Currently, one of the most significant changes between a normal raid and hard raid is the inability to revive teammates during instances. Frankly, this is just bizarre. Not only is there no precedent anywhere in the game, but being able to revive teammates is one of the most fundamental properties of this game.
I mean, it's literally the first thing in the Destiny experience; you're resurrected by your Ghost.
However, the removal of our ability to revive teammates means Bungie's designers have taken a subtractive approach to increasing difficulty. The alternative would be additive (e.g., enemies have more health, enemies deal more damage, there are more enemies, etc.), which are tactics they also employ, but the mixture is a little weird.
Presumably, the intent is to make dying a big bummer. But that's the problem. Dying is already a pretty big bummer, and no revives means we're not playing.
Are these implications really what Bungie wants?
In another thread, another player pointed out how certain subclasses become irrelevant in hard mode. For instance, Warlocks' ability to self res with sunsinger is WAY more important than nova bombs, which are rendered highly ineffective by the much tougher enemies. The suggestion there is that perhaps these supers are not suitably balanced.
For the purposes of the hard mode raids, though, making certain subclasses irrelevant subtracts more viable resources from the game. Further, it limits our strategic options.
The cumulative effect is that hard mode raids aren't really hard. They're merely a matter of employing one of the few strategies that work and crossing your fingers that everything goes as planned and that no glitches trip you up.
It's just a weird experience that isn't really representative of the game as a whole. The raid design team has cherry picked elements of the game to make important to us, and part of the puzzle is figuring out what works and what doesn't work. It isn't necessarily about how [i]well[/i] you execute, just that you do.
I'd like to see the hard mode raids made more difficult by adding layers of obstacles, not removing tools from our tool box. Let our skills breathe. Don't make us pigeon hole ourselves into specific skillsets and resources that we must use to complete the challenge. Instead, present challenges that give equal credence to all of our abilities and allow us to choose the ones we like to use based on the challenges ahead of us, not what you've taken away from us.
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It's called "hard" for a reason. If you can complete the raids you must suck huge dick. They are not even hard anymore
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Yes an no, i think they should get an additional difficulty that scales with the lvl cap(so there would be a lvl 26, 30, and 34 vog for example) with maybe an increased drop chance of exotics or something like that
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Im fine with no revives. It should be there. My biggest problems are the laziness of bungie, and the solos. Raid should absolutely require 6 players working together. If you can solo endgame content, then the devs didn't really put much thought into the other 5 players roles. Also, i have a huge problem with them creating difficulty simply by overleveling enemies, or throwing them at you in massive numbers. Neither takes much imagination or effort.
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I'm pretty sure that, in general, Nova Bombs do less damage than rocket launchers. Combine that with the fact that I can buy Heavy Ammo and find it pretty often during gameplay, and Nova Bomb is basically useless next to a Launcher.
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Bungie need to make changes when doing hard mode raids. When doing VOG and being level 32 then our weapons should easily kill the enemies. In Crota End's Hard mode I notice being a level 32 and have max weapons our power is not even close to damage the enemies. If the enemies are level 33 then we should be able to bring their life level down quick instead having two, three or even all six players work so hard and see Knights enemy life not even gone down to half bar. If we have Ghost who have power to bring back a guardian to life then it should be available in Hard Mode Raids.
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I can't even beat Crota on hard
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To make the raid harder they should do like the nightfall. Every week is different. Put the jugler, or solar, void or ark burn. Make enemies mele do more damage. those are some ideas.
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They should allow revives in hard modes. Just change the timer...
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The no revive is completely fine as is, it's hard mode, it shouldn't be made easy by being able to revive everyone on your team if you die. This adds another element of teamwork and setting up your load outs correctly (not every warlock uses sunsinger with revive on hard). I would love to see various factors in play though, as hard mode in Crota just made the enemies more bullet sponges than adding other difficulty elements in, and takes the fun out of it.
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Same as the revive timer, it's a pointless mechanic to increase difficulty in a very simple manor. It's like they designed the raids wrong, and last minute decided to find the easiest ways to make it more difficult.
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You sir are a poet.
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Excuse the cheese but, that was pretty beautifully put, great articulation. Bungie, heed this post :)
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As far as the Res? Nah, don't want it, clever addition... err subtraction lol You hit the nail on the head though. Hard is supposed to be harder, not bullshit. You can't just make the enemies do more damage... Ninja Gaiden did that... it's stupid. You should never, ever remove things. Ever. Just add things, always add, never remove. +1 bump +1 like
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Edited by Prof Sheitbag: 3/13/2015 2:27:38 PMWhoa, wait a sec, buddy - Bungie adding something else into the game that can make this a nightmare: [b]Glitches, bitches[/b]! xD Even with our Swordbearer as host, and with his insanely fast connection, we still watched: 1.) The sword drop, and fall through the floor into oblivion 2.) Ir Yut magically regen health 3.) Ir Yut fly into her crystal and basically mock us with her eulogy 4.) Swordbearers during the bridge and Crota sections just not showing up for the party 5.) The bridge, even after being "fully formed" and visible to all of us not able to hold the weight of a single guardian (he fell right through....) 6.) Enemies rushing through the barrier in the crystal room (nearly wiped our hold team) 7.) Ogres randomly spawning out of sequence during Crota (had 1 spawn during our first sword - wiped out two guys before we realized what was going on) 8.) Ogres/Swordbearers running to weird areas on the map (Swordbearer runs back into Ogre rooms, Ogres running underneath crystal room - nothing is provoking them, the just make a B-line there for some reason) 9.) Totems activating, and wiping our team, even after the ogres have been dispatched 10.) The Gatekeeper during the Crota sequence pretty much saying 'Fuk this!" and rushing our entire team in the crystal room 11.) Crota pulling a Bastard Gatekeeper and rushing out entire team in the crystal room 12.) Crota getting pissy and chasing down our Swordbearer (we have a great video of him chasing our SB for quite the distance...) 13.) Crota's bullets magically flying through walls 14.) Crota half-kneeling (playin' possum) only to then go apeshit and swing that sword (he had no shield either - would not go down again) 15.) Crota not going down at all, even with no shield (dude had nothing, and we had gally's dropping on him for 10 seconds straight - he just refused to kneel) And my absolute favorite: 16.) Dying when you drop into Crota's End (watched a bud of mine drop in, and then as he landed get thrown against a rock and die. We all had a good laugh) So, the subtractive method of increasing difficulty is not Bungie's only card to play - they also love, love, love leaving some of the worst game-breaking glitches active and prevalent in these raids.
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I agree, it seems bungie punish players for dying by forcing them to stare at Peter Dinklage's balls until their team finishes a checkpoint or wipes.
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Seriously, everyone online is such a jerk about keeping to the plan, and you get immediately kicked if you aren't a "sunsinger with Ghorn" it just feels like you're being forced to play the way "Bungie wants us to" instead of having and using our own skills.
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I agree. I mean I get the whole dying in hard mode being a permanent thing if we didn't have our ghosts (first mission on the moon anyone??) But we do have them and....well frankly I think bungie places too much focus on the fixing of PvP aspect versus the game as a whole. I would like to see an improvement to the raids though. I specifically only use my blade dancer class for raid now or bounties. There is literally zero use for it outside of specific parts of the raids and bounties IMO. Blink is worthless outside of PvP and just.....meh in general to it.
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I agree, to completely remove revives is actually hurting than helping Destiny. Bungie seems smitten to FORCE a specific game play, use the weapons they want you to use and to make sure hard raids only appeal to ignorant players. I've tried to do a few hard raids but being lvl 31 and dying once seems to guarantee a kick out of the game if your not with friends. Increasing the timer would have been enough. Destiny already has little content for players to do each week. To remove 2 raids from players trying to get radiant and better weapons seems counterproductive. It seems Bungie is happy in players becoming disgusted and quit for a few days instead of providing fun gameplay. I don't expect a fireteam to keep a bad player around but too many LFG hard raid teams expect perfection. Maybe most hard raid players are @$$holes and I just expect too much. I've had great experiences with normal raids but the exponential increase in hate players is absurd. How is one to learn the hard raid if you don't have enough friends to work with and learn? I'm not into watching YouTube videos, I want to learn by playing. We already have to leave the game to play the game. I don't want to do even more. The grind to get radiant materials is extremely long since you can only get a few once a week. Bungie seems to love FORCING their gameplay on others, extend gameplay by increasing grinding with no benefit, focus on nerfing fun guns, ignore the terrible economy setup and punish mid-play gun swapping. It's like they looked at all the other top rated games and said, let's do the opposite to make a game players will love even more and have them stick around for 10 years. Whomever thought these things were good are even more detached from human reality than the Vex. I guess we'll see what HoW brings but so far it doesn't look good...
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No. It's not called a kinda hard raid. It's called hard raid, it's not easy man. I'm not being mean I'm just saying.
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Edited by WARCOLONEL: 3/13/2015 10:16:35 PMThe one reason I would argue against this idea is from a lore P.O.V. Darkness zones are those areas you cannot be revived without a teammate. It's the areas of the solar system the Traveler's light cannot pierce. I don't know of anything more thematic of this than the raids, where we are fighting the equivalent of evil demigods. It makes sense that if certain locations of hard enemies, such as strike bosses, cause darkness zones, these demigod like enemies should have something more powerful just because of their presence. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just prefer the idea of being unresurrectable. A better way to make subclasses feel more balanced could be to create the opportunities that allow them to shine. A blade dance is all but useless in VoG compared to the gunslinger. Voidwalkers are just not up to snuff compared to self-rezzing. Placing in bosses that receive double damage from supers or melee (works for BD and Striker) are simple fixes that would give players incentive to play these characters. Granted, this is more of a band-aid approach. Maybe make specific energy damage types better for parts of a raid. Dust Palace style, just not so annoying. Or, my favorite idea for a raid penalty (in the same vein of [i]Presence of Crota[/i]) an area or checkpoint of the raid where supers don't work. You have to tackle a mini or final boss without any 'slinging, bubbles, or radiance. I can't think of a better way to level the playing field as far as subclass usage goes.
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Well thought out and written. Never thought of it this way but the way you suggested does sound much more fun. It would definitely bring team based play into the raid more.
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I disagree... So much so... Reviving is not a "core" part of the game, but merely a necessity. The when playing alone, if you die in a darkness zone, you restart. In a team, if you died, and could not be brought back, you would be sitting around for a long while, or you team mates would have to wipe (like in the raid...) This would make the game play much more difficult and frustrating to play with anyone else because if they die, you have to restart. This puts groups playing on a team at a sever disadvantage to those playing alone, Making players more likely to avoid groups for most of the game, and most of the game CAN be soloed. So, if you could not revive in man game, no one would play together, which is kinda the point of the game. The raid was intended to be different, and intended to be a difficult test of teamwork. Where everything in the main game "Can" be done solo, the raid was designed to "require" multiple players to complete. (Yes, some parts can be still soloed on crota, but... ) Removing revive makes every player essential at all times, one death can lead to a wipe. Making every player indispensable. You must truly rely on teamwork and cooperation to beat a raid. Allowing revives on hard mode would make it equally easy as normal, when you are of the appropriate level. It's actually really hard to make it difficult if you can revive. Nightfall is hard even with revives, however, there are no "wipes" and there are also numerous difficulty modifiers. With only 3 player and such high damage levels coming from burns, its not hard for all 3 to get killed, especially when they try and revive a downed team mate. W/o burn and with 6 players, it would be much easier to keep everyone alive. Also, the night fallis cheese-able by allowing a dead player in the open to return to orbit and then join back in alive, circumventing the whole "revive" thing in the first place. Try that in the raid and you still come back dead, and un-relivable. I would like to see more challenging game play mechanics added to future hard raids, BUT, keep the no revive.
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Edited by Shadow_Legion: 3/13/2015 12:24:57 PMI disagree. Not dying is a form of skill check. And makes it so carrying your own in the raid is more important. What hard mode and Crota's End lack are actual gameplay mechanics that could make the encounter difficult. Relying on level difference is weak, temporary and artificial means to adding difficulty. Also the last thing this game needs are more bullet sponge enemies.
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That be some mighty fine lingo. But ya that would be fantastic.
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Bungie really missed the mark. I hope they can get your sense through their thick heads.