Crucible is surprisingly not fun!

Listen, I don't like this game's PVP either. But at some point I moved on. It's a healthier plan than perseverating on something you find frustrating.

@zevvion: My problem is certainly the lack of tactical options NOW. If I want to flank I need a teammate sticking to my balls the whole time or the perfect timing so my opponents are actively shooting at something else when I come in from another lane. If these elements totally out of my control are not there my target will have no trouble fleeing and regrouping or 3 guys will turn my way and melt me in 0.25 seconds. The amount of team play required in Destiny 1 was perfect for the game it is. A game design to make you feel like a badass. A game where team/character interactions are quite limited. You could flank and had plenty of opportunities to win in a 1v1, even 2v1 scenario. Now? 1v1 against a good player he will either win or run away. 2v1, forget it, you're dead if you didn't catch them by surprise while they're fighting someone else. So you're forced into a boring as hell blob playstyle where you stick to your teammates at all times and can't do much on your own. I want freedom in the way I play this game. Creatively coming up with strategies on the fly is when Destiny is at its most rewarding. You can't do that when anything you do on your own is doomed to fail.

Call of Duty has a mode called "hardcore" that has been in most games in the series for a long while. You die from a single bullet or two, there's no mini-map, and there's no "kill-cam." It completely and fundamentally changes the game, and it's there as an OPTION. Destiny 2 crucible feels like a COD game where the developers ONLY included "hardcore" modes, reduced the player count, and said "Sorry if you don't like it, but this is what we're doing now. There's no option for what you used to enjoy here."

After playing weeks of crucible, I kind of hate it. I'm still playing sometimes anyway, because I still really enjoy the core gameplay and competitive multiplayer in general, but I HATE, the changes. I hate the team shooting, I hate how you have to sick to everyone else like glue, I hate how you can't make big solo plays or win two or three on one fights like you could in D1. I hate being rushed and completely outnumbered, I hate being flanked and feeling that no where is safe because my teammates are dead, and I hate not being able to play with more of my friends, just as I was afraid I would.

I hate that control used to be my favorite game type, something I absolutely loved in Destiny 1, and I hate how the changes to the game have made me despise it in Destiny 2. I hate how you can't choose which game type to play, I hate that they've launched another game without a private match option, and I hate that the most useful OP weapon in the game is somehow a D1 exotic that should never have been in this game in the first place.

D1 style crucible with the same 6 vs 6 player count, and the same time to kill, but with the new Kinetic, Energy, Power weapon changes, and the new power ammo changes. How great would that have been? They can keep the 4vs4 team-shooting change, but make it an OPTION, and give me an option to play the game the way I enjoyed it for years.

With as important as I considered crucible in Destiny 1, and with how much I cared about the crucible aspect of the DLC in the add-ons to that game, this literally might make me not buy anything beyond the base game of Destiny 2. I can't see myself spending $70 on DLC over the next couple of years or whatever if I don't enjoy the crucible like I used to.

I feel like every match takes too long. It doesn’t matter if one side is stomping the other, or if it is a hard fought match. Every game is going to take about the same amount of time to end. I’d rather have a five minute timer that ends with a coin flip for the winner, because I feel like I don’t actually contribute to the match in any significant way.

By the way, for those struggling with PvP, I highly suggest checking out this True Vanguard video. While I may not be the biggest fan of the way this Crucible works currently, this is a great guide in how to play it effectively.

@hestilllives19: What feeling do you get out of the streaming scene? If I remember correctly Destiny 1 was very popular on twitch right until they broke the meta at the end of Rise of Iron. How is Destiny 2 doing? Can't imagine this is more fun to watch than it is to play.

@pyrodactyl: I still enjoy RealKraftyy stream. His flanking style of play is entertaining to watch even when he is losing.

More than just streamers, does the main Destiny community seem to be enjoying 4v4 and teamshooting, or are they complaining a lot about it?

Either way, I had a thought the other day. One thing that people really seem to want is to be able to pick their own game types. I have to imagine that the game can't stay this way forever, right? They're just doing this so people can get plenty of experience with each mode before they decide they don't like a certain game type, wouldn't you think?

Because if the DLC in December features Rift or some other new or returning game mode, there's no way they'd just throw that in a random playlist where you have a 1 in 4 chance of playing the new game mode that you just paid money for, right? That part of the game really needs to change.

Also, I can't imagine Iron Banner will feature random game modes, so that's another potential issue. Players won't want to have choice one week, and then back to random game types they hate the next, wouldn't you think?

@pyrodactyl: Honestly I haven't been watching it much, but the thing that is pretty telling to me is that most of the streamers I watch were on Destiny pretty much 24/7 up until the last 4-5 months of Destiny 1. Now, most of them when I tune in to Twitch and it's not early Friday for Trials or Tuesday to Raid, aren't even playing Destiny 2 at all. They are playing other games entirely and their viewership numbers are suffering because of it. And I don't think they would be doing it if their Destiny numbers were doing fine, I think those are probably hurting too. Bad not very watchable PvP has for sure hurt their wallets. Destiny 2 isn't very exciting to watch unlike how Destiny 1 was. Even watching good players with 5.0+ K/D's, all they are doing now is making smart plays consistently, and that isn't fun to watch. There is no more holy crap I just won that 3v1 because I pulled off an Epic Snipe, Grenade, HC Triple Tap on those guys. Big Plays don't exist. It makes the game more boring and less fun to watch, so it's no surprise numbers are dropping. Guys like Gothalion are fine, they have their 5k audience and play mostly PvE anyways, but the PvP and Trials guys are seemingly hurting right now. Bungie needs to step up and fix this PvP, and quickly.

@hestilllives19: Destiny 2 is averaging 20-30k which is higher the Y3 D1 which isn't surprising but what hasn't happened is those big spikes for Trails/Raid, now weather people find PvP entertaining is hard to say as were in the end of year AAA release crunch and with the continued success of PUBG there's alot more comp for eyeballs atm. D2 seems built for casuals, is PvP a problem that needs fixing if more people come back for DLC or are buying bright engrams.

@spaceinsomniac: I think that you brought a good point.

Limiting the options on the crucible to this extent will make it grow old in a short period of time.

Instead of bilndingly throwing 6v6 out of the game, Bungie should at least made some modes such as control 6v6 while the others such as supremacy 4v4. They should have also tried to implement the custom playlist approach in Titanfall 2 instead of forcing the players to play on two pre determined playlists.

@giant_gamer: I quite like the unified 4v4 everywhere philosophy though. As a result, everything feels tightly balanced around that. My favorite Destiny maps are now all D2 maps. I think that has something to do with the design philosophy behind them.

More playlists would be welcome though. I like the idea of Unranked and Ranked, where Ranked is the playlists as they are now, no choice, you just have to be good. Unranked would be individual mode choice.

I'm doubting they want to. The only way to fix this would be to bring down time to kill and rebalance ability cooldowns. They won't make such sweeping changes until the expansion in fall 2018 if ever. Get ready for at least a full year of bad crucible.

@pyrodactyl: I agree, and it makes me pretty sad. I think the big thing is Bungie doesn't totally understand what they've built with Destiny PvP, which in Destiny 1 was something that had the potential to be absolutely fantastic. They make changes based around the PvP numbers of what the bottom 50% are using, because that represents the largest portion of the community, and they also wait a long time to make changes. By the time they decide to make those changes, instead of a small tweak here or a small tweak there every 2-4 weeks, they wait 6 months and make massive changes to everything. Which is really unhealthy because it just shatters what the game was the week before and it almost has to be relearned. They also have this weird philosophy since Destiny 1 vanilla of being absolutely terrified of "Power Creep". In their terror, Guardians have actually seen the usefulness of literally every ability, every weapon perk, and even now with Destiny 2 our ability to customize those abilities in a way that actually makes sense in each Subclass. I'm not sure if that terrified philosophy comes from their inability to make enemies tough enough for us or what, but with Destiny 2 it kind of has gotten out of control how absolutely weak we all are in comparison to pretty much all of Destiny 1. Here a list of those changes just between D1 and D2.

• We now have static weapon rolls, and whether you agree with this or not, it has diluted the power weapons had the potential for across the board for Destiny 1. It was a lot more of a grind, but Weapons feel considerably weaker now than they ever did in Destiny 1, mainly because Bungie's perk combinations are rather useless for 99% of their Static Weapons.
• AA values have been drastically reduced across the board for every precision gun class. This has rendered Sniper Rifles and Hand Cannons rather useless in PvP, and not great in PvE. This won't be an issue for PC due to a M/KB, and it's highly likely this is the cause, but why they didn't keep the same AA values as Destiny 1 is silly for Consoles. Destiny 1 had one of the best feels to it of any console shooter I've ever played, and the balance between recoil and AA was the main reason, it was pretty much perfect.
• The Kinetic, Energy, and Power Weapon changes were directly done to impact PvP without their PvE considerations. Special weapons gave variety in PvE to what you could do and how you could stack damage in places like a Raid. It also allowed you to better cover Ranges across the board. It has drastically reduced Guardian effectiveness in PvE. (All of that said, I actually don't mind this change, as it has now grown on me, except Rocket Launchers in PvP, I hate every part of them and I don't think they should be allowed to exist, they are way too powerful, there is a reason they were the go to Heavies for PvP in D1)
• Weapon damage was reduced across the board in PvP. This has resulted in an increase of TTK by roughly 34% across the board. Which in and of itself wouldn't be a bad thing. But Bungie has a real bad habit of fixing the same problem from multiple angles, which doesn't actually fix the initial problems, but only creates new ones. A higher TTK is one of the reasons that has lead to the current "Teamshot" mentality that is so pervasive in Destiny 2. It isn't a fun way to play the game. It extends 1v1 engagements (if they ever happen at all) far to long IMO and puts you in far too many "Team Shootout" scenario's which aren't very fun and don't really seem like anyone did anything right or wrong, they just seem random who wins the encounter. This isn't fun and is very bad game design.
• Subclasses were reduced to Bungie made tree's of perks rather than Guardian customized like D1. This has drastically reduced the effectiveness of them across the board. In an obvious troll to keep us from being very powerful, they have seemingly put incoherent perks in combination with each other on many of the Subclass perk tree's, or in a couple cases (Voidwalker and Gunslinger), put such bad perks on those tree's it renders the entire tree useless.
• Along with nerfing our ability to even use the perks we want in conjuction with each other, they actually took the nerf hammer to the cooldowns of most of those abilities as well. In a best case scenario (running 2 Elementally correct Grenade Mods), Grenades take exactly 3x longer to recharge than they ever did in Destiny 1 under the same circumstances (5 Dicipline). This same concept is also true for Melee's. Supers also take longer but it isn't as significant like it was in the D2 Beta, since Bungie realized that never giving players a Super was an incredibly bad idea.
• Remember what I said about hitting things from both ends, while Grenade spam was bad in Destiny 1 at 25s for a cooldown, Bungie also decided we don't actually want them to do damage. All of the most often used Grenades from Destiny 1 were hit with massive nerfs of up to 50%, literally cutting their damage potential in half. The funny thing is, the grenades they left relatively alone, Voidwall/Vortex/Solar/Pulse/Swarm, are all easily the top tier grenades in Destiny 2, and the primary reason is because they weren't nerfed into the ground. Keep in mind all of these grenades were the bottom of the barrel in D1 because they were the most useless. And now, you are stupid to go into a Raid without a whole mess of Pulse Grenades. Keep in mind these same changes effected melee's hard too. Melee's got hit with about a 40% nerf, and to some about a 50% like the Striker melee which was very powerful in D1 doing 165 damage in PvP. This is the second reason why the bad Teamshot mentality is so pervasive. There are very few Grenade options that will actually punish a team of 4 just standing on top of each other shooting down a lane. If Grenades had more impact it would force players to watch from other angles rather than being on top of one another, and it would allow for those players to be more easily isolated by 1 player more often like what happened in D1. This would create a lot more 1v1 scenarios rather than 4 man deathsquads.

In essence, we are profoundly weaker than we have ever been. Not only did Ghaul take our Light, seemingly Bungie did as well. Their seeming focus on a PvP Esport, while also neglecting even that doesn't make sense to me. Where are Ranked playlists that show a rank for players in game. Basically we just get the downside of Ranked, bad connections with SBMM and tougher opponents in Competitive, with no way to see how well Bungie even evaluates us a player. I have no way to see that Bungie thinks I'm a top 1, top 10, or whatever % player. They also removed Custom Matches from Destiny 2, something that very much existed in Destiny 1. Why? It's the only true way for any Esport type of thing can even happen within Destiny 2. The only real Competitive thing we have is Trials, which in and of itself isn't the Esport thing they are seemingly going for. Speaking of Trials, they actually made Trials drastically harder by simply removing the Mercy available on Trials passages. My 145 Flawlesses from D1 would have dropped drastically to probably around 75 had we not had the ability to even lose 1 game. Due to this alone, when the population starts to drop, Trials is going to become an extremely toxic place, even more so than it has ever been. This is not good for the game mode, and another terrible design decision by Bungie. Having to reset 80-90 minutes of progress when you are at game 6 because either you played bad, came up against 1 team that was just unbelievably good (all top 1,000 players, has already happened to us several times, we even won a few of those games), or had a player lose connection on game 7 (happens decently often, Bungie servers are bad, it ruined a game we were 3-0 in, after we had just beat 13 teams in a row 6-0, 3v4 Trials in near impossible to win, even against worse players).

Add to all of this Bungie's laserbeam focus on the Casual crowd (those that play less than 5 hours per week) for Destiny 2 and their lack of any kind of focus on those more Hardcore players who have all already run out of things to do in Destiny 2, and I'm just not all that happen with the direction Bungie has taken with Destiny 2. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of what they've done to please the Casual crowd, and I'm glad they did it (Public Events, Lost Sectors, Adventures, better Campaign, extremely easy to obtain Exotics, etc), but the fact that Static Rolled weapons/armor have removed any sort of hunt for better Loot, removes a lot of the joy of Destiny. The fact that I'm basically locked into whatever predesigned stat rolls Bungie made for Armor (I guess Hunters don't have an option to not be extremely Mobile since every Armor has 2+ Mobility across the board) and I've already obtained all but the unreleased Armors (like Iron Banner or if there are any different Raid Armors for Prestige), there is nothing to do once I played a bit of Fashion Destiny and made the best Armor set with as good of perks as I can. Making a Stat perfect Armor set with Mods is just way too expensive and honestly isn't even fun, so I'm just not going to do that. Then we have the fact that I'm only even missing 1 Legendary Weapon in the entire normal game plus a couple Raid Weapons that just won't drop for me (Sniper, Sword, and Hand Cannon), and I basically have nothing left to do but check in with Xur each week to see if he's selling the 3-4 Exotics I'm still missing (stupid Orpheus Rigs being the only one I actually care about outside of just collecting them all). The real sad thing is, I've run out of things to do in only 136 hours of gameplay... what? Even those that just play the game Casually will be hitting this point far before the first DLC drops in December. I've already seen my friends list dry up to only around 1/6th of the players that were on every day over the first 3 weeks. This is not healthy for Destiny, and I hope Bungie realizes this.

Wow, that turned into a lot longer Bungie rant than I expected... Sorry not sorry.

@hestilllives19: I agree with like 99% of this. I feel like the only truly inspired changes from D1 to D2 are:

1. The Nighfall. Putting a timer on the thing was a bold move and totally payed off. It totally changed they way you approach strikes and it turns hard mode Nigthfalls into kind of raid like experience.
2. New kinetic/energy/power weapon structure. Great for both PvE and PvP (if the TTK wasn't so long). Fantastic when combined with:
3. Great exotic weapons. I think the new exotic weapons are varied, interesting and balanced almost across the board. Playing around with merciless, wardcliff, risk runner and sweet business is way more compelling than playing with any of the D1 exotic weapons. Too bad there are still a few shit sandwiches in there (fighting lion and graviton lance)

I'm kind of baffled the same design team who made these decisions also set up the terrible inventory/vault system as well as unusable subclasses and boring PvP. Hell, they made a bunch of incredible exotic weapons but the exotic armor is SO BAD. It's like 75% geared towards PvP with some damn OP pieces in there that totally outclass everything else in PvE. Instead of the fun, varied exotic gun selection, exotic armor is either almost useless or, in a rare cases, totally overpowered in PvE. It's nuts

@pyrodactyl: I agree with points 1 (Nightfalls have become fun again, something D1 lost somewhere along the lines) & 2 (like I said, the new Weapons structure has really grown on me as I've played, even if I hated the idea at first, and it even plays pretty well in PvP, though it makes the game a lot more boring). But I'm not totally sold on the Exotics being better than D1, especially Armors. Weapons have (in no particular order) Mida (kinda on the wish this wasn't in D2 club, especially without a lot of other D1 guns), Sweet Business, Sunshot, Coldheart, Hardlight (only interesting thing is the rotating Elements), Riskrunner, Merciless, Borealis, and Wardcliff as pretty standout Exotic. That's 9/19 guns, and the other 10 are pretty bad for the most part or even joke weapons like the Tractor Beam. As far as Armors go we really only have a few standout Exotics like Orpheus Rig (which are so much more powerful than basically anything else), Mask of the Quiet One (only real standout Sentinel Exotic for PvP, and all it does is give a perk available on the worse tree), Doom Fang Pauldrons (decent for Sentinel PvE, or which you should be playing Striker anyways), Actium War Rig (and it literally just gives you more Auto Rifle bullets), Hallowfire Heart (it's just a D1 perk of Sunbreaker that was removed), Karstien Armlets (really good Voidwalker for PvE), and Transversive Steps (keeps you from being the absolute slowest on Warlock, now you are just slow). Of the only really useful Exotic Armors, only 4 should be considered actually good and well designed (Orpheus Rig, Actium Rig, Doom Fang Pauldrons, and Karstien Armlets). Just glancing at only the Vanilla Destiny Exotics, I see 15 really solid Weapons that had great uses throughout Destiny's 3 years, and 13 Armors that were the same. Keep in mind if I were to include all Destiny Exotics over the 3 years you can at least double those numbers as a lot of the DLC 1 & 2, Y2, and Y3 Exotics were the best in the entire game. I'm a bit let down by the quality of D2's Exotics. Many of D2's best Exotics are simply rehashes of nerfed D1 exotics or even Legendaries (Sunshot to Fatebringer). Mida comes into Destiny 2 as a top tier gun, simply because it wasn't really touched between games (outside of the obvious TTK drop all guns received). Maybe some of the Weapons/Armors will get better as Bungie does balance changes but I'm not holding my breath. Their honestly just wasn't enough of them in Destiny 2 so far. We need more Exotics, and we need more Legendaries, and more than anything, we need more variance on what exists. Having 10 Hunter Gauntlets all with 2 Mobility with half having 1 Recovery and the other half having 1 Armor isn't fun for any kind of build considerations. And that is the theme across the board right now with Destiny 2, they seemingly sucked the fun out of most of the game in some misguided idealized form of balance. Bring back how fun Destiny was.

I think all weapons and armor are far worse than D1. Not having the random perks kills the loot grind entirely. There is no reason to grind for loot unless you are a person who has to have one of everything in your collection. Loot becomes pointless once you get all the best drops. And most everyone gets those in the first 10-15 hours of post story. Because of how often they drop. And having quests for a couple of them, so literately every player has them. Bungie way over corrected against all the criticism from people who dropped off the first game. And I see them having just as many if not more people drop of this just as hard now before the first big changes come. Which will then lead to them way over correcting changes in the third game. All they've done is created a bad cycle for themselves. And that is sad.

This how bad the state of weapons is. As a level 7 player on a new character with the starting auto rifle (Pariah), I was able to get 28 kills in a PVP match. 28 kills with the worst auto rifle in the game. This not only speaks to how bad the weapons are, but how bad PVP is in general. I then put that same power level 45 Pariah on a 303 character. Got 36 kills in a PVP match. I mean, what? That shouldn't be possible. I went back and tried using a 200 power level auto rilfe in PVP in D1 with a 398 character, not even a starting level range weapon, and got smoked. I got one kill. I couldn't do crap against anyone. My one kill was a finish off. Also after going back to D1 PVP, I don't know if I ever want to play D2 PVP ever again. Its not as fun. I lost 3 hours last night in D1 PVP. Just couldn't stop playing it. I've never once done that in D2 PVP. Also the feel of my main auto with my main titan in D1 feels way better than any weapon in D2. My backup scout rifle and pulse feel way better also. The shooting just feels better for some reason. Yes they are more powerful, but I'm not talking about the power. I mean the actually felling of the shooting itself. Its much less aim assisted, its feels more crips and the impact of the shots feels pronounced.

@hestilllives19: I had a section there trashing exotic armor because it's all boring and bad. Weapons though are a hell of an improvement over Destiny 1. I can't name a single D1 exotic weapon that is as interesting as Risk Runner or Wardcliff coil. All D1 exotic weapons were just slightly better version of X. G horn? Regular rocket launcher with more damage. Plan C? It was so uninspired it's a legendary in D2. Mythoclas? It's a weird sounding auto rifle. The interesting guns were completely useless in PvE (thorn, last word, the linear fusion rifle, no land beyond, dragon's breath, etc). The good ones were boring and completely broke PvE (g horn, black spindle, icebreaker).

The only exotics guns that were fun and somewhat effective were invective and fourth horseman and they were just shotguns with minor tweaks. They did such a better job designing exotic guns in D2. Even the joke exotic are fun and ridiculous. You should try the raid exotic shotgun. It can take out like 10 thralls in one shot. It's a fun dumb weapon

@pyrodactyl: When I think of interesting D1 Exotic weapons all of these come to mind (granted some of these aren't the same now as when they were introduced and found much better uses as time went on): Necrocasm, Zhalo, Last Word, Thorn, Hawkmoon, Bad Juju, Red Death, Outbreak Prime, No Time to Explain, Tlaloc, Jade Rabbit, Touch of Malice, Telesto, Plan C, Queenbreaker Bow, Lord of Wolves, Chaperone, 4th Horseman, Black Spindle, Ice Breaker, No Land Beyond, Trespasser, Sleeper Simulant, Thunderlord, Super Good Advice, Dark Drinker, Raze Lighter, Truth, and Gjallarhorn. All of these listed guns have a very unique use and found themselves extremely capable under the right (often modifier or Raid instances) circumstances. You can literally pick any one of them and they had a great use in some, maybe extremely random but it existed, circumstance.

In Destiny 2 there aren't as many unique encounter options. Some of that is due to the removal of the Heroic Strike playlist, and another is the extremely limited Modifier selection we've seen to date for Nightfalls. The 4 you listed are probably the only ones with unique encounter potential (outside of just trying to punt players off the map with a Tractor Cannon.

You're exaggerating a bit.

I have plenty of people whom I play with regularly that have 200+ hours under their belt that didn't own Vigilance Wing and were looking at me all jealous until this week when Xür sold it. I currently have 217 hours into D2 and I don't own every weapon in the game. I don't even have every Exotic. 10-15 hours for all the weapons? That happens to no one.

As a level 7 player you are grouped in PvP with people around your level if possible and of the same skill set. Auto-Rifles are notoriously strong in PvP right now, there is no 'bad Auto-Rifle', let alone that one could be the worst weapon in the game. Getting 28 kills ( which is by no means an insanely high amount) against new players with a good gun is honestly not that uncommon. I can get 28 kills with a Pulse Rifle, the actual worst weapon class in the game right now and I am far from good.

You should try some Trials and bring that Pariah of yours, see how you do. Trust me, you won't get far.

Edit: Also, this is more of an opinion, but I think random perks were a huge bummer in D1. If you think 200 hours to get every weapon in the game is too quick, then I can see why you would love it, but I think 200 hours is completely fair to get the gear you need. So you can imagine why someone like me would dislike it when I had 2700 hours into the game and still didn't own the two guns I needed, because of random perks. And I saw myself lose firefights in Crucible because my opponents had those weapons and I did not.

While I would agree that there needs to be something more to play for, randomized weapons are not what I want ever again. If I'm not on a level playing field in PvP after 200 hours, that's busted design. I think D1 gets way too much after-the-fact-praise for its endgame PvP balancing.

@hestilllives19: I have the complete reverse opinion because it felt like D1 had very little encounter design. Guns either made very little difference or they would be completely overpowered. G Horn and black spindle were boring and dominated. Red death and bad juju were good but pretty boring. Just average pulse rifles with uninteresting perks. Kinda like sunshot in D2. Good gun, pretty boring.

No gun in D1 felt as exotic as the best D2 exotics while being actually good guns. Also D1 had 3 years. If they keep making guns like sweet business, Risk Runner and Wardcliff D2 will be kinda nuts in 2-3 expansions

@pyrodactyl: I really hope that's true, it just feels like they were spinning their wheels without idea's for Armors and Weapon Exotics for D2, hence the rehashes of D1 stuff and relatively few Exotics all around.

@hestilllives19: The low number of exotics is frustrating. It's like half of Bungie is landscape artists, and then they have one guys coming up with exotics. Titan has 2 exotic helms, one of which is a D1 rerun. It's completely baffling to me. The game sold itself from the first jump on guns and loot, but there really just isn't that much. Plus, the drop rates are quite high, such that even though I'm playing less of this than D1 I have a much. much higher percentage of not just the available exotics, but gear across the entire spectrum.

I didn't say all the weapons, I said the best weapons. Everyone gets Vigilance from doing a quest. Everyone gets the quest. Everyone should have it. If they don't its their own fault for not doing the quest. I don't know a single person who doesn't have vigilance or mida. They are both quests that everyone gets (the blue flag missions post story). Just like everyone gets Rat king quest, and the on the coms quest. And I would also argue that not a single exotic is even in the top 5 of the best weapons in the game. Most every legendary out classes all exotics. Which is stupid. So yes, I stand by that pretty much every single player has some of the best weapons this game offers in the firsts 10-15 hours POST STORY, like I said before. You get them from heroic public events, faction engrams and random drops. I have every exotic weapon but hard light. Its the only one I can't get. I hate every single exotic weapon. Most of the legendary weapons I got in that first 10-15 hours post story are the ones I still use. Because nothing beats them.

And your wrong about PVP. I've never, EVER, been matched with people around my level when a low level. I'm always the only one who isn't level 20. ALWAYS. I've never once since the first week at a low level been in a match with more than one other person who isn't level 20. So I think its pathetic I'm beating people with better gear, with a PL 45 crap auto. I shouldn't be able to get 28 kills with it against a full team of people who are level 20 and above PL 200. That is just stupid. And yes there are plenty of bad auto rifles. And I would argue that scout rifles are over powered and out class every auto in PVP. In fact, autos are some of the worst weapons in this game. There are like three that are even remotely good.

@spamfromthecan: the 3 exotic quests are mida, rat kind and strum (strang? you know the hand cannon). Vigillance is an exotic drop Xur just had on sale

@hestilllives19: I'm keeping exotic weapons and exotic armor separate for a reason. They really dropped the ball on armor. Like I said at the start of this conversation, it's crazy Bungie can make the best and worst decisions on adjacent problems.

They fumble the open world stuff and live events but the end game activities are still great. Exotic weapons are great, armor is bad. Good quality of life improvements, inventory system is still abysmal. Some subclass specs are fun, viable and original, others are unusable trash. One class ability is amazing, the other 2 are meh. You know what I mean? It's like the design team is incompetent but only half the time.

Last thing, 4 in one release is way better than 0 in 5 releases over 3 years

@pyrodactyl: You sure? I have 3 of them, one on each character. I swear it has a quest.

No, that must have been luck.

Vigilance Wing has no Exotic quest. It is a random drop and many people with 200+ hours did not have it until Xür sold it.

The best weapons in the game according to the meta strictly by gun class are still weapons people with 200+ hours under their belt don't necessarily own. I received my first Better Devils after 80 hours and I play with people that still don't have it yet. There are many people I play with that don't own Nergal PR4, one of the better Pulse Rifles in PvP. I believe I overheard @hestilllives19 got his only recently and he has some 130+ hours in D2. The notion that the best weapons in the game is something people own after 10-15 hours is certainly a possibility, but it seems highly unlikely from my own experience and the people I've talked to. 150-200 hours is a more accurate number for this.

I'm not wrong about PvP. The game attempts to match you with like-leveled people, if there aren't any available, then it won't let you sit at the Searching screen forever and just load you into something that is available. You're still grouped with like-skilled people, even Quickplay is not completely clean of this. You go show me you do well in Trials with that weapon and beat people 1v1. It won't happen, because you're being matched with bad players now which isn't representative of the meta as a whole which is found in Trials and at the higher ranks of Competitive. I can get 30+ kills using any weapon at low ranks. It really is not something to hold the standard by. Character Level and Power Level do not matter in this, at all. There are no level advantages in PvP. You keep bringing it up as if it should make a difference.

I don't really know what to say to your claim that Auto-Rifles are the worst weapons in this game other than it being factually untrue. They have been tested to deal the highest sustained damage out of any non-Power weapon in PvE and their TTK, range and aim assist in PvP makes them unarguably one of the best weapon classes. They only get outmatched by specific weapons in specific situations, not entire classes on their own. You may not like the feel of Auto-Rifles, I know I don't so I don't use them. But that doesn't mean they aren't still the most robust weapon class in PvP.

As for your claim that no Exotic weapon in the game is the best, the meta statistics currently show 98% of matches have at least one person using MIDA Multi-Tool, 89% Uriel's Gift, 70% Last Hope, 62% Prosecutor and 45% Vigilance Wing. That is the top 5. So 2 out of 5 top weapons are Exotics. Additionally, 2 out of 5 are Auto-Rifles, both in the Energy slot, so when you look at the stats realistically almost everyone uses an Auto-Rifle.

For reference, 4 out of 10 top weapons are Auto-Rifles. 1 is a Pulse, 2 a Scout, 1 an SMG, 1 a Sidearm and so on. Auto-Rifles are dominating, as is MIDA.

I'm not trying to claim the PvP is perfect though.

@spamfromthecan: @zevvion: Zevvion is pretty much correct across the board here. Vigilance is a random drop, and Xur was the first chance many had at it. I did finally get a Nergal just yesterday in fact, which was ironically followed by a 2nd (Gunsmith is a turd). The only real Weapons/Armor I'm looking for at this point is the Orpheus Rig boots for Hunter, on 3 characters. So I don't really feel like your statement is wrong, just highly exagerated at 10-15 hours as I and most my friends hit this point around the 125hr mark, which is my opinion is way too fast like you've said. Conversely Zev is also right about Auto Rifles just be a dominant force right now. I absolutely hate playing Meta's if I can help it, but I feel stuck using a Mida/Uriel's to an extent because that loadout is so much more versatile than anything else (though I refuse to use a Rocket Launcher right now, even if they are the best Power). I want Hand Cannons to not be trash, but alas, they are trash right now. The End is decent, but it at times has weird accuracy issues just like Hand Cannons and honestly all other Scouts. Mida just beats them out due to the usefulness of Third Eye and Lightweight towering over all other Scout Perks. There are other good loadouts like Antiope/Nergal, but that depends on the map, it's for mostly closer engagement ranges and it shreds.

As far as the under level 20 Crucible goes, I can tell you firsthand that it does indeed match you with other non level 20 players on a consistent basis. I played on my Brother in Law's account at his house the other night with crappy blue weapons and consistently dropped 7.0+ K/D's. Those players are bad and have no clue what they are doing. After 20 SMBB kicks in pretty hard even seemingly in Quickplay. I consistently get tougher opponents in Quickplay, absolute animals in Competitive, and both really good and really bad teams in Trials. It does seem like the better my teammates average, the harder teams we play in Trials, but the SBMM is a bit easier than Competitive, I think it uses the Quickplay SBMM settings. It's funny though, I have like a 1.65 KA/D Competitive, 2.02 KA/D Quickplay, and a 2.38 KA/D Trials (I only really go tryhard in Trials, and it's also the mode I've played the most by far 62 Non-Trials vs. 156 Trials, also most of those 62 were Solo vs 4 man teams in Trials).

Note:Sidearms have the fastest TTK at 0.73s but there range is incredibly small, followed closely by SMG's at 0.90s but suffer the same issues of range, then you have Auto's at 1.07s who have pretty solid range all the way out to Mid Range. So this is why Auto's are so strong right now. They are also capable of sustained damage. Check this out if you are interested in this stuff. Low Impact Pulses come in closest to Auto's TTK, but they have poor range for Pulses, of which have poor range in general compared to Scouts. Everything else has around 1.2s TTK's.

Hi guys. I'm just out here trying to get good. Poopy meta or not. Great, thoughtful posts by all the usual suspects.

@hestilllives19: You should try Vigilance + Last Hope, or at least MIDA + Last Hope. You will have to adjust your playstyle as you'll be long and close range, not optimal in the middle as you would with an Auto-Rifle, but man, Last Hope is insanity. It's the only thing that makes me able to win against Auto-Rifles right now, though only at close range, but you can consider your positioning to make the most of that.

Also, even though Vigilance is in the top weapons, I still think it's underrated. You're a stats-man so it's hard to convince you as it isn't looking amazing on paper and you also have to get used to it. It fires and handles differently from any other Pulse I've used. Once I got used to it though, it feels strong.

@zevvion: I've used Vigilance a bit (too many people I respect were saying the same thing). It feels goodish on kills, but that scope... I just can't do it. Things look too weird to me. I haven't tried Last Hope much but I have with Last Dance, I like the movement abilities while ADS more. I'm just not the best with Sidearms and never was, even in D1. I also don't like that it puts you into a bit of a box ranges wise, though I do agree that they shred up close, it just felt like I was losing too many Mid Range gunfights to Auto's. Right now I only really lose bad engagements and up close fights with Sidearms with a Uriels. I'm liking that Antiope/Nergal loadout and might try it some tonight, but I've found myself just out of range and wanting a Mida on a lot of maps. I really wish they would push out Pulse range by 10m or so and maybe bring in Auto's by the same and PvP would be rather balanced for the primaries.

@hestilllives19: If you want HC, Dire Promise (dead orbit's HC) feels really good, cause I think I hit more shots than other HC I've used so far (Better Devils, Old Fashioned, Sunshot)

@hestilllives19: Yeah, Pulses have an awkward range at the moment. I do like that they have range dropoff now rather than just being as effective as Scouts as was the case for most of D1's lifespan. But they may have overdone it a little. It seems if I use a Pulse I can lose to an Auto-Rifle from close to medium range and after that Scouts beat me. There is a very tiny margin within that where Pulses are strongest but it's pretty much impossible to consistently get into such ranges.

That said, Vigilance rises above this typical Pulse behavior for me. I can beat Auto-Rifles at medium range with it, though I do have to get all my crits to get that done, which is obviously not consistent. I do beat MIDA most of the time however, unless I am in a long range engagement, but of course I wouldn't win that. I had to adjust my positioning to make the most of Vigilance, I couldn't just equip it and go. I tend to avoid long range engagements and typical lanes entirely, unless I am with someone who has a Scout.

So how does the seasons work. Is season 1 this one week? Or is it the entire first year? I assume its just this one week?

Hi. I like to play the crucible from time to time.

@spamfromthecan: They haven't expressly stated a time period, but on the Clan Banner it says the benefits of it will remain active once earned for that season only. Those benefits have been active since D2's launch. So a season might be a month or so, though that seems unlikely as my clan was capped at Clan XP every time and we only unlocked the last tier of rewards this week. Presumably once the new season starts these benefits will disappear and new ones will have to be earned.

Most people seem to think the season will last until the next DLC hits. So early december in this case. This is just speculation though.

@zevvion: I mean specifically in regards to Iron Banner. I figured the clan season was different since its been active since the start. But Iron banner has a milestone for getting 10 engrams in season 1. So I would assume that is just this week while its active. Seems like a low milestone for months.

EDIT: and it also appears to be across your account, not per character. Which seems odd. I played like 9 or 10 matches with one and got to rank 4. Then just loaded up my secondary and its at 40% for the milestone there too.

@spamfromthecan: Pretty sure it is for the entire season just like Clan's. I don't know if anyone has gotten the Season Engram yet, not that I've heard of. It would take 60-70 games on average (40 wins at least, 200 Tokens) to obtain it on 1 character. But if you jump on each character, each day, you can obtain an extra 45 Tokens for IB each day, which should cut that down significantly if you can do it in 1-2 games. You could theoretically get it done in 9-12 games.

@hestilllives19: Yeah, I mean, I'm rank 7 right now. So I hope its just per week.

This whole concept of seasons is so dumb. Seasons would be a perfect way to have people work toward something all through the season (which I'm guessing lasts 3-6 months or right until the next expansion). But as of now it's just meaningless. It's just an arbitrary amount of time until they reset your clan progress and bring back these nothing limited time events.

@spamfromthecan: No one knows for certain. But the language they use seem to suggest there is only one season, not different types of seasons depending on the mode you're playing. So it should be a single Milestone for whenever this season ends. Perhaps the next Iron Banner will refresh the Milestone if you have it completed already, but if you did not complete it yet it might continue from where you left off? All speculation though.

@hestilllives1 I have it. It's a pretty sweet emblem that looks very appropriate for my clan. You also seem to be guaranteed 5 of both the Iron Banner Shaders from it. But that's basically it. Edit: By the way, that Milestone is account bound. You can only get it once, not once on every character.

@pyrodactyl Not to mention they are pretty vague about what a season actually is and when it ends. Also, where do the obtained bonuses go if the season ends? Are they removed? The description would suggest yes, but it's pretty unclear. I wish they expanded on the season concept.

@zevvion: From last week's TWAB... which I'm sure you read. But for others wondering about Season's info, this is when/where it will be discussed.

Their Stage – Our Story

*There is that word again: Season.There is a mention of seasons when you inspect your Clan. Now, we’re talking about it on the blog. What does it all mean?We’ll be answering that question, and more like it, at TwitchCon.

Panel Discussion: The Seasons of Destiny.Friday, October 20, 4:30PM PacificCoolCat Theater + CoolCat ChannelWhat do Seasons mean in Destiny 2?What will change from season to season?How many seasons can we expect?When does Season Two begin?

The session will be streamed (I mean, of course it will be streamed, it’s TwitchCon), so everyone can tune in and see what we have planned to keep the Destiny community engaged. When the time comes, pile into the theater or click this link to join us virtually.