I am confused, do I upvote or do I downvote? If I like it, is it a downvote? but what if it's already zero? how do I know that they know my appreciation?

While I am still listening to the podcast I want to comment on something that Sols said which I think either may be a mistaken perception or if true it really shows how little Bungie cares for the experience of it's current players (negative perception but I don't see how else to view it). Regarding the split of company resources for developing D2 versus the number of people maintaining/adding to Destiny for the rest of the year Sols said that he thought that Bungie said that they assigned something like 5 or 6 people to the task supporting new Destiny Content (which I also assume includes features like enlarging Vault space and other requests like weapons balancing). Reflecting on this fact it seems like a reasonable number if the company's size was 75, but it's not. Bungie is a company of 750 people. Assuming that 250 of these people work in company support positions (Finance, HR, top level management, IT, Facilities, S/R, Company Masseuse, Deej, Cozmo and so on), which is bloated but it makes initial numbers easy to approximate. This means that of the 500 people they have for working on the games they support that currently 99% of the company is working on D2 and 1% is assigned to still support Destiny. I don't know about you but this sounds laughably small for supporting a 3 year old game with "millions" (over time but still own a copy) of players. This is even more lopsided when one considers that Bungie is surely outsourcing as much of it's D2 work to other studios, as it did with Destiny (and Halo's before it). If you ever watch the credits far more names are given to outside sources than Bungie in house for work on the game (at least twice as many). For those on the forums that say Bungie should be concentrating all of it's efforts on D2, well if these numbers are correct, we are already there. In fact, we are way past there. It seems to me that a better balance of the companies efforts would be a minimum of a 95% to 5% split between D2 efforts and Destiny support (with a 90%/10% split being more realistic). When Bungie did their long term planning for Destiny years back I find it hard to believe that they planned for less than 5% support after 3 years (and I am not even including the outsourcing efforts in the 95%).

*sigh* I think my Gemini is broken....... For some reason someone decided to replace the rounds with feathers.... All it does is tickle my opponents.... Help me figure out who did this! Also BUMP!

Thanks for inviting me :) It was an awesome experience. I'm a listen to it NOW!!!

Bumpety bump bump

Is there a possibility to hear your cast live? Next time? i would really like to listen live and maybe comment while youre doing it. Great work, great idea btw.

I wanted to start by saying two things, both chaos dogma and Boolean Gemini are both sleeper weapons. Some key points that I totally agree with. 1. Shotguns do not need to be nerfed. 2. The meta is largely perception 3. Expanding further, there are many weapon classes that are currently usable/competitive. 4. The previous point can be verified through both anecdotal experience and metrics(such as carnival's data, and the spreadsheet that was mentioned). 5. Players should branch out and try new guns, And might I add that this would not only enhance the game from a community standpoint, but it would also cure a lot of the boredom that people experience with this game. Some that I disagree with: 1. "I wouldn't change anything". There are most certainly things that I would change. A. I feel that auto rifles do not provide enough reward for the risk that you must put yourself in to use them effectively, especially not when compared to weapons such as high fire rate pulse rifles. Auto rifles require the player to pull off perfect head shots at the top of the engagement to achieve a reasonable TTK compared to other weapons. Pulse and scout rifles can be played sloppy and still achieve an optimal TTK, on top of not forcing the player to commit fully to achieve a fast kill. In addition to stopping power, which was mentioned in the podcast, I would like to see standard damage increased, with a slight decrease in critical damage, as well as a buff in magazine size. B. High impact pulse rifles are completely outclassed by high fire rate models. I don't know how to fix this issue without making these weapons two shot, which was an unpopular idea within the podcast... I have put this to test extensively in private matches against a player who is statistically, as well as anecdotally the same skill as me. It's also mathematically represented in the spreadsheet, grasp and CD easily won in 7-8 out of 10 times on both sides of our test... Which ever player used the High Fire rate class had a clear advantage. C. Fusion rifles need a stability buff, slight reduction in charge time, and a slight flinch reduction across the board. I love fusion rifles, I really do... I love that they take specific technique and patience to be used effectively... However, it only takes a few bad experiences to make players completely drop a weapon... There are simply times when fusion rifles just don't kill, for no goddamn reason, every fusion rifle user know this. With that said, these changes need to be implemented carefully, because fusion rifle users also know the extreme power that they possess... They are the type of weapon, that If made too easy to use, would completely paralyze the entire crucible... As they once did... 2. Sidearms need a buff. All I'm going to say is that people are sleeping on side arms right now... I'll just post this here: https://youtu.be/KbM5B8ip3m4 What I would have said, had I been there: I have often advocated for a primary weapons buff, and I think that often is mistaken for increasing lethality of every weapon. However this is not totally accurate. The changes that I proposed above, if implemented, would not only inject diversity into the crucible, but would also provide balance, as always I mean that relatively, as we all know "perfect balance" is unachievable. In simple terms, if more auto rifles are on the field, dominating the close to mid range spectrum, it will make shotgun rushers have to think more carefully about closing the gap... And snipers would have one more weapon type to take seriously by way of High impact pulses... Subsequently, players that main their secondary weapons would consider pulling out their primary, as well as find that these new primary weapons would augment their current secondary gameplay. I think the one thing we can all agree with is we don't need anymore Nerfs... And to be honest, anyone who has ever read any of my posts knows this to be rare... I actually have a lot of hope for the next patch because of what was stated in the weekly update. They seem to be focusing on some level of balance rather than destroying weapons to create a new meta.

I dislike the "dynamic" weapon tunings overall. It's artificial and come at the price of rendering other types useless. It's a given really, all weapons must be viable, or else the developers are just putting junk content and playing games with games lol. The key to balancing weapon types is map layouts and play style. Like RedGirl said, you can still use an arminus etc auto rifle but you got to approach differently and use the map accordingly and that's what really makes an fps.

Great show, Sols and everyone else.

I haven't been having that meny problem with lag this iron banner mind you I only played to compete the bounties no hand cannon or auto rife or pulse rife to grind for so once the bounties were done I logged off wasn't even worth spending lengendry marks at iron banner cause they still have the same roles on the armour as the first time so lazy. Perhaps we should not let fireteams in to iron banner cause when we wouldn't have people doing it on purpose perhaps we should have a sorry there's a red bar in the team you can't enter iron banner cause that may sort out a lot of this lag etc. Is a bit of shame about no crimson day but when I'm one of the people who just jumps off the edge to get loot drops quicker. Vog and cotra guns are not the same with out the burns fate bringer would not be the same fang wouldn't be the same they are more likely to make new guns without burns drop as rewards it'll be lucky if vex and neco keep their burns. Personally I still think scope time needs a nerf maybe quick draw and to add movement sway when scoped I do agree how was the best dlc reforge was great way to bring back the fun. Perhaps we could nerf fastest firing pulse rife in order to bring it into line with the other guns perhaps adjust fall off cause the fastest firing pulse rife should have a lot more falloff if their range is that small, Nerf sticky fusion by 10% just to stop them being over used lol unless we buff all other grenades by 10% so people use other subclasses again. Destiny 2 was meant to be September but they might push it back further even more so if the next call duty come out close to that date. The vex travel though time so we can easily say the vault is being active but cotra coming back perhaps his soul in a new body? Favourite moment I don't have one cuase I've done everything only thing I need to do is log in to get the silly boxes each week.

I'll have to check this podcast out. However, if it's just another whine-fest from hard core TOS players, no thanks.

I think lots of us waiting for this fun, enriching pve content that isnt going to come. Other than the raid, Rise really offered nothing great in the replayable pve realm

Great conversation. Happy to meet everyone! And as I mentioned, I encourage everyone to get out of the comfort zone and try new weapons. There are so many surprisingly great alternatives to the perceived meta.

Bump for a later listen. Great having Asta, Carlous, and Theo on! Thanks for all the editing work, Sols.

Good cast, it's always cool to hear the voices behind the tags. Really cool to hear the guys from Nigeria. I was actually kinda bummed that Crimson Doubles wasn't returning. Ran it last year with my son and had a blast. I had already set up a teammate for this year. Oh, well.

Bump for a later listen. Pls

First a serious question for RWG. For some reason I personally think that since they moved Red Death to the Nirwins archtype in 2.0, that it seems to be a much better gun than it was back when it could still two burst. Is that your impression of it? Well enough of a delay, on with my posting (abridged version, as there were so many topics this week, I felt it would at least be worth it for me to shorten things. If anything needs clarification, don't hesitate to ask me). -Iron Banner Clash- -Lag and Rewards- Wasn't feeling up to playing this banner, till I actually decided to do something else related to it (more on that later), and I quickly got all three to 5 before I ever realized I had done so. Rewards dropped a plenty from my experience, and lag was more like a basic crucible game for me, which can be seen as a good thing, considering its IB. -Map Rotation/Voting- Ehh I'm mixed on the voting part. I came from a CoD background, and practically saw only one map over and over again (Nuketown) and it just gets sickening to play on. I prefer to have it as it currently is than to get into the vote for map thing. -Ghost Cameras/Theater Mode- Ehh. I think there is way many more things that this Franchise needs than theater mode, as doing so would make it more secure around the idea of it being a PvP centric title, and I'm a bit against that. However the biggest problem that adding it does is add additional latency into a game that already has a crap ton of network stability problems. Now I realize this idea is for D2 and beyond, but unless they fix network quality, it will just be extra wasted space that could have been allocated to actual in game content. -No Crimson Doubles- Just tells me not to log on, honestly. I had fun w Crimson Days last year, and completed my doubles Grimoire from 0-100 wins during its timeframe. -Spring Update/Roadmap- They need to give more than they do. Regardless, I'll have no one on my fl at that point in time that plays this game anymore. -Re-skins vs expectations- I expect more effort than they give, but I like so many others feel Bungie kind of half asses it and expects us to go nuts over everything. Year 3 I still have yet to see something that I would want my characters to actually go for. -Would you rather have big D1 change or D2 sooner?- I would rather they would actually give players content to play. Honestly, at this point in the games history they probably should just give some teasers regarding D2, cause I know way too many people who will not return for anything this game has to offer, whether rehashed raids or not. So their emphasis should obviously be towards getting the defacto next title out as soon as possible to stop the bleeding and mistrust players have in the Bungie brand. However they should have actual things to do in a game that has no reason half the time to boot up. -Return of VoG?- If it happens, it happens. I don't want them screwing up my favorite weapons in the game with their yr2/3ifying them, but I've come to expect Bungie to do exactly that at this point. That being said, just a light increase to everything is fine with me. I don't want to see it become something different than it was, because then it won't be VoG now will it. To the Aetheon dead comment, you have to realize that the vex control time. Who ever said we destroyed the real Aetheon, as all we could have done was destroy one version of him from a specific era of time. -Bungie and communication- On major releases they reveal too much. All the rest of the time it's just studio dark. They still are too quiet on giving potential road maps to events for the game, and I doubt they will change in the future. -Balance patch inbound- Disagree on some instances as there are clearly issues w the High Rof pulses being a bit over achieving with little to no damage falloff. I think something in general needs to be done at this point, but it's all subjective. -Weapons and numbers- I'll have to check out that link you guys posted re numbers, because I'm kind of on the mind that CD kills much faster than .8 sec. However, what the numbers won't truly reflect is the fact of specific weapons shooting you. For example, it's great that optimal SC.25 is quicker than CD, however this accounts every bullet being a recorded headshot, and with flinch mechanics, SC.25 is going to never be near that optimal number. There are other factors that have to be taken account for, and I don't know if it is addressed in the link or not, but optimal time to kill is not going to show what necessarily is an accurate assessment of actual ttk. Just my two cents. -CL's secret weapon- Boolean has always been solid. Problem is most people complain about the RDS being obstructed by the iron sight, causing most to not be able to use the gun. I just like the VoC feel it has, despite the iron being an occasional tunnelvisioning effect. -Favorite moments of the week- Playing IB with just Vault Weapons. Have to test them out, and clean house somehow, and what better way than to pull them out of the vault and test them all out for multiple games. Got 1/3 of my weapon space cleaned out, and expect to get that to half empty providing my power doesn't go out from this nor-easter. As a fun side note: maybe I should be called the Shotgun Warrior, as I have more shotgun kills, Theo, lol

Gonna listen on my way home. Looks like good topics.

Bump.. listening now, always enjoy IB discussion. I must say Lost the audio quality on this one is AWESOME. Not sure what you did but it's way better than I've heard. I'll admit when I heard that your guests on this one are representing from Nigeria I groaned a bit because a lot of times on the show I can't understand what some of the more heavily accented folks are saying... not the case this time.