Tag: Destiny News

Destiny Share Skip Confluxes in Vault of Glass Raid

Thanks to Isaac356 on the Destiny subreddit, a new strategy has been uncovered that lets players bypass the time-consuming Conflux section of Vault of Glass. Now, this isn’t a particularly challenging section, especially for level 32 Destiny players, Destiny power leveling make you upgrade more easy, but it does take a while to get through. Some might even call it boring.

However, most of these “cheeses” have been regularly patched out of Destiny in an attempt to keep players on the straight and narrow path. For example, many Vault of Glass raiders preferred to push the Templar off the map in Vault of Glass, rather than actually fight him the correct way.

Once the Templar exploit was patched out, however, players found far fewer ways to exploit the raid as a whole. That isn’t to say the experience got more difficult, but it became a hefty time commitment. While some can run through the Crota’s End raid in under 30 minutes, the average Vault of Glass run can take close to an hour, and there’s really no way to speed it up…until now.

Getting past this section is fairly simple, although it’s unclear if the skip can be done with a full fireteam. In Isaac356’s example, he does it with a single teammate.

Here’s how it’s done. The first player stays in the Trials of Kabr section of the raid, waiting as early on as possible. The second player then descends to the Conflux area, triggers the section, and then returns to orbit. With nobody there to guard the Confluxes, but no player within the Darkness Zone, Destiny seemingly freaks out and keeps the Confluxes protected.

Ultimately, there’s still a lot more of the Vault of Glass to complete, including the Oracle phase, fighting the Templar, the Gorgon Maze, the Gatekeeper section, and then beating Atheon. But, even just a small skip is worth highlighting for players who regularly run this raid. Not to mention, this is one of the longer timed sections.

Yes, we know the loot isn’t great, but the shot at exotic weapons is still there, and the Fatebringer and Vision of Confluence are still really great Destiny weapons. Also, we highly doubt Bungie will patch this out; they’re too busy focusing on future content.

Destiny Share May See The Return Of Queen’s Wrath Bounties

“Destiny” may be looking at new bounties in the future, specifically some new Queen’s Wrath Bounties. This is if new unearthed information via data mining is to be believed.

The new findings are courtesy of Redditor THConer. Inquisitr managed to spot the new findings, which hint at the possible return of the event once the “House of Wolves” arrives.

All of these should be taken with a grain of salt. As far as official promises go, Bungie has announced before that it will be dropping one more update before “House of Wolves” hits “Destiny.”

For now, developer Bungie has revealed the details, tweaks and changes that will be set for Inferno mode this week. The Inferno Clash will see some similarities with the Inferno Control mode.

There are 10 maps to be expected for Inferno Clash. These include The Anomaly, Firebase Delphi, Twilight Gap, Rusted Lands, Shores of Time, Bind Watch, Asylum, The Burning Shrine, The Cauldron and Pantheon.

The changes for the new Crucible have been lumped into four main areas of “Destiny.” The first is that there will be no trackers or radars involved when playing. In line with this, Bungie has also limited the Heavy crates per match to just one set. This matches the lack of Tracker for the mode.

As far as scoring is concerned, the Inferno mode will only be about getting kills. So even if players deliver good assists, it’s mostly to aid with teamwork more than anything else. On the topic of teamwork, Bungie Crucible Designer Jeremiah Pieschl also emphasised the importance of communication to push players more towards the winning side of the battle.

Bungie is already preparing a new bounty for “Destiny” players, to be held on April 1, 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time for PS4 players. Unlike a couple of gaming April Fools’ pranks, the hunt and reward are real. Those who claim victory will receive a nameplate as pictured in the Bungie blog post here.

The battle will be against the Guardians of Destiny. The team will have two members of Bungie as players.

FIFA 15: Nightfall And Weekly Heroic Strike Reset

Bungie has once again reset the “Destiny” servers to provide gamers a fresh challenge for the week. The latest Nightfall and Weekly Heroic Strike is The Summoning Pits, which takes place on the Moon and sees gamers going up against Hive Ogre; Phogoth the Untamed.

The Nightfall changes things up a bit from last week too switching out a couple of modifiers. The “Destiny” subreddit indicates players can expect Epic, Nightfall, Acr Burn, Lightswitch and Angry modifiers on their journey. Epic throws large numbers of highly aggressive, shielded enemies at players, while Arc Bun multiplies damage taken from any source.

PlayStation Universe notes that the Heroic Strike also takes place in The Summoning Pits, with Arc Burn and Heroic modifiers, the latter meaning aggressive enemies appear in larger numbers. In order to emerge victorious, players must enter the Hive fortress, repel the waves of Hive minions, locate and enter the Summoning Pits and defeat Phogoth himself.

Besting Phogoth is no easy task though. Gamers can choose to wear him down from a distance using Rocket Launchers, or decide to take out the waves of Hive mobs that appear first, in order to battle him one on one. Once unchained, Guardians are advised to aim for the critical hit area on his chest to inflict the most damage. A video, hosted on the DestinyFollower YouTube channel provides a helpful guide on how to kill Phogoth.

As previously reported, the team at Bungie has recently outlined the features included in the 1.1.2 update. The update will focus on increasing Vault Space for guardians, giving players more space to collect items and gear gained on missions. Raid fixes will also be implemented as the team seeks to squash annoying bugs and make missions more fun. New audio and visual options are also on the docket, as are changes to the way ammo drops are handled during Crucible matches.

As part of 1.1.2, Bungie will also be making changes to strikes themselves. The team has gone over a lot of data which shows that some players complete certain missions far less than others, though the studio hasn’t shared what sorts of changes gamers can expect. Bungie warns that gamers will need to be patient, as 1.1.2 is still weeks away. Till then, gamers will have to be content with the Nightfall and Weekly Heroic Strike resets.

Destiny Share Must Deliver In Its ‘House of Wolves’ Expansion

Despite being all anyone could talk about in 2014, Destiny chatter has been relatively quiet so far this year. After the December release of The Dark Below, once that content was complete, all that was left was the eternal grind and periodic events like the Iron Banner. But now, we’re moving closer toward the spring release of the game’s next expansion, House of Wolves, and with it, there are fresh things to discuss.

House of Wolves represents the second half of the season pass DLC for the original game, and is the last officially announced piece of content for Destiny as of the moment. If a leaked schedule is to be believed, Destiny is planning a massive “Comet” expansion this fall, with more DLC to follow after that, and Destiny 2 the next year. But for now, we only have the Wolves.

It can be expected that the amount of content won’t differ that much from The Dark Below, which contained three story missions, one Strike (two for PlayStation), a Raid, three multiplayer maps, new weapons and armor, and a new level cap of 32. Destiny power leveling make upgrade more easy. There may be a tiny bit of variance, but it’s a safe bet the $20 DLC won’t contain anything truly earth-shattering like a new planet or spaceship dogfights. But within this general framework, there are still a lot of things Bungie needs to get right, improving on both the original game, and the last bit of DLC.

 

More (Any) Cutscenes

One of the more disappointing parts of The Dark Below was that despite the fact that there was a new storyline to pursue, the rise of Crota, it was told in such a limited fashion. The new missions are given via a new Tower vendor, who is the only character given any voicework at all in the expansion. Past that, there isn’t so much as a solitary cutscene before, during, or after any mission. Destiny needed to improve its storytelling from the initial release, but no one imagined it would actually get worse with DLC. Given that the Wolves storyline involves the Awoken Queen of the Reef, I have to imagine this will be rectified, but please, give more than one character some lines.

 

Tower Conversations

I previously wrote a lengthy post about how Destiny is in desperate need of a “lore patch” to improve its world-building and storytelling. The list of proposed changes was quite extensive, and I wouldn’t expect all of them to be implemented here, but maybe just…this one? Right now, all Tower vendors are simply that, vendors. All the characters you can interact with exist only to sell you something while uttering one liners, and the only other time you hear their voices is out in the wild when they give you eight-word bounty assignments or brief you on Strikes (for the five hundredth time).

 

No Exotic Wipes

As we move into gameplay, it’s clear that the biggest mistake that needs to be rectified from The Dark Below is that under no circumstances, should XP be wiped from gear. Despite there being “new” versions of exotics that can be taken to a new max level, there is absolutely no reason to reset their progress back to zero after a trade-in, wiping away potentially dozens of hours of use in an instant, and forcing players to now start from scratch for a third time on each of them. The solution is obvious, and should have been the last time around.

 

Less Xur Responsibility

While I like the concept of Xur, the weekend-only, “randomized” vendor, the game has become too centered on him. Xur now sells 1) exotic armor and weapons 2) exotic engrams 3) exotic shards used to upgrade exotics 4) ammo synths and 5) exotic trade-in upgrades. It’s just too much. Allow players to upgrade any exotic at their respective vanguard, and take the not-needed randomness out of waiting for Xur to stock the right upgrade.

 

More Fun Goose Chase

One thing I thought The Dark Below did right was its rather fun post-story mission bounty quest that sent players around to fill an urn with dead Hive, culminating in a challenging final mission and a (somewhat) useful gear reward. We need more cool little treasure hunts like this, and more actual exotic bounties to boot. They’re mysterious, challenging and engaging all at the same time, and Destiny needs more of them (but no mandatory PvP objectives please).

 

Don’t Negate Crota’s End

This is an offshoot of the “progress wipe” complaint, where players who had played the Vault of Glass on repeat for weeks suddenly found their efforts pointless after the release of The Dark Below. On day one, the vendors started selling Legendary gear as good as or better than their own. Given that Crota’s End has been even more of a slog as players try to reach the new cap, there are going to be riots in the streets if vendor items immediately outclass all their raid gear yet again.

 

Challenges, Not Brick Walls

Crota’s End also brought with it the death of “challenge,” replacing it instead with “difficulty,” which sounds similar, but isn’t. The hard mode of Crota’s End was indeed hard, but not in a fun way. Rather Bungie simply overleveled all enemies to the point where the biggest challenge was simply that players would die in a few hits and the Hive’s health was now best measured in minutes. The Vault of Glass has a much more thoughtfully built hard mode, and it would be nice to return to that philosophy rather than just turning a dial up to eleven and throwing players into a thresher.

 

Creative Bosses

To date, nearly every single boss in Destiny is a just giant version of an existing enemy. Even if the battles themselves are serviceable, the lack of creativity in design is just astounding. If House of Wolves debuts and the bosses are either giant Dregs or Shanks, I’m going to lose it. I’m not asking for Zelda-level creativity here, but please, design something that isn’t just an existing enemy model scaled up by 400%.

 

No PlayStation-Only Strike

First Xbox had five strikes to PlayStation’s six. Then it was six to eight. Now, if the trend continues, it will be seven to ten, in favor of Sony. In a playlist with so few options to begin with, this creates a repetitive, empirically worse experience for one console and it’s only getting more pronounced as time goes on. I may be biased because I play Strikes more than anything else, but it’s getting tiresome that this exclusive deal is locking a great deal of quality content away from a huge portion of the playerbase.

I could probably keep going, but I want to keep my expectations at least somewhat reasonable here. Feel free to add in your own suggestions in the comments, and we’ll probably hear something official from Bungie soon enough.

Next Week’s Weekly Heroic And Nightfall Strike Ahead Of Time From Destiny

As leaked by Reddit’s fabled Megamanexe4, next week’s Strike is ‘The Summoning Pits’, starring Phogoth, everyone’s favorite Ogre. Next week’s Destiny Nightfall will feature:

  • Epic
  • Nightfall
  • Arc Burn
  • Lightswitch
  • Angry

Having the Arc Burn in The Summoning Pits won’t be quite as bad as bad in the final fight with Phogoth, considering that the Ogre himself does Void damage, but considering that the Strike takes place in the Hellmouth, most Hive enemies deal Arc Damage.

Finding yourself in close quarters with blade-swinging Knights or Thrall will also land you in hot water, considering that they deal immense damage when Lightswitch is active. The fight with Phogoth is particularly intense, given the number of Thrall, Wizards, Knights, and Acolytes; most of which either hit you or shoot some sort of Arc-based weapon. Plus, Phogoth is shooting his death-ray your way.

The Weekly Heroic takes things back a step by just having Arc Burn and Heroic modifiers active, making for a more forgiving raid; albeit challenging.

Guardians can go about beating the Strike a number of ways, but the most popular seems to be staying in the first room before entering Phogoth’s chamber. In there, each player can shoot at Phogoth with their weapon of choice, all while avoiding the majority of enemies outside.

There are a couple of occasions on which you will need to retreat – when enemies, such as Wizards and Knights, enter the room to murder you, or when a Shrieker spawns behind you; both of which will happen. When they do, retreat to the second room back, and simply wait for the enemies to despawn, then head back in to rinse and repeat.

In his post, Megaman also announced that he is no longer able to successfully predict Xur’s stock, meaning that his stock will well and truly be a surprise from now on.

Destiny: Vault space and Raid fixes

In its weekly blog update about Destiny Patch 1.1.2, Bungie has said that it will be addressing a number of player concerns in the future update, including more Vault space and Raid fixes, to further improve the game.

Earlier this week, Bungie had released a 1.1.1.1 hotfix patch to Destiny that was meant only for back end improvements to help the game’s developers monitor the game. Bungie will be releasing the next patch, Destiny Patch 1.1.2 sometime in the next several weeks, ahead of the launch of The House of Wolves expansion pack.

In the latest blog update, design lead M.E. Chung has discussed how the team identifies the improvements and features that need to be added in their updates. After listening to their community feedback and brainstorming with the research team, Bungee follows a process for selecting and developing new features for its updates. Apparently, time constraints allow the developer to limit the number of features and fixes they can work on for the update.

Bungee has not provided any clear details on what can be expected in the Destiny 1.1.2 update, though it has listed these five features as a priority on its blog:

Vault Space – We know you need more space to collect all the treasures you gain from your missions, and more gear is on the way.

Raid Fixes – There are times when Atheon and Crota can be uncooperative, so we’re tackling their worst bugs.

House of Wolves DLC Might Arrive in May From Destiny

Bungie’s Destiny has become an unprecedented success for the company despite several issues that have arisen since launch. Given that many gamers expected a sprawling space epic, akin to Borderlands meets Halo, the low amount of content has been a major issue.

 This was somewhat mitigated with The Dark Below expansion but for a $20 DLC, it included one new Raid, a few new Exotics, three new Story missions, one new Strike, three new PvP maps and an increased Light level cap (not to mention periodic Nightfalls and Weeklies that can only be played if you have the DLC). While this sounds good on paper, it pales in comparison to what other MMO-like games have offered. So what’s coming next?

GamingBolt recently spoke to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter about his thoughts on the same. Activision has already confirmed that a sequel will be happening but what has Pachter heard regarding other future plans for Destiny, especially the major content update rumoured to be happening in Fall?

 “You know, Activision’s management told me that they’re – they and Bungie – are trying to keep Destiny’s revenues about flat every year this year and going forward every year until Destiny 2 comes out. It’s going to be more than just map packs and levelling up. This major content drop is going to be more like a World of WarCraft expansion, so probably more like a $40 ten level cap change as opposed to a $20 two level cap change. That’s really what they intend to do.”

Pachter also said he’s unsure about the frequency of the $20 expansions but that there may be at least a four month gap between each one. “I don’t know how frequently we’re going to see the $20 versions, but my guess is that you’ll see two $20 expansions and one $40 expansion each year, so kind of pace it out that way. Every four months, you get something like that. So I think that the goal is to keep that 3.5 to 5.5 million daily active player group spending $60 to $80 a year.

“Maybe you can sell the $40 expansion and one $20 expansion to each of them. That’s like selling them a new game every year, and Destiny maybe ends up generating 5 million units at $60. I think that’s their plan, and I think if you really like Destiny, that’s just like buying Call of Duty every year. That’s not that big a deal.

“I don’t think Destiny is ever going to be as big as Call of Duty, but I think the plan is, as people get next gen consoles – there were 3.5 million daily active players back in November, they said it was higher now, my guess is 5, like I said – and I think their goal is by year end it’s 7. And by year end ‘16, it’s 9, and then by year end ‘17 it’s 11, and then the next Destiny sells 20 million copies and then they start again.”

 This isn’t exactly a new business plan that Bungie and Activision stumbled upon. EA has been selling games as a service for quite some time now with FIFA’s Ultimate Team mode. “You know, I think that it’s a smart and new business model.

I mean, it’s essentially taking the MMO subscription model and turning it into a pay-as-you-go for content model, and it might work. I think it’s an interesting new business model. You’ll hear all the publishers talk about something called “games as a service”, essentially that means subscription games. They would really love to morph into that, but none of them wants to give up that $60 initial sale.

So FIFA Ultimate Team is that. They keep selling you stuff but you need to buy the game in order to play it. Destiny is that, it’s just that the stuff that they’re selling you is in a big package that costs $20 or $40.

Destiny: The players 16 minutes finish the Crota Raid

Bungie’s Destiny is notorious for its ridiculous player-driven challenges, such as soloing Raids or taking a Sparrow where no Sparrow should be allowed to go. With this in mind, a player undertook Destiny‘s latest Raid, Crota’s End, solo. While this is nothing new, the player managed to do it in an astonishing 16 minutes and 7 seconds.

With any challenge comes a horde of players vying to be the best; not for any particular reward, but just because they can. Many players decided to take on Destiny‘s Raids with increasingly ridiculous requirements – completing it in 16 minutes, however, is equally impressive and insane.

Crota’s End has five main sections: The Abyss, The Bridge, The Hallway, The DeathSinger, and finally Crota himself. While each section is capable of a solo run, using multiple ‘cheeses’ and shortcuts, it doesn’t always make them any less difficult (especially during the latter sections).

The player in question, known on Reddit as Slayerage, used a Bladedancer Hunter to great effect, taking advantage of its Blink and Super abilities. Check out the full video below.

Allegedly, Slayerage practiced for a good 10 hours straight before recording his fastest run. While it is on Normal, the run’s time is incredibly impressive, especially considering there are a number of occasions where Slayerage could have improved the time by a few seconds per encounter (such as Blinking off the rock during the opening section).

There are a few techniques in here that I hadn’t seen used before, such as using Blink while swinging the Sword in order to cross The Bridge without even activating it, or using Blink to skip a whole section of The Abyss at the start. I’ll be taking advantage of both those tricks next time I take on Crota’s End – not speed running, of course.

Slayerage is responsible for most of the ridiculous Destiny feats you see across the internet, such as running Vault of Glass with two people, or soloing Crota’s End on Hard Mode.

Destiny: How to glitch Heavy Ammo

Destiny is a game filled with shortcuts, cheeses, and glitches players discovered to ease their way through the game’s myriad of activities. This guide details one of the many ways to quickly generate Heavy Ammo – a useful tip for Strikes, Nightfalls, and Raids (especially Raids).

3Step 1

Empty all of your Primary and Heavy Ammo (we’re assuming you don’t have Heavy Ammo at this point anyway, hence the glitch). This may take a while for the Primary, but the process speeds up if you switch weapons once and then use the swapped weapon after a reduced ammo penalty (for swapping).

It may take a minute, depending on what gun you have – during this step, I recommend getting into a safe place and not shooting anyone just yet.

Step 2

Once you lose all your Primary Ammo, you’re going to equip Ice Breaker (or at least pull out, if you already have it equipped). The reason we’re using Ice Breaker is because the ammo regenerates, so we won’t have any use for Special Ammo drops.

Use Ice Breaker to shoot as many enemies as you like – they should drop one box of Heavy Ammo per kill.

Just make sure you don’t pick up any ammo until you’re ready to do so, as picking up Primary or Heavy Ammo will stop the glitch from working.

Alternative method

Alternatively, for those who don’t have Ice Breaker, you can just empty all of your ammunition, and the game will automatically refresh it – all of your weapons must be empty, and the refresh takes about 10-15 seconds.

This ‘method’ is well-known, considering it was built directly into the game, but it’s also a useful way to gain some more Heavy Ammo if you find that enemies aren’t dropping any.

Both of these are alternatives to using a Heavy Synth, if you find yourself in a situation where you don’t have any or you’re too stingy to use one – or worse, on a cool down from already using one.

Destiny: New Weekly Heroic Strike Exploit Detailed

destiny

The latest patch to come to “Destiny” brings a lot of changes and modifications to how gameplay and weapons work. And to ensure that fans are clear on where the developers now stand when it comes to what fans can expect next, they set to answer some questions regarding the patch.

For the most part, a lot of fans have asked about weapons and damage in the latest Open House. And Bungie has provided some insight on the decisions made related to nerfed or buffed weapons.

“Actually, we look at the balance of weapons in both spots and make decisions about if, when, what and how we choose to balance said item,” said senior sandbox designer Josh Hamrick as a response to one fan query. “We want to make the game better as a whole, not just one part. All of us play both PvE and PvP on a nightly basis so none of us want to hurt either of those activities.”

A very resonant lament from “Destiny” players is how the changes that have been made for the weapons, even with the latest patch. The changes that have been done to improve one area, say the PvP, comes at the cost of PvE players experiencing nerfs to their weapons that result in weaker damage for PvE play.

Some fans, such as one Bungie forums user CSSparrowofDoom, has pointed out that even the balance meant for PvP is not necessarily one that pushes for its improvement. Bungie did point out that reception to change, for Autos for example, have been mixed at best. Even the existing weapons that ae deemed as underpowered are currently being monitored.

One such case is the Necrochasm, which is an exotic gun that’s potentially one of the hardest to obtain in “Destiny.” John Weisnewski, sandbox designer at Bungie, did say that the Necrochasm does not have a competitive edge compared to other weapons and auto rifles. In addition, fans can look forward to future updates that would tackle the Necrochasm, so at least that’s in the works. The best action for now, it seems, is to listen to the community feedback, something which Bungie does appreciate.

A new development for “Destiny,” however, that a fan has taken into his own hands involves the Weekly Heroic Strike. There were a number of changes that came with the latest patch from Bungie, and that’s in the form of matchmaking.

According to VG 24/7, this follows fan comments when it comes to finding members of fireteams for the events. The common practice is to turn to outside help, whether through the trusted fireteam listings on Reddit or the use of apps and fan-made sites. But it appears that the patch brought in a bigger problem to those who were fine with doing solo on the Weekly Heroic Strike.

The source sites that there are now players who are finding the necessary matchmaking and lack of ability to solo as a problem in itself. Though it may now be a more amenable problem, at least for PS4 players. One “Destiny” player has found a way to forego matchmaking by tinkering with the PS4’s clock while playing the game.

Currently, the fix is actually a glitch in the system, which bugs the matchmaking process so it will not correctly search for other guardians to join the game. The steps to achieving solo are illustrated in the video provided below. Whether or not this will be fixed by Sony later on for the PS4 or Bungie will provide a solution in the next patch has not yet been confirmed.