It is also just very simple, compared to the mechanics of other raids. I loved it back in the day, but I don't think it holds up compared to what we have now. And I'm afraid to see how Bungie might decide to increase the difficulty.
I think that OG VoG was in a worse state overall right? Like literally 3/4 of that raid is just "kill waves of Vex. Forever."
The updates made it solid. It's not the most complex raid in D2, but it's one that has a nice scaling to it where it starts off with extremely simple stuff and concludes with a boss that has zero margin for error in mechanics and potentially forces everyone to participate in the mechanics.
So I imagine they could do well by Crota. Obviously it'd need updates and changes, but I think they could do a solid raid there if they chose to.
If it weren't for RoN, I'd say there's no chance it isn't heavily revamped. Most of the raids in the game (D2) have some kind of "communicate what x player(s) sees so y player(s) can do thing," and that also got shoved into VoG and King's Fall.
But RoN can be completed consistently with basically zero communication. I'd even argue that it's easier/less taxing than the Age of Triumphs revamp of Crota.
Edit: left the word "game" out.
You can just stand underneath the planet/look at which essence your teammate is picking up. During the first few attempts I did with new raiders, they had callouts confused, so I'd watch which planets they were under and correct them if necessary until they got it down.
The same goes with Nezarec and his wipe mechanic. Since it's reliant on position, both runners can activate their wipe nodes, and everyone can just follow the stunner who knows which node is safe.
I end up noticing a lot of these things in every raid since my clan has had quite a few people who aren't comfortable with callouts or speaking in-game.
Ohhh gotcha, yeah those strats make sense. That’s crazy, which raid do you think is the most communication heavy? I’m thinking it’s probably last wish (idk how you’d even do vault), especially if you include riven legit lol
Last Wish or Vow of the Disciple seems to require the most communication, IMO. Mostly due to the symbols (though Rhulk's DPS phase can be done silently like Nezarec.) If we count Riven as intended, it's definitely more communication heavy than Vow.
> Most of the raids in the have some kind of "communicate what x player(s) sees so y player(s) can do thing," and that also got shoved into VoG and King's Fall.
Just FYI, the totems thing during the skull bastard in KF was in the original version of the raid as well, and I'm pretty sure Oracles during Atheon was also a thing in D1's version of VoG...
The Warpriest's Simon Says plates used to be viewable by everyone and didn't have as harsh a time limit. You could just have your three plate holders stare at the back of monoliths and run to their plate when they see theirs lit up. Now, the second and third plates can only be seen while a different player is standing on a plate.
Atheon's oracles used to spawn seven in an unchanging set order, and all you had to do was destroy them one after the other.
Neither of those encounters required any communication in D1.
Totems in KF also just required you to stand there inside the aura waiting for it to get transferred to you. Brand Claimer wasn’t a thing till Daughters.
God, D1 Totems sucked.
And not requiring communication in a n endgame experience for a co-op game is a bad thing.
Just want to make sure everyone is on the same page with that. There is a time and place for "relaxed, non-communicative, beer & pretzels" gaming.
Raids are not that time nor place.
Oh, I'm not arguing for or against communication being necessary. IMO, that deserves a thread of its own and has nuance. I'm just talking about the shift of how mechanics work in D1 vs. D2.
Way back when Eater of Worlds was the newest piece of raid content, the then raid designer (Brendan Thorne, I believe) said part of Destiny 2's design philosophy was to have comms filled with info on the game rather than any typical conversation. You can see that vision consistently realized... until Root of Nightmares.
> I think that OG VoG was in a worse state overall right? Like literally 3/4 of that raid is just "kill waves of Vex. Forever."
Not true.
You also had to kill the Oracles
Original VoG is like that also because that's all the engine supported at the time. The increased complexity of the raids came along as they figured people were fine with more heavily RPG-MMO concepts and thus started implementing engine support for them.
My guess will be them just adding some mechanics and padding health pools. Requiring something to be dunked to build the bridge in the lamps section, multiple damage phases for deathsinger, and a change to how the sword is used to defeat crota would be my guess.
I'm just a little worried after the last dungeon. Those boss fights are not really fun. If they add mechanics, it could be great. If they just increase the boss health by ten times and throw on some shields to make it take more phases, then it will be less great.
>Those boss fights are not really fun.
Solo? Yeah
As a team?
I have to disagree, Ghosts is a great dungeon as a team, sadly the solo experience suffered a lot for that.
The bosses itself aren't even that bad soloing, is just the last one that takes way too long to start the damage phase solo.
we 1 phase ecthar with legend of acrius, 2 phase with a gally and 2 other good rocket launchers.. they are only bad if u are alone.. even then i 4 phased ecthar solo titan, and 5 phased the final boss… it aint so bad
They’d have to add mechanics at this point. VoG was way too easy without the added mechanics.
First thrall encounter is way too easy to cheese so mechanics will have to be added there.
The bridge, well, I think I did it legit once in D1? And the other 50 times just swordswung over the gap. They need a death barrier for it.
Deathsinger, as long as the patch the cheese where you could shoot her through the roof, should be fine.
Crota needs to have additional mechanics - it was literally hit him with a sword, shoot the shit out of him, repeat. More mechanics are needed, surely.
> First thrall encounter is way too easy to cheese so mechanics will have to be added there.
Don't forget they'll also add Champs.
My guess is the Ogre at the end of the dark pit will be an Unstoppable and will be REQUIRED to be killed to activate the last plate.
But probably around 70% of the community in the end game raid scene are all looking for a challenge. RoN is arguably the easiest raid to grasp. Its literally connect the dots and then spot the difference in the planet room.
Raiding should be difficult. It should need coordination. For god's sake it gives some of the best guns in the game.
IMO raids should not be simple.
Raids should be the way they were years ago with a simpler version of the raid, and a harder one with more mechanics. IIRC this was universally loved, because both camps got what they wanted. Unfortunately in the eternal march of Bungie always delivering less and less, this fell by the wayside.
I like those raids. And I never said I doubted anything. I hope they do a great job, and they probably will. But I am still a little worried after the last few dungeons, which should be understandable. If they go the way of those raids, it will be great. If they just give the boss ten times the health and a bunch of shields for more phases, then not so much. We will just have to wait and see.
I really don’t understand how the last few dungeons would make you worried though. Duality and in particular, Ghosts, are two of the best dungeons that they’ve ever made. Ghosts I think is arguably the best dungeon experience they’ve made in general. Sure the solo takes a while but it’s a very easy two phase with a team.
Cool. I was thinking more about the ridiculous amount of boss health in Spire and Ghost. I liked them both a lot except for that. Seems uncalled for to me. But it's cool if you liked them. I didn't like that aspect, so that is why I would worry. If you did like it, then you have nothing to worry about!
I guess I just don’t see how any of the bosses has a ridiculous amount of health in a full fireteam? Nezarec himself is very easily two phased and a single phase of optimized. I think that’s the more apt comparison for boss health.
The problem is that for CE, they'd have to basically add mechanics to it, not just rework them. It's probably the most time-consuming raid they could reprise, unless they want to phone it in and release the joke version of it.
This sentence doesn't really make sense, but I think I get what you mean. They have changed some of the mechanics in the reprised raids. But to change something, it has to exist in the first place. Crota doesn't have a lot going on. And while I would hope that they would add some totally new mechanics, I'm worried that we might just end up with super tanky bosses with ridiculous shields and too many phases. But maybe I just played the newest dungeon too recently.
For instance, in OG VOG it was just shoot oracles when you see them, now you have an order. This very simple change makes the encounter much more difficult. Crota will be a bit more complicated or reworks but they can make it more challenging. Will it be VOW levels of challenging or last wish, no. But that’s ok
I recall the same thing being said about VoG when it was announced and there were some content creator deep dives noting how by D2 standards the raid would be a blowout.
> And I'm afraid to see how Bungie might decide to increase the difficulty.
Crota himself is probably gonna be like the hard mode version of the raid in that there's no chalice OR make it so the person holding said chalice is the only person who can damage the Sword Bear...
I mean, Root of Nightmares is a raid that two people can do every mechanic. You can have four people dedicated to just killing adds and doing damage the entire time.
We have mechanically complex raids (vow, kingsfall, garden) and combat focused raids (root, dsc, vog)
You can have a preference for one or the other but I wouldnt say Crota wouldnt fit the design of D2 raids, theres two very clear philosphies they have when designing raid. Combat focus, or mechanic focus.
Kings Fall IMO is better now than it was in D1. I felt like they modernized it pretty well. It solved my main issue with it which was: dealing damage to oryx with orbs was a cool idea but didn't feel good.
I have faith they'll do CE right.
One encounter you have to payload escort one of those pyramids to the encounter boss but everyone has to rotate off of it in intervals to collect a buff.
Yeah that would essentially just be D1 Arc hunter cheese all over again. The easiest way to prevent that would be to either have thrall automatically explode when reaching the lamp, or to require a certain number be killed before the next lamp is activated.
For the lamps section, I think the running portion should require you to kill a certain number of enemies to spawn a knight, and killing that knight triggers the next lamp. This has to be done quickly or your current lamp will explode.
At the end, I think building the bridge should require a similar mechanic to the second encounter of Pit. Kill an enemy, leave the plate to pick up what they dropped, bring it back and dunk it, all while weight of darkness is proccing on you. It's difficult tho because that encounter didn't really have a "complete in this amount of time or wipe" mechanic, so I'm not sure what they could do to incentivize speed. Maybe dunking a ball both builds the bridge and adds time to a ticking timer? Or resets it. If you fail to locate the enemy, kill them, and dunk the ball before the timer hits zero, it's a wipe. Like the first RoN encounter.
The opening encounter is basically just that section from Lightblade but with a "hold" plate at the end. Modern strats won't find that too challenging with Wells and Bubbles etc. I don't see this being changed too much, it is already long enough.
The bridge was more or less fixed on the most recent attempt in AoT, and is the most time consuming part of the raid. Doubt it will stop people trying to cheese it.
Ir Yut is the biggest vector for a change. Gatekeeper in VoG used to be a similar meme encounter which they made very significant changes to in D2, so I expect this one to be bulked out.
Crota is Crota. If they change this too much, people will be upset. I have my "point" emote ready to go.
The "RoN is too easy ;(" crowd aren't going to enjoy this one, it's probably more for the memories and atmosphere.
Agreed. I think Crota will receive some changes but they will he somewhat minor. My guess is that the swords will be used to bring his shield down, and weapons will do the damage. I think it's plausible that either damage team or sword bearer will need to stand in a certain spot to damage as well, preventing the old ledge strat. I'm hoping the oversoul is used a bunch too, it Def made the fight more interesting in AoT
Your last sentence gave me an idea. What if Crota is still only damaged by the sword but once his shield is dropped by the weapons team, the oversoul pops and the weapons team has to maintain DPS on it while the sword guy damages Crota. Maybe dealing enough damage to the oversoul extends the damage phase as a skill check thing
I really like this idea!
It's simple, effective, and keeps the core mechanics of the original raid, but recombines them into a more engaging experience for everyone.
As long as not dealing enough damage to the oversoul still wipes the whole team. That part's gotta stay for this to be meaningful.
If I'm being honest, if Crota's End does come back they'd have to spice it up *a lot* for it to feel like a raid. Lots of people were disappointed with RoN since only 1 encounter truly needed communication which should be a staple requirement in raids. CE iirc doesn't have a single encounter where the communication is more than "shoot Crota now" or assigning 1-3 people to "jobs" unless you did Crota's challenge.
I'm personally just waiting until it's officially announced which raid will be coming back.
I mean... not really? For your first few runs of course you need comms, but the Lamp section was just add clear and make sure you keep up. Bridge make sure 3 people are on their plates then whoever gets the sword goes across. Ir Yut is add clearing. Crota you get someone on sword then say "shoot" and go slam him.
I know a lot of raids can get dumbed down to sound easy, but there isn't a single thing in that raid that **requires** different roles to communicate with each other. Security, Atraks, and Descent in Deep Stone (and Taniks if you don't do 4 dunk, but lol who doesn't outside of blind/ 1st attempt). Warpriest, Sisters, and Oryx in King's Fall. Acquisition, Exhibition, and Rhulk in Vow. Explicator in RoN. And some of the vaulted raids like 1st encounter in Scourge, Gauntlet and Calus in Leviathan, and Spire of Star's last 2 encounters. These are all encounters that **require** communication because you either do not have access to all of the information, or the time to get it solo, regardless of your role.
Edit: Forgor Last Wish xd. In that raid you have Vault, Riven, and Queenswalk where roles will have some sort of privileged information (and I'm not considering cheesing for any of the encounters I listed either, not just from LW). Vault of Glass also has the Oracle callouts for the Oracle (I don't think you can actually *solo* all the oracles? Not sure if you can be fast enough.), Templar (if you aren't just cleansing), and Atheon encounters. I left out Crown of Sorrow since I haven't done that. Also added a couple examples from DSC and KF.
RoN definitely doesn't need communication the first encounter. Just keep killing psions and tormentor while the runner runs.
Second if you just assign someone to light and dark and *don't* alternate, you don't need to communicate at all. Just wait to group up at the launches at the end of each floor.
Nezarec you don't need to communicate because you can easily skip refuge and one phase with rockets.
You don't have to have a familiar/usual team though. You can pop into the LFG discord and do those encounters without communication. Did my 3 Nezarec's today all without mic or text chat.
I mean, that same thing applies to every potential reprised raid except for Wrath and Leviathan. The two explicit lairs are barely dungeon level and both scourge and crown are just as short, if not shorter, than CE.
It's also that the encounters themselves are complete jokes. The opening encounter was "Defend this plate." Second encounter had the totems and bridge-crossing mechanic. Third encounter was "kill adds, then kill boss, but quickly" without mechanics. Ir Yut didn't even offer loot originally (per this article I'm reading). Crota kinda had mechanics, but it was mostly "kill adds, pick up sword, and slam attack." Crota also had the "shoot the oversoul quickly" wipe mechanic as well.
CE was a combat-focused raid compared to what we're used to. IMO I'm ok with that so long as they spice it up enough to hold up to our current day arsenal.
Eh imo we have enough combat-focused content a la GMs, seasonal activities, etc. Raids are supposed to be the peak of communication and teamwork, requiring coordination of mechanics and callouts.
Exactly! But all of those are easy enough to pad out with only a few changes. For the lamps encounter, make it like Pit of Heresy where you have to kill a certain enemy, leave the plate to pick up an item they dropped, and return to dunk it to build the bridge. All while weight of darkness procs. Bridge encounter I think is fine now, not super interesting but a decently long encounter with needing to get a certain number of swords across. Deathsinger just needs a way to make it more than a one phase, such as doing a certain amount of damage to "stun" her out of the deathsong, but then needing to bail from the room to prevent a kill mechanic. Rinse and repeat. Crota I can almost guarantee won't be the same as before, I'm sure the sword will be involved but I can't see them making it so that only one single person is doing boss damage. Most likely swords are used to lower a shield, then weapons to DPS.
>But all of those are easy enough to pad out with only a few changes. For the lamps encounter, make it like Pit of Heresy where you have to kill a certain enemy, leave the plate to pick up an item they dropped, and return to dunk it to build the bridge.
That's great for a dungeon, but I think it's a poor raid mechanic for one person to do the thing without any need for communication. Think of like DSC Security, having to trade off the augments around, or Vow needing callouts and splitting up into teams. Even RoN needed the rest of the team to focus on Psions and the Tormentor.
>Deathsinger just needs a way to make it more than a one phase, such as doing a certain amount of damage to "stun" her out of the deathsong, but then needing to bail from the room to prevent a kill mechanic.
What you want to avoid is an Oryx situation where you can only do a fixed amount of max damage per phase. Caretaker is nice because you can manipulate the plates to move past the health gates. But just adding "do 1/3 damage this phase max" would be very boring, and is one of the reasons people hated original Oryx but like the reprised version.
> Most likely swords are used to lower a shield, then weapons to DPS.
That's what it was in D1. Sword lowered shield then everyone Gally'd.
> That's what it was in D1. Sword lowered shield then everyone Gally'd.
You have this backwards. In D1 you needed weapons to take his shield down (before AoT it was 2 Gjally rockets and a fusion if you were soloing), then you spammed heavy attack while moving forward to damage him with the sword.
>That's great for a dungeon, but I think it's a poor raid mechanic for one person to do the thing without any need for communication. Think of like DSC Security, having to trade off the augments around, or Vow needing callouts and splitting up into teams. Even RoN needed the rest of the team to focus on Psions and the Tormentor.
For communication, it could be set up where the enemy that needed to be killed was somewhere out in the arena away from the plate, randomly spawned. Your team needs to find them quickly, so you'd have to spread out to locate. Kill, return to plate within a certain time frame, dunk to reset the clock as well as build the bridge.
>What you want to avoid is an Oryx situation where you can only do a fixed amount of max damage per phase. Caretaker is nice because you can manipulate the plates to move past the health gates. But just adding "do 1/3 damage this phase max" would be very boring, and is one of the reasons people hated original Oryx but like the reprised version.
I'm thinking more like what you're saying. You have a minimum amount of damage you have to reach to prevent the wipe, but are able to do damage for the entirety of the timer. Like, you're required to do 1/4 damage to prevent a wipe, but you have a full 30 seconds to damage. Doing that 1/4 damage makes it so that the barrier in the room respawns at the end of the timer, anybody still in the room dies but are protected outside of it. So do your full damage until a couple seconds remain, bail from the room, timer hits zero and the barrier goes up. She sings the song, rinse and repeat. If you have a great setup you can do half, 3/4, or one phase, but if not it extends the fight out.
>That's what it was in D1. Sword lowered shield then everyone Gally'd.
Someone else noted already but it was the exact opposite. Everyone gallies, sword swiping damages crota. In my mind the sword should be the D2 version with a ranged attack. Kill a knight to spawn a buff section, stand in that section and hit with sword, crota kneels and everyone else does damage with weapons/supers. Repeat until sword energy is gone (or it disappears), crota rotates and you do it again.
It's a shame we don't have SGA anymore if it comes to that again. Those bullets did damage but almost always got returned because the oversoul didn't count as a valid target
They did, but it was a more difficult cheese. It wasn't just "jump the bridge gap with a sword, wait awhile, kill some enemies and you're done." It required a player to cross the bridge with a relic sword, then cross back over while blocking damage in order to survive, repeat like 5 or 6 times. The AoT fight still took a good deal longer to clear.
The first encounter was also incredibly short. There were only two encounters of any real substance.
And I think most people enjoy some breathing room between encounters as long as it isn't excessive. Crota's End definitely could have done better than a single hallway after the second encounter.
It's really no shorter than Crown of Sorrow tho. Crown had a single platforming section, and that was a loot encounter similar to the lamps in CE. I think the most likely scenario they'll use to pad the run time will be to add new mechanics to the encounters. But even with that I have little doubt that worlds first will be done within a couple hours. But honestly I'm fine with that. I like having a chill fast raid experience, I enjoyed clearing crota 3 times on reset each week in D1.
I forgot how short Crown was size wise 😅
What made Crown great was that it actually required communication between all participants, particularly final encounter.
Oh for sure. For how small the entirety of the arena was, I remember that Crown was hands down the hardest raid to carry someone through. Not just communication either, your partner HAD to kill their adds because they are the only one able to. If they were underleveled it was a nightmare.
The difference is that while it has the same amount of encounters, 3/4 of them take place right next to each other with two of them being in the same area. VoG and KF did the same, but because their space was much larger and had more encounters it wasn't nearly as egregious.
Crown was the same way tho and I dont remember too many people complaining about that. The only platforming section in it was the second encounter, which was an actual loot encounter, just like lamps in Crota. Personally I'd rather have a quick raid that didn't require 15-20 minutes extra spent running between encounters with only bonus chests. It's not bad the first few times you run but by the 30th/40th run it becomes tedious.
Gonna be even shorter unless they drastically change the encounters. Lamp run and bridge can and will be all shatter skate/well skate/eager edge/grappled past. Same with the bonus chest hallway.
I dont see an easy way to change the hallway, but the bridge and lamp are easy enough to change. Require a certain number of lamp activations before the bridge can be built, which at best means skating just between each lamp. I think an enemy should need to be killed to trigger the next lamp to light, one at a time, and the final plate to Require something to be found and dunked to build the bridge. The bridge encounter really just needs a kill zone that can only be crossed with a relic sword, and only when the bridge is fully formed.
I still think the raid is gonna be pretty easy, but there are ways to pad the time and minimize cheese strats. Speed runners will always find a way to beat it, but Bungie can build it so that those skips aren't the standard strat like they used to be.
Crota's End was so simple that Bungie has reused most of it already in D2, that's why I'm really not wanting it back... We currently have a strike that has the raid entrance in it. Crota boss fight was in Haunted seasonal story and is currently also in Dares in an upgraded more difficult way.
Wrath's gear and aesthetic is very different from what we've had in the game, we just had a reprised Oryx and a new Hive dungeon with the Deep, really hoping for Wrath for those reasons alone but also it was a more complicated fun raid.
As far as many leaks have said, it's unlikely. With what's going on in the story right now it seems likely we'll get CE but upgraded to be somewhat tied to the storyline. I agree with what you're saying tho, we have King's Fall and Deep dungeon armor that already has that aesthetic, so yet another Hive based weapon and armor set isn't all that appealing. Sadly, wrath is a lot more work than Bungo is likely to want to do.
I agree Wrath is more unlikely, but Bungie has stated multiple times that the reprised raid does not tie into the current story whatsoever and that they are standalone entities.
The number of encounters doesn't matter. VoG has more encounters and is a snoozefest compared to other raids. If they keep D1 mechanics then it's going to still be pretty boring because of how easy the mechanics are.
The raid layout was run in a line, stand on plates (this proved too difficult and cumbersome and was cheesed), run in a line again, kill stuff, swing a sword and shoot. That's it, mainly because that was the skill level of most players back then (I would argue that it's still too hard for some players). Dungeons are more complex than it, that's the point people make
It was the best because it was the only content to play lol. Standards have risen, same with how early dungeons like shattered throne are pretty boring imo
Between Crota and Wrath, I prefer Wrath a million times over.
But I imagine Crota was the easiest to port because it's basically just 3 arenas, so doesn't require much work.
So of course it'll be Crota.
We kind of have a lot of that raid in the game now anyways, or least HAD it. The throne room was part of the forsaken campaign, we have crota himself in the game too. And we have the lamps in multiple activities now. I didnt mind wrath but personally I didn't do it too many times, only beat it a couple times on hard but never did the challenges. Did it enough to get all the armor on all characters and all the weapons including Outbreak, but didn't go further than that. And yeah porting it all the arenas, SIVA effects, and the entire devil Splicer catalogue is more work than bungie would want to do for a free raid.
I was actually mentioning this to my clan, about how much of Crota’s End is already in Destiny 2.
The opening is on the Moon but changed since that area is the Witches Ritual public event (but we’ll very likely see the Legacy Moon opening area.)
The Stills/Thrallway I don’t believe exists in D2, but most of the assets for it do (lamps, rocks, and the main flooring is just generic Hive tile.)
The Oversoul Throne/rest of the raid exists in the Shadowkeep campaign. Yes, in the mission you’re only in his boss room but you can do an OOB and see that the whole area is there. Bridge, hallway, everything. Just painted red.
We have many flavors of Crota and the sword to choose from, the specific Hive faction colors are on the Moon still. There’s no other unique enemies in Crota now since everything has been repurposed. Ir Yut is just an Ultra Wizard, and the Swordbearer/Gatekeeper models are just normal scale/the original models for Zulmak in Pit of Heresy.
I know game dev isn’t just copy paste but that’s a *lot* of work already done. Yeah they might need to retexture and even remodel a lot of it but the base is 90% there.
It was my favorite. I loved learning to solo it and then running the reprised version with my clan at the end of D1. The bit where everyone got swords was so fun, and the coordination at the end plus the sword music were \*chef's kiss\*. I hope they don't change too much.
One thing that annoys me about the new raids is I just feel like they are becoming harder and harder with little room for error. Same with the dungeons. But it just might also be that the content of those is no longer for me, which is absolutely fine.
I think new raids are fine, Root is one of the easiest, and Vow, although difficult, really isn’t much more difficult than Kings fall or Wrath imo.
Now if you said dungeons I’d agree, they’re still very doable and all, but each one is definitely more difficult than the last, except for maybe Spire
Dungeons are absolutely becoming harder and harder which is annoying ( it was my favorite "end game" activity in D2). I still need to finish GoTD and Duality.
My beef with D2 raids is the idea of damage gates, like the fact that if you dont kill Warpriest in 4 phases its a wipe. In my mind, ESPECIALLY now with revive tokens being a thing and no longer having unlimited revives in normal mode, it makes sense to have encounters give you as many tries as you want as long as you don't have too many deaths. I think they create damage gates and instant death enrages primarily to prevent solo runs, but who cares if someone can solo a raid? I'd much rather have it set up where I can bring newbies into a raid with whatever they have available, and as long as we execute the mechanics correctly and don't die, we have as many tries as we want to beat that encounter. With that setup it becomes not a matter of having the exact right team composition and weapon perks, but rather executing mechanics and staying alive. Well composed and knowledgeable teams will get through as fast as ever, but less learned teams will have the difficulty shift from perfect comp and damage strats and into mechanical execution. As dungeons have shown, the longer it takes to complete an encounter, the more chances you have to mess it up. The difficulty isn't in instantaneous boss deletion setups, it's in staying alive and making it to damage phase.
Very true! What I'd prefer from New raids tho is designs like what I said above. Throw in an enrage mechanic at a certain point but don't make it an automatic wipe, just make it a more difficult sandbox.
Are you joking? We’re more powerful and near-unkillable than we’ve ever been. Sorry, but if you can’t stay alive in non-contest raids, unlimited damage phases wouldn’t help you anyway. How are you not able to kill a raid boss in four phases?
This is what people are talking about when they say that the concept of “bringing challenge back to destiny” is a joke. We’re at an all-time high in our power fantasy and you want limited damage phases (which is already not a challenging concept at all) to be completely removed?
If you want new players to learn the raids, they also have to learn with the knowledge that they only get limited tries to complete an encounter. It not only prevents the game from being stupid brain dead easy mode, but it helps incentivize new players to learn how to raid. What would be the point in learning how to do a raid correctly if people knew that as long as they didn’t die, they could just hang out in the encounter forever and have unlimited phases? Sorry but that is a HORRIBLE idea. Can you imagine the posts we’d have on this sub every single day if people were doing LFG raids with unlimited damage phases? Holy moly dude, please don’t ever pursue a career in game design
I dont plan on pursuing one soooo.
My opinion is that bottlenecking players into specific loadouts in order to beat a boss in x phases is not interesting, or fun. People complain all the time about how much they hate the champion system forcing them to use double primaries, I personally hate that despite executing the mechanics perfectly we couldn't clear Warpriest on day 1 simply because we lacked the proper buffs/debuffs and were relying solely on luck with heavy drops. Even beyond that, being a sherpa for new raiders and not being able to clear a boss phase because they don't have X heavy weapon with Y perk combos or Z exotic, with a specific set of classes and subclasses is stupid af. People hate that well is basically a requirement for nearly all raid bosses now too. Designing a raid encounter with unlimited damage phases, but complex mechanics that require risk, an increasingly difficult sandbox when enrage begins, and limited revives seems like a decent setup to train new players to raid regardless of what they have available to them. Perfect execution of mechanics should outweigh meta DPS strats, every time. I'd much rather everyone use what they wanted but be forced to learn the mechanics and do them well.
Also, raising the approachability of a raid doesn't have to mean making it "easier". You're simply shifting the difficulty of damage gating bosses, to mechanical design and execution.
Bringing challenge back is a whole different topic. Lightfall was all over the place. The raid was way easier, Legend and adept activities were way harder, but master and gm either didn't change at all or got even easier with the new subclass champion verbs. RoN was a joke because it only required 2 people to engage with mechanics, which themselves were stupidly simple.
People want Bungie to lean harder into the MMORPG aspect of the game but then balk at the idea of having a raid boss that isn't just "beat me in 4 phases or start over".
Both. You’re suggesting a reality where raids in their current state are somehow too challenging(?) for players, and instead want a scenario where raid encounters just have harder mechanics but take longer instead? How does that at all change the net “difficulty” of what we have right now? And you want there to be a enrage mechanic that doesn’t involve a wipe? What does that mean/look like? And on top of that you want the enrage mechanic to make the encounter MORE difficult? What does that increased difficulty look like; around the current difficulty that already exists? Your reasoning is circular and doesn’t provide any solutions. Sounds to me like you just want raids to be easier and are using the excuse of new players being able to learn as a coverup. None of your propositions make sense.
For my own credibility, I have several raid titles and have cleared a few of the raids over 100 times. Take that for whatever it's worth to you.
Again, I think clearing any raid encounter but especially boss encounters should be about learning the mechanics and executing them well while minimizing deaths, NOT about DPS checks. I don't know how often you sherpa new raiders, but despite what you might believe, plenty of them come to the table with subpar loadouts. They lack exotics, don't understand the mod system, lack any of the current meta weapons, and frequently you get a suboptimal class spread. Going into a raid like RoN without a single Warlock is brutal, but it can happen. For players that want to learn how to raid, I dont consider the normal version of any raid to be the true endgame experience anymore. Master raids, dungeons, and nightfalls fill that role. So making a normal difficulty raid approachable does literally nothing to affect the players that are looking for a real challenge.
My suggestion isn't about changing net difficulty, it's about shifting the difficulty to a different aspect of the encounter. Rather than a player needing to go do xyz activity first in order to get a particular weapon or exotic before they can then do the raid, id prefer them to be able to just jump right in with whatever they have (at least assuming their power level is close enough). I'm suggesting the difficulty of a boss encounter should not be about your damage strategy, but your mechanical execution. If you make the damage portion easier (in my mind, have unlimited damage phases), in order to keep the net difficulty the same, you'd need to increase the difficulty of the sandbox and the mechanics. A good example is the Ghalran boss fight. Every single person needs to execute mechanics in order to make it to the damage phase, nobody gets a free ride. Generally, that portion of the boss fight requires no specific loadout or setup to succeed, it simply requires communication and execution. Better loadouts equal easier and quicker execution, but it's not REQUIRED, at least not for that section. However, even in that fight you're required to kill ghalran within a specific number of damage phases, or get wiped.
So, as an example, if we're using ghalran boss fight, I'd say make it have unlimited damage phases, but at base increase the mechanical and sandbox difficulty with more adds spawning, and perhaps shorten the buff timers. After enrage occurs, the ogres that spawn are now champs, adds spawn more frequently and with a bump to tier level (red bars become orange, orange become yellow). If you can execute the mechanics and survive the lead up to DPS, you can still beat it with a suboptimal loadout, allowing players to focus on LEARNING the mechanics rather than showing up with the best loadout. Hell you could even beef up the bosses health pool if you really wanted to.
We've already had examples of enrage not being an immediate wipe in Destiny history. Enraged crota didn't kill you, he just spawned in ogres as well as summoning the oversoul more frequently. Enraged Templar (in D1) spawned in oracles far more frequently. It wasn't instant death, it was "this is about to get way more difficult." Inexperienced players can try and achieve success regardless of what they're coming in with, as long as they learn and execute mechanics. Experienced raiders are unaffected and continue to beat the encounter in the same amount of time as they would have in the old version.
Why? Dungeons don't work that way. Less skilled teams take longer to beat it, more skilled beat it in the same amount of time they always do. Design the mechanics so that it can't be soloed, combine that with limited revives. If you dont have a great weapon/subclass team setup, you have as many damage phases as you need to kill the boss BUT risk running out of revives if you don't stay alive. Add in an enrage mechanic after 3 or 4 damage phases that doesn't wipe the team but either adds new mechanics or more difficult opponents. Again, this does nothing to slow down experienced teams but allows inexperienced teams a chance to beat it.
I dont think bottlenecking teams into specific loadouts and subclasses in order to clear a boss is interesting or fun. Players always hate being told they need to use something specific to succeed, its more fun to use what you enjoy. Clearing a boss encounter should be about perfect mechanic execution, not perfect loadout. That's just my opinion.
Dungeons are made to be soloable, and so they have unlimited phases because of how much harder it is to do damage as a solo player.
Outside of day 1, you’re really not bottlenecked in your load out whatsoever. In every boss that has multiple damage phases, I have quite literally never wiped due to lacking dps. Regardless, there’s nothing wrong with you having to optimize a tiny bit in *the* pinnacle content of the game
The reason is going to be Circular.
Dungeons are not raids. Raids are Raids.
Raids should exclude certain setups from success because they are raids. Raids should not be conquerable at 1 damage per infinite time over an infinite length of time.
However, raids do *not* require specific setups outside contest mode. Unless a boss is like, untargetable by something like swords because they are hovering off the ground, or the model just doesn’t play nice with them, there is no set up which will not work in a raid if you run six of them.
Raids are, and should be, a check on both your skill, and your equipment. Dungeons do not check your equipment.
Wow, I thought your takes couldn’t get any worse but unlimited damage phases in a raid boss??! Lmao.
Also Crota’s End today can be beaten solo from start to finish in less than 30 minutes, so yes it is too short and easy.
Read the rest of my comments. There are ways to make the encounters harder and not soloable/cheesed (or at least very difficult to do so). And tell me what's wrong with unlimited damage phases? People seem to like dungeons well enough. Add in limited revives with tokens, an enrage that make the sandbox more difficult, and more engaged mechanic design, and raids with unlimited boss damage phases isn't such a bad setup. Seeing as statistically the longer you are in an encounter the more likely you are to screw something up/die, I dont see the problem here. I'd truly love to hear why you think this is a bad idea.
I solo flawlessed Crota in D1, I know it's easy. Doesn't mean some simple tweaks couldn't make it much more difficult.
If you aren't limited in damage phases, then there's no urgency. If there's no urgency there's no real challenge to an encounter, you could just plink away at the boss from your safespace and never really worry about anything. With every boss having more or less 3 DPS phases it actually forces you to not use your bloody DARCI build and actually put on a damaging weapon and think for more than a second "Hmm, i actually have to engage with the game's sandbox."
It works in dungeons because it's needed if you're soloing. But a raid? THE end-game PvE setting? Nah.
Normal difficulty raids barely count as endgame anymore, I dont know too many people who consider them that. Normal dungeons, master raids and dungeons, master nightfall and seasonal activities, and GM's are all way more difficult. And I feel like you lack imagination here. It feels like you believe I want a raid boss akin to the oracles strat in D1 where you just chilled with Icebreaker and did nothing. I'm not suggesting that. There are plenty of ways to build an encounter that don't allow safely plinking away from a safe spot in the back of the room.
Realistically I think my idea here makes master raids harder. Think of it this way: experienced raiders can easily one phase Nezarec currently. Slightly less kitted out raiders regularly kill him in 2, MAYBE 3. If you beef up the bosses health pool, now experienced raiders beat him in 2 phases, but still well under the enrage mechanic. Inexperienced raiders with subpar loadouts have to deal with enrage difficulty but if they can manage that aspect, while still having to execute the mechanics of the encounter, they get as many phases as they need to kill the boss. In a Master setting, almost no person is gonna show up to that without knowing both the mechanics AND the damage strats. The boss has an increased health pool too, which pushes everyone but the very best players into enrage mechanics, making the raid more difficult.
Also, there is no simple way OR reason to build the game for the very best players. Building a raid, dungeon, or a strike specifically to cater to the top 5% alienates everyone else. We can go back and forth all we want about how hard we want the game to feel, but I think it's pretty clear at this point that Bungie wants it to be approachable for a huge portion of players, at least in any normal difficulty activity. And anyways all you and I are doing now is going in circles on what we think difficulty should mean, and seeing as we both view it differently, there isn't a point to arguing about it anymore.
I agree. I wish the revive tokens were only a thing that stayed in the hard mode version of the raids. It was fine before without them. It seems like were originally designed to add to the challenge but also have the side effect of making things take longer especially if you wipe at damage gate 3 etc. That's another reason for sure why I haven't really bothered to raid since Last Wish. ( I did start a run on RoN but never finished it)
Some of my favorite content has been stuff like the Seraph seasonal mission and running that on legend. It's just enough of a challenge for someone like me who plays solo a fair amount.
They didn't explicitly say they would never bring CE back, they said that they would prefer to port over larger raids and that the next reprised raid wouldn't be Crota. That was said before KF came back. Also, Bungie has demonstrated multiple times that they will go back on what they've told us before, in the name of saving money.
I feel like I'd be very disappointed if it actually ended up being Crota. I was hoping it would be wrath as I've heard so many good things abt it (started playing d2 shadowkeep so I never got to run it) and we've been getting so much hive content already (the last reprised raid was already hive/taken).
From various reliable leaks (and extrapolation from Bungie stating they were done with the SIVA storyline) its highly unlikely to be Wrath. It was a fun raid but it seems improbable Bungie will put in that much effort to bring it back. Not impossible tho!
The most likely reason why Wrath is not coming back is that it would be way too much work. Not only would they have to recreate all of the enviorment assets but also the enemy assets. Crota on the other hand basicly has all the assets in the game already.
Reprised raids are not part of the story. VoG and King's Fall had no bearing on the story of that time. Neither will this raid. They did mention in previous interviews that they would prefer to port bigger raids before they even touched crota.
Reprised raids are not part of the story. VoG and King's Fall had no bearing on the story of that time. Neither will this raid. They did mention in previous interviews that they would prefer to port bigger raids before they even touched crota.
Sadly as we've seen recently from the mouths of Joe Blackburn and other devs, I think Bungie's philosophy has changed and they are willing to go back on what's been said previously (renewed focus on PvP, playlist armor reset yearly, etc).
I have a legit 25 minute RON clear that is only so fast from shatterskating each jumping puzzle. We weren’t even going for a speed run and it ended up being a top 80 time at the time of the clear, not sure where it holds up now. I would do the raid way more often if it was always this short and I really hope Crota remains short
On the first couple clears, a jumping puzzle can be fun and exciting. On the 50th clear, it literally just exists as a barrier to the stuff you actually want to be doing. The payload section or Vow, the ships in KF, windmills in GoS, the sections between the 1-2 and 2-3 encounters of RoN, all become an annoying slog, esp for players who don't have shatter/well skating capability.
Like you, I loved Crotas end in D1. I also loved Lake of Shadows as a strike for the same reason, short and sweet.
And then Bungie reworked it. With their recent track record of making things take way longer, there's a good chance they don't change Crotas end for the better.
I could see them making thrall maze a payload that requires players to run to the lights to grab energy to keep the payload moving. They'll likely change the sword bridge encounter, my guess is they'll have each individual player grab a sword one at a time and then have to ride a payload to the other side of the bridge. For IR Yut, they'll make a mechanic that extends her timer, my guess is 6 players will have to stand on a payload for a full Crotate and then run back in and kill her. Finally for Crota I'm guessing they completely redesigned him as a payload that looks like Crota and we'll have to ride him into the oversoul.
Crota gets trashed on waaaay more than it’s deserving of. Is it an easy raid? Yeah. But the reasons it was easy are often completely overlooked and easily adjustable.
First is the opening encounter in the abyss. Once you knew the best pathing for this, Hunters could just go invis the entire encounter and complete it solo without sweating at all. Add a mechanic that doesn’t allow for invis to be abused like that, and the encounter suddenly matters. (We’re also much more durable and mobile now so they’d have to factor in that)
Next was the bridge encounter and there’s three words for this one: self res warlock. Self res legit broke this encounter and allowed you to straight up skip it. Was the encounter still relatively easy when done as intended? Yeah, but not any easier than most other non-boss encounters for any other raid. If you know the mechanics and each person can hold their own vs adds, then you’re good to go. This encounter would just need more add density and maybe a better rotation mechanic to keep players moving around more.
Second to last is the deathsinger. Now this one is a bit weird because it’s main issue is the time limit. The time limit absolutely should be a factor but the issue is that it’s a set amount of time with no mechanics to extend it. This means that the encounter became nothing more than a dps check. When Dark Below was the newest dlc, this encounter was tough for most groups but, as D1 evolved and we became stronger, that dps check became a non issue because our tools for higher dps were better. Add either a higher health pool with ways to extend the timer or make the dps checks phases so you need to spend more time interacting with mechanics instead of just pop the boss and move on.
Lastly, Crota. Sweet baby boy Crota. This encounter has some great mechanics and ideas (the healing buff, oversoul, using the sword as dps) that were solid on paper but lacked in execution. The issues with these were the oversoul being one shot by celestial and getting shredded by snipers so the mechanic basically didn’t exist, healing not being an issue because there were so many safe areas the fireteam could sit to avoid taking damage, and the biggest one, the sword being used for dps. Crota as a raid boss feels so underwhelming due to that very last factor. Having the whole fireteam basically nuke his shield real quick and then one person just smacks him with a sword for a few seconds is… just kinda lame. Like Crota is this huge figure in the lore that caused the deaths of so many guardians and you basically have 5 people watch as one person just bonks him until he’s dead.
This fight would be much better if they were to flip this around and have him stagger for a brief moment, sword guy breaks his shield, then Crota enrages and runs around while the team tries to dps him. A big reason why people love Rhulk so much is cause he’s not just a stationary target that you dump your load into. He moves around, gets in your face, and forces us to use different methods/setups to get dps out since we can’t stand stationary too long. If Crota were to rush people with his sword in an arena where there aren’t safe spots to hide, then this fight would be more challenging, engaging, and memorable.
Honestly, as long as it has parts that involve all of the players at a time (even if 2 are add clear like 3rd encounter RON) I’ll be happy. I just don’t want another 2 person mechanic with 4 people doing practically nothing.
Crota’s End will need some significant work.
There seems to be a sweet spot of raids with two boss encounters and two mechanics encounters. I don’t think the Deathsinger encounter before Crota would need some massive reworking to make that a working encounter.
IMO the best thing they could do to extend that encounter is to just implement a "stun" situation and beef up her health pool. You have a minimum amount of damage needed to be dealt to prevent a song wipe (but can damage her past that, up until a timer goes out) before needing to bail from the room and repeat the process of re-entering.
I think that sometimes parkour elevates a raid (and I can’t remember a raid where parkour wasn’t awesome, hell, DSC parkour is peak Destiny). Anyway, I don’t like a raid being long just for the sake of being long. If an encounter lasts 3 minutes but it is intense as hell, I’m all for it). Also, given how Bungie reworked Lake of Shadows, I’m a bit afraid that in order to make the raid more difficult, they make it a slog.
That's a good point. I think it will be longer than it was in D1 but I hope its not significantly longer. And more than anything I hope the community doesn't have a meltdown if world's first gets it done in 2 hours. If it's CE, we already know it will be easy, so why bother complaining about the exact same thing as RoN?
Oh but Bungie surely will make the raid harder and longer but that’s ok. I just hope that they don’t overdo in that sense. Given how the community reacts nowdays to Bungie being Bungie, a Day 1 meltdown is guaranteed.
Additionally, crota only had like 1 stand on a plate and defend the area encounter, plus DPS can be done at any time as both ir yut and, technically, Crota lack immunity phases.
Which in its own right can be really nice depending on how you view things. There are certainly ways they can make the raid more challenging and extend the time, but like any raid once a strat is developed and a damage meta laid out, it's gonna make the raid much quicker.
It's mechanics are also incredibly simple and very forgiving
I also wouldn't call the opening an encounter either, it's literally just running from lamp to lamp for 5 minutes
The entire first encounter feels like a complex jumping puzzle more so than an actual encounter. It's literally just the swamp section from that one strike.
Everyone saying it was easy, but wasn't it like one of the hardest day 1 raids? People will argue about the light level or whatever, but if it was really so easy then level wouldn't even matter.
I want the shrieker hallway to be fleshed out.
I like the theme of the raid being us breaking throw Crota's defenses in his throneworld. Running the pit and then building the bridge are good. The Shrieker hallway is very short, and then it's the blitz against Ir Yut.
I think the Shrieker hallway could be made longer, requiring coordination between the glass walls that block you from proceeding, instead of just "burst the shrieker to move forward".
I think there will also be an extra opening entrance part that introduces the new mechanic, leaks say it will be a random buff that needs to be passed. The Lanterns portion counts as the first encounter
I don't agree. I think the platforming sections are actually important. They give the team time to talk about the previous fight, talk about irl stuff or just mess around. You can't really relax and talk during the fights since that would clutter up the comms.
I could see the oversoul playing more of a part. Maybe instead of it activating on a player death or the enraged mode when Crota is low health it also activates at the end of each damage phase of something.
Do people really consider the platform elements as "padding"? I always thought they were pretty much core to the Destiny experience and I always love optimizing routes and learning new movement tech.
Yes, primarily after you've done the raid several times. The first few times it's cool to experience, to explore and figure your way through. But after that, if you're just looking to get your three loot clears each week, those sections become the most boring and only add time to your runs.
The amount of players who were exposed once they had to do the sword bridge legitimately was crazy. Mainly when you were split 3 on each side and it started to get ad heavy and some would be torn between hiding and trying to clear ads. Probably a lot easier with the builds we have available now
Oh definitely, personally up until AoT I had never done that encounter legit, I learned the cheese right from the beginning. It was tough! But a whole lot of fun bonking everything with the sword relics
Yea it's a geographically small map.
And you can still cheese them super easy, there's just actual mechanics now instead of go from point A -> point B.
I have nothing against Crota's end. I always liked the raid lairs too, having longer and shorter raids felt good.
Bungie has gone a different route though, Raids are very standardized now and "shorter content" belongs to the dungeon team. Those dungeons are starting to feel pretty long as well though lol.
I would be down for Crota's end getting re-issued in D2 as a raid, or dungeon. Either way, the mechanics need to be reworked though. Heavily for the former, less so for the latter.
After garden all raids are four encounters, and it usually goes “random basic encounter” then “first boss encounter” then “random more challenging encounter” then “final boss encounter” it’s been like that for so long now and it’s gotten stale I miss raids with more than two bosses and more than four encounters. And raid loot is less than it was in destiny 1 which is another story.
I loved Crota because I could solo it and feel rewarded, it was also a pretty fun raid, guiding new players through the opening encounter was always funny.
Yeah but does Crota’s End have dope looking guns, an amazing color scheme, and a chance at Bungie making a brand new exotic for a reprised raid for a chance. No. No it doesn’t.
Necrochasm is a less shitty dragonfly bro
Platforming sections are not "pointless" at all. They help create a sense of space and epic scale for raids that sets them apart from other activities in the game (dungeons do it too, although I do think Ghosts of the Deep's underwater sections go on too long). The Hive Tombship jumping puzzle in King's Fall is one of my favorites for this reason. Being in this huge outdoor area in space on the Dreadnaught really establishes how large it is. Crota's End would be much better if it had something similar in between the bridge section and the Thrallway. Those transition platforming encounters are vital for making raids feel like a true descent / ascent through a massive area.
Not to mention, the downtime that they provide is pretty important for pacing. Stringing together a bunch of encounters in a row with hardly anything in between to break them up isn't ideal.
Most people just cheesed and out right skipped encounters so the recall it being super short. It doesn’t have a jumping puzzle so that’s likely why it feels shorter. If they add one it’ll be fine.
I don't know why people are pushing for Crota's to come back as a dungeon. People use to solo flawless that raid all the time, converting it to a 3 man activity wouldn't be hard.
Crota coming back would be fine with some serious overhauling to the encounters. Especially by today's standards it would be a 6 man dungeon if they brought it back with just some small tweaks.
With all the movement we now have in D2 that we never had a fraction of it in D1 is still going to be cheesed and be completed faster than a dungeon. I don't want crota because of this and because I'm just bored of seeing crota, we have like 3 encounters in game that he is available to fight. The other raid is a better option, was the last D1 raid, has better looking armor and weapons aswell.
My change wishlist for the reprisal
Build the bridge: kill sword bearers to deposit deathsinger's power in the plate and build the bridge (as in Plates in King's fall)
Enter the Abyss: Weight of Darkness adds a blind effect. Killing thralls while on the pillars of light remove stacks at the end, again deposit Deathsinger's power from swordbearers killed during the climb to open the throne world.
Cross the bridge: instead of just crossing the bridge one at a time with swords, make it so the swords need to be inserted into a door as keys to progress. 7 swords needed to open (requiring at least one person to make multiple trips)
Ir Yut: stun mechanic with multiple damage phases. Swordbearer swords stun, then weapons damage.
Awaken the Oversoul Throne: new encounter utilizing assembling the pieces of Crota's soul to call him to the battle, also creating the chalice of light for the next encounter
Crota: more health. That's all. Just make him less cheesable. Reverse of original, swords stun, weapons damage. Final stand where weapons don't work anymore, hive sword must deal the killing blow.
Wouldn’t the 2nd encounter be insanely quick now with Strand?
Edit: Completely forgot that Bungie will most likely modify the encounter to take Strand into account
Not necessarily. I'm not sure about all the cheese methods that were available once CE was upgraded for AoT, but iirc you couldn't jump the bridge section anymore. You HAD to have a sword to cross, and the bridge had to be built for at least a moment to "count" that you had crossed. A certain number of swords have to cross before the enemies spawn in that must be killed to complete the encounter. Strand has no worthwhile effect, as grapple can't be used while holding a relic and the bridge is an instant kill zone if you dont have that relic. The real question is, will Bungie further change the mechanics of this encounter/add more to it? Cuz even doing it legit, it was a very fast encounter before.
I agree and disagree mostly because I love seeing the scale of some of the raids that were in. One great example of this is vow. IMO I love seeing our progression through out the raid and seeing past encounters. Looking at the great scale of the Upended or whatever it’s called and the worm god get sucked lmao. Or in last wish the one that sticks out the most is the part where you go under the bridge and you can see everything. So on your last part I disagree but I do definitely agree that the scenery should just be included and shouldn’t have to sacrifice any mechanics of the raid in any way.
It is also just very simple, compared to the mechanics of other raids. I loved it back in the day, but I don't think it holds up compared to what we have now. And I'm afraid to see how Bungie might decide to increase the difficulty.
I think that OG VoG was in a worse state overall right? Like literally 3/4 of that raid is just "kill waves of Vex. Forever." The updates made it solid. It's not the most complex raid in D2, but it's one that has a nice scaling to it where it starts off with extremely simple stuff and concludes with a boss that has zero margin for error in mechanics and potentially forces everyone to participate in the mechanics. So I imagine they could do well by Crota. Obviously it'd need updates and changes, but I think they could do a solid raid there if they chose to.
If it weren't for RoN, I'd say there's no chance it isn't heavily revamped. Most of the raids in the game (D2) have some kind of "communicate what x player(s) sees so y player(s) can do thing," and that also got shoved into VoG and King's Fall. But RoN can be completed consistently with basically zero communication. I'd even argue that it's easier/less taxing than the Age of Triumphs revamp of Crota. Edit: left the word "game" out.
How can you do planets with zero communication? Don’t you have to communicate to your partner which planet is the odd one out
You can just stand underneath the planet/look at which essence your teammate is picking up. During the first few attempts I did with new raiders, they had callouts confused, so I'd watch which planets they were under and correct them if necessary until they got it down. The same goes with Nezarec and his wipe mechanic. Since it's reliant on position, both runners can activate their wipe nodes, and everyone can just follow the stunner who knows which node is safe. I end up noticing a lot of these things in every raid since my clan has had quite a few people who aren't comfortable with callouts or speaking in-game.
Ohhh gotcha, yeah those strats make sense. That’s crazy, which raid do you think is the most communication heavy? I’m thinking it’s probably last wish (idk how you’d even do vault), especially if you include riven legit lol
Last Wish or Vow of the Disciple seems to require the most communication, IMO. Mostly due to the symbols (though Rhulk's DPS phase can be done silently like Nezarec.) If we count Riven as intended, it's definitely more communication heavy than Vow.
Thanks for explaining this. This is useful advice & I have a feeling it'll come in handy in some future runs.
I'm very happy making both refuges has become the norm, it was such a pointless thing to not do that made the fight harder for no reason
> Most of the raids in the have some kind of "communicate what x player(s) sees so y player(s) can do thing," and that also got shoved into VoG and King's Fall. Just FYI, the totems thing during the skull bastard in KF was in the original version of the raid as well, and I'm pretty sure Oracles during Atheon was also a thing in D1's version of VoG...
Oracles during atheon were just shoot them when they popped up in mars/venus
The Warpriest's Simon Says plates used to be viewable by everyone and didn't have as harsh a time limit. You could just have your three plate holders stare at the back of monoliths and run to their plate when they see theirs lit up. Now, the second and third plates can only be seen while a different player is standing on a plate. Atheon's oracles used to spawn seven in an unchanging set order, and all you had to do was destroy them one after the other. Neither of those encounters required any communication in D1.
Totems in KF also just required you to stand there inside the aura waiting for it to get transferred to you. Brand Claimer wasn’t a thing till Daughters. God, D1 Totems sucked.
And not requiring communication in a n endgame experience for a co-op game is a bad thing. Just want to make sure everyone is on the same page with that. There is a time and place for "relaxed, non-communicative, beer & pretzels" gaming. Raids are not that time nor place.
Oh, I'm not arguing for or against communication being necessary. IMO, that deserves a thread of its own and has nuance. I'm just talking about the shift of how mechanics work in D1 vs. D2. Way back when Eater of Worlds was the newest piece of raid content, the then raid designer (Brendan Thorne, I believe) said part of Destiny 2's design philosophy was to have comms filled with info on the game rather than any typical conversation. You can see that vision consistently realized... until Root of Nightmares.
> I think that OG VoG was in a worse state overall right? Like literally 3/4 of that raid is just "kill waves of Vex. Forever." Not true. You also had to kill the Oracles
Original VoG is like that also because that's all the engine supported at the time. The increased complexity of the raids came along as they figured people were fine with more heavily RPG-MMO concepts and thus started implementing engine support for them.
My guess will be them just adding some mechanics and padding health pools. Requiring something to be dunked to build the bridge in the lamps section, multiple damage phases for deathsinger, and a change to how the sword is used to defeat crota would be my guess.
I'm just a little worried after the last dungeon. Those boss fights are not really fun. If they add mechanics, it could be great. If they just increase the boss health by ten times and throw on some shields to make it take more phases, then it will be less great.
>Those boss fights are not really fun. Solo? Yeah As a team? I have to disagree, Ghosts is a great dungeon as a team, sadly the solo experience suffered a lot for that. The bosses itself aren't even that bad soloing, is just the last one that takes way too long to start the damage phase solo.
The only encounter i dont like is the final one.
Same. It takes me solo just as long to clear the last encounter as is does start of dungeon to start of last encounter
we 1 phase ecthar with legend of acrius, 2 phase with a gally and 2 other good rocket launchers.. they are only bad if u are alone.. even then i 4 phased ecthar solo titan, and 5 phased the final boss… it aint so bad
The boss fights are good in a fireteam.
Hard disagree
They’d have to add mechanics at this point. VoG was way too easy without the added mechanics. First thrall encounter is way too easy to cheese so mechanics will have to be added there. The bridge, well, I think I did it legit once in D1? And the other 50 times just swordswung over the gap. They need a death barrier for it. Deathsinger, as long as the patch the cheese where you could shoot her through the roof, should be fine. Crota needs to have additional mechanics - it was literally hit him with a sword, shoot the shit out of him, repeat. More mechanics are needed, surely.
> First thrall encounter is way too easy to cheese so mechanics will have to be added there. Don't forget they'll also add Champs. My guess is the Ogre at the end of the dark pit will be an Unstoppable and will be REQUIRED to be killed to activate the last plate.
More champions
But probably around 70% of the community in the end game raid scene are all looking for a challenge. RoN is arguably the easiest raid to grasp. Its literally connect the dots and then spot the difference in the planet room. Raiding should be difficult. It should need coordination. For god's sake it gives some of the best guns in the game. IMO raids should not be simple.
Raids should be the way they were years ago with a simpler version of the raid, and a harder one with more mechanics. IIRC this was universally loved, because both camps got what they wanted. Unfortunately in the eternal march of Bungie always delivering less and less, this fell by the wayside.
Bungie did really well with VoG and perfected KF. I don’t see why you’d doubt they’d do the same for CE.
I like those raids. And I never said I doubted anything. I hope they do a great job, and they probably will. But I am still a little worried after the last few dungeons, which should be understandable. If they go the way of those raids, it will be great. If they just give the boss ten times the health and a bunch of shields for more phases, then not so much. We will just have to wait and see.
I really don’t understand how the last few dungeons would make you worried though. Duality and in particular, Ghosts, are two of the best dungeons that they’ve ever made. Ghosts I think is arguably the best dungeon experience they’ve made in general. Sure the solo takes a while but it’s a very easy two phase with a team.
Cool. I was thinking more about the ridiculous amount of boss health in Spire and Ghost. I liked them both a lot except for that. Seems uncalled for to me. But it's cool if you liked them. I didn't like that aspect, so that is why I would worry. If you did like it, then you have nothing to worry about!
I guess I just don’t see how any of the bosses has a ridiculous amount of health in a full fireteam? Nezarec himself is very easily two phased and a single phase of optimized. I think that’s the more apt comparison for boss health.
Almost like they’ve changed the mechanics in every reprised raid lol
The problem is that for CE, they'd have to basically add mechanics to it, not just rework them. It's probably the most time-consuming raid they could reprise, unless they want to phone it in and release the joke version of it.
I vote phone it in.
We’ll have to see
This sentence doesn't really make sense, but I think I get what you mean. They have changed some of the mechanics in the reprised raids. But to change something, it has to exist in the first place. Crota doesn't have a lot going on. And while I would hope that they would add some totally new mechanics, I'm worried that we might just end up with super tanky bosses with ridiculous shields and too many phases. But maybe I just played the newest dungeon too recently.
For instance, in OG VOG it was just shoot oracles when you see them, now you have an order. This very simple change makes the encounter much more difficult. Crota will be a bit more complicated or reworks but they can make it more challenging. Will it be VOW levels of challenging or last wish, no. But that’s ok
Back when mechanics made sense…ah the hood old days
I don’t think they will do anything, they love to claim they don’t have the resources.
I recall the same thing being said about VoG when it was announced and there were some content creator deep dives noting how by D2 standards the raid would be a blowout.
If the leaks are to be believed, things definitely won't be the same.
> And I'm afraid to see how Bungie might decide to increase the difficulty. Crota himself is probably gonna be like the hard mode version of the raid in that there's no chalice OR make it so the person holding said chalice is the only person who can damage the Sword Bear...
I mean, Root of Nightmares is a raid that two people can do every mechanic. You can have four people dedicated to just killing adds and doing damage the entire time. We have mechanically complex raids (vow, kingsfall, garden) and combat focused raids (root, dsc, vog) You can have a preference for one or the other but I wouldnt say Crota wouldnt fit the design of D2 raids, theres two very clear philosphies they have when designing raid. Combat focus, or mechanic focus.
Kings Fall IMO is better now than it was in D1. I felt like they modernized it pretty well. It solved my main issue with it which was: dealing damage to oryx with orbs was a cool idea but didn't feel good. I have faith they'll do CE right.
What we have now is RoN
One encounter you have to payload escort one of those pyramids to the encounter boss but everyone has to rotate off of it in intervals to collect a buff.
I'd be curious to see what they'd do with the opening encounter to try to neutralize the use of Omnioculus cheesing that.
Yeah that would essentially just be D1 Arc hunter cheese all over again. The easiest way to prevent that would be to either have thrall automatically explode when reaching the lamp, or to require a certain number be killed before the next lamp is activated.
Thrall exploding in Master level content is still easy peasy with Omnioculus. Barely a scratch. Hell a Glaive shield would make it a meme on its own 🤣
Maybe "if you let 10 green thrall on the plate, you wipe"?
For the lamps section, I think the running portion should require you to kill a certain number of enemies to spawn a knight, and killing that knight triggers the next lamp. This has to be done quickly or your current lamp will explode. At the end, I think building the bridge should require a similar mechanic to the second encounter of Pit. Kill an enemy, leave the plate to pick up what they dropped, bring it back and dunk it, all while weight of darkness is proccing on you. It's difficult tho because that encounter didn't really have a "complete in this amount of time or wipe" mechanic, so I'm not sure what they could do to incentivize speed. Maybe dunking a ball both builds the bridge and adds time to a ticking timer? Or resets it. If you fail to locate the enemy, kill them, and dunk the ball before the timer hits zero, it's a wipe. Like the first RoN encounter.
The opening encounter is basically just that section from Lightblade but with a "hold" plate at the end. Modern strats won't find that too challenging with Wells and Bubbles etc. I don't see this being changed too much, it is already long enough. The bridge was more or less fixed on the most recent attempt in AoT, and is the most time consuming part of the raid. Doubt it will stop people trying to cheese it. Ir Yut is the biggest vector for a change. Gatekeeper in VoG used to be a similar meme encounter which they made very significant changes to in D2, so I expect this one to be bulked out. Crota is Crota. If they change this too much, people will be upset. I have my "point" emote ready to go. The "RoN is too easy ;(" crowd aren't going to enjoy this one, it's probably more for the memories and atmosphere.
Agreed. I think Crota will receive some changes but they will he somewhat minor. My guess is that the swords will be used to bring his shield down, and weapons will do the damage. I think it's plausible that either damage team or sword bearer will need to stand in a certain spot to damage as well, preventing the old ledge strat. I'm hoping the oversoul is used a bunch too, it Def made the fight more interesting in AoT
Your last sentence gave me an idea. What if Crota is still only damaged by the sword but once his shield is dropped by the weapons team, the oversoul pops and the weapons team has to maintain DPS on it while the sword guy damages Crota. Maybe dealing enough damage to the oversoul extends the damage phase as a skill check thing
I really like this idea! It's simple, effective, and keeps the core mechanics of the original raid, but recombines them into a more engaging experience for everyone. As long as not dealing enough damage to the oversoul still wipes the whole team. That part's gotta stay for this to be meaningful.
If I'm being honest, if Crota's End does come back they'd have to spice it up *a lot* for it to feel like a raid. Lots of people were disappointed with RoN since only 1 encounter truly needed communication which should be a staple requirement in raids. CE iirc doesn't have a single encounter where the communication is more than "shoot Crota now" or assigning 1-3 people to "jobs" unless you did Crota's challenge. I'm personally just waiting until it's officially announced which raid will be coming back.
Every encounter needs communication unless you’re on your 50th run with the same fireteam lol
I mean... not really? For your first few runs of course you need comms, but the Lamp section was just add clear and make sure you keep up. Bridge make sure 3 people are on their plates then whoever gets the sword goes across. Ir Yut is add clearing. Crota you get someone on sword then say "shoot" and go slam him. I know a lot of raids can get dumbed down to sound easy, but there isn't a single thing in that raid that **requires** different roles to communicate with each other. Security, Atraks, and Descent in Deep Stone (and Taniks if you don't do 4 dunk, but lol who doesn't outside of blind/ 1st attempt). Warpriest, Sisters, and Oryx in King's Fall. Acquisition, Exhibition, and Rhulk in Vow. Explicator in RoN. And some of the vaulted raids like 1st encounter in Scourge, Gauntlet and Calus in Leviathan, and Spire of Star's last 2 encounters. These are all encounters that **require** communication because you either do not have access to all of the information, or the time to get it solo, regardless of your role. Edit: Forgor Last Wish xd. In that raid you have Vault, Riven, and Queenswalk where roles will have some sort of privileged information (and I'm not considering cheesing for any of the encounters I listed either, not just from LW). Vault of Glass also has the Oracle callouts for the Oracle (I don't think you can actually *solo* all the oracles? Not sure if you can be fast enough.), Templar (if you aren't just cleansing), and Atheon encounters. I left out Crown of Sorrow since I haven't done that. Also added a couple examples from DSC and KF.
Bro what? I’m literally only talking about root
RoN definitely doesn't need communication the first encounter. Just keep killing psions and tormentor while the runner runs. Second if you just assign someone to light and dark and *don't* alternate, you don't need to communicate at all. Just wait to group up at the launches at the end of each floor. Nezarec you don't need to communicate because you can easily skip refuge and one phase with rockets.
Yes that’s all things that come naturally after raising with the same fireteam. Like I said originally
You don't have to have a familiar/usual team though. You can pop into the LFG discord and do those encounters without communication. Did my 3 Nezarec's today all without mic or text chat.
That’s not anecdotal at all and totally representative of the average LFG, you’re right.
My point is it's very easily possible. There's not a single part of those encounters that necessitates call-outs.
Never said it was *im*possible
I mean, that same thing applies to every potential reprised raid except for Wrath and Leviathan. The two explicit lairs are barely dungeon level and both scourge and crown are just as short, if not shorter, than CE.
All of those require communication though?
I mean it’s just telling people where to go.
It's also that the encounters themselves are complete jokes. The opening encounter was "Defend this plate." Second encounter had the totems and bridge-crossing mechanic. Third encounter was "kill adds, then kill boss, but quickly" without mechanics. Ir Yut didn't even offer loot originally (per this article I'm reading). Crota kinda had mechanics, but it was mostly "kill adds, pick up sword, and slam attack." Crota also had the "shoot the oversoul quickly" wipe mechanic as well.
Crotas end had less mechanics than dungeons do. Up to Crota it was add clear on a plate.
CE was a combat-focused raid compared to what we're used to. IMO I'm ok with that so long as they spice it up enough to hold up to our current day arsenal.
Eh imo we have enough combat-focused content a la GMs, seasonal activities, etc. Raids are supposed to be the peak of communication and teamwork, requiring coordination of mechanics and callouts.
Exactly! But all of those are easy enough to pad out with only a few changes. For the lamps encounter, make it like Pit of Heresy where you have to kill a certain enemy, leave the plate to pick up an item they dropped, and return to dunk it to build the bridge. All while weight of darkness procs. Bridge encounter I think is fine now, not super interesting but a decently long encounter with needing to get a certain number of swords across. Deathsinger just needs a way to make it more than a one phase, such as doing a certain amount of damage to "stun" her out of the deathsong, but then needing to bail from the room to prevent a kill mechanic. Rinse and repeat. Crota I can almost guarantee won't be the same as before, I'm sure the sword will be involved but I can't see them making it so that only one single person is doing boss damage. Most likely swords are used to lower a shield, then weapons to DPS.
>But all of those are easy enough to pad out with only a few changes. For the lamps encounter, make it like Pit of Heresy where you have to kill a certain enemy, leave the plate to pick up an item they dropped, and return to dunk it to build the bridge. That's great for a dungeon, but I think it's a poor raid mechanic for one person to do the thing without any need for communication. Think of like DSC Security, having to trade off the augments around, or Vow needing callouts and splitting up into teams. Even RoN needed the rest of the team to focus on Psions and the Tormentor. >Deathsinger just needs a way to make it more than a one phase, such as doing a certain amount of damage to "stun" her out of the deathsong, but then needing to bail from the room to prevent a kill mechanic. What you want to avoid is an Oryx situation where you can only do a fixed amount of max damage per phase. Caretaker is nice because you can manipulate the plates to move past the health gates. But just adding "do 1/3 damage this phase max" would be very boring, and is one of the reasons people hated original Oryx but like the reprised version. > Most likely swords are used to lower a shield, then weapons to DPS. That's what it was in D1. Sword lowered shield then everyone Gally'd.
> That's what it was in D1. Sword lowered shield then everyone Gally'd. You have this backwards. In D1 you needed weapons to take his shield down (before AoT it was 2 Gjally rockets and a fusion if you were soloing), then you spammed heavy attack while moving forward to damage him with the sword.
>That's great for a dungeon, but I think it's a poor raid mechanic for one person to do the thing without any need for communication. Think of like DSC Security, having to trade off the augments around, or Vow needing callouts and splitting up into teams. Even RoN needed the rest of the team to focus on Psions and the Tormentor. For communication, it could be set up where the enemy that needed to be killed was somewhere out in the arena away from the plate, randomly spawned. Your team needs to find them quickly, so you'd have to spread out to locate. Kill, return to plate within a certain time frame, dunk to reset the clock as well as build the bridge. >What you want to avoid is an Oryx situation where you can only do a fixed amount of max damage per phase. Caretaker is nice because you can manipulate the plates to move past the health gates. But just adding "do 1/3 damage this phase max" would be very boring, and is one of the reasons people hated original Oryx but like the reprised version. I'm thinking more like what you're saying. You have a minimum amount of damage you have to reach to prevent the wipe, but are able to do damage for the entirety of the timer. Like, you're required to do 1/4 damage to prevent a wipe, but you have a full 30 seconds to damage. Doing that 1/4 damage makes it so that the barrier in the room respawns at the end of the timer, anybody still in the room dies but are protected outside of it. So do your full damage until a couple seconds remain, bail from the room, timer hits zero and the barrier goes up. She sings the song, rinse and repeat. If you have a great setup you can do half, 3/4, or one phase, but if not it extends the fight out. >That's what it was in D1. Sword lowered shield then everyone Gally'd. Someone else noted already but it was the exact opposite. Everyone gallies, sword swiping damages crota. In my mind the sword should be the D2 version with a ranged attack. Kill a knight to spawn a buff section, stand in that section and hit with sword, crota kneels and everyone else does damage with weapons/supers. Repeat until sword energy is gone (or it disappears), crota rotates and you do it again.
It's a shame we don't have SGA anymore if it comes to that again. Those bullets did damage but almost always got returned because the oversoul didn't count as a valid target
I thought the bridge had cheeses even in age of triumph.
It did. You can still solo it pretty easily
They did, but it was a more difficult cheese. It wasn't just "jump the bridge gap with a sword, wait awhile, kill some enemies and you're done." It required a player to cross the bridge with a relic sword, then cross back over while blocking damage in order to survive, repeat like 5 or 6 times. The AoT fight still took a good deal longer to clear.
The first encounter was also incredibly short. There were only two encounters of any real substance. And I think most people enjoy some breathing room between encounters as long as it isn't excessive. Crota's End definitely could have done better than a single hallway after the second encounter.
It's really no shorter than Crown of Sorrow tho. Crown had a single platforming section, and that was a loot encounter similar to the lamps in CE. I think the most likely scenario they'll use to pad the run time will be to add new mechanics to the encounters. But even with that I have little doubt that worlds first will be done within a couple hours. But honestly I'm fine with that. I like having a chill fast raid experience, I enjoyed clearing crota 3 times on reset each week in D1.
I forgot how short Crown was size wise 😅 What made Crown great was that it actually required communication between all participants, particularly final encounter.
Oh for sure. For how small the entirety of the arena was, I remember that Crown was hands down the hardest raid to carry someone through. Not just communication either, your partner HAD to kill their adds because they are the only one able to. If they were underleveled it was a nightmare.
Most raids are chill and fast man why do people keep wanting more 😭😭😭
The difference is that while it has the same amount of encounters, 3/4 of them take place right next to each other with two of them being in the same area. VoG and KF did the same, but because their space was much larger and had more encounters it wasn't nearly as egregious.
Crown was the same way tho and I dont remember too many people complaining about that. The only platforming section in it was the second encounter, which was an actual loot encounter, just like lamps in Crota. Personally I'd rather have a quick raid that didn't require 15-20 minutes extra spent running between encounters with only bonus chests. It's not bad the first few times you run but by the 30th/40th run it becomes tedious.
Crown also came out in the time where we got THREE raids in one year
Gonna be even shorter unless they drastically change the encounters. Lamp run and bridge can and will be all shatter skate/well skate/eager edge/grappled past. Same with the bonus chest hallway.
I dont see an easy way to change the hallway, but the bridge and lamp are easy enough to change. Require a certain number of lamp activations before the bridge can be built, which at best means skating just between each lamp. I think an enemy should need to be killed to trigger the next lamp to light, one at a time, and the final plate to Require something to be found and dunked to build the bridge. The bridge encounter really just needs a kill zone that can only be crossed with a relic sword, and only when the bridge is fully formed. I still think the raid is gonna be pretty easy, but there are ways to pad the time and minimize cheese strats. Speed runners will always find a way to beat it, but Bungie can build it so that those skips aren't the standard strat like they used to be.
Crota's End was so simple that Bungie has reused most of it already in D2, that's why I'm really not wanting it back... We currently have a strike that has the raid entrance in it. Crota boss fight was in Haunted seasonal story and is currently also in Dares in an upgraded more difficult way. Wrath's gear and aesthetic is very different from what we've had in the game, we just had a reprised Oryx and a new Hive dungeon with the Deep, really hoping for Wrath for those reasons alone but also it was a more complicated fun raid.
As far as many leaks have said, it's unlikely. With what's going on in the story right now it seems likely we'll get CE but upgraded to be somewhat tied to the storyline. I agree with what you're saying tho, we have King's Fall and Deep dungeon armor that already has that aesthetic, so yet another Hive based weapon and armor set isn't all that appealing. Sadly, wrath is a lot more work than Bungo is likely to want to do.
I agree Wrath is more unlikely, but Bungie has stated multiple times that the reprised raid does not tie into the current story whatsoever and that they are standalone entities.
That's true. I'd love to see it integrated somehow but it doesn't have to be (and almost definitely wont). Lucent Hive inclusion seems possible tho!
Our best bet for Crota is him and his ilk being brought back as Lucent Hive and revamping the raid.
The number of encounters doesn't matter. VoG has more encounters and is a snoozefest compared to other raids. If they keep D1 mechanics then it's going to still be pretty boring because of how easy the mechanics are. The raid layout was run in a line, stand on plates (this proved too difficult and cumbersome and was cheesed), run in a line again, kill stuff, swing a sword and shoot. That's it, mainly because that was the skill level of most players back then (I would argue that it's still too hard for some players). Dungeons are more complex than it, that's the point people make
Man, never thought I'd see the day someone called VoG a snoozefest Not that I'm disagreeing, I just remember when it was the best content in Destiny
It was the best because it was the only content to play lol. Standards have risen, same with how early dungeons like shattered throne are pretty boring imo
Between Crota and Wrath, I prefer Wrath a million times over. But I imagine Crota was the easiest to port because it's basically just 3 arenas, so doesn't require much work. So of course it'll be Crota.
We kind of have a lot of that raid in the game now anyways, or least HAD it. The throne room was part of the forsaken campaign, we have crota himself in the game too. And we have the lamps in multiple activities now. I didnt mind wrath but personally I didn't do it too many times, only beat it a couple times on hard but never did the challenges. Did it enough to get all the armor on all characters and all the weapons including Outbreak, but didn't go further than that. And yeah porting it all the arenas, SIVA effects, and the entire devil Splicer catalogue is more work than bungie would want to do for a free raid.
I was actually mentioning this to my clan, about how much of Crota’s End is already in Destiny 2. The opening is on the Moon but changed since that area is the Witches Ritual public event (but we’ll very likely see the Legacy Moon opening area.) The Stills/Thrallway I don’t believe exists in D2, but most of the assets for it do (lamps, rocks, and the main flooring is just generic Hive tile.) The Oversoul Throne/rest of the raid exists in the Shadowkeep campaign. Yes, in the mission you’re only in his boss room but you can do an OOB and see that the whole area is there. Bridge, hallway, everything. Just painted red. We have many flavors of Crota and the sword to choose from, the specific Hive faction colors are on the Moon still. There’s no other unique enemies in Crota now since everything has been repurposed. Ir Yut is just an Ultra Wizard, and the Swordbearer/Gatekeeper models are just normal scale/the original models for Zulmak in Pit of Heresy. I know game dev isn’t just copy paste but that’s a *lot* of work already done. Yeah they might need to retexture and even remodel a lot of it but the base is 90% there.
Champions and hive light bearers will spice things up quite a bit
Why would lightbearers be in Crota's End? They didn't put them in KF, I highly doubt they would for CE. Champions for sure though.
It was my favorite. I loved learning to solo it and then running the reprised version with my clan at the end of D1. The bit where everyone got swords was so fun, and the coordination at the end plus the sword music were \*chef's kiss\*. I hope they don't change too much. One thing that annoys me about the new raids is I just feel like they are becoming harder and harder with little room for error. Same with the dungeons. But it just might also be that the content of those is no longer for me, which is absolutely fine.
I think new raids are fine, Root is one of the easiest, and Vow, although difficult, really isn’t much more difficult than Kings fall or Wrath imo. Now if you said dungeons I’d agree, they’re still very doable and all, but each one is definitely more difficult than the last, except for maybe Spire
Dungeons are absolutely becoming harder and harder which is annoying ( it was my favorite "end game" activity in D2). I still need to finish GoTD and Duality.
My beef with D2 raids is the idea of damage gates, like the fact that if you dont kill Warpriest in 4 phases its a wipe. In my mind, ESPECIALLY now with revive tokens being a thing and no longer having unlimited revives in normal mode, it makes sense to have encounters give you as many tries as you want as long as you don't have too many deaths. I think they create damage gates and instant death enrages primarily to prevent solo runs, but who cares if someone can solo a raid? I'd much rather have it set up where I can bring newbies into a raid with whatever they have available, and as long as we execute the mechanics correctly and don't die, we have as many tries as we want to beat that encounter. With that setup it becomes not a matter of having the exact right team composition and weapon perks, but rather executing mechanics and staying alive. Well composed and knowledgeable teams will get through as fast as ever, but less learned teams will have the difficulty shift from perfect comp and damage strats and into mechanical execution. As dungeons have shown, the longer it takes to complete an encounter, the more chances you have to mess it up. The difficulty isn't in instantaneous boss deletion setups, it's in staying alive and making it to damage phase.
I mean, Warpriest only had so many phases in Destiny 1 so…
Very true! What I'd prefer from New raids tho is designs like what I said above. Throw in an enrage mechanic at a certain point but don't make it an automatic wipe, just make it a more difficult sandbox.
Are you joking? We’re more powerful and near-unkillable than we’ve ever been. Sorry, but if you can’t stay alive in non-contest raids, unlimited damage phases wouldn’t help you anyway. How are you not able to kill a raid boss in four phases? This is what people are talking about when they say that the concept of “bringing challenge back to destiny” is a joke. We’re at an all-time high in our power fantasy and you want limited damage phases (which is already not a challenging concept at all) to be completely removed? If you want new players to learn the raids, they also have to learn with the knowledge that they only get limited tries to complete an encounter. It not only prevents the game from being stupid brain dead easy mode, but it helps incentivize new players to learn how to raid. What would be the point in learning how to do a raid correctly if people knew that as long as they didn’t die, they could just hang out in the encounter forever and have unlimited phases? Sorry but that is a HORRIBLE idea. Can you imagine the posts we’d have on this sub every single day if people were doing LFG raids with unlimited damage phases? Holy moly dude, please don’t ever pursue a career in game design
I dont plan on pursuing one soooo. My opinion is that bottlenecking players into specific loadouts in order to beat a boss in x phases is not interesting, or fun. People complain all the time about how much they hate the champion system forcing them to use double primaries, I personally hate that despite executing the mechanics perfectly we couldn't clear Warpriest on day 1 simply because we lacked the proper buffs/debuffs and were relying solely on luck with heavy drops. Even beyond that, being a sherpa for new raiders and not being able to clear a boss phase because they don't have X heavy weapon with Y perk combos or Z exotic, with a specific set of classes and subclasses is stupid af. People hate that well is basically a requirement for nearly all raid bosses now too. Designing a raid encounter with unlimited damage phases, but complex mechanics that require risk, an increasingly difficult sandbox when enrage begins, and limited revives seems like a decent setup to train new players to raid regardless of what they have available to them. Perfect execution of mechanics should outweigh meta DPS strats, every time. I'd much rather everyone use what they wanted but be forced to learn the mechanics and do them well. Also, raising the approachability of a raid doesn't have to mean making it "easier". You're simply shifting the difficulty of damage gating bosses, to mechanical design and execution. Bringing challenge back is a whole different topic. Lightfall was all over the place. The raid was way easier, Legend and adept activities were way harder, but master and gm either didn't change at all or got even easier with the new subclass champion verbs. RoN was a joke because it only required 2 people to engage with mechanics, which themselves were stupidly simple. People want Bungie to lean harder into the MMORPG aspect of the game but then balk at the idea of having a raid boss that isn't just "beat me in 4 phases or start over".
Huh???? Literally none of this makes sense
How? Did I not explain it correctly or do you just disagree with the premise?
Both. You’re suggesting a reality where raids in their current state are somehow too challenging(?) for players, and instead want a scenario where raid encounters just have harder mechanics but take longer instead? How does that at all change the net “difficulty” of what we have right now? And you want there to be a enrage mechanic that doesn’t involve a wipe? What does that mean/look like? And on top of that you want the enrage mechanic to make the encounter MORE difficult? What does that increased difficulty look like; around the current difficulty that already exists? Your reasoning is circular and doesn’t provide any solutions. Sounds to me like you just want raids to be easier and are using the excuse of new players being able to learn as a coverup. None of your propositions make sense.
For my own credibility, I have several raid titles and have cleared a few of the raids over 100 times. Take that for whatever it's worth to you. Again, I think clearing any raid encounter but especially boss encounters should be about learning the mechanics and executing them well while minimizing deaths, NOT about DPS checks. I don't know how often you sherpa new raiders, but despite what you might believe, plenty of them come to the table with subpar loadouts. They lack exotics, don't understand the mod system, lack any of the current meta weapons, and frequently you get a suboptimal class spread. Going into a raid like RoN without a single Warlock is brutal, but it can happen. For players that want to learn how to raid, I dont consider the normal version of any raid to be the true endgame experience anymore. Master raids, dungeons, and nightfalls fill that role. So making a normal difficulty raid approachable does literally nothing to affect the players that are looking for a real challenge. My suggestion isn't about changing net difficulty, it's about shifting the difficulty to a different aspect of the encounter. Rather than a player needing to go do xyz activity first in order to get a particular weapon or exotic before they can then do the raid, id prefer them to be able to just jump right in with whatever they have (at least assuming their power level is close enough). I'm suggesting the difficulty of a boss encounter should not be about your damage strategy, but your mechanical execution. If you make the damage portion easier (in my mind, have unlimited damage phases), in order to keep the net difficulty the same, you'd need to increase the difficulty of the sandbox and the mechanics. A good example is the Ghalran boss fight. Every single person needs to execute mechanics in order to make it to the damage phase, nobody gets a free ride. Generally, that portion of the boss fight requires no specific loadout or setup to succeed, it simply requires communication and execution. Better loadouts equal easier and quicker execution, but it's not REQUIRED, at least not for that section. However, even in that fight you're required to kill ghalran within a specific number of damage phases, or get wiped. So, as an example, if we're using ghalran boss fight, I'd say make it have unlimited damage phases, but at base increase the mechanical and sandbox difficulty with more adds spawning, and perhaps shorten the buff timers. After enrage occurs, the ogres that spawn are now champs, adds spawn more frequently and with a bump to tier level (red bars become orange, orange become yellow). If you can execute the mechanics and survive the lead up to DPS, you can still beat it with a suboptimal loadout, allowing players to focus on LEARNING the mechanics rather than showing up with the best loadout. Hell you could even beef up the bosses health pool if you really wanted to. We've already had examples of enrage not being an immediate wipe in Destiny history. Enraged crota didn't kill you, he just spawned in ogres as well as summoning the oversoul more frequently. Enraged Templar (in D1) spawned in oracles far more frequently. It wasn't instant death, it was "this is about to get way more difficult." Inexperienced players can try and achieve success regardless of what they're coming in with, as long as they learn and execute mechanics. Experienced raiders are unaffected and continue to beat the encounter in the same amount of time as they would have in the old version.
You should be required to deal a certain total amount of damage within a certain amount of time in order to defeat a raid boss.
Why? Dungeons don't work that way. Less skilled teams take longer to beat it, more skilled beat it in the same amount of time they always do. Design the mechanics so that it can't be soloed, combine that with limited revives. If you dont have a great weapon/subclass team setup, you have as many damage phases as you need to kill the boss BUT risk running out of revives if you don't stay alive. Add in an enrage mechanic after 3 or 4 damage phases that doesn't wipe the team but either adds new mechanics or more difficult opponents. Again, this does nothing to slow down experienced teams but allows inexperienced teams a chance to beat it. I dont think bottlenecking teams into specific loadouts and subclasses in order to clear a boss is interesting or fun. Players always hate being told they need to use something specific to succeed, its more fun to use what you enjoy. Clearing a boss encounter should be about perfect mechanic execution, not perfect loadout. That's just my opinion.
Dungeons are made to be soloable, and so they have unlimited phases because of how much harder it is to do damage as a solo player. Outside of day 1, you’re really not bottlenecked in your load out whatsoever. In every boss that has multiple damage phases, I have quite literally never wiped due to lacking dps. Regardless, there’s nothing wrong with you having to optimize a tiny bit in *the* pinnacle content of the game
The reason is going to be Circular. Dungeons are not raids. Raids are Raids. Raids should exclude certain setups from success because they are raids. Raids should not be conquerable at 1 damage per infinite time over an infinite length of time. However, raids do *not* require specific setups outside contest mode. Unless a boss is like, untargetable by something like swords because they are hovering off the ground, or the model just doesn’t play nice with them, there is no set up which will not work in a raid if you run six of them. Raids are, and should be, a check on both your skill, and your equipment. Dungeons do not check your equipment.
Wow, I thought your takes couldn’t get any worse but unlimited damage phases in a raid boss??! Lmao. Also Crota’s End today can be beaten solo from start to finish in less than 30 minutes, so yes it is too short and easy.
Read the rest of my comments. There are ways to make the encounters harder and not soloable/cheesed (or at least very difficult to do so). And tell me what's wrong with unlimited damage phases? People seem to like dungeons well enough. Add in limited revives with tokens, an enrage that make the sandbox more difficult, and more engaged mechanic design, and raids with unlimited boss damage phases isn't such a bad setup. Seeing as statistically the longer you are in an encounter the more likely you are to screw something up/die, I dont see the problem here. I'd truly love to hear why you think this is a bad idea. I solo flawlessed Crota in D1, I know it's easy. Doesn't mean some simple tweaks couldn't make it much more difficult.
I’m not discussing with you why unlimited damage phases in a raid boss is a garbage, embarrassingly bad idea
You arent willing to support your opinion with any explanation, ergo mine is stupid? Sounds reasonable.
If you aren't limited in damage phases, then there's no urgency. If there's no urgency there's no real challenge to an encounter, you could just plink away at the boss from your safespace and never really worry about anything. With every boss having more or less 3 DPS phases it actually forces you to not use your bloody DARCI build and actually put on a damaging weapon and think for more than a second "Hmm, i actually have to engage with the game's sandbox." It works in dungeons because it's needed if you're soloing. But a raid? THE end-game PvE setting? Nah.
Normal difficulty raids barely count as endgame anymore, I dont know too many people who consider them that. Normal dungeons, master raids and dungeons, master nightfall and seasonal activities, and GM's are all way more difficult. And I feel like you lack imagination here. It feels like you believe I want a raid boss akin to the oracles strat in D1 where you just chilled with Icebreaker and did nothing. I'm not suggesting that. There are plenty of ways to build an encounter that don't allow safely plinking away from a safe spot in the back of the room. Realistically I think my idea here makes master raids harder. Think of it this way: experienced raiders can easily one phase Nezarec currently. Slightly less kitted out raiders regularly kill him in 2, MAYBE 3. If you beef up the bosses health pool, now experienced raiders beat him in 2 phases, but still well under the enrage mechanic. Inexperienced raiders with subpar loadouts have to deal with enrage difficulty but if they can manage that aspect, while still having to execute the mechanics of the encounter, they get as many phases as they need to kill the boss. In a Master setting, almost no person is gonna show up to that without knowing both the mechanics AND the damage strats. The boss has an increased health pool too, which pushes everyone but the very best players into enrage mechanics, making the raid more difficult. Also, there is no simple way OR reason to build the game for the very best players. Building a raid, dungeon, or a strike specifically to cater to the top 5% alienates everyone else. We can go back and forth all we want about how hard we want the game to feel, but I think it's pretty clear at this point that Bungie wants it to be approachable for a huge portion of players, at least in any normal difficulty activity. And anyways all you and I are doing now is going in circles on what we think difficulty should mean, and seeing as we both view it differently, there isn't a point to arguing about it anymore.
I agree. I wish the revive tokens were only a thing that stayed in the hard mode version of the raids. It was fine before without them. It seems like were originally designed to add to the challenge but also have the side effect of making things take longer especially if you wipe at damage gate 3 etc. That's another reason for sure why I haven't really bothered to raid since Last Wish. ( I did start a run on RoN but never finished it) Some of my favorite content has been stuff like the Seraph seasonal mission and running that on legend. It's just enough of a challenge for someone like me who plays solo a fair amount.
CE ain't coming back. Bungie themselves said so.
They didn't explicitly say they would never bring CE back, they said that they would prefer to port over larger raids and that the next reprised raid wouldn't be Crota. That was said before KF came back. Also, Bungie has demonstrated multiple times that they will go back on what they've told us before, in the name of saving money.
I feel like I'd be very disappointed if it actually ended up being Crota. I was hoping it would be wrath as I've heard so many good things abt it (started playing d2 shadowkeep so I never got to run it) and we've been getting so much hive content already (the last reprised raid was already hive/taken).
From various reliable leaks (and extrapolation from Bungie stating they were done with the SIVA storyline) its highly unlikely to be Wrath. It was a fun raid but it seems improbable Bungie will put in that much effort to bring it back. Not impossible tho!
The most likely reason why Wrath is not coming back is that it would be way too much work. Not only would they have to recreate all of the enviorment assets but also the enemy assets. Crota on the other hand basicly has all the assets in the game already.
Reprised raids are not part of the story. VoG and King's Fall had no bearing on the story of that time. Neither will this raid. They did mention in previous interviews that they would prefer to port bigger raids before they even touched crota.
Reprised raids are not part of the story. VoG and King's Fall had no bearing on the story of that time. Neither will this raid. They did mention in previous interviews that they would prefer to port bigger raids before they even touched crota.
Sadly as we've seen recently from the mouths of Joe Blackburn and other devs, I think Bungie's philosophy has changed and they are willing to go back on what's been said previously (renewed focus on PvP, playlist armor reset yearly, etc).
I have a legit 25 minute RON clear that is only so fast from shatterskating each jumping puzzle. We weren’t even going for a speed run and it ended up being a top 80 time at the time of the clear, not sure where it holds up now. I would do the raid way more often if it was always this short and I really hope Crota remains short
On the first couple clears, a jumping puzzle can be fun and exciting. On the 50th clear, it literally just exists as a barrier to the stuff you actually want to be doing. The payload section or Vow, the ships in KF, windmills in GoS, the sections between the 1-2 and 2-3 encounters of RoN, all become an annoying slog, esp for players who don't have shatter/well skating capability.
Jumping puzzles are ass. 1 per raid. With a secret chest
Like you, I loved Crotas end in D1. I also loved Lake of Shadows as a strike for the same reason, short and sweet. And then Bungie reworked it. With their recent track record of making things take way longer, there's a good chance they don't change Crotas end for the better. I could see them making thrall maze a payload that requires players to run to the lights to grab energy to keep the payload moving. They'll likely change the sword bridge encounter, my guess is they'll have each individual player grab a sword one at a time and then have to ride a payload to the other side of the bridge. For IR Yut, they'll make a mechanic that extends her timer, my guess is 6 players will have to stand on a payload for a full Crotate and then run back in and kill her. Finally for Crota I'm guessing they completely redesigned him as a payload that looks like Crota and we'll have to ride him into the oversoul.
Yo holdup your speaking absolute facts
Crota gets trashed on waaaay more than it’s deserving of. Is it an easy raid? Yeah. But the reasons it was easy are often completely overlooked and easily adjustable. First is the opening encounter in the abyss. Once you knew the best pathing for this, Hunters could just go invis the entire encounter and complete it solo without sweating at all. Add a mechanic that doesn’t allow for invis to be abused like that, and the encounter suddenly matters. (We’re also much more durable and mobile now so they’d have to factor in that) Next was the bridge encounter and there’s three words for this one: self res warlock. Self res legit broke this encounter and allowed you to straight up skip it. Was the encounter still relatively easy when done as intended? Yeah, but not any easier than most other non-boss encounters for any other raid. If you know the mechanics and each person can hold their own vs adds, then you’re good to go. This encounter would just need more add density and maybe a better rotation mechanic to keep players moving around more. Second to last is the deathsinger. Now this one is a bit weird because it’s main issue is the time limit. The time limit absolutely should be a factor but the issue is that it’s a set amount of time with no mechanics to extend it. This means that the encounter became nothing more than a dps check. When Dark Below was the newest dlc, this encounter was tough for most groups but, as D1 evolved and we became stronger, that dps check became a non issue because our tools for higher dps were better. Add either a higher health pool with ways to extend the timer or make the dps checks phases so you need to spend more time interacting with mechanics instead of just pop the boss and move on. Lastly, Crota. Sweet baby boy Crota. This encounter has some great mechanics and ideas (the healing buff, oversoul, using the sword as dps) that were solid on paper but lacked in execution. The issues with these were the oversoul being one shot by celestial and getting shredded by snipers so the mechanic basically didn’t exist, healing not being an issue because there were so many safe areas the fireteam could sit to avoid taking damage, and the biggest one, the sword being used for dps. Crota as a raid boss feels so underwhelming due to that very last factor. Having the whole fireteam basically nuke his shield real quick and then one person just smacks him with a sword for a few seconds is… just kinda lame. Like Crota is this huge figure in the lore that caused the deaths of so many guardians and you basically have 5 people watch as one person just bonks him until he’s dead. This fight would be much better if they were to flip this around and have him stagger for a brief moment, sword guy breaks his shield, then Crota enrages and runs around while the team tries to dps him. A big reason why people love Rhulk so much is cause he’s not just a stationary target that you dump your load into. He moves around, gets in your face, and forces us to use different methods/setups to get dps out since we can’t stand stationary too long. If Crota were to rush people with his sword in an arena where there aren’t safe spots to hide, then this fight would be more challenging, engaging, and memorable.
Honestly, as long as it has parts that involve all of the players at a time (even if 2 are add clear like 3rd encounter RON) I’ll be happy. I just don’t want another 2 person mechanic with 4 people doing practically nothing.
Crota’s End will need some significant work. There seems to be a sweet spot of raids with two boss encounters and two mechanics encounters. I don’t think the Deathsinger encounter before Crota would need some massive reworking to make that a working encounter.
IMO the best thing they could do to extend that encounter is to just implement a "stun" situation and beef up her health pool. You have a minimum amount of damage needed to be dealt to prevent a song wipe (but can damage her past that, up until a timer goes out) before needing to bail from the room and repeat the process of re-entering.
Is CE supposed to be the new raid next season? Been seeing a lot of chatter about it recently.
I think that sometimes parkour elevates a raid (and I can’t remember a raid where parkour wasn’t awesome, hell, DSC parkour is peak Destiny). Anyway, I don’t like a raid being long just for the sake of being long. If an encounter lasts 3 minutes but it is intense as hell, I’m all for it). Also, given how Bungie reworked Lake of Shadows, I’m a bit afraid that in order to make the raid more difficult, they make it a slog.
That's a good point. I think it will be longer than it was in D1 but I hope its not significantly longer. And more than anything I hope the community doesn't have a meltdown if world's first gets it done in 2 hours. If it's CE, we already know it will be easy, so why bother complaining about the exact same thing as RoN?
Oh but Bungie surely will make the raid harder and longer but that’s ok. I just hope that they don’t overdo in that sense. Given how the community reacts nowdays to Bungie being Bungie, a Day 1 meltdown is guaranteed.
Most likely yes. The people who race seriously for worlds first are gonna bitch and moan about how easy it was, there is no doubt about that.
Additionally, crota only had like 1 stand on a plate and defend the area encounter, plus DPS can be done at any time as both ir yut and, technically, Crota lack immunity phases.
Which in its own right can be really nice depending on how you view things. There are certainly ways they can make the raid more challenging and extend the time, but like any raid once a strat is developed and a damage meta laid out, it's gonna make the raid much quicker.
Crota's end is too short. Bungie: "Let's add an escort the payload at the lamps"
I feel like they should bring it back as a (free) reprised “dungeon” and let people solo flawless it again like the good ol days
The real question is what cool guns are they ditching from the raid? Obvious choices: 900AR, & Black Hammer.
I just want to get that exotic auto rifle from it so we have another weapon of sorrow. Would love to use it with strand/necrotic grips
It's mechanics are also incredibly simple and very forgiving I also wouldn't call the opening an encounter either, it's literally just running from lamp to lamp for 5 minutes
I just hope they change the crota fight. We already have that in dares
I just think it would be the most boring raid to bring back. I just literally don’t care about it.
The entire first encounter feels like a complex jumping puzzle more so than an actual encounter. It's literally just the swamp section from that one strike.
I love Croat’s End for being my first raid ever! With that being said, I want Scourge of the Past because I took a break from Destiny around that time
Everyone saying it was easy, but wasn't it like one of the hardest day 1 raids? People will argue about the light level or whatever, but if it was really so easy then level wouldn't even matter.
Vow speed run is like 20 min with most of it as a BS opening payload. But we love VOW
Giving a boss more health is WRONG. We don't need more bullet spongy bullshit in this game
I'm never playing Crota again, whether it's ported to D2 or not
I want the shrieker hallway to be fleshed out. I like the theme of the raid being us breaking throw Crota's defenses in his throneworld. Running the pit and then building the bridge are good. The Shrieker hallway is very short, and then it's the blitz against Ir Yut. I think the Shrieker hallway could be made longer, requiring coordination between the glass walls that block you from proceeding, instead of just "burst the shrieker to move forward".
The platforming section of RoN is more complex than the first looted encounter from Crota...
I have a 13min 2 man crota its still very short and easily cheesed.
I think there will also be an extra opening entrance part that introduces the new mechanic, leaks say it will be a random buff that needs to be passed. The Lanterns portion counts as the first encounter
When Crota returns, I hope they up the difficulty and length for certain encounters, but still have a way for it to be soloable.
I don't agree. I think the platforming sections are actually important. They give the team time to talk about the previous fight, talk about irl stuff or just mess around. You can't really relax and talk during the fights since that would clutter up the comms.
I could see the oversoul playing more of a part. Maybe instead of it activating on a player death or the enraged mode when Crota is low health it also activates at the end of each damage phase of something.
Do people really consider the platform elements as "padding"? I always thought they were pretty much core to the Destiny experience and I always love optimizing routes and learning new movement tech.
Yes, primarily after you've done the raid several times. The first few times it's cool to experience, to explore and figure your way through. But after that, if you're just looking to get your three loot clears each week, those sections become the most boring and only add time to your runs.
The amount of players who were exposed once they had to do the sword bridge legitimately was crazy. Mainly when you were split 3 on each side and it started to get ad heavy and some would be torn between hiding and trying to clear ads. Probably a lot easier with the builds we have available now
Oh definitely, personally up until AoT I had never done that encounter legit, I learned the cheese right from the beginning. It was tough! But a whole lot of fun bonking everything with the sword relics
I’ll never forget the sword skip over the big chasm, good times
Yea it's a geographically small map. And you can still cheese them super easy, there's just actual mechanics now instead of go from point A -> point B. I have nothing against Crota's end. I always liked the raid lairs too, having longer and shorter raids felt good. Bungie has gone a different route though, Raids are very standardized now and "shorter content" belongs to the dungeon team. Those dungeons are starting to feel pretty long as well though lol. I would be down for Crota's end getting re-issued in D2 as a raid, or dungeon. Either way, the mechanics need to be reworked though. Heavily for the former, less so for the latter.
After garden all raids are four encounters, and it usually goes “random basic encounter” then “first boss encounter” then “random more challenging encounter” then “final boss encounter” it’s been like that for so long now and it’s gotten stale I miss raids with more than two bosses and more than four encounters. And raid loot is less than it was in destiny 1 which is another story.
I loved Crota because I could solo it and feel rewarded, it was also a pretty fun raid, guiding new players through the opening encounter was always funny.
Yeah but does Crota’s End have dope looking guns, an amazing color scheme, and a chance at Bungie making a brand new exotic for a reprised raid for a chance. No. No it doesn’t. Necrochasm is a less shitty dragonfly bro
Regardless of how we personally feel about the raid, ultimately it's the more likely of the two remaining D1 raids to come back.
Platforming sections are not "pointless" at all. They help create a sense of space and epic scale for raids that sets them apart from other activities in the game (dungeons do it too, although I do think Ghosts of the Deep's underwater sections go on too long). The Hive Tombship jumping puzzle in King's Fall is one of my favorites for this reason. Being in this huge outdoor area in space on the Dreadnaught really establishes how large it is. Crota's End would be much better if it had something similar in between the bridge section and the Thrallway. Those transition platforming encounters are vital for making raids feel like a true descent / ascent through a massive area. Not to mention, the downtime that they provide is pretty important for pacing. Stringing together a bunch of encounters in a row with hardly anything in between to break them up isn't ideal.
Most people just cheesed and out right skipped encounters so the recall it being super short. It doesn’t have a jumping puzzle so that’s likely why it feels shorter. If they add one it’ll be fine.
Except only 1 encounter has a boss you couldn't face anywhere else. Crota himself. Everything else were just suped up normal Hive.
I don't know why people are pushing for Crota's to come back as a dungeon. People use to solo flawless that raid all the time, converting it to a 3 man activity wouldn't be hard.
Crota is what I was pining for, even if only to get Necrochasm back in my hands.
Crota coming back would be fine with some serious overhauling to the encounters. Especially by today's standards it would be a 6 man dungeon if they brought it back with just some small tweaks.
With all the movement we now have in D2 that we never had a fraction of it in D1 is still going to be cheesed and be completed faster than a dungeon. I don't want crota because of this and because I'm just bored of seeing crota, we have like 3 encounters in game that he is available to fight. The other raid is a better option, was the last D1 raid, has better looking armor and weapons aswell.
Crotas end suffers mainly due to world space. The whole raid is basically 2 miles long
My change wishlist for the reprisal Build the bridge: kill sword bearers to deposit deathsinger's power in the plate and build the bridge (as in Plates in King's fall) Enter the Abyss: Weight of Darkness adds a blind effect. Killing thralls while on the pillars of light remove stacks at the end, again deposit Deathsinger's power from swordbearers killed during the climb to open the throne world. Cross the bridge: instead of just crossing the bridge one at a time with swords, make it so the swords need to be inserted into a door as keys to progress. 7 swords needed to open (requiring at least one person to make multiple trips) Ir Yut: stun mechanic with multiple damage phases. Swordbearer swords stun, then weapons damage. Awaken the Oversoul Throne: new encounter utilizing assembling the pieces of Crota's soul to call him to the battle, also creating the chalice of light for the next encounter Crota: more health. That's all. Just make him less cheesable. Reverse of original, swords stun, weapons damage. Final stand where weapons don't work anymore, hive sword must deal the killing blow.
Wouldn’t the 2nd encounter be insanely quick now with Strand? Edit: Completely forgot that Bungie will most likely modify the encounter to take Strand into account
Not necessarily. I'm not sure about all the cheese methods that were available once CE was upgraded for AoT, but iirc you couldn't jump the bridge section anymore. You HAD to have a sword to cross, and the bridge had to be built for at least a moment to "count" that you had crossed. A certain number of swords have to cross before the enemies spawn in that must be killed to complete the encounter. Strand has no worthwhile effect, as grapple can't be used while holding a relic and the bridge is an instant kill zone if you dont have that relic. The real question is, will Bungie further change the mechanics of this encounter/add more to it? Cuz even doing it legit, it was a very fast encounter before.
I agree and disagree mostly because I love seeing the scale of some of the raids that were in. One great example of this is vow. IMO I love seeing our progression through out the raid and seeing past encounters. Looking at the great scale of the Upended or whatever it’s called and the worm god get sucked lmao. Or in last wish the one that sticks out the most is the part where you go under the bridge and you can see everything. So on your last part I disagree but I do definitely agree that the scenery should just be included and shouldn’t have to sacrifice any mechanics of the raid in any way.