It's clearly only for the elite and the streamers; I really am not sure what the point was. No one who hasn't raided before can realistically do this, and anyone lured back is usually missing the required weapons. The amount of time we have for it feels like crap; for those of us with jobs or who have holiays booked can go -blam!- ourselves. The scoring feels very arbitrary and bad, especially with the times and scores not always lining up. The Fireteam Finder is woefully insufficient for this task; being unable to show checkpoint a group is on makes it essentially useless. In every LFG I've seen has had more people join and leave due to it not being the checkpoint they want than people stay and being kicked combined. There are New Lights everywhere, who don't have a hope in Hell of completing this, and are just going to assume that the entire community is full of toxic elitists who gatekeep the end-game. But all of that could be forgiven as good intentions and bad execution, if the whole thing wasn't still riddled with bugs. Golgoroth refusing to turn, planets not revealing themselves, symbols not accepting input, all whilst the timer continues to tick down is pretty unforgivable. So my final take on this is I can appreciate the intention here, but this is a pretty bad implementation in every way for the game. Making something that requires a pretty serious time investment also highly timelimited just sends the message that Bungie doesn't really want to make content for anyone who doesn't have 5+ hours for their game every day.

Takes me back to the...IF YOU ARE NOT ELITE AND DON'T HAVE A GALY....YOU NEED NOT APPLY. At least I've resolved 1 of these. While it's good to have and the rewards are GREAT... being a scrub, I find it hard to get through. Its level is beyond just a CHALLENGE. I fully get why its this way... In your words...its supposed to be hard. Just get good. But...ITS A GAME....it's supposed to be fun and entertaining. NOT a salty sweat fest dev mother cursing experience. The only fun about it is watching everyone run around like headless chickens trying to figure out what to do....and the reward. Good job on that one. 😆 😭

Answers to the questions: The difficulty is fine. The encounter tweaks are whatever. Once you find out what they are, they are just there. Scoring is cool, but the time bonus is not. It forces you to worry about doing the encounter fast, and wiping if you don't finish fast enough. Which is annoying. Other thoughts: Think if you do higher levels first, all the levels under it should count as completed. Also, to go along with that, think if you finish the previous week, you should be able to just do the new boss the next week. This isn't a true raid, just an extra activity, no need to stretch it out. I do like that it's a nice test of random raid encounters, and it feels more for people that raid often.

[quote]How is everyone feeling about The Pantheon so far? We are keeping an eye on the feedback and want to hear your thoughts. How is the difficulty? Are the encounter tweaks enjoyable? How do you feel about the scoring and time bonus?[/quote] Score and timing feels bad. We get punished for doing caretaker or atraks too fast

Pantheon is overall an excellent addition to the game. I personally enjoy the challenge, the wake up call for many players that they still need much more growth in terms of their arsenal and skill, and the rewards, at least for the most part (especially with the news of all the adepts being enhanceable, which probably should have been told to us Week 1 as I barely gave them much consideration). I have a few gripes however: -Platinum score should be equal to platinum time in essentially all circumstances, barring cheese. You either make the timer or you don’t. Assuming you do an encounter legit within the timeframe it should count as platinum. Really this is mostly only relevant on Atraks, and likely Riven, but there were a few encounters too where I either got incredibly close to going under the threshold or actually did go under (sorry my runners were too good and got three symbols every entry in Caretaker so we didn’t kill enough trash enemies lol). It should not be this narrow of a threshold if I’m doing the encounter as intended. -Tormentors are not an interesting challenge. In most encounters, they just get straight up ignored and add almost nothing. In the others, they pigeon hole your team incredibly hard as Tormentors are very difficult to kill without things like snipers, divinity, machine guns, freeze, suspend, blind, and so on. I think this is more a problem with Tormentor design being way too overtuned to emphasizing precision damage and not necessarily their addition here in particular. I find the emphasis on precision damage in defeating them interesting but I think the exact amount of damage reduction they get may need to be tuned, especially if you intend to use them beyond the sparingly few missions/strikes they were designed for. -The duration of the event. While I think it being limited time is okay, I think giving players a little longer to digest this content would have been more appropriate. Totally fine with emblems and Godslayer being time sensitive but the activity and other base rewards should stay, if not permanently, definitely longer than it is currently slated for. This is one of the only activities in the game that genuinely challenges many players and I think that is very healthy for the sense of progression in the game. -Lastly: who is this activity designed for? It is clear by the difficulty, time commitment, and stringent time requirements that this activity is mostly made for the most hardcore of players. But many of the rewards in the activity (while great for some who may need the catch up) are not particularly desirable for this audience. I think the allure of a guaranteed raid exotic brings a lot of players who are definitely not ready for this activity. If the intention was to somehow encourage the non-raiders to get into raiding, I think this activity might do the opposite due to just how punishing and frustrating it can be if you’re not bringing a well-trained team. The amount this activity funnels you down to only the best of loadouts may be incredibly jarring for players who perhaps don’t have access to this gear and have little chance of building up their arsenal in time to get a clear before Pantheon is gone.

As a long time raider who has completed every boss already and who has all the loot, I don’t like it. I hate timers. They take the focus from enjoying the encounter to being frustrated because you weren’t fast enough. Also, armor drops are pointless as are most of the weapon drops. If this is for people who need that gear then the timers and escalating difficulty is bad. If this is for people like me or streamers then the title alone is not worth the effort. It’s an interesting idea but not thought out.

The points are difficult to answer, without knowledge of what the true intention of this mode is. If the mode was added to generate interest from the wider community, pre final shape... then I think this misses the mark by some way! IMHO: it doesn't make much sense to use the end-end game to generate player engagement and attract extra pre-orders etc... it may do the opposite. Or, if this is just an added end game option, aimed at a small player base. The encounters and loot need a revist; dcv bosses could have been used, with updated loot based upon that activity... that could have been something different, rather than tweaked encounters.

I feel like most dps supers need to be brought up in dmg a bit. There is literally no reason to run any other dps super then nighthawk or star eaters golden gun. Even during a week with arc surge it's better to have 5 golden gun hunters then 5 thundercrash titans. Golden gun get used very quickly then dmg can continue, but every other dps super takes a bit to hit the target. I think that dps supers should do dmg based on cast time. Don't bring golden gun down, just bring the others up to at least do comparable dmg with their equipped exotic based on how long it takes to cast.

[quote]How is the difficulty? Are the encounter tweaks enjoyable? How do you feel about the scoring and time bonus?[/quote] The 5 below, and increasing power deficit, isn't fun in any activity. Not sure why "big number"/power is increasing in FS because we are capped in everything so power is irrelevant. It's clear this activity isn't for normal people.

FWIW: I stopped raiding before the sunset debacle. That’s also why/when I departed for distant shores - WarFrame. Prior to that bounce, raiding was a regular thing, with a regular bunch, every reset. Then the vibe began to change…raids now had timers and enhanced mechanics - hoops to jump through! General difficulty levels increased…then came Sunset…and the vibe changed virtually overnight. Friends Lists evaporated…regular buddies left in droves…it just wasn’t the same anymore. 🫤 Much, much later: I returned…but with a very different way I engaged with the game; ie, I enjoyed the artwork, the gunplay, the scenery, chasing old unfinished seals and quests - or contemplating such; getting stuff done that was doable for me and my interests; not doing stuff that didn’t interest me due mostly to enhanced difficulty / throttling / ridiculous RNG… So, raids / dungeons / etc. - no thanks! My 10-year anniversary is almost up. Lightfail nearly caused me to bounce one final time…I was hopeful that ‘Joe’ would shake things up…but he left. The recent dev streams, and flood of new stuff…and possible life after TFS got me back on board - for now. I like the Destiny universe…it’s familiar territory for this old tortoise…and I’m happy just pootling about! Stuff like Pantheon and the Persistence Trials card hold no appeal to me. To ‘enjoy’ and git gud at that stuff, ya need a regular bunch to be halfway decent, and have a chance to succeed…not suck! That D1 vibe was lightning in a bottle…D2 just ain’t the same. 🤔 I’m in for TFS and possibly beyond…depending on what happens thereafter… Itmt: I think / hope there’s a genuine new energy at BHQ that will put the players’ interests, front and centre! ‘Trust us!’ 🧐 Time will tell…👈 Ease springs! 🫡

LFG for Pantheon is extremely painful due to the negative power. My day one team flies through it, but when I dip into the fireteam finder it is extremely hit or miss (I had one pretty decent LFG team and the rest I had to dip out of after 2 hours of failure). IMO: it would have been nice to have some minimal guards up like requiring guardian rank 7 or 8 before you can load up Pantheon. Into The Light has attracted a bunch of returning / new players, which is great, but it's not immediately clear that this raid is "hardcore" compared to a normal raid.

I would like to do it but the first encounter in the first week ran off my friends and now none of them want to do it. I think the first encounter should be at normal difficulty with the new additions so the players like my friends will feel they have the ability to continue. Maybe ramp up the difficulty after the first week or at least the first encounter of the first week.