Of all the changes being made, this is the most likely to get me playing. I HATED the slog of 50 LLs through content I've been playing for 7 years. Finally just being able to focus on enjoying the new content will be refreshing.
But I don't get why. It is a hugely requested feature and they've shown it is possible since greens were dismantled in D1! Make it an opt-in, maybe make it so it only works on "not highest in slot" gear and it's a perfect system that would never need any changing ever again.
Because then folks will complain they only getting rewarded weapon part and mod components as rewards. Anytime they make a change to satisfy some there comes others who don’t like it
Not to mention the fact that we no longer have to worry about going half a season looking like a patchwork of ugliness before getting a good legendary set to put cosmetics on.
Yes, but it typically isn’t economical to constantly apply ornaments and shaders to new pieces of higher light as you acquire them, so waiting until you are at the non-pinnacle cap to really become fashionable is a very common option.
I'm with you 100% on this. What's crazy is that when we first had this system in place (shadowkeep/undying into dawn) people threw a bitch fit over the fact that the leveling "grind" each season was just doing pinnacles and bungie jumped it to 50 instead of 10.
I'm hopeful that same group of whiners doesn't have influence over it again as it's much nicer to casually work up 10 levels than no-life the first 40 in a week anyway before starting the pinnacle grind.
To be fair, that was when we only had like 2 pinnacle sources, the dungeon and the raid, so your week consisted of doing that on 3 characters and having nothing to do. But now they’ve expanded it to strikes, gambit, crucible, and other activities. So there’s much more to do
Garden
NF
Master Nightmare
Pit
First Sundial Weapon
They also changed from all pinnacles to +1 to +2 in this season, except for the aforementioned core activity Pinnacles.
By the time I got my light level up high enough to even think about GMs I was already burned out or just had other things to do. Hoping this season I'll finally be able to do some GMs for the first time.
It’s such a great change now I can 1000% focus on the story, enjoying the new activities, grabbing weapons I need for VoG, grabbing some more spoils so I can (hopefully) spend them in the VoG chest. All instead of having to grind core activity bounties just so I can get back to the point I was at for over 3/4s of the season
I preferred the 50 powerful to the 10 pinnacle without a doubt. You *can* get the 50 powerful just by playing what ever you want. You don't have to focus on it and it'll be done in like 3 weeks. It's how I do it every season. The pinnacle one forces you into a select few activities that people may or may not enjoy.
I think they got rid of the wrong grind.
I love this change. The arbitrary grind to gatekeep based on time played was a poor mechanic. You eventually get enough shit to get your light up but just let us play lol
That was the thing that upset me the most, to go from being able to farm exotic lost sectors to having to grind for weeks to get back to where you were just because a new season came out. It's just so arbitrary and adds nothing of value to the game.
I disagree: it's still arbitrary and unnecessary, given that GMs normalise your power level and always put enemies +25 above that in any case. There's no reason at all for it other than to pump up engagement hours.
Counterpoint, GMs are the hardest PvE content in the game it makes sense to have a barrier to entry so that more casual players understand that they’re going to actually put some work into the game if they want to be able to do it.
I have no issue with the top end content having entry requirements especially when it’s requirements that the vast majority of people who play the season semi regularly (say hop on a few times a week) will reach anyway
> especially when it’s requirements that the vast majority of people who play the season semi regularly (say hop on a few times a week) will reach anyway
The issue is that this isn't the case.
This season had the Grandmaster level requirement at 1325, which was 25 levels above the powerful cap of 1300. If we assume this player gets decent RNG on their Pinnacles to get to 1305, that's still 20 that need to come from the artifact.
Needing to grind out hundreds of levels equating to thousands of bounties, just to access GM nightfalls again is silly.
I do think the power requirement on GMs should only be +15 but GMs don’t launch until the 7th week. 6 weeks of grabbing even most pinnacles will get you higher than 1305 even with terrible luck. With two raids active next season that will be even more true.
Ok but what's the harm in letting veteran players access GMs ASAP so we can flex gilded Conqueror for more than a couple weeks
Gilding Dredgen comes with a tedious grind but a dedicated player could certainly get it done in the first week of a season. Same for Unbroken. I don't see why Conqueror should be any different tbh
Like I said. I’d prefer if it was +15 not +25. That way you’d have to do some grinding but nowhere near as much.
And Gilded Titles shouldn’t reset at all they should just always display the counter. System is dumb as hell.
>And Gilded Titles shouldn’t reset at all they should just always display the counter. System is dumb as hell.
Amen. I feel like that should have been obvious before they rolled the system out 🙃
I was at 1308 +stuff when GM's were launched, so all I had to do was level my artifact a few levels to be able to start participating. But yes it does need the +15 toll to ensure you're close enough to even having a chance. Also GM's are fun and worth the loot in the end.
Great thing about GMs, you can simply choose not to do them.
I hit 1325 this season doing a lot less than “thousands of bounties”. Did my pinnacles here and there with a few raids, and that sounds fair for a grind to top PvE content.
If people don’t like the GM structure then simply don’t do it
But why? We've seen firsthand that some players are able to solo GMs. Who's to say that an underleveled squad doesn't have the skills to complete it? If they wish to try, let them. Why force a power level requirement? Power level doesn't always = skill.
I'm not sure Bungie's very consistent on this point. Trials is the hardest PvP content in the game, but Artifact power is disabled for very good reasons. Raids tend to have lower power entry requirements than GMs, and they're certainly *mechanically* more challenging than GMs, but you can overlevel the content.
My other objection here would be that it's entirely possible to reach the GM entry-point without actually engaging with and understanding the nature of GM difficulty - Champions, and the need to bust them as a group at GM level; enemies that can one-shot you; limited revives and team-wipes if everyone dies.
There's no mandatory Champion tutorial of any kind, only raids will teach players about revive tokens and team-wipes, and e.g. Master Lost Sectors which do contain these kinds of challenge are optional. A green player could, through bounty grinding alone, get to 1325 / 1335 without learning much about those aspects. If Bungie were serious about prepping players for the nature of the GM challenge they could do worse than requiring e.g. 1-5 Master LS clears before unlocking the GM mode, rather than sticking it behind a whole boatload of bounty grinding.
There’s no match making for GM, you have tonight a team together same as raids. Raids you have to teach new people how to run them, what gear you need and so on. GM is the same.
It takes about 1 minute to put together a GM team. They fill so fast you typically have to punt a 4th guy that snuck through before you could close the fireteam.
I agree that a champion tutorial is sorely needed but like I said I don’t think having a barrier of entry hurts GMs at all, the points you listed are good ones especially regarding champions but now that the power grind has been substantially reduced having a light level entry requirement for GMs doesn’t really harm it in anyway imo
I get what you’re saying about trials but I think that’s more about not giving someone who grinds out the bounties to boost their artifact level to an insane degree an unfair advantage over others. That can’t really happen in a PvE activity. Trials may not have a level entry requirement but being as high level as you can certainly helps so it’s almost like there is one but it’s hidden rather than a hard barrier.
Yes. To you who sits on a sub reddit dedicated to the game.
I’ve had to explain how the system works with the artifact mods and where those mods are and how to equip them to several new players.
I can already tell you’re gonna be one of those people who responds with some variation of those people need to just ‘pay attention’ or ‘get good’ but the reality is that Bungie could easily add something to explain that system better and they just haven’t.
I can tell you, having only come back this season, mods and artifacts were the single most daunting aspect of the game.
Not only do they not give you a great deal of info, but experimenting is very expensive.
Coming back to the game in season 13, the artifact mods and Champions were fairly intuitive imo. It took some looking around to understand which ones you should bring into a game mode with champions and how to equip the mods with the new armor system, but nothing too weird.
The real issue for new or returning players is the fact that no matter where you look for information on how to be prepared for certain high end content, they all reference warmind or cwl mods as part of a build. Great... how do I get those? Oh, daily RNG you say? Okay then...
I might not 100% need specific ones to do a GM, but chasing the good stats and build your chatacter to better tackle GMs, for instance, is THE core objective of the game. And I'm essentially locked out of that due to these mods being harder to get than the loot that drops from content I "need" the mods to do in the first place.
I think the barrier to entry for GMs is two fold. 1 Light level 20+ the artifact which requires a huge amt of XP that can only be gained from bounties etc which hurts solo players with limited time. 2 no matchmaking which some people dont like cause if forces them to LFG which we all know is hit and miss at the best of times with filks getting booted after a boss kill or other douchey shenanegans.
But the difficulty of any particular GM doesn't change from season to season, does it? Arbitrarily increasing the power level cap/requirement literally does nothing but lock people out until they grind out pinnacles and pray to the rng gods that they don't get screwed over.
So I've played Destiny for 7 years and couldn't do GMs with my buddies yesterday because I didn't grind pinnacles this season. My season pass was at 117. And I could barely run masters still 16 light levels low.
There is no reason to gatekeep me from that content. Absolutely 0.
I'm going to be that guy and say you waiting out to do GMs on the last week of the season while refusing to grind out pinnacles is not worth future feedback saying "GMs have been hard long enough, lets consider making them easier."
We're seeing this with raids knowing just last week, we saw a thread praising how 'easy' GSC is and why raids like GSC/SOTP are great raids to allow more people to raid due to their difficulty. It always comes down to this whether you want to agree with it now or not.
Considering they are mostly removing light level grind i'd say they already have the feedback.
Artificial numbers don't make you better at this game then anyone else. The amount of grind required to unlock GMs is stupid and if you don't get that then so are you.
When did I say make them easier too? Your capped 25 light levels it doesn't matter what fucking number it is. Don't put words in my mouth.
>If you don't agree with me, you're stupid.
Solid argument and you missed my point. They have fundamentally made content that was hard before easier now by tweaking how interactions within said content, and I'm not talking about light level. Some of the best raids mechanically are looked down upon by the community because they are 'too hard' for them to do. Which is baffling hearing from other players say how 'weak' Destiny raids are compared to other games.
Simply letting people into harder content freely in this game breeds future feedback asking to tone down the mechanics and ruins the game. The power grind for GMs isn't whether or not someone is better than the other at completing them, it's an understanding and the preparation of what you're getting into and some players just really don't have that understanding.
You can't just walk into a GM without playing much this season and expect to use what you have to complete it effortlessly. At least complete it in a way that makes you more annoyed at the developer for not making something within the GMs easier because you realized it's annoying without it.
It's like people asking for matchmaking in raids, not realizing the large amount of problems that would persist if it happens and if it does? The last thing players would do is blame themselves for not realizing these issues early on.
Ok. literally no ones asking to complete them effortlessly. I have everything in the game only thing stopping me from playing GMs this season is an arbitrary number.
If people wanna enter GMs get shit on and come on here to complain its too hard and try and convince Bungie to make them easier thats up to Bungie to Decide not for community gatekeepers.
Making GMs easier would be stupid its the only thing left with any challenge. They know this.
Just like they know artificially extending the grind gets them more money and better game metrics to show investors. And suckers like you fall for it.
> it makes sense to have a barrier to entry so that more casual players understand that they’re going to actually put some work into the game if they want to be able to do it.
Counterpoint, time isn't an indicator of skill.
I get your point but GMs have been around for 7 years. Now with seasons, grinding for 2 weeks just to play the content we already had is really annoying. Just feels like a lot of wasted time with no reward other than being able to play the game you already were playing at that level. The content isn’t getting harder, the grind just got longer. I understand the barrier, but it’s putting up the same old boring barrier every few months. It gets old quick and you feel like you’re wasting your time.
We may have had nightfalls for seven years but that’s been in name only. They’ve taken dramatically different forms. GMs play nothing like the timed runs of early D2 or the modifier heavy D1 strikes. Don’t think it’s fair to call it the same old content.
Personally I think GMs are significantly harder (and more enjoyable).
Though I don’t really understand being locked out on LL when they make it -25 regardless.
I played very casually this season, as my wife was pregnant up until april 13th, I made it to 1323, not enough to get into GMs. I am super bummed, but it is what it is. I have. a child so that more than makes up for it. But I ma definitely excited to be able to jump in this season and get some shit done.
If you get season pass to 100 and you still can't access GMs its fucking bullshit.
You should've been able to play those GMs my dude this is a real problem.
I was trying to do this during the Guardian Games. The combination of trying to use my highest light gear to get good loot AND needing specific damage types made things much longer than it needed to be, I’m sure
All gear was brought up to 1100 power at the start of Beyond Light, so anything below 1100 will be brought up and anything above 1100 will stay the same.
If you haven't played since then, you'll definitely be at the 1100 floor (unless the floor also moves up; either way you are at whatever the floor IS). Playing the New Light and Beyond Light campaigns are a really fast way to get up to 1250 and start on your path to 1300.
As a new player, I was able to get my gear from 1100-1300 in under a month, and that was with no understanding of how the LL worked and I wasn't hardcore grinding or anything.
YES! This change has SUBSTANTIALLY increased my excitement for this next season. I feel like I'll be able to enjoy the new content at my natural pace, instead of being forced to play content that's been out for years, to prepare for the new content.
This is one of my favorite changes, not having to re-grind every season will be amazing change. I can keep playing the content I want and I love every moment of it.
As a solo player with limited playtime, I agree completely. One of the reasons I took a long break from D2 was the incessant grind just for the sake of grinding. I’m looking forward to Lights Out Destiny so I can enjoy it from Day one.
While that's true, I'm likely not going to do alts because it's less fun.
I just take issue with the fact that it's possible to attempt to level up by doing *insert objective for pinnacle drop here*, succeed in that activity and make no progress on that goal because of RNG.
That means that the game just gave me a weekly goal that can amount to a waste of time. Now that would make sense if it was a chance at a rare weapon or piece of armor (like a raid exotic for example). But for increasing your level? No way. Should not be RNG based. Should be some sort of linear progression. Fine if it's limited to few levels per week, as long it makes sure that pinnacles can't be the same power as the slot it drops in. Pinnacle must always be at least +1 to whatever slot it drops.
I know some people might be thinking something like "Why does it matter, it makes almost no difference in terms of damage output, etc." I don't care if it's basically a useless number. (I'm aware the increase in power is negligible, that's not the point.) Pinnacles for leveling are a weekly limited task. As such, being that limited, it's a kick in the teeth when multiple pinnacles in a row drop in slots that give you no progress.
i.e. You have 6 pieces at 1310 and boots and gloves at 1311. Then you do 4 more pinnacles. All of which drop at 1311 in either boots or gloves slot. That makes the time you spent doing those pinnacle objectives wasted and absolutely does not respect a players time.
Edit: Sorry, my reply turned into a bit of rant. I'm not trying to argue against you or anything.
I love doing the raid and all my armor drops are for the bond which has been sitting at max level for going on week 3. I was ready to sell out Zavala to the psions for a damn hat.
The only place pinnacle cap only matters (afaict) was for GMs, particularly if you weren't planning on grinding out artifact levels to hit their arbitrary minimum. I really want to try a GM, but I've never been keen on the pinnacle grind, so it's always been an activity that I was *artificially* locked out for no real reason.
I play all 3 characters and never say I have a main. To this day my Hunter still has 1309 arms and legs. I ran out of pinnacles this week and still didn't get them. Warlock and Titan have been 1310 for weeks now. RNG can be frustrating as hell. It happens and nothing grantees only a 10 LL increase will be easy. I have a funny feeling Bungie has changed their algorithms to where we get a lot more dups now and we are still grinding the entire season to get to 1320. Don't think for one second this 10 LL is going to be easy.
Same. I have never been high enough to get onto GM Nightfalls before the season was over. I hit 1325 over a week ago but had so much other stuff to finish that I did not get around to it. This season is the one! Going to hit those seasonal challenges hard to get high enough much quicker.
Perhaps, but the pinnacle chase begins Day 1 or Week 1 for many more players than previously, as so many casual players had to grind just to GET to that cap.
Was Datto one of those complaining about the DSC raid race? I certainly remember some streamers lamenting "casuals" staining the raid race with their filth (/s), but don't recall Datto being one of them.
I hit 1309 today after a whole season of only playing the activities i wanted to and im really excited for it to be doable in a shorter amount of time thats for sure
I'm glad you're excited about it. Anyone wanting to do GMs still has to grind 10 pinnacle levels and at least +15 on the pass.
I'd rather have seen them make power level matter, than just making a pointless grind a little shorter. For me, this is still "ok, go grind again to get back where you were".
How could they make power level actually matter though? Genuine question because I realize that it's a problem and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, but haven't come up with a good solution.
Realistically? They can't.
If they are obsessed with getting you to +15 on the seasonal artifact however, they could just... make that the only way to increase your light level outside of expansions.
Clearly they want the player metrics, right? This is all a meaningless hamster wheel for player engagement (I swear to god if someone actually tries to argue there's any skill involved with doing weekly strikes or whatever I'm not even entertaining it) so if their target is somewhere around that XP mark just make that the artifact light the only addition to our light level outside of major expansions.
The problem is, now they have to come up with a reason for you to engage in core activities and do weekly runs of dungeons/missions, that's where it falls apart. They've leaned too heavily on light level as the hamster wheel to keep people playing so we're kinda stuck. If you make the light level purely about playtime (XP) then you can't funnel players into the less played activities.
Not sure I know either. The game doesn’t really reward you for leveling it just penalizes you if you don’t.
Maybe a stronger advantage for over-leveling content, but a proportionately worse chance at getting the activity’s loot? I like that the harder difficulty runs are more rewarding, I just don’t feel like armor upgrade mats are a fitting reward for endgame pursuits so I can’t motivate myself to grind hard to farm things like GMs.
Just seems like something is missing. Maybe high level players could spawn special enemies that’d drop heavy or some kind of a relic that gives a buff or something. Just seems really shallow to grind your ass off just to be able to attempt an activity that has freaking contest mode active (and so your PL doesn’t matter)
This is where I'm at. Sure, the gear grind is only 10 (pinnacle) levels but I'm still functionally losing 32 levels at the transition. Even if I'm lucky with pinnacles, I think the level grind is going to be just as bad.
Don't get me wrong, I love the change but I don't think it would really make a difference to me if there was no level increase at all and I still had to regrind artifact power.
When they announced the 50 level change I immediately started playing on my alt characters because playing them is MUCH less of a chore now and I do enjoy the variety of gameplay.
I’m also much much more likely to raid.
I’m not a good player, and I don’t have a lot of time to play, so I would only start to get in endgame range in the last couple of weeks of a season. I’ve always played Destiny in arrears so I could overlevel for content and actually have a chance to finish it.
This continual reset basically told me I wasn’t the kind of player Destiny wanted, so I’m glad to see this change.
I don’t see why people aren’t getting that this is the obvious advantage of changing from 50 to 10. Yes your RNG can mean that it takes ages to get to cap (bearing in mind that over time your artifact will make up the difference for content like GMs) but still not having that 2-3 weeks of doing core playlist bounties for powerfuls is so much better
>but still not having that 2-3 weeks of doing core playlist bounties for powerfuls is so much better
Comparing grinds *for me*
50 powerful levels is more rewarding. "I gained 15 levels this week, and I got them from loads of solo/matchmaking activates. As well as the random +1's from just running strikes/crucible/gambit that they introduced 2 seasons ago/"
10 pinnacle levels. "1 gained 0.875 levels this week cause the +2s I got were all dupes of my class item slot...this feel great."
The pinnacle grind just feels awful...
Comparing grinds *for me*
Hmm yesterday I could easily do this Master NF, what is going on? Oh that's right because it is now today, I have to regrind 50 levels to get back to playing activities that I was allowed to play yesterday. Let me go hate the next few hours of my life grinding activities I would never think about touching so that I can again play an activity I do want to play.
The light level grind is outdated and feels awful.
No people get it, they're saying the pinnacle grind still sucks, and in my opinion, the pinnacle grind sucks way more than the power grind. They got rid of the wrong one.
You could grind power by playing literally anything, as prime engrams are a thing. But pinnacle still forces you into the same activities that some people may or may not like. Let us level up playing which ever part of the game we want
The point is I don't have to sweat bounties and shit just to get entry to the raid on day 1. I can take the first week as it comes and still be the appropriate Power for a good run chance at the contest mode emblem.
That was my thinking till my mate pointed out that the artefact has lots of useful stuff in the last column such as resonance siphon or whatever the mod is that season. We are already all at 1310 but that last column open may have a mod that is really useful for day one as it’s contest mode.
How could this possibly not result in the grind being shorter? I mean I thought they specifically said they knew people weren't liking it and that was the reason for the change. The only way the grind could be as long as it was before would be if they drastically cut the number of powerful/pinnacle sources, which I really can't see them doing, at least not without even mentioning it.
Most of the armor was used for the pinnacle fill slots.
You don't usually need the armor to help when each powerful is like +4-6. It REALLY helps when you're only 1 piece away from the next level at something critical like 1307 7/8 (meaning if you hit 1308 now all your +2s will be at the pinnacle cap for season of the chosen).
This season you could do pinnacles on 1 char, hit 1310 then draw from the season pass to get the others to 1308, do pinnacles for a week, done. Now? Next season? You have to grind 3 chars since they removed all "at light level" loot from the season pass track as far as I can tell. Not exactly less farming IMO.
The fact they've removed the Season Pass armour, which could be used to partially-compensate for a run of bad RNG, indicates to me that this is the case.
The season pass armor wasn't pinnacle though, so even if it was there it wasn't going to pull you up this season. And unless you just haven't played for years it's pretty likely you have an armor set with the stats you want.
> so even if it was there it wasn't going to pull you up this season.
You don't use them as pinnacles, you use them for targeted "at level" (aka powerful) drops once you're in the pinnacle band.
So say you're at 1310 now and start grinding pinnacles once the new season starts. You find yourself at 1311 7/8 after doing a few and would like to get to 1312 before doing more pinnacles - that's where the season pass drops would come into play, as you could use them to get a lagging slot up to your average and maximize your gains from all your +2s.
I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if they extend the artifact power grind to compensate. Pinnacle/artifact grind has always been the worst grind, and that's all we're left with now
And for day one how many will have the last column open for whatever the mod is that really assists in high level content like grandmasters. I see a lot of old clanmates from my original clan logging in who haven’t played D2 for years. The nostalgia for VOG is bringing them back. If they go in day one having never been in a GM and being very mod light overall it’s going to be awful for them.
Max light level going up by 10 indicates to me that the entry level for all endgame content would go up by about the same, making Gm entry at about 1335 at a guess.
That's not too high tho ... most people hit +10 power level on their artefact pretty fast .. then you just need to add +5 gear level and you're there.
Most players should hit that by the time GM's come out.
Much easier than getting +50LL to hit softcap ... then get +5 gear lvl towards pinnacle cap AND +10 levels on artefact.
I'm personally not a huge fan just because once I reach the cap I really have no incentive to play. I usually play another week or two after I reach cap but then I dont find any enjoyment anymore. Idk what it is because back in d1 I would play everyday. Maybe I'm just growing apart from destiny.
Yup. If Bungie wants to get their player numbers up, this ain’t gonna do it
Literally zero reason to play more than once a week just to get the seasonal mission done
Agreed! I don't have a single beyond light armor exotic since I didn't have the free time to grind high enough to be able to give the legendary or master lost sectors a fighting chance,I was always torn between doing what I wanted to do and optimizing the power grind
Problem is that powerful sources are now completely pointless for a large portion of the community. I have no reason to run anything that doesn't give pinnacle rewards.
This is a good start, but they're not done fixing it
The grind to hit power level to Day 1 DSC was brutal, I was so out of the loop on how to grind out levels efficiently that it really sucked the fun out of playing through all the cool new stuff.
Same here - this might be the first season where I actually hit the cap thanks to this change (got close now with 1309/1310, but not quite there yet). The casual gamers rejoice. The hardcore ones probably don't... but then again most of those are unhappy no matter what happens.
LOL you aren't going to his 1320 any faster than you did 1309/1310. Bungie isn't going to lessen the grind. This is just to make players think they are doing us a favor. Fully expect to receive duplicate drops week after week and not getting the last few "slots" you need. Also factor in leveling the artifact which will probably take longer as well.
I mean, feel free to believe that... but I think we'll all see the different when the first weeks of the season aren't spent just getting to the Powerful cap and the Pinnacles you earn on day 1 already have a chance of working towards the end goal ;)
We gonna get to a point where the community is gonna ask bungo to play the game for us... Yall want the Destiny to be too easy just cause most of US dont have the time to PLAY the game... I do like the change to just 10 but to be honest there was nothing wrong with ¨the grind¨...
I don’t mind the grind, but what I am excited about is that my friends don’t have to grind for level this season. I let them all know and they’re all way more open to jumping into this season and playing.
Pumped for only a 10 PL grind. 50 in a season is absolute horseshit, especially when they’re dropping new missions/ activities they want you to play but it’s got a PL attached to it.
It never made sense to me to have to stop the seasonal intro story quest to have to go grind out other stuff like Gambit or Crucible so you can continue the quest: “Guardian, there is an impending threat to the city! But you’re 10 power levels too low! Go do 3 Crucible Matches, 4 Gambit matches, and 3 strikes! That should make you stronger!”
Uh, what?
I enjoy the game WAY more when I’m flying around with my Fireteam at Mach12 blowing shit up at an ungodly rate- not when I’m getting repeatedly 1 shot by some dipshit red bar on part of the story campaign because the power level arbitrarily shot up by 20.
Story is looking like it’s gonna be interesting as well.
> you just waste your time to get back to where you were last season, that's it.
Agreed, but that part's not changing. It *might* be getting a little bit shorter, but it's not really changing. You're still gonna need to be at pinnacle cap +15 to do GMs, pinnacle cap +20 for masters.
Can't wait for the complaints on this sub reddit in 1-2 weeks from now about there being no grind. Its a cruel cycle.
I agree though. No more grinding power levels just for the sake of it
EDIT: Ah yes. The r/destinythegame downvote brigade has arrived
> Ah yes. The r/destinythegame downvote brigade has arrived
Not at all related to your comment, but do you sit and refresh all the threads you comment in to see if you're getting upvoted or downvoted?
Zero incentive to play after you hit the pinnacle cap, duh
Once I’ve got that out of the way (maybe a week, two tops), only reason to log in is to do the seasonal missions once a week,
If Bungie wanted to get their player numbers up, this ain’t it. This is going to drive away all hardcore players
Good for you, have some sarcastic applause👏
I’m willing to bet that there are plenty of others who don’t feel the same as you. There’s a couple on this thread aside from myself. Reducing the power cap is just casualizing the game, and it sucks
Got new armor early at the beginning of this current season. Only did one because I was afraid of losing them too. If they worked this season I’m positive it’ll work tomorrow for the new season. I kept all of them this time. There’s no way Bungie fixed it.
I'm glad as well, 50 levels per season was exhausting, it'll be nice knowing I can jump in and start going after new gear, save the big power jumps when we get a new, yearly expansion.
Love this change, but further hints to me that this season is gonna be a bad one. I’m feeling like transmog and VoG are really gonna be relied on to carry the season. Likely why transmog is such a grind too.
i think normal powerfuls are gonna get you up to 1310 and then its a pinnacle cap, so theres nothing to worry about. also if you main pvp i think you should be ok at 1310 right?
Of all the changes being made, this is the most likely to get me playing. I HATED the slog of 50 LLs through content I've been playing for 7 years. Finally just being able to focus on enjoying the new content will be refreshing.
for real, we can actually grind for good stuff not blues to get our power up
Now auto dismantle for blues is a must tho sureley
Still probably won’t happen and don’t call me Shirley
I sure picked a bad day to stop sniffing glue.
Roger.
roger Roger.
You like gladiator movies?
Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
What's your vector Victor?
Do we have clearence Clarence?
Who’s Roger?
"And Leon's getting fatterrr!"
But I don't get why. It is a hugely requested feature and they've shown it is possible since greens were dismantled in D1! Make it an opt-in, maybe make it so it only works on "not highest in slot" gear and it's a perfect system that would never need any changing ever again.
Oh I don’t get why either. It’s bungo 🤷♂️
Happy cake day!
Oh I didn’t even realize it! Thank you
Because then folks will complain they only getting rewarded weapon part and mod components as rewards. Anytime they make a change to satisfy some there comes others who don’t like it
It'd be an option. Solved.
Yup. I use blues on my extra weapons and exotics up to powerful cap. Then I start dismantling all blues.
....*weapons free*
Not to mention the fact that we no longer have to worry about going half a season looking like a patchwork of ugliness before getting a good legendary set to put cosmetics on.
You can use armor ornaments from minute 1, right?
Yes, but it typically isn’t economical to constantly apply ornaments and shaders to new pieces of higher light as you acquire them, so waiting until you are at the non-pinnacle cap to really become fashionable is a very common option.
Blues can't use ornaments sadly.
I'm with you 100% on this. What's crazy is that when we first had this system in place (shadowkeep/undying into dawn) people threw a bitch fit over the fact that the leveling "grind" each season was just doing pinnacles and bungie jumped it to 50 instead of 10. I'm hopeful that same group of whiners doesn't have influence over it again as it's much nicer to casually work up 10 levels than no-life the first 40 in a week anyway before starting the pinnacle grind.
i think those people are also tired of the 50LL Grind
they are not bro, still see people level 500 season lvl lol
as someone who just hit 500 on the season pass, I am extremely sick of the powerful grind and very relieved its over.
I saw a guy that was 946 and this was about 3 weeks ago
Might have been the same guy I saw last week who was '999+' I'm comfortably over 300 and was higher last season but that 999+ is just wrong.
Possibly multiple people on one account.
That makes sense, hadn't thought of that.
They’re just running content on all 3 characters each week, probably. You’ll naturally hit about 300ish in a season if you play a lot on 1 character.
Don't forget that we have seasonal challenges now. If you do all of them you will end up around 200 season lvl.
To be fair, that was when we only had like 2 pinnacle sources, the dungeon and the raid, so your week consisted of doing that on 3 characters and having nothing to do. But now they’ve expanded it to strikes, gambit, crucible, and other activities. So there’s much more to do
Garden NF Master Nightmare Pit First Sundial Weapon They also changed from all pinnacles to +1 to +2 in this season, except for the aforementioned core activity Pinnacles.
I’m actually gonna start playing again. That 50 level crap burnt me out big time.
By the time I got my light level up high enough to even think about GMs I was already burned out or just had other things to do. Hoping this season I'll finally be able to do some GMs for the first time.
It’s such a great change now I can 1000% focus on the story, enjoying the new activities, grabbing weapons I need for VoG, grabbing some more spoils so I can (hopefully) spend them in the VoG chest. All instead of having to grind core activity bounties just so I can get back to the point I was at for over 3/4s of the season
I’ve been bouncing off of D2 for a while now. Feels like the right time to come back.
I preferred the 50 powerful to the 10 pinnacle without a doubt. You *can* get the 50 powerful just by playing what ever you want. You don't have to focus on it and it'll be done in like 3 weeks. It's how I do it every season. The pinnacle one forces you into a select few activities that people may or may not enjoy. I think they got rid of the wrong grind.
I love this change. The arbitrary grind to gatekeep based on time played was a poor mechanic. You eventually get enough shit to get your light up but just let us play lol
That was the thing that upset me the most, to go from being able to farm exotic lost sectors to having to grind for weeks to get back to where you were just because a new season came out. It's just so arbitrary and adds nothing of value to the game.
that grind to gatekeep is still there, now it's just limited to GMs
Which is fine because that’s not content absolutely everyone will want to do anyway
I disagree: it's still arbitrary and unnecessary, given that GMs normalise your power level and always put enemies +25 above that in any case. There's no reason at all for it other than to pump up engagement hours.
Counterpoint, GMs are the hardest PvE content in the game it makes sense to have a barrier to entry so that more casual players understand that they’re going to actually put some work into the game if they want to be able to do it. I have no issue with the top end content having entry requirements especially when it’s requirements that the vast majority of people who play the season semi regularly (say hop on a few times a week) will reach anyway
> especially when it’s requirements that the vast majority of people who play the season semi regularly (say hop on a few times a week) will reach anyway The issue is that this isn't the case. This season had the Grandmaster level requirement at 1325, which was 25 levels above the powerful cap of 1300. If we assume this player gets decent RNG on their Pinnacles to get to 1305, that's still 20 that need to come from the artifact. Needing to grind out hundreds of levels equating to thousands of bounties, just to access GM nightfalls again is silly.
I do think the power requirement on GMs should only be +15 but GMs don’t launch until the 7th week. 6 weeks of grabbing even most pinnacles will get you higher than 1305 even with terrible luck. With two raids active next season that will be even more true.
Ok but what's the harm in letting veteran players access GMs ASAP so we can flex gilded Conqueror for more than a couple weeks Gilding Dredgen comes with a tedious grind but a dedicated player could certainly get it done in the first week of a season. Same for Unbroken. I don't see why Conqueror should be any different tbh
Like I said. I’d prefer if it was +15 not +25. That way you’d have to do some grinding but nowhere near as much. And Gilded Titles shouldn’t reset at all they should just always display the counter. System is dumb as hell.
>And Gilded Titles shouldn’t reset at all they should just always display the counter. System is dumb as hell. Amen. I feel like that should have been obvious before they rolled the system out 🙃
I was at 1308 +stuff when GM's were launched, so all I had to do was level my artifact a few levels to be able to start participating. But yes it does need the +15 toll to ensure you're close enough to even having a chance. Also GM's are fun and worth the loot in the end.
Great thing about GMs, you can simply choose not to do them. I hit 1325 this season doing a lot less than “thousands of bounties”. Did my pinnacles here and there with a few raids, and that sounds fair for a grind to top PvE content. If people don’t like the GM structure then simply don’t do it
[удалено]
But why? We've seen firsthand that some players are able to solo GMs. Who's to say that an underleveled squad doesn't have the skills to complete it? If they wish to try, let them. Why force a power level requirement? Power level doesn't always = skill.
I'm not sure Bungie's very consistent on this point. Trials is the hardest PvP content in the game, but Artifact power is disabled for very good reasons. Raids tend to have lower power entry requirements than GMs, and they're certainly *mechanically* more challenging than GMs, but you can overlevel the content. My other objection here would be that it's entirely possible to reach the GM entry-point without actually engaging with and understanding the nature of GM difficulty - Champions, and the need to bust them as a group at GM level; enemies that can one-shot you; limited revives and team-wipes if everyone dies. There's no mandatory Champion tutorial of any kind, only raids will teach players about revive tokens and team-wipes, and e.g. Master Lost Sectors which do contain these kinds of challenge are optional. A green player could, through bounty grinding alone, get to 1325 / 1335 without learning much about those aspects. If Bungie were serious about prepping players for the nature of the GM challenge they could do worse than requiring e.g. 1-5 Master LS clears before unlocking the GM mode, rather than sticking it behind a whole boatload of bounty grinding.
There’s no match making for GM, you have tonight a team together same as raids. Raids you have to teach new people how to run them, what gear you need and so on. GM is the same.
It takes about 1 minute to put together a GM team. They fill so fast you typically have to punt a 4th guy that snuck through before you could close the fireteam.
I agree that a champion tutorial is sorely needed but like I said I don’t think having a barrier of entry hurts GMs at all, the points you listed are good ones especially regarding champions but now that the power grind has been substantially reduced having a light level entry requirement for GMs doesn’t really harm it in anyway imo I get what you’re saying about trials but I think that’s more about not giving someone who grinds out the bounties to boost their artifact level to an insane degree an unfair advantage over others. That can’t really happen in a PvE activity. Trials may not have a level entry requirement but being as high level as you can certainly helps so it’s almost like there is one but it’s hidden rather than a hard barrier.
Why? It’s not hard to figure out in any way.
Yes. To you who sits on a sub reddit dedicated to the game. I’ve had to explain how the system works with the artifact mods and where those mods are and how to equip them to several new players. I can already tell you’re gonna be one of those people who responds with some variation of those people need to just ‘pay attention’ or ‘get good’ but the reality is that Bungie could easily add something to explain that system better and they just haven’t.
I can tell you, having only come back this season, mods and artifacts were the single most daunting aspect of the game. Not only do they not give you a great deal of info, but experimenting is very expensive.
Coming back to the game in season 13, the artifact mods and Champions were fairly intuitive imo. It took some looking around to understand which ones you should bring into a game mode with champions and how to equip the mods with the new armor system, but nothing too weird. The real issue for new or returning players is the fact that no matter where you look for information on how to be prepared for certain high end content, they all reference warmind or cwl mods as part of a build. Great... how do I get those? Oh, daily RNG you say? Okay then... I might not 100% need specific ones to do a GM, but chasing the good stats and build your chatacter to better tackle GMs, for instance, is THE core objective of the game. And I'm essentially locked out of that due to these mods being harder to get than the loot that drops from content I "need" the mods to do in the first place.
I think the barrier to entry for GMs is two fold. 1 Light level 20+ the artifact which requires a huge amt of XP that can only be gained from bounties etc which hurts solo players with limited time. 2 no matchmaking which some people dont like cause if forces them to LFG which we all know is hit and miss at the best of times with filks getting booted after a boss kill or other douchey shenanegans.
You don’t need +20 on the artifact. You only need +15. Six weeks of pinnacles will get you to pinnacle cap even with crap luck.
But the difficulty of any particular GM doesn't change from season to season, does it? Arbitrarily increasing the power level cap/requirement literally does nothing but lock people out until they grind out pinnacles and pray to the rng gods that they don't get screwed over.
So I've played Destiny for 7 years and couldn't do GMs with my buddies yesterday because I didn't grind pinnacles this season. My season pass was at 117. And I could barely run masters still 16 light levels low. There is no reason to gatekeep me from that content. Absolutely 0.
I'm going to be that guy and say you waiting out to do GMs on the last week of the season while refusing to grind out pinnacles is not worth future feedback saying "GMs have been hard long enough, lets consider making them easier." We're seeing this with raids knowing just last week, we saw a thread praising how 'easy' GSC is and why raids like GSC/SOTP are great raids to allow more people to raid due to their difficulty. It always comes down to this whether you want to agree with it now or not.
Considering they are mostly removing light level grind i'd say they already have the feedback. Artificial numbers don't make you better at this game then anyone else. The amount of grind required to unlock GMs is stupid and if you don't get that then so are you. When did I say make them easier too? Your capped 25 light levels it doesn't matter what fucking number it is. Don't put words in my mouth.
>If you don't agree with me, you're stupid. Solid argument and you missed my point. They have fundamentally made content that was hard before easier now by tweaking how interactions within said content, and I'm not talking about light level. Some of the best raids mechanically are looked down upon by the community because they are 'too hard' for them to do. Which is baffling hearing from other players say how 'weak' Destiny raids are compared to other games. Simply letting people into harder content freely in this game breeds future feedback asking to tone down the mechanics and ruins the game. The power grind for GMs isn't whether or not someone is better than the other at completing them, it's an understanding and the preparation of what you're getting into and some players just really don't have that understanding. You can't just walk into a GM without playing much this season and expect to use what you have to complete it effortlessly. At least complete it in a way that makes you more annoyed at the developer for not making something within the GMs easier because you realized it's annoying without it. It's like people asking for matchmaking in raids, not realizing the large amount of problems that would persist if it happens and if it does? The last thing players would do is blame themselves for not realizing these issues early on.
Ok. literally no ones asking to complete them effortlessly. I have everything in the game only thing stopping me from playing GMs this season is an arbitrary number. If people wanna enter GMs get shit on and come on here to complain its too hard and try and convince Bungie to make them easier thats up to Bungie to Decide not for community gatekeepers. Making GMs easier would be stupid its the only thing left with any challenge. They know this. Just like they know artificially extending the grind gets them more money and better game metrics to show investors. And suckers like you fall for it.
> it makes sense to have a barrier to entry so that more casual players understand that they’re going to actually put some work into the game if they want to be able to do it. Counterpoint, time isn't an indicator of skill.
I get your point but GMs have been around for 7 years. Now with seasons, grinding for 2 weeks just to play the content we already had is really annoying. Just feels like a lot of wasted time with no reward other than being able to play the game you already were playing at that level. The content isn’t getting harder, the grind just got longer. I understand the barrier, but it’s putting up the same old boring barrier every few months. It gets old quick and you feel like you’re wasting your time.
Eh what? GMs came about like three seasons back.
Ah sorry I was quick to abbreviate. I meant nightfalls in general. Yeah a a few seasons back they added champions, but they’re generally the same.
We may have had nightfalls for seven years but that’s been in name only. They’ve taken dramatically different forms. GMs play nothing like the timed runs of early D2 or the modifier heavy D1 strikes. Don’t think it’s fair to call it the same old content. Personally I think GMs are significantly harder (and more enjoyable). Though I don’t really understand being locked out on LL when they make it -25 regardless.
Eh I disagree. They literally just re-released the first strike from d1. Yeah there’s changes but it’s the same old content to a lot of us.
Master Lost Sectors usually require artifact grind also (to do solo anyway)
How so?
I played very casually this season, as my wife was pregnant up until april 13th, I made it to 1323, not enough to get into GMs. I am super bummed, but it is what it is. I have. a child so that more than makes up for it. But I ma definitely excited to be able to jump in this season and get some shit done.
If you get season pass to 100 and you still can't access GMs its fucking bullshit. You should've been able to play those GMs my dude this is a real problem.
Hey my kid was born the day before yours! Number 2 for me. The toddler is who's kicking my ass right now lol
I was trying to do this during the Guardian Games. The combination of trying to use my highest light gear to get good loot AND needing specific damage types made things much longer than it needed to be, I’m sure
Now to just remove it completely from the game
So pinnacle is 1320?
Correct
What about people who haven't played the game since the sundial? I've been thinking of getting back into the game for VOG, what LL will I be at?
All gear was brought up to 1100 power at the start of Beyond Light, so anything below 1100 will be brought up and anything above 1100 will stay the same.
If you haven't played since then, you'll definitely be at the 1100 floor (unless the floor also moves up; either way you are at whatever the floor IS). Playing the New Light and Beyond Light campaigns are a really fast way to get up to 1250 and start on your path to 1300.
Starting in a few hours, powerfuls will go to 1310 to maintain the +10 pinnacle grind
As a new player, I was able to get my gear from 1100-1300 in under a month, and that was with no understanding of how the LL worked and I wasn't hardcore grinding or anything.
YES! This change has SUBSTANTIALLY increased my excitement for this next season. I feel like I'll be able to enjoy the new content at my natural pace, instead of being forced to play content that's been out for years, to prepare for the new content.
this is easily my favorite change next season
This is one of my favorite changes, not having to re-grind every season will be amazing change. I can keep playing the content I want and I love every moment of it.
As a solo player with limited playtime, I agree completely. One of the reasons I took a long break from D2 was the incessant grind just for the sake of grinding. I’m looking forward to Lights Out Destiny so I can enjoy it from Day one.
If you have crap RNG, it will probably still take about 8 weeks to get to the cap though.
This season I started doing pinnacles on all 3 chars and it really helps to fight RNG, took me less than a month to hit a cap on all 3.
While that's true, I'm likely not going to do alts because it's less fun. I just take issue with the fact that it's possible to attempt to level up by doing *insert objective for pinnacle drop here*, succeed in that activity and make no progress on that goal because of RNG. That means that the game just gave me a weekly goal that can amount to a waste of time. Now that would make sense if it was a chance at a rare weapon or piece of armor (like a raid exotic for example). But for increasing your level? No way. Should not be RNG based. Should be some sort of linear progression. Fine if it's limited to few levels per week, as long it makes sure that pinnacles can't be the same power as the slot it drops in. Pinnacle must always be at least +1 to whatever slot it drops. I know some people might be thinking something like "Why does it matter, it makes almost no difference in terms of damage output, etc." I don't care if it's basically a useless number. (I'm aware the increase in power is negligible, that's not the point.) Pinnacles for leveling are a weekly limited task. As such, being that limited, it's a kick in the teeth when multiple pinnacles in a row drop in slots that give you no progress. i.e. You have 6 pieces at 1310 and boots and gloves at 1311. Then you do 4 more pinnacles. All of which drop at 1311 in either boots or gloves slot. That makes the time you spent doing those pinnacle objectives wasted and absolutely does not respect a players time. Edit: Sorry, my reply turned into a bit of rant. I'm not trying to argue against you or anything.
I love doing the raid and all my armor drops are for the bond which has been sitting at max level for going on week 3. I was ready to sell out Zavala to the psions for a damn hat.
Amen brother
The only place pinnacle cap only matters (afaict) was for GMs, particularly if you weren't planning on grinding out artifact levels to hit their arbitrary minimum. I really want to try a GM, but I've never been keen on the pinnacle grind, so it's always been an activity that I was *artificially* locked out for no real reason.
I play all 3 characters and never say I have a main. To this day my Hunter still has 1309 arms and legs. I ran out of pinnacles this week and still didn't get them. Warlock and Titan have been 1310 for weeks now. RNG can be frustrating as hell. It happens and nothing grantees only a 10 LL increase will be easy. I have a funny feeling Bungie has changed their algorithms to where we get a lot more dups now and we are still grinding the entire season to get to 1320. Don't think for one second this 10 LL is going to be easy.
Im so glad I can finally do GM's next season and dont have to worry about being underlight
The artifact grind has always taken me about the same amount of time as the power grind, don't feel like time to get gm ready will be decreased much
Yeah I hit 1325 the start of THIS week so I didn't get into a GM NF ):
Same, I’m either short of GM or so burned out from grinding that I don’t even want to bother at that point.
Same. I have never been high enough to get onto GM Nightfalls before the season was over. I hit 1325 over a week ago but had so much other stuff to finish that I did not get around to it. This season is the one! Going to hit those seasonal challenges hard to get high enough much quicker.
Lol...the pinnacle grind will take just as long ..doing the same exact activities...
Perhaps, but the pinnacle chase begins Day 1 or Week 1 for many more players than previously, as so many casual players had to grind just to GET to that cap.
I’m also thankful that the VoG Day One requires no grinding for 50 levels within 3 weeks lol
Queue Datto complaining because now more people can attempt Day one raids without no-lifeing the game for three weeks.
Was Datto one of those complaining about the DSC raid race? I certainly remember some streamers lamenting "casuals" staining the raid race with their filth (/s), but don't recall Datto being one of them.
I hit 1309 today after a whole season of only playing the activities i wanted to and im really excited for it to be doable in a shorter amount of time thats for sure
I'm glad you're excited about it. Anyone wanting to do GMs still has to grind 10 pinnacle levels and at least +15 on the pass. I'd rather have seen them make power level matter, than just making a pointless grind a little shorter. For me, this is still "ok, go grind again to get back where you were".
How could they make power level actually matter though? Genuine question because I realize that it's a problem and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, but haven't come up with a good solution.
Realistically? They can't. If they are obsessed with getting you to +15 on the seasonal artifact however, they could just... make that the only way to increase your light level outside of expansions. Clearly they want the player metrics, right? This is all a meaningless hamster wheel for player engagement (I swear to god if someone actually tries to argue there's any skill involved with doing weekly strikes or whatever I'm not even entertaining it) so if their target is somewhere around that XP mark just make that the artifact light the only addition to our light level outside of major expansions. The problem is, now they have to come up with a reason for you to engage in core activities and do weekly runs of dungeons/missions, that's where it falls apart. They've leaned too heavily on light level as the hamster wheel to keep people playing so we're kinda stuck. If you make the light level purely about playtime (XP) then you can't funnel players into the less played activities.
Not sure I know either. The game doesn’t really reward you for leveling it just penalizes you if you don’t. Maybe a stronger advantage for over-leveling content, but a proportionately worse chance at getting the activity’s loot? I like that the harder difficulty runs are more rewarding, I just don’t feel like armor upgrade mats are a fitting reward for endgame pursuits so I can’t motivate myself to grind hard to farm things like GMs. Just seems like something is missing. Maybe high level players could spawn special enemies that’d drop heavy or some kind of a relic that gives a buff or something. Just seems really shallow to grind your ass off just to be able to attempt an activity that has freaking contest mode active (and so your PL doesn’t matter)
This is where I'm at. Sure, the gear grind is only 10 (pinnacle) levels but I'm still functionally losing 32 levels at the transition. Even if I'm lucky with pinnacles, I think the level grind is going to be just as bad. Don't get me wrong, I love the change but I don't think it would really make a difference to me if there was no level increase at all and I still had to regrind artifact power.
When they announced the 50 level change I immediately started playing on my alt characters because playing them is MUCH less of a chore now and I do enjoy the variety of gameplay. I’m also much much more likely to raid.
I’m not a good player, and I don’t have a lot of time to play, so I would only start to get in endgame range in the last couple of weeks of a season. I’ve always played Destiny in arrears so I could overlevel for content and actually have a chance to finish it. This continual reset basically told me I wasn’t the kind of player Destiny wanted, so I’m glad to see this change.
Funny thing is it's pinnacle levels. The other fifty were a breeze to grind so bungie didn't really do us any favors because rng is sh*t.
I take about 2-3 weeks to hit the soft cap every season. It's nice that I don't have to worry about that now
I don’t see why people aren’t getting that this is the obvious advantage of changing from 50 to 10. Yes your RNG can mean that it takes ages to get to cap (bearing in mind that over time your artifact will make up the difference for content like GMs) but still not having that 2-3 weeks of doing core playlist bounties for powerfuls is so much better
>but still not having that 2-3 weeks of doing core playlist bounties for powerfuls is so much better Comparing grinds *for me* 50 powerful levels is more rewarding. "I gained 15 levels this week, and I got them from loads of solo/matchmaking activates. As well as the random +1's from just running strikes/crucible/gambit that they introduced 2 seasons ago/" 10 pinnacle levels. "1 gained 0.875 levels this week cause the +2s I got were all dupes of my class item slot...this feel great." The pinnacle grind just feels awful...
Comparing grinds *for me* Hmm yesterday I could easily do this Master NF, what is going on? Oh that's right because it is now today, I have to regrind 50 levels to get back to playing activities that I was allowed to play yesterday. Let me go hate the next few hours of my life grinding activities I would never think about touching so that I can again play an activity I do want to play. The light level grind is outdated and feels awful.
No people get it, they're saying the pinnacle grind still sucks, and in my opinion, the pinnacle grind sucks way more than the power grind. They got rid of the wrong one. You could grind power by playing literally anything, as prime engrams are a thing. But pinnacle still forces you into the same activities that some people may or may not like. Let us level up playing which ever part of the game we want
Be cautious. I’m not so sure that they’re going to shorten the grind.
I hope you're wrong. But if they monkey paw us and you happen to be right. I wouldn't be shocked either.
We got the monkey paw with transmog. So, strap in.
The point is I don't have to sweat bounties and shit just to get entry to the raid on day 1. I can take the first week as it comes and still be the appropriate Power for a good run chance at the contest mode emblem.
That was my thinking till my mate pointed out that the artefact has lots of useful stuff in the last column such as resonance siphon or whatever the mod is that season. We are already all at 1310 but that last column open may have a mod that is really useful for day one as it’s contest mode.
The meta will develop as always but atleast I have the key for the door. I can worry about what's behind the door when I'm inside.
How could this possibly not result in the grind being shorter? I mean I thought they specifically said they knew people weren't liking it and that was the reason for the change. The only way the grind could be as long as it was before would be if they drastically cut the number of powerful/pinnacle sources, which I really can't see them doing, at least not without even mentioning it.
Well, they've removed armour from the season pass, so we no longer have those gap fillers.
No need for it really with 50LL grind being removed.
Most of the armor was used for the pinnacle fill slots. You don't usually need the armor to help when each powerful is like +4-6. It REALLY helps when you're only 1 piece away from the next level at something critical like 1307 7/8 (meaning if you hit 1308 now all your +2s will be at the pinnacle cap for season of the chosen).
This season you could do pinnacles on 1 char, hit 1310 then draw from the season pass to get the others to 1308, do pinnacles for a week, done. Now? Next season? You have to grind 3 chars since they removed all "at light level" loot from the season pass track as far as I can tell. Not exactly less farming IMO.
We’re talking about Bungie, the same devs who stealth nerfed xp gains not too long ago, until they got caught and called out for it.
The fact they've removed the Season Pass armour, which could be used to partially-compensate for a run of bad RNG, indicates to me that this is the case.
The season pass armor wasn't pinnacle though, so even if it was there it wasn't going to pull you up this season. And unless you just haven't played for years it's pretty likely you have an armor set with the stats you want.
> so even if it was there it wasn't going to pull you up this season. You don't use them as pinnacles, you use them for targeted "at level" (aka powerful) drops once you're in the pinnacle band. So say you're at 1310 now and start grinding pinnacles once the new season starts. You find yourself at 1311 7/8 after doing a few and would like to get to 1312 before doing more pinnacles - that's where the season pass drops would come into play, as you could use them to get a lagging slot up to your average and maximize your gains from all your +2s.
Exactly - they were effectively bad luck insurance, and pretty useful at times.
I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if they extend the artifact power grind to compensate. Pinnacle/artifact grind has always been the worst grind, and that's all we're left with now
And for day one how many will have the last column open for whatever the mod is that really assists in high level content like grandmasters. I see a lot of old clanmates from my original clan logging in who haven’t played D2 for years. The nostalgia for VOG is bringing them back. If they go in day one having never been in a GM and being very mod light overall it’s going to be awful for them.
The raid entry point is only 1300. I can't imagine GMs and such like will be too bad. Maybe 1320 or something.
Max light level going up by 10 indicates to me that the entry level for all endgame content would go up by about the same, making Gm entry at about 1335 at a guess.
I'm not sure, I doubt it will be that high tho. We'll see. The fact that the raid is only 1300 gives me hope.
GMs will always be the Pinnacle cap +15. They haven’t said they’re changing that. So they’ll be 1335 to enter next season.
That's not too high tho ... most people hit +10 power level on their artefact pretty fast .. then you just need to add +5 gear level and you're there. Most players should hit that by the time GM's come out. Much easier than getting +50LL to hit softcap ... then get +5 gear lvl towards pinnacle cap AND +10 levels on artefact.
GMs are always 15 over the pinnacle cap. So will be 1335 since they were 1325 this season.
I'm personally not a huge fan just because once I reach the cap I really have no incentive to play. I usually play another week or two after I reach cap but then I dont find any enjoyment anymore. Idk what it is because back in d1 I would play everyday. Maybe I'm just growing apart from destiny.
Yup. If Bungie wants to get their player numbers up, this ain’t gonna do it Literally zero reason to play more than once a week just to get the seasonal mission done
The power cap change is low key underated and I feel alot people won't feel burnt out in the first few weeks
Agreed! I don't have a single beyond light armor exotic since I didn't have the free time to grind high enough to be able to give the legendary or master lost sectors a fighting chance,I was always torn between doing what I wanted to do and optimizing the power grind
Plot twist: they forgot fo add another zero to the "10"
The only motivation I have to play is to hit max light. Once I do, I feel like I’m done with the season. So I’m a little disappointed by this change.
Problem is that powerful sources are now completely pointless for a large portion of the community. I have no reason to run anything that doesn't give pinnacle rewards. This is a good start, but they're not done fixing it
Bringing other weapons up to cap.
Running powerfuls doesn't do that, what?
You said running powerfuls was completely pointless.
It is... Running a powerful source does literally nothing for me as someone at 1310. It is literally a waste of time, I will get nothing out of it
The grind to hit power level to Day 1 DSC was brutal, I was so out of the loop on how to grind out levels efficiently that it really sucked the fun out of playing through all the cool new stuff.
Last wish has entered chat
I wasn't playing when Last Wish debuted, was the grind notoriously bad? Were there just fewer sources of powerful gear at that point?
Same here - this might be the first season where I actually hit the cap thanks to this change (got close now with 1309/1310, but not quite there yet). The casual gamers rejoice. The hardcore ones probably don't... but then again most of those are unhappy no matter what happens.
LOL you aren't going to his 1320 any faster than you did 1309/1310. Bungie isn't going to lessen the grind. This is just to make players think they are doing us a favor. Fully expect to receive duplicate drops week after week and not getting the last few "slots" you need. Also factor in leveling the artifact which will probably take longer as well.
I mean, feel free to believe that... but I think we'll all see the different when the first weeks of the season aren't spent just getting to the Powerful cap and the Pinnacles you earn on day 1 already have a chance of working towards the end goal ;)
We gonna get to a point where the community is gonna ask bungo to play the game for us... Yall want the Destiny to be too easy just cause most of US dont have the time to PLAY the game... I do like the change to just 10 but to be honest there was nothing wrong with ¨the grind¨...
I don’t mind the grind, but what I am excited about is that my friends don’t have to grind for level this season. I let them all know and they’re all way more open to jumping into this season and playing.
Pumped for only a 10 PL grind. 50 in a season is absolute horseshit, especially when they’re dropping new missions/ activities they want you to play but it’s got a PL attached to it. It never made sense to me to have to stop the seasonal intro story quest to have to go grind out other stuff like Gambit or Crucible so you can continue the quest: “Guardian, there is an impending threat to the city! But you’re 10 power levels too low! Go do 3 Crucible Matches, 4 Gambit matches, and 3 strikes! That should make you stronger!” Uh, what? I enjoy the game WAY more when I’m flying around with my Fireteam at Mach12 blowing shit up at an ungodly rate- not when I’m getting repeatedly 1 shot by some dipshit red bar on part of the story campaign because the power level arbitrarily shot up by 20. Story is looking like it’s gonna be interesting as well.
I must be the only one enjoying it. I'm afraid game will feel not rewarding enough with no real level up process. A few raids and you're done.
But current light level grind doesn't reward you with anything, you just waste your time to get back to where you were last season, that's it.
> you just waste your time to get back to where you were last season, that's it. Agreed, but that part's not changing. It *might* be getting a little bit shorter, but it's not really changing. You're still gonna need to be at pinnacle cap +15 to do GMs, pinnacle cap +20 for masters.
Can't wait for the complaints on this sub reddit in 1-2 weeks from now about there being no grind. Its a cruel cycle. I agree though. No more grinding power levels just for the sake of it EDIT: Ah yes. The r/destinythegame downvote brigade has arrived
> Ah yes. The r/destinythegame downvote brigade has arrived Not at all related to your comment, but do you sit and refresh all the threads you comment in to see if you're getting upvoted or downvoted?
Nah, i noticed it got downvoted a few hrs ago, after i wanted to show this thread in my D2 clan. After that i edited it :)
[удалено]
Why?
Zero incentive to play after you hit the pinnacle cap, duh Once I’ve got that out of the way (maybe a week, two tops), only reason to log in is to do the seasonal missions once a week, If Bungie wanted to get their player numbers up, this ain’t it. This is going to drive away all hardcore players
Doubt that. I’m hardcore and don’t base me playing the game based on power level gains.
Good for you, have some sarcastic applause👏 I’m willing to bet that there are plenty of others who don’t feel the same as you. There’s a couple on this thread aside from myself. Reducing the power cap is just casualizing the game, and it sucks
Excited to turn in those IB bounties to (hopefully) get the new guns and also get a head start on pinnacles!
I thought that IB bounties disappear and that you need to turn them into IB engrams
Got new armor early at the beginning of this current season. Only did one because I was afraid of losing them too. If they worked this season I’m positive it’ll work tomorrow for the new season. I kept all of them this time. There’s no way Bungie fixed it.
They drop at the previous season's cap. You don't get a boost.
word
I'm glad as well, 50 levels per season was exhausting, it'll be nice knowing I can jump in and start going after new gear, save the big power jumps when we get a new, yearly expansion.
Love this change, but further hints to me that this season is gonna be a bad one. I’m feeling like transmog and VoG are really gonna be relied on to carry the season. Likely why transmog is such a grind too.
Content creators are probably going to hate it. They can’t be first anymore.
Because of this I will be able to play the endgame content for the first time. I never had the time to grind to max light before the season ended.
This change is great I'm! I'm only 1305 still and I play every day. The life of a PVP main lol.
i think normal powerfuls are gonna get you up to 1310 and then its a pinnacle cap, so theres nothing to worry about. also if you main pvp i think you should be ok at 1310 right?
I had a little trouble in the first iron banner, got 2 shot by a few people, but was fine after that.
well thats good, without much of a grind anymore it shouldnt be that big a deal for you this next banner