Destiny and Warframe players thread for those considering Anthem

From the EWKAA thread:

You can replay missions you have already completed with other people. [Source]

Pretty sure that means: "You can replay missions you have already completed, even with other people." Not, "You can only replay missions you have already completed if you replay with other people."

Although ... it's just possible he does mean the latter, as in, the only way you can replay a mission you've already completed is if some friend, who has not yet completed the mission, invites you to help out. It's just possible they intend to make replay of missions by invitation only. Perhaps to have a soft-block on replaying critpath missions, for the sake of story integrity. You can opt-out by refusing the invite, making the immersion breaking your choice.

I was just playing Destiny 2 a bit this morning, experiencing Bungie’s most anemic content addition yet. It struck me that Anthem is dropping at a good time in Destiny’s release schedule.

The Black Armory is the first of three expansions tied to Bungie’s new annual pass. Previously, content additions like the Warmind expansion had full story campaigns, new 3-person Strikes and a raid layer. Black Armory sort of has a story quest, but it’s mostly just introducing new activities called Forge Ignitions with tedious grinding.

The lack of new content is exacerbated by the fact that instead of releasing it all at once, Bungie decided to stretch their release schedule over a few months. With their next content drop, Joker’s Wild not dropping until March, Anthem should be hitting at a time when many hardcore Destiny players will have exhausted the Black Armory content and start feeling the content drought.

I don’t think you can think of Destiny that way. Each expansion has a singleplayer story campaign that’s self contained. If you got Rise of Iron, you finished all the story content it has to offer. There are exotic weapon quests you can unlock also, but I don’t get too fussed about them. I don’t think waiting for a “complete” version really makes sense. Destiny 2 is much the same, the story is there but in some cases end game activities (like the raid) are closer to an actual ending. In Taken King and Rise of Iron for example the true final defeat of the threat is in the raids.

I try to keep some tabs on what the hard core players are complaining about, though I’m not really one of them. One of the biggest is that they work through content quickly and often have nothing interesting to “chase” or work towards. Bungie, who have apparently in the past complained that their engine toolset is unwieldy and difficult to work with for the content they try to make, have decided to deal with both problems by stretching less content over more time. It takes longer to do content now (As of Black Armory) because you have to grind to even get to a power level that allows you to complete it successfully. I logged on the day Black Armory dropped and was unhappy to find that, because I hadn’t grinded to max level before the content released, it would be a few weeks before I could see much of it.

I say this as someone who was very happy with the Forsake expansion, which was one of the best story content drops Destiny has ever had, but the past few weeks have been disappointing.

I'm on PC and tried Warframe at the very beginning while I was starting to get better at ME3MP and found the early Beta lacking. Came back Dec 2013 and found it much improved and stayed according to Steam I now have 5200 hours plus with a break when ME:A came out.

Destiny 1 was obv out for me but I played the first year of 2 and had fun but as Bungie listened to the hardcore players that insisted on it only reward hard grind I've skipped Forsaken. The lack of social interaction spoiled it and made it pretty much a solo affair for me.

Anthem after the Alpha taster I had, I'm looking forward to the Beta and IF and only if my friends like it and get it I'll be there. Coming from Warframe I don't mind the focus on looter/shooter rather than deep long story but I'm not going in solo again.

Well, after close to 5000 hours, ugh.., mostly D1 thank goodness, spent playing D1 and D2 I'm not really going to complain about what direction its heading but I did drop it, as did the few remaining D1 and 2 friends I had, after the last Dlc dropped.

I'm still looking forward to Anthem and honestly believe there will be quite a few pve only Destiny players that will be making the switch also. The base game of Anthem does look alot more solid (matchmaking, access to endgame content) and I'm honestly relieved that I won't have to be trying to coordinate with 5 other friends from different time zones that work, have families, etc. to find enough time to actually make an attempt at endgame content now. Now we just need 4, endgame is suppose to last for roughly an hour and if we're short one, we'll let matchmaking take care of it.

Had some thoughts about Anthem and Destiny today:

Awhile back I remember a BioWare dev saying that they were looking to avoid the elitism playerbase split that comes with instituting raids. Also things like “world first” bonuses.

I think of this now because Destiny launched their “Niobe Labs” event yesterday. It’s a puzzle dungeon of sorts that, once completed for the first time, will unlock the final weapon forge activity for all players. Several streamers have put in 20+ hours of their time into it, but nobody has been able to complete it yet (partly because you have to translate French and interpret references to Norse myth, Japanese myth and French literature to actually understand the riddles)

Bungie has been catching a lot of flack over this because the event is clearly something only the top 1% of players will be able to participate in and reflects the apparent focus of their newest content almost exclusively catering to their most hard core players and streamers. Destiny 2 started out too casual, but the pendulum has now swung the other direction.

So, I think Anthem will be in a position to attract a lot of Destiny players looking for less hardcore focused content.

Thought they did pretty well with Forsaken too.

However, I am very happy to hear that Anthem will have matchmaking for every activity. Trying to get people to do raids with in Destiny is a hassle. I could do with challenging activities that don’t depend on convoluted mechanics.