[quote]Healthy Debate on Destiny 2[/quote] Uses the word "salt" in the first sentence. Dumbass.

If you preorder on psn you cannot cancel if you live in USA. Tried. Failed.

I think this boils down to whether your PVP oriented or PVE oriented. Many of the changes were designed to make PVP easier to balance. But they do so by limiting our character's power, by eliminating variability and customization, and eliminate the use of fun/powerful weaponry. These changes simply cut against what PVE players want, which is MORE customization, more variability/diversity, more powerful weapons, and the ability to use our powerful weapons as often as we want. No matter how you slice it, the 2 primary system just does NOT provide you with the sense of being a Space-Magic-Powered god of war. Many welcome the prospect of a more balanced PVP experience, but overall, there are even PVP players who are wondering where the fun went with the D2-style PVP. Not ALL PVP players universally support the changes that are coming in D2. Believe it or not, there are those who enjoyed the faster paced, more chaotic and lethal battlefield we shared in Crucible, especially in the earlier days. So these changes serve to slow the game down and make it boring and uninspiring, even for those who self-identify as PVP-oriented players. The bottom line is that a large majority of the PVE base and a smaller portion of the PVP community don't like these changes. You put the two of them together, and you can see that there is a SIGNIFICANT portion of the community that does not like the direction the game is going, if not a plurality or a majority. I think Bungie is going to be in for a rude awakening, as they're essentially just making an FPS with a few extra bells and whistles - but far less replay value than even D1 provided. And make no mistake about it, Y2/Y3 did a TON of damage to this game by removing the loot-based incentives we had to replay content. They made loot way too easy to obtain by quest and 3oC, and there was really no incentive to run/rerun the raids like D1 provided. The result? The game got stale for me as soon as we finished all our challenge modes in TTK. Went from 300+ raid completions in Y1 to just 16 in Y2. That's not a good thing! Overall, if they want to get this game righted, IMO, the list of ways to improve it is very short. Logistically is another question - but thats why Bungie pays its programmers big bux in the first place! Here's MY list of things that are NECESSARY to get the game going in the right direction: 1. Separate PVE from PVP. This means that they can tune EVERY stat for EVERY gun/ability separately in both modes. This is a necessary evil, as damage tuning alone is very inadequate. One of the ways Bungie erodes weapon effectiveness in PVP is to make it less consistent (accuracy, damage drop off, etc.). So it doesn't matter if you buff a gun's damage way up in PVE - if you make it less consistent, you won't experience that damage buff nearly as often as you should to make up the difference. In the alternative, they can simply have separate loot pools for PVP and PVE - make some gear EXCLUSIVELY for use in PVP. With this option, they could have separate loadouts for both modes. 2. PVE needs to go back to how it was in Y1. People complain about Y1, but they keep forgetting that the game was never intended to be an instant-gratification game. The sense of accomplishment was much greater in Y1 because the grind was so much more difficult. And beyond that, the grind was far more rewarding because our guns hadn't been nerfed for the sake of PVP or for the purpose of drawing out the meager amount of PVE content we actually had (reducing elemental burn damage from x3 to x2 while you increased AI hp to compensate for higher light level? Come on Bungie! You're smarter than that....) 3. Respect different players choices of playstyles in PVP. Offer Mayhem for pure chaos, normal crucible (plays like Y1 crucible), and Hardcore/Competitive, which will feature purely standardized loadouts, weapons, armor, and toned down abilities or timers (Think Trickle in PVP with no heavy or special ammo spawns). 4. Stop obsessing with HOW we play the game in PVE and concern yourself with whether we are enjoying ourselves in PVE. Who cares if players are sitting back and sniping bad guys from a safe distance. Who is BUNGIE to say that the players doing that are or are not enjoying themselves? It's not like they don't have the option to equip a shotgun and rush in guns a blazing - wait. Actually, they don't. Because Shotguns have been trashed in PVE for the sake of PVP. If you do #1 right, players WILL have the option to equip whatever weapon they want in PVE and play how they want. 5. Implement optional opt-in matchmaking for all content. Destiny's best stuff is the endgame content and by failing to have optional, opt-in matchmaking on ALL content, you are ensuring that a large percentage of your player base won't have access to this content. Yes, we should ALL make friends to play with, but you also need somewhere to start. The TL;DR?: Fixing the game is easy. Go back to how things were in Y1, which was the GOLD standard for PVE and replayability. Separate PVE from PVP with a common-sense fix, not a bandaid. Stop obsessing with HOW people experience the game and only concern yourself with whether people, on average, are enjoying the game. Finally, open up the floodgates - let optional matchmaking be a thing. IDC about the success rate of matchmade teams so much as I care about them having the ability to connect, meet new people, and potentially form the bonds you need to form in order to come together as a truly cohesive fireteam.

[quote]Healthy Debate on Destiny 2[/quote] Anybody else read the title of this post and think: "Is this going to be [b]another[/b] post about pop tarts and energy drinks?"

So... You want to replace the entire forum with this thread?

I don't know why people would get excited about the 50 cutscenes. The homecoming mission alone had 4 cutscenes. If you take into consideration the amount of content D2 is suppose to have, 50 cutscenes doesn't sound like much.

Destiny 1 had 43 cutscenes. D2 only has 7 more

Firstly, I will say... most of what I saw in D2 that would be hard to resolve (activities, environments, graphics, etc) was already fine. The game world, what we saw of it, was very attractive. And, the plot looks very good. I have only one significant unresolvable issue with the game: the mute protagonist. I don't like it. Nothing anyone says can bring me around. However, it's not changing. I get that. I'm not going to skip the game just because the movies have no real immersion. Video games where you genuinely care about the protagonist(s) are few and far between anyway. Now, let's talk the resolvable issues. Bungie has assured us that many of the chief concerns about the beta (the interminable Super recharge, tickling scouts, writhing python SMG's, inherent weakness of the dual-primary system, power weapons are too weak for the amount of ammo we get, and grenades that are about as destructive as chucking banana cream pies) have been addressed. OK, yeah, I get that. Question is... HOW have they been addressed? By what degree? You reduced Super recharge time. OK, but by what percent? You could knock it down 0.5%, from 7:30 to 7:28, and that would be a reduction. But I really don't think that would affect gameplay much. Since primary weapons are now 2/3 of our loadout, they need to be worthy of that increased import. This means a damage boost. How much more? Again, giving us a percentage of increase would be nice. And don't forget, some especially weak archetypes need special attention. I could go on and on, but the real heart of the matter is this: we know it's your intent that the final product be different from the beta. Those of us who were concerned by the weak weapons, bullet sponge yellow bars, and negligible abilities appreciate that. But I'm sorry to say this but it's a little hard to completely trust Bungie at this phase of the game. The abandonment of legacy consoles... I didn't like that but I understood it. The microtransactions of Festival of the Cost were pretty deplorable. And the 2-14-17 patch has made most Crucible matches an exercise in frustration these days: when Bungie chose not to fix this mistake despite 2/3 of players hating it, that pretty much iced it. A simple statement that our concerns about gameplay in the beta have been addressed will no longer suffice. I, for one, want a list of changes, complete with percentages, so we know exactly how much stronger our weapons are, and how much faster our Supers will regenerate. Despite my concerns about Bungie, I remain grateful to them, for creating a game that has given me close to 2500 hours of entertainment. If I have concerns about D2, I also see much potential in it. And that is why, though I will probably spend 9-6-17 in what I anticipate will be a much emptier Destiny 1 game world, I will continue to pay attention to Destiny 2's final product, and the ensuing tweaks that occur. I know quite well that if a game can be ruined by a bad patch, it can certainly be rescued by a good one.

The only thing I'm not crazy about is the mute protagonist. I mean I get that it's supposed to be us as the guardians and all I just feel like they should have at least some lines. I'm not to crazy about the whole the ghost talks for us thing.

Speaking of healthy, tell me why Activision just realeased xp boosts on specially marked boxes of pop tarts lol. I shit you not, between the energy drinks and the pop tarts were gonna have some wired up fatbodies runnin around the farm. GG #Moarpoptartsmom!

It's really hard to get excited about things I haven't seen when all I have to go on is a lackluster Beta.