Kotaku story

It will feature a fallen raid and will revolve around Saladin and his flaming battle axe. We can probably expect improvements to iron banner as well as new story missions. Out in September.

Super stoked on this. Just in time to get me through the DS kick I am going through right now.

Shame the boss isn't a big Knight.

@pyrodactyl: The only disconcerting thing for me is how it has been described as being the size of both Dark Below and House of Wolves, not in comparison to The Taken King. If they plan on this content lasting another whole year like The Taken King, it honestly needs to be larger than The Taken King was, not smaller. Or they need to do a better job in 2016-17 of putting out live content to support the game, because support for The Taken King post launch has been abysmal. The April Update was a joke with less than 5 hours of new content to go through, and while I hope some of the quality of life improvements are maintained, Destiny was honestly in a much better place back in December before they broke the game with the December patch. In my opinion only a few positive things have happened in Destiny since before that patch. The class changes to Titans and Warlocks (excluding early detonation on hammers and no tracking on flameseeker, in essence they broke Sunbreaker), quality of life changes to the infusion system, and a few of the small weapon balance changes like fusion rifles stability, Chaperone precision multiplier, and LITC only on precision shots. And the events this year have been kind of a joke. The Halloween event was cool for the first day and that was about it. SRL was fun for a race or two and then done. I actually enjoyed Crimson Doubles but to call it an event is laughable. And then the April update added back content we already paid for just at current light levels. It added a couple hours of new pointless story and a few new and interesting weapons that I haven't even been able to obtain like the Hand of Judgement Scout Rifle that regularly rolls with both Firefly/Hidden Hand and Explosive Rounds, which makes for an exceptional weapon in both PvP and PvE when you consider it's a Jade Rabbit archetype Scout that does 75 precision and 50 to the body in PvP because of Explosive Rounds (2 more Precision, 1 more Body than Jade) and give a generous headshot hitbox due to hidden hand. Firefly on a Scout also makes it a monster in PvE for obvious reasons. Considering it's unlikely we will get anything other than SRL event 2 before Rise of Iron, and likely more of the same pitiful support next year, I doubt we see many people sticking around past there first two or three trips through the Hard version of the new Raid. I bet by November everyone is gone again for another year, that is if people even give Destiny that much of a chance again after this past year.

Almost sexual, isn't it, Smithers?

@hestilllives19: They did the right thing at the time with Taken King but that release did bring a bunch of new disappointments. As long as they address most of that stuff in their pitch for Rise of Iron like they did for Destiny's shortcoming in their Taken King pitch it will be fine.

I'm not ready to jump to any conclusion quite yet.

@pyrodactyl: I completely agree that The Taken King was exactly the size and scope of what Destiny needed in September 2015. Bungie just needed to do a better job of putting out actual content to go with it similar to what they did throughout Year 1, even if that involves Activision hiring another Studio, or expanding the size of the Live Team to accommodate small Dark Below/HoW content throughout the rest of the year so we don't have another year like this one where Destiny has basically been dead. Until I hear news like that, it's starting to get harder and harder to root for Destiny to continue to succeed when Bungie and Activision seemingly aren't even trying anymore. Bungie in Year 2 just seems so much more arrogant and at the same time demoralized. Even looking at yesterdays weekly update you can see the arrogance of them still holding to their guns on SBMM after the massive outcries from places like Reddit for it's removal for months, so much so that Reddit created a Megathread for SBMM because the front page was being dominated by the topic every single day. This is the Bungie that cancels Trials and Iron Banner, likely for a few weeks because they can't fix a bug that has come up, not the one that works around it by doing creative things like just making the next Iron Banner Mayhem so the glitch wouldn't effect Iron Banner.

I hope Rise of Iron is as good as The Taken King was, and is given at least the support that Year 1 Destiny had, but at as of right now that seems like a false hope since Bungie's track record of late has been pretty pitiful and our best hope, Luke Smith, who was in charge of both Vault of Glass and The Taken King has been moved over to the Destiny 2 team and isn't a part of Rise of Iron. So while I hope it's a good expansion, the odds are looking stacked against it. At least the Raid should be good since it was the Raid that was supposed to come out with House of Wolves a full year ago and has been pushed back to Rise of Iron, so hopefully an 18 months in development Raid will be worth the wait.

@hestilllives19: I'm with you on it being very disappointing if this is Dark Below size content, but at the same time, I kind of really miss playing Destiny. I quit about 3 or 4 months ago I think and that April update didn't seem to have anything to get me excited to play it again. If there is a new Raid, then at least there is reason to play? I'm really hoping they do something to the subclasses though. People say a 4th subclass is impossible, but I'd like to see one. And if we don't (which we won't), then I don't see why they can't expand on the existing subclasses. Well, I know why they can't, because the game is being run by a skeleton crew now so they just don't have the manpower to do it. But as a consumer their logistics don't concern me. I want new shit that expands on the gameplay, not just add more content. Part of the reason why The Taken King was so succesfull was because it introduced three entirely new subclasses. I highly doubt it would have been as fun without them.

Any new class stuff is going to be reserved for Destiny 2 at this point. I fully expect that game to add a completely new class with 4 subclasses (and maybe expand the standard fireteam to 4 to match) and add a new subclass/element to the existing classes.

In the end for me it all depends on how much is in it. If its Taken King size I'm more than likely in. I've spent too much time in Destiny to stop now, I'd wager. Anything less than that though and maybe I'll just wait 6 months to see where they go with it. The live support of the game has been just about as awful as it can be, or at least none of it interests me even in the slightest. I'm not really sure how they could revamp Iron Banner and outside of giving us new armor/shaders/weapons to get I don't really care if they don't change a whole lot. Maybe we'll finally see that Fire Thunderlord they showed us in the Taken King reveal trailer?

@ll_exile_ll: @zevvion: Yeah, I really hope it's at least the size of The Taken King but I highly doubt it will have any subclass stuff, like Exile said I fully expect them to do some interesting stuff in 2017 with Destiny 2 on that front. I just want 10-15 missions, a Raid, an explorable area (European Dead Zone?), and maybe a small cool feature like the Court of Oryx was. A few new PvP modes would be nice as well include a revamp to Trials and some new maps like always. All of that should be easily doable since they have already been working on the Raid since last Summer according to the newest info, not HoW, and The European Dead Zone was suppose to be in launch Destiny so most of the assets they probably already have since it was already in Trailers back in 2013 (all those wooded Earth area's). I saw an interesting comment on a Reddit post about a cool idea for the "cool feature" to be a wave based unending horde mode of enemies trying to get through a pass in the European Dead Zone into the Last City and our team of 3 Guardians being the last hope of fending them off. I think that would be a cool feature, with loot getting better the further you get, but always being doomed to fail and somehow leads into the new "Raid" which is designed around stopping that horde from reaching the Last City in one last ditch effort. Of course nobody knows until E3 what this DLC will be, but something like that would get me back interested, at least for a few months until that content drys up for a year and they do nothing else to support Destiny until 2017.

BTW it's been forever since I've heard from you Zev, it's good to see you again.

@hestilllives19: Appreciate the comment. Yeah, I was progressing my lowest Destiny character at a 0,1% rate each week. It was completely stagnant for my highest character so I totally fell off playing it after they announced to not put out any 'real' content anymore. I've been thinking about Destiny lately. I really want to play it again, but man... I don't like not being able to progress my character. I think I'd still love Trials, but it takes up so much time. It's been pretty refreshing to have my weekend go towards meeting girls instead of being at my desk for 16 hours straight.

But still... Kinda miss it. You guys still play Trials?

@hestilllives19:I would personally cut down on the number of story missions if it means we get a new end game mode of some kind. Story missions have always been some of the least interesting part of the game anyway. Hopefully they do something cool with IB that makes it not terrible.

@zevvion: We played trials in the last couple of weeks. It's the hardest it's ever been. We can't even get to the lighthouse anymore. I would wait for more casual players to come back in when Rise of Iron comes out. For now it's a slaughter fest in there

I'm stoked for a new raid. I am hoping that they will implement some sort of matchmaking system because I am truly getting tired of using fireteams and not having a steady raid group.

@zevvion: I know that feeling, after about November I was stuck around 319 on all 3 character and actually never hit 320, stupid class items. Weirdly, I hit 335 in week 1 of the April update on all 3 characters, so as far as that goes I feel like they fixed the progression system for now. I still play Trials, cause meeting girls is over rated... In all seriousness though I try to do about a card a week or so, sometimes more, but most of the guys have dropped of. Exile mostly plays RPG's now and has only been on Destiny a bit since the April Update. Veggies was pretty active before the April Update but I haven't seen him much since right after Dark Souls 3 came out so I assume he's had work stuff going on. Pyro, Brandon, and Count have probably been on the most, and I've played a few rounds of Trials with Pyro and Brandon, and a few runs of Prison with all of those guys. Most of my Central guys have been a skeleton crew even since the update. I know Mech is about to get married soon and John and King are off playing random games lately. Honestly, at least on my friends list, the April Update didn't do much in the way of bringing people back, and those that came back weren't back for more than a week or so. Also, Trials was cancelled this weekend and likely will be again next as long as they don't fix this current infinite rocket launcher glitch in the crucible. It's pretty sad considering how much Destiny could have capitalized on how badly The Division faceplanted in the same time period if Destiny didn't more or less do the same.

@hestilllives19: The sad part about Destiny vs The Division is that while both are doing really poorly right now in terms of putting good content out, only Destiny has strong enough fundamentals to carry itself through. Bungie don't need to push good content or capitalize on anything because The Division isn't in the same league as Destiny.

@pyrodactyl: I know, I just think a lot of the Destiny player base jumped ship when The Division came out until Massive dropped the ball on it so terribly with the Incursions update. With the April Update for Destiny not doing much to retain players either I feel like most of those players have just drifted to other stuff now ignoring both games entirely. Although the update 1.2 they've been talking about that launches tomorrow for The Division seems like it might actually be pretty good, but after the giant dump that was Incursions I'll probably just wait a week and see what others have to say about it before seeing if anyone is interested in checking out the new Incursion. I still enjoyed The Division, even if the shooting and mechanics of it isn't the best, and would probably still be playing it if it hadn't gotten so broken for like a month. When not broken the DZ is fun and I think Incursions could be too. I just wish they wouldn't have such an anti player mentality about their loot. As of today, before 1.2, they are just too stingy with it. It just takes far too long to get proper loot to maximize the effectiveness of your character and unending treadmills aren't fun. They also shouldn't have enemies anywhere in the game that can both one shot you from across the map and take 4 clips of ammo to the face without dying. If they ever fix those two things on an endgame level I it would become fun again. Hopefully 1.2, as it seems like those are the goals behind it, does a decent job of addressing those two concerns, because otherwise it just isn't a fun game, especially when you consider that the minute to minute gameplay isn't the best for the type of game it is.

I'm still rocking Vanilla Destiny.

That's just the way I like it though. Trials needs to be full on sweat. I really miss it. I will admit, just before I quit playing I was trying to help out people with Trials just for funsies. I consider myself a 'decent' player, but absolutely not great or amazing. But I remember finding this one guy who was absolutely terrible, so his trueskill or elo or whatever they use to make matchups was extremely low. I was able to wipe the opposing team right up until match 7 or so purely by myself. It was super fun and hilarious. It also made me realize that the insanely skilled dudes who wipe us probably feel the same way when they face us. Then I got sad.

@hestilllives19: I don't even know what my clan is up to. I'm sending them a message now. I think I might do a Trials card this weekend. I might play Destiny casually or something. I do really miss it. Good memories.

I will never play this game again. I learned from my mistakes.

Unless Destiny 2 comes out in early 2017 (like April or earlier) I will be really disappointed with a Dark Below/HoW size update this fall. Taken King only held my interest for 2 months and I basically haven't played Destiny at all in 2016. Year 2 has been a huge disappointment.

I have gone from being a huge booster of Destiny in year 1, playing almost daily for a good 6-9 months, to being really wary about the future of the game/franchise.