DESTINY 2: The Final Shape

[Eivion]

Might not be the worst idea then since Episodes are lasting a third of the year. Might actually make Trials feels like more of an event.

[RIPPA]

Finally got Khvostov (both versions)

Speaking of exotics - you can pick up a quest from Shaw Han to get Arbalest. Its technically the same quest he always has but it is updated for Final Shape (as in one step requires you to get kills in the Pale Heart. I don't remember where it was before). Anyway - it drops at level so you can at least do it to increase your light level

[RIPPA]

Bought Wicked Implement since I never bothered to do that part of the quest

Immediately had the catalyst drop on the first thing I did after buying it

[RIPPA]

Some devs gave an interview with Edge Magazine - Games Radar basically does a recap

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/destiny-2-the-final-shape-edge-feature/

In it - they basically say that Act 3 has an exotic mission that is probably the biggest one they have ever done

Quote

"We have an Exotic mission coming in Echoes Act Three," Stevens says. "It is one of the biggest Exotic missions we've ever built, and it's only possible because of this new content cadence. The ability for us to build this massive Exotic mission – literally one of the biggest – it wouldn't have been possible in the past. This is where we see the [development] team taking the opportunity, their willingness to change, their willingness to adapt to this new cadence with us, and really seize the opportunity to expand Nessus, expand this world. Because a lot of us, with Destiny, we think of it as a living world, right? A world that is expanding and changing throughout time. And we would not have been able to expand Nessus in this way without the Episode."

 

[Eivion]

8 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Bought Wicked Implement since I never bothered to do that part of the quest

Immediately had the catalyst drop on the first thing I did after buying it

Its a nice weapon that feeds well into Stasis. Surprised you didn;t get it until now. The quest wasn't too bad if you used LFG. 

1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

Some devs gave an interview with Edge Magazine - Games Radar basically does a recap

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/destiny-2-the-final-shape-edge-feature/

In it - they basically say that Act 3 has an exotic mission that is probably the biggest one they have ever done

Curious now what the particulars of the mission will be with this talk. This does give me some hope though that the newer aspects of Nessus become more than just mission related changes long term. We haven't seen an expansion of Nessus since Season of the Chosen when with the massive land tank for the Proving Grounds strike.

[RIPPA]

Couple of other small changes that I love

Being able to buy unowned armor exotics from Rahool

Expert Breach being matchmade

[RIPPA]

41 minutes ago, Eivion said:

Curious now what the particulars of the mission will be with this talk. This does give me some hope though that the newer aspects of Nessus become more than just mission related changes long term. We haven't seen an expansion of Nessus since Season of the Chosen when with the massive land tank for the Proving Grounds strike.

It was one of those things that I forgot about after Season of the Deep ended and then when I realized I still hadn't done it near the end of the year, I had other things that I wanted to get done instead

[Eivion]

12 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Couple of other small changes that I love

Being able to buy unowned armor exotics from Rahool

Expert Breach being matchmade

I want to say they made Expert Breach matchmade due to an issue they found before the Episode even began. Have to say its no more annoying than regular so I hope they make this a thing for other activities. It would be nice to not have to run to LFG or Fireteams for every activity at that level.

[Eivion]

Have to say I appreciate Enigma Protocol getting changed up a bit with Taken replacing the Vex this week. Its a minor change, but its definitely enough to throw off casuals who might have just gotten used to it based on playing around with blueberries for a hour just to complete it once.

[RIPPA]

Finally got all the Prismatic stuff on my Titan so I can now futz around with my other characters too

I had been paranoid about fucking up the triumph for getting everything on one class so I wanted to finish my Titan before doing the rest

Hoped over to my Hunter to see what all the fuss is about. I think I am going to LFG my way through the Legendary campaign with him. But first I am gonna do some IB.

[RIPPA]

About halfway through the campaign on Legendary with my Hunter

Dreading the final 3 missions as it has been dicey a few times. Part of that is because it is so easy to throw away lives by missing a jump.

[RIPPA]

From today's live stream (which was a shit show for awhile because no one at Bungie thought to turn off on screen celebrations so the stream looked like a screen saver from 1993. They finally figured it out about 15 minutes in)

• All the story beats for Act II will be dropped at once. (This normally they would have been spread over 3 weeks). They made sure to emphasis this was an experiment.
• The activity for Act II is 3 new Battlegrounds
• All three will take place on Nessus. The location of the first one is basically redoing the final mission of Act I. The other two are new spaces on Nessus. First two launch week 1. The last one launches week 2.
• They are nerfing reserve swapping which is probably gonna be what the streams bitch about most
• Solstice will indeed take place during Act II
• Prismatic Hunters will be getting a nerf in PvP (specifically skip grenades and threaded specter)

[RIPPA]

33 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

From today's live stream (which was a shit show for awhile because no one at Bungie thought to turn off on screen celebrations so the stream looked like a screen saver from 1993. They finally figured it out about 15 minutes in)

• All the story beats for Act II will be dropped at once. (This normally they would have been spread over 3 weeks). They made sure to emphasis this was an experiment.

Bungie had to clarify this on Twitter because apparently the dev misspoke

The change of story beats will start with EPISODE II not ACT II

[Eivion]

Watching Cross stream of the stream.

Glad Episode II will at least feature the story beats all being accessible in week 1 of each Act, but I am just a pinch disappointed its taking that long as they implied it would be something from getgo of Episodes when talking about them months ago.

The Act II Artifact mods all being solar and/or sniper focused was not on my bingo card, but I am pleased that its the case. It will be nice to finally have an excuse break out the crafted snipers I damn near never use. Haven't really used snipers for PvE regularly since D1.

Glad to see DMT and the other scouts with its frame getting a buff. They are all nice, but also feel well left behind for PvE as the difficulty scales. Conversely I can find a way to use other scouts fine for add control at least.

Adept mods losing negative effects is surprising though it makes some sense with damage increasing mods being dropped. They have to create new mods just for some weapon types to have something useful. Wonder if they add new Adept mods as well.

Never used the reserve mods. The swapping was moronic but well pushed by people like Cross for maximum DPS. I think they likely mitigated some backlash by increasing the mods across the board though I'm sure some will still bitch just because. I'm sure Datto was ecstatic to hear about the change.

Good with Battlegrounds being added. I always enjoy them at least on their initial run.

Hunters' Solstice Armor looks like crap and is easily the worst of the classes. Somehow it doesn't surprise me as they went a little hard on the explorer vibes for TFS and ITL armors.

14 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Bungie had to clarify this on Twitter because apparently the dev misspoke

The change of story beats will start with EPISODE II not ACT II

That Bungie dev didn't quite misspeak, but she didn't state it clearly enough either so it was easy to confuse her words.

Edited July 10 by Eivion

[RIPPA]

Getting really fucking tired of people not knowing how to label their LFG groups

Still haven't done the Legendary campaign version of Ascent

Multiple times I have joined a posting only to find out (either at the Fireteam screen or worse being dropped mid-mission) that its actually the Saga version

Even stupider is that clearly most of the folks making the listing don't realize their is a difference because in the mission they run around not realizing there are mechanics and can't figure out why they are still dying.

Side note - also been finding that a lot of my completions are coming in two mans because inevitably someone drops from the group mid-mission

[Eivion]

Finally picked up both versions of Khvostov over the weekend. It was running the Cysts that took the most annoying amount of time since they were a bit random at first a few weeks back. Luckily that meant I did most of the Motes of Light stuff already. Haven't really broken out the exotic version yet though I like the legendary one well enough.

Did the story stuff for Echoes Act II this week. Dug the Battlegrounds. They felt like a nice middle point between strikes and the usual Battlegrounds. Need to do an expert version soon. The story stuff was good, especially the last radio message at the end. looking forward to what comes next.

[RIPPA]

One of the things about playing right at reset is that for both Battlegrounds I was dropped in with two mans who clearly are gamer gamers as they were nuking bosses in 2 seconds

I definitely missed things that were going on since they were storming through the mission

[Eivion]

Interesting choice to have nothing but the newest exotic missions in the Fireteam Finder. Kind of annoyed since it makes what should be an easy weekly pinnacle to get annoying.

[RIPPA]

yeah - there are a lot of... questionable... decisions in the way Fireteam Finder was set up

Still haven't been able to find a group for Legendary Ascent or Iconoclasm yet

Did finish the story on my Hunter. Appreciated that you don't have to do all the extra missions before getting to Excision

Nowhere near as tedious to do so I will probably play it through with my Warlock instead of buying the campaign skip

Spend today catching my Hunter up on the Episode content

[Eivion]

Digging the story beats from this week and the side story of Failsafe and the Frog. Still kind of shocked that the biggest stuff like comes from lore bits. I always take a while to read mine so I caught Byf's latest vid revealing

Spoiler

that apparently one of Osiris's Echoes or Reflections is running around and that there is a "Not-Worm" in the Vex network that apparently ignored the all powerful echo that landed there. Like WTF to both of those. 

Going to kind of be pissed if we don't get a proper Vex expansion with all of this being explored in the next year or two. Feels like they have created far too many interesting strings to pull on for all of this.

[RIPPA]

I am deeply amused that Bungie officially puts sparrows in PvP and people just play the maps normally

[Eivion]

So another mass of layoffs is occurring which I expected but admittedly forgot about the past few months of Final Shape positivity. There was just no way TFS was going to be successful enough to carry the studio beyond Destiny and one other game.

220 layoffs. All non-Destiny and Marathon game projects are dead sans one that is moving to a new studio within Playstation.

12%/155 people of the Bungie is being integrated with Sony.

At least one of the people was the senior narrative designer so its all over the board and not just people from other game projects. Really hope Sony remove Parsons. So much of this shit is his fault alongside whoever else is at top with him. The claim that execs are among the released would be more reassuring if Parsons and co were among them.

[RIPPA]

Apparently the entire player support team was let go

[Eivion]

And The FInal Shape's narrative lead was laid off as well.

TWID/TWAB for the week is cancelled. Bungie is claiming no delays are coming.

Edited August 1 by Eivion

[RIPPA]

Jason Schreier tweeted that he will have a full story tomorrow to clear up the rumors that their won't be any more "expansions" for D2 - just small content updates and that D3 was "cancelled"

(He did already say that D3 was not cancelled because it was, in fact, never in development. There was a spinoff project called "Payback" that was cancelled years ago)