yes, thank you for clarifying!
There were also the daily heroic missions, and also the heroic strike playlist.
I would love to see that down the line. Heroic Strikes sound like a lot of fun; I’ve played (most of them) so many times now I can almost do them in my sleep. Which is fun in its own way, to feel more powerful, but the higher difficulties of Halo: CE is where I had the most fun in that game.
Especially when you consider how the Heroic Strike list got weekly modifiers like the Nightfall, so it kept it interesting from week to week. One week would have Arc Burn, the next you’d have no radar, but all your melees do tons more damage, the next you do more damage in the air, along with Solar Burn, and the possibilities were just endless. Always made it a fresh experience. Although there would be some weeks that the modifiers made some strikes just such a pain to go through that you were almost guaranteed to have everyone go to orbit the moment it came up.
I’m intrigued by this week’s news from Bungie, that hints at more challenges and rewards from strikes. I didn’t get much into strikes until relatively late in my D1 time, but then really started to enjoy them a lot. It was great fun to happen into a duo that I clicked with and just go on a strike romp for an hour or so. So, fingers crossed!
Yep, that would be really great. Strike-specific loot would also be a nice thing from D1 for them to re-add to D2.
So I recently started a Titan after getting up to 295 with a Warlock. I got my first auto rifle in the campaign and thought “oh my god what is this amazing gun.” I didn’t even notice good that gun feels when I played through the first time, I killed everything because it just felt so right.
That’s a roundabout way of saying I’m playing more strikes now on my Warlock because I gotta get my hands on an Origin Story.
Another question while we’re on the topic of strikes: I played them quite a bit in September and then not much again until this week. Between then and now I had never played the Lake of Shadows strike but suddenly I’m getting it all the time. Do they cycle through which strikes are possible? There’s also the Arms Dealer strike, but I’ve never played it and only know it exists because of the Nightfall. Not sure how all that works.
Origin Story might be my favorite gun in the game. You can get it from Zavala when you complete the Vanguard quest.
I’m pretty sure Bungie tweaks the chances of certain strikes coming up from week to week.
Well I played three this morning and finally got Arms Dealer! It’s a cool one, feels like the closest thing to a horde mode
I made it through my first full raid yesterday! We beat Gauntlet in two tries, Dogs and Bath in one, and then spent a little over an hour getting Calus done. Now that I’ve practiced all the mechanics I feel much more confident and … even like this raid a lot. (And now I can finally turn in those Calus tokens!)
I’m really curious, how do the raids feel in this? I expect everything is just really tanky and deals a lot of damage, but what’s the feel of the mechanics? High coordination requirements? DPS checks? Lots of potential for one person to wipe everyone by standing in the wrong place?
I’m asking because while I’m enjoying the game and want to check the raid out at least once, FPSes just inherently kinda stress me out in group content; I have a lot less experience with them than with “traditional” MMOs.
Also, just completed my Actium War Rig/Sweet Business combo and it’s the only thing in the game so far that’s felt like completing a Diablo 3 set bonus. I wish exotic/perk synergies were not even necessarily “stronger”, but more exciting and impactful for your playstyle.
If you have any D1 points of reference it’s somewhere in between Kings Fall and Wrath of the Machine. If you don’t: the tankiness isn’t an issue in the normal raid if you’re around 270-280. Mechanics wise there’s room for error but someone else usually needs to pick up the slack (aka know the mechanics well enough to make the right move if someone else makes a mistake). Every waypoint group I’ve been in has been super chill and willing to help new people. I personally love teaching the mechanics to new folks and still run guided games regularly for waypoint regulars. If you’re interested you should head over to the waypoint discord, there’s a lot of organizing of groups over there! I make a weekly poll where people put down their availability and we make groups based off of that 
I’m pretty sure the discord is locked these days or something? Thanks though, I’m definitely interested at some point in the near future.
I agree with @Cado on the KF-WOTM reference, though I do think that this raid is a little less forgiving of small mistakes. Most of the mechanics aren’t hard to execute, but they’re precise, and coordination is important to pull it off.
However, that said, don’t let that chase you away from giving it a try. I’ve watched Cado stream and will vouch for the fun tone and environment he keeps up for the raid! Getting the mechanics right (and even getting it wrong in the right environment) with a group that’s having a good time is really, really fun and rewarding.
(I say that assuming you’re not on Xbox – if you are, I’d be happy to join you in the raid sometime!)
Nah, I’m on the PC and have zero familiarity with D1 or, for that matter, Halo, which seems to be a big point of reference for everyone. I appreciate the replies, though!
I’d say that the single-line description of Destiny 2 is probably “what if Halo was structured like Guild Wars 1”. Halo isn’t really a necessary reference beyond how the moment to moment combat (and some of the universe themes) works and even that isn’t directly lifted (because levelling and how weapon mods change how things behave while Halo has always been about a few gun archetypes that you switch between). It’s cool to come from Halo and know that you do shields with the energy weapon then switch to kinetic for the health (unless you’re playing with an unconventional loadout) but I wouldn’t have thought lack of familiarity with Halo would be that much of a barrier.
(I am currently having fun hoovering up all those side missions that unlock in the open areas but the campaign never really gives you a good time to jump into. It’s amazing how quickly everyone is getting to the final stuff to do in the first week on PC.)
It’s funny – Halo is a big touchstone for so many of the people I’ve played Destiny with, but (whispering) I’ve never played it, either!
It’s not really a barrier so much as missing non-essential but interesting context, I guess? I’ve always heard a lot of praise about how good the guns feel to use, for instance, and it’s clearly something they’ve iterated on a lot throughout a bunch of titles.
I definitely had a Guild Wars feeling at several points throughout the game, but the only other Bungie thing I’ve played was both of the Myth games, and there’s definitely a lineage there too, at least in how they do worldbuilding and storytelling (and naming conventions, apparently).
So I know why games need to put in various constraints to keep the level design working (let she who has never added an invisible wall way up there just to make sure no one swims in the sky and breaks her level cast the first stone) but does anyone else feel like some of the You have 5 seconds to desist warning messages are a bit too liberally applied to the game world?
Here is a game filled with little Easter eggs and chests to discover, that tells you to explore every inch of the map but then… you do and you keep on finding spots they tell you not to go to. It’s not even like I’ve spec’d to actually have unusual mobility to reach areas I shouldn’t. For some reason the invisible walls feel much nicer than the points where if you don’t act fast then you will die to “misadvanture”. I can accept that I can’t get somewhere despite looking like I kinda should but when I do get there and I’m told I’m about to die it seems incredibly rude.
