So far it seems like it's essentially an old Season, just split into 3 time gated 3-week chunks rather 9 weeks all at once followed by a long gap before the season finale. It's kind of a six of one, half dozen of the other situation. If this is meant to feel like a different format it's not really working.
@imnotgivingyoumyname810 this seems tone deaf to me. The first week of tfs, we didn't even engage with the episode's content. The quest was literally "thwart the final shape." Basically hurry up and wait. Then it was 3 weeks of npcs we like talking about how the vex are being really weird, and then more hurry up and wait. It's just odd, homie, nothing to do with instant gratification. We didn't get that with seasons either.
@@xenode2059 you somehow turned "instant gratification" to mean "every sort of gratification under the sun" that being said, I think dropping the acts as a big drop each time would be good
Wouldn't say it's the worst so far. Gameplay wise it's pretty fun if too difficult on Expert in the final encounters, everyone just dies so easily. But narratively yeah, super boring so far and I'm almost completely disengaged with the story. It'll change as this is the wind up to part 2 and 3 but yeah, really dull so far.
They didnt communicate directly something concrete about any raid reprisal but the indirect communication suggests they dont have any raid reprisals in their 2024 plan. As for dungeons, the preorder expasion pack said there is a dungeon key included. So there is a dungeon confirmed in one of the remaining 2 episodes. In the last 2 expansions (WQ, LF) there were 2 keys mentioned so we can confirm the value also went down from previous years while the price stayed the same.
I was kind of expecting to hear about reprised raids and dungeons by now, hell that video that came out just before the release of echos could of been the perfect time
Now that I've hit 100 on the pass, beat the season quests and crafted the act 1 weapons, there is literally no incentive to play the game outside of waiting for my friends to get on to raid...So I guess I'll log off for a few weeks.
@@SurajVadulas It is not. It is still just listed as classified in the collections under the legendary shotguns tab, and we already know (almost all of) the remaining Dawn weapons are being timegated alongside the remaining acts of the episode.
Still bugged : ECHOES only the Warlock earns vex-flavored armor. titan and Hunter see no markers, quests, or notifications. Oh, and red-borders are wane and thin for me this season, just a handful with zero patterns completed. Tiresome.
I'm one of the few people who don't mind the seasonal model with the weekly drip feed. However, I thought episodes would be more stacked, where we get 6 weeks of content per each act, eventually totaling to 18 weeks of content. Now, it's just basically that we will get 9 weeks over 4 months, versus the previous 8 weeks over 3 months. I would easily prefer the previous seasonal model because that would mean we at least get one more story arc in the year. Plus while the wait between seasons is longer, the story would at least be denser. Episodes isn't the way to go if they are doing it like this. I thought they made them longer so that they could make them denser. But they made them longer so that they could make less in general.
To be fair, most seasons had 6-7 weeks of story content, not 8. And the season that released with the expansion pack typically had much less story content (IIRC Risen had only 4 weeks, Defiance had 5), meaning that we typically got 22-29 weeks' worth of story content in a year. Assuming episodes are all 3 weeks per act 3 times, that's 27. Roughly the same amount of story content. However, I am certainly not a fan of this pacing, at least not initially. I'm hoping that this episode, or at the very least this act, is a bit light on the story side since it launched alongside Final Shape.
Wow, if this is the plan then Final Shape, as good as it was, will still be the end of Destiny 2 as no way people will stick around for such little content spread out over such a long time. Like WTF, Seasons were better at this point by a WIDE margin. What's worse, if there was any time the new Season/Episode needed to pop off, it was now to keep people interested in the story now that the Light V Dark saga is over.
I kept saying since these episodes were announced that its just them wasting time until Marathon hits. They'll parade Destiny's corpse around for microtransaction money until nobody is playing it anymore and they have free money for their Hero-shooter. You know, like overwatch and valorant, so they cant make all the characters non-binary, ugly, every other ethnicity, etc. Marathon will flop except for the hardcore competitive shooter crowd, and since gamers have been getting sick and tired of DEI injections, Marathon will flop so hard that bungie might just get assimilated into Sony as per their agreement. Game over bungie, game over.
@@PurePancakes113 yet he's correct. It's been the same since they 1st introduced seasons. Money maker wit the least effort possible until the next project is released.
Lmao you underestimate hardcore D2 players... if they replaced every mission in the game with - collect this material - many of them would still be playing.
A few thoughts about Episodes. Apologizes for the longer than usual comment. If this was called a season it would rank among the worst. A boring, repetitive three-person activity that can be infuriating due to teammates speeding ahead costing you loot, which is the entire reason to do it to begin with. Not to mention the wonky deposit issues with things spawning right next to the deposit spot or the non-stop death room boss fight last week. The whole thing feels rough around the edges. This feels especially egregious because we just had the best horde mode in Destiny history with Onslaught. That was a better activity with much better loot that we could focus farm. A lot of players farmed Onslaught to death so possibly that fatigue carried over to Breach Protocol, which feels like a huge step back on its own. This being the initial Episode doesn’t give a great first impression on what we have to expect with episodes in the future. It feels like they just decided to spread out the “dead weeks” and pad many weeks with the silly busy-work “chore checklist” junk. I can see why the Episode model is better for Bungie, but it doesn’t feel like it’s better for me as a player. The story is very thin. Yeah, I expected a comedown after defeating The Witness, but this feels largely unnecessary. I know there’s more to go and I’m confident that something cool will happen with the Vex, but it’ll likely be in September when Act 3 wraps up. Finally, I have much less incentive to log in and play for the next three weeks because I’ve hit 100 on the season pass and I’d be wasting effort and XP.
Yeah, this feels worse than the seasonal model. I wish they had some outside play testers to look at this and tell them that no people are not into this.
@atomic_wait It's a good question. Assuming the seasons were not extended, I think towards the end of each season, there would be about 3-6 weeks of nothing before the final week's mission. If we do the most, 6 weeks, that's 24 weeks of nothing. Similar to 27, but it could also be less than 24, perhaps 20 weeks or something. But the thing is, they said for Episodes there'd be more content, more story, and even with this fun math, we're not projected for that promise.
@@pioneershark2230 Who said anything about activities? I know what's confirmed. We all knew back when they showed us Episodes roadmaps way back. I'm talking about content drought and the droughts we're getting in between Acts vs the droughts we used to get between seasons.
@@cos0 activities are content, there's more of them. So ig you're the one who mentioned it. That being said, they really should've just done a big drop with 5 weeks break between, you're making the wrong complaint here I think, doing the maths we're getting more weapons, more and activities yearly, the issue I think though is just how it's released
So instead of a full season, with the front half having content and the back half not having it, we now get 3 acts, with half and half. Not sure I prefer this. I'd rather get all the content in back to back weeks, and then i can walk away for a few weeks. I don't like having to come back every several weeks.
The problem with the rampant time-gating in the game is it ends up being yet another way Bungie "forces" players to play the game the way Bungie wants us to play. It's a poor choice for Bungie and any developer when they dictate how we the players must play the game. You can only hold a set amount of this material at a time, you can only progress your Pathfinder this way (when Bungie specifically stated the whole Pathfinder system was designed for players choice and freedom to progress how each individual player wanted). I have no problem with the overall grind in Destiny 2. I honestly never have. For me, the game is a complete blast to play. To me, I feel that more player choice seriously needs to be a much higher priority for Bungie. If I as a player choose to run Vanguard Ops solo then that should be a choice an individual player can make. A player can run Dungeons and Raids solo but Vanguard Ops somehow remains locked to matchmaking.
I’d say if anything at the start of a 3 week break have a community mission like do this event defending vex gathering data so the community is working together to meet this goal to get data needed to trace or infiltrate the vex hive
Paul, I gotta disagree with your take about The Vex needing a “Face” to talk to because the cold machines angle is boring Making the Vex ALSO have a human-like antagonist who can overact in audio transmissions, wag their finger at us, etc etc is literally THE most boring thing they could have done. At that point-what makes the Vex any different from the Destiny’s races? Their one defining trait-they’re machines, not people, they can’t empathize-is gone. Now they’re just the same as everything else. Boring, emotionally driven and prone to bland monologues from their overacted leader who will be the foil for “Season of the boring soap opera #47”
Well, im glad I got this Episode included with Final Shape, because I'm not ordering another season again, unless truly big and meaningful changes happen, which wont.
I think this is good for pacing honestly. Gives time for people to catch up who can’t play as much, gives time to play other games, and keeps you from competing everything in 8 weeks and then having half a season with zero new content. I’d rather it be spread out like this.
There is so much other content that is running parallel to the current Episode. GM Nightfalls and Master Raid this week. Last week we got GM Excision. The week before that was Dual Destiny. If this is what we can expect from Episodes moving forward, then perhaps there is cause for concern. However, I suspect this Episode, especially Act I, has been more lightly packed due to it running side by side with Final Shape content.
Bungie are clearly all big FF14 and WoW fans, the timing lines up perfectly to give every player and employee time to step away for those other expansions! /s (but also not really /s)
15k+ less seasonal challenge bright dust a year now , less story , incomplete season pass , time gated loot , missing season synthweave is now a season pass reward , and recently raised price , list goes on ...... i love the dlc but this new seasonal motto is just a dial back and a shamefull one .... this motto is unsustainable and needs to be reverted back to original format , currently no reason to purchase seasons i just wish i knew this before buying annual pass .....
Episodes are just thinner seasons with less content and more time gates. Sadly this new model along with Vanguard pathfinder have really negatively impacted how this expansion has landed. 😢
Dang, with FS being alot of players hop off point, Episodes had alot riding on them to engage new players and retain old ones, and imho it's failing at both.
What I personally am tired of is the absurd amount of time-gating in Destiny 2. I get that Bungie wants long-term player retention and overall time being invested into the game. I totally get that aspect. The fact remains though that those players who love the game, truly love the game, those players will continue to invest their time in the game. There's always something to work towards earning in the game and for many, this fact alone gives these places reasons to keep grinding and keep playing.
I won't notice it this episode because I'm going to be working on Final Shape stuff for a while. The issue is the next episodes when I've completed all the Final Shape stuff and I don't have anything else to do.
I was a fan of how less grindy the weekly activities felt these past few weeks. With the seasonal model, it often felt like I had a long list of chores I had to complete, whereas now it feels like I'm given 1-2 chores and they're pretty easy chores like do a couple bounties, grab a couple whatchamacallits, etc. I do think Bungie's kind of shot themselves in the foot with the first Episode though, because even if there were three more weeks of story content to go through, like you said and from what I've heard from quite a few people is that most people have already completed the Battle Pass. I myself am only at around 75, but I haven't been grinding as much. But I think this might be an issue specific to the fact that this is the first Episode immediately following the Expansion, which brought with it a ton of new content for us to explore and do things, all of which was earning us XP. I suspect when Act 2 drops, it'll feel like a much bigger grind to max out the pass. And on a semi-related sidenote: I think it's interesting how these Episodes have Battle Passes that are now 300 levels each, totally for 900 levels in the year, all of which cost the same amount of Silver if whales decide they want to just max out the pass. Obviously that's their decision to do so, but I do find it interesting how Bungie essentially increased the amount of pass levels for people to buy by more than double.
@@christophertheofilos1063 I don’t know what to tell you, but the seasonal model is over the second they said episodes the game is basically finished. There’s not much they could. Add The only reason why we’re seeing episodes right now is because this is the only thing making income for bungie
I agree that this episode isn't hitting right so far. That being said, so many quality of life upgrades have been added to the game in recent times... Do you remember not having fireteam finder, onslaught, loadouts in game, skimmers, exotic class items, swords that can have a random exotic perk, etc.? Don't forget about one of the best dlc campaigns in the game's history, The Final Shape. Is this season (episode) sub par? Yeah, I guess, but even you said this week was actually a fun mission. I want to see it improve more and more, but maybe it needs more time.
The amount of content isn’t the problem. It’s never been the actual problem. QUALITY content should be the focus. Somehow, or rather certain voices in the community have turned an issue of quality into an issue of quantity, based on the incorrect assumption that the Taken King year was bad because we didn’t get a consistent stream of content. And yet me and my 80 or so friends at the time all still logged in and chased exotics, raid rolls, and ran trials. This never ending chase after “more stuff to do” is the exact opposite of what makes destiny great. Bungie’s own words are to “take breaks”, and I think that is a very healthy and good way to play games like this, but their content model still wants people to log in every week and pretty much most days to get your pinnacles and all of that stuff. For Act 1, we got probably about one hour of unique content, spread out over three weeks. This is probably one of the worst content delivery methods I can think of, chopping up a story and ruining pay offs all for the sake of a battle pass and getting weekly logins. Bungie’s strong suit is heavily curated missions, like story missions and exotic quests. I don’t see why they can’t take something like what we got in Act 1 and put it all into one mission that can be replayed on harder difficulties. I’d much rather have Bungie focus on one really cool mission for these Episodes, with all the effort going into that one mission, instead of having to do this weekly thing. They could still keep the cadence the same, except on day one of the Act they can drop the one long mission, as well as whatever 3 player activity they want, and the new vendor. You play through the curated mission, and can replay it on harder difficulties for better loot, and to find the secrets.
I totally get the complaints, but as someone who’s been gone since witch queen I really like that I’m given more time to catch up on stuff that I missed
Every season immediately after an expansion has been pretty bad imo. We got banger, after banger, after banger with content from onslaught, pantheon and final shape. I expect act 2 will be slightly better and act 3 will really kick off what Bungie is cooking with the episode model.
What was the trigger for the cutscene @paul_tassi ? I completed the failsafe mision, saw the interaction between Saint and Osiris in the helm, but that was it. There was no cutscene. Also havent seen a mission for the third specimen - seems like it is bugged
I think the timegates should have been properly communicated but for me the breaks in content lets me catch up and grind because I can't play every day. I do like the missions so far and the new environments look cool
sad thing is i BET 1000% that this is going to be the gameplan for how they will do seasons for marathon , but given that its a pvp game first and foremost we likely wont get any story atall for the seasons there
I'm surprised more people don't like these breaks between stuff happening... I was actually pretty happy to see it. It's like a sign to go enjoy other games and not log in every single week just for story dripfeed.
I really thought episodes were going be like Curse or Warmind with a more focused story. I was expecting like 2 decent length missions released per act, but what we’ve done so far has been disappointing
i was just saying this to a friend, telling a story in such a short time is depressing makes it feel less important and at first sight the episodes look insane
Maybe I’m crazy but I like this better… You have clearly defined times to come back, and to step away to go do other stuff. If you aren’t around during the start of an act then you have time to still catch up. And you have some down time between acts to play at your own pace and unlock patterns and stuff. I guess it’s probably not great for the ultra hardcore who are on the game a ton every day but for people who play a 5-10 hours a week it’s not bad.
I was expecting this, but thought it would be 4 weeks of story, because if this is the cadence we are going to get far less weekly beats than seasons over a year, something like 18 now, 24ish in 4 seasons. I'm going to wait to judge, but we better be getting a new replayable content each act, be it another episodic activity or replayable exotic mission. I am going to cut them a little slack too because this was made alongside TFS so I expected it to be thinner, but we shall see
I think I am okay with this. I do constantly fall off toward the end of seasons and the. End up getting sucked into something else and then sit a season out. I think this will work out all right for someone like me. Give me time to finish/play some other games. Tire of mainlining one game and having it consume my life for two months straight with a FOMO carrot.
What exactly were people expecting though? Like specifically? All content to drop on day 1 of the act and then what? Nothing? I always assumed this year would be an “easy” live content year for Bungie so they can cook on “Frontiers” (or D3).
How it should've gone: Act 1: 6 week story Act 2: 6 week story Act 3: 6 week story How echoes was advertised: Chasing ALL of the ejecta from the traveler How it actually goes: 9weeks split across 2 months each, with most likely only 1 ejecta chased down. Bungies incompetence is next level, they killed all the momentum from TFS only a month in.
my joy for the game fell really hard after playing most of the dlc content. Just burned after out. this is also the first time I did not buy the special edition, so no future seasons. I know a lot of people that quit buying the expensive version of the dlc
I think im gonna wait until at least the end of this episode to make judgment just because its a new system for us and them getting a new story off the ground. I know they said this is gonna be self contained story's but i dont think thats fully the case i think this is ground work for the future
I'd rather have content in short bursts rather than slowly week over week. Although it seems like it's the same amount of content in a season but even more spread out
Week 2 gave us a hint and even went into proximity mode when you got near it in breach. This week we got no hint and I have turned breach upside down to no avail. It could be nesses but nothing has changed In its environment meaning it could literally be anywhere and we would never know. Bungie has also confirmed it’s a bug
What seasons and episodes have taught me is that they are never executed well, and to just stick to buying expansions because at least those get developed for longer than a handful of months. Granted some expansions are not hits like some others, but i feel that ratio of bad expansion:good expansion is less than the ratio of bad season/episode:good season/episode.
They reduced content (4 seasons down to 3 episodes) & are drip feeding already drip feed content. Most likely because many team members are making D3. Frankly I’m over this entire hamster wheel. They locked exotic class items away from solo players & that was my last straw. I see what direction Bungie wants to take this game in the future, probably all multiplayer, force players to create friend groups/clans that will guilt them into constantly logging in & grinding hours on the slop feed hamster wheel. Nope. Done.
I would say i am in between a consistent/ casual player an with all the new missions plus the campaign. This does feel like a good about of content. I haven’t even started the episode content yet. Idk that’s just me
Thank the Witness we have more time to farm weapons, right? I only have 427 in the vault at the moment. I heard there's a god roll that will one shot red bars available? Is that right?? Unfathomable.
It says 500k per bright engram - that's standard. And I can't believe of all people, Paul, you forget that seasons that launched along side expansions are paired down. Think Season of the The Risen and Season of Defiance. Those were shorter seasons.
They cant crank out content like were used to while working on project frontiers or whatever. They need to reveal more to get ppl hype and help understand if thats the case
They definitely should’ve clarified the acts not actually being 6 weeks of content. By showing each act is 6 weeks long then show what it’s filled with, it definitely implies 6 weeks straight of content each. Especially because drip feeding content week by week until it ends has become the standard, so they should have been more clear on that.
This is like if a sandwich shop owner realized people hate the sandwiches, but fixed it by making the same sandwich, cutting it into 3rds, and selling each 3rd 6 weeks apart from one another
So im not understanding. We dont get a conclusion to this act we just move on to the next story without finding out what happens to Saint? Or will this story be continued in the next act?
This is act 1 of the first episode. We get a few weeks downtime before the story continues in act 2. People are upset because there is downtime instead of a steady drip of content, and because the story isnt super intense. Which is kinda funny because the story just started, as this is act 1...
@@aljazslemc9569 Act 2 starts a new story tho as well? It should be the Scorn guy. So im guessing we'll continue this narrative while also starting a new one?
Act 1 first 3 weeks story beats then last 3 weeks nothing. Rinse and repeat 2 more times... Thats how Im interpreting this. Wonder in what ways is this better than what we had previously.
It's a new thing Bungie is trying, I'm sure they'll take the feedback as usual, but having 3 weeks downtime is nice, especially since elden rings dlc came out
I hate that I paid extra money to get the Episodes... But at least I got it on discount through a key site. Still, I should have known better. After all these years if there's 1 thing Bungie is good at it's getting their fanbase to fork over money. I'm honestly so exhausted of the game already and I just came back in late April after a 2yr break. Just playing the game, managing your inventory and trying to keep pace with what's going on is so mentally exhausting. It really does feel like a job at times and I'm pretty over it again already. I want to be able to play other games and I just can't do that + keep up with Destiny. I hate the live service model so much.
I get what Bungie is attempting to do with Episodes, in particular this 3 week gap in between each Act. I think Bungie is attempting to give a period of time, in this case the 3 week gap, to the more casual players which would in theory give these players time to play the "catch up game". I also think it gives Bungie a little bit of breathing room to address fixes, etc. However, while I understand what Bungie may be attempting with this whole Episode model, I personally don't feel it's actually going to work out as Bungie intends.
I think itll be fine once people get used to it. Before we had a bunch of people playing through the end of season droughts and complaining about lack of content and people dropping in just for the story as they play other content. Other games usually retain me and i assumed others, for about 3 weeks. This way we have regular breaks between content in destiny, that lets us enjoy a full other game or catch up or whatever. And if we feel like playing the wait for new content isnt as bad as having to wait more than a month for new content. I wouldn't even be surprised if Bungie ends up tying its content downtime specifically around big game releases. Which is great since a lot of the player sentiment is they're being held hostage here, and that its like a hamster whell and so on... now i can choose to play something else, and not feel like im missing out or dropping the game.
Great points from both of you. I know what I was saying in my original posts went a bit off topic lol. I just have a few opinions regarding the overall decisions Bungie tends to make.
Honestly Final Shape is so good I haven’t touched Echoes. Im not sure why it even dropped with Final Shape. Echoes should’ve gone live a month from now when people are running out of TFS content
I fucking called it lmao. A paying more for less situation, and tfs was gonna be the final time they ever put effort. Boy am I glad I didn't pre-order. For those that did pre order and are mad, it's your fault for not trusting the early signs (I still could be very very wrong, I hope I'm right)
You could tell by the writing on the wall when they were talking about episodes that all they were planning was player rention simulator i mean ffs they are splitting off the weapons and giving us back the 2nd set when act 2 lanuches, honestly tho im happy final shape was as good as it was i think its time to permanently let destiny go
I feel like three weeks of story is too little time in. Like I can see why they are doing this, but three weeks doesn't feel like enough time to tell a compelling story, even if it is only part of a larger episode. Didn't feel like much of an Act I guess.
Well it is an act 1 itll be more stretched out, since instead of 1-2 weeks that act 1 of the season would get, it got 3 weeks to set up the story. It will be a slower burn by definition i don't know what people expected when bungie said they'll be doing 3 acts over 4 months 😂 chances are they made act 1 lighter than usual specifically so people could enjoy the expansions. Can't know for sure until we actually know what the actual episode plan is and what content we'll be getting. Maybe next week we get the exotic quest. Or a secret quest or something. Or nothing for 3 weeks, which is still better than a month of basically nothing except a voiced run through the activity, like we got in risen and defiance. Remember in 3 weeks time, we were done with defiance. I had all my weapons, and the story concluded. Risen was pretty similar. I like that the story is just begging, even if i have to wait a little while i play other content, there'll be plenty of stuff to play soon im sure. Besides with the raid and grinding out for the buried bloodline still, i have my stuff to do. I haven't gotten all the patterns for the pale heart or the weapons that came out this season either....
It’s gonna be so nice to be able to continue playing Elden Ring guilt free for the next month. Haha. I don’t have to worry about missing anything in this game now.
The ranks are stuck at 100. More XP gives Eververse Engram. In 3 weeks, it start at 100. The less i play, the more i wanna play less. And Bungie wants me to play less. Sooo...
Yee people got too hyped up for final shape. They're just too distracted by the fact that episodes will be shit all long year, instead of realizing that final shape literally has 0 substantial content that is fun to play.
@@panzershreck8077 yep and it's crazy I said this a week ago and was pounced on for saying it now you're saying I'm on to something that just shows how it's going.
One thing I did not hear you mention, is that this game is your job. For 90% of people, 90% of the players it’s not nor is it something that can be constantly played without disruption.
Underwhelmed when the episode started but held out to see if it got better. Still underwhelmed. Now 3 weeks of nothing? Could've at least done some sort of community event similar to the build up to the Salvations Edge raid.
