Latest news with #Bungie
Forbes
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Destiny 2's ‘Arms Week' Brings Some Unwelcome, Ill-Timed Surprises
Destiny 2 Destiny 2 has brought back the concept of Arms Week in The Edge of Fate, a new event meant to paper over the fact that there are no more week-to-week story developments or missions in this expansion, due to there not being an attached season anymore. It sounds pretty cool, a unique set of weapons for players to hunt and this time, that includes the first ever spread shot Hand Cannon, which is about as close as we're going to get to a sawed-off shotgun in the game. The problem? Bungie just cannot resist badgering players for 'engagement,' or doing its best to push microtransactions. Add in some more baffling decisions on top of that, and what should have been an easy layup is yet again another series of annoyances. I promise you I am as sick as writing these up as you are of reading them, but it just keeps happening. The problems: Destiny 2 Destiny 2 FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder The fact that I can find this many flaws with a single, seemingly simple week-long event feels like a metaphor for everything Bungie has been getting wrong lately. The good news? The spread shot Hand Cannon is pretty fun, at least. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Destiny 2: The Edge Of Fate's Portal Cannot Sustain The Game
Destiny 2 Logging in to Destiny 2 during its second week, players were greeted We are now in an era, for the first time in years, where there is not a week-to-week story unfolding in Destiny. In the Edge of Fate, you beat the campaign, and that's it. Instead, you're herded into the main new draw of the entire game, The Portal. The Portal is a series of four 'Ops' sets of missions, Solo, Fireteam, Pinnacle and Crucible. Each have their own dedicated weapons and armor to farm, both now using the new 'tier' system of the game, common Tier 1 drops and exceedingly rare Tier 5 drops at the highest difficulty levels of the game. It's only been two weeks, but it's clear this is not going to be enough to sustain the game in a meaningful capacity, and it would be shocking if the game's active players did not start dropping left and right as they hit some sort of wall in the activity. Some may last longer than others, and some changes will no doubt be made to fix extremely obvious issues with the system. But The Portal is not going away this is 'the thing' that's meant to keep players engaged now. The launch of this Portal in The Edge of Fate is bizarre. There are zero new activities in any of the Ops lists. I'm not going to classify through a string of enemies in a Patrol zone 'new' for Solo Ops. Fireteam Ops is years-old strikes and forgotten seasonal activities. Pinnacle is only old exotic quests right now, though supposedly chunks of dungeons will be added later. Destiny 2 FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder The way to 'mix this up' to some extent is the new modifier system with different challenges and boons you can pick to earn better rewards. But it's mainly split into lower levels trying to get an A rank, which usually just means locking your loadout and putting on an enemy challenge or two, or higher levels, where you have to slap every negative modifier in the game on in order to get the best loot. And not even the best look. At the high end, something like a 5% drop at any Tier 5, much less a specific weapon or armor piece with perks or distribution you may want. Lower levels are blindingly easy. I'm not sure what's going on there, but some of these difficulties have bosses that cannot possibly have more health than a miniboss, at max. But at higher levels, getting more powerful actually hurts you, given that you will keep being forced into higher deltas. +30, +40, +50, nothing you do can change that unless you scale things back for inescapably less loot. The split is that lower tier players are going to climb high enough where this just gets exhausting, and leave. Higher tier players, all but a few crazies, are going to burn out with this insane difficulty that is often not necessarily difficulty, but endless sponges and the simple inability to ever feel truly strong. There are some pretty obvious Portal fixes that should be implemented ASAP: Destiny 2 Being vastly under-generous with loot and overly focused on 'challenge' with stupidly punishing tuning is a recipe to turn off players. All of this seems to be in place to extend the grind as long as possible, but what it's going to do is cause a lot of rage or exhaustion quits. I'm already seeing it happen. The entire concept of the Portal, replaying very old content, also is just not appealing at baseline for most players, and those that do say they like it, I will be curious if even they'll still be around a couple weeks from now. This is just not going to be able to carry Destiny 2 for six month gaps between major expansions without severe population crashes. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Forbes
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
70% Of Destiny 2's Top Contest Mode Clearing Raid Teams Cheated
Destiny 2 As if Bungie needs to deal with any more Destiny 2 drama, player investigations have now revealed that among the limited number of Contest clears for the insanely difficult Desert Perpetual raid last week, as many as 70% of the top 100 list appear to have cheated. It seems too early to list dozens of specific teams here, as I've already seen at least a couple false positives, but the provable ones? Many are very, very obvious. These cheater clears are marked by certain, publicly available data points, namely (via @aquativityy): Cheaters This is a mess. We have not seen anything at this level with a Contest raid clear…ever. The only piece of good news it that it does not seem to involve well-known, high profile teams including World's First Team Nuts, their livestreamed clear being obviously legitimate. All of this blew up yesterday and is currently the talk of the entire Destiny community, (which outside this, is already struggling to accept the Edge of Fate expansion on its own merit). Bungie has said nothing, as of yet. At this point I would at least put out a 'we're investigating' tweet today, but this is yet another thing they're going to have to explain in terms of how this happened regarding this Contest Mode raid, as they're already looking into bugged enemy health and deltas. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder But we may know how this happened, at least to a certain extent. In its latest round of mass layoffs at Bungie, one of the teams affected heavily was player security which, as you might be able to guess, are the ones who work toward catching and preventing cheaters like this. Not to say that division doesn't exist at all now, but if you're wondering why this is happening at this moment, it certainly seems to fall in line with the timing of that. Destiny 2 It seems likely that there will be a large purge of these cheaters at some point given how obvious it is. But there's an additional layer on top of this, as it's not mandatory that everyone in a party is cheating, they are just playing with a cheater in order to get the clear. All of them should be banned as well, but that's not a guarantee. If you completed the Contest Mode raid, stay in line. You may now find yourself moving way, way up the legitimate clears list or shooting into the top 100 or top 50. We are awaiting Bungie to say anything about this. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Forbes
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
The 13 Good Things About ‘Destiny 2: The Edge Of Fate'
Destiny 2 I have made no secret about the fact that on the whole, I do not especially like the latest Destiny 2 expansion, The Edge of Fate, nor the general direction the game is now moving in. Me complaining about Destiny is not a new phenomenon, but as a break from that, I will list some things I do like about The Edge of Fate and these changes, as those do in fact exist. So, let's begin. The New Nine Story – I wasn't sure about this at first, but after The Edge of Fate I've come to believe that it was actually a pretty good call to focus on The Nine as the next major antagonists of the new era. They've been a fixture in the game for a decade, but always behind the scenes and after all this time, we barely know anything about them. Now we will, and what we've learned so far has been very interesting. Lodi – New character Lodi, a special agent pulled through time and thrown onto Kepler, is one of the best-written, well-voiced characters I've seen in this game in ages. Possibly ever, somehow. He's likable, funny and authentic. A great addition to the cast. Destiny 2 Target Farming – The featured gear of The Portal allows you to target farm a specific slot in a much easier way than we've seen previously, plus bonus drops are a way to get even more rolls by bouncing around between activities. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Mid-Mission Drops – Lord, I do not know how long I've been saying this, but loot that drops during a mission should not be random, crappy world loot, it should be loot you'd get from that activity as bonus drops. Finally, finally they've done it with The Portal. Thank you. Solo Ops – The content of this playlist may need work, but the existence of something that you can hop into as a solo player, scale up the difficulty as much as you want and earn guaranteed power upgrades is welcome, and we've never really had anything like this before. (Why you're getting power upgrades and how that system feels is another matter). Set Bonuses – This is a cool addition to armor that I've been hoping to see for some time. There's a lot of potential here, as these are already far more useful than origin traits on weapons. We can already see with the raid set just how build-boosting these can be, and there are only going to be more possibilities from here. Destiny 2 The Earned Bushido Set – The samurai armor is one of the coolest free armor sets you can earn in Destiny in a very long time. A must-earn just for the transmog possibilities alone. The Existence Of The Tier System – Let me be clear here, I like the concept of a Tier system for loot, 1-5 roads for weapons and armor that have meaningful upgrades in time. The execution of this right now is what needs work with getting higher Tiers being utterly exhausting and no way to upgrade between tiers. But fundamentally I do think a Tier system with some modifications is a good move. The Portal Landing Page – You know, I don't hate it. Again, the concept of The Portal taking over the game is one thing, but I do think the very clear landing page for the Ops playlists and Kepler is streamlined in a way that the old Destination map was not with its endless flashing icons and spread-out mission buttons. The Portal very much lacks personality, but it does come off as more coherent, even to a veteran player like me. Daily/Weekly Auto-Quests – These have proven to be a solid source of XP, and while confusing, the ability to grab guaranteed, decent (for now) loot from Zavala every week feels like a good addition. But they didn't need to delete Pathfinder for this. Destiny 2 New Weapons – Some of these are really good! The rocket pulse is the highlight (I still don't have one, grrr), but I've enjoyed a number of the new weapons across the different avenues to get them. The Raid – No, I haven't played the raid yet. Yes, I can probably still classify it as good given community sentiment now that we're behind all the Contest Mode drama. Supposedly it may be one of the game's best. Foundry Boost – We logged in this week for a surprise boot of SUROS weapons, giving them 25% more damage across The Portal and getting us out of the New Gear-demanded system temporarily to use some old favorites for big boosts. These boosts becoming a regular thing will be fun. I'm forgetting some, and the larger structural problems with the game are in fact awful now, but smaller things? They got a lot right. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy
Forbes
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Destiny 2' Just Secretly Fixed A Big ‘Edge Of Fate' Problem
Destiny 2 I don't quite know why, but when Bungie does something very good when it comes to responding to player requests in Destiny 2, they often don't broadcast it well enough, but here we are again. A new patch yesterday fixed some bugs like PS5 audio issues, nerfed some guns, and introduced a new problem with the Encore mission where it once again needs to be disabled. However, it also added something cool, and it helps with what I have said repeatedly is one of the bigger problems with the new Portal system. While I did not see it announced anywhere, and DMG confirmed that it was indeed a new addition as of this week, a selection of individual Fireteam Ops missions now have inborn matchmaking, rather than having it off and mandatorily herding players into Fireteam Finder every single time they wanted to play one. These new matchmaking options come with set modifiers you cannot change, which is necessary to make matchmaking work at all. When I was under 220 power, those selected were automatically getting me to an A-rank. Over 220, now it's B, but 90% of the way to A (it should still be possible to get A). Destiny 2 The catch here is that it's only the top row of Fireteam Ops missions. The others below it, which is currently 12 other missions, do not have matchmaking. Why? The top row are the featured ones where you can focus specific slots, so the assumption there is that more people will be playing those. Having matchmaking for 15 different individual missions, especially with player population precipitously declining, feels like a recipe for long waits and frustration. So you'll have to use Fireteam Finder only on those. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder This move also helps Fireteam Finder itself, because the more 'casual' players who don't want to deal with FF and modifier picking are herded into matchmaking, where people who have more focused plans and perhaps are being a bit more purposeful about it are more likely to find like-minded people in FF to link up with. So, win-win for both types of players. Solo Ops doesn't need matchmaking, obviously. I can understand why Pinnacle Ops doesn't have matchmaking. So, this addition to Fireteam Ops feels 'good enough' in many regards, even if I'd maybe bump up the matchmaking breadth to at least half the featured missions with more specific gear offered. Don't get me wrong this is not a seal of approval for Destiny 2's new Portal or the power grind that's currently in place (woof), but if you are interacting with the system, this is certainly good news and I just wanted to make you aware of its existence, given that for whatever reason, this did not launch with the expansion nor is it really being broadcast by Bungie. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy
