I don’t view that as the main issue with strikes tbh. People played strikes a lot in D1 before strike-specific loot was a thing. I think just overall better loot and better strike design to make them more fun would be the first steps. Strike-specific loot would obviously be welcome but I think other things should come first.
Can you elaborate on what kinds of things you mean when you say "better strike design to make them more fun"?
In strikes right now almost all of them are:
run down this hallway killing guys. Eventually you will get to a room where you have to slam an orb, kill waves of guys, or none of these. You get to a boss, which do offer a nice diversity of fights. Get a purple item of random slot.
I think that 2nd part of that statement is where the improvement can be. Some things i would love to see.
- Split paths where guardians have to accomplish similar goals.
- Branching paths that end with different loot... Want a lot of glimmer? Go down this path, kill/save these things. Want upgrade mats? Go the other way. Finish the strike where each member of the strike went different paths/completed goals successfully? Get all rewards.
- Sparrows being incorporated where we have to race against time. Something like an escape or race to stop something from exploding.
- Community challenges for night falls. Maybe there's a chest we can see that needs to have the community perform weekly goals and when cleared, you can open the community chest at the end of a nightfall/strike. Contains a small amount of Silver/large amount of bright dust.
- Customized loot table/strike specific loot.
- Have Xur (Or another vendor) sell an item similar to the chalice from menagerie that skews the drop from the strike to be, weapon/armor. Or if you want to get deeper in the way people can chase perfect rolls, allow them to choose like in menagerie.
Just a few things I have always wanted to see in strikes... Also Bring back SRL. :)
For your second suggestion(Branching paths/rewards) do you have any ideas on how to handle the following possible outcomes:
For some reason I've read the title as "Strikes 2.0"(we could really use those as well) and was confused for a second.
What kind of things would make up "Strikes 2.0" in your opinion? (Not to derail this thread!)
Haha, I actually don't know if I've ever heard that one. :P
When the team was making the title for completing a lot of the Shadowkeep triumphs (Which shipped as "Harbinger"), I pitched that it should be called "Lightmare". Can't win 'em all!
Hi Gunmaster! Thank you so much for the reply! I'm happy to elaborate on anything and everything. :-)
To me when someone is on patrol they are taking things as they come, they're out there looking for trouble and trying to keep the place safe. As the system currently stands you're not naturally patrolling. You're going into an area and bringing up your ghost and finding a patrol beacon that's got a quick turn around time to get whatever objective requires it done. If you're looking for planetary materials you go to the Planetary Vendor and get the 4 bounties and do those specific things. It's very structured for something that I think would feel better as a more free form experience that erred towards an open world feeling.
The experience itself isn't fluid because it just feels like you're doing some checklist items from other activities, either for a bounty, quest or to get some planetary mats and then moving off. I think it's safe to say that very few people go into a patrol zone in order to just patrol. There isn't really much of a reason to since there isn't much in the way of rewards and the way that the Patrol Zones are have ended up with them being kind of stagnant this long on.
I think the problem at the time with Challenges wasn't with the Challenges themselves but with a lot of things that were going on with Destiny 2 at the time. There wasn't a whole lot of anything to opt into doing and having bounties gave us the ability to to choose to do something. I'm not saying remove all bounties, I think they're good for Vanguard, Crucible, Gambit, Etc. However when it comes to Patrolling and given the nature of what actually patrolling a zone would entail it makes more sense to have something akin to Challenges where you're working to keep the whole area safe. So I do think bounties and player agency are important but should be saved for more targeted activities, patrols I think would benefit from being a more free form experience.
Public Events have powerful enemies but I can't recall the last Public Event where the boss took more than 5-10 seconds to melt into oblivion. Don't get me wrong, that is fun in it's own right but what was occurring with the Vex Offensive on the moon with the Invasions was cool. It required people to work together and then if you did well you got to fight a more powerful enemy still. That was a lot of fun and it took time and was challenging. I put the bit in there about tracking guardian kills because the arbitrary unknown time before an enemy leaves doesn't feel good to me.
I think that you could hinge some of the mechanics for these world bosses off of established mechanics from other patrol zone activities so we're using familiar existing mechanics that people have an established understanding of in order to help ease them into something that is different and more difficult but ultimately something they have completed something like before.
- Hive Knight World Boss
- The Hive Knight World Boss spawns and is Immune to Damage
- When the Hive Knight Spawns so does a Powerful Wizard and 3 Shielded Crystals
- The Crystals are generating a Portal and the Portal is spewing out Thrall to attack players and defend the Hive Knight World Boss.
- Kill the Wizard (This is evident and expected because it's a powerful enemy and it's natural to target them)
- This creates a field on the ground like the one from Escalation Protocol. When this is spawned the Thrall from the portal swarm it. You have to stand in it to lower the shields on the Crystals and then Destroy them.
- Destroying the Crystals severs the connection to the portal, stops the Thrall swarm from spawning, and weakens the Hive Knight World Boss allowing it to actually take damage.
- The damage phase is controlled by the players. When the World Boss Hive Knight kills X Amount of Guardians he's able to summon a new Wizard which then opens the portal and creates the crystals starting the cycle over again.
With an encounter like this it's more complicated than an HVT or Public Event Heroic but it uses a lot of familiar mechanics that are used elsewhere in the patrol zones. So what you should do is relatively clear.
- Giant Taken World Boss (I didn't specify an archetype cause I wasn't sure, picturing big thrall boy)
- This giant taken world boss spawns and with it a number of blights.
- The giant taken has two main aspects. If you're near it you take constant damage. It is immune entirely to damage however there are spheres of Darkness around its knees.
- You step into a blight. This gives you immunity to the constant damage effect. This also allows you to target the knee weak points to break the Darkness Sphere.
- When it's broken you unload on it the knees until it topples over, not unlike a spider tank, this reveals a weak spot atop it's head.
- You can attack this for critical damage, or you can enter a blight and then attack that weak spot to do critical+ damage and take it down even faster.
I think so long as familiar mechanics from existing public events are mix and matched into these encounters they can be expanded on and used in new ways to create interesting World Boss Encounters that leverage existing knowledge for public events to make them non-frustrating. Or, at least, as non-frustrating as they already are.
To comment on if that pillar is important, I do think so but I think it's okay if occasionally there is an exception to that. If 95% of the content in a patrol zone is relatively easy to sort out with some random guardians I think it's okay for 5% of it to be a bit harder.
As far as destinations, that's really the whole of my suggestions. I think there is a lot to be done with how Strikes are broken down right now as a playlist and activity but that doesn't sound so much like your area or really in theme with the rest of this post.
Thank you again for the reply. It made my day!
So to summarize your main points (please correct me if I'm misunderstanding!):
You would prefer that the player's objectives and goals be more free-form and feel less structured. Random objectives & things happening to the player as opposed to the player actively seeking out and opting in to their goals.
When you say "more challenging" you mean more mechanically complex. There are added layers and steps required beyond simply "Kill everything". Stand in a spot, destroy a non-combatant object, shoot a weak spot, etc.
When you say "requires multiple players" you are referring to enemy count and difficulty, not actual cooperative requirement. I.e. "There are so many enemies and they are so tough that I would be crazy to try this alone" as opposed to, "You must stand in 2 places at once to progress, meaning it is literally impossible for one player to succeed".
No problem and thanks again for writing out your feedback in a constructive manner. :)
Read moreChallenges should have just been endless, like repeatable bounties. You clear one, get the reward, a new one loads into its spot.
A public event update might be good. The vex invasion felt kinda fun, but my favorite thing in d1 was where a taken event and public event happened at the same time. Patrols also need a bit more enemies on the map, especially because player presence actively causes enemies not to spawn. I've legitimate had players abuse this to get me to leave the zone. That's a bigger problem with "final blows" style bounties and objectives though (btw, final blows quest steps actively suck and cause way to many problems in this game) and less about other problems.
Event overlap is awesome and something we're definitely interesting in continuing to do & do more of!
Patrols also need a bit more enemies on the map
How do you feel that the number of enemies in D2 patrol areas compares to the number of enemies in D1 patrol areas?
First I would like to say this was a very well written post from OP and also, a great response from yourself. With that said, I do have an issue that caused immense frustration yesterday while playing.
Loaded up Mars patrol to finish my weekly flashpoint and run some public events but there were two guardians in interceptors who were camping the rally flag killing all other guardians in the area. Never knew this was a thing but it was a very frustrating experience. Even when the public event did spawn, they clearly were only going after other players instead of participating in the event. Fast traveled out of there and said screw it until I was put into another instance.
there were two guardians in interceptors who were camping the rally flag killing all other guardians in the area
How were the players in the interceptors killing other players? This should not be possible as they should deal no damage to and physically pass through other players.
One thing, I'd really like to have like, a tiny bit of choice, or the ability to reject and replace a crapshoot objective that I'm NOT going to do.
Part of the reason I didn't like objectives as they were implemented was that if I didn't want to do one, I didn't really have any other options, and the problem here is psychological in part.
Fortnite has challenges that are given to you daily, and you have the option to replace one a day if you don't like it (IE: Play a match with a friend). I feel like this is an acceptable compromise, I'm not sure how you'd work in the option to replace one though.
What objectives would you be likely to want to skip? Is it a specific type of objective, does it depend on the exact situation, etc? Can you give some examples? I believe a more ideal approach to this issue would be to design objectives that players don't want to skip in the first place!
Firstly, thank you for this well thought out and constructive post. These are some very interesting ideas!
Can you enumerate the problem space (List the issues) you're trying to solve with your goals? What specific issues indicate to you that the current experience is not fluid?
When the game had Challenges how did you feel about them being automated? One of the goals of removing those and returning to a bounty system (as well as the current patrol beacon system somewhat) is to make players feel like they're opting into the content as well as (potentially) giving them some agency over when and how they take on these additional objectives. An automated rotator system like you describe above removes these things. Do you believe these are important? More or less important that making the experience easier/simpler for players?
What are your goals in distinguishing "world boss" from public events which frequently feature powerful enemies to fight?
One of our pillars for public areas (w...
Read moreThis is still one of my favorite game trailers ever. We have some really talented people working on that team!
You don't move characters you point the platform at a specific set of data. If you link PC and XB1 to your bungie.net account and then activate cross save, choosing your PC data, that means you'll play the PC data whether you're on PC or XB1. You can play on either platform whenever you want as often as you want. They're just both accessing the same save data now.
Hi! We actually recently made the discovered markers brighter internally so they're easier to spot once discovered. This is currently planned to go live around Shadowkeep (Though that may change!).
If mods take this down, they’re clearly apart of her cunning plan
Protection 100
What if /u/KentuckyBourbon94 is actually Savathun?
Illusion 100
