I need them to add more meters and variability to the weapons. Originally it seemed like a good idea that the guns would all be relatively equal other than their power; my mind translated that as something more similar to Bloodborne, where weapons would come down to preference rather than a random roll of the dice and whatever behind-the-scenes calculations were manipulating the player base to skew one way or another at the moment.

But in practice, it just made most of the junk weapons even junkier, and the increased drop rates for Legendarys and Exotics made them wholly unexciting to procure, especially when you're constantly leveling up by two or three power levels and having to either rebuff or replace all the weapons you'd just collected. It's a completely uncompelling system compared to just...you know, using the weapon and leveling it up that way. I'd much rather have not collected damn near every Exotic across three characters just three months into the game if it meant the Exotics I did get had challenges and upgrades attached to them contingent on my use of the weapon. That's the thing I'm surprised Bungie never understood about their game; especially for a player like me who plays solo while scrubbing through GB content and podcasts, it's the shooting I'm here for. The stellar death animations, the endlessly satisfying gunfire sounds, the just-unique-enough enemy units. Destiny 2 should've doubled down on enemy unit types and per-weapon challenges; it went the opposite direction.

I've found myself pointing to MLB The Show a lot over the past year, mainly when it comes to how to handle micro-transactions correctly (and, though a wholly different conversation, it should be noted they are working hard to discourage purchasing their in-game currency this year), but their plan for this year's game looks exactly like Destiny 2 should've looked. They have programs, or collections of tasks and goals to complete, broken out by position, from Common players to Immortal Legends, and the Common/Bronze/Silver/Gold/Diamond programs all trickle up and contribute to completing the Immortal Legend programs and unlocking the best players in the game. In addition there are team collection and statistic goals, souvenir collection goals, general statistical goals across all modes within Diamond Dynasty and so on. The point is, that game is designed for you to constantly explore it, swapping players around and experiencing everything the devs have made for you. I imagine a similar system for Destiny 2 and drool over it; as things currently stand, I paid for the Season Pass but uninstalled the game over a month ago and hadn't logged in since whenever Curse of Osiris launched and I immediately bounced off of it.

All this stuff sounds like smart changes, and I'll give Destiny 2 another shot at some point; if for no other reason than I paid for the content. But I don't see that day being any time soon.

My PvE 30 minutes quick impression, running around Mercury.(PS4)
-All trash mobs can be one shotted with Better Devils
-Snipers(Alone as a God) feels a lot better, but still can't compare to rockets against Yellow-Bar enemies and mobs
-Warlock burst glide is damn fast. Died twice because I overshot my jump.

It’s been awhile since I followed what Bungie was doing with Destiny 2. After reading about this update, I don’t think there’s anything Bungie can do that will get me to come back to Destiny 2, which is sad considering I sprung for that version with season pass.

Aha, I was just thinking about reinstalling Destiny 2 today, but I'd forgotten about the speed update. Sorry Knack, I'll need the HD space.

@dispossession If your problems with D2 PvP, this update won't fixed that I think. If it's not enough content, the next content drop for PvE should be better with this update.

I reinstalled to try this. It's... Fine. They're pretty minor quality of life gameplay changes that don't REALLY make anything feel drastically new or fresh. Not at all enough to bring me back, especially with Division doing GE week right now.

@galerian: both PvE and PvP. I don’t really care enough about the game to want to waste my time on it.

All these system changes are great and all...but they really need more content!

From what it feels like mobility works like it should have from the beginning. The higher the stat, the faster you move. I played through the nightfall twice: once on mobility 8 and once on mobility 1. The latter felt like nothing had changed while the former felt like I was zooming around on ice without the floaty slippery feeling. It felt super good moving like a hunter, but playing on a warlock. Warlock jumps being boosted now means you get more bang for your buck in a jump. The old adage of them being slow is less true now. I played some dawnblade and you really move. Even more so that the base bump to warlock jumping, you get a powerful thrust forward when you jump allowing you to make ground very quickly. Along with the other buffs It ultimately makes a class I rarely played feel more empowering. Pulse rifles feel okay now. Still not sure I'll use them (outside Vigilance wing, which apparently wrecks now), but that's more because of my preferences. It's nice they're viable for those who want to use them though. I still need to mess with more stuff, especially in a non difficult mode as I've only really gotten my impressions from the nightfall and prestige nightfall.

I still need to check out the pvp at the time of writing this. I came around on it this past iron banner and had fun once I adjusted my playstyle to being less rambo and more band of brothers. (...no idea if that's a good metaphor) Basically sticking with your team at all times and team shooting. Push if they push and hold if they hold. 4 out of 5 times this led to us all living longer and getting more kills. With the new changes I really interested to see how it's all been affected.

With all this said and all my praises, the biggest problem continues to be a still lack of new stuff to do. Straight up, we just have to wait for Dlc2 for this to be solved though, unless Iron Banner, faction rallies, collecting or equipment optimization have struck your fancy (which they have for me and are a big part to why I've still stuck around - the last one in particular) there's very little reason to keep playing.

Honestly, the weapon leveling feels like one of the easiest/most accessible parts of the game for me and is a lot more appealing than having to level up each one individually. For instance, got a scout rifle? Just infuse a higher level scout rifle into it and you're done. You only ever have to put a legendary mod on once (unless you want to change the element, but it's really just better to use different weapons for this) The only reason to ever replace one is if you prefer it over what you've been using. Imagine finding out about a better weapon to use and then having to go out and use it for hours just to get it raid ready or decent to use for the nightfall. I don't think I could stand that after a few cycles.

The same goes for armor infusion, except it gets a lot more complicated with their pool of mods. I've ended up making 4 different sets for my warlock just to cover each element and something for the raids. Now with the mobility change and pvp to consider I'd also need to think about having a set for those too. And given I have 3 characters and limited inventory/vault space this process gets cumbersome real fast. They're planning on adding 50 additional spaces in the vault, but I'm not entirely sure that's gonna help in the long run. More content means more stuff to get and less and less space to put it...

Everyone on reddit is focusing on how the changes are influencing PvP which interests me very little.

In PvE, the changes seem good but maybe a little on the low end. I think rapid-fire scout rifles feel viable now with the damage and precision buffs. I used a full-auto scout in the prestige nightfall and I felt like I was just eating through enemies.

Shotguns feel good to me now. I used Perfect Paradox near-exclusively for an entire strike thanks to the massive buff to ammo capacity and the 35% damage buff. Perfect Paradox now holds 21 ammo which feels amazing.

I still have a lot of weapons to test out, but I’m at least happier playing now.

Like many have said the problem for me is after fiddling around for like an hour I have the same brick wall that stopped me playing before.

My light level is maxed, I have a ton of exotics. I played all the content. There's nothing to DO.

Compare that to the Division or Warframe. Division this month and this week specifically is cycling through all of their Global Events, which means special global event credits drop when doing 1) open world boss runs 2) Incursions which are kinda raids 3) the Dark Zone 4) High Priority Targets, special boss runs 5) Story missions 6)The Underground DLC 7)Survival and Last Stand DLC.

You use these credits to buy caches which contain high level gear sets to collect of which there's many, and cool rare exotic weapons. Then you can re roll stats on guns and gear, and even use dismantled loot you don't want or need to upgrade your current gun. It's a finely tuned system of "get more loot, then make it the most badass" that keeps me hooked in, and there's PLENTY of variety so I don't get bored chasing said loot.

Destiny BADLY needs an end game like this. Right now there's balance changes yeah, but still nothing making me want to play.

Damn it, PvP still feels so dull. Argh....!

This update is exactly what I thought it was going to be. People on reddit are so pissed it’s kind of funny.

Although to be fair, I guess I didn’t foresee Hunters getting fucked once again. I can always count on Bungie to hit bellow my very low expectations.

I’m now following the development of this game out of a morbid sense of curiosity.

Just as an FYI, I updated the original post to reflect the exact changes from the patch notes, link to the patch notes, a few things players found through testing, new Mercules904 spreadsheet, etc. I also added a few "Hot Takes" about the update from True Vanguard, Datto, and links to Briar Rabbit and Aztecross.

So as far as my "Hot Take" of playing it a couple nights this week, I've found I don't really enjoy Quickplay much more than I before. Predominately because they didn't tweak matchmaking settings at all, which still feature heavy SBMM settings (with a low population like now, it isn't fun for higher skilled players like myself due to massive lag that was very noticeable), frequent Teams vs Solos, players who refuse to adjust to the new Movement Abilities (mainly Teammates that will not push opponents, but rather sit back and wait to teamshot/angle other players, hopefully this will improve over time), and my biggest issue which is horrific respawn locations that are extremely evident via the now shorter Quickplay respawn timers at 2s. On many occasions it was beyond infuriating this week to wipe 2-3 players solo (mainly because other players aren't use to the new quick movement speeds, and I played a LOT of D1 at these same/similar speeds), only to be stuck right next to the same players I just killed respawning at full health plus overshield, shooting me when I'm still half health or below from engaging them... those same players. Bungie needs to do some serious behind work on their Spawn Zones, as they have been terrible since launch, but with increased Spawn Speed, it's actively ruining the Crucible, especially the new Rumble. A lot of people are claiming it's 8v8 being too crowded, and maybe that's the case too, but the Spawns are all kinds of broken in D2.

I do however want to give Trials a bit of a go tonight, so I'll update this is it is better, because parts of the new gameplay were fun (Movement Speed of Titan/Warlock Jumps, and availability of Heavy), but the unfairness of Spawns was kind of ruining my fun. The problems I expected did seem to exist though, with Power Ammo control being the most important aspect of the game since Power Ammo is drastically better than Kinetic/Energy Weapons. I do still think TTK needs to go down so players can combat Power Ammo more effectively without it, but all of that will be more evident within Trials with a competent team rather than going solo like I did all week.

Yeah I jumped back in for a few matches after not having played the game since Curse of Osiris came out and I think the new movement speed stuff is nice, but I already feel like I'm back in Destiny 1 where the most effective means of winning a fight is to use your OHK weapons (in this case Power weapons) and start/finish every single fight with an ability. Power ammo spawns too fast and frequently and makes controlling those spawns an intense breakneck fight and with the somewhat faster abilities, I was definitely starting to feel the same sense of bullshit fatigue I had in D1 when ability spam and shotgun/snipers were king, just to a lesser extent. And yeah, the faster respawns means the already mediocre spawns are now simply infuriating and Rumble itself feels like such a half-baked implementation almost solely because of the awful spawns.

I guess all the PvE buffs are nice but with zero incentive to actually engage with PvE, I can't bring myself to really care too much about them at least right now. At this point, well actually since December, I'm just gonna check out the DLC when it comes out since I already paid for it and then probably go back to other stuff. Hopefully Bungie can figure out what they actually want Destiny 2 to be at some point in the future here.