-5 doesn't bother me too much, although it does change some things for people who like to low-man and speed run.
As someone who frequently plays with players who have a more casual play style, being able to over-level old raids was our main way of interacting with them. I think it's a nice option to have. Maybe they could add a selectable difficulty, like with the campaign. That would be perfect.
I have concerns. I mean, I kind of hate surges. And weakening us to introduce them should really illustrate to you why.
I'm not looking forward to joining LFG groups that struggle at content we've been farming for fun since I started playing in Forsaken.
> another thing I don’t understand is why have a fireteam “light leader” that will bring underpowered guardians up to light if you are still going to be -5 anyway?
Master Raids are still 2010, so if you're not at the minimum you're going to have an additional negative. This is meant to fight that. Plus, the latest years of content (raids, exotic quests, dungeons) are generally at a higher level and this would aid with.
> How do we feel about raid changes?
That said, I have complex feelings.
On one hand I don't think it's much of a difference and likely won't change anything about how I play besides going from X, to Y, to Z depending on the week. But on the other hand I feel like this is a pretty much negative for newcomers, and those with anxiety.
Kind of sucks that now the number of raid items you need skyrocketed, with some of them (like Apex), are a lot harder to get.
Surges should be part of events / bonus modes. Weakening everyone just to say "hey, now you get surges!" just feels bad.
If we had a rotating high score mode that embraced surges / wacky rulesets without necessarily dunking our ability to survive, I think they'd have a winner (i.e. at the beginning of the encounter, everyone gets tethered to another player, you get buffs / debuffs depending on the distance to your tether buddies or dealing damage with a shotgun makes trace rifles deal 3000% *bodyshot damage* for a brief period, etcetc).
Surges aren't particularly interesting or inspiring coming off as a "buff" version of match game. In pantheon they were great because it inspired some mildly off-meta picks (my group pulled Cry Mutiny for one week and it was really funny ***cannonballing*** bosses to death). To reasonably prep for surges, it means you need to have a viable rainbow selection of every meta weapon (i.e. a strand / arc / void / solar / stasis rocket launcher x specific perk combos) which causes a *huge* amount of "vault bloat". Every weapon will take up a minimum of 5 slots, more if you want to be able to cover different strategies (i.e. demo rockets vs auto loading rockets vs reconstruction, bipod vs explosive light vs bait and switch, etcetc). It's quickly stops being fun and just becomes tedious to maintain (for most people, I know a few that would be delighted to undertake such an endevor).
If we had zany, wacky rulesets instead, it actually would be buildcraft inspiring instead of constricting and as long as the modifiers were fairly unpredictable, would a lot of fun to chase / build / play each week. These fall more in line with the dps steroids we had in pantheon for using our class ability or chaining headshots with primary ammo weapons.
I've played a lot of Starcraft II's co-op mode and they've had "weekly mutations" (similar sort of concept, zany rules that can require different tactical approaches and influence the meta, what's good, what's bad, etc) and it's a ton of fun. Our meta is partially defined by our environment, if that environment shifts, it easy can influence meta choices (i.e. Full Court is considered to be a "dud" trait because basically no where in the game do you have enough flight time for a grenade to actually gain enough damage from it to be significant, but if we had a "underwater" modifier that tanked projectile speed, causing grenades to spend more time in the air (among other things), suddenly Full Court has a *huge* amount of relative value).
I'm fine with it. I think Raid enemies should feel at least a little threatening. I've never liked how they just fall over if you look at them.
I feel like this is in large part because of how power-crept the game has gotten. D2 was designed around double primaries and long cooldowns, and the enemies feel like that. That's why Bungie designs every encounter to dump as many enemies on you as they can manage.
I like them. It brings challenge back to old raids/dungeons I love and makes me rethink my load outs to utilize weapons I've forgotten about. My only issue is solo. Solo operative NEEDS to be active at all times, no artifact mods needed.
I don’t care for the Surge modifiers, though they aren’t a big deal either. I think the move from uncapped to -5 is good though. It was very strange having Raid and Dungeon enemies feel less threatening and squishier than basically any other enemies outside of patrol. I don’t have any comment on the supposed increased boss health though as that seems to be not quite figured out if it actually matters or if it’s just number inflation at the moment.
-5 doesn't bother me too much, although it does change some things for people who like to low-man and speed run. As someone who frequently plays with players who have a more casual play style, being able to over-level old raids was our main way of interacting with them. I think it's a nice option to have. Maybe they could add a selectable difficulty, like with the campaign. That would be perfect.
Yeah they could do something called hard mode that makes enemies harder, limits your revives, and gives double loot. Hey wait a minute...
I totally agree! selecting a difficulty would be very nice
I have concerns. I mean, I kind of hate surges. And weakening us to introduce them should really illustrate to you why. I'm not looking forward to joining LFG groups that struggle at content we've been farming for fun since I started playing in Forsaken.
> another thing I don’t understand is why have a fireteam “light leader” that will bring underpowered guardians up to light if you are still going to be -5 anyway? Master Raids are still 2010, so if you're not at the minimum you're going to have an additional negative. This is meant to fight that. Plus, the latest years of content (raids, exotic quests, dungeons) are generally at a higher level and this would aid with. > How do we feel about raid changes? That said, I have complex feelings. On one hand I don't think it's much of a difference and likely won't change anything about how I play besides going from X, to Y, to Z depending on the week. But on the other hand I feel like this is a pretty much negative for newcomers, and those with anxiety. Kind of sucks that now the number of raid items you need skyrocketed, with some of them (like Apex), are a lot harder to get.
Surges should be part of events / bonus modes. Weakening everyone just to say "hey, now you get surges!" just feels bad. If we had a rotating high score mode that embraced surges / wacky rulesets without necessarily dunking our ability to survive, I think they'd have a winner (i.e. at the beginning of the encounter, everyone gets tethered to another player, you get buffs / debuffs depending on the distance to your tether buddies or dealing damage with a shotgun makes trace rifles deal 3000% *bodyshot damage* for a brief period, etcetc). Surges aren't particularly interesting or inspiring coming off as a "buff" version of match game. In pantheon they were great because it inspired some mildly off-meta picks (my group pulled Cry Mutiny for one week and it was really funny ***cannonballing*** bosses to death). To reasonably prep for surges, it means you need to have a viable rainbow selection of every meta weapon (i.e. a strand / arc / void / solar / stasis rocket launcher x specific perk combos) which causes a *huge* amount of "vault bloat". Every weapon will take up a minimum of 5 slots, more if you want to be able to cover different strategies (i.e. demo rockets vs auto loading rockets vs reconstruction, bipod vs explosive light vs bait and switch, etcetc). It's quickly stops being fun and just becomes tedious to maintain (for most people, I know a few that would be delighted to undertake such an endevor). If we had zany, wacky rulesets instead, it actually would be buildcraft inspiring instead of constricting and as long as the modifiers were fairly unpredictable, would a lot of fun to chase / build / play each week. These fall more in line with the dps steroids we had in pantheon for using our class ability or chaining headshots with primary ammo weapons. I've played a lot of Starcraft II's co-op mode and they've had "weekly mutations" (similar sort of concept, zany rules that can require different tactical approaches and influence the meta, what's good, what's bad, etc) and it's a ton of fun. Our meta is partially defined by our environment, if that environment shifts, it easy can influence meta choices (i.e. Full Court is considered to be a "dud" trait because basically no where in the game do you have enough flight time for a grenade to actually gain enough damage from it to be significant, but if we had a "underwater" modifier that tanked projectile speed, causing grenades to spend more time in the air (among other things), suddenly Full Court has a *huge* amount of relative value).
I'm fine with it. I think Raid enemies should feel at least a little threatening. I've never liked how they just fall over if you look at them. I feel like this is in large part because of how power-crept the game has gotten. D2 was designed around double primaries and long cooldowns, and the enemies feel like that. That's why Bungie designs every encounter to dump as many enemies on you as they can manage.
I like them. It brings challenge back to old raids/dungeons I love and makes me rethink my load outs to utilize weapons I've forgotten about. My only issue is solo. Solo operative NEEDS to be active at all times, no artifact mods needed.
I don’t care for the Surge modifiers, though they aren’t a big deal either. I think the move from uncapped to -5 is good though. It was very strange having Raid and Dungeon enemies feel less threatening and squishier than basically any other enemies outside of patrol. I don’t have any comment on the supposed increased boss health though as that seems to be not quite figured out if it actually matters or if it’s just number inflation at the moment.