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Edited by Tactica: 6/12/2015 9:52:11 PM
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Skolas Kill - something is wrong... rewards are NOT comensurate with time vested

[b]From memory, I've killed skolas[/b] - 3 times week 1 (solar) - 2 times week 2 (arc) - 3 times week 3 (void) - 2 time week 4 (solar) so far...[b][updated 6/12/15][/b] This doesn't count the times we abandoned the attempt and disbanded (happened twice). During those runs, I've vested an enormous amount of time both getting to and then killing Skolas. Our best time getting to him was 55 minutes, however it usually takes 1:30-2:00 to get to him. We've spent anywhere from 30 minutes (void week) to 5 hours on Skolas (arc week) - round 6 - ALONE... sometimes, with no joy... but usually, we take him down. Void burn was easily the easiest week, Arc burn was definitely the worst and biggest nightmare week... it was downright painful in fact. I've now finally received an Elder Cypher on all 3 of my toons, but my Titan is GLitched out - as Varicks won't actually give it to my Titan (I had full bounties when it dropped - so its bugged out)... so really, only 2 of the three of my guardians have earned the new exotic HoW weapons (Q Bow and LoW) [b]updated[/b]. With the above [b]updated[/b] 10 successful boss kills in mind, I've received only 2 Elemental primaries from killing Skolas... the scout and the pulse(both arc). That's a [b]updated[/b] 20% yield of Elemental to Boss kill reward rate!!!! That's a [b]updated[/b] 30% yield for Elder Cypher. Once you have one of each of the Cyphers (novelty guns) you frankly don't give a rip about them... so all you are really after is the elemental primaries... and at 20% drop rate, you start asking yourself - is this time vested vs. reward even worth it? I mean on average we are talking around 3-4 hours for a Skolas run with a average to good group... So let's call it 3.5 hours... after my 10 runs @ 3.5 hours each on avg, we are talking about [b]updated[/b] 35 hours for 2 elemental primaries... and that doesn't count setup times or the 2 failures... we are approaching a full work week now!!! Even when you do get a drop, you really want a Solar Hand Cannon or a Void scout as all other combinations are basically junk as other items in the game outclass them - and these wasted perks make them almost useless... Jeezus BNG? WTF? Does this seem anywhere even close to acceptable? [b]With the above in mind, I have a few issues with this. First, let's look at ToO and Raids for comparison...[/b] 1. The Trials of Osiris and Raids are both End Game content 2. ToO and Raids both offer stopping points for breaks in gaming to return to 3. Most IMPORTANTLY, ToO and Raids both offer END GAME quality incremental rewards - all the way through - not just at the end!! 4. Both ToO and Raids offer a GUARANTEED end game quality loot drop at various locations [b]Now let's look at Skolas:[/b] 1. There are no breaks in the gaming, you must play all the way through, hope for no network problems 2. You get no breaks to return to if life calls in Skolas - no checkpoints - why is this a good idea? 3. WHERE ARE THE INCREMENTAL END GAME QUALITY REWARDS PER ROUND???????? 4. Why are the Elemental primaries on RNG and possible to NOT drop at all? 5. The small chests at the end of Skolas generally suck, just like the 32 and 34 runs 6. The large chest, at the end of Skolas contains the same junk that other arenas generally do - unless you need ship, shader and emblem... but you can only get the ship on one run... and anything short of queens shotgun, sniper and rocket is basically worthless... BNG... Now I get it, they don't want folks just passing off 'check points' in arena challenges - like they do in every other aspect of destiny's PvE experience... Okay, fine. Then there are REALLY intelligent ways to DISCOURAGE this kind of thinking... and do it by REWARDING players, not punishing them. [b]Level 35 run should be rewarding and a special experience![/b] 1. Could offer incremental rewards - based on how far you get - judgment RANK per round completed should be no-brainer 2. Each round completed should generate per round rewards such as CHANCES at dropping cypher, weapon parts (the new must have commodity!), legendary engram, blue engrams, Varicks Armors like can be purchased with chance tokens 3. No BNG, you can keep all the Varicks guns if you are NOT going to fix them... nobody wants that stuff with shank burn/ dreg burn, etc on it... I mean seriously, whose idea was that? Disciplinarian isn't horrible... but the others... ulgh, garbage - throw that out... Here's a REALLY simple FIX to make MOST not all of those Varicks guns have a VALUE again... first add another perk spot... give them all the traditional two perks that we are used to rolling for at the Gunsmith... now on that new perk spot, let us get Fallen, Vex, Hive, Cabal or GUARDIAN DISCIPLINARIAN - done. Now, people will actually WANT some of these weapons, and will seek them out.... go tell the guy / department who came up with dreg/shank burn that he needs to write a public apology to the Destiny community for the next weekly update - PS, the above will save your HoW Varicks weapons - (well not the non-elemental primaries, those can just be canned.) 4. Each round completed should IMPROVE roll % towards a better drop on Skolas for ELEMENTAL primaries - if you complete all rounds preceding Skolas, and you kill him - 100% chance for DROP of one of the elemental primaries - nuff said... nobody wants to play all the way through and put all that time in and NOT get a primary... over and over.... after all, these things are RNG and can have different burns / stats (right?)... these things SHOULD be dropping much more regularly! Oh, and see above on the RACE disciplinarian... my elemental primary scout with dreg burn compared to a buddy who has one with fallen disciplinarian is just a slap in the face... nobody wants to work this hard, for a <20% chance at an Elemental primary, hope they get one of the good ones, then get some crappy modifier on it... Jeezus BNG... who is in charge of your Fun Dept anyway??? [b]Next up... let's talk about your Weapon Parts problem since you've eliminated Etheric Chest farming[/b] That was the only 'present' answer to the Weapon Parts Economy 3.0 problem BNG has created. Since the knee jerk response to remove Etheric Chest farming (response to unrelated Treasure Key issue fix)... we now have a Weapons Parts shortage, and no real way to deal: - 25 weapon parts = Exotic Ascend - 25 weapon parts = Her Benevolence (any queen legendary) Fully Upgrade - 50 weapon parts = Lord of Wolves fully upgraded - 50 weapon parts = Queen's Bow fully upgraded - 3 weapon parts = 1 roll at Gunsmith - 60 weapon parts = 20 rolls on average at gunsmith per weapon So, when do we get the weekly update addressing exactly how are folks supposed to accumulate weapon parts now - strikes? Ulgh. Surely they don't want us using weapon cores to buy and dismantle or ToO rank 5, to buy and dismantle ( over and over.) The time demands are real BNG - this is ludicrous! [b]Speaking of cores, let's talk Varicks and these armor / weapon Cores...[/b] When you get your armor / weapon core, the last thing you want to do is use it on anything Varicks has for sale. Okay, yes you feel obligated to buy some of that STR armor if it allows you to get to 34 and use that Etheric light on a piece of your GOOD armor, but generally, his "for sale" items are to be avoided. Nobody wants +STR. Why BNG is even trolling us this way is beyond me. Then we have his weapons... they are laughable. I mentioned it previously, but someone came up with just a horrible idea to waste one of the perk slots. I don't know about you guys, but after week 1, I quit buying his weapons. What does that leave you with after you complete a Skolas (or level 34 run?) You make your Justice Chance roll and hope you get a decent piece of armor that DOESN'T have +STR on it. Man, does Varicks loot need a complete overhaul!? It's all so anti-climatic - short of MAYBE his sniper - because you don't care about the wasted perk slot as much... or hoping to get armor with PoE useful modifers for vex, hive, cabal and Intellect & discipline (not STR) - the rest is just very disappointing... BNG, please, this won't last till Sept! [b]So how many are really enjoying / downing Skolas compared to the player base? Who's affected by this?[/b] We know ~16,000,000 (feb 2015) - 20,000,000 (may 2015 numbers) of players are on Destiny. Players are averaging ~ 3 hours a day play. Per the May 2015 data, the 20M number seems to be holding. http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/05/06/destiny-hits-20-million-players Now, based on the recent weekly update on BNG, we learn 378,511 [b]fireteams[/b] have downed Skolas in the first 3 weeks of play. https://www.bungie.net/en/News/News?aid=13016 1. We don't know how many of those Fireteams were repeat teams and repeat players 2. I know I beat him 8 of those times So if I divide 378,511 by 8 to get an idea of how many 'unique' fireteams beat skolas - just to take a swag stab at this... I come up with 47,313... then if I multiply that by 3, just to see how many unique players experienced it - 141,942 rounded... and I think that's probably generous. So if 16M players, we are saying 0.89% experienced it. If 20M players, we are saying 0.71% experienced it. 3. IGN's poo-poo's HoW @ 5:25, saying, I don't see a reason to play HoW right now, Skolas blows, Queen's weapons are junk, the TIME is not worth the REWARD, etc: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/11/fireteam-chat-ep-22-oryx-vs-e3-igns-destiny-podcast?watch 4. Forbes & PoE loot train-wreck: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/06/12/one-year-later-how-has-destiny-changed-since-the-alpha/ I rest my case, just my thoughts, thanks for listening.

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  • Hi

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  • I would agree 100%. I was asked to help out 2 people who never did skolas before tried with no luck. I sunk about an hour to 2 hours into ot until I had no choice but to leave. I have to feed my kids. I did it myself last night with 2 of my regulars still took an hour and a half. I'm not a horrible player. And I love to try to help people out but I can tell you never again. As sad as it is to say I would much rather gjallarhorn him to death and deal with the mines after for the simple fact that new players with a gjallarhorn have a better chance of completing it that way. Then trying to deal with the tracing bullets, the essence timer that slips your mind in the rest of the confusion bungie has thrown at us. Called skolas revenge.

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  • 13 level 35 clears... Two ciphers, only ONE elemental primary... And it was a crappy arc pulse rifle. I don't think I'll even bother after they remove the burn.

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  • This is why I don't play the PoE anymore, the rewards are terrible and not worth it.

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  • Good read. Bump.

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  • almost same here with some downsizes.. i beat skolas 3 times.. and got two elder siphers out of it.. One guy was Especialy unlucky and got kicked out of the fireteam by a network error of bungie while we were at the airlock AFTER skolas, so no return for him and no reward.. The Queens weapons are basically useless since i can upgrade my former weapons and they outshine the Queens stuff by FAR. My Badger CCl is still the go-to weapon and wrecks havoc. so i simply dont need any of those apart from maybe a lenegadry tracking rocket launcher with another elemental type since i already have HoC. the Rest ist just not worth the Vault Slot The HoW Weapons have the most stupid perks ever with shank burn and dreg burn and such its hillarious .. also without any element to it on primaries i wont even bother to spend any of the weapon cores that are currently rotting in my vault. also Judgement chance doesnt give a chance to get any good gear just plenty tries to get bad gear.. the n better wait.. also the dedication to an enemy type is a unlogiocal just eats up needed vault space.. if i need a full set for each enemy type to get the right buffs, then i would need 48 slots just for PoE armor, plus 12 VoG armor, Plus 12 CE armor and maybe 12 old Queens armor and 12 IB armor and 12 ToO armor, making this a total of[b] 108[/b] Armor pieces without any legendary or exotics.. (which i am not allowed to store) so much for "you can collect guardian"!) also skolas is tedious.. i know how to do it, and its not a big thing pre and post patch but its time consuming and very little rewarding.. with dynamic environment and dynamic rounds this would be so much more of a fun that reading the burns up front on the Bungie website.. (which is still not updated to the post patch .. *) like this is today, its more like working on a factory on a conveyer belt production.. ToO is (and thats coming from me, a dedicated NON PvP player) the most fun.. BUT! Bugnie was asscrakc anough to make the only fun part in the dlc, non playable for normal players.. i am not talkign about the difficulty since the rewards for just participating are great! and even a 5 win passage is a huge success for normal players.. but the fact that if you just use the game , its basically unplayable since there is no form of trying to form a team apart from harassing random players in the tower, of which we know: is super annoying and rarely crowned by success, so all you can do is inflating your "friendslist" by adding more random people from one of the lfg sites.. which you will most likely never see again after one passage .. i have no idea why bungie doesnt have the clue for how videogames work but they must understand that the smallest portion of players are in a clan or fixed team.. most of them 90+% are single players that search for teammates .. for the occasional try.. The rewards for ToO outshine EVERYTHING in HoW.. i was to the lighthouse 2x and got nice weapons even if the perk rols werent perfect, they still rock the house, sadly especially the PoE. which is PvE .. so the best PvE weapons are given out to the "top tier" (or carried PvP players) and to be honest ToO is currently the only "social" happening in Destiny, since a Shitload of streamers offer carry services to the lighthouse. Upside: more connection between the players, downside for the game: ist a Pay to win activity, ( pay 10$ and get carried or if you are lucky , get into one of the streams and be exposed to the world.. hmm..)

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  • Edited by Gfoke: 6/18/2015 9:26:35 AM
    Well I've got about 15 hours in the 35 Poe and haven't gotten a damn thing. Still haven't beaten him. Also haven't gotten a chance to try since they "nerfed" him. In that amount of time I could've beaten crota on hard 25-30 times and gotten every weapon and armor piece again!

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  • Dam u str8 babygurl

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  • absolutely correct on all your points, even the changes to Skolas aren't going to save the encounter.

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  • Dude, if u still need weapon parts, get out of Destiny. I'll gladly give u some of my 2k+ I never use

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  • I nominate you for bungie dev.

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  • Bump

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  • One of the top 3 post I've seen. I'd be surprised if people still play this religiously by the end of June. All I want is a Hawkmoom and hope to get my third cipher today. After that it'll be a waiting game for Xur to sell Plan C & NLB.

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  • Edited by FlyLoBetto: 6/16/2015 3:57:09 AM
    I haven't done Skolas yet. I just never am ready to maybe sink 5 hours into something for a shader or ship. I suck at PvP so trials is out. Kind of think the expansion sucks but it was only $20 so whatever

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  • Did skolas tonight after hot fix, took an hour flat to do the entire 35 PoE. Git gud.

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  • Well said my friend! I agree 100% with all you said. I've done Skolas once and it took over 5 hours and received crap at the end. I will not be doing that again.

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  • After I killed skolas, my elder cipher glitched and no one told me I needed a key to get the ship, shader and emblem. All that I walked away with was a grimoire card -_-

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  • Bump

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  • Well written post (I actually read all of it). Completely agree on the checkpoints. Just make the checkpoints specific to your character (not account). That way you can't hop into a skolas CP unless you've grinded up to him that week. The one thing I will disagree with is you should be buying the all str armor. A full set against hive in PoE is awesome. It gives you like 100% int, disc and str, and increased agi, health and recovery. It's actually a little OP. Once you have full sets for all 4 races, everything is going to be pretty easy. [b]But this makes the weapon core probably even more pronounced as now you are accumulating weapon cores you can't even use for judgment chances. [/b]

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  • Well... I don't enjoy destiny as much anymore. I enjoy playing destiny to socialize with my friends but thats about it. I have upgraded the weapons I wanted to, all my toons are now 34. I vault space is maxed. Apart from the social aspect if it, I do not see the point anymore, which is a shame. I helped founder a clan, I spent personal time creating and maintaining a clan website that is successful. The appeal is lost. I will continue to play with clan mates and online friends. I will continue to run and maintain our website, but it is not the same. Destiny played over this past week has dropped to less than 15% of what it was.

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  • I gave up after 4 hours - I feel sorry for the 2 ppl I joined who had been at it for EIGHT hours without success. Whoever thought not having checkpoints on a bullet sponge boss needs shooting.

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    1 Reply
    • Edited by AJIc3CoLd: 6/13/2015 6:04:54 PM
      I'm glad people are noticing this, finally, I think I've done Skolas twice in the past two weeks. It's a waste of time, the loot system is broken and not worth the time.

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      3 Replies
      • I agree with everything

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        1 Reply
        • Big Bump

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        • while i agree about your points, what happened to people playing the game just to have fun? why cant you kill skolas because of the experience?

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          1 Reply
          • Bumpity Bump BUMP

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