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Destiny 2 Edge of Fate Critique

all right I am back with the Destiny 2 video I would have made this yesterday but I am finding it somewhat difficult to keep on top of videos with a toddler and a newborn So if you see less videos for me that is why I'm doing my best Got to focus on writing mainly which is my my day job Uh but I had to make a video about the live stream yesterday for the edge of fate Uh which was a 45 minuteish stream that was not really about the edge of fate Um there was like a couple minutes of a vi at the beginning that had some edge of fate stuff that went really really fast and then they had their usual people sitting on the couch uh talking to DMG who's who stood in for host I think everyone does a fine job It's just I I'm not loving you know this format I feel like this format's been a little played out At least they had some game footage uh this time But the main issue here was that this was all a discussion about systemsbased stuff for the most part and it is stuff that we've heard at least a couple times over At this point I think we've had at least one or two blog posts or tws about um a lot of these systems You know Armor 3.0 know how they're changing stats um tier stuff and then we had everybody visit Bungie and then they released a bunch of videos about all the same stuff and how that works And now we're doing an official Bungie stream where we're explaining all of that all over again Like normally I would go point by point through a stream like this but I don't really see the point in doing that because it it's all stuff that's been kind of explained already And you know we can debate whether or not it's good There's some uh you know conflict about whether this new gear system is good where you get bonuses for specific pieces of gear and then you grind them and then it goes away you know after 6 months or 3 months or whatever and doesn't sound the best And then specific things people are annoyed by like the um Hunter Dodge being pretty severely nerfed Um I kind of wanted to just talk more generally about why this whole leadup to the Edge of Fate seems pretty weird Um like this isn't a preview of the expansion and I feel like we've barely gotten a preview of the expansion You know what what did we get here in I wrote this down as fast as I could because it came very quickly uh the edge of fate Kepler something about a dormant singularity and they observe the collapse but it didn't affect them Um there are scientific culture called the Ionians I think there are the house of exile elixy which never invaded earth They've been around here There is dark matter that converted into elixney ether which was toxic That's all I got down there Um you know this is about the nine and stuff Uh they said it's a dungeon-like destination with without really expanding on what that is And then they once again went over all these like very specific Kepler mechanics They love this goddamn energy ball where you turn into Samos Saran and this electric ball and you bounce around and then there's other stuff like a I think there's like a teleportation thing and then a matter manipulator to solve puzzles But like we don't I just feel like we really don't have a good sense of at the very least like the scope of this thing And like we know it's going to be smaller but like what is this What is Kepler Like what what is going on with this location If it's a dungeon-like destination is this just like not a real zone Like is it like kind of a series of you know maybe not linearity but like you know different branching pathways It sounds more like I don't know the Nether or something but probably with less you know more or less explorable space It's just this is the thing like it's very confusing and they say it's you know nonlinear It's um you know you can do things in whatever order and then it seems like one of those things where they did mention this briefly like you go past the zone and you see like oh well this is a matter manipulator thing I can't do that And then you get that power and you come back And we we haven't really seen how this works in practice We have no real sense of what's coming in terms of activities Like all we really hear about is this strange sounding campaign and people are like "Oh they want to keep stuff under wraps." Every season every episode you know every expansion we're hearing about like the stuff you can do And as far as I can tell there's there's almost none of that and what's been focused on like even in this stream What were they doing in the stream They were they were messing around in the the new shooting gallery and then uh they were playing was either the coil what's the one that's not the coil the other Sabathon one Sabathoon Spire I think it is and they were using the new weapons and stuff in there So presumably the quote portal that arrives as sort of like the playlist thing is is coming with that returning But like you know what I mean Like this this it's not an edge of fate preview because all we're talking about are systems changes These are systems changes that are not they're starting with the edge of fate but the idea is that they're going to continue on through this whole era I imagine this new armor stat thing is going to be the norm for years to come Um and you know they I certainly think they're going to tweak some things I think they're going to tweak the new gear idea a bit uh as they you know it's this balance between making something useful and then also making sure people keep grinding but I think people are thinking this is like a little too much grinding and not enough content And the the theory here that makes the most sense unfortunately is not that Bungie's just really hiding all these mysteries and like you know there's so much more to see and rather there's just not that much to show Like I don't know why they're not explaining better what Kepler is Like you don't have to like spoil story stuff but like I I don't even understand what this zone is It doesn't seem like a real patrol space supposedly It doesn't have any lost sectors Like if it's just a dungeon where you know you're backtracking and doing your little rogike Samus things Not rogike but like your you know that kind of stuff like that Metroid Vania type format It's It's different and different may be cool but I'm I'm curious what scope this is and what it actually kind of looks like and we just don't know that And you can say that that they're keeping this under wraps They got to sell this thing man Like you got to this is supposed to be the thing to launch the game into a new era of like attracting new players and like the one thing they keep citing is this portal where you're going to log in and it's like here do the portal and like that's going to be the main thing Um but in terms of like selling this as an expansion they're not doing that essentially Like there's barely anything that's been touched on with this expansion We know like they've sort of previewed the year which is stuff you're you're getting later on We know that I think it's halfway through this It's it's the Playlands are coming back and there's some sort of uh Iron Lord probably SAish thing happening I we've been predicting CA forever but it feels like it's time to hit the emergency SA button Uh but like like what what's going on It just doesn't seem like this is remotely close to the normal promotion that we'd see for an expansion And like even knowing that this is smaller even knowing that they are going to keep some stuff under wraps like the raid you know we don't expect them to be previewing the raid in any meaningful capacity at this point That's something they don't do But I'm I'm just very confused as to why essentially we've only seen like here's a couple new enemy types Uh here's this guy in glasses and this very you know paragraph long overview of this story and it's you know we have to like really really do glimpses I think someone saw Meer Sundes returning in in one of the screenshots or something but like you're we're literally combing through this thing to find stuff And then we transfer into this you know 40 minutes of system changes we've already talked about They spent like 10 minutes on the three exotics that I think there are probably 15 creator videos about that are much longer and probably much more interesting The one big new thing we we saw and learned here is the heavy uh heavy crossbow slot is a new weapon type Very cool That sounds awesome Um I like the idea of shooting a bolt retrieving it These bolts have different effects Like you can rip a bolt out of someone and it hurts them more And like that was like unequivocally the coolest thing that they showed here But the rest of this was like stuff we've heard about already or now we're like you know devolving in debates about this new gear stuff and percent bonuses and and grinding and regrinding and like all of this stuff And none of this feels like what the game needs going forward And it it's tough because like we always talk about you know Bungie leadership being in the a bad you know bad influence doing the wrong decisions doing all this bad stuff at a certain point like there are kind of developer level decisions that don't seem good or don't seem like they make a lot of sense Um this new era just it feels like they're changing a lot of stuff for the sake of changing stuff but it's like these huge overhauls where I'm like is this going to be significantly more fun than the game was you know a month before this launched is are the idea of tier five weapons that much cooler than you know double enhanced perk shinies which we have now Is tier five armor that much more interesting than artifice armor if you add like another energy slot They've shown these like set bonuses where like there's one about getting a speed boost doing a bunch of things you know I'll we'll see what the other ones are but that didn't seem terribly exciting And then this idea that like you know the artifact kind of does this drive you to new new use gear but this seems kind of a different level And like the thing is is they DMG talked about like okay well the next stream is going to be about power level and progression And again that's like a systems thing and I think they're doing like a balance one later or something It doesn't seem like they're going to do anything focused on the content of the actual expansion Like what what is the farmable activity here Is there a new activity Are there any new strikes I'm assuming there's no new Crucible maps Lord knows there's no Gambit anything Um what size is this zone Is it a planet Like what what size is this campaign Like we know it's smaller scale and it's not these big you know campaign missions but like is it half as big Is it a quarter as big Like at least you know if we have no perception of what's going to be here it's kind of just like hey show up like you like Destiny before so trust us that this new Destiny thing is good Like it's it's not in the the game is not in the place where you can't like actively sell something that people need to purchase These system changes are great but you're spending you know almost all of your promotion time talking about free system updates you know and and different loot farms and whatever Uh that are all free which great you know you're not going to pay for those anyway But in terms of recapturing player interests um long laps players trying to bring in new players I don't see how this accomplishes any of that I saw a lot of people saying they're going to they're canceling their pre-order after that stream because it's just so so underwhelming And you know for some of us we're going to play no matter what I mean I'm essentially a Destiny creator at this point whatever you want to say And there's certainly a number of enthusiastic creators and enthusiastic players who are like "Yeah man Sign me up." But I talk about like you know people hate this and they're like well that's the vocal minority and like people love like sorry it's not like it's the majority of people are not really thrilled about any of this It's happened with Marathon too where it's like oh well actually I liked Marathon Like that's great There's always going to be people that let life are excited about it but like you know read the room and read the comments under you know DMG's how did the stream go thing and and things like that or read chat Like I don't think people are being like unnecessarily cruel about this I don't think that they have put forth a good hook about really any of this Like the expansion to the system changes sound goodish you know Um I I think I'm on board with them I don't know if the new gear thing is going to be as big of a deal as people are saying I'm not opposed to changing systems It's just or the idea of like grinding more armor than we do now It's just a matter of like is this going to feel oppressive and annoying or rewarding But it feels like a coin flip now and the scale of this you know Edge of Fate expansion compared to you know what what the second expansion is going to be like Is that one going to be more story focused since it's like this Outlaw Renegade Star Wars thing Like is that where we get a big campaign that bigger campaign that's you know more um engaging than this It just everything seems so up in the air like these these changes are not these system changes are are not apparently universally being accepted as this is definitely going to be better which for an overhaul this big you would want it to be like oh yeah this is a significant improvement that is something we can test out when it gets here even if a few things do not seem good upfront but if you're if you're trying to sell people on this new year of content and I just don't know what you're actually selling with the way this is being presented And I I very much believe that the unfortunate answer to this is that there is not a ton to show There is not a ton being hidden under the curtain outside of like the raid And like yeah there will be secrets They don't have to explain all the secrets but like what what is a big new activity here Like I I just don't really get what's going on here in terms of what this zone is I mean you know we can figure out the storyline but what what's coming here is actual content that people are signing up to pay $80 a year for Fact that they've lowered the price even is a little unexpected and does imply you know a significant reduction in size People are like "Oh well have they confirmed it's going to be less content?" Like it's going to be less content Like again I'm not being mean It's just a fact Like Bungie's half the size it was a few years ago They're working on Marathon they're under an immense amount of pressure uh because Lord knows I don't know if Marathon's going to pan out So it's going to be just Destiny So I've also you know done some math and try to predict the peak of what this is going to be based on the current record low player count Yeah it's not a shock It's it's record low I'm not saying that's like stunning It's just a matter of fact as to how many people are going to actually show up for this um expansion And what you do you know what I did is like the average is like usually triple um your player you know concurrent players or whatever to be the peak for your next expansion It's around that And if you do that here it's kind of like half of what the last expansions were almost a third of something like the final shape or lightfall And I think it'll be less than that I don't you know I don't think people are nearly as excited about the edge of fate as they've been any other expansion really It just I am at baseline excited for new era of Destiny I'm excited for new stories I'm fine moving past the Traveler and the Witness and Light and Darkness all that I do think that was sort of played to death at this point Um I'm initially a little skeptical of a whole ninebased saga which is apparently what this is I thought we were going to go do things like go to the Elixney home world or the Vex home world or Torvat or things and we're on some random madeup planet at the edge of the solar system Like it I guess it's just not really what I thought it was going to be And I wish they would explain what it is so I could be reassured that oh okay well this is good It just it it hasn't happened So I don't know I'm going in circles I guess but that's kind of where we are and it it just doesn't seem like we're going to get any significant information This thing is under two weeks away now or no under three weeks away now and it there are not really indications that we're going to get more uh significant information about the actual meat of the expansion I'm sure we'll get another trailer or something but that that seems like it's it So yeah Uh let me know what you're thinking in the comments Am I overreacting Am I being destiny alarmist as as usual But I don't know I don't think so Um I I don't think I'm you know on the wrong side of the community with this one but you can let me know what you think So thank you for watching Again I will try to do as many videos as I can manage Um the rest of my family is on a walk right now so I squeeze these in when I can But yeah thanks for watching I'll talk to you soon Take care