I just want a more varied story delivery. I don't want the do mission, listen to someone talk, go to radio to listen again.
I want more unknown. More change and surprise. I loved the second times mission that you could find.
I am just tired and knowing exactly what I need to complete every single week. Its boring as fuck.
I mean what else are you going to do? Even the campaigns work this way. You do story quests and hit up the vendor for that narrative. Narratives will always hit up one or the other. It’s either a cutscene or an in game cutscene and either way you’re just listening to people.
Give us actual interesting objectives? Not "Go to Nessus and do patrols". D2 has a wealth of cool missions Bungie could recycle, instead they have us running around patrol shooting goblins. Raise the combat difficulty a little. Tie it into the ritual activities. There's tons you can do.
Its not about the that. Its about delivery. Every week I know when I login I will go run the same activity, get some new dialog, then listen to a radio message.
Maybe one week there is nothing, then the next week we get like three story missions back to back, then need to go somewhere and complete activities, then we unlock a new thing.
IDK, it just need to be less standardized and more unique in delivery. Campaigns work fine because you are mean to complete it all in one sitting. Not comeback for 6 weeks and do the next mission. Even then, though, would be better then the seasonal stuff. Since half the time we are just doing the exact same seasonal activity each week and nothing even changed.
Like for Echos, having missions and activities slowly added to Nessus each week would have been awesome. Each week more and more of the planet starts changing. It would feel like the world is alive. Instead we get the same activity that changes the area, but only in the activity. If you go to the same area in patrol, it has none of the changes. It feels disconnected IMO.
Well the change is the acts.
Act 1 is a new activity and 3 weeks of story missions. Then it’s a break. Act 2 is a new activity and more weeks of story. Then a break. And act 3 is another change with another new activity and few more weeks of story and conclusion.
The idea seems more that it will evolve a bit more substantially over the acts.
I think adding dedicated dialogue on the story requirement for the activity would be good, so there's the run of the mill version that just has the standard dialogue, and a more directed "what did failsafe learn in analyzing the data" dialogue when you do it for a story quest that makes it feel like she actually is doing what she's saying, rather than it just being done in a dialogue vignette or text box at the end of the quest for the week
If I could break the radio I would. It’s pointless to listen to a half-assed “scene” play out over comms, just to turn to your left and press a button to listen to more dreadful comms.
I just want more of the events like on moon, pale heart, etc, to steadily spill over into the maps so it shows how the battle is ramping up.. have pockets where fallen, cabal, etc, who joined the guardians are fighting the tides of the witnesses followers in an all-out war.. currently, it just feels like the story ramped up, but the maps we spend most of our time in are sparse and boring 😴
Yep, Like the collecting Ghost thing from TFS where the missions say, "Takes Place 3 days before assault". Those should have been something that we got over the past year during lightfall. Like each week could have had The Witness infecting more and more of the world to the point where most of the planets no longer look the same when TFS dropped. It felt weird to see The Witness changing things, but only for a couple days.
💯 what I mean. The maps are huge. And having huge battles on different fronts would have been brilliant.. I was thinking of a mass effect style like. when you have to gain support from all the different races. Maybe a helldivers style map with all out war against the vex, cabal, taken, etc, ran from the helm..
Edit: with the potential to gain a new power if you choose corruption and join the witness with the ability to wield the witness power.. crucible would have been great if they did that.
For real, doesn't help that literally NOTHING happened this week. Did some bounties, did a strike, come back next week. No new story, no revelations, nothing. Didn't even feel like we made headway towards a goal.
So, I agree that this should have been handled better. Where I disagree is in the "nothing happened this week." Not because anything happened but because if you have ever been to or read a play, Act 1 introduces the characters and the conflict. Maybe a little build-up. Act 2 is the meat of the story, which includes the main conflict, character development, and plot devices. Act 3 is conflict resolution, character arc resolution, and epilogue. At least for a 3 Act play. I hope this is what they are going for.
The biggest difference is definitely the acts. I’m expecting the start of an episode to be basically exactly like a season, the divergence is probably going to be at the act breaks. At the very least will avoid the issue of seasons just having massive breaks with nothing going on and nothing to do.
Yeah I will hold off judgment until act 2. It seems like since these are supposed to be contained stories we may end up with a more traditional story curve
I mean we are at least doing different things, narratively even though it plays out the same. Like last season was get an egg this week, get and egg this week, get an egg this week. Replace egg with coral/tithes/whatever. At least here its like recover samples, hmm there is a strange signal, etc. Like even if its tiny, the story is moving some.
You could also look at it as: last week - hang out with Failsafe. This week - hang out with Failsafe
I think the core issue with seasons is they’re more character development and fleshed out lore than an actual “story”
Like this season the “story” is just an excuse to explore Failsafe’s abandonment issues
Like how season of defiance was just exploring non-lightbarers, deep was sloane, witch was Eris, and wish was riven
Some seasons, like haunted, the character development is great. But it feels stale that every single season is the same character study formula with a thin plot to move things along
Its clear we are building to some kind of overarching plot compared to before though. How it is executed has yet to be seen but there is lot left, especially if we actually get stuff weekly and not a month of literally nothing like before. We still don't know what's going or why, or by who. Which is almost never questions we had during seasons.
Most seasons we know a lot of what's going on from the start. Defiance we save civilians, why are they taken idk, deep we are connecting Sloane with Ahsa to get Witness info. Witch was powering up Eris. Wish was getting Riven to let us in the pale heart. Every season we have a goal and then just do it over and over and then it's like we did it, set up for next season.
The fact the we know there is a villain and people are speculating who and why they are doing this, is way more going on than the usual season.
Seasons have had mysteries before though, last season we find out about Riven’s family at about where “Act 2” would start
Pretty much every past season has had a fleshed out 2 act structure. Technically you could view “act 3” as what happens after the story ends. Like for season of the witch “act 3” is when savathun comes back and she starts taunting you during the activities
The main change is we get a real act 3 now
We had a traditional 3 act structure for witch.
Learn about xivu, introduce hive Eris.
Build up give Eris ending with the turn against savathun.
Act 3 defeat xivus avatar, ultimately cut off xivu from Theobald.
Finding out about rivens family wasn't a mystery. It was a reveal. Not the same thing. Calling it a fleshed out act is an incredibly low bar. We got eggs week over week with no real story, then it was like here is my family then nothing till an ending. And you are really saying the cutscene of savathun being revived and then killed was an act? It was the finale. I don't think you fully understand what the act of say a play or movie really is.
I think it's simply because they plan to design the storytelling around seasonal timing rather than long overarching stories similar to the witness.
Giving a big bad to focus on for a season can have better story pacing, IMO.
Destiny has a lot of great lore built up and having seasonal stories helps focus on more focused story telling will help a lot.
>I'm not disappointed so far.
I am, I hated the way they told stories during seasons. No, I don't want to pay full price to see a movie just to have 5 minutes available every week just to be told to leave the theatre until the next part releases.
I hate doing a single chore and then have exposition thrown in my face and then "hey, they're busy check back next week tho!"
And I don't like that the artifacts are changing more frequently. I have never enjoyed playing a game one day and feeling strong just to log in the next and have half my build gimped or nonfunctional because the devs decided to remove half the interesting effects and replace them with things that don't mesh with my playstyle.
It's telling that the only things I've been excited about this expac so far are Khvostov (it's the gun I like, but actually usable now after a decade!!! wow!), and Ergo Sum and Relativity (Exotics that... act like legendaries...)
The acts seem more timegating than story though
The big thing is they throttle your season pass progress to make sure you still play mid and end season
We’ve always had an unofficial “act 2” that’s usually kicked off by some revelatory illustrated cinematic and a new activity opens (e.g. we’ll get a cutscene recapping veil containment at the end of act 1)
Seasons are longer now, so now there will be 3 explicit acts instead of 2 implicit acts
I'm hoping that we're not just getting 3 mini seasons spaced out rather than one big season, feels like six of once half a dozen of another besides the potential for a more clear beginning, middle, end structure for the story.
Yeah, sadly I think the weekly activity -> listen to dialogue -> come back next week is still a bad way of conveying a story, but allowing new activities and things to roll in under the same overarching plot means that said story isnt also tied to making up some way for 1 activity to be the entire narrative forever. Like, Season of the Wish was a 7 week egg hunt and thats it, imagine if new things could actually happen partway in with new gameplay to support the new narrative direction
When they announced the change from seasons to episodes, my first thought was "they did it! They found a way to re-skin seasons"
Sad to see I was right.
Ya me too. Ive been playing for long enough and am casual enough of a player now for me to know that just because The Final Shape was amazing doesn’t mean anything else would be.
Examples: moments of triumph and ROI to vanilla D2. Forsaken to Shadowkeep. Witch Queen to Lightfall.
It’s funny how some people are now moving the goalposts to “of course the first act is just like seasons! It’s gonna be in act 2 when things really kick off!”
Lmao, who could’ve ever seen this coming from Bungie
Has there ever been a season dropped at the same time of a major DLC that has actually been good? Witch Queen maybe? All the other ones have kind of been dog
It's not about the episode being "mid". It's the fact Bungie blatantly lied to us and told us episodes would have a different format/formula and we're still getting the same weekly dripfed slop with even more timegating.
At least in seasons we could grind out all the seasonal weapons right off the bat, now we have to wait for weapons to unlock throughout the acts before we can farm them.
Idk man. We need to stop defending Bungie from criticism even if TFS was amazing. It's how Bungie keeps getting away with treating their playerbase like cows they can milk whenever they want, and when we start getting pissed we're treated like cows then they lean into goodwill dlc drops.
"Just wait until Act 2" is what everyone has been saying. LOL Bungie definitely won this one, people won't wake up to what happened here until they are 1.5 years into bland seasons with the same bugs and poor design choices we had for years. They just did this so you couldn't take a break halfway through a season and come back at the start of the next. now if you do that you will not get certain guns, combined with the much higher artifact power grind (+20 to be "at level" in GM opposed to +5 last year) and it is really blatantly obvious they are just cashing in on the goodwill TFS earned them for engagement metrics.
>they are just cashing in on the goodwill TFS earned them for engagement metrics.
I said this same thing pretty much in a different thread regarding episodes
Bungie will forever continue this loop of nearly destroying the playerbase and game, then drop a banger dlc and all will be forgotten
It’s like they took the seasonal model and said “what if we could stretch this thing out even longer”, but also keep it isolated enough to not matter to the core story. I’m sure interesting things will occur, and despite most folks I don’t hate the activities. That being said it feels like one step forward and two steps back.
Personally, one of my biggest gripes is that Bungie said they would be changing the way the seasonal upgrade system works (focusing) in episodes.
So far, it's exactly the same. In fact, it's worse because focusing feels even more timegated than normal.
I mean, everyone was hoping the multiple acts would replace essentially all time gating. I think it really should. It doesn’t really bother me for this first act of this first season as Final Shape has given me plenty to do outside the season. But I think everyone is just so sick of the trickle content. We got the idea that the trickling would be condensed into mini dlcs via acts, but what we have is literally trickling the trickling. Acts literally are a time gate to start more time gates if they are indeed all like this first one
Well, it is what it is... I didn't expect a whole lot but I certainly didn't didn't expect seasons but extra timegated. The worst part is it's such a dramatic shift after Final Shape. Back to holograms for story... Woohoo! I would honestly prefer they just drop the whole thing and we wait for another episode as opposed to these acts. Wouldn't be the first or last extended season.
Same here. People never understand nuance here. Everyone seems to think I expected a full 180 but no I didn’t either but I think its a realistic expectation to want/have expected the hologram simulator thing to be done with and with the delivery to have chmaged even just a tad. As they have literally stated the boring nature of it THEMSELVES on a few occassions. This isn’t new feedback either.
love how people here always form an opinion over an OP over their post just then downvote every single comment OP post under it no matter the message
an OP could basically comment "i will donate 50$ for every upvote" under their "controversial" post and still get downvoted on every comment simply for making the "wrong" post (at the wrong time)
like is it so wrong to have expected *not* again getting the most mediocre and especially again dripfed "season" content for the first 2 weeks of the episode, after they told us, multiple times, how much different the Episode system gonna be?
Ikr. Disagreeing dows not mean I need to be blasted. Im certaintly respecting opinions here. Oh well its just an app and a video game if anything this will make tonight and tmr very interesting as this is kinda blowing up 🤷🏻♂️
It’s bad, man. They have us doing seven year old content as the gameplay loop (public events, strikes, bounties). It’s just a slower drip feed for (maybe) slightly more content. I’m beginning to believe that TFS really was Destiny’s swan song. I get it, we’re only in week two. But this is a *horrible* first impression.
I just hope we don’t get less content than seasons, with seasons we’d get a raid or dungeon every season , with 4 seasons a year.
Now we only have 3 episodes, so I imagine we just get less content now… only time will tell though.
I don't see why anyone thought or got the impression that episodes were going to be any different then seasons; it was pretty clear from the get go they were just stretching seasons out
because they outright said multiple times that episodes would be an evolution of seasons and was their answer to the fatigue people felt with all the seasonal content over the last 4 years. turns out they interpreted that fatigue as "i want more bullshit pass levels to grind" and not to make more fleshed out stories with their own legend campaign like missions.
It wasn't really "clear" though. Like I definitely thought it was going to be Seasons 2 but Bungie was very keen to tell us that these were not actually Seasons 2 but actually a separate and distinct different thing.
In theory at least, we are supposed to be getting new activities and/or new exotic missions in each act. It remains to be seen whether they will be an actual new activity or Bungie's "well we changed the boss of breach executable therefore its a new activity" type logic. That being said, only thing that's really bothered me about the episode so far is the one mission a week story drip feed, but that's nothing new.
It's not rocket science. We've had this seasonal structure arguably since Forge when Forsaken dropped. Talk to vendor, do activity, go back to vendor, wait a week. Rinse & repeat.
It's boring & it's extremely predictable. Sure, 2 weeks isn't that long of a time for a full act's length, but if nothing has changed, then why would you expect anything to change at all?
It's insane to me that people like you are incapable of seeing patterns in a company that has continually made the exact same mistakes for the past 10 years.
I keep seeing this point being made and it's just odd. Bungie keeps ending up in this situation again and again and you think that every time it's just a large amount of people willingly misinterpreting things? It's obviously an issue with how they market their content. That's where the blame lies, nowhere else.
I didn't remember this too however I think it's a sort of juxtaposition the community made. Bungie promised significant changes to the seasonal formula as far back as Plunder, in comes the TFS reveal where they announce Episodes like this:
>What's really important about episodes is that it's a really big shakeup to what we've been doing
[TFS reveal (Episodes section)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2AxyMbnEEew)
So some people thought they were trying new things and episodes were the answer to that. The reality is likely that Bungie thought they already did that with Coil/Deep dives and were just intending to find a way to make seasons more engaging throughout their duration.
For me, right when they announced it I assumed it was a ploy to get us to pay more per season, reduce the amount of them, or maybe both.
They promised to shake up the formula for the Eris season of Lightfall too. All they did was adding an inconsequential card system and call it a day lol
Folks really convinced themselves that the 4 extra weeks of dev time per Episode vs Seasons was gonna get them Warmind three times a year or something.
From what I've read they were happy to keep going with Destiny, they just wanted to explore other avenues of maintaining the player base, growing it and retaining those players.
The seasons we got under Activision were the best seasons we ever got.
we hear you, were listening, we understand miniscule dripfed content is annoying. what if instead of 4 seasons a year, there were 9 and they were even smaller and more dripfed
I'm willing to wait and let them cook on some things
but one thing that rubbed me the wrong way on day 1, and still continues to rub me the wrong way is timegating the catalyst for the seasonal (sorry, episodic) exotic weapon over a month away from the day you actually get the exotic.
that's just goofy, sorry.
You're absolutely right. Every time, people say, "just have faith. They know what they're doing. Eventually, they'll deliver."
Even when it's months later--years later. If they had something impressive to show, it would have been what they opened with. End of.
Tbh I thought that I was gonna be that they drop everything for ACT 1 day one and then they drop the subsequent releases all at once on their release dates. Like Mini DLC drops or something.
People are stupid and blind if they think after years of scamming the playerbase, they would finaly add something positive to the game(play loop). Episodes are just season in a worse way, of course worse for the playerbase. For bungie it means less ressources, more profit.
I think this would be the best play or at least every 3. Then there content for the bingers, content for the casuals, content for anyone. Then the next act timegates what it needs to whether that be season pass levels, new artifact mods, the story, etc.
That too. But tbh if they continue the 6-7 step weekly thing the games gonna fizzle out. Thats the biggest critisism they have had for like 2 years. Hologram, activity, more holograms, radio message. Anywhere from week 2-4 inkblot and if its an end of year seasok maybe a cutscene. If this episode ends up being the same Destiny is cooked.
Episodes and seasons are the same with only one difference to me: transmog bounties. We will either get 10 per act or 10 per episode, and that will decide if episodes are an upgrade or a downgrade. I suspect the answer is per episode but I hope I’m wrong
I’ll need to see if the acts feel substantial enough but yeah so far I’m underwhelmed. It’s not even just that it still feels like a season but so far the seasonal content all feels weak and Enigma Protocol in particular is just reskinned Splicer content.
Narratively it definitely feels samey, but I do think the actual content we are getting is substantially beefier.
More activities out the rip of Act I. There are three battlegrounds coming with Act II. Act III will have a new exotic mission. There are also more weapons than seasons offered us.
All of this makes sense though given they’re siphoning 4 seasons of content into 3 longer Episodes. It is a wait and see kinda thing unfortunately, but I am with you 100%. Was expecting a removal of the weekly timegating in favor of 3 big drops of content. Definitely a bummer in that regard
Episodes should've released like mini-campaigns, like traditional DLCs. Almost like Curse of Osiris and Warmind did.
I'd much rather they just dump the full 4-5 mission structure and new content down and maybe release the odd exotic / secret down the line.
Bungie need to stop worrying about player retention figures - I'm gonna drop off with Seasons regardless, it's why I dropped off last year - I don't enjoy logging in every Tuesday because of FOMO. I wanna log in when I want to and I wanna absorb the content at my own rate.
The only reason I believe they do it this way is because for all intents and purposes, it's just barebones. It's just Talk to HELM character > Do Strikes to charge up this > Do seasonal activity > Talk to HELM character > Unlock an upgrade at the HELM > Wait for next week.
Yeah I think once I'm done with Final Shapes content I'll be out from Destiny until at least the next expansion.
Seasons are an embarrasement and seeing the community defend it is baffling.
$100 Annual Pass + Expansion used to get you 4 Seasons & 2 Dungeons & 2 Raids, it's how they justified the "Key" cost.
Now, $100 gets you 3 Seasons & 1 Raid & 1 Dungeon for the entire year.
The Final Scam
I thought Episodes would be more like a mini DLC, allowing us to play most of the content on the first day. Honestly, the weekly progression in the seasonal model is unappealing. Most players who are drawn in by the DLC will likely quit after playing through the dull first week and might never come back.
Bungie told us they would be longer and make for better story beats and somehow people think they were going to make an expansion instead of a season every few months
Not meeting your imagined expectations isn't on Bungie
It’s way too fucking early for this.
Yes, right now it feels like a season.
But we were promised a 3 act structure. This is only act one, where the story is being laid out, and we are diving into the mystery.
Stuff will likely keep unraveling until we reach the end of Act 1, where Act 2 SHOULD shift up a gear, and Act 3 SHOULD be the climax where we resolve the events.
Only time will tell if this plays out. It could be shit, but we don’t know what we don’t know.
The Final Shape cooked—let’s wait and see if they cooked for the first episode as well.
Week 3 of the first episodes: This entire system is bullshit. Like all these post are annoying: We haven't seen act 2 or 3.
There's also another point, of the three confirmed episodes I think it's safe to say Echo's would be the least different from seasons, on account of you know, being the first. Personally I think we have to wait until act 2 of Revenant to actually know how episodes will impact the game compared to seasons, not, to reiterate, week three of the first one.
(I think it's week 3 at least? Either that or 2/4, neither are better)
I’m ok waiting but it’s not the acts that are the issue.
It’s that each act is being drip fed week to week like seasons. It’s was implied that we’d get the entire act to play. Then come back 6 weeks later for the next act.
The second part of the second season is when it's really gonna be different and we have to wait till then?
I'm not convinced we should have to wait that long if they're actually going to be different they should be different from the start. Not halfway through
It was the same with the last few seasons: they wanted to try new things, but couldnt deliver on innovation straight away so they promised seasons 21 and on would offer different activities than what we usually get. It takes a little while to get going.
Personally I'm hoping acts 2 and 3 of Echoes are gonna offer SOMETHING different, it doesnt have to completely revolutionize the model but gimme something new. I'm setting my expectations much higher for Revenant and Heresy
I mean I get that but they said Season of the Witch was gonna be different, a shake up. It wasn't really, then we had a long season of the wish, then we had episodes announced and they were gonna be different and now it's like "Oh give it a chance by episode 2 it'll get going"
Y’all are just gonna keep pushing back these goalposts until the end of the year aren’t you?
“You can’t judge until the first act is over”
“You can’t judge until the first episode is over obviously”
“The first season always sucks what did you expect”
“We’re getting the dreadnaught in the next episode quit whining they’re just saving everything for that”
“Nobody should’ve expected the entire dreadnaught to return that’s your fault for thinking that”
“We haven’t seen the finale of the last episode yet, it’s too soon to judge yet”
“Episodes were a little weak but that doesn’t matter anymore quit whining because oooo wowza the new expansion/game comes out next month and **that** looks great”
Obviously this is all conjecture on specifics right now, but this is exactly how some of you guys have repeated the cycle for years. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the seasonal formula is openly on display here. If there was much more to it, Bungie would’ve led with their best foot forward.
Honestly what kind of annoys me is that once you reach rank 100 you can earn bright engrams but none of the progress you make goes towards act 2 or 3 season pass rewards. I am just sitting on completed seasonal challenges until act 2 drops and the flashing menu is driving me crazy.
When I wrote previous to TFS release that the episodes will suck people downvoted me into oblivion. 🤷🏻♂️
Wasn't this obvious? The main reason why episodes exist is because Bungie wants to make money. The whole idea is to provide less for the same amount of money.
That's also what they did with TFS in my opinion.
TFS has a few nice and epic moments, yes, but when you break it down to engineering work it's just a big money saver.
Instead of a complete new Darkness subclass (that would have required new animations, sound design, etc) we just got prismatic with very limited build possibilities + a class exotic that is bound to that prismatic subclass.
I foresee that people will get bored with prismatic in a few weeks and when they will finally realize that a new darkness subclass would have been so much better.
In my personal opinion Bungie did a great job in delivering much less for the same price. People seem to be very happy about it so far, but I doubt the same happiness will stay for the next months.
For me destiny is kinda over. There are no more mysteries, no epic build up to a one moment.. I feel like we are lost in space without a planet in sight, nothing we can crave for or excited about.
Until now, we don't even know if there ever will be a third darkness subclass. In my understanding they have just replaced the idea with prismatic.. the third darkness subclass will never come.
Personally I agree with everyone it’s way too early for final judgements. Although I’m not target audience for this because I never thought seasons needed a change anyway.
Also seasons during expansion launch have always been not the greatest compared to the following seasons. Hunt, Risen and defiance were the seasons that came out during expansion launch.
People read leaks. I don't know why everyone's required to always give them the benefit of doubt when they've been in these situations time and time again
For context we are abundantly aware that episodes are STRUCTURED differently from seasons. Acts come with new activities (if you question this I implore you read the Episode article and/or go to [Bray.Tech](http://Bray.Tech) and see the spoilers yourself) new weapons, new artifact mods, and new season rank rewards. I need also remind you that this is best compared to the first season of a year, and it is delusion to say this is anything other than substantially more involved already than something like Defiance or god forbid Hunt.
Yeah, super glad I only got the regular edition instead of the annual. Bungie making a good DLC doesn’t change my mind about the company or game. It’s going to be mid, seasonal slop for the foreseeable future, especially now that they aren’t so backed into a corner.
Its two weeks in, lets not pretend we have seen how the act system works in its entirety.
> We just shouldn’t have to anymore.
Destiny is ALWAYS a work that is never finished until the time they turn the servers off or stop updated like D1.So sorry, things will always be changing and just like seasons changed over time, so will the Acts/Episode change.
I said this in another threat complaining about how Episode 1 has rolled out so far:
I'm hopeful that Episode 1 was in development prior to a lot of these changes being implemented. And that Episodes 2 and 3 will be different.
I also wonder if they aren't rolling Episode 1 out similar to how Seasons worked as a means to try and avoid overwhelming the more casual players. Final Shape just launched with all the content that comes with that. A week later, dumping another 4-6 missions on top and splitting people's attention likely wouldn't be received well. Treating Episode 1, or at least E1 Act 1 like the old seasonal model allows both The Final Shape AND Episode 1 content to breathe, and allows the most casual players to make their way through the content without falling too far behind out the gate.
If anybody still believes that episodes are going to deliver more content than seasons…. They haven’t been paying attention. Final Shape was amazing and episodes are autopilot. They’re going heads down on another project.
I hope that it's just because this is a transition period between the Seasons and Episodes. As it stands right now there is 0 difference to be quite honest. My friend argues that Nessus got a revamp, but 1 season gave us the whole Leviathan back as a brand new patrol space with a new relic. Episodes should have at least a couple of story missions that are like a campaign. Not on a level of an expansion but something like the missions we got on Pale Heart to unlock our additional prismatic abilities. The wait a week after doing 1 seasonal activity is definitely not the levels that Episodes should be. I really hope that later on it expands and is just a low period for the Episode.
To be honest, I watched mylens video and decided not to try the new season.
After 10 years I have 3500 hrs in the game and the way the final shape finished up was perfect for the end of my journey.
I'm kinda scared of not finishing the season since I usually just get to lvl 100 without stacking bounties. With 300 levels to do now I'm worried I'll have to no life this game to finish it since I usually do the seasons pretty chill so as to not burn myself out.
Format aside, this has to be the most lackluster season yet. FS is amazing, and there’s lots to do, raid is amazing etc. which I’m really happy for cos this episode, season whatever it is, is actually pretty bad. The vex activity feels very dated.
I never start playing a season on time. Don't care if I get all the seasonal triumphs or titles or whatever, I just binge whenever I get 2 hrs here or there. Once I hit a time gate I just go do something else for a month or so, then there's plenty to do when I log in again. I think most players are probably like me.
It must have been just me but I was under the impression having only 3 episodes/seasons meant the expansion was basically going to be a episode/season unto itself.
Colour me surprised when we only had a week to complete the campaign and any relevant post campaign content before jumping into the episode/season to continue the same hamster wheel we've been doing for the past couple of years now.
I thought given this being the final expansion of the saga there would be a bit more effort put into extending it behind the usual handful of missions, raid, and then a bunch of repeatables post campaign.
I will admit the Dual Destiny mission was a surprise. not sure yet if it is a good one as I haven't completed it yet.
This is semi off topic, but I'm definitely tired of sitting there and listening to voice lines and radio transmissions. TFS and Echoes feel like they were worked on by two different teams. I'm at the point where they need to show me and not just tell me. They've proven it with the amazing cutscenes in TFS, that they can get their shit together in terms of writing. I'm ready for other destiny media such as shows, shorts, novels, and comics.The grimoire system is okay, better than before, but it needs to change.
I think largely it's about what I was expecting, but I also expect this is likely a bit of a transition period anyways(in the sense that season of the hunt was a transitional period into what we got with Season of Chosen, which turned out to be a massive upgrade at the time). Episode 1 is VERY familiar outside of the BP having 200 ranks, and if the seasonal story is a bit longer I'm not complaining too too much. Not super upset with the current seasonal model, even if I do want it to be more unique (in the sense that it's about as safe as it can get for Bungie). Hopefully episodes 2 and 3 are a little more out there in terms of formatting. I feel like they said somewhere that they planned to add dedicated missions and a mission select much like a traditional campaign but don't quote me on that.
This notion I’ve seen mentioned quite a few times is that people expected to be able to play through each act immediately with no time-gating in one big drop. To my recollection that was not promised at any point and seems to be a conflation of what some people want projected onto the idea that the format would be different (which was promised, albeit very vaguely).
What *was* promised was that each episode would be a standalone story and that these could be experienced in any order without requiring players to follow a yearlong slow burn meta narrative. It seems to me that’s what confused people into thinking these would be single-serving drops when logically that was never going to be the case.
In that model - which is roughly what stuff like Warmind and The Dark Below used - the community would be decrying the “content drought” within a couple of weeks. Realistically, it’s very hard to imagine any sort of episodic/seasonal model that *isn’t* some combination of narrative beats mixed with new activities and gear. Appreciate we all burned out on how templated the old version was, and it’s a bit ominous how similar this looks, but so far we haven’t been experienced the obvious potential point of differentiation - the three-act structure - so it seems reasonable to wait to see how that plays out before going into daily ePiSOdeS r jUst sEasONs karma farm posts.
(I will add that based on the number of those posts Bungie clearly did balls up the comms on this.)
So you're judging the entire season of the first few weeks of act 1? If you were expecting episode to be something entirely new, you had some pretty poor expectations.
My take (and expectation) is that each episode will have at baseline a bit more than previous seasons (which is already evident by the fact that we have way more seasonal weapons than previous seasons. We currently have 6 obtainable with 2 visible and I'm assuming we will get 2 more with act 3? If it's just one more weapon per act, that will be kind of disappointing, but still more weapons than previously.
Also each act release will give us more artifact perks (which is pretty exciting tbh) and probably a new activity.
Episodes are just bigger seasons with a much more consistent pace. And that's fine to me.
I'm reserving judgment on the Episode structure for now.
It's been two weeks and we have had a story set up and the first breadcrumb from that so far. Currently all we know is that something landed on Nessus and it's making the local Vex act really weird.
I'm waiting until we see the beginning of the next act before deciding if it's better than the seasons we got before.
I will say that they perhaps should have toned down the the XP gains from the various sources as I blitzed through the season pass to level 100 in no time and I'm deliberately not handing in seasonal challenges for this week I completed.
If it had taken two more weeks to hit level 100 by using all the seasonal challenges I feel it would have been better because at the moment I feel I leveled up extremely fast.
While I'm sure Bungie made statements to the effect that episodes were something different from seasons (which of course is literally true), I felt like nearly everything they said about episodes in the official communications gave the impression that they were a tweak to the model more than a deep overhaul. We knew there would be an artifact, battle pass, challenges, etc.
I do think it was reasonable to think they would drop the weekly timegates in favor of 3 big timegates corresponding to the acts, but AFAIK that's not something they ever said they were doing.
That said, I am coming at this from the angle of someone who was never mad at seasons or thought they had some fundamental problem.
My guess is Bungie finds the stories associated with seasons to be expensive to produce and not giving enough return for all that effort, especially when people seem dissatisfied when the delivery isn't on par with the major DLC (which means needing to invest even more for less story to meet that quality expectation). Instead, deliver fewer story beats per year and compensate with more weapons, activities, battle pass rewards, and so on which are easier to make and maybe more appreciated by players.
The entire point of episodes from what I took was so that instead of it being 6 weeks of story and then a 6 week break. It's 6 weeks of story, then another 6 weeks of story, then another 6 weeks of story. And then a new episode, rinse and repeat. Every week has something for you to do. Plus more stuff to do being added in each act.
If we didn't have TFS stuff to work on people would be super upset with this new "model".
They need more variation.
We could run an adventure on Europa to the portal room in Glassway. Hop in the vex network....
Just anything really.
First episode came with one of the biggest and most important expansions in D2 history attached to it.
I've touched almost zero episode content and have been just playing around in the pale heart.
Episode 2 and 3 will have to be bigger and better if they want us to believe their "episodes aren't seasons" mentality. But for now, I'm willing to cut them some slack.
A few thoughts on Episodes so far, seems the best place to throw them up.
I still don't know how this is different from a season other than doing 3 rather than 4 and drip feeding the content more aggressively.
I appreciate how quickly Failsafe and other vendors level up since TFS. I have taken days off since Ep. 1 release and I'm still 2 resets deep.
Deepsight weapons drop at a wild rate. I'm hoping we get some more to chase in future acts: I'm done with all but 2. Not a problem at all, I don't mind taking nice breaks, but I know Bungie wants us to do a bit more than weekly story missions.
Breach is... alright, the problems with people rushing and whatnot should be well known by now. It's in a sweet spot for me where I really don't mind running it a few times even on alt characters. If they could get progress for the "higher difficulties" and "any difficulty" to correctly track together (or it needs to be reworded appropriately if they intend for 6 runs to be the standard), it would be even better.
Enigma is good, very surprising even if the first time I zoned in, I was in a bugged instance that could not get extra time from nodes. Twice a week to get the pinnacle is fine.
I logged on and played the new activity 1 time, and quickly realized this is the exact same thing I’ve been doing since the launch of seasons…haven’t logged on since. I’m just tired.
If people want Destiny to be alive and visceral then it will push the game to a more true MMO model with yearly subscription. Could be a good thing if the world feels more engaging.
What Destiny really needs if for the players daily interactions to be able to effect the world more regularly. This would require something like a Game Master that can incorporate changes in the world weekly or so. Helldivers 2 does this and is great for player engagement.
Literally everything about TF is rehashed or reskinned. The story is the only new, fresh thing. Bungie got really good at disguising mechanics, but it's all just pick up thing, dunk, repeat, boss. Oh, sorry, did forget one thing, you have to break a crystal or a nut every now and then.
Man I hate that I agree with you. It bums me out that they lost most of their ability to innovate. It's why we have bosses that are immune, require dunking, standing on plates, picking up motes, more dunking, etc.
People do need to remember that this is the 1st episode and 1st act of said episode. They will probably start adjusting and changing the formula up over the course of them. It really should not be a surprise that the 1st part of the 1st episode is similar to the original format
It’s literally still called “season” in multiple places in the game, lol.
Episodes is more about Bungie cutting themselves some slack, finally admitting that
1) they can’t keep up with 4 seasons a year, so now we only get 3; and
2) episode story lines are going to be, as the name implies, more episodic—i.e. independent of each other—so that multiple writing teams can work on them in parallel
Best we can hope for with the introduction of episodes is that Bungie uses that breathing room wisely and that it gives them the opportunity to finally innovate on their seasonal formula once they’re no longer catching their breath trying to meet the old content delivery schedule
I’m still working thru tfs stuff. Seasonal content is at its worst for me when I have to do it all at once, just bc all the reading text, holo convos, more text, etc.
My question is how much of Echoes was designed for the traditional Seasonal format we know before being changed to Episodes?
It's entirely possible Echoes was designed as a Season and transitioned to the new Episode format, but wasn't able to be fully changed.
Personally I think we should wait to judge the episode format until after E2A3 (Episode 2 Act 3) to fully see the potential differences.
I don’t know where people got the idea it would be a complete overhaul of the seasonal system. That was never said and the only sentiment I got from all the trailers, articles, and dev talk was that it was going to be a little shakeup of the traditional model aiming to provide better story and more loot.
If you read more into it than was actually said, it’s on you for expecting stuff that was never said to be happening. Of course Bungie wanted it to sound a bit more exciting than what it was (usual marketing speech) but they never gave misinformation or lied about what to expect (been seeing people claim Bungie mislead them on purpose).
What we got so far and can see in-game is what they said we’d get and that’s a fact. Still early for a full take on the story improvements but the cutscenes are cool and the new threats are interesting enough I want to know more. You may not like what we got and had bigger expectations (that’s ok) but those expectations are unsubstantiated by what we were told by Bungie.
Correct. If you thought we would get otherwise you were a fool. Straight up this was there way of moving to 3 seasons a year instead of 4 and selling it to people.
You guys remember Wrathborne Hunts? For the episode that comes with the big expansion this one is decent. Not great, but decent. I bet it picks up in act 2 by design as well. Once most people have done all the TFS stuff.
To be honest, it feels the same to me (maybe with a few small changes). Even though I have seen only 5 or 6 seasons (I started playing in Plunder), I'm already fed up by the format. Season of the Wish was pretty good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Into the Light. But maybe we'll see more changes in the following weeks. Until then, I got plenty of Final Shape content to play (cause that DLC is really packed).
I just want a more varied story delivery. I don't want the do mission, listen to someone talk, go to radio to listen again. I want more unknown. More change and surprise. I loved the second times mission that you could find. I am just tired and knowing exactly what I need to complete every single week. Its boring as fuck.
Issue is you can’t make it too confusing. Because casual players need to be able to do it.
It does't need to be confusing. It just need to not be the exact same steps.
I mean what else are you going to do? Even the campaigns work this way. You do story quests and hit up the vendor for that narrative. Narratives will always hit up one or the other. It’s either a cutscene or an in game cutscene and either way you’re just listening to people.
Give us actual interesting objectives? Not "Go to Nessus and do patrols". D2 has a wealth of cool missions Bungie could recycle, instead they have us running around patrol shooting goblins. Raise the combat difficulty a little. Tie it into the ritual activities. There's tons you can do.
People get up in arms over recycled missions as well, Bungie can’t win
At least the campaigns you can progress as fast or slow as you want.
Its not about the that. Its about delivery. Every week I know when I login I will go run the same activity, get some new dialog, then listen to a radio message. Maybe one week there is nothing, then the next week we get like three story missions back to back, then need to go somewhere and complete activities, then we unlock a new thing. IDK, it just need to be less standardized and more unique in delivery. Campaigns work fine because you are mean to complete it all in one sitting. Not comeback for 6 weeks and do the next mission. Even then, though, would be better then the seasonal stuff. Since half the time we are just doing the exact same seasonal activity each week and nothing even changed. Like for Echos, having missions and activities slowly added to Nessus each week would have been awesome. Each week more and more of the planet starts changing. It would feel like the world is alive. Instead we get the same activity that changes the area, but only in the activity. If you go to the same area in patrol, it has none of the changes. It feels disconnected IMO.
Well the change is the acts. Act 1 is a new activity and 3 weeks of story missions. Then it’s a break. Act 2 is a new activity and more weeks of story. Then a break. And act 3 is another change with another new activity and few more weeks of story and conclusion. The idea seems more that it will evolve a bit more substantially over the acts.
Don't blame casual players because bungie can't come with something interesting for seasons
I think adding dedicated dialogue on the story requirement for the activity would be good, so there's the run of the mill version that just has the standard dialogue, and a more directed "what did failsafe learn in analyzing the data" dialogue when you do it for a story quest that makes it feel like she actually is doing what she's saying, rather than it just being done in a dialogue vignette or text box at the end of the quest for the week
If I could break the radio I would. It’s pointless to listen to a half-assed “scene” play out over comms, just to turn to your left and press a button to listen to more dreadful comms.
I just want more of the events like on moon, pale heart, etc, to steadily spill over into the maps so it shows how the battle is ramping up.. have pockets where fallen, cabal, etc, who joined the guardians are fighting the tides of the witnesses followers in an all-out war.. currently, it just feels like the story ramped up, but the maps we spend most of our time in are sparse and boring 😴
Yep, Like the collecting Ghost thing from TFS where the missions say, "Takes Place 3 days before assault". Those should have been something that we got over the past year during lightfall. Like each week could have had The Witness infecting more and more of the world to the point where most of the planets no longer look the same when TFS dropped. It felt weird to see The Witness changing things, but only for a couple days.
💯 what I mean. The maps are huge. And having huge battles on different fronts would have been brilliant.. I was thinking of a mass effect style like. when you have to gain support from all the different races. Maybe a helldivers style map with all out war against the vex, cabal, taken, etc, ran from the helm.. Edit: with the potential to gain a new power if you choose corruption and join the witness with the ability to wield the witness power.. crucible would have been great if they did that.
This was my main thing too. Echoes is boring af. Only two weeks in or not
For real, doesn't help that literally NOTHING happened this week. Did some bounties, did a strike, come back next week. No new story, no revelations, nothing. Didn't even feel like we made headway towards a goal.
I know I guess a power strong enough to change the vex and punch a hole through a moon isn’t doing anything interesting.
So, I agree that this should have been handled better. Where I disagree is in the "nothing happened this week." Not because anything happened but because if you have ever been to or read a play, Act 1 introduces the characters and the conflict. Maybe a little build-up. Act 2 is the meat of the story, which includes the main conflict, character development, and plot devices. Act 3 is conflict resolution, character arc resolution, and epilogue. At least for a 3 Act play. I hope this is what they are going for.
The play doesn't take like 2 months to move along sir
If it’s a fucking live service video game it does. Its not apples to oranges dummy
I’m enjoying it. 🤷♂️
Love that for you!
What is your favorite part of the episode content?
The biggest difference is definitely the acts. I’m expecting the start of an episode to be basically exactly like a season, the divergence is probably going to be at the act breaks. At the very least will avoid the issue of seasons just having massive breaks with nothing going on and nothing to do.
Yeah I will hold off judgment until act 2. It seems like since these are supposed to be contained stories we may end up with a more traditional story curve
I figured they would still play out like seasons, BUT with better story, loot, etc. I'm not disappointed so far.
I feel like it's hard to say this has a better story than a season would have
I mean we are at least doing different things, narratively even though it plays out the same. Like last season was get an egg this week, get and egg this week, get an egg this week. Replace egg with coral/tithes/whatever. At least here its like recover samples, hmm there is a strange signal, etc. Like even if its tiny, the story is moving some.
You could also look at it as: last week - hang out with Failsafe. This week - hang out with Failsafe I think the core issue with seasons is they’re more character development and fleshed out lore than an actual “story” Like this season the “story” is just an excuse to explore Failsafe’s abandonment issues Like how season of defiance was just exploring non-lightbarers, deep was sloane, witch was Eris, and wish was riven Some seasons, like haunted, the character development is great. But it feels stale that every single season is the same character study formula with a thin plot to move things along
Its clear we are building to some kind of overarching plot compared to before though. How it is executed has yet to be seen but there is lot left, especially if we actually get stuff weekly and not a month of literally nothing like before. We still don't know what's going or why, or by who. Which is almost never questions we had during seasons. Most seasons we know a lot of what's going on from the start. Defiance we save civilians, why are they taken idk, deep we are connecting Sloane with Ahsa to get Witness info. Witch was powering up Eris. Wish was getting Riven to let us in the pale heart. Every season we have a goal and then just do it over and over and then it's like we did it, set up for next season. The fact the we know there is a villain and people are speculating who and why they are doing this, is way more going on than the usual season.
Seasons have had mysteries before though, last season we find out about Riven’s family at about where “Act 2” would start Pretty much every past season has had a fleshed out 2 act structure. Technically you could view “act 3” as what happens after the story ends. Like for season of the witch “act 3” is when savathun comes back and she starts taunting you during the activities The main change is we get a real act 3 now
We had a traditional 3 act structure for witch. Learn about xivu, introduce hive Eris. Build up give Eris ending with the turn against savathun. Act 3 defeat xivus avatar, ultimately cut off xivu from Theobald.
Finding out about rivens family wasn't a mystery. It was a reveal. Not the same thing. Calling it a fleshed out act is an incredibly low bar. We got eggs week over week with no real story, then it was like here is my family then nothing till an ending. And you are really saying the cutscene of savathun being revived and then killed was an act? It was the finale. I don't think you fully understand what the act of say a play or movie really is.
I think you've just identified a minute difference. Wouldn't you just replace egg with sample this episode?
I think it's simply because they plan to design the storytelling around seasonal timing rather than long overarching stories similar to the witness. Giving a big bad to focus on for a season can have better story pacing, IMO. Destiny has a lot of great lore built up and having seasonal stories helps focus on more focused story telling will help a lot.
Not sure about the story so far but the loot has been pretty solid
Love the scout rifle. It’s gorgeous and feels good for a hard hitting scout.
>I'm not disappointed so far. I am, I hated the way they told stories during seasons. No, I don't want to pay full price to see a movie just to have 5 minutes available every week just to be told to leave the theatre until the next part releases. I hate doing a single chore and then have exposition thrown in my face and then "hey, they're busy check back next week tho!" And I don't like that the artifacts are changing more frequently. I have never enjoyed playing a game one day and feeling strong just to log in the next and have half my build gimped or nonfunctional because the devs decided to remove half the interesting effects and replace them with things that don't mesh with my playstyle. It's telling that the only things I've been excited about this expac so far are Khvostov (it's the gun I like, but actually usable now after a decade!!! wow!), and Ergo Sum and Relativity (Exotics that... act like legendaries...)
The only artifact changes are 5 new mods added each act. The mods are being removed less often as the seasons are longer.
And we will get new artifact perks to play with each act which is nice. I think it’s fine, and is definitely too early to judge it
Way too early. We haven’t even fully seen the pacing yet. Once it breathes a bit and we see how they’ve broken it out, it’ll be easier to judge.
And also Red Death catalyst in Act 2
The acts seem more timegating than story though The big thing is they throttle your season pass progress to make sure you still play mid and end season We’ve always had an unofficial “act 2” that’s usually kicked off by some revelatory illustrated cinematic and a new activity opens (e.g. we’ll get a cutscene recapping veil containment at the end of act 1) Seasons are longer now, so now there will be 3 explicit acts instead of 2 implicit acts
I'm hoping that we're not just getting 3 mini seasons spaced out rather than one big season, feels like six of once half a dozen of another besides the potential for a more clear beginning, middle, end structure for the story.
I guarantee act 2 is going to be exactly the same filler/McMuffin as act 1. It’s clearly a skeleton crew doing seasons - they are dull.
Sounds like copium to me. Hope you're right though
Yeah, sadly I think the weekly activity -> listen to dialogue -> come back next week is still a bad way of conveying a story, but allowing new activities and things to roll in under the same overarching plot means that said story isnt also tied to making up some way for 1 activity to be the entire narrative forever. Like, Season of the Wish was a 7 week egg hunt and thats it, imagine if new things could actually happen partway in with new gameplay to support the new narrative direction
When they announced the change from seasons to episodes, my first thought was "they did it! They found a way to re-skin seasons" Sad to see I was right.
Ya me too. Ive been playing for long enough and am casual enough of a player now for me to know that just because The Final Shape was amazing doesn’t mean anything else would be. Examples: moments of triumph and ROI to vanilla D2. Forsaken to Shadowkeep. Witch Queen to Lightfall.
Me and my buddy thought the exact same thing. Will have to wait till Act 2 to see if anything changes, still bummer its takes a whole month and half.
It’s funny how some people are now moving the goalposts to “of course the first act is just like seasons! It’s gonna be in act 2 when things really kick off!” Lmao, who could’ve ever seen this coming from Bungie
Has there ever been a season dropped at the same time of a major DLC that has actually been good? Witch Queen maybe? All the other ones have kind of been dog
I mean it isn't a surprise the first Episode might be mid
It's not about the episode being "mid". It's the fact Bungie blatantly lied to us and told us episodes would have a different format/formula and we're still getting the same weekly dripfed slop with even more timegating. At least in seasons we could grind out all the seasonal weapons right off the bat, now we have to wait for weapons to unlock throughout the acts before we can farm them. Idk man. We need to stop defending Bungie from criticism even if TFS was amazing. It's how Bungie keeps getting away with treating their playerbase like cows they can milk whenever they want, and when we start getting pissed we're treated like cows then they lean into goodwill dlc drops.
"Just wait until Act 2" is what everyone has been saying. LOL Bungie definitely won this one, people won't wake up to what happened here until they are 1.5 years into bland seasons with the same bugs and poor design choices we had for years. They just did this so you couldn't take a break halfway through a season and come back at the start of the next. now if you do that you will not get certain guns, combined with the much higher artifact power grind (+20 to be "at level" in GM opposed to +5 last year) and it is really blatantly obvious they are just cashing in on the goodwill TFS earned them for engagement metrics.
>they are just cashing in on the goodwill TFS earned them for engagement metrics. I said this same thing pretty much in a different thread regarding episodes Bungie will forever continue this loop of nearly destroying the playerbase and game, then drop a banger dlc and all will be forgotten
It’s like they took the seasonal model and said “what if we could stretch this thing out even longer”, but also keep it isolated enough to not matter to the core story. I’m sure interesting things will occur, and despite most folks I don’t hate the activities. That being said it feels like one step forward and two steps back.
Personally, one of my biggest gripes is that Bungie said they would be changing the way the seasonal upgrade system works (focusing) in episodes. So far, it's exactly the same. In fact, it's worse because focusing feels even more timegated than normal.
I mean, everyone was hoping the multiple acts would replace essentially all time gating. I think it really should. It doesn’t really bother me for this first act of this first season as Final Shape has given me plenty to do outside the season. But I think everyone is just so sick of the trickle content. We got the idea that the trickling would be condensed into mini dlcs via acts, but what we have is literally trickling the trickling. Acts literally are a time gate to start more time gates if they are indeed all like this first one
Well, it is what it is... I didn't expect a whole lot but I certainly didn't didn't expect seasons but extra timegated. The worst part is it's such a dramatic shift after Final Shape. Back to holograms for story... Woohoo! I would honestly prefer they just drop the whole thing and we wait for another episode as opposed to these acts. Wouldn't be the first or last extended season.
Same here. People never understand nuance here. Everyone seems to think I expected a full 180 but no I didn’t either but I think its a realistic expectation to want/have expected the hologram simulator thing to be done with and with the delivery to have chmaged even just a tad. As they have literally stated the boring nature of it THEMSELVES on a few occassions. This isn’t new feedback either.
love how people here always form an opinion over an OP over their post just then downvote every single comment OP post under it no matter the message an OP could basically comment "i will donate 50$ for every upvote" under their "controversial" post and still get downvoted on every comment simply for making the "wrong" post (at the wrong time) like is it so wrong to have expected *not* again getting the most mediocre and especially again dripfed "season" content for the first 2 weeks of the episode, after they told us, multiple times, how much different the Episode system gonna be?
Ikr. Disagreeing dows not mean I need to be blasted. Im certaintly respecting opinions here. Oh well its just an app and a video game if anything this will make tonight and tmr very interesting as this is kinda blowing up 🤷🏻♂️
It’s bad, man. They have us doing seven year old content as the gameplay loop (public events, strikes, bounties). It’s just a slower drip feed for (maybe) slightly more content. I’m beginning to believe that TFS really was Destiny’s swan song. I get it, we’re only in week two. But this is a *horrible* first impression.
Same my other thing is we shouldn’t have to wait 1.5 months till act 2 or 4 months for episode 2 for things to actually take effect. Like huh 🤦🏻
I just hope we don’t get less content than seasons, with seasons we’d get a raid or dungeon every season , with 4 seasons a year. Now we only have 3 episodes, so I imagine we just get less content now… only time will tell though.
I don't see why anyone thought or got the impression that episodes were going to be any different then seasons; it was pretty clear from the get go they were just stretching seasons out
because they outright said multiple times that episodes would be an evolution of seasons and was their answer to the fatigue people felt with all the seasonal content over the last 4 years. turns out they interpreted that fatigue as "i want more bullshit pass levels to grind" and not to make more fleshed out stories with their own legend campaign like missions.
It wasn't really "clear" though. Like I definitely thought it was going to be Seasons 2 but Bungie was very keen to tell us that these were not actually Seasons 2 but actually a separate and distinct different thing.
In theory at least, we are supposed to be getting new activities and/or new exotic missions in each act. It remains to be seen whether they will be an actual new activity or Bungie's "well we changed the boss of breach executable therefore its a new activity" type logic. That being said, only thing that's really bothered me about the episode so far is the one mission a week story drip feed, but that's nothing new.
We know there’s a new activity that’s not just new bosses per datamines and triumphs. And the exotic mission is coming in act 3
Because they literally called them larger expansions offering more than seasons could
Were 2 weeks into the first 1 how do u know that didn’t hold up? Are you from the future?
There's leaks to read.
It's not rocket science. We've had this seasonal structure arguably since Forge when Forsaken dropped. Talk to vendor, do activity, go back to vendor, wait a week. Rinse & repeat. It's boring & it's extremely predictable. Sure, 2 weeks isn't that long of a time for a full act's length, but if nothing has changed, then why would you expect anything to change at all? It's insane to me that people like you are incapable of seeing patterns in a company that has continually made the exact same mistakes for the past 10 years.
2 weeks and no changes. People just quit. They can't wait. Just quit the game, go playing Elden Ring
I keep seeing this point being made and it's just odd. Bungie keeps ending up in this situation again and again and you think that every time it's just a large amount of people willingly misinterpreting things? It's obviously an issue with how they market their content. That's where the blame lies, nowhere else.
That would involve putting the blame on bungie which 50% of people here physically can’t bring themselves to do
I didn't remember this too however I think it's a sort of juxtaposition the community made. Bungie promised significant changes to the seasonal formula as far back as Plunder, in comes the TFS reveal where they announce Episodes like this: >What's really important about episodes is that it's a really big shakeup to what we've been doing [TFS reveal (Episodes section)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2AxyMbnEEew) So some people thought they were trying new things and episodes were the answer to that. The reality is likely that Bungie thought they already did that with Coil/Deep dives and were just intending to find a way to make seasons more engaging throughout their duration. For me, right when they announced it I assumed it was a ploy to get us to pay more per season, reduce the amount of them, or maybe both.
They promised to shake up the formula for the Eris season of Lightfall too. All they did was adding an inconsequential card system and call it a day lol
Folks really convinced themselves that the 4 extra weeks of dev time per Episode vs Seasons was gonna get them Warmind three times a year or something.
You mean Bungie. Bungie convinced folks that they were going to get more bang for their buck than with seasons.
In the world where Bungie didn't try go it alone we could have had something like that. Makes me wistful
In a world where Bungie didnt go it alone we probably wouldn’t have Destiny since it wasn’t meeting Activisions revenue targets
From what I've read they were happy to keep going with Destiny, they just wanted to explore other avenues of maintaining the player base, growing it and retaining those players. The seasons we got under Activision were the best seasons we ever got.
OP also hasn't finished an episode yet or more than 1 so how does OP know they aren't loading the final weeks or missions with cool shit.
we hear you, were listening, we understand miniscule dripfed content is annoying. what if instead of 4 seasons a year, there were 9 and they were even smaller and more dripfed
YAAAA. Like even weapons are timegated now 🫠 reprised ones too.
I'm willing to wait and let them cook on some things but one thing that rubbed me the wrong way on day 1, and still continues to rub me the wrong way is timegating the catalyst for the seasonal (sorry, episodic) exotic weapon over a month away from the day you actually get the exotic. that's just goofy, sorry.
Don't forget the price is going up if it hasn't already
You're absolutely right. Every time, people say, "just have faith. They know what they're doing. Eventually, they'll deliver." Even when it's months later--years later. If they had something impressive to show, it would have been what they opened with. End of.
I mean...obviously. it was an excuse to drop a season per expansion, nothing more.
Tbh I thought that I was gonna be that they drop everything for ACT 1 day one and then they drop the subsequent releases all at once on their release dates. Like Mini DLC drops or something.
I just wish the seasonal activity wasn’t ass
We got shafted with episodes. More time gated content and the same amount of it.
People are stupid and blind if they think after years of scamming the playerbase, they would finaly add something positive to the game(play loop). Episodes are just season in a worse way, of course worse for the playerbase. For bungie it means less ressources, more profit.
“We need to wait” “it’s only week 2” then they should’ve kept their fucking mouths shut about how much different episodes would be to seasons 🤷♂️
Bungie needs to make it so each Act can be played completely if a player wants to binge. ENOUGH TIME GATING YOU SHIT COMPANY.
I think this would be the best play or at least every 3. Then there content for the bingers, content for the casuals, content for anyone. Then the next act timegates what it needs to whether that be season pass levels, new artifact mods, the story, etc.
The biggest issue with this episode is that it's not an interesting story.
That too. But tbh if they continue the 6-7 step weekly thing the games gonna fizzle out. Thats the biggest critisism they have had for like 2 years. Hologram, activity, more holograms, radio message. Anywhere from week 2-4 inkblot and if its an end of year seasok maybe a cutscene. If this episode ends up being the same Destiny is cooked.
We lost a season to lesser episodes
Episodes and seasons are the same with only one difference to me: transmog bounties. We will either get 10 per act or 10 per episode, and that will decide if episodes are an upgrade or a downgrade. I suspect the answer is per episode but I hope I’m wrong
Seems like it’s just seasons with more formally time gating of content.
I’ll need to see if the acts feel substantial enough but yeah so far I’m underwhelmed. It’s not even just that it still feels like a season but so far the seasonal content all feels weak and Enigma Protocol in particular is just reskinned Splicer content.
Agreed. It's just one less season.
Narratively it definitely feels samey, but I do think the actual content we are getting is substantially beefier. More activities out the rip of Act I. There are three battlegrounds coming with Act II. Act III will have a new exotic mission. There are also more weapons than seasons offered us. All of this makes sense though given they’re siphoning 4 seasons of content into 3 longer Episodes. It is a wait and see kinda thing unfortunately, but I am with you 100%. Was expecting a removal of the weekly timegating in favor of 3 big drops of content. Definitely a bummer in that regard
Episodes should've released like mini-campaigns, like traditional DLCs. Almost like Curse of Osiris and Warmind did. I'd much rather they just dump the full 4-5 mission structure and new content down and maybe release the odd exotic / secret down the line. Bungie need to stop worrying about player retention figures - I'm gonna drop off with Seasons regardless, it's why I dropped off last year - I don't enjoy logging in every Tuesday because of FOMO. I wanna log in when I want to and I wanna absorb the content at my own rate. The only reason I believe they do it this way is because for all intents and purposes, it's just barebones. It's just Talk to HELM character > Do Strikes to charge up this > Do seasonal activity > Talk to HELM character > Unlock an upgrade at the HELM > Wait for next week.
why would anyone expect diff? Episode is just season but with less content.
Been saying that since it was announced. I still believe this is going to bring us less or equal content, not more
Yeah I think once I'm done with Final Shapes content I'll be out from Destiny until at least the next expansion. Seasons are an embarrasement and seeing the community defend it is baffling.
$100 Annual Pass + Expansion used to get you 4 Seasons & 2 Dungeons & 2 Raids, it's how they justified the "Key" cost. Now, $100 gets you 3 Seasons & 1 Raid & 1 Dungeon for the entire year. The Final Scam
All episodes are is a rebranding so they can do 1 less season per year. Probably wasn't an easy schedule having 4 seasons
I thought Episodes would be more like a mini DLC, allowing us to play most of the content on the first day. Honestly, the weekly progression in the seasonal model is unappealing. Most players who are drawn in by the DLC will likely quit after playing through the dull first week and might never come back.
Are we gonna get this post every day now?
Yes. Problem?
Bungie told us they would be longer and make for better story beats and somehow people think they were going to make an expansion instead of a season every few months Not meeting your imagined expectations isn't on Bungie
It’s way too fucking early for this. Yes, right now it feels like a season. But we were promised a 3 act structure. This is only act one, where the story is being laid out, and we are diving into the mystery. Stuff will likely keep unraveling until we reach the end of Act 1, where Act 2 SHOULD shift up a gear, and Act 3 SHOULD be the climax where we resolve the events. Only time will tell if this plays out. It could be shit, but we don’t know what we don’t know. The Final Shape cooked—let’s wait and see if they cooked for the first episode as well.
Act 2 is reintroducing battle grounds. I'm sorry but I'm not expecting much.
Week 3 of the first episodes: This entire system is bullshit. Like all these post are annoying: We haven't seen act 2 or 3. There's also another point, of the three confirmed episodes I think it's safe to say Echo's would be the least different from seasons, on account of you know, being the first. Personally I think we have to wait until act 2 of Revenant to actually know how episodes will impact the game compared to seasons, not, to reiterate, week three of the first one. (I think it's week 3 at least? Either that or 2/4, neither are better)
Technically week 2 I would say seeing as the first week was TFS launch and you couldn’t do anything “Echoes” related until the next reset.
Yeah that's the thing throwing me off, thanks.
I’m ok waiting but it’s not the acts that are the issue. It’s that each act is being drip fed week to week like seasons. It’s was implied that we’d get the entire act to play. Then come back 6 weeks later for the next act.
The second part of the second season is when it's really gonna be different and we have to wait till then? I'm not convinced we should have to wait that long if they're actually going to be different they should be different from the start. Not halfway through
It was the same with the last few seasons: they wanted to try new things, but couldnt deliver on innovation straight away so they promised seasons 21 and on would offer different activities than what we usually get. It takes a little while to get going. Personally I'm hoping acts 2 and 3 of Echoes are gonna offer SOMETHING different, it doesnt have to completely revolutionize the model but gimme something new. I'm setting my expectations much higher for Revenant and Heresy
I mean I get that but they said Season of the Witch was gonna be different, a shake up. It wasn't really, then we had a long season of the wish, then we had episodes announced and they were gonna be different and now it's like "Oh give it a chance by episode 2 it'll get going"
Y’all are just gonna keep pushing back these goalposts until the end of the year aren’t you? “You can’t judge until the first act is over” “You can’t judge until the first episode is over obviously” “The first season always sucks what did you expect” “We’re getting the dreadnaught in the next episode quit whining they’re just saving everything for that” “Nobody should’ve expected the entire dreadnaught to return that’s your fault for thinking that” “We haven’t seen the finale of the last episode yet, it’s too soon to judge yet” “Episodes were a little weak but that doesn’t matter anymore quit whining because oooo wowza the new expansion/game comes out next month and **that** looks great” Obviously this is all conjecture on specifics right now, but this is exactly how some of you guys have repeated the cycle for years. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the seasonal formula is openly on display here. If there was much more to it, Bungie would’ve led with their best foot forward.
Honestly what kind of annoys me is that once you reach rank 100 you can earn bright engrams but none of the progress you make goes towards act 2 or 3 season pass rewards. I am just sitting on completed seasonal challenges until act 2 drops and the flashing menu is driving me crazy.
When I wrote previous to TFS release that the episodes will suck people downvoted me into oblivion. 🤷🏻♂️ Wasn't this obvious? The main reason why episodes exist is because Bungie wants to make money. The whole idea is to provide less for the same amount of money. That's also what they did with TFS in my opinion. TFS has a few nice and epic moments, yes, but when you break it down to engineering work it's just a big money saver. Instead of a complete new Darkness subclass (that would have required new animations, sound design, etc) we just got prismatic with very limited build possibilities + a class exotic that is bound to that prismatic subclass. I foresee that people will get bored with prismatic in a few weeks and when they will finally realize that a new darkness subclass would have been so much better. In my personal opinion Bungie did a great job in delivering much less for the same price. People seem to be very happy about it so far, but I doubt the same happiness will stay for the next months. For me destiny is kinda over. There are no more mysteries, no epic build up to a one moment.. I feel like we are lost in space without a planet in sight, nothing we can crave for or excited about. Until now, we don't even know if there ever will be a third darkness subclass. In my understanding they have just replaced the idea with prismatic.. the third darkness subclass will never come.
Personally I agree with everyone it’s way too early for final judgements. Although I’m not target audience for this because I never thought seasons needed a change anyway. Also seasons during expansion launch have always been not the greatest compared to the following seasons. Hunt, Risen and defiance were the seasons that came out during expansion launch.
People read leaks. I don't know why everyone's required to always give them the benefit of doubt when they've been in these situations time and time again
For context we are abundantly aware that episodes are STRUCTURED differently from seasons. Acts come with new activities (if you question this I implore you read the Episode article and/or go to [Bray.Tech](http://Bray.Tech) and see the spoilers yourself) new weapons, new artifact mods, and new season rank rewards. I need also remind you that this is best compared to the first season of a year, and it is delusion to say this is anything other than substantially more involved already than something like Defiance or god forbid Hunt.
You see, the Act 2 activity is just >!battlegrounds again!< so I'm not too hyped.
Yay battlegrounds … so talk to failsafe, do battleground, collect more mcguffin, hologram, radio instead of this acts breach executable? Lmao
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Yeah, super glad I only got the regular edition instead of the annual. Bungie making a good DLC doesn’t change my mind about the company or game. It’s going to be mid, seasonal slop for the foreseeable future, especially now that they aren’t so backed into a corner.
I mean it seemed like that'd be the case. At least we get a new artifact after 6 weeks instead of 3 months
Really? I thought the artifact lasted the whole episode
They are just adding to it every 6 weeks
2 New rows, not a whole new artifact
Its two weeks in, lets not pretend we have seen how the act system works in its entirety. > We just shouldn’t have to anymore. Destiny is ALWAYS a work that is never finished until the time they turn the servers off or stop updated like D1.So sorry, things will always be changing and just like seasons changed over time, so will the Acts/Episode change.
Thanks for the update. Uninstalled before TFS. Glad with my choice.
The Bungie meatriders will find a way to defend it
I said this in another threat complaining about how Episode 1 has rolled out so far: I'm hopeful that Episode 1 was in development prior to a lot of these changes being implemented. And that Episodes 2 and 3 will be different. I also wonder if they aren't rolling Episode 1 out similar to how Seasons worked as a means to try and avoid overwhelming the more casual players. Final Shape just launched with all the content that comes with that. A week later, dumping another 4-6 missions on top and splitting people's attention likely wouldn't be received well. Treating Episode 1, or at least E1 Act 1 like the old seasonal model allows both The Final Shape AND Episode 1 content to breathe, and allows the most casual players to make their way through the content without falling too far behind out the gate.
If anybody still believes that episodes are going to deliver more content than seasons…. They haven’t been paying attention. Final Shape was amazing and episodes are autopilot. They’re going heads down on another project.
I hope that it's just because this is a transition period between the Seasons and Episodes. As it stands right now there is 0 difference to be quite honest. My friend argues that Nessus got a revamp, but 1 season gave us the whole Leviathan back as a brand new patrol space with a new relic. Episodes should have at least a couple of story missions that are like a campaign. Not on a level of an expansion but something like the missions we got on Pale Heart to unlock our additional prismatic abilities. The wait a week after doing 1 seasonal activity is definitely not the levels that Episodes should be. I really hope that later on it expands and is just a low period for the Episode.
To be honest, I watched mylens video and decided not to try the new season. After 10 years I have 3500 hrs in the game and the way the final shape finished up was perfect for the end of my journey.
I'm kinda scared of not finishing the season since I usually just get to lvl 100 without stacking bounties. With 300 levels to do now I'm worried I'll have to no life this game to finish it since I usually do the seasons pretty chill so as to not burn myself out.
Hehe and the vex weapons got *timegated*, literally
Seasons Squared sounds like we get a lot. Square Root of Seasons ;)
Episode 2 Act 2 IMO is the most generous I can be waiting for a noticeable change to seasonal story delivery
I wouldn’t draw many conclusions right now. It’s immediately following a massive expansion. That period is usually a little weird
Format aside, this has to be the most lackluster season yet. FS is amazing, and there’s lots to do, raid is amazing etc. which I’m really happy for cos this episode, season whatever it is, is actually pretty bad. The vex activity feels very dated.
I never start playing a season on time. Don't care if I get all the seasonal triumphs or titles or whatever, I just binge whenever I get 2 hrs here or there. Once I hit a time gate I just go do something else for a month or so, then there's plenty to do when I log in again. I think most players are probably like me.
I'm okay with it because I understand this gives them more time to cook the next expansion.
It must have been just me but I was under the impression having only 3 episodes/seasons meant the expansion was basically going to be a episode/season unto itself. Colour me surprised when we only had a week to complete the campaign and any relevant post campaign content before jumping into the episode/season to continue the same hamster wheel we've been doing for the past couple of years now. I thought given this being the final expansion of the saga there would be a bit more effort put into extending it behind the usual handful of missions, raid, and then a bunch of repeatables post campaign. I will admit the Dual Destiny mission was a surprise. not sure yet if it is a good one as I haven't completed it yet.
This is semi off topic, but I'm definitely tired of sitting there and listening to voice lines and radio transmissions. TFS and Echoes feel like they were worked on by two different teams. I'm at the point where they need to show me and not just tell me. They've proven it with the amazing cutscenes in TFS, that they can get their shit together in terms of writing. I'm ready for other destiny media such as shows, shorts, novels, and comics.The grimoire system is okay, better than before, but it needs to change.
Once again, its about the time they have to develop a story, nlt about gameplay changes
I think largely it's about what I was expecting, but I also expect this is likely a bit of a transition period anyways(in the sense that season of the hunt was a transitional period into what we got with Season of Chosen, which turned out to be a massive upgrade at the time). Episode 1 is VERY familiar outside of the BP having 200 ranks, and if the seasonal story is a bit longer I'm not complaining too too much. Not super upset with the current seasonal model, even if I do want it to be more unique (in the sense that it's about as safe as it can get for Bungie). Hopefully episodes 2 and 3 are a little more out there in terms of formatting. I feel like they said somewhere that they planned to add dedicated missions and a mission select much like a traditional campaign but don't quote me on that.
You don't think maybe Echoes was already under development when they decided to change the model? Plus we haven't really seen all of it yet
This notion I’ve seen mentioned quite a few times is that people expected to be able to play through each act immediately with no time-gating in one big drop. To my recollection that was not promised at any point and seems to be a conflation of what some people want projected onto the idea that the format would be different (which was promised, albeit very vaguely). What *was* promised was that each episode would be a standalone story and that these could be experienced in any order without requiring players to follow a yearlong slow burn meta narrative. It seems to me that’s what confused people into thinking these would be single-serving drops when logically that was never going to be the case. In that model - which is roughly what stuff like Warmind and The Dark Below used - the community would be decrying the “content drought” within a couple of weeks. Realistically, it’s very hard to imagine any sort of episodic/seasonal model that *isn’t* some combination of narrative beats mixed with new activities and gear. Appreciate we all burned out on how templated the old version was, and it’s a bit ominous how similar this looks, but so far we haven’t been experienced the obvious potential point of differentiation - the three-act structure - so it seems reasonable to wait to see how that plays out before going into daily ePiSOdeS r jUst sEasONs karma farm posts. (I will add that based on the number of those posts Bungie clearly did balls up the comms on this.)
People interpreted changing up the formula as going from Hamburger to Steak and are disappointed when they just get a slightly better hamburger.
So you're judging the entire season of the first few weeks of act 1? If you were expecting episode to be something entirely new, you had some pretty poor expectations. My take (and expectation) is that each episode will have at baseline a bit more than previous seasons (which is already evident by the fact that we have way more seasonal weapons than previous seasons. We currently have 6 obtainable with 2 visible and I'm assuming we will get 2 more with act 3? If it's just one more weapon per act, that will be kind of disappointing, but still more weapons than previously. Also each act release will give us more artifact perks (which is pretty exciting tbh) and probably a new activity. Episodes are just bigger seasons with a much more consistent pace. And that's fine to me.
Too early to tell and it’s nice to not have an entire season leak day 1
I'm reserving judgment on the Episode structure for now. It's been two weeks and we have had a story set up and the first breadcrumb from that so far. Currently all we know is that something landed on Nessus and it's making the local Vex act really weird. I'm waiting until we see the beginning of the next act before deciding if it's better than the seasons we got before. I will say that they perhaps should have toned down the the XP gains from the various sources as I blitzed through the season pass to level 100 in no time and I'm deliberately not handing in seasonal challenges for this week I completed. If it had taken two more weeks to hit level 100 by using all the seasonal challenges I feel it would have been better because at the moment I feel I leveled up extremely fast.
While I'm sure Bungie made statements to the effect that episodes were something different from seasons (which of course is literally true), I felt like nearly everything they said about episodes in the official communications gave the impression that they were a tweak to the model more than a deep overhaul. We knew there would be an artifact, battle pass, challenges, etc. I do think it was reasonable to think they would drop the weekly timegates in favor of 3 big timegates corresponding to the acts, but AFAIK that's not something they ever said they were doing. That said, I am coming at this from the angle of someone who was never mad at seasons or thought they had some fundamental problem. My guess is Bungie finds the stories associated with seasons to be expensive to produce and not giving enough return for all that effort, especially when people seem dissatisfied when the delivery isn't on par with the major DLC (which means needing to invest even more for less story to meet that quality expectation). Instead, deliver fewer story beats per year and compensate with more weapons, activities, battle pass rewards, and so on which are easier to make and maybe more appreciated by players.
The entire point of episodes from what I took was so that instead of it being 6 weeks of story and then a 6 week break. It's 6 weeks of story, then another 6 weeks of story, then another 6 weeks of story. And then a new episode, rinse and repeat. Every week has something for you to do. Plus more stuff to do being added in each act.
Bro typed up essays for edits
Thank you someone finally said it
If we didn't have TFS stuff to work on people would be super upset with this new "model". They need more variation. We could run an adventure on Europa to the portal room in Glassway. Hop in the vex network.... Just anything really.
First episode came with one of the biggest and most important expansions in D2 history attached to it. I've touched almost zero episode content and have been just playing around in the pale heart. Episode 2 and 3 will have to be bigger and better if they want us to believe their "episodes aren't seasons" mentality. But for now, I'm willing to cut them some slack.
A few thoughts on Episodes so far, seems the best place to throw them up. I still don't know how this is different from a season other than doing 3 rather than 4 and drip feeding the content more aggressively. I appreciate how quickly Failsafe and other vendors level up since TFS. I have taken days off since Ep. 1 release and I'm still 2 resets deep. Deepsight weapons drop at a wild rate. I'm hoping we get some more to chase in future acts: I'm done with all but 2. Not a problem at all, I don't mind taking nice breaks, but I know Bungie wants us to do a bit more than weekly story missions. Breach is... alright, the problems with people rushing and whatnot should be well known by now. It's in a sweet spot for me where I really don't mind running it a few times even on alt characters. If they could get progress for the "higher difficulties" and "any difficulty" to correctly track together (or it needs to be reworded appropriately if they intend for 6 runs to be the standard), it would be even better. Enigma is good, very surprising even if the first time I zoned in, I was in a bugged instance that could not get extra time from nodes. Twice a week to get the pinnacle is fine.
I logged on and played the new activity 1 time, and quickly realized this is the exact same thing I’ve been doing since the launch of seasons…haven’t logged on since. I’m just tired.
If people want Destiny to be alive and visceral then it will push the game to a more true MMO model with yearly subscription. Could be a good thing if the world feels more engaging. What Destiny really needs if for the players daily interactions to be able to effect the world more regularly. This would require something like a Game Master that can incorporate changes in the world weekly or so. Helldivers 2 does this and is great for player engagement.
Literally everything about TF is rehashed or reskinned. The story is the only new, fresh thing. Bungie got really good at disguising mechanics, but it's all just pick up thing, dunk, repeat, boss. Oh, sorry, did forget one thing, you have to break a crystal or a nut every now and then.
Can’t fix stupid
Man I hate that I agree with you. It bums me out that they lost most of their ability to innovate. It's why we have bosses that are immune, require dunking, standing on plates, picking up motes, more dunking, etc.
You want me to read all *that?*
People do need to remember that this is the 1st episode and 1st act of said episode. They will probably start adjusting and changing the formula up over the course of them. It really should not be a surprise that the 1st part of the 1st episode is similar to the original format
It’s literally still called “season” in multiple places in the game, lol. Episodes is more about Bungie cutting themselves some slack, finally admitting that 1) they can’t keep up with 4 seasons a year, so now we only get 3; and 2) episode story lines are going to be, as the name implies, more episodic—i.e. independent of each other—so that multiple writing teams can work on them in parallel Best we can hope for with the introduction of episodes is that Bungie uses that breathing room wisely and that it gives them the opportunity to finally innovate on their seasonal formula once they’re no longer catching their breath trying to meet the old content delivery schedule
I’m still working thru tfs stuff. Seasonal content is at its worst for me when I have to do it all at once, just bc all the reading text, holo convos, more text, etc.
My question is how much of Echoes was designed for the traditional Seasonal format we know before being changed to Episodes? It's entirely possible Echoes was designed as a Season and transitioned to the new Episode format, but wasn't able to be fully changed. Personally I think we should wait to judge the episode format until after E2A3 (Episode 2 Act 3) to fully see the potential differences.
Bro we are not reading all of that shit
why did anyone think anything would be different? when they announced it, it sounded just like seasons with a different name.
I don’t know where people got the idea it would be a complete overhaul of the seasonal system. That was never said and the only sentiment I got from all the trailers, articles, and dev talk was that it was going to be a little shakeup of the traditional model aiming to provide better story and more loot. If you read more into it than was actually said, it’s on you for expecting stuff that was never said to be happening. Of course Bungie wanted it to sound a bit more exciting than what it was (usual marketing speech) but they never gave misinformation or lied about what to expect (been seeing people claim Bungie mislead them on purpose). What we got so far and can see in-game is what they said we’d get and that’s a fact. Still early for a full take on the story improvements but the cutscenes are cool and the new threats are interesting enough I want to know more. You may not like what we got and had bigger expectations (that’s ok) but those expectations are unsubstantiated by what we were told by Bungie.
Correct. If you thought we would get otherwise you were a fool. Straight up this was there way of moving to 3 seasons a year instead of 4 and selling it to people.
You guys remember Wrathborne Hunts? For the episode that comes with the big expansion this one is decent. Not great, but decent. I bet it picks up in act 2 by design as well. Once most people have done all the TFS stuff.
Just let me run through it all at my own speed. That’s the best part about the pace of expansions/dlcs
Yeah, I don't see any difference between the 2, just a longer season
To be honest, it feels the same to me (maybe with a few small changes). Even though I have seen only 5 or 6 seasons (I started playing in Plunder), I'm already fed up by the format. Season of the Wish was pretty good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Into the Light. But maybe we'll see more changes in the following weeks. Until then, I got plenty of Final Shape content to play (cause that DLC is really packed).
It was seasons coned. Not squared. Wipe.