My brother and me did it yesterday for the first time, with a group of friends that already done it without the random teleport change. While they were bitching a bit at first about the change, because the guy used to get the shield couldn't always grab it, we still managed to finish it in 10 tries max, after learning how to improvise on the spot. It was a good challenge, very fun and frustrating at the same time. You can even send another player into the portal afterward to help if bad luck strikes the teleporting team. We finished it with a sense of satisfaction after working it out the best we could. They really dont mind about the change now, and we are now ready to face it again without fear because we tried and learned all the roles. Beautiful experience, now implement all those crazy ideas into the strikes so that it's less bulletsponge boss and more skill-based please!!!!

Cough!

Well, looks like the devs need a swift kick in the arse!! Why do they get to make the decisions? Surely you have someone there at your company that can give them a clip round the ear saying "sorry lads, but this one is out of your court" where are the people who make sensible decisions?! You should have left normal mode alone, sorry but, some players excel on defense, and others on offence, that's the whole point of having different types of players! It doesn't really bother me and my clan but, I just think this is stupidity! What's really sad is, the friends who don't get to play as much, and they want to do the raid, they are not as strong, or as experienced, so having a particular task and having someone help them is the only way they will complete it, that is out the window now! You are just excluding certain people from doing the raid now! You should have asked US the community about what we thought about these proposed changes! To be honest, I don't even think this was a bug or mistake, I think your company and devs underestimated how good some of us would be a clearing your Raid, and decided 'shit, people are ranking up too fast, this seems too easy, lets make it harder' (Not that I have a problem with that, but next time, save it for your next raid, leave the original one alone for God's sake!). But seriously, how did you NOT know Atheon teleports the three furthest away, where is the testing?! Making changes now almost 2 months after the game came out is just either lazy work, or rushed work! Seriously, why don't you focus on something like, I don't know, your disconnects - I got kicked doing nightfall solo right when I was on my way to the boss! As if its not hard enough! Same thing during the crucible, you will be 1 kill away from your bounty, or will be having the most amazing game and BOOM this arrogant message comes up telling me to check my internet connection! If I had a problem with my internet I wouldn't be able to log in would I? Also, you should be focusing on bringing back exotics to what they should be, instead of some nerfed nonsense because some pathetic pvp players were crying (this is not even a pvp game for gods sake!!). All those pvp whingers you catered to, will be gone in a week when cod comes out! The nerfing of the Pocket Infinity was absolute nonsense!! Why would you remove the extended mag perk and give it fast reload?! What a stupid and useless perk (its not even that quick), the reload is already fast, and you can get faster reload with some character perks. The clip should be AT LEAST 5, not a pathetic 3! Blue and green fusion rifles have more in the clip, and you call this an exotic?! The only thing about this exotic that stands out is the auto-fire, all others stats pale in comparison to my others. Bring BACK the proper Pocket Infinity! And tell your developers to make something properly in the first place, instead of releasing something that has not even been tested properly! Thank you.

Seriously. Seriously. How about fix the actual bugs that existed before this patch and continue to exist... Zombie Praetorians. 1 or 2 people getting Teleported. Oracles wiping the group after they have been killed. The relic shield not protecting everyone within it and allowing Aetheon to kill people within it with no rhyme or reason. There are more not listed. Probably too many to list. Is this what you wanted? Is this your standard for what makes a "hardcore" raid? These cannot be planned game mechanics. I took a group down through VOG last night. Not a single wipe from my group all the way to the last check point. My group rocked three attempts on Aetheon, and on each attempt we were wiped due to one of the above issues. Each attempt we only needed one or two volleys left to drop Aetheon. The random teleports are not an issue, and it doesn't really make the encounter any more difficult, it just makes it obnoxious. But that's fine, my group can and did over come those issues, but we cannot overcome horrible bugs that have existed since launch and should have been fixed before you even thought about fixing a game mechanic that didnt need fixing. These bugs are seriously ruining the endgame experience. How can you justify adding artificial difficulty, when players cant even complete the Aetheon encounter without experienceing horrible and glaring issues that wipe the entire group and ruin the experience? You guys need to take a look at your priorities. FIX THE BUGS THAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN BRINGING TO YOUR ATTENTION FOR A MONTH!.

The fight is so awesome now you can't even open the Vault of Glass without having two of your fireteam members being kicked out... Seriously.. haven't you tested that patch before releasing it? Also, why you spent hours of hard work to fixed an issue that wasn't really an issue when there are still like 3 or 4 issues that directly affect the players? I don't really care about the boss teleporting randomly three players or cheesing him with Void Grenades, I've been doing it legit since the raid becomes available... But what about the portal not teleporting a player? Atheon teleporting only two players instead of three? Being killed INSIDE the Relic's bubble? These issues are annoying... Teleporting the three farthest players doesn't bother anyone except Bungie's devs so why do you "fixed" that before everything else? Anyway, I would have love to try the "new" Atheon but with two players being kicked out every 30 seconds it was kinda impossible to even open the VoG Gates...

DeeJ, where are these Halloween sparrows that have been rumored to exist?! I wanna know so I can get one :D

You keep saying that there should be more than one way to win Destiny, while you keep telling us " that's not how we envisioned you would play the game". A pretty inconstant message, but I'm not surprised, since you asked the community for feedback on the proposed change, then completely ignored it, flushed it down the pan. You wanted the game to be player inclusive, but have made the best level harder? Yet again an inconstant and confusing message. I'm not saying that this part of the Raid is easy, but now every player needs to be strong at every job. I think that the dev team is butthurt that as players, we found a strategy of beating the game that they had not considered or tested for. You've taken out the teamwork and strategy, introduced randomness, like the rewards weren't random enough? Right !? This is Bungies fault anyway. If players weren't force to play the same raid over and over again, they would have not focused on cheese-ing the bosses. I though that there was going to be a new raid every week, in a rotating playlist? What happened to that? Month 2 after release and we, as paying customers are still being treated like beta testers. Its alot like saying we are in listening mode, but we don't feel like doing mode unless you pay us.

I wanted to voice my opinion about this patch: Atheon Teleporting Randomly: I agree with the change, as it requires more communication and teamwork. I don't agree that it was called a "bug", because it was clearly programmed to teleport the farthest 3 people from the beginning. Why would you have taken so long to address it if it was an actual bug? Neither here nor there, but call it like it is and you won't get as much flak. Anyways, I think it makes the raid more enjoyable, because I was finally able to get some good time in with the Relic (as I was not the usual Relic carrier). I thought it was more challenging and required greater communication and teamwork which I always appreciate in an encounter. Teleportation Issue: This is a BUG and needs to be fixed. At one point last night we had FIVE people in the desert portal at the same time due to teleportation issues. We saw this few and far between, but it happened more than once. Templar Issue: The Templar can still be pushed off of the back platform where the first conflux spawns at the beginning of the encounter. It really trivializes the encounter just like the Atheon trip did. Please address this as soon as possible. It would be great for my raid team to attempt the non-teleport chest legit rather than through pushing the boss. However, at this point it is the fail safe way to ensure the chest spawns....so we take that route until it is not available. Final Thoughts: I don't know if this is possible, but if you could do a beta of your upcoming expansions for a good two weeks it would probably be in your best interest. As an avid raider and MMO player, these sort of bug strategies are pretty significant. If you did do a beta (of just the raid) and let people make premade end game light level characters to specifically test the encounters, I think you would know a lot more about the potential shortcomings and be able to patch out the issues before you go live. The Atheon and Templar push strategies made this raid tier trivial and shortened the overall longevity of the game. I realize as more content becomes available, that longevity will increase. However, if these sort of strategies are present in the next raid, you will see hardcore players clearing nightfall, weekly, daily, vog hard, and crota's end in one night, leaving the rest of the week for playing other games rather than Destiny. Make it a closed beta for top level raiders who usually find these sort of glitches. Give players a challenge with Crota's end which cannot be glitched. Also, reward players who put in the effort to beat these tough encounters with a drop table. Randomness is great for the lower levels and even strikes. However, if you want to make really difficult and unique raids, you need to make it worth the time investment with guaranteed drop percentages to keep farming it. Or, make a Xur type vendor for raids and make a raid token a guaranteed drop. Even if each boss dropped one and you needed 10 or 20 to get one piece of gear, people will continue farming for a month if they know a piece of end game gear of their choice is at the end of it (if the raid is hard and not many people can complete it). If it's easy, then it's just a mindless grind with no satisfaction. Make level 32 hard to reach so it feels like an accomplishment when you reach it. Also, don't give out tier 2 exotics through Xur. Only give bounties and low level raid drop chances. I understand you wanted to gear people out and make them feel like they are getting good level gear at an even pace. That's an okay idea for tier 1 so that people can get to 26 and start raiding without too much grinding to gear up. However, tier 2 raids need to be a stretch goal. If you make it so that all people are on tier 2 at the same time and gear the same speed, the game won't survive. WoW started substantially loosing its player base when catering to casual players and wanting everyone to experience all content. The key is to make content that only a smaller player base can reach. Obviously, make a base that everyone can get to (i.e. VoG / tier 1 raiding), but then make tier 2 and 3 progressively difficult so you get a smaller spread of player base as you go up tiers (and reward those players with really unique [exotic] weapons and gear). It will make for a greater diversity of light level, give lower level players something to aspire to, and give the hardcore players a reason to continue to be hardcore (so they can be the best and highest level). This is the system that sucked me and countless other people into games like WoW, and it can be a system that keeps people playing destiny. Just my thoughts.

I originally thought that Bungie just cared about keeping people playing Destiny, but after this patch (especially after the VoG offered NO INSTRUCTIONS as players had to find their own way to complete it, now Bungie is saying, your way is the wrong way) I am pretty sure they are trying to get people to quit Destiny. (The above is in reference to 3 random teleportations and to that ONLY)

You can still push off the templar and kill oracles from the spawn by just sitting up there id hardly say this is challenging at all

Personal me and my group had no issue with the "patch" we made it through hard which a few adjustments and it only toke a few extra tries. But i would have preferred to see some of the adjustments to the under powered exotics. And the actual bugs in the game such as the portal glitch, the fact that we are stuck in the Vault after we beat atheon and the disconnect errors everyone is experience. Also from a tech leads point of view there is no reason that you guys should have push a patch with out testing to verify that it would not cause issues. This was a serious oversight that should not come from a company as large as bungie and activision.

Personally I think this was a ridiculous thing to patch. Why? Because YOU guys designed the environment for the Raid to happen in. Why is there an area for him to fall into? If you didn't want that to happen you guys should of thought of that beforehand. TBH I don't actually care as much as some of the other people except for the fact that there are much more pressing issues that the community has been SCREAMING at the top of their lungs about, that are MUCH more pivotal to an enjoyable game experience that have been outright IGNORED. ) It makes a mockery of there being ANY sort of community dialogue between Bungie and the players. While it might have been sort of fun to have you be vague when we were speculating about the game pre-release, now it is just insulting. If you are not allowed to comment, just SAY you aren't allowed to comment.

Transporting 3 randoms sucks and since your dev team keeps doing what they want and not what the people want they probably will take the whole ten years to get anything right including the Exotic weapon fixes you (Bungie) said were going to happen because they were to weak when released. Your team is a disappointing team. At least when you make a patch note don't condescend to tell us the 3 rear people being transported was not intended. You are outright lying. I for one do not like that.

I'm personally glad that DeeJ is willing to listen to the community. Cheesing is still possible, as said earlier. Add baby bumpers in the any possible area where Atheon can fall off. Calling the old teleporting mechanism a bug is just screaming that you want the game to be played your way and it should be changed back to the old way of teleportation, since I'm already hearing horror stories of only 2 people being teleported and 5 oracles spawning instantly and killing everyone in hardmode.

Last night issue was when going through teleport, 2 of us didn't go back with the relic holder. It wasn't the end of the world but just annoying. Hard mode Atheon

I'm still trying to think of the reason in-universe why Athreon only sends three people back...like, shouldn't he be able to send [i]everyone[/i] back? Rewind the battle to heal himself? I mean it makes sense from a gameplay perspective to make him balanced but he's still a (the?) Timelord. I think it's a good update. Fix those errors and exploits. I feel like that's more important than new content, which will only add more errors and exploits. Although I am looking forward to the next update.