SpaceInsomniac

Do you people call the NAACP the Naaahcup? When a series of letters are arranged to each stand for a different word, it's kind of customary to pronounce those letters separately, as a shortened version of a series of words.

Do you really see EA or Ubisoft paying Activision for something like this? I have to imagine there are other ways to make your micro-transactions look attractive, that don't involve paying large sums of money to your biggest competitors.

Is anything like that even happening now? Are there EA patents that Activision is paying for, because they just have to have it in their game?

The thing I love most about this is that Activision didn't just DO this. They could have done this at any time and not told a soul. But they wanted to make sure that they're the ONLY ones who can do this. That's the only reason you patent something in the first place.

So, thanks Activision for being so greedy that you not only are forced to tell the world you want to do this, but also thanks for perhaps saving us from every other developer doing it in the future. You'll be like Namco not letting anyone put mini games into their load screens, only accidentally beneficial for the customers of all your competitors.

I really hope that mainstream media picks up on the psychological manipulation found in this year's COD supply drop system, as well. That could definitely be a story that would surprise non-gamers, and end up as bad press for Activision.

I finished Super Meat Boy, but could never touch the post-game content. I haven't played Cuphead, and Dark Souls is far too punishing for me to enjoy. I didn't really even have the patience for Splunkey.

Could all of these games have included easier difficulties? Sure, but the developers decided not to. And anyone who finishes or even makes it considerably far into these games can feel a sense of accomplishment for doing so. If Super Meat Boy had a much easier difficulty, I likely would have played on it. I would have told myself that I couldn't or didn't want to do something that I was ultimately able to do, and that absolutely would have changed my personal experience. By not catering to players of all skill levels, you can assure that part of the appeal of your game is overcoming a true challenge.

The exploration elements of Dark Souls games has always appealed to me, but I just can't get into the combat and the punishing nature of those games, so I've accepted that the game isn't for me. Why people can't seem to do the same with Cuphead is hard to understand.

@opusofthemagnum: I meant daily crucible milestones, not the weekly milestones. Sorry for the confusion.

I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed in the first Iron Banner event, especially when comparing it to Iron Banner in Destiny 1. Here are the pros and cons, as I see them. Feel free to share your own opinion.

PROS: New announcer feels different and fun, it's nice to be able to dependably play a specific game type, the armor looks nice for some classes, and it seems easy to get tokens to redeem. You're also given tokens for a loss, which is nice for less skilled players.

CONS: Literally everything else. The weapons seem pretty bad, as least on paper, and from what I've tried using so far. Maybe one or two look okay. There's also no "god roll" PVP weapons for ranking up to level 5 during the event, because there's no ranking up, and there are no weapon rolls. The weapons look like reskins of existing weapons with slight changes. The "gold" accents on the armor don't take shaders, and don't actually look gold. I was looking forward to using New Monarchy or raid shaders on the armor, but it never has that bright and shining metallic look that other armor sets can get. The Iron Banner shaders themselves don't look good either.

And this is more an issue with armor altogether, but the hunter armor is resilience, and I want recovery. Far more than Destiny 1 ever did after year one, this game feels like it really needs a transmogrify feature. Fixed "perks" on armor is just the worst.

The bounties, excuse me, "milestones" are also a step backward. Three daily goals, with no weekly goals, and no way to complete your standard daily crucible milestones by playing Iron Banner. At least Iron Banner does give you clan and crucible XP to work towards those weekly luminous engrams.

But what of the seasonal goal? The 10 packages in a season reward is awful. Not only is it a simple emblem, but it doesn't even offer any form of stat tracking, such as your Iron Banner efficiency rating or number of games won.

Allow me to reword that: The big SEASONAL reward for playing the SEASON of Iron Banner is the same thing you unlocked for reaching RANK ONE out of five during a weekly Iron Banner event in Destiny 1. It's an emblem.

Iron Banner used to be much better, because you were guaranteed a specific weapon with an otherwise highly unlikely set of perks that was usually great in PVP. All through the week you'd work toward a set of specified goals. Now perk roles are gone, all the guns are RNG, and most of them seem completely pointless to use or bother earning in the first place.

Anyone else disappointed? Perhaps you disagree, and you're enjoying the event even more than Destiny 1 Iron Banner. Either way, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

No, that must have been luck.

@sammo21: You should perhaps rename this thread to mention something about Iron Banner, since it's starting soon, and it seems to be what the thread is mostly about.

I don't see how that could even be a thing, unless you barely played. With 6 vs 6 in the original Destiny, you could never fire your gun and still win games fairly often. I won plenty of games where the worst player of the game was on the winning team, and occasionally that player was me. It's a shame you didn't play more, because Iron Banner was never hard to rank up with enough play, and some of the the best PVP weapons could only be found there.

Iron Banner in Destiny 1 awarded a token every time you lost a game. You would turn in up to five tokens automatically when you did win, and they were worth bonus reputation. I can't see this new "you get tokens no matter what, but get more for a win" system being all that different, when before you had to lose six games in a row before you weren't making any sort of progress. You could also easily get teamed with or against some really good players, so there was usually a 50/50 chance you'd win.

Either way, I hope you enjoy the new version of Iron Banner, and I hope I do too.

Correct. There are two playlists currently in Destiny 2. The "quick play" playlist features Clash, Control, and Supremacy. For those not familiar with Destiny, that's Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Kill Confirmed in COD. And the "competitive" playlist features Countdown and Survival, which can be compared to Search and Destroy from COD, and team deathmatch with a limited number of respawns for each team.

So yeah, there's no way to play the exact game modes you want to play. I remain hopeful that it's just Bungie's way of forcing players to try all game types before they allow players to play only the modes that they want, but so far I don't think they've said a thing.

How about actually being able to reliably play a single game type?

What a novel idea! Perhaps they should extend that thought to every game type, and then people could play the game modes that they want to play when they want to play them. That sounds just crazy enough to work!

Sorry, I'm still a bit frustrated with that particular design decision.

Aside from the armor, I have to think that a weapon or two will be available. We've already seen Iron Banner themed weapon models in Destiny 2 preview images, and in D1, the Iron Banner weapons were some of the best PVP weapons in the game.