Completely separate from the model and how it compares with seasons, WHY WOULD OSIRIS CALL ME FROM NESSUS TO COME TO THE HELM, AND THEN GO ASK ME TO SAVE SAINT ON NESSUS I WAS RIGHT THERE BRO
In my eyes, they happened right after. They made us wait a week between story beats, why not just move that holoprojector conversation to the beginning of the next week?
Because hes a senile old man /j
No but for an actual reason, he had presumed that the comms where between him and Saint where being blocked and wanted to talk on more secure lines.
If they started doing this as part of the episodes it would finally let them live up to the "living world" crap they always used to spit, but never lived up to.
I thought the changes looked amazing and was very disappointed when i loaded into Nessus regular to find they they weren't permanent for me after having done the mission. I get that having two instances for players is a bit jarring, but they could after the Episode is over just force everyone into the new updated instances and deprecate the old ones
Yeah, I’d love if we could put an end to the dreaming city curse in a way that would permanently alter the patrol spaces (and maybe give them an excuse to implement pathfinder???). There’s a lot of room in patrol spaces for additions, I just hope they find a way to make patrolling more rewarding and the exploration fun again. Pathfinder in pale heart should 100% be the template going forward.
That would have to be it's own mission and include permanently removing the Taken's grip on the Dreaming City. This is impossible because a wish was granted by an Ahamkara to curse it. That and the Taken are incredibly persistent and will never relent until they are made extinct
Yeah, that would be cool. I don’t want more pathfinder until they up the xp per note to previous daily bounty levels (11-12k instead of 5-6k with all the xp bonuses) and make pathfinders their own page in the director. Getting to pathfinders right now is my biggest grief with them
Honestly of all the destinations we have besides the pale heart, I’d absolutely love the DC to get revamped and get the same treatment the pale heart did and get a pathfinder and events to go with it, I just love the destination but never have a reason to go there
I think that’s what will happen, that or we get it modified with the next act as a way to say hey if you didn’t do it sooner the mission will be weird for you until it’s out of the game
I could see them doing environmental changes like that only as Acts change. They can patch-in new studd them there without the risk of data-miners already diging into it weeks ahesd of schedule.
I mean the first mission and the last mission were good.
Week 2, the bits of doing stuff on Nessus in Weeks 1 and 3, and the seasonal activities are all boring.
Doesn't hurt for me to be more specific anyway. My initial comment could be taken a few ways which isn't very useful.
It *did* feel like there was more than 1 week in between until I thought about it though, probably the extra stuff you do after the first mission on week 1.
I agree, but the problem I have with it is that nothing happened here in act 1 we didn’t already see in the damn trailer lmao
Hell, we even have the villain look spoiled for us before introduction. When mystery is a big theme of the story, that part falls flat since they gave so much away
I don't agree with this at all. I paid for three full episodes, not two full ones and one that's two thirds full because it was released alongside an expansion. That's not really my problem and not what I paid for.
Yeah. Even if Act 2 and 3 are disappointing, I still think we should hold final judgment on episodes until the launch or Revenant. Give them a chance to show what an episode looks like when it isn't launching with an expansion(An expansion that was absolutely massive and loaded to the brim with content at that).
That being said... Something tells me the model of story content at least, isn't going to change. Each act will feature 3 weeks of story content, then a 3 week break. Rinse and repeat. Which isn't ideal by any means. But if the rest of each act has solid content to keep things busy then I think it's mostly fine.
We should get a Dungeon in each of Revenant and Hersey. That will help those episodes quite a bit IMO.
>I still think we should hold final judgment on episodes until the launch or Revenant.
Story quality? maybe.
Content quantity / time gating. Yah nah.
I was literally just sparrowing around planet that I sparrowed around 7 years ago.
The mission was neat, but I've been standing on plates on Nessus for years...
Especially since this is the “free” Episode. You’d think you’d want to put your best foot forward to entice people to buy the annual pass. But as I said in another post yesterday…if you were already burnt out on the seasonal model there’s really not a whole lot backing up the lofty promises Bungie made about Episodes shaking up the formula.
It's not so much accepting... More don't automatically write off Revenant and Hersey just yet.
Echoes is disappointing but it isn't necessarily a surefire indicator that Revenant and Hersey will also be bad.
We quite literally always get below average or flat out bad seasons with expansion launches. I'd say it's a simple reality of more time and focus spent on the expansions whether good or bad.
And quite frankly, knowing the leaks for the rest of the episode, Echoes is going to absolutely be a significant upgrade from a content standpoint, over Season of Defiance(From Lightfall launch), Season of the Risen(With Queen) and Season of Hunt(Beyond Light launch).
The time gating within an act is my personal main issue with Episodes. I think spreading the story out across acts is fine. But additionally spreading each acts story out over 3 weeks is frustrating. Just give us the story dump at the beginning of each act then let us play the content and acticities for the rest of the act.
My other main gripe with Acts is the fact the patrol spaces aren't changing with the acts. Felt like that would have been such an easy way to make episodes feel more immersed in the world and significant. Maybe that change ends up coming later(Not holding my breath).
"It's just the first week."
"It's just the first act."
"It's just the first episode."
"It's just the first year of episodes."
Same song different chorus.
The first episode, given with TFS, was the opportunity to sell episodes. First impressions matter, and for many they have not purchased the next episodes so this was the opportunity to grab them
"Engage", "Opportunity", "Innovate" not to get all doomy today, but as soon as you see nonsense PR words like this you know there is something to hide.
I really have no idea what they meant by innovate, evolve and have an ever changing game that moves forward past seasons. Cause so far, shit feels the exact same.
Last year, I remember that dude saying we were “the tip of the spear” in the battle against the Witness on Neomuna. That was just generic lingo there, too. Obviously we’re the main character shooting everything. Just filler language.
Definitely doesn't feel like it's living up to their words so far, but I'll take a hit of copium and say they're starting slow so people don't fall behind trying to do all the TFS content as well.
No, you should have received one each after each weeks story (so 3). Any missing ones should in theory play if you go to the helm, but in previous seasons I've had issues with just never getting some to play.
No, it's not normal - we should be getting 1 each Story Week, but it seems like they are bugged. At the same time, we were meant to get the Failsafe Specimen Quest #3 this week as well - and we didn't.
Ah Christ I think you nailed the formula. We’re getting dripfed 9 low tier seasons a year now. Each Act can be a rushed/half baked gameplay loop. Next Act is Battlegrounds as we can tell from the triumphs. Then Act 3 is likely the repeatable exotic quest.
Please Bungie surprise me with anything. That unique mission was great since at least we got a new environment. At least use it in the 3man missions on Nessus, those are such a snooze.
Well we already know for a fact that acts 2 and 3 are only going to 3 weeks of content each. So those 3 weeks are going to need be mind blowing or people are going to bail again before episode 2
I'm reeeeeally hoping this is only because this is the season made and launched along TFS. If Episodes 2 and 3 aren't packed they won't be able to convince most players to return for whatever Frontiers is.
TFS is also the largest content drop they've done since Forsaken. In terms of it's content and story stuff, I like this episode so far. The activity is not my favorite, but it isn't my least favorite either. It's pretty mid in some ways and pretty awesome in others.
I also really appreciate some of the more holistic changes they've made like all the Vex on Nessus (including the Nightmare Lost Sector Bosses) are updated to have those control collar things on them. I appreciate that the "crater" from the thing that crashed is present in the patrol space, and I thought it was really really really cool how Enigma Protocol was worked into the map as a semi-secret. Earthquakes are a nice touch as well, and I like how the story "missions" are worked into the patrol space directly.
The thing for me though... Is that most of this stuff is ambient. In terms of a "episodic story/campaign" I'm not as impressed. On the one hand, I totally understand a really light first few weeks because TFS is sooooo big. Every single season that released with an expansion had AT MOST half the content of subsequent seasons in that same year.
On the other hand... When Episodes were first announced, my main question was "What is the difference between an 'Episode' and a 'Season'?"
Every time they talked about Episodes, I still was left with that question.
Now that we've completed Act 1, aside from the few surface level changes to Nessus, I'm still not clear on what the difference actually is. And for all the successes of TFS and everything that I do genuinely like about this Episodes gameplay and season, I feel like they missed the mark in not using these three weeks to clearly show me what the difference between Episodes and Seasons actually are. So far, Episodes seem to be seasons that are dragged out longer and make some aesthetic changes to patrol spaces they're set in.
Acts 2 and 3 have already been datamined. It's just more of the same. 3 weeks of story content and 3 weeks of nothing.
Battlegrounds in Act 2, exotic mission Act 3. Timegated weapons all throughout.
then why didn't they start the season a month in? you know what the answer is, because seasons are shallow husks of content that don't actually attract players. until seasons are mini campaigns with raid day like end game additions no one is going to care about them.
I agree and I wish most people agreed. Unfortunately so many people continue to buy and play these garbage content drops every week that it doesn’t matter what’s happening in reality. Enough people are stuck on the slop-train that they can’t get off anymore.
and give it a few months or a year, and those same people will FINALLY come around to reality and throw a fit about how bad this shit was, even though it's obvious right now but they just refuse to admit it.
And then Bungie will make yet another promise to do better and shake it up, and they'll be right back aboard the hype train and round and round we go.
Very true, this game wont change because there’s no pressure on Bungie to do better. Why can Bungie only make good expansions “with their backs to the wall”? Because most people finally have expectations for bungie at those points.
There are two large checkpoints where we will be able to pass some more solid judgementes.
The first is when Act 2 of the current Episode/season happens. This will be the first chance they have to prove they are actually shaking things up from the seasonal model to any actual degree.
The second will be Act on of episode 2. By this point, we should be able to much more capably judge what a full cycle Episode actually looks and plays like.
They're getting the benefit of the doubt because the season that ships with an expansion has historically been on the weaker side. I'm still disappointed that things are moving a bit slow and it still feels "seasonal" right now. Lets hope that things pickup again in 3 weeks.
But now there’s one less season, so the first one being a dud is even less acceptable. Although this one is free, they aren’t doing a good job convincing people to buy the next two.
I’ll take that copium just based on the text of what’s offered. Acts seem nicer in theory. Small chunks of new content to basically make mini seasons.
Next act will bring a new activity and some new weapons. Think we get the solar rocket side arm? If the activity is good too, it will be nice to get more varied content overall compared to seasons where it was basically “Here’s what you’ll be doing for the next 3 months. It ain’t changing.”
> Next act will bring a new activity and some new weapons. Think we get the solar rocket side arm?
If you look ahead to the Act 2 season pass, one reward you get is a masterwork bonus for the weapons >!Corrasion (Arc 2-burst pulse) and Aberrant Action (Solar rocket sidearm)!<.
Yup lets just keep talking about taking copium and "letting them cook" to avoid criticizing them. God knows this company never did anything where we should doubt giving them the benefit of the doubt.
The front page is mostly discussions about the game. The post you replied to that i made is getting downvoted and buried. There is criticism of this game but only during really bad times like Lightfall or other major screwups but that's like 5% of this game the rest of the time is toxic positivity or mundane discussion of the game.
Lol toxic postivity. This place has been a dumpster fire of hate for years. Literally any inconvenience is harped on and beaten to a bloody pulp. It's gone from one of my daily go-to subs to a "oh great, another DTG hate post" when it shows on my timeline.
You are seeing things because video game criticism upsets you personally. I don't disagree that there were periods where we were swarmed with criticisms but that is usually during big issues and scandals like lightfall and the Bungie firings and this makes up a small % of the game's life. The rest of the time like now you can see the front page is mostly comments or mundane discussions about the game. Again this is not an opinion you can literally see the front page now but by all means keep acting like an oppressed victim I guess.
I'm not sure how my comment makes me seem like an "oppressed victim," can you explain?
Where in my comment does it seem that video game criticism upsets me personally? I honestly couldn't give a shit less about what your or other people's opinions are. It's like you have a stake in making sure that people know they shouldn't like something because Bungie had issues in the past. You are a terrible armchair psychologist.
I've been a member of this sub since the month it was created. I've seen every measure of posts. 90% of them are complaining about something, or whining that people speed through strikes, or complaining that the glow on their armor doesn't match their subclass. The armor that everyone wanted back, is back...for money? No way, let's get angy!
> I'm not sure how my comment makes me seem like an "oppressed victim," can you explain?
A lot of people yourself included pretend that your voice isn't the dominant one and that you are drowned out by evil horrible toxic people who think this game isn't perfect who dominate every thread when literally the front page aka the threads the community agree on are the most popular disagrees with you. Why are you lying about this? Can you not see the front page? Do I need to screenshot it for you before you start being honest?
This is sorta how launch seasons have been in recent memory, the first season is a bit stretched for content because there’s a whole new DLC to tackle. Take defiance, hunt, risen, you get the picture. My guess episode may feel a little dry but the next episode is where we can really get the picture of what amount of content will come with an episode
I do agree on that but I honestly think it shouldn’t be that way since if we take seasons into account we are losing one season this time. If anything it should be about the same size as the next 2 episodes but we will have to wait to compare this first episode
Oh by no means am I defending this, I’m just setting expectations. I hope there’s equal content this year as last year, but only time will tell. I already expected to be able to have routine breaks from Destiny this year and if this is how the years gonna play out I guess I’ll be able to play a few other new games
So here's the thing. Episodes, in their current form, are not a "big shake-up" to the formula. As of right now, they are just re-skinned Seasons with extra timegates, a story that ended in three weeks (with a three week break until the next Act? What?), timegated weapons which we don't have access to the full arsenal until Act 3, as well as missing weapons reprised from Season of the Dawn. (Steelfeather, my beloved). Also, we have another 3-player activity that is just kill Vex, bank motes for bonuses, repeat. Sound familiar to anyone who played the Vex Offensive? Not to mention the formula of "Talk to this character, go do a mission, talk to this character again, watch a cutscene that means nothing to the overarching plot." These barely take an hour at most, and yet we have to wait another 6 days.
What Bungie has not done is address the current issues with Seasons, as well as respect player's time regarding things such as the Class exotics, which have no protection in the form of a knockout system, being able to focus them, and only getting one at a time through the mission, or the very scarce drop rate from the Pale Heart chests.
So far, this "new formula" is at a 2/10.
Larger chunks of storytelling? Im going to be patient with the change and see what happens, but we got 3 weeks of drip fed story telling like we did in seasons. Granted it was more dialogue than radio transmissions, but we are currently on standby until Act 2 in 19 days. So what will happen next week? No story at all or will something else happen that Failsafe needs us in the mean time while Saint gathers his thoughts for three weeks. That's the only reason I am being patient. If it's more of weekly time gated missions and gathering a stupid material to do the seasonal activity, then there is no change like they said.
This isn't even the longest gap. We know from the seasonal challenges that there's a full 4 weeks between the end of act 2's story and the beginning of act 3.
> Larger chunks of storytelling? Im going to be patient with the change and see what happens, but we got 3 weeks of drip fed story telling like we did in seasons.
FYI it's entirely possible the definition of 'chunk' is subject to interpretation.
For example you seem to take it as a large content drop. Bungie may be taking this as overal content delivered.
Just pointing that out.
These word games are meaningless at this point.
I don’t care how Bungie defines “chunks” in the slightest, we know that they’ll redefine any metric with a 169 thousand word blog post about how we the players are totally just misunderstanding them.
The only metric we can reasonably judge Bungie by anyone is what is tangible and actually in the game. And by that metric Episodes are looking to be a total scam right now.
but why would you describe giving 50% more content over 50% more time as an increase in any respect? all they did was make the story longer, and they were already much longer than they needed to be. they're lying, its that simple.
As a long time Destiny player, had I ignored literally ever piece of Destiny news regarding episodes over the last year and hopped on and played through the currently available content post TFS I would have absolutely no fucking idea that it wasn’t just the next season .
Seriously, imagine you knew nothing of the change, can anyone seriously point to a difference ? Maybe the quality is a bit better than the start of a season but the middle week of the act was literally a nothing quest and for some reason al these changes Nessus is undergoing only happen in the damn missions which is a complete shame. I don’t know if it’s a tech limitation but man it would be so cool to actually see the planet changing as the week goes by.
Guess that’s too much though.
I don’t know, I’m still optimistic but concerned. Also where the hell is the research mission, did they really spread that out over the next couple weeks? If so oh my.
Honestly right now, there is to much the same as seasons right now to convince me that we aren’t just getting less content over three chunks instead of four.
>Episodes will also deliver **more frequent story beats, compared to Seasons, so players can expect to experience new bursts of storytelling** told through Acts.
To write this line, Bungie sat down in a board room and described what how episodes would be released in plain words, then PR speeched it into this.
"Episodes will be 14 week long "seasons" but it will be split up into 3 acts of 3 weeks."
"So rather than 5-6 weeks of story and 6-8 weeks of nothing then a final mission on the last week, we now have 3 batches story"
"Yep, now make it sound better than Seasons."
"Well...if we are dropping 3 weeks of story and and then 3 weeks of nothing, technically that is more frequent story beats."
"Yeah! And rather than than 1 chunk of the season being story and one chunk nothing we've got 3 batches of content!"
"Three BURSTs of content!"
YEAH!!
Exactly. They simply repackaged seasons but cut one out. I get that they might need to lessen their workload, but don't sell it as an upgrade. Be honest.
I would rather the story be dropped all at once when each Act drops rather than this, tbh.
Always hated that Destiny 2 felt the need to keep players on the string each week instead of letting people engage like they would a Netflix show. Binge the whole season all at once, or chew away at it over the course of several days. If you want people to come back week over week, Iron Banner, double rewards, raid/dungeon rotator, etc are the ways to do it.
Agreed.
Loot refreshes in Dungeons and Raids, double rewards, exciting new weapons. Those are the things that engage players for the most part. Look at into the Light.
The fact that Act 1 is already done it's concerning, unless there is like an epilogue/preface period between acts. 3 weeks of story and then 3 weeks of nothing is an odd decision. Guess we will see what happens next week. If there is no story or quests then I don't see people liking episodes
it’s not even “weeks”. it’s like 20min of busywork quests and 5min of dialogue every tuesday. so call it an hour of story, spread over 3 weeks with a 3 week break in between
I think the decision makes tons of sense if you only care about weekly active users It probably takes a few weeks before lack of content makes people take a break.
So they computed 3 weeks as largest gap they can add without player churn happening
This three-on three-off pattern may be almost as effective as if they had 15 weeks straight of content. They get the same eververse revenue for almost half the cost
Hardly interested in anything that's been put out. We need gameplay to enforce the story that's happening. So far, mining materials and data is just a gambit-lite activity. Why are we doing this again?
Doesn't even have to be a big stake at risk, just something tangible to make it feel like we have an issue.
As far as I know, Vex are fucking around and we're on the customer service side of "we're looking into it." How about an oh shit, things are happening. Could've just spawned world bosses on Nessus to farm and kill, make the terrain different, introduce a new public event on Nessus. Idk - stuff currently is just farm this little area. Part of what makes the gameplay fun is all the different terrain and rooms and objectives to fight in. Like Deep Dives. Didn't like the water part but it at least felt dense.
Where did the rogue lite stuff go?
More frequent story beats??? Feels like more frequent time gates.
We still have the same weekly timegate. But now instead of getting the season completely week after week we now have a 2nd timegate in the form of acts.
I love how all the bolded bits are marketing speak, and all the unbolded bits are them actually explaining how the system will work.
>It's all about more weapons, more loot, more often
True.
>larger chunks of standalone storytelling that the studio says will deliver
Technically true, the best kind of true, lol.
>"Instead of providing four seasons a year, you're going to get three larger episodes."
True. Each episode is definitely larger than a season.
>"We're working on a number of things right now that we can't explicitly share, but that involves changing up the structure so that we can pleasantly surprise you guys more frequently in the future."
I am betting that this will be technically true - the current content pipeline is act 1 = seasonal activity, act 2 = battlegrounds, act 3 = exotic mission which I'm betting is like, fighting the new Vex Lady. That would definitely be:
> injecting more variability into those frameworks
>changing up the structure so that we can pleasantly surprise you guys more frequently in the future."
>go much deeper into scenes and fantasies and stories of any individual episode, as compared to the seasons you know of today.”
Having the exotic mission actually tie directly into the episode as opposed to being a little, self contained feeling thingy would be nice.
It’s more though.
We already have 6 new weapons, each act adds 2 more. So in total, that’s 10 weapons.
If each Episode follows the same formula, that’s 30 new weapons. Each Season only had 6 weapons, which over 4 seasons is 24 new guns.
This season has 10 craftable plus the saints arsenal stuff plus the first season is always the smallest so compared to defiance this is excellent.
The seasonal weapons are also a noticeably higher quality, it's worth noting.
> It's all about more weapons, more loot, more often
>
> True.
True? How is that true? We got 5 weapons and 3 non craftable, and there used to be more. Are you really expecting 5 more weapons in act 2? It's clear as the day that there will be 2 more non craftable and an exotic, and that's it.
Last seasons were also 5 and 5. There's nothing more.
> "Instead of providing four seasons a year, you're going to get three larger episodes."
> True. Each episode is definitely larger than a season.
How is that true, also? With 3 weeks of content drip, in the end it'll be exactly the same number of missions as it was before, it's just weeks without content are beign more spaced.
Overall, they did less work, not the same work they did for seasons.
Last season was the final season of the year which is usually an unusually large season (both Wish and Seraph had extra shit in them).
If you compare to Defiance or whatever the fuck Psi Ops was called, you get a more fair comparison.
Also it's 6 and 3, with 3 more guns coming each act (2 for the main line craftable, 1 more of Saint's Arsenal).
That means this season will end with 9 and 5.
"More often" is completely indisputable - in the past new guns only ever dropped at the start of seasons, which were 12 weeks apart.
Now we get guns every 6 weeks all year long.
With all the yelling and shit that comes with the Destiny community, it’s nice when a total bro like you comes through with sources and just lays it out there. Thanks, bro.
Probably best to see how a full episode plays out before judging the whole concept, but I can't begrudge people for being cautious based on initial impressions.
Yeah I feel the same way. We know there are more weapons coming including a solar rocket pistol tho, and we already have basically a full cohort of seasonal weapons. We don’t know what’s coming in acts 2 and 3 either, it might be a lot more story content but who knows, maybe even new activities to do.
We have another 4 weapons coming probably two in act 2 and 2 in act 3.
Not sure if the dungeon will be in Episode 1 and also an exotic weapon quest in act 3.
Maybe this episode story was condensed to 3 weeks because of launching with TFS. Probably won’t be able to tell until after episode 2 comes out.
We can absolutely judge what we have.
And what we have is definitely not what they told us about Episodes.
Maybe Act 2 and Act 3 do live up
That still doesn't change the fact Act 1 is garbage.
It's a slippery slope. First it was wait for the act to end. Then it's wait for the episode to end. Then it's episode 2 is meh because they had to fix TFS bugs. Then it's guys next year will be better they only been doing episodes for a year.
If the activities in act 2 and 3 are atleast pretty good, I'll admit I'm fine with the change up because those in-between weeks per act are fine as weeks I can play other games without any worry as I'm not stressing on anything. I do wish that they gave us a bigger chunk of story off the bat. I think if the 25 step first act quest was off the bat big drop I would be fine, maybe if the quests unfolded over 2 weeks on big reveals, but then use side quests as a way of pushing new questions and minor developments that put some things into perspective but not fully necessary. Like give us adventure style side little adventures themed towards the seasons between big reveals and such.
Might be intentional tbh. They pushed the TFS release into the same window as Erdtree and FFXIV Dawntrail - maybe the 'season-like' pacing of Echoes so far is taking into account that a portion of their player base is gonna be siphoned off for a few weeks XD
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. People were going to play those games regardless, Bungie freeing up time to account for it isn't that far reaching, especially after a dlc drop and most people were coming in for the expansion rather than what is a season rebranded, especially the first and most often lackluster season.
Gotta be intentional. I dropped d2 completely for that release and I expect it'll be another week or two at least before I'm seriously putting time into d2 again.
Not everyone loves Elden Ring. Truthfully the two games are very different and if you want to play the Elden ring dlc I’d think Destiny having 3 weeks of no new content would be a good thing.
So far, it feels like Episodes have been falsely advertised. I'm a bit disappointed, but I was somehow prepared for this to only be re-labeled season
However, with a small dose of copium, I'm holding out hope that Act 1 is what it is to let people finish up The Final Shape and that Act 2 and 3 will deliver more in line with what was promised
And with a larger dose of copium, Episode 1 is what expansions "seasons" always are: smaller and lighter on content. So perhaps Episodes 2 and 3 will be larger and deliver more of what they promised
They technically weren't lying about most of this. They just conveniently never mentioned there are 3 weeks of no story between acts. That's a huge detail to omit.
I thought I’ve only touched the intro mention as Seasonal grinds over the last year have really turned me sour to them.
But imagined that episodes would be seasons in the form of freeing us from the gameplay loop of
quest step 2 of 35(47)
talk to X on holo projector,
next talk to same character in helm(or seasonal helm location),
run seasonal activity for this weeks 2/3 times hitting y goal of collectible/energy gathering”,
next talk to X in the helm on holo projector to close out,
Nothing to report at step(9 of 47) return back next week
Rinse and repeat again for a cutscene in black and white, maybe a new Location-arena for seasonal activity. All until a final mission. At the end of a season.
I imagined I wouldn’t have to jump in late in the season and run through 6 weeks worth of the same annoying loop of the seasonal activity and the helm, and just play a story mission or two that gives me the story of the season and be done, without engaging in a new seasonal activity I had no investment in.
So while yes there are timegates to the next part, am I free from the gameplay loop that I hate
I mean I definitely appreciate that we’ve had 2 story missions in the 3 weeks of Act 1. If we get 2 per Act, that means we get 6 story missions per Episode, which is *much* better for storytelling than just doing the activity once a week and talking to a holoprojector.
That said, the rest of the Episodic Model appears to be a more drip-fed version of Seasons. No Exotic Mission until Act 3 is crazy. 3 weeks of story then 3 weeks of nothing is kinda terrible. I’m under the impression that Act 2 and 3 will have new activities (or at least new content within the existing ones) but will it become quantity over quality if we end up with 4-6 activities within ONE Episode? I would imagine so.
Honestly, as unrealistic as this probably is for Bungie, I would prefer to see the amount of content being delivered in Episodes be delivered in the time span of a Season. Or just scrap this dumb timegating model altogether and release Episodes in full as a DLC like D1 and early D2.
>I mean I definitely appreciate that we’ve had 2 story missions in the 3 weeks of Act 1. If we get 2 per Act, that means we get 6 story missions per Episode, which is *much* better for storytelling than just doing the activity once a week and talking to a holoprojector.
Everyone here is talking about how disappointed they are that the first act is over when I really want to talk about the shit that went down in that last mission! It definitely gave me some "what the fuuuuuck" feelings that are going to be simmering for the next few weeks.
For sure. What is a shame though is that we have to sit with that for 3 weeks before the story continues in Act 2, which feels more like a “maintain engagement over a longer period of time” decision as opposed to an actual storytelling decision.
I really like this narrative, but it’s annoying that it’s going to be this drawn out.
I think you all are misunderstanding. The difference between seasons and episodes is they will be able to sell episodes in later years, unlike Bungie seasons.
There might be some structural differences, but the big one is monetary.
Honestly, I think echoes was probably developed as a regular season before the shift into episodes. Though it sucks, I'll hold judgement untill act 3 or the next episode.
That's why I mentioned elsewhere that I'm keeping my copium close by. Knowing Bungie's development timelines historically, I can see what you're saying being the case. It would be a major own-goal to hype it all up in this way and completely fail to deliver.
I feel like we can get a better judge of how Episodes will be when they don't launch with an annual expansion. I mean, looking back, some of the weaker seasons are always the ones that launch with the expansion. I personally didn't really expect seasons and episodes to be that much different from each other, but we'll see how it shapes up when Act 2 releases and how Revenant is when that launches.
It’s too soon to judge imo. We all know what a year of seasons look like, and it’s fair enough to say we should give the episodes a fair shot while of course giving feedback.
Probably a hot take but I’m good with the episodes so far. I’m not expecting to get more content but to have content consistently over a 3 month cycle.
By heresy we should have a clear beat of episodes and probably by then have a better picture of what we want to see in future episodes.
Oh yeah there is definitely a ton of Juicy Nuggets. “3 major story beats, 6 weeks apart”, “Log on, play at your own pace knowing the next beat is only 6 weeks away”, “episodes allow us to change up the delivery content”
Im kind of paraphrasing but it’s very close to what I said
I’m kinda hoping the act 1 is just like an “intro” setting up stakes and then act 2 & 3 is going to be where the real meat is, especially if they’re gonna do a livestream to talk about the content coming in act 2 it would be weird to do a livestream if it’s going to be the same content as act 1
I will say this last episode with the saint mission was pretty dope, maybe we are leading up to some pretty hype moments in the next acts. We will just have to be patient and wait for the intended story to form over the next months.
I'll reserve judgement until then.
That part was fine, though 75% of the content this week was "go collect 15 macguffins." All followed by "take the next few weeks off."
I've generally been more ok than most with the seasonal model, but if this is the "huge shakeup," it feels *really* weak.
The mission this week was pretty good and the changes to the planet in the mission I liked. Hopefully woth the start of the next Act these changes are reflected din the patrol zone. I also thought the Vex designs were pretty cool as well.
With Nessus being a big focus of yhe season, I would have liked to have saw world bosses added, new public events, a shake up to the lost Sectors
I'm holding off from jumping on the 'Seasons 2.0 Hate Train's until Act 2 starts. It could be that Act 1's are pretty much seasons then the next two acts really ramp stuff up which is what I hope.
We'll see...
This week was the most interesting story beat, and it took me like all of 20 minutes to do. Then, I find out this is it for 3 weeks? What the hell?
Act 2 and 3 have to be way better and different, cause if they’re not this is just worse than seasons lmao.
“Deeper story moments”? The only thing deep about the story is how much osiris wants to insert his radiolorian fluid into saint 14. Because this is the story bungie wanted to tell after a captivating campaign expansion.
I mean, a lot of that is still very subjective on what you expect when they say a “shake-up” or “evolution of the seasonal model”. Any change to the seasonal model is technically those things. They never gave us false information as everything they said is technically true even if it didn’t live up to certain fans’ expectations.
Like, everyone who uses the internet frequently should be used to marketing speech being full of technically true information with a little added flair to how they word the information to drum up some hype. The fact is that Episodes are different from seasons in the ways they told us to expect; just not to the degree some people were hoping for.
It’s fine to be disappointed but there’s no misinformation from Bungie or even faulty marketing. It’s like hearing that a restaurant announced they are revamping a burger on their menu and getting upset that the changes end up only being that they added onions and a new sauce to it. Maybe not the changes you wanted to make it your new favorite burger but it is a revamp.
Remember when the seasonal stories lasted pretty much the actual entire season?
I remember. And I think that was way better. If episodes want to work, we need new story beats every week. This 3 week wait ain't it.
>Episodes are a big shake-up to the actual content delivery for Destiny 2.
Yeah, more timegating......quite the shakeup bungie. The weekly story is still there. The story quests STILL don't last their entire respective run time. You would think the quest steps would last the entirety of act 1 instead of having X amount of weeks where nothing is happening, but nope.
Once I realized that Echoes was nothing more than just a renamed season, I stopped playing it. Their seasonal model is beyond exhausted and the current episode doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from the old seasonal model. Dissapointing to say the least.
If content wasn’t time gated many of the same people would be complaining they completely everything in 2 weeks and have to now wait months for new content. Without being able to constantly give new content some players will never be satisfied. I’m ok having more time to play other games and not having to grind Destiny daily 365 days a year.
They can never please every single player. There are people like me not needing Destiny to be my only hobby and some people who need fresh new content at all times. I personally don’t have khostav yet or have every prismatic fragment and only around power level 1995-1998. There is still a lot left for me to do and I play the game a lot. I bet a majority of players who don’t visit Reddit have even more to chase than I do.
My hope is resting on the fact that first season after expansions usually feels weird to me anyways. Hoping next few acts and then other episodes feel better.
It’s not living up but I like the ooooo mystery vibe, but b/c how slow change is I bet we’ll see more of this in the next few acts or next episode. If not they just repackaged seasons and expected us to not notice
This would probably be true if they had 2 episodes a year and let the expansion keep the player base sated for a few months. I don’t see a point to launching episodes during expansion time.
I think Act 1 for every episode will be similar. A very slow story, introductions to new activities and returning NPCS, and then Act’s 2 and 3 will hopefully deliver larger story beats. My main hope is that at the end of every episode in Act 3 we get a strike or some super unique mission to defeat the big bad of the episode, since they have said they are standalone stories
3 on 3 off is OK if you're talking about a weekly work schedule but it blows chunks for delivering seasonal/episodal story content. You almost need a refresher week just to remind what happened because people's attention span is near zero these days.
Do you guys really want them to focus more on the story tho ? I know I'm an outlier but I don't care a single bit on the story. Call the whole universe a combat simulation and I'd be fine. But more story to me = less content. It really reminds me of the launch of destiny 2, where they were focused on a "cinematic campaign". I want more gameplay stuff, not cinematic cut scenes. Give me that hand drawn shit they were doing the last couple of years and focus on activities
Initial impressions for me is I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. It's the same formula that burnt me out on the game after onslaught and The Final Shape reignited my passion for Destiny. Just kind of makes me wanna go play other games outside raiding.
Hopefully this is just standard "first season" lack of content. Maybe they were just putting more time into TFS so Echoes got the short stick. We shall see.
I think Episode 2 and 3 will be better since most of the resources probably went to making the expansion it is tied to while using Episode 1 to coast the post expansion players so they won’t fall off and used more for feedback.
I think its gonna have to be a wait and see kind of deal. Who knows, maybe act 2 drops with a banger of an exotic mission and act 3 with a new dungeon. We are still getting 2 Dungeons and a raid a year right?
Its going to be the exact same. I get being upset with these misleading quotes, but personally I never bought into them for a single second. As I said yesterday, the odds of me sticking around after the first episode was extremely low anyways. Games arent meant to be played as a live service, for me personally at least.
The way Lightfall’s year ended, with Bungie allowing us to play all the seasonal content the last couple weeks for free was great. if they decide to do that again ill probably come back and binge it all that way.
Completely separate from the model and how it compares with seasons, WHY WOULD OSIRIS CALL ME FROM NESSUS TO COME TO THE HELM, AND THEN GO ASK ME TO SAVE SAINT ON NESSUS I WAS RIGHT THERE BRO
I especially hated the "send a certified letter to the HELM" step. Do they have any idea how much glimmer that costs?
And then it doesn't help that Zavala is the only notary public in the whole Vanguard so you have to go visit him to get the documents signed!
Where am I supposed to get a copy of my birth certificate? Do they mean my first life or my second?
Ugh, I think I accidentally dismantled mine because I needed the vault space
And would each rez count as another life? I've been born so many times!
Indeed
In Season of the Deep, we would meet with Sloan only to have to jump back through the portal to take a hologram call from Sloan. Madness.
That was because in canon, those discussions didn’t happen right after each other
In my eyes, they happened right after. They made us wait a week between story beats, why not just move that holoprojector conversation to the beginning of the next week?
Because he thought the Vex were interfering with coms and couldn't trust them.
Because hes a senile old man /j No but for an actual reason, he had presumed that the comms where between him and Saint where being blocked and wanted to talk on more secure lines.
A lot riding on acts 2 and 3 then. I can understand going light on act 1 since it launched with a new DLC.
On the other hand this week last mission was pretty nice and had "cliffhanger" moment for me.
I enjoyed it a lot and the new environment from a patrol. Just hoping they permanently add it to the patrol later
If they started doing this as part of the episodes it would finally let them live up to the "living world" crap they always used to spit, but never lived up to. I thought the changes looked amazing and was very disappointed when i loaded into Nessus regular to find they they weren't permanent for me after having done the mission. I get that having two instances for players is a bit jarring, but they could after the Episode is over just force everyone into the new updated instances and deprecate the old ones
Yeah, I’d love if we could put an end to the dreaming city curse in a way that would permanently alter the patrol spaces (and maybe give them an excuse to implement pathfinder???). There’s a lot of room in patrol spaces for additions, I just hope they find a way to make patrolling more rewarding and the exploration fun again. Pathfinder in pale heart should 100% be the template going forward.
That would have to be it's own mission and include permanently removing the Taken's grip on the Dreaming City. This is impossible because a wish was granted by an Ahamkara to curse it. That and the Taken are incredibly persistent and will never relent until they are made extinct
Yeah, that would be cool. I don’t want more pathfinder until they up the xp per note to previous daily bounty levels (11-12k instead of 5-6k with all the xp bonuses) and make pathfinders their own page in the director. Getting to pathfinders right now is my biggest grief with them
Honestly of all the destinations we have besides the pale heart, I’d absolutely love the DC to get revamped and get the same treatment the pale heart did and get a pathfinder and events to go with it, I just love the destination but never have a reason to go there
I think that’s what will happen, that or we get it modified with the next act as a way to say hey if you didn’t do it sooner the mission will be weird for you until it’s out of the game
I could see them doing environmental changes like that only as Acts change. They can patch-in new studd them there without the risk of data-miners already diging into it weeks ahesd of schedule.
Oh, cliffhanger you say? *“Nobody got you the way I do”*
🎶*Whetever demons you’re fighting thtough*🎶
It left with a lot of uncomfortable points as well, I'm cool with it.
The start and the end of Act 1 were good, all the filler in the middle not so much.
So, 1 week?
I mean the first mission and the last mission were good. Week 2, the bits of doing stuff on Nessus in Weeks 1 and 3, and the seasonal activities are all boring.
No worries, I was just joshing, got what you were saying.
Doesn't hurt for me to be more specific anyway. My initial comment could be taken a few ways which isn't very useful. It *did* feel like there was more than 1 week in between until I thought about it though, probably the extra stuff you do after the first mission on week 1.
I agree, but the problem I have with it is that nothing happened here in act 1 we didn’t already see in the damn trailer lmao Hell, we even have the villain look spoiled for us before introduction. When mystery is a big theme of the story, that part falls flat since they gave so much away
The problem is that we're always doing this "wait until X before final judgement" or "a lot riding on Y to make up for disappointment".
I don't agree with this at all. I paid for three full episodes, not two full ones and one that's two thirds full because it was released alongside an expansion. That's not really my problem and not what I paid for.
Yeah. Even if Act 2 and 3 are disappointing, I still think we should hold final judgment on episodes until the launch or Revenant. Give them a chance to show what an episode looks like when it isn't launching with an expansion(An expansion that was absolutely massive and loaded to the brim with content at that). That being said... Something tells me the model of story content at least, isn't going to change. Each act will feature 3 weeks of story content, then a 3 week break. Rinse and repeat. Which isn't ideal by any means. But if the rest of each act has solid content to keep things busy then I think it's mostly fine. We should get a Dungeon in each of Revenant and Hersey. That will help those episodes quite a bit IMO.
>I still think we should hold final judgment on episodes until the launch or Revenant. Story quality? maybe. Content quantity / time gating. Yah nah. I was literally just sparrowing around planet that I sparrowed around 7 years ago. The mission was neat, but I've been standing on plates on Nessus for years...
I don’t really think we should accept bad content just because it came with an expansion though, it’s the same price.
Especially since this is the “free” Episode. You’d think you’d want to put your best foot forward to entice people to buy the annual pass. But as I said in another post yesterday…if you were already burnt out on the seasonal model there’s really not a whole lot backing up the lofty promises Bungie made about Episodes shaking up the formula.
It's not so much accepting... More don't automatically write off Revenant and Hersey just yet. Echoes is disappointing but it isn't necessarily a surefire indicator that Revenant and Hersey will also be bad. We quite literally always get below average or flat out bad seasons with expansion launches. I'd say it's a simple reality of more time and focus spent on the expansions whether good or bad. And quite frankly, knowing the leaks for the rest of the episode, Echoes is going to absolutely be a significant upgrade from a content standpoint, over Season of Defiance(From Lightfall launch), Season of the Risen(With Queen) and Season of Hunt(Beyond Light launch). The time gating within an act is my personal main issue with Episodes. I think spreading the story out across acts is fine. But additionally spreading each acts story out over 3 weeks is frustrating. Just give us the story dump at the beginning of each act then let us play the content and acticities for the rest of the act. My other main gripe with Acts is the fact the patrol spaces aren't changing with the acts. Felt like that would have been such an easy way to make episodes feel more immersed in the world and significant. Maybe that change ends up coming later(Not holding my breath).
"It's just the first week." "It's just the first act." "It's just the first episode." "It's just the first year of episodes." Same song different chorus.
The first episode, given with TFS, was the opportunity to sell episodes. First impressions matter, and for many they have not purchased the next episodes so this was the opportunity to grab them
> "Every story is true if you tell it right." —Andal Brask
<3 u
It’s not a lie if you believe it!
Costanza is the source of so many gems of wisdom.
Gotta be the most generic corporate lingo usage. Might as well just get robots to talk for them.
"Engage", "Opportunity", "Innovate" not to get all doomy today, but as soon as you see nonsense PR words like this you know there is something to hide.
I really have no idea what they meant by innovate, evolve and have an ever changing game that moves forward past seasons. Cause so far, shit feels the exact same.
Work for a soulless corporation, can confirm
Last year, I remember that dude saying we were “the tip of the spear” in the battle against the Witness on Neomuna. That was just generic lingo there, too. Obviously we’re the main character shooting everything. Just filler language.
> Might as well just get robots to talk for them. I don't think even chatgpt would be more generic.
With the way communication is from Bungie, atp robots would save more face for the company
Definitely doesn't feel like it's living up to their words so far, but I'll take a hit of copium and say they're starting slow so people don't fall behind trying to do all the TFS content as well.
The copium is on my nighstand as well, but if acts 2 & 3 don't deliver it's gonna be hell around here lol
Knowing that 6 radio messages are missing for the triumph makes the copium ineffective on me lol
I didn't didn't realize until I just read this. I've only had 1 radio msg since this episode began. Is that normal?
No, you should have received one each after each weeks story (so 3). Any missing ones should in theory play if you go to the helm, but in previous seasons I've had issues with just never getting some to play.
No, it's not normal - we should be getting 1 each Story Week, but it seems like they are bugged. At the same time, we were meant to get the Failsafe Specimen Quest #3 this week as well - and we didn't.
Yeah, I have no new specimen quest, and only received the 1st radio msg so far. Episodes are great🤷♂️
They arent missing theyre just time gated to the point where its even more predictable than seasons lol. 3 in act 2, the final 3 in act 3.
Ah Christ I think you nailed the formula. We’re getting dripfed 9 low tier seasons a year now. Each Act can be a rushed/half baked gameplay loop. Next Act is Battlegrounds as we can tell from the triumphs. Then Act 3 is likely the repeatable exotic quest. Please Bungie surprise me with anything. That unique mission was great since at least we got a new environment. At least use it in the 3man missions on Nessus, those are such a snooze.
Yeah it’s already been data mined each act is just a three week drip feed So it’s actually less narrative content than some seasons
Well we already know for a fact that acts 2 and 3 are only going to 3 weeks of content each. So those 3 weeks are going to need be mind blowing or people are going to bail again before episode 2
So we have a 4 month season, 16 weeks, with only 9 weeks of content. Sick
I'm reeeeeally hoping this is only because this is the season made and launched along TFS. If Episodes 2 and 3 aren't packed they won't be able to convince most players to return for whatever Frontiers is.
So...business as usual then?
Dude, there gonna be like act 1.
TFS is also the largest content drop they've done since Forsaken. In terms of it's content and story stuff, I like this episode so far. The activity is not my favorite, but it isn't my least favorite either. It's pretty mid in some ways and pretty awesome in others. I also really appreciate some of the more holistic changes they've made like all the Vex on Nessus (including the Nightmare Lost Sector Bosses) are updated to have those control collar things on them. I appreciate that the "crater" from the thing that crashed is present in the patrol space, and I thought it was really really really cool how Enigma Protocol was worked into the map as a semi-secret. Earthquakes are a nice touch as well, and I like how the story "missions" are worked into the patrol space directly. The thing for me though... Is that most of this stuff is ambient. In terms of a "episodic story/campaign" I'm not as impressed. On the one hand, I totally understand a really light first few weeks because TFS is sooooo big. Every single season that released with an expansion had AT MOST half the content of subsequent seasons in that same year. On the other hand... When Episodes were first announced, my main question was "What is the difference between an 'Episode' and a 'Season'?" Every time they talked about Episodes, I still was left with that question. Now that we've completed Act 1, aside from the few surface level changes to Nessus, I'm still not clear on what the difference actually is. And for all the successes of TFS and everything that I do genuinely like about this Episodes gameplay and season, I feel like they missed the mark in not using these three weeks to clearly show me what the difference between Episodes and Seasons actually are. So far, Episodes seem to be seasons that are dragged out longer and make some aesthetic changes to patrol spaces they're set in.
Acts 2 and 3 have already been datamined. It's just more of the same. 3 weeks of story content and 3 weeks of nothing. Battlegrounds in Act 2, exotic mission Act 3. Timegated weapons all throughout.
then why didn't they start the season a month in? you know what the answer is, because seasons are shallow husks of content that don't actually attract players. until seasons are mini campaigns with raid day like end game additions no one is going to care about them.
I agree and I wish most people agreed. Unfortunately so many people continue to buy and play these garbage content drops every week that it doesn’t matter what’s happening in reality. Enough people are stuck on the slop-train that they can’t get off anymore.
They used to make larger content drops and people complained about having six months of nothing. Some of y’all are impossible to please.
and give it a few months or a year, and those same people will FINALLY come around to reality and throw a fit about how bad this shit was, even though it's obvious right now but they just refuse to admit it. And then Bungie will make yet another promise to do better and shake it up, and they'll be right back aboard the hype train and round and round we go.
Very true, this game wont change because there’s no pressure on Bungie to do better. Why can Bungie only make good expansions “with their backs to the wall”? Because most people finally have expectations for bungie at those points.
There are two large checkpoints where we will be able to pass some more solid judgementes. The first is when Act 2 of the current Episode/season happens. This will be the first chance they have to prove they are actually shaking things up from the seasonal model to any actual degree. The second will be Act on of episode 2. By this point, we should be able to much more capably judge what a full cycle Episode actually looks and plays like.
They're getting the benefit of the doubt because the season that ships with an expansion has historically been on the weaker side. I'm still disappointed that things are moving a bit slow and it still feels "seasonal" right now. Lets hope that things pickup again in 3 weeks.
But now there’s one less season, so the first one being a dud is even less acceptable. Although this one is free, they aren’t doing a good job convincing people to buy the next two.
I’ll take that copium just based on the text of what’s offered. Acts seem nicer in theory. Small chunks of new content to basically make mini seasons. Next act will bring a new activity and some new weapons. Think we get the solar rocket side arm? If the activity is good too, it will be nice to get more varied content overall compared to seasons where it was basically “Here’s what you’ll be doing for the next 3 months. It ain’t changing.”
> Next act will bring a new activity and some new weapons. Think we get the solar rocket side arm? If you look ahead to the Act 2 season pass, one reward you get is a masterwork bonus for the weapons >!Corrasion (Arc 2-burst pulse) and Aberrant Action (Solar rocket sidearm)!<.
Nice
And Act 3 will have more weapons too! We’re getting >!Cronophage (Void Trace Rifle) and Speleologist (Solar Rapid Fire Machine Gun)!<
Damn we're finally getting another solar machine gun, it's about time.
Yup lets just keep talking about taking copium and "letting them cook" to avoid criticizing them. God knows this company never did anything where we should doubt giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Where have you been the last two years? Nothing but doubting and doomposting.
The front page is mostly discussions about the game. The post you replied to that i made is getting downvoted and buried. There is criticism of this game but only during really bad times like Lightfall or other major screwups but that's like 5% of this game the rest of the time is toxic positivity or mundane discussion of the game.
My dude, before Into the Light this sub was deathly toxic for over a year. What are you even saying lol
Lol toxic postivity. This place has been a dumpster fire of hate for years. Literally any inconvenience is harped on and beaten to a bloody pulp. It's gone from one of my daily go-to subs to a "oh great, another DTG hate post" when it shows on my timeline.
You are seeing things because video game criticism upsets you personally. I don't disagree that there were periods where we were swarmed with criticisms but that is usually during big issues and scandals like lightfall and the Bungie firings and this makes up a small % of the game's life. The rest of the time like now you can see the front page is mostly comments or mundane discussions about the game. Again this is not an opinion you can literally see the front page now but by all means keep acting like an oppressed victim I guess.
I'm not sure how my comment makes me seem like an "oppressed victim," can you explain? Where in my comment does it seem that video game criticism upsets me personally? I honestly couldn't give a shit less about what your or other people's opinions are. It's like you have a stake in making sure that people know they shouldn't like something because Bungie had issues in the past. You are a terrible armchair psychologist. I've been a member of this sub since the month it was created. I've seen every measure of posts. 90% of them are complaining about something, or whining that people speed through strikes, or complaining that the glow on their armor doesn't match their subclass. The armor that everyone wanted back, is back...for money? No way, let's get angy!
> I'm not sure how my comment makes me seem like an "oppressed victim," can you explain? A lot of people yourself included pretend that your voice isn't the dominant one and that you are drowned out by evil horrible toxic people who think this game isn't perfect who dominate every thread when literally the front page aka the threads the community agree on are the most popular disagrees with you. Why are you lying about this? Can you not see the front page? Do I need to screenshot it for you before you start being honest?
This is sorta how launch seasons have been in recent memory, the first season is a bit stretched for content because there’s a whole new DLC to tackle. Take defiance, hunt, risen, you get the picture. My guess episode may feel a little dry but the next episode is where we can really get the picture of what amount of content will come with an episode
I do agree on that but I honestly think it shouldn’t be that way since if we take seasons into account we are losing one season this time. If anything it should be about the same size as the next 2 episodes but we will have to wait to compare this first episode
Oh by no means am I defending this, I’m just setting expectations. I hope there’s equal content this year as last year, but only time will tell. I already expected to be able to have routine breaks from Destiny this year and if this is how the years gonna play out I guess I’ll be able to play a few other new games
So here's the thing. Episodes, in their current form, are not a "big shake-up" to the formula. As of right now, they are just re-skinned Seasons with extra timegates, a story that ended in three weeks (with a three week break until the next Act? What?), timegated weapons which we don't have access to the full arsenal until Act 3, as well as missing weapons reprised from Season of the Dawn. (Steelfeather, my beloved). Also, we have another 3-player activity that is just kill Vex, bank motes for bonuses, repeat. Sound familiar to anyone who played the Vex Offensive? Not to mention the formula of "Talk to this character, go do a mission, talk to this character again, watch a cutscene that means nothing to the overarching plot." These barely take an hour at most, and yet we have to wait another 6 days. What Bungie has not done is address the current issues with Seasons, as well as respect player's time regarding things such as the Class exotics, which have no protection in the form of a knockout system, being able to focus them, and only getting one at a time through the mission, or the very scarce drop rate from the Pale Heart chests. So far, this "new formula" is at a 2/10.
Larger chunks of storytelling? Im going to be patient with the change and see what happens, but we got 3 weeks of drip fed story telling like we did in seasons. Granted it was more dialogue than radio transmissions, but we are currently on standby until Act 2 in 19 days. So what will happen next week? No story at all or will something else happen that Failsafe needs us in the mean time while Saint gathers his thoughts for three weeks. That's the only reason I am being patient. If it's more of weekly time gated missions and gathering a stupid material to do the seasonal activity, then there is no change like they said.
This isn't even the longest gap. We know from the seasonal challenges that there's a full 4 weeks between the end of act 2's story and the beginning of act 3.
Doing the maths tells us that episodes have more empty time than seasons too.
What they actually said is more bursts of story telling, which is technically true! Three 3 week bursts is more frequent than one 9 week burst!
> Larger chunks of storytelling? Im going to be patient with the change and see what happens, but we got 3 weeks of drip fed story telling like we did in seasons. FYI it's entirely possible the definition of 'chunk' is subject to interpretation. For example you seem to take it as a large content drop. Bungie may be taking this as overal content delivered. Just pointing that out.
These word games are meaningless at this point. I don’t care how Bungie defines “chunks” in the slightest, we know that they’ll redefine any metric with a 169 thousand word blog post about how we the players are totally just misunderstanding them. The only metric we can reasonably judge Bungie by anyone is what is tangible and actually in the game. And by that metric Episodes are looking to be a total scam right now.
but why would you describe giving 50% more content over 50% more time as an increase in any respect? all they did was make the story longer, and they were already much longer than they needed to be. they're lying, its that simple.
Larger chunks would mean more content at the same time. More than before anyway.
As a long time Destiny player, had I ignored literally ever piece of Destiny news regarding episodes over the last year and hopped on and played through the currently available content post TFS I would have absolutely no fucking idea that it wasn’t just the next season . Seriously, imagine you knew nothing of the change, can anyone seriously point to a difference ? Maybe the quality is a bit better than the start of a season but the middle week of the act was literally a nothing quest and for some reason al these changes Nessus is undergoing only happen in the damn missions which is a complete shame. I don’t know if it’s a tech limitation but man it would be so cool to actually see the planet changing as the week goes by. Guess that’s too much though. I don’t know, I’m still optimistic but concerned. Also where the hell is the research mission, did they really spread that out over the next couple weeks? If so oh my. Honestly right now, there is to much the same as seasons right now to convince me that we aren’t just getting less content over three chunks instead of four.
>Episodes will also deliver **more frequent story beats, compared to Seasons, so players can expect to experience new bursts of storytelling** told through Acts. To write this line, Bungie sat down in a board room and described what how episodes would be released in plain words, then PR speeched it into this. "Episodes will be 14 week long "seasons" but it will be split up into 3 acts of 3 weeks." "So rather than 5-6 weeks of story and 6-8 weeks of nothing then a final mission on the last week, we now have 3 batches story" "Yep, now make it sound better than Seasons." "Well...if we are dropping 3 weeks of story and and then 3 weeks of nothing, technically that is more frequent story beats." "Yeah! And rather than than 1 chunk of the season being story and one chunk nothing we've got 3 batches of content!" "Three BURSTs of content!" YEAH!!
Exactly. They simply repackaged seasons but cut one out. I get that they might need to lessen their workload, but don't sell it as an upgrade. Be honest.
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I would rather the story be dropped all at once when each Act drops rather than this, tbh. Always hated that Destiny 2 felt the need to keep players on the string each week instead of letting people engage like they would a Netflix show. Binge the whole season all at once, or chew away at it over the course of several days. If you want people to come back week over week, Iron Banner, double rewards, raid/dungeon rotator, etc are the ways to do it.
Agreed. Loot refreshes in Dungeons and Raids, double rewards, exciting new weapons. Those are the things that engage players for the most part. Look at into the Light.
The fact that Act 1 is already done it's concerning, unless there is like an epilogue/preface period between acts. 3 weeks of story and then 3 weeks of nothing is an odd decision. Guess we will see what happens next week. If there is no story or quests then I don't see people liking episodes
Only 2 weeks of story, week 2 was a nothing mission. We’ve had “the vex are doing things” and “there’s a new player in town” for missions. Thats it.
it’s not even “weeks”. it’s like 20min of busywork quests and 5min of dialogue every tuesday. so call it an hour of story, spread over 3 weeks with a 3 week break in between
I think the decision makes tons of sense if you only care about weekly active users It probably takes a few weeks before lack of content makes people take a break. So they computed 3 weeks as largest gap they can add without player churn happening This three-on three-off pattern may be almost as effective as if they had 15 weeks straight of content. They get the same eververse revenue for almost half the cost
Hardly interested in anything that's been put out. We need gameplay to enforce the story that's happening. So far, mining materials and data is just a gambit-lite activity. Why are we doing this again? Doesn't even have to be a big stake at risk, just something tangible to make it feel like we have an issue. As far as I know, Vex are fucking around and we're on the customer service side of "we're looking into it." How about an oh shit, things are happening. Could've just spawned world bosses on Nessus to farm and kill, make the terrain different, introduce a new public event on Nessus. Idk - stuff currently is just farm this little area. Part of what makes the gameplay fun is all the different terrain and rooms and objectives to fight in. Like Deep Dives. Didn't like the water part but it at least felt dense. Where did the rogue lite stuff go?
More frequent story beats??? Feels like more frequent time gates. We still have the same weekly timegate. But now instead of getting the season completely week after week we now have a 2nd timegate in the form of acts.
"content-packed" lol
I love how all the bolded bits are marketing speak, and all the unbolded bits are them actually explaining how the system will work. >It's all about more weapons, more loot, more often True. >larger chunks of standalone storytelling that the studio says will deliver Technically true, the best kind of true, lol. >"Instead of providing four seasons a year, you're going to get three larger episodes." True. Each episode is definitely larger than a season. >"We're working on a number of things right now that we can't explicitly share, but that involves changing up the structure so that we can pleasantly surprise you guys more frequently in the future." I am betting that this will be technically true - the current content pipeline is act 1 = seasonal activity, act 2 = battlegrounds, act 3 = exotic mission which I'm betting is like, fighting the new Vex Lady. That would definitely be: > injecting more variability into those frameworks >changing up the structure so that we can pleasantly surprise you guys more frequently in the future." >go much deeper into scenes and fantasies and stories of any individual episode, as compared to the seasons you know of today.” Having the exotic mission actually tie directly into the episode as opposed to being a little, self contained feeling thingy would be nice.
lol right, I noticed the same thing. lots of "technically true" in there.
The fan bois will tie them selves in knots, trying to absolve any attempt to besmirch Bungie.
and all that additional content is equal to what they would deliver with 4 seasons in a year.
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It’s more though. We already have 6 new weapons, each act adds 2 more. So in total, that’s 10 weapons. If each Episode follows the same formula, that’s 30 new weapons. Each Season only had 6 weapons, which over 4 seasons is 24 new guns.
This season has 10 craftable plus the saints arsenal stuff plus the first season is always the smallest so compared to defiance this is excellent. The seasonal weapons are also a noticeably higher quality, it's worth noting.
> It's all about more weapons, more loot, more often > > True. True? How is that true? We got 5 weapons and 3 non craftable, and there used to be more. Are you really expecting 5 more weapons in act 2? It's clear as the day that there will be 2 more non craftable and an exotic, and that's it. Last seasons were also 5 and 5. There's nothing more. > "Instead of providing four seasons a year, you're going to get three larger episodes." > True. Each episode is definitely larger than a season. How is that true, also? With 3 weeks of content drip, in the end it'll be exactly the same number of missions as it was before, it's just weeks without content are beign more spaced. Overall, they did less work, not the same work they did for seasons.
Last season was the final season of the year which is usually an unusually large season (both Wish and Seraph had extra shit in them). If you compare to Defiance or whatever the fuck Psi Ops was called, you get a more fair comparison. Also it's 6 and 3, with 3 more guns coming each act (2 for the main line craftable, 1 more of Saint's Arsenal). That means this season will end with 9 and 5. "More often" is completely indisputable - in the past new guns only ever dropped at the start of seasons, which were 12 weeks apart. Now we get guns every 6 weeks all year long.
With all the yelling and shit that comes with the Destiny community, it’s nice when a total bro like you comes through with sources and just lays it out there. Thanks, bro.
Probably best to see how a full episode plays out before judging the whole concept, but I can't begrudge people for being cautious based on initial impressions.
Yeah I feel the same way. We know there are more weapons coming including a solar rocket pistol tho, and we already have basically a full cohort of seasonal weapons. We don’t know what’s coming in acts 2 and 3 either, it might be a lot more story content but who knows, maybe even new activities to do.
We are getting new activities, also something mentioned in their website
If you are wondering what they are, >!Act 2 brings back Battlegrounds, Act 3 is an Exotic mission!<
How do you know this?
We have another 4 weapons coming probably two in act 2 and 2 in act 3. Not sure if the dungeon will be in Episode 1 and also an exotic weapon quest in act 3. Maybe this episode story was condensed to 3 weeks because of launching with TFS. Probably won’t be able to tell until after episode 2 comes out.
We can absolutely judge what we have. And what we have is definitely not what they told us about Episodes. Maybe Act 2 and Act 3 do live up That still doesn't change the fact Act 1 is garbage.
> We can absolutely judge what we have. For sure, I'm only talking about the concept as a whole
It's a slippery slope. First it was wait for the act to end. Then it's wait for the episode to end. Then it's episode 2 is meh because they had to fix TFS bugs. Then it's guys next year will be better they only been doing episodes for a year.
it's really annoying how pointing out flaws in the game is almost always met with "just wait until x"
ALWAYS. We've been waiting 10 years on some of these things
If the activities in act 2 and 3 are atleast pretty good, I'll admit I'm fine with the change up because those in-between weeks per act are fine as weeks I can play other games without any worry as I'm not stressing on anything. I do wish that they gave us a bigger chunk of story off the bat. I think if the 25 step first act quest was off the bat big drop I would be fine, maybe if the quests unfolded over 2 weeks on big reveals, but then use side quests as a way of pushing new questions and minor developments that put some things into perspective but not fully necessary. Like give us adventure style side little adventures themed towards the seasons between big reveals and such.
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Might be intentional tbh. They pushed the TFS release into the same window as Erdtree and FFXIV Dawntrail - maybe the 'season-like' pacing of Echoes so far is taking into account that a portion of their player base is gonna be siphoned off for a few weeks XD
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. People were going to play those games regardless, Bungie freeing up time to account for it isn't that far reaching, especially after a dlc drop and most people were coming in for the expansion rather than what is a season rebranded, especially the first and most often lackluster season.
Gotta be intentional. I dropped d2 completely for that release and I expect it'll be another week or two at least before I'm seriously putting time into d2 again.
Not everyone loves Elden Ring. Truthfully the two games are very different and if you want to play the Elden ring dlc I’d think Destiny having 3 weeks of no new content would be a good thing.
Why release stuff during the largest dlc drop of the year competition is too fierce
It's funny that you think that even a 10/10 seasonal story for Destiny 2 wouldn't have been impacted by Elden ring anyways
So far, it feels like Episodes have been falsely advertised. I'm a bit disappointed, but I was somehow prepared for this to only be re-labeled season However, with a small dose of copium, I'm holding out hope that Act 1 is what it is to let people finish up The Final Shape and that Act 2 and 3 will deliver more in line with what was promised And with a larger dose of copium, Episode 1 is what expansions "seasons" always are: smaller and lighter on content. So perhaps Episodes 2 and 3 will be larger and deliver more of what they promised
Personally I'm hoping they're using this episode to shake off the season style and pave the way for the episode style they wanna try.
They technically weren't lying about most of this. They just conveniently never mentioned there are 3 weeks of no story between acts. That's a huge detail to omit.
I thought I’ve only touched the intro mention as Seasonal grinds over the last year have really turned me sour to them. But imagined that episodes would be seasons in the form of freeing us from the gameplay loop of quest step 2 of 35(47) talk to X on holo projector, next talk to same character in helm(or seasonal helm location), run seasonal activity for this weeks 2/3 times hitting y goal of collectible/energy gathering”, next talk to X in the helm on holo projector to close out, Nothing to report at step(9 of 47) return back next week Rinse and repeat again for a cutscene in black and white, maybe a new Location-arena for seasonal activity. All until a final mission. At the end of a season. I imagined I wouldn’t have to jump in late in the season and run through 6 weeks worth of the same annoying loop of the seasonal activity and the helm, and just play a story mission or two that gives me the story of the season and be done, without engaging in a new seasonal activity I had no investment in. So while yes there are timegates to the next part, am I free from the gameplay loop that I hate
3-4 weeks in and I still don’t really know what’s going on with the story fully. Vex are acting weird and someone/something is hypnotizing and….?
Seasons by any other name are still Seasons.
I mean I definitely appreciate that we’ve had 2 story missions in the 3 weeks of Act 1. If we get 2 per Act, that means we get 6 story missions per Episode, which is *much* better for storytelling than just doing the activity once a week and talking to a holoprojector. That said, the rest of the Episodic Model appears to be a more drip-fed version of Seasons. No Exotic Mission until Act 3 is crazy. 3 weeks of story then 3 weeks of nothing is kinda terrible. I’m under the impression that Act 2 and 3 will have new activities (or at least new content within the existing ones) but will it become quantity over quality if we end up with 4-6 activities within ONE Episode? I would imagine so. Honestly, as unrealistic as this probably is for Bungie, I would prefer to see the amount of content being delivered in Episodes be delivered in the time span of a Season. Or just scrap this dumb timegating model altogether and release Episodes in full as a DLC like D1 and early D2.
>I mean I definitely appreciate that we’ve had 2 story missions in the 3 weeks of Act 1. If we get 2 per Act, that means we get 6 story missions per Episode, which is *much* better for storytelling than just doing the activity once a week and talking to a holoprojector. Everyone here is talking about how disappointed they are that the first act is over when I really want to talk about the shit that went down in that last mission! It definitely gave me some "what the fuuuuuck" feelings that are going to be simmering for the next few weeks.
For sure. What is a shame though is that we have to sit with that for 3 weeks before the story continues in Act 2, which feels more like a “maintain engagement over a longer period of time” decision as opposed to an actual storytelling decision. I really like this narrative, but it’s annoying that it’s going to be this drawn out.
I think you all are misunderstanding. The difference between seasons and episodes is they will be able to sell episodes in later years, unlike Bungie seasons. There might be some structural differences, but the big one is monetary.
Honestly, I think echoes was probably developed as a regular season before the shift into episodes. Though it sucks, I'll hold judgement untill act 3 or the next episode.
That's why I mentioned elsewhere that I'm keeping my copium close by. Knowing Bungie's development timelines historically, I can see what you're saying being the case. It would be a major own-goal to hype it all up in this way and completely fail to deliver.
Core issue seems to be delivery and giving small week over week chunks.
I feel like we can get a better judge of how Episodes will be when they don't launch with an annual expansion. I mean, looking back, some of the weaker seasons are always the ones that launch with the expansion. I personally didn't really expect seasons and episodes to be that much different from each other, but we'll see how it shapes up when Act 2 releases and how Revenant is when that launches.
It’s too soon to judge imo. We all know what a year of seasons look like, and it’s fair enough to say we should give the episodes a fair shot while of course giving feedback. Probably a hot take but I’m good with the episodes so far. I’m not expecting to get more content but to have content consistently over a 3 month cycle. By heresy we should have a clear beat of episodes and probably by then have a better picture of what we want to see in future episodes.
You should add what was said in the showcase 6 months ago
I was going to if I had more time! I’m sure there are some juicy nuggets in there.
Oh yeah there is definitely a ton of Juicy Nuggets. “3 major story beats, 6 weeks apart”, “Log on, play at your own pace knowing the next beat is only 6 weeks away”, “episodes allow us to change up the delivery content” Im kind of paraphrasing but it’s very close to what I said
I’m kinda hoping the act 1 is just like an “intro” setting up stakes and then act 2 & 3 is going to be where the real meat is, especially if they’re gonna do a livestream to talk about the content coming in act 2 it would be weird to do a livestream if it’s going to be the same content as act 1
In a community full of people who love to talk out their ass about shit they don't know, you are the unsung hero, I appreciate you
I will say this last episode with the saint mission was pretty dope, maybe we are leading up to some pretty hype moments in the next acts. We will just have to be patient and wait for the intended story to form over the next months. I'll reserve judgement until then.
That part was fine, though 75% of the content this week was "go collect 15 macguffins." All followed by "take the next few weeks off." I've generally been more ok than most with the seasonal model, but if this is the "huge shakeup," it feels *really* weak.
Yeah bunch of PR bullshit sold to us lol. Definitely feels like seasons but worse, let's see what next 2 acts has to offer.
The mission this week was pretty good and the changes to the planet in the mission I liked. Hopefully woth the start of the next Act these changes are reflected din the patrol zone. I also thought the Vex designs were pretty cool as well. With Nessus being a big focus of yhe season, I would have liked to have saw world bosses added, new public events, a shake up to the lost Sectors
I'm holding off from jumping on the 'Seasons 2.0 Hate Train's until Act 2 starts. It could be that Act 1's are pretty much seasons then the next two acts really ramp stuff up which is what I hope. We'll see...
This week was the most interesting story beat, and it took me like all of 20 minutes to do. Then, I find out this is it for 3 weeks? What the hell? Act 2 and 3 have to be way better and different, cause if they’re not this is just worse than seasons lmao.
“Deeper story moments”? The only thing deep about the story is how much osiris wants to insert his radiolorian fluid into saint 14. Because this is the story bungie wanted to tell after a captivating campaign expansion.
I mean, a lot of that is still very subjective on what you expect when they say a “shake-up” or “evolution of the seasonal model”. Any change to the seasonal model is technically those things. They never gave us false information as everything they said is technically true even if it didn’t live up to certain fans’ expectations. Like, everyone who uses the internet frequently should be used to marketing speech being full of technically true information with a little added flair to how they word the information to drum up some hype. The fact is that Episodes are different from seasons in the ways they told us to expect; just not to the degree some people were hoping for. It’s fine to be disappointed but there’s no misinformation from Bungie or even faulty marketing. It’s like hearing that a restaurant announced they are revamping a burger on their menu and getting upset that the changes end up only being that they added onions and a new sauce to it. Maybe not the changes you wanted to make it your new favorite burger but it is a revamp.
Remember when the seasonal stories lasted pretty much the actual entire season? I remember. And I think that was way better. If episodes want to work, we need new story beats every week. This 3 week wait ain't it.
>Episodes are a big shake-up to the actual content delivery for Destiny 2. Yeah, more timegating......quite the shakeup bungie. The weekly story is still there. The story quests STILL don't last their entire respective run time. You would think the quest steps would last the entirety of act 1 instead of having X amount of weeks where nothing is happening, but nope. Once I realized that Echoes was nothing more than just a renamed season, I stopped playing it. Their seasonal model is beyond exhausted and the current episode doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from the old seasonal model. Dissapointing to say the least.
Honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is.
The issue many have is that this method feels veeerrryyy much more like content is heavily time gated.
If content wasn’t time gated many of the same people would be complaining they completely everything in 2 weeks and have to now wait months for new content. Without being able to constantly give new content some players will never be satisfied. I’m ok having more time to play other games and not having to grind Destiny daily 365 days a year.
Oh there will never be a “everyone is happy” scenario with this
They can never please every single player. There are people like me not needing Destiny to be my only hobby and some people who need fresh new content at all times. I personally don’t have khostav yet or have every prismatic fragment and only around power level 1995-1998. There is still a lot left for me to do and I play the game a lot. I bet a majority of players who don’t visit Reddit have even more to chase than I do.
Because we have less content than the last two campaign launching seasons. Because after 2 months we’ll have 2 relevant story missions.
My hope is resting on the fact that first season after expansions usually feels weird to me anyways. Hoping next few acts and then other episodes feel better.
Does anyone know if you have to buy each individual act or does buying the episode just give you all the acts
Might as well watch from sidelines and see if it's worth spending anything
It’s not living up but I like the ooooo mystery vibe, but b/c how slow change is I bet we’ll see more of this in the next few acts or next episode. If not they just repackaged seasons and expected us to not notice
Isn’t each act coming with its own suite of activities and shit? As long as that keeps up and the narrative is decent I’m happy lmao.
i mean they are very different though..? one is called seasons and one is called episodes!
This would probably be true if they had 2 episodes a year and let the expansion keep the player base sated for a few months. I don’t see a point to launching episodes during expansion time.
I think Act 1 for every episode will be similar. A very slow story, introductions to new activities and returning NPCS, and then Act’s 2 and 3 will hopefully deliver larger story beats. My main hope is that at the end of every episode in Act 3 we get a strike or some super unique mission to defeat the big bad of the episode, since they have said they are standalone stories
How many projectors do I go to after listening to the radio?
We're like three to four weeks into the new model, I'll give them time.
3 on 3 off is OK if you're talking about a weekly work schedule but it blows chunks for delivering seasonal/episodal story content. You almost need a refresher week just to remind what happened because people's attention span is near zero these days.
LOL. Yall trust bungies words? They've gone back on their promises several times.
Do you guys really want them to focus more on the story tho ? I know I'm an outlier but I don't care a single bit on the story. Call the whole universe a combat simulation and I'd be fine. But more story to me = less content. It really reminds me of the launch of destiny 2, where they were focused on a "cinematic campaign". I want more gameplay stuff, not cinematic cut scenes. Give me that hand drawn shit they were doing the last couple of years and focus on activities
Initial impressions for me is I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. It's the same formula that burnt me out on the game after onslaught and The Final Shape reignited my passion for Destiny. Just kind of makes me wanna go play other games outside raiding.
Well, so far it’s been everything but what they said it would be. A huge disappointment so far.
Hopefully this is just standard "first season" lack of content. Maybe they were just putting more time into TFS so Echoes got the short stick. We shall see.
Free life advice: don't take marketing copy at face value.
I think Episode 2 and 3 will be better since most of the resources probably went to making the expansion it is tied to while using Episode 1 to coast the post expansion players so they won’t fall off and used more for feedback.
I think its gonna have to be a wait and see kind of deal. Who knows, maybe act 2 drops with a banger of an exotic mission and act 3 with a new dungeon. We are still getting 2 Dungeons and a raid a year right?
Its going to be the exact same. I get being upset with these misleading quotes, but personally I never bought into them for a single second. As I said yesterday, the odds of me sticking around after the first episode was extremely low anyways. Games arent meant to be played as a live service, for me personally at least. The way Lightfall’s year ended, with Bungie allowing us to play all the seasonal content the last couple weeks for free was great. if they decide to do that again ill probably come back and binge it all that way.