Last night time noticed the beginning of the Guardian Games in Destiny 2, a brand new three-way competitors between Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks to, in Bungie’s words, “test your skills in a series of daily class challenges” and in the end “prove that your class reigns supreme”. In actuality, the competitors is simply one other set of bounties in a game already too targeted on bounties. Guardian Games is a bust, and under no circumstances what this disappointing season wants. However! Yesterday’s patch did at the very least repair some irritating points, together with placing seasonal mod slots on some outdated armour and including extra Pinnacle rewards.
The Guardian Games will run till May 11, in order that’s three weeks to determine who’s greatest. Unsurprisingly, Destiny’s squillion Hunters have taken a robust early lead. Eva Levente has adorned the Tower with a robust Olympics-y look, which is good, and participating can get you new prizes. Natty new Ghost shells come emblazoned with statues of the emblematic class animals, and a quest results in a brand new unique machinegun: a honking nice Cabal minigun named the Heir Apparent.
It’s a disgrace the precise occasion is so bland. The entire competitors is about finishing bounties in common actions, some by doing common stuff (kill a great deal of enemies, full Strikes, defeat of us in PvP, and so forth) and others particularly from tremendous, grenade, or melee capability kills. Either approach, it’s bounties on bounties. No half will “test your skills” or allow you to “prove that your class reigns supreme” by demonstrating your prowess. It’s a grinding contest. Destiny already places too many rewards behind bounties relatively than actions, nudging us to spend time travelling round to assemble bounties we’ll have to play in particular methods to finish. Checklists will not be enjoyable.
Last night time I went to the Tower, admired the decorations, picked up a load of Guardian Games bounties, checked out my heaving quest log, sighed, then closed Destiny and performed one other game as an alternative. I’ll return and get Heir Apparent however don’t care concerning the ‘competition’.
A grind-off occasion is an actual let-down in a season that’s already a bit no matter. Rasputin’s Seraph Towers and Bunkers misplaced their novelty earlier than even the second Bunker opened, not to mention the third. The Warmind Cells are a enjoyable toy however take actual funding to develop into marginally higher at killing enemies who largely aren’t troublesome anyway. Trials Of Osiris is a horror of a PvP mode the place robust gamers abuse matchmaking to farm weaker gamers for weapon tokens. And the plot about stopping a miles-long spaceship from crashing into Earth feels so non-urgent that we’re pausing to have a good time the Spaceolympics. Now alongside comes a bounty-grinding occasion with no new exercise and meagre rewards, but loads of new themed cosmetics within the ever-disappointing Eververse microtransaction retailer.
The swish Spaceolympics armour, emotes, spaceships, and such you see everybody sporting in trailers and screenshots are from Eververse, not occasion rewards. Events typically used to offer their themed armour as rewards, however now you will need to purchase the armour decoration set from Eververse. Each class’s set prices 1500 Silver (about £13 in actual cash) or 6000 Bright Dust. If you accomplished all common weekly Bright Dust bounties plus the brand new occasion Bright Dust bounties on one character throughout these three weeks, you continue to wouldn’t earn sufficient to purchase their occasion outfit. With three characters grinding, you’d earn sufficient for 2. I don’t outright object to microtransactions, particularly now Destiny 2’s base game is free-to-play, but it surely presently feels grubby.
While I don’t count on each occasion to be as enjoyable because the Solstice Of Heroes with its parkour battles in the European Aerial Zone, Season Of The Worthy wanted an enormous increase – and this isn’t it.
Still, yesterday’s Update 2.8.1 introduced some good things. A number of the welcome modifications are solely fixing previous errors however hell, I’m glad to see them anyway. Let’s see what now we have…
- The Powerful rewards from weekly Crucible, Strike, and Gambit challenges plus the weekly clan engram will now be +1 Pinnacle rewards. Pinnacles solely drop from a couple of robust challenges, so it’s now simpler to gear up by means of the ultimate stretch from 1000 Power to 1010.
- Seasonal mod slots have been added to loads more armour sets. Oh, and Bungie don’t record it however the Escalation Protocol gear does too. EP armour now has Worthy slots whereas the remainder have Dawn or Undying slots. While I do want Bungie would make seasonal slots common, hey, an entire lot extra trend is now sensible.
- Fighting Lion is much less damaged. Despite Bungie’s discuss of buffing Destiny 2’s best gun this season, a bug meant it really got here out worse. Bungie say they’ve now restored the blast radius of breech-loading grenade launchers. However, a couple of Fighting Lion diehards insist that it’s not quite right yet. HMM.
- Bungie have re-added a few of the stats tracked by Emblems earlier than the iffy new Emblem system launched, and sure historic information is unbroken.
- The Fourth Horseman, that honking nice new shotgun, not has an bug which made the game ignore loads of its harm. Y’know the way generally you’d see it eat by means of an enemy’s well being bar, then a split-second later the game healed them? I feel it’s that.
- Bad information for solos and scrubs: the bug making the Whisper and Zero Hour missions mega-easy is mounted.
- Oh, and the murderously robust Grandmaster issue launched in Nightfall: The Ordeal mode this week. It doesn’t supply higher rewards than Master issue, just some cheevos.
Bungie have acknowledged that Destiny 2’s current season model is busted however we nonetheless have one other entire season to go after this earlier than we must always count on to see modifications on account of this realisation. I’ve simply stopped taking part in as a lot relatively than danger burnout, and that’s advantageous however it’s a disgrace. Fingers crossed for some thrilling plot twists later this season. So far its all gradual build-up revealed in minor methods.
