crawling out barely clinging to life, seeing the cabal march through its streets, to the wonderful climb through the mountains - its an incredibly strong start. Titan is beautiful, and the descent into the hive-infested arcology, with blaring techno and dark hallways, was great, however the Hive end up being throwaway obstacles, that serve no purpose. Finding Icora on Io is probably the best mission that involves recovering a vanguard member, with some interesting lore tidbits strewn throughout. After the final boss fight, seeing the tower rebuilt was pretty awesome, and getting some closure with the characters is a really nice feeling, even if theyre not the most charismatic bunch. The few scenes with Ghaul, his consul, and the speaker are great, but it doesn't really build to anything. I really enjoyed those scenes, but I expected them to have some payoff beyond vague hints at cabal culture and the reveal of his consul being his old master. Ghaul ends up being a very underwhelming villain by the end, his motivations only half explored, and his struggle with whether or not to take the light being super underdeveloped. I didn't mind the characters or their dialogue at all. Maybe thats because I went in expecting something utterly terrible because of all the scuttlebutt around it, but I really like Failsafe (For the 5 seconds she shows up in the campaign) and Cayde 6 isnt terrible. Its hard to describe how good Destiny 2 looks. At its best moments I'd say its one of the best looking games I have ever played. Its a great mix of tech and art.

The one thing the game pulls off flawlessly, however, its its structure. Starting off slowly, introducing you to key concepts as you make your way through the story, slowly expanding until the very end, where it basically becomes the Destiny everyone knows and loves/hates.

@spamfromthecan: Yes it was the marketing slogan but it was also in a big speech to you from The Speaker in the first game.

"The stories tell of a golden age long ago, when our civilization spanned the system. It was a bright and hopeful time. But it didn't last. Something hit us. Knocked us down and tried to stamp us out. No one knows exactly what, but we do know this: very few of us survived, and those that did owe their lives to the The Traveler. Legends say The Traveler sacrificed itself to save us. The mysterious sphere still hangs where it made its last stand, low above the Earth, keeping silent watch. The years that followed the collapse of the golden age were hard, but slowly we joined together to build a city beneath The Traveler. And now we've begun to venture back into the wild, only to find that we're not alone. Strange and deadly creatures have occupied our old worlds. And they're pressing hard against The City, probing for a weakness, trying to stamp us out for good. Your story begins at this moment of great adventure and peril. You are a Guardian of The City; a soldier able to wield some of The Traveler's incredible power. If you can find a way to save The City - to reclaim all that we have lost - you will become legend. If you fail, the last light of civilization will go out!"

So, no, it is not a fourth wall break and it is not referencing their marketing material. I mean, Ghaul just spent days-weeks grilling the speaker about the Light and the Traveller...then he references something The Speaker said to you which mean he probably also mentioned it to Ghaul :|

Bungie simply excels at presentation. Even when the game's narrative skews toward being too hammy (all of the Cayde/Failsafe nonsense on Nessus), Destiny's art direction remains overwhelmingly great. Those last few sequences, the Almighty and the Battle of the Last City particularly, really stand out as highlights.

I could stand on Io and watch Jupiter turn sleepily on its axis for the rest of time.

@sammo21: Agree to disagree then.

@spamfromthecan: I'll allow you your alternative facts ;)

I like a lot of your points and those are already the sticking points for things I wish they would change mostly. Some of the UI changes are baffling at best and just bad at other times. (1) Not being able to locate your fireteam on a Planet is a huge headache. This is something they need to fix as soon as possible before Patrols become so irrelevant that this gets lost and only talked about when we again do Patrols in the next DLC. (2) I just wish the Vault would auto order itself in a couple ways. Filter each Gear slot to its own section if they are put into the Vault (Kinetic/Energy/Power Weapons, and Helmet/Chest/Gauntlets/Boots/Class Items), and then organize them all by Rarity and then Power Level. If they just applied that filter I don't think the Vault would have any issues anymore, as there wouldn't be a need for sorting options. I do however like how they removed us having a static Weapon and Armor section each with 108 Slots. These 200 slots are more meaningful since you can have up to 200 Weapons because nobody keeps 100 Armor pieces in the Vault. (3) Mods need some serious work over. I'd like to see certain Armors be allowed two mods, like your Exotics and Chest (or 3 for Exotic Chests). It feels like a drastic drop in Power considering we had two perks on each Armor piece in Destiny 1, especially when they've slowed down the recharge rate of Abilities so much already. (4) I actually like this change by Bungie. There isn't this super crowded Milestones Menu and you are no longer prevented from picking up Bounties (Milestones) due to only having 16 available slots. They are only relevant in their activities in question anyways. What I do not like however is the removal of Quests. I like how you could pick up Quest and set them to active so you could tell exactly where to go to finish them off. I'd like to see that return. (5) I said this over on Discord but the entire Shader "controversy" could easily be solved by just bringing back Eva Levante and having her sell obtained Shaders for Glimmer and even have a set of Shaders on sell for the week like she did in Destiny. Nobody would have any issue with that. There is also plenty of space in the new Tower to add her somewhere. Hopefully they decide to do something like this. In all honestly though I have a whole mess of Shaders right now, so it hasn't been much of an issue for me. (6) I think you lose me a bit here. They've always established that certain races congregate in certain places, so from both a lore and gameplay perspective, what is going on with Enemies and their locales seems perfectly fine to me. (7) Absolutely, but is this a bad thing? I wish they would add some value back to The Farm but I like the "New Tower" anyways. If anything it's a bit to sparse right now and needs to be filled up. Hopefully bringing back Factions later this month will fill it up a bit more. (8) I think the Server Load for them has been near Capacity all week. They are getting hit hard so it makes sense we are seeing a bit of that Live game jank. (9) This is nice to know. I do think a lot of the new UI options are annoying though. I had that I have to seemingly go through hoops just to pull up either the Clan Page or my Friends list.

Good list though. I'll probably list the things I hope they fix at some point, just haven't had time to sit down and think about it.

Above all my complaints about balancing the game properly and giving each class fun viable options, the main sticking point for me is still the first one I brought up when they had their reveal event. They may have polished up the campaign and other elements of the game but they didn't lean into what people thought was great about Destiny. The game has always been at its best when it's challenging and demanding. The gameplay is robust enough to support those kinds of experiences and that's why Destiny towers above its FPS MMO RPG competition.

So why is the game so brainless and easy everywhere outside the Nightfall? I had such a blast running through that Nightfall and completing the rat king quest (also in the Nightfall but harder). It was almost raid like. An experience unlike any other game I've ever played. But except the Raid presumably, nothing even comes close to this level of engagement anywhere in the rest of the game.

Strikes don't have hard mode variants. Weekly story missions are exactly like campaign missions. Sometimes even easier since you might've played the campaign under leveled. Flashpoints and the associated public event are a giant missed opportunity. They feel like a slightly more polished and more accessible version of Destiny 1 public events. They repeat constantly in different locations and on different planets. Instead of a new end game activity they're just a brainless grind.

This is the reason I'm calling this Destiny 1.5. They may have addressed some of the complaints with Destiny but they didn't expand enough on what makes the game great in the first place.

@hestilllives19: I think were pretty much in agreement but I was in a rush for work so I'll elaborate further.

On point 4 yeah the challenges are much better than bounties they give you a good reason to visit each location daily but if I did two out of three challenges on earth there is no way of checking your progress or seeing what the challenges even are other than loading EDZ or if I can't remember if I finished the daily strike challenge your boned there's simply no elegant solution. My problem isn't the system but the lack of tracking having challenges listed on the map while your in orbit doesn't sound too hard.

With 6 I'm not asking random enemies to spawn each time but does the same two vandels and three dregs have to spawn in the same ratio and stand in the exact same spot it might sound like a minor niggle, but couldn't they spawn 10 yards away from a different cave with a slighty different ratio and stand 10 yards someplace else, and the same rings true for events. The world feels very mechanical when it doesn't really need to be.

@thepanzini: I wouldn't at all be opposed to them adding back in a tab for tracking active Quests and Bounties. I think that would solve all of the issues for 4. Hopefully something like that does happen. And that does make a lot more sense for 6. I get what you are saying and I don't totally disagree, but I'm sure scripting in random enemy encounters on every planet for every possible encounter would be a Development Nightmare so I get why they didn't do that too. I'm sure they could do some if this type of boss from this cave then these enemies but I feel like at a certain point that wouldn't solve the problem you are talking about. It would just be "Oh, there's a Fallen Captain, I guess he will have two Vantals, 3 Shanks, and 4 dregs with him like he always does." To be much larger than that I would think would require an awful lot of programming work and playtesting/bug fixing.

So a kinda out there observation I have an SSD in my Pro I tend to load quicker than my teammates this one time I loaded into the tower before any players or even NPC's now this has happened before in D1, but in Destiny 2 all the players loaded in using Cabal style meteor balls it was a pretty cool unnecessary detail.

I've got my first loadout I super enjoy, maybe more than anything I ever had in Destiny 1, especially because it's subclass agnostic. I'm a light level 246 Titan right now. I have the Actium War Rig (Legendary Chest) which actively reloads auto rifles when you aren't firing (though they do have to be equipped). I'm caught off guard when I reload at this point it happens so rarely, as both my current auto rifles (Scathelocke kinetic and Sand Wasp arc energy) have a ~50 round magazine.

The Actium War Rig also improves the reload speed for power weapons, which for me became The Prospector legendary grenade launcher about 30 minutes ago. I happened to have the sweet Comstock skin for it already as well. This thing...8 round magazine, fires full auto, dumps a full clip off in about two seconds it feels like, and then reloads in almost less time than it took to unload the magazine (appears to carry a second full magazine in reserve as well). I feel like a damn demigod right now clearing public events and lost sectors.

I had almost 15,000 more kills with a hand cannon than the next closest style of weapon with my Titan in Destiny 1, let alone the other classes combined with that, and was primarily a scout rifle player behind that. This is like a totally different experience for me and I'm kind of having a blast just unloading all my ammo all of the time haha.

I also have Mask of the Quiet One, which is a ridiculous looking devil goat helmet with chain mail for a face that converts all damage taken back into ability energy, but it is also biased towards Sentinel due to it also granting health restoration for Void ability kills. Obviously going to hold that one in my back pocket for now (I didn't play much Sunstriker at all last year so I'm giving it an earnest shot, but I may still wind up Sentinel long term) but with my current weapons loadout this War Rig armor combined with these two high-mag auto rifles and this legendary grenade launcher have turned me into, well, a War Machine.

@thepanzini: Ships have their own Transmat style that you can change. It's pretty cool. And I've noticed the same, I'm running an SSHD, and I load faster than anyone else as well, but I'm also often the Fireteam Leader so I think that's also part of it.

@hestilllives19: Yeah its a great touch I transmat in from a servitor ball its pretty sweet, the weird stuff I see generally comes from loading in before the host / fireteam leader.

@nodima: Fellow Titan player. LOVING Mask of the Quiet One. It's a wonderful, empowering feeling to go out, take enemy fire like Sebastian Shaw, and then convert and return it as unfettered void damage.

I'm running the Sentinel build that gets an additional shield toss. Added to to the Mask's properties, I have access to something like four throws per super.

Yea, I'll have to give this another shot when I get tired of being a fire wielding hell beast. Most of my guns come with explosive AOE rounds or ignite and explode the enemy on death at this point (not to mention the auto rifles, again, almost never need to reload manually), my grenade launcher goes from 0-100 [i]real quick[/i] (© Aubrey Graham) and I love the running uppercut fire punch. My weapon drops have pushed me into practically requiring the War Rig chest piece to be at optimal damage potential. I never figured out how to optimize the shield rush or get more than two throws off and even that was rare. I will say the hammer toss is less fun as a super than the shield bash but I'm more effective with it and its molten lava.

Bungie has really figured out a fun perk system with this game, though maybe it was always there in Destiny 1 as well, all this stuff was just hidden behind impossible drop odds and the stuff you couldn't possibly play solo.

Without matchmaking for nightfall, it seems like theres nothing to do once you finish the "story" and the handful of quests that appear after that. What are you guys doing after finishing this content? Just doing the events that spawn every few minutes over and over again?

@genfuyung: Destiny is Pokemon with guns it all depends how badly you want the stuff, most players will have a routine completing daily challenges and doing the weekly activities nightfall / raid etc with banner and osiris every other week. Most people will eventually run out of steam and will either just PvP or drop the game untill the next expansion.

@genfuyung: Try joining a clan. It will help out you levelling up with some clan rewards as well.

@genfuyung: Pretty funny how you mention Matchmaking for the Nightfall since they added Guided Games beta into Destiny 2 today actually which is exactly that, Matchmaking for the Nightfall and will be for the Raid later this month.

@hestilllives19: Is there any reward for the sherpas themselves, beside satisfaction from helping fellow guardians? Because I don't remember reading about it anywhere.

@galerian: So that is pretty unclear as my Clan isn't able to even Guide a game (Clans at the 100 player cap are excluded from Guided Games since other players can't then join said Clan, a dumb rule if you ask me but it is what it is). But my understanding is that every time your Clan completes a Guided Game you should get Bonus Clan XP (which isn't hard to obtain anyways for larger Clans and comes rather quickly, and Strikes are some of the Slowest gains in Clan XP anyways) and you gain what they call Oathkeepers Score. Each Clan has an Oathkeepers Score, and I think it's shown to others players as a way to show off how often that Clan is able to accomplish Guided Games activities with a Guidee. There is a Score for both Nightfall and Raid activities. So this should allow players to choose between Clans with higher or lower Oathkeepers Score to decide who to join. So I don't think it really has much of a tangible effect but it may make it faster to for your Clan to find Guided Games if your Oathkeeper's Score is higher. I hope that makes sense.

@hestilllives19: Yes it does, thanks.

It is weird for Guided Games to be limited to clan that is not full yet. I thought the intention of GG is to help solo player play through contents that have no normal matchmaking, not for clan recruitment.

So did anyone play through the story solo and still have a fun time? Does the campaign incorporate any matchmaking (either deliberate or seamless like how other players would appear in some areas throughout the first game)?

@dgtlty: While Destiny 2 story feels rushed its still fun shoot bang even solo and there are moment of awesome spectacle you can play nearly the entire campaign in co-op but it doesn't have matchmaking like a strike, you will regularly see other players as the story takes you throught the free roam enviroment during the campaign. Its very much the same deal as Destiny 1 but the small difference D2 having a few instances which can involve other players during story missions it creates a few cool moments the game doesn't explore enough.

I played through entirely solo. I believe the instance in other players during certain segments. I've had a lot of fun solo, and am really interested in getting into some of the end game content.

I played solo and it was fun for what it was; I personally found it too easy but I've heard other people say some of the encounters were pretty challenging for them solo so I don't know. The meditation (ie. heroic) variants from the endgame can be pretty rough I guess. Destiny is really the only FPS I play so I'm no savant either, it just felt pretty easy breezy throughout the whole campaign. I had hoped they would have figured out a way to incorporate more enduring matchmaking but every section of the four worlds is still its own instance generator, so while you'll see other guardians out there in the open fields making their way towards the next interior section, they'll always phase out once you enter that area. That was definitely one of the more disheartening aspects of solo play in Destiny 1, and I'd hope the emphasis on the Public Events and adding Guided Games for end game content might've led to impromptu two and three man fireteams for story content but I guess that's just too much load on their code.

@galerian: Yeah, I thought the same. Though I guess their thought process is that if it's impossible for a Guided player to join said Clan after the fact (which is I assume there real intent here) the whole process isn't worth going through. I was excited that our massive Clan could help so many people though. I'm interested that if we purposely dropped to 99 and locked the clan down if it would allow us to do it.