CE just feels like a strike

You have a point. It's also why I slightly shudder at the indications of HoW being a gladiatorial arena kind of raid. Although I don't want to jump to any conclusions, there's no denying that simply throwing the book at the players, like in CE, is tedious not to say lazy. It's also the reason why the VoG remains the most fun thing in the game, while CE is a grind to get gear and weapons.

VOG is like the Bloodgulch of this game.

Yeah. Screw the jumping part of VOG though..... because titan + Marijuana = dead a lot.

As someone who completed CE in the first week, I can say that the initial experience of CE was very satisfying. My raid team completed the raid without any cheeses (as they hadn't been discovered yet), which made it a great raid. The abyss was a death-fest with everyone running for their lives (quite literally). To get through it, we used - wait for it - teamwork and communication (gasp!). The relief of finally running into the white light and getting to the totem bridge was awesome. The totem bridge itself is a great encounter... if you actually do it. The greatness of the encounter is lost on most people because they have never completed it without cheese. I really wish Bungie would fix the encounter like they said they did the first time. "You are now required to cross the bridge with the sword." No, Bungie. [u]One[/u] person is required to cross the bridge. Here's what they should do: apply the "bane of the swordless" debuff at the beginning of the encounter (like the burden of crota debuff). The only way to remove the debuff is to pick up the sword and cross the bridge. Ogres will only spawn once all members of the fireteam have removed the bane of the swordless debuff. That would make sure that all members of the fireteam are actually contributing (like my fireteam did, which made it a better experience for all involved). And then you have Crota. Whether you think it is a hard fight or not, it was fun. Figuring out how to time up the damage to have the sword carrier up on the platform in time to swing at Crota required a lot of trial and error and a lot of communication. When he finally disintegrated, it was so satisfying. Before people watered it down with cheeses, CE was a hard, rewarding raid. The sentiment that CE is not as good as VoG is fueled by, IMO, the fact that so many people never completed it before the cheeses were discovered. If you complete a raid completely by using cheeses, you are not going to appreciate the raid. Do you remember when Templar was fixed so that he couldn't be pushed off? The forum was flooded with posts along the lines of "OMG! Bungie ruined the Templar fight. It's too hard now! If we want to push him off why can't we? Geez, Bungie, you just broke the raid." In the case of CE, most people started with cheeses, so there was no accomplishment for them when they beat it. That's why there were so many "That's it? I just cheesed through the whole raid. What a joke..." posts. Well no shit it's a joke if you don't actually play it. In retrospect, VoG is definitely a more [u]complete[/u] raid than CE. It's a grander scale. It has puzzles. The relic mechanic on Atheon is well thought out. Not every encounter was cheeseable. CE had a lot of potential. Did Bungie maximize that potential? Absolutely not. I don't think that means Bungie will never be able to match VoG, though. They definitely can. The only question is whether they will listen to the fanbase and spend resources conceiving a raid for HoW that matches the complexity and beauty of the VoG. Given the fact that they still haven't addressed some of the most glaring issues in CE (being able to cheese the first two encounters, disappearing swords, Crota not kneeling, etc.), I don't have too much faith that the next raid will be any better.

I can't even get a satisfyingly excellent raid group because no one knows how to do anything. Whether it be gorgon maze, how to use the relic, how to drop the death singer (I'll admit it's tough, but it's doable if there's coordination.), or even how to kill atheon/crota. I'm disappointed with people lately on the lfg forums for the raid since no one can do it properly. I'm not saying I'm the end all be all, but people are so ignorant to things. We should all have a sense of how to get the raid done. They're not the hardest thing in the world.

I prefer crota, VOG takes too long and has way too many bugs

Haven't done CE but I was quite disappointed with vault of glass. I expected to be battling through out the whole thing and more platforming too.

I find crota's end to be much more satisfying than vog.

I dont understand why ppl like vaultof glass better... The beginning is tedious, but ill say that atheon is fun[quote][/quote]

I agree. There was nothing more fun than realizing you were the most experienced raider in a new group. Never got the same level of excitement out of crota

Played both, vog for sure is a way better thought out raid than ce. HoW had better step it up for sure.

I feel like VOG had more structure, Crota's end- shoot, kill, keep moving foward. VOG wasn't like that. I remember going through VOG first time, no one knowing what to do and it was almost impossible to figure out. Crota's end hardest part was finding out where the lamps were. Other than that it was just kill, kill, kill.

Let me start off my saying that I have already played about 3 hours today. My grandparents come Friday and Saturday, so I can't game then. So I spend like 1.5 hours in weekly and nightfall, then went to do VoG hard. (We were stuck there for about an hour, then I spent the next hour trying to finish CROTA hard mode with another group.)Now, I know it's easy, but for some reason we couldn't get past confluxes. I had two friends IRL that were with me. Afterwards I joined another friends party, and he said he's doing Crota tonight with my two friends that were with me in VoG. They said that I was doing really bad, and one of the two friends is hosting the Templar checkpoint tonight. So now the three of them, who were originally gonna raid with me, decide that they don't want me, and would rather have someone else, which really pissed me off. I feel like I'm pushing my amount of time I can be on, but I never get to raid with my friends IRL, which is kind of disappointing. What do I do??:(