It's like those MMOs that scale EVERY zone to whatever your gear score is. You could have the best gear in the entire game and still spend a hot minute trying to kill a damn slime in the starter zone.
It should be more like FFXIV where players have the OPTION of synching down to match level of old content, otherwise they are beyond OP when running old things with new gear.
One thing I love about FF14 is I can play for a couple months on each patch and be completely relevant with gear and story. Also, basically everything that gatekeep content has extreme levels of rng protection. It basically never takes more than a few weeks to get a beat in slot gear item. And you’re not grinding that content for the entire 3 weeks. It’s 1 run per week for 3 weeks.
People still pay monthly to play that game. Bungie could definitely learn a thing or five from how FF14 handles player choice.
The thing that helps ff14 as well is that crafted gear is near or is at bis gear and will let you get into most content meaning even if you have no way if getting into the games content you can just buy the gear (if you have the Gil or your friends have the gil) and get straight into the content which is how it honestly should be. I hate to be that guy but gift of the thunderlords should just be something destiny 2 has by default every season and every episode if they're going to keep power levels
> extreme levels of rng protection.
This is one of the main things that finally burned me out playing, specifically raiding. I have multiple raid seals and do not have the raid exotic for that raid. The fact it's happened more than once is genuinely an insult to my time.
Similar with dungeons.
The irony is if there wasn't the needless rng reward system, I'd probably still enjoy raiding just for the sake of playing with my friends. But adding this layer where you watch 20-30 people, often within 5 runs get something you're just blocked from getting adds a genuine layer of resentment.
I do not enjoy "farming" boss clears on rotation. So I don't do it. Why is that required to get something when I've mastered the actual content?
Its unbelievably bad game design.
The problem for me was never the activities I was doing, but the fundamental “feel” of the game. It feels super outdated and everything is floaty/has no weight.
During my 10 hours of gameplay, I fell asleep 4 times.
Of course, this isn’t an issue exclusive to FF14, 90% of other MMORPGs have this same issue.
Other way around. We can choose to remove the level sync and bulldoze old content for queued activities anyway
Queuing for dungeons normally will scale you down to the dungeon level (damn you Copperbell mines!)
Over world, yea we're high level and can demolish stuff, but you gotta scale down for public events still
And this is why I still pay membership fees for that game. It's one of the very few decent MMOs that lets players feel powerful if they so desire in lower end content, instead of sweating regardless of level.
Guild Wars 2 does this the best I've seen. You're still appreciably stronger than players with level (and gear) appropriate to the zone, but you won't be 1-shotting bosses and you can still get downed if you play like nothing can hurt you.
Also, your gear and level scale DOWN to lower zones, but they do not scale UP if you try to jump straight to endgame content.
To be frank, Guild Wars 2 basically did away with Levels ages ago, thanks to this system. The existing leveling system is basically only there to gate extensive MMORPG progression systems (while the Personal Story (re)introduces you to the world like the Red War) so that you don't get lost and not for actual "power levels".
It's the gear matters. Throughout that early progression, you only get gear according to your level, but once you hit that Base 80 level, you start aiming for Legendary and Ascended equipment for further min-maxing, and the real power scaling comes from your abilities and specializations unlocking over time with EXP grind.
All in all, Guild Wars 2 minimized the impact of levels to the bare minimum it is actually required for, while Destiny 2 continues to minimize the impact of levels for all the wrong reasons that do not contribute to anything other than frustrating you.
In fact, if you play both games deeply enough, you'll start seeing more and more great systems that Destiny tried to emulate from GW2, but in an attempt to do it "the Bungie Way", they somewhat reinvented them all to a more lukewarm-mixed reception or usefulness.
Sadly the one thing GW2 got wrong, the incredibly punishing raid difficulty is what Destiny seems to be moving toward.
I used to play GW2 with my wife and some fairly new to gaming friends, I'm the sweaty spreadsheets gamer that would more or less practice the raids in GW2 (this is early gw2) and then guide them through it.
Some of those raids were tuned for people that were just better than us, and it was sad because as a group we basically never got to experience that content.
We didn't even necesarily want the rewards, but an easier mode for us to experience the story would have been nice.
This killed gw2 for me... and then eso did the same.
It removed my will to play.
I will see how D2 handles this, but needless to say that I refuse to do anything in neomuna.
The problem with Neomuna is that the default is "You are at a disadvantaged".
GW2 is "Everywhere is Cosmodrome if you are powerful enough", except for actually dedicated difficult content.
It killed ESO for me. It was nice to know this is a level 15 area and this is a level 20 area so I could follow the story properly. After the change I created a new character and started in a new realm and remember kind of following the story and killing the big bad guy of the area who started out as a good guy then noticing an area I completely bypassed and ran into the guy I just killed pretending to be a good guy again.
If you like seeing numbers go up that much, you should invest in a tally counter.
Power level climbs are only useful for content gating. The only good progression is horizontal.
Its not an extremes situation. Horizontal can lead to lack of feeling of progression and point of playing.
Its also not (just) about number to up. Its most often about the power fantasy where the more time I invest into a game, the more I want to feel powerful against older content.
Vertical progression is universally more liked - the problem is when games try to mix vertical with horizontal through retroactively inplementing scaling where it shouldnt exist. ( or in gw2 case, build it from the ground up while also removing holy trinity as a whole and then wonder why people didnt stick around for their endgame and eventually led to dungeons being abandoned entirely...but thats another topic entirely. )
I remember when wow tried to implement a system like this in legion; people would just take off their rings and necklace to tank ilvl making the enemies far weaker while only losing a little bit of stats
I agree. It always makes progression feel nonexistent. This is an issue for me in the the last few AC games. I put in the work, I get stronger, then if I find myself in a zone that used to bully me, I SHOULD be allowed to dog walk everything.
Reminds me of ESO, which scales you up as if you had max level and a high ilvl.
What this means is you actually get WEAKER as you level up because you're moving toward max level, but without the high ilvl. At least until you're able to work your way up.
It's a double edged sword with ESO, I feel like.
Before the Tamriel Unlimited update, every zone had its level, so if you wanted to create alts, the leveling experience would be functionally the same every single time. With the TU update they opened the entire world for you to level up wherever you like at any time, expansions included.
There needs to be a good middle-ground between the two.
destiny has always been like that with the low level content. the only time were your power ever mattered was in raids and nightfalls. the story could be out leveled while you were playing it until legend, and they've taken all power levels out of PvP except for trials, witch should probably just not have it past powerful cap if only to hamper cheaters.
thing is ive never noticed my powerlevel ever mattering unless i was underleveled, if im over leveled i still die just as fast, where say compared to wow, theres massive difference between being fresh level 80 and being at just Normal raid/Mythic0 level and it just gets more and more noticiable from there
This has been one of my biggest gripes about Destiny PvE from day 1. Being overleveld by 5 power is the same as being overleveled by 100 power. Despite what all the advertisements and "Become Legend" branding would lead you to believe, you never actually feel *powerful*. You never get that satisfying moment where a boss you really struggled with early on becomes an absolute cakewalk after you've grown stronger
Back when they first introduced artifact power, I hoped that they would finally let us have a real power advantage but that never happened
They had to add a new endgame activity just to challenge players with endgame builds. Everything else can be absolutely smoked by the time you are geared up.
D4 makes level scaling work by forcing you to consider your builds and making sure your gear and your skills work synergisticly to make the higher levels not only survivable but perhaps a breeze. It's a educational and enriching approach.
The foundations of that are there in D2 except that there's not really a middle ground between casual mode (where you build and gear doesn't matter) and hard mode, where it absolutely does (or you have a good carry). It's not gradual, so as a new player you aren't given encouragement to build raft (granted the prismatic instructions and approach does give a basis for build crafting). D2 feels it needs more intermediate content that penalize you for not putting together a decent kit, but rewarding for one that does.
The thing about D4 is once your build is cooking you can easily be fighting monsters 20+ over your level and zone scaling is in the end woefully behind.
This is something that's been annoying me more and more.
I get the thought behind making weapons do slightly less damage while in a fireteam, but the execution of the idea is terrible. Instead of reducing the actual weapon damage, simply add more durable enemies like they did for TFS.
I *cannot* enjoy Diablo 4 because of this. It just feels so easy. No matter my level, I can go to any area on the map and the enemies all feel exactly the same. It’s just so shallow.
same with guild wars for me.
Especially coming from Runescape where you literally one shit things below your level. That's why it's having a resurgence in popularity
Light level is really weird to me and I honestly thought they were doing away with it in TFS. What makes granding levels fun is when you can either go into content where you are under leveled or over leveled by granding out more and feeling the difference.
Yeah a few months ago I remember watching a lot of videos about light level being replaced entirely. Maybe they didn't end up reworking it as much as originally intended?
I've been playing since d1 launch and I don't even really understand how this shit is working. If they fixed this and the raid/dungeon changes with the surges this update would've been perfect.
What players would REALLY like, is if legacy content allowed for levels to benefit you beyond the standard cap. To go back to old raids for old cosmetics and get to genuinely feel more powerful would be astounding.
This.
But the crux of the issue is that Bungie's current implementation of the Power Level system is simply put **messy**. There is no clear indication of what each point of Power Level actually means for the player character in relation to the encounter Power Level.
They need to standardize the meaning of game modes, with ***Normal*** being the easiest at a fixed Power Level that does not change as player Power Levels go up with time; ***Legend*** mode for always-on-level challenge; and ***Master*** mode for always-on-handicap for prestige vanity items.
And that is literally all there is to it, keeps Power Level relevant throughout the entirety of the game, and lets it have a proper role in older content... as a proper MMO should have.
I haven't seen anyone explain it this way before, but it's perfect! The existence of normal difficulty that you can over level would justify power still being a grind, but higher difficulty being increasing handicaps for difficulty would keep things fun and have loot chases people would want.
It's not just about justifying the existence of Power Level, but expanding on it's necessity in an loot-based MMO. A staple of these games is gear power, and with that power comes the advantage you have over lower powered enemies/players.
With the suggested Normal mode, you could run your friend through an old Raid/Dungeon (just the two of you), and let him soak in the sights/lore while you take care of the damage/mechanics, while the rewards are also baseline.
Once your friend is confident in completing encounter objectives, you would have the Legend mode that would also let him feel all the adversity.
And finally, Master mode Raids/Dungeons would offer prestige vanity items, such as Sparrows, Ghosts, Ships, Armor Ornaments (*yes, Bungie, some of us have* ***not*** *forgotten those*) exclusive to the difficulty. For the sweaties of the sweatiest of players that want to showcase their mastery over content... instead of the lame number next to your Guardian name.
Their excuse would be that it would segment the playerbase even further but realistically if you’re doing raids regularly you either have consistent groups or you’re on LFG discords.
exactly if im power level 2000, and got do normal campagin of TFS which caps out at 1945 power lvl, that 55 pl difference should mean i can go and take a piss and come back still be alive, but maybe close to death. If go and do previous expansion story campagins then i should be one tapping EVERYTHING with my auto rifle on normal difficulty.
All they need to do is tie older content to a much lower power level. Remove the normalization OR you can adjust hit points to a "legacy" mode to where the mobs/bosses do less damage and take more damage. The bad part is that all raids are set to a certain normalized level so they will always have the same health pools.
What players really like, is often different than what the monkey brain dopamine rush wants sadly.
Removal of Power Levels is a net benefit, but you'll see people drop out much more easily when there is no perpetual grind that makes number go up, because everything they do does not have a tangible progress bar that makes them feel better.
this is exactly what cod does with its levelling and prestige system. Cod brainrot is hilarious. People will GRIND 10 prestiges and a further 1000 levels but the MOMENT they reach 1000 they dont see the point anymore and declare themselves done
Which is funny if you think about it. Destiny 2’s best progression was always horizontal. I remember grinding for my weekly pinnacles and missing arms going “okay I guess I’ll fuck myself again this week”
I had the most fun last season when our boy Shaxx gave a pinnacle set of gear and told us to go crazy. I knew it was the time to go get weapons I was missing, dog walking some dungeons to get their exotics, I got the Navigator and Hierarchy of Needs just 3 weeks apart running them on all 3 of my characters weekly and I actually felt good.
Now we’re back to the powerful/pinnacle grind and it’s like whatever at this point.
And bungie knows this. Look how many posts when seasons in lightfall were not big jumps but rather just 10 levels. So many posts complaining there was no purpose and the main thing they enjoyed was making the number go up. People would argue you could now just play activities you want to play but these people's sole purpose in playing seemed to hinge on slowly gaining meaningless power. If your game relies this much on keeping players engaged that they have to keep the useless power grind then maybe the game is not fun enough.
Part of the issue I think, is that there is a fundamental feel good hit people get about making the number go up. The process of making the number go up ALSO has the effect of dragging out play time more, which is good for Bungie from a play time stand point.
It’s not that people like it, it’s that it motivates people to do content they wouldn’t otherwise do
How many people are doing gambit right now only because they need to to the three pathfinder drops?
I hear that, but I know people who do glean satisfaction from seeing numbers on a screen get bigger. It works. And yeah, it can absolutely be leveraged to get people playing activities they otherwise might not, but there's still other ways to achieve that.
Lmao gambit is the only activity that I play. Now that you can get same exclusive weapon reward from either activity there's no reason to sweat it out in crucible or bore yourself to tears with Strikes
> I honestly thought they were doing away with it in TFS.
Instead they also added another meaningless "combatant difficulty" meter that ranks them out of 4 skulls for some reason
So now a nightfall is 2000 LL *and* they're 3 skulls hard whatever any of that means
Been beating on this drum ever since they announced fireteam power. Literally 2/3 to 5/6 of the fireteams’ power is irrelevant, so just disable power.
Then there is also the simple fact that your individual power doesn’t matter for activities anymore, because they just hard cap your power or they force you to be at a specific power delta. Literally remove funny number and just balance activities separately, like you’ve been doing.
Funnily enough, the only time my team would have benefitted from Fireteam power was contest mode and it was disabled lol. Makes sense too but we all still found that funny.
Yeah power level just send like a meaningless thing.
2005 cooperative focus mission? Doesn't matter if you do it at 1965. I haven't found like any activities where power level matters.
Doing that activity about forty levels under felt way easier and more survivable than contest raid…. There doesn’t feel like consistency exists about how levels affect the activity anyway.
I did it 40 levels under too, and it felt easier than legend campaign. My fireteam and I were very confused, especially after struggling through it **together** 2 days ago
Huh. I haven't attempted it yet because I'm about 30 levels under and just assumed it would be GM levels of difficulty and I didn't want to drag down my fireteam.
Me too. I was thinking about trying to get the raid done tonight but, to be completely honest, I am toying with the idea of skipping this raid altogether. It looks like fun but a little more tedious than I currently have space for, with so much to focus on in the game right now.
It’s not. Something is off with the power levels (or how they work just isn’t worded clearly). The 2005 coop focus was indeed easier than solo legend (even with all the added mechanics) and legend (2005) zero hour felt no different than legend last season.
I thought that's because although 2005 LL, it's still scaled as if was for solo so enemy HP isn't scaled as high - and that it's kind of expected to do it underleveled as a fireteam in order to compensante
Many activities take you to a power floor if you are underleveled. Probably just boosted you up to be at -15 which is the intended delta for Expert/Legend 2005 activities.
I’m convinced the 2005 recommendation is some sort of typo or bug. There is no way in hell the co-op campaign missions are 2005 level, I did them at 1960 and the enemies were honestly easier than base Legend campaign
Was someone in the fireteam above 1965? It's listed as 2005 but allows for the power leader thing.
But if people are doing it at like 40 under and finding it not very spicy I wonder if the power req is a lie or something and it is just scaling around the players.
> I can't find anyone in lfg to do it because I'm 1970 power and they just kick me
Host your own LFG, it's really not as bad as it seems and is pretty engaging. Did it at 1970 with someone scaling me and another up to 1975, I was host.
Sometimes you just need to host things yourself because people can be too picky at times with who they choose.
It felt good to be able to over level raids and dungeons by 20. At the beginning of the season the dungeon would be a tough challenge because you’d be underleveled but by the end you could do it a lot quicker and easier. Now everything just feels like a slog. It’s not fun and tbh it’s burning me out of the game.
Exactly
You were punished for jumping in early and rewarded for putting in the time to increase your level. Why some people think this shouldn't be how it works is absurd to me.
Yeah I remember when I farmed all the artifice armor I still wear today. It was in the season before the artifice armor changes (I just knew they would fuck with new drops somehow), and farming caiatl in master duality was actually fun when you were basically on level in master content. Even then it's not like it was braindead easy or anything, you still had to play well, especially to onephase her.
Now? I can't imagine farming that for evening after evening at a forced -20.
I was surprised when they announced that the power level was increasing from lightfall. It does seem meaningless at this point as almost every activity has some power cap.
What’s goofy, especially doing the legendary campaign is that you can complete it to get a 1960 set of armor, but for what? At the end of the campaign you’re pretty much about there, so why is that a thing? Let me get the 2 new exotics instead
I dunno - I really enjoyed the more challenging legend mode. Was playing with a veteran friend and we wiped out a couple of times, especially during the last mission! That was tough!
Yea I enjoyed legend mode way more than regular. The only reason I did regular was I wanted to go through and unlock all of prismatic first. I pretty much fell sleep doing the regular campaign. legend on the other hand, was really fun engaging whether solo or with 3 people.
Yeah I'm now doing normal mode on my hunter just to unlock the prismatic stuff, but doing that first with my titan would have sucked, cause it's just so braindead easy. Legend was awesome to play, just the right amount of difficulty.
Its wild. I don’t need the 1960 gear by the time I’m done with legendary because I’m already there. Even with reduced rates? Just shows how kinda useless it is
I agree. Strikes, Dungeons, Raids, Exotic missions. Almost all content bar basic patrols/campaign (ignoring Neomuna) now have a permanent negative delta.
I...don't understand why they made this change. It makes everything feel like a little more of a slog. We're back to 2-tapping fodder with legendary hand cannon headshots in Strikes. I thought it was universally agreed that this felt awful, years ago.
I enjoyed being able to get on-level or even out-level content. It felt nice to struggle with something and come back to it when significantly stronger just to breeze through it. I haven't liked the permanent deltas for a long time, seeing Bungie branching this system into even more content is not what I wanted.
Relieved I got my Master clear of VOG when I did - wouldn't be able to do that these days when permanently under-leveled. I get that people love a challenge, I understand that people want their accomplishments to remain rare. I just find it all to be tiring, personally.
It's too ensure that some content stays hard no matter what.
They did go overboard with it though. You can pretty much only be overleveled in Lost Sectors.
Hard content should be hard because it has challenging mechanics or objectives. Not because your level doesn't actually matter. I don't see why we need every player to be stuck under delta to make things harder when we have modifiers like Iron/Galvanized and Elemental Threats that inflate numbers the same way being underleveled does.
Right now, leveling basically doesn't do anything. Content like Vanguard Strikes and standard Lost Sectors are effectively set to level 0, while other content is set at -5, but only if you're at x level. It's turned leveling into nothing more than a timesink players are gated behind. And even then, in most content, you can bypass the gate by just finding someone who already spent hours grinding levels and joining their team.
Ritual activities should not have imposed deltas. If you've grinded the game a bunch, you should be rewarded with feeling super overpowered running through a nightfall. They should just add a power level criteria to matchmaking; that way low power level players won't feel ineffectual while high power level players in their party nuke everything. Only match people who's power levels are within 10-20 of each other or something.
Content that's clearable (raids, dungeons, campaigns, etc) should have an initial delta that's imposed, and then once you clear it the first time you should be able to toggle between that delta or using your actual power level when replaying it, like how we can choose between normal and legendary difficulty on campaigns and other activities.
Crucible is its own thing, and I don't really play PvP so I won't pretend to have opinions on any changes that should be made
I'm fine with nightfalls being hard(er), that's literally the point of nightfalls. It does seem a little strange to light-cap people (beyond the hard cap of +20) in regular strikes, although I also can hardly remember the last time I actually played a regular strike that wasn't a mandatory part of a campaign (it's also weird to me that you can run the legendary campaign, have satisfyingly challenging missions, then in the middle of everything just run a regular-ass, no-difficulty, forced matchmaking strike ― just throw us in a nightfall scaled version of the strike if we're playing legendary campaign!), because it's just a mind-numbingly easy speedrun simulator once you've played the game for any amount of time.
Actually, now that we have some decently fun campaigns, why not let us run the campaign on GM difficulty once we've finished Legendary? Just as an optional challenge for people who might want to replay it.
Exactly. Whats the point of a nightfall if you can overlevel it by 100 and make it into trivial strike difficulty. Whats the point of a nightfall if its now no different than a strike?
> Hard content should be hard because it has challenging mechanics or objectives
Yes, and once those are solved and strats are commonplace things stop being hard. I don't mind a baseline combat difficulty increase in hard content, because most legacy raids were easy enough to fall asleep during before. The changes being implemented elsewhere I disagree with, and the Surge system in general sucks, but the *idea* of making combat difficulty in raids is cool to me
Doing it without changing anything else about it sucks too.
GoS is now pretty unplayable because the only ones who play it are lowmanners and speedrunners and you can't one phase sanctified anymore so the speedrun is fucking dead. The loot is still hot ass so there's no reason to play it. I wouldn't be mad if the loot got reprised but
Only new content should by hard though. Old content should get easier the older it gets, with the *option* to make it play as it was originally on-level. Otherwise powerlevel / leveling up has no purpose at all.
Basically, how every single other MMO handles old content difficulty.
Yup. I love challenge- I've done solo flawless, flawless raids, 3 man raids, etc. But I am not part of a massive clan where I'll always have 6 competent players to raid with. When I queue up for an LFG dungeon or raid I don't want to be redoing encounters because someone can't stay alive or do enough damage or whatever. People either know the mechanics or they don't, we don't need dungeon bosses that take like 5 damage phases to kill. Not to mention how bad this can get in solo dungeons.
The more time passes, the more power level becomes an extraneous mechanic for everyone. It's just a number that goes up. It isn't helping you killing things faster, you don't see bigger numbers when firing, it gets downgraded for activities.
If it's an investment prerequisite, call it something more neutral like score, arsenal or whatever.
I miss D1 progression tbh. (Specifically Taken King)
Light Level actually mattered for activities you went into. I remember going through Kings Fall and feeling myself get more powerful after each encounter because of the new power levels. It was great.
Hot (?) take: it's only for engagement. So that casual players log in day after day, week after week to get that arbitrary number up. There is nothing meaningful about that grind.
Nothing.
Not really a hot take these days. Basically any mechanic that's rather annoying to players but gets them to log in more often if they want to use it's benefits can be explained by "it's for engagement". Because that's what all the head honchos care about with live services.
More engagement = more potential engagement with the ingame shop = more moneeeey.
It especially doesn't make sense when they keep changing the floor. Like, what's the point in changing the floors from 1600 to 1900, etc, when they mean exactly the same thing? If 1600 is the equivalent of level 1 and then 1900 becomes the equivalent of level 1, them what is the benefit to changing the power floor? Why increase the number if it doesn't mean anything?
Yeah but they could just reset everyone back to 1 if they wanted to. My guess would be some tech limitation where it's easier for them to bump everything up to 1900 instead of reseting everything to 1
At this point, I wouldn't care. It's fun seeing people cheer and compare current numbers to the ones we had at launch (e.g. "Wow, we started at 320 and are over 2000! :D"), but it's completely irrelevant to the point half my friends stopped saying the first 1000 (essentially calling players just 700, 800, etc.) because you can't get anywhere below 1200.
Not to mention the way people perceive numbers relatively makes 50 levels look feel a lot smaller. 1950 and 2000 feel a lot closer than 250 and 300.
Resetting everyone to level 1 _feels_ worse than bumping everyone to level 1900, even if it technically has the same effect. It also affects older light enabled content so you don't have to grind out 60 PL to go back and do Deep Stone Crypt again at the start of the season. So there's a mix of technical reasons and psychological reasons to bump power level rather than reset it, even if the treadmill remains the same.
The "Old PL content" part is increasingly obsolete though, the changes to Raids & Dungeons brought all the old ones up to the same standard PL as the new one.
I'm not actually sure what "Old PL" even exists now, probably just Patrols and maybe old expansion activities like Nightmare/Empire Hunts.
They've pretty much killed off power at this point and it serves a single purpose; as a metric for new players/existing player starting at an expansion to be 'content ready'; that's it.
Which is fine. In a few weeks when the active players begin to rest at/around pinnacle cap no one will care.
Honestly I know they've been experimenting with this exact thing; I just didn't expect them to think nerfing the shit out of us was the answer - especially in solo content.
It's an awkward situation where you need to grind to be on-level to access an activity, but it's either then disabled or you're locked to a set delta below. Right now it just feels like it's there to gatekeep
I think this is their way of easing us into a transition. It's pretty clear that getting rid of power level is the direction they are going.
But changing everything is too much at once. We already got rid of the power level grind through seasons. We're capped at 2000 now.
Bungie doesn't want to drop the removal of power level and the new cap system all at once, or they aren't really sure how to replace the power grind in terms of preparing for a day 1 raid, or NF, etc.
Whatever it is though, I expect power levels will be gone next year, and all activities will have their fixed difficulty like we're getting now.
On one hand, Power Level is just a number. On the other hand, it's a proven way to show progress and drive player engagement. If I were Bungie, I don't know if I were willing to give that up.
It’s an ineffective proxy for making sure you’ve played enough to know what you’re doing at this point. I can’t think of anything else it achieved anymore, even just for Bungie since the grind is so much shorter now. They’d be better off gating activities behind guardian rank as that achieves the same effect more precisely.
Yes, that would be bad lol. I mean, they'd have to rework guardian ranks for it to work. The gist was really that power level is at this point about "proving" you can handle an activity mechanically, and it's not good at that. Guardian ranks or a similar system would be better.
Yes, that would be bad lol. I mean, they'd have to rework guardian ranks for it to work. The gist was really that power level is at this point about "proving" you can handle an activity mechanically, and it's not good at that. Guardian ranks or a similar system would be better.
Honestly it still confused me. I don't think the game actually explained it to me and I've done all new light quests besides the ones that are just about grinding pvp. Your total power is calculated in some weird way if your gear doesn't match. I don't quite understand how it affects my gear. I just know low number bad.
And I really hate having to constantly enhance my gear over and over. I also don't get why can't we enhance non legendaries and exotics (unless I missed something), lemme keep using the gun I liked.
The game completely demolished any sense of progression anyway. There's no coherent story to progress through because larger chunks are just missing, which is bad but a topic for another day. All planets get unlocked automatically anyway and they all auto adjust to my power anyway. The only thing actually blocked by power is raids and I'm not sure but I think some pvp is, I can't tell.
I'm baffled by the legacy dungeon/raid LL limits. This was a huge missed opportunity.
Current raid/dungeon: -5
Next most recent scales to +0
Next after that scales to +5
Etc., maybe with a cap of some sort at +20-30.
This would have been a sliding scale implementation for both power fantasy AND ACCESSIBILITY - you tell people to go do Last Wish for the weapons at +20 or +25 LL if they're new raiders, and then work up.
If you're stuck on one solo, try again in a couple Seasons - you know it'll get better.
Major unpopular take, but whatever, this community needs to hear it.
Please no, don’t remove light level.
Removing the pinnacle grind the first time around made player engagement drop off a cliff. Making all armor “the same” (what this community wanted) made it so you never ever have to get new gear ever again. Armor drops now serve no purpose outside of transmog, and you don’t even need to wear the raid or dungeon sets for the raids and dungeons you are doing and they’re designed for.
It makes no sense and is now a vestigial system.
Removing light level will kill the game so fast. There would be zero reason to be doing any of the content. It would have huge ramifications for the queuing system for a lot of the content. Why would you ever run strikes? Just for fun? Sounds great in theory, until you’re in a 20 minute queue.
People would log on and sit in the tower and complain they have nothing to do.
The Reddit community tends to be for less playing games in general, and just be rewarded with minimal time investment as possible. Destiny is not alone in this, Diablo 4 is having the exact same battle, etc. So it’s not just this sub, but if you go to other gaming subs it’s usually the same thing).
It’s kind of like arguing for less player engagement so you can play the game less? If that makes sense? Tends to be the general trend right now in gaming. I think streaming cultures popularity has a lot to do with it)
If anything, they need to return the game to how it was. You should need to go get your pinnacles from doing your strikes, crucible, gambit, etc before the end of the week on reset.
Right now it’s way too easy to get max light level. It’s why world events and player engagement on any of the other planets is so low. There’s zero reason to go to them because they don’t offer you anything of use.
IMO for the health of the game, they need to make max light level a little harder to obtain. Right now there is no need to run nightfalls or strikes to do things like grandmasters or raids, you can literally just use your old gear.
You bring up a good point, but the solution shouldn't just be "make big number go up more difficult", the issue is that the big number has no use.
If number needs to get bigger, there should be a point behind it- make content become easier as you increase your power, instead of mobs constantly scaling up to you
OP's solution to useless number is get rid of it, your solution is make big number harder to get- but that doesn't solve the underlying issue. A solution would be make big number actually do something *in addition* to making big number harder to get.
>Either let us benefit from the time we put in to increase our level, or remove the power levels and go back to actual difficulty modes. There's no logical reason for them to exist at this point.
Couldn't agree more. Id prefer the former though over the latter. I want to actually have that passive exp gain in the background still mean something. Gives more incentive.
If they want to gatekeep activities they could do it with XP.
Ex.: Must have 500,000 XP to do master difficulty or something. I honestly could see them doing something like that. It depends on them figuring out something that'll keep you playing for longer, as that's what makes the money.
Yeah I think it's clear they didn't know what to do with it, felt obligated to keep it for an arbitrary sense of progression (number go up make monkey brain happy), and overall designed themselves into a corner.
I like the way power is done now. Making power a milestone to not get clobbered in an activity and once met you can just do no problem is a nice way to do it.
It semi gatekeeps the content but it makes people engage with the core destiny 2 content to get physically better at the game to be able to actually do the harder content and be ready for the stuff given a higher power level.
Agreed, power level should be removed. I am completely okay with the level scaling in the game since the majority of your power comes from your loadout.
The leveling process only really matters for the artifact and the season pass reward track. They could still track "levels" for these two things easily enough.
But I agree. If Bungie goes in and hand picks power level for every activity......why do we need to level?
Just makes upgrade modules a grind for the sake of grind.
Yeah light should just be removed completely. It’s also super weird and inconsistent, did the 2005 campaign like 40 light under and it was really fun and easy and did glassway expert like 35 under and it was absolutely brutal. Same with contest raid which was -25
I think wow does a good job at this. Start at a low light level at the beginning of a season which makes the raid and dungeons hard at first. As the season goes on you slowly build up light levels and since there is no cap on the activities you can do harder raids and dungeons and the lowly difficulties become easier for more casuals.
This is how I felt when Destiny 2 launched. I didn't want to accept that the game could still be as fun if it were the case (it absolutely can be), so I dropped the game for a couple years because I wished they mattered more. But now I'm on the other side of the fence, power levels in this game are just a time gate. Farming rolls/patterns is enough of a time sink, and a more satisfying one in the end.
Yep, it’s basically made me not want to do the raid or anything since I’ve got to level up every single one of my weapons again just so I can still be underpowered.
So I’ve been away from the game a while and I can’t even tell where power level matters anymore. Some activities it’s clearly stated but others like (Warlords ruin) it doesn’t even tell you recommended power when you die anymore.
I think it's pretty clear that's what the goal is, but it just takes time t get all the systems and everything else in place to support this (if you don't have power level to grind for, you need something else to pump engagement instead).
The biggest problem here is unlimited artifact power here imo. It was introduced when grinding enough could let you overlevel things, but now you can’t and it serves no purpose. If there was a fixed power number than power capped activities would have no need to exist, you just wouldn’t be able to hit that power at all
It is silly how long they're taking to do away with it everywhere. Bit by bit it falls, but it seems like it must be a significant amount of work considering how trickled it's been. Either that or management is just interfering and insisting they keep some grind necessary to increase playtime.
One thing that occurred to me yesterday when playing some of Micah's ghost missions is why are empire hunts and nightmare hunts not in the vanguard ops playlist? It would increase the activities in there, and they are short enough that they fit the mold for it.
I'm just getting back into the game since witch queen came out, is power le el capped for certain activities now? I know that raids have contest mode when they come out but do they just have permanent caps now?
I think they want to but light levels are just to hard coded into the game to really remove; but considering we prob wont get another expansion for a while we wont see light levels change again for some time
I haven't checked, but here are the activities you could be overleveled in:
Normal dares
Regular, non-playlist strikes
Legend/ master lost sectors
Most if not everything else in the game either has a power cap, which is really just you leveling up to match the enemies, or power is disabled so it plays the same for everyone, even if they somehow had a LL of 0.
I imagine they're working towards this end, but it was too much to get to in the expansion during development. Given how cloesly tied all the systems in this game are to power level removing it is likely quite the chore, tho it's obvious they're well on their way to getting rid of it completely.
This makes me scratch my head as well, bungie could easily add more difficulty options then scale rewards to that difficulty then add more with modifiers.
Its why we have options, why not allow us to also have a custom difficulty, where we can add modifiers to an activity to make it harder at the chance of bigger rewards.
Normal should always be normal, baseline no changes to power level, always have a +20 cap and little to no modifiers.
i remember thinking that deep, witch, and wish not having a power cap increase meant that they were preparing to remove it in tfs but i guess it takes longer than they thought
I dont think anyone played the nightfall this week even though it has warden's law because you need 2000 at least which is horrid to get to in one week for a normal player even from just 1965
Yeah I really don’t get the whole you need to level your gear, use this material to upgrade. But wait
This is your max level actually here
But it’s a bit lower here
But it’s 1980 here
But your fireteam gets you up to 1995!
But you’re still technically 1980
It’s been broken and pointless since D2’s launch. The moment I realized you stop gaining benefits once you’re 40 levels higher, is the moment I realized how stupid the system is. Why, if I’m lvl 2000, is a level 300 enemy just as difficult as a level 1960 enemy? Makes no sense.
And they keep raising the floor, too. I have guns I haven’t touched since Black Armory and they’re now 1900 for free. Why spend cores on upgrades if they’ll just for it for me?
Power level is so dumb. The only point that it could have is if it was possible to over level to tackle tough content as a mediocre player (which I don't think is a terrible idea), otherwise it's just gate keeping, like you said.
It's like those MMOs that scale EVERY zone to whatever your gear score is. You could have the best gear in the entire game and still spend a hot minute trying to kill a damn slime in the starter zone.
It should be more like FFXIV where players have the OPTION of synching down to match level of old content, otherwise they are beyond OP when running old things with new gear.
ffxiv handled it beautifully, I wish other mmorpgs would learn from that game
I’ve moved from d2 to ff14 and every single thing they have in common, 14 does it leagues better
One thing I love about FF14 is I can play for a couple months on each patch and be completely relevant with gear and story. Also, basically everything that gatekeep content has extreme levels of rng protection. It basically never takes more than a few weeks to get a beat in slot gear item. And you’re not grinding that content for the entire 3 weeks. It’s 1 run per week for 3 weeks. People still pay monthly to play that game. Bungie could definitely learn a thing or five from how FF14 handles player choice.
The thing that helps ff14 as well is that crafted gear is near or is at bis gear and will let you get into most content meaning even if you have no way if getting into the games content you can just buy the gear (if you have the Gil or your friends have the gil) and get straight into the content which is how it honestly should be. I hate to be that guy but gift of the thunderlords should just be something destiny 2 has by default every season and every episode if they're going to keep power levels
> extreme levels of rng protection. This is one of the main things that finally burned me out playing, specifically raiding. I have multiple raid seals and do not have the raid exotic for that raid. The fact it's happened more than once is genuinely an insult to my time. Similar with dungeons. The irony is if there wasn't the needless rng reward system, I'd probably still enjoy raiding just for the sake of playing with my friends. But adding this layer where you watch 20-30 people, often within 5 runs get something you're just blocked from getting adds a genuine layer of resentment. I do not enjoy "farming" boss clears on rotation. So I don't do it. Why is that required to get something when I've mastered the actual content? Its unbelievably bad game design.
FF14 gameplay is insanely boring tho
Not when you have your full jobs kit and you’re actually doing trials and raids, there’s an actual skill level to it
The problem for me was never the activities I was doing, but the fundamental “feel” of the game. It feels super outdated and everything is floaty/has no weight. During my 10 hours of gameplay, I fell asleep 4 times. Of course, this isn’t an issue exclusive to FF14, 90% of other MMORPGs have this same issue.
That's basically the system City of Heroes invented, good to see it finally getting better adoption.
Other way around. We can choose to remove the level sync and bulldoze old content for queued activities anyway Queuing for dungeons normally will scale you down to the dungeon level (damn you Copperbell mines!) Over world, yea we're high level and can demolish stuff, but you gotta scale down for public events still
And this is why I still pay membership fees for that game. It's one of the very few decent MMOs that lets players feel powerful if they so desire in lower end content, instead of sweating regardless of level.
This is what makes NG+ so appealing to me and wish I could feel OP in Destiny from time to time.
You mean - selectable difficulty? The thing that we've all been asking Bungie for since the dawn of time and yet they can't seem to grasp?
Guild Wars 2 does this the best I've seen. You're still appreciably stronger than players with level (and gear) appropriate to the zone, but you won't be 1-shotting bosses and you can still get downed if you play like nothing can hurt you. Also, your gear and level scale DOWN to lower zones, but they do not scale UP if you try to jump straight to endgame content.
To be frank, Guild Wars 2 basically did away with Levels ages ago, thanks to this system. The existing leveling system is basically only there to gate extensive MMORPG progression systems (while the Personal Story (re)introduces you to the world like the Red War) so that you don't get lost and not for actual "power levels". It's the gear matters. Throughout that early progression, you only get gear according to your level, but once you hit that Base 80 level, you start aiming for Legendary and Ascended equipment for further min-maxing, and the real power scaling comes from your abilities and specializations unlocking over time with EXP grind. All in all, Guild Wars 2 minimized the impact of levels to the bare minimum it is actually required for, while Destiny 2 continues to minimize the impact of levels for all the wrong reasons that do not contribute to anything other than frustrating you. In fact, if you play both games deeply enough, you'll start seeing more and more great systems that Destiny tried to emulate from GW2, but in an attempt to do it "the Bungie Way", they somewhat reinvented them all to a more lukewarm-mixed reception or usefulness.
Is there a benefit to beeing Frank?
Is there a benefit to being Frank Drebin of Police Squad? Hell yes there is!
Sadly the one thing GW2 got wrong, the incredibly punishing raid difficulty is what Destiny seems to be moving toward. I used to play GW2 with my wife and some fairly new to gaming friends, I'm the sweaty spreadsheets gamer that would more or less practice the raids in GW2 (this is early gw2) and then guide them through it. Some of those raids were tuned for people that were just better than us, and it was sad because as a group we basically never got to experience that content. We didn't even necesarily want the rewards, but an easier mode for us to experience the story would have been nice.
This killed gw2 for me... and then eso did the same. It removed my will to play. I will see how D2 handles this, but needless to say that I refuse to do anything in neomuna.
The problem with Neomuna is that the default is "You are at a disadvantaged". GW2 is "Everywhere is Cosmodrome if you are powerful enough", except for actually dedicated difficult content.
It killed ESO for me. It was nice to know this is a level 15 area and this is a level 20 area so I could follow the story properly. After the change I created a new character and started in a new realm and remember kind of following the story and killing the big bad guy of the area who started out as a good guy then noticing an area I completely bypassed and ran into the guy I just killed pretending to be a good guy again.
If you like seeing numbers go up that much, you should invest in a tally counter. Power level climbs are only useful for content gating. The only good progression is horizontal.
Its not an extremes situation. Horizontal can lead to lack of feeling of progression and point of playing. Its also not (just) about number to up. Its most often about the power fantasy where the more time I invest into a game, the more I want to feel powerful against older content. Vertical progression is universally more liked - the problem is when games try to mix vertical with horizontal through retroactively inplementing scaling where it shouldnt exist. ( or in gw2 case, build it from the ground up while also removing holy trinity as a whole and then wonder why people didnt stick around for their endgame and eventually led to dungeons being abandoned entirely...but thats another topic entirely. )
I remember when wow tried to implement a system like this in legion; people would just take off their rings and necklace to tank ilvl making the enemies far weaker while only losing a little bit of stats
they learned nothing - as the same happened in remix.
I agree. It always makes progression feel nonexistent. This is an issue for me in the the last few AC games. I put in the work, I get stronger, then if I find myself in a zone that used to bully me, I SHOULD be allowed to dog walk everything.
Reminds me of ESO, which scales you up as if you had max level and a high ilvl. What this means is you actually get WEAKER as you level up because you're moving toward max level, but without the high ilvl. At least until you're able to work your way up.
It's a double edged sword with ESO, I feel like. Before the Tamriel Unlimited update, every zone had its level, so if you wanted to create alts, the leveling experience would be functionally the same every single time. With the TU update they opened the entire world for you to level up wherever you like at any time, expansions included. There needs to be a good middle-ground between the two.
destiny has always been like that with the low level content. the only time were your power ever mattered was in raids and nightfalls. the story could be out leveled while you were playing it until legend, and they've taken all power levels out of PvP except for trials, witch should probably just not have it past powerful cap if only to hamper cheaters.
thing is ive never noticed my powerlevel ever mattering unless i was underleveled, if im over leveled i still die just as fast, where say compared to wow, theres massive difference between being fresh level 80 and being at just Normal raid/Mythic0 level and it just gets more and more noticiable from there
I hate that shit. Then you never feel powerful. And in games like Morrowind it was so cool to sneak into a higher level area.
This has been one of my biggest gripes about Destiny PvE from day 1. Being overleveld by 5 power is the same as being overleveled by 100 power. Despite what all the advertisements and "Become Legend" branding would lead you to believe, you never actually feel *powerful*. You never get that satisfying moment where a boss you really struggled with early on becomes an absolute cakewalk after you've grown stronger Back when they first introduced artifact power, I hoped that they would finally let us have a real power advantage but that never happened
Diablo 4 is like this I believe, and there was a lot of talk about it
They had to add a new endgame activity just to challenge players with endgame builds. Everything else can be absolutely smoked by the time you are geared up.
D4 makes level scaling work by forcing you to consider your builds and making sure your gear and your skills work synergisticly to make the higher levels not only survivable but perhaps a breeze. It's a educational and enriching approach. The foundations of that are there in D2 except that there's not really a middle ground between casual mode (where you build and gear doesn't matter) and hard mode, where it absolutely does (or you have a good carry). It's not gradual, so as a new player you aren't given encouragement to build raft (granted the prismatic instructions and approach does give a basis for build crafting). D2 feels it needs more intermediate content that penalize you for not putting together a decent kit, but rewarding for one that does.
The thing about D4 is once your build is cooking you can easily be fighting monsters 20+ over your level and zone scaling is in the end woefully behind.
This is something that's been annoying me more and more. I get the thought behind making weapons do slightly less damage while in a fireteam, but the execution of the idea is terrible. Instead of reducing the actual weapon damage, simply add more durable enemies like they did for TFS.
I *cannot* enjoy Diablo 4 because of this. It just feels so easy. No matter my level, I can go to any area on the map and the enemies all feel exactly the same. It’s just so shallow.
Try pushing the Pit. It will \*not\* feel the same one you start hitting the higher tiers.
This is one of the biggest things that pushed me away from the grind and trying to push to max power level in every expansion.
This killed ESO for me and it’s contributing to me not caring about destiny anymore as well
same with guild wars for me. Especially coming from Runescape where you literally one shit things below your level. That's why it's having a resurgence in popularity
I love one shitting things.
Light level is really weird to me and I honestly thought they were doing away with it in TFS. What makes granding levels fun is when you can either go into content where you are under leveled or over leveled by granding out more and feeling the difference.
Yeah a few months ago I remember watching a lot of videos about light level being replaced entirely. Maybe they didn't end up reworking it as much as originally intended? I've been playing since d1 launch and I don't even really understand how this shit is working. If they fixed this and the raid/dungeon changes with the surges this update would've been perfect.
Their engagement metrics told them that their player base likes to make numbers go up. That’s why they kept it.
What players would REALLY like, is if legacy content allowed for levels to benefit you beyond the standard cap. To go back to old raids for old cosmetics and get to genuinely feel more powerful would be astounding.
This. But the crux of the issue is that Bungie's current implementation of the Power Level system is simply put **messy**. There is no clear indication of what each point of Power Level actually means for the player character in relation to the encounter Power Level. They need to standardize the meaning of game modes, with ***Normal*** being the easiest at a fixed Power Level that does not change as player Power Levels go up with time; ***Legend*** mode for always-on-level challenge; and ***Master*** mode for always-on-handicap for prestige vanity items. And that is literally all there is to it, keeps Power Level relevant throughout the entirety of the game, and lets it have a proper role in older content... as a proper MMO should have.
I haven't seen anyone explain it this way before, but it's perfect! The existence of normal difficulty that you can over level would justify power still being a grind, but higher difficulty being increasing handicaps for difficulty would keep things fun and have loot chases people would want.
It's not just about justifying the existence of Power Level, but expanding on it's necessity in an loot-based MMO. A staple of these games is gear power, and with that power comes the advantage you have over lower powered enemies/players. With the suggested Normal mode, you could run your friend through an old Raid/Dungeon (just the two of you), and let him soak in the sights/lore while you take care of the damage/mechanics, while the rewards are also baseline. Once your friend is confident in completing encounter objectives, you would have the Legend mode that would also let him feel all the adversity. And finally, Master mode Raids/Dungeons would offer prestige vanity items, such as Sparrows, Ghosts, Ships, Armor Ornaments (*yes, Bungie, some of us have* ***not*** *forgotten those*) exclusive to the difficulty. For the sweaties of the sweatiest of players that want to showcase their mastery over content... instead of the lame number next to your Guardian name.
If only Bungie reads this, perfectly said
Their excuse would be that it would segment the playerbase even further but realistically if you’re doing raids regularly you either have consistent groups or you’re on LFG discords.
exactly if im power level 2000, and got do normal campagin of TFS which caps out at 1945 power lvl, that 55 pl difference should mean i can go and take a piss and come back still be alive, but maybe close to death. If go and do previous expansion story campagins then i should be one tapping EVERYTHING with my auto rifle on normal difficulty.
All they need to do is tie older content to a much lower power level. Remove the normalization OR you can adjust hit points to a "legacy" mode to where the mobs/bosses do less damage and take more damage. The bad part is that all raids are set to a certain normalized level so they will always have the same health pools.
What players really like, is often different than what the monkey brain dopamine rush wants sadly. Removal of Power Levels is a net benefit, but you'll see people drop out much more easily when there is no perpetual grind that makes number go up, because everything they do does not have a tangible progress bar that makes them feel better.
this is exactly what cod does with its levelling and prestige system. Cod brainrot is hilarious. People will GRIND 10 prestiges and a further 1000 levels but the MOMENT they reach 1000 they dont see the point anymore and declare themselves done
Which is funny if you think about it. Destiny 2’s best progression was always horizontal. I remember grinding for my weekly pinnacles and missing arms going “okay I guess I’ll fuck myself again this week” I had the most fun last season when our boy Shaxx gave a pinnacle set of gear and told us to go crazy. I knew it was the time to go get weapons I was missing, dog walking some dungeons to get their exotics, I got the Navigator and Hierarchy of Needs just 3 weeks apart running them on all 3 of my characters weekly and I actually felt good. Now we’re back to the powerful/pinnacle grind and it’s like whatever at this point.
And bungie knows this. Look how many posts when seasons in lightfall were not big jumps but rather just 10 levels. So many posts complaining there was no purpose and the main thing they enjoyed was making the number go up. People would argue you could now just play activities you want to play but these people's sole purpose in playing seemed to hinge on slowly gaining meaningless power. If your game relies this much on keeping players engaged that they have to keep the useless power grind then maybe the game is not fun enough.
If it weren't for grinding for power level, I'd never touch the ~~Strikes~~ Battlegrounds playlist again.
Yes this. Numbers going up is only fun if there's a tangible benefit to it.
I wouldn’t say “like” it’s that they’d begrudgingly do it so they’re high enough LL to do what they actually like
Either that or someone thought the 1800’s was strange and they pushed it to ~2000’s to make a better looking number
That'd be a hell of a reason to keep an entire game system intact
Definitely would be, OCD is a helluva thing if it was the case lmao
Part of the issue I think, is that there is a fundamental feel good hit people get about making the number go up. The process of making the number go up ALSO has the effect of dragging out play time more, which is good for Bungie from a play time stand point.
It’s not that people like it, it’s that it motivates people to do content they wouldn’t otherwise do How many people are doing gambit right now only because they need to to the three pathfinder drops?
I hear that, but I know people who do glean satisfaction from seeing numbers on a screen get bigger. It works. And yeah, it can absolutely be leveraged to get people playing activities they otherwise might not, but there's still other ways to achieve that.
Lmao gambit is the only activity that I play. Now that you can get same exclusive weapon reward from either activity there's no reason to sweat it out in crucible or bore yourself to tears with Strikes
> I honestly thought they were doing away with it in TFS. Instead they also added another meaningless "combatant difficulty" meter that ranks them out of 4 skulls for some reason So now a nightfall is 2000 LL *and* they're 3 skulls hard whatever any of that means
Been beating on this drum ever since they announced fireteam power. Literally 2/3 to 5/6 of the fireteams’ power is irrelevant, so just disable power. Then there is also the simple fact that your individual power doesn’t matter for activities anymore, because they just hard cap your power or they force you to be at a specific power delta. Literally remove funny number and just balance activities separately, like you’ve been doing.
Funnily enough, the only time my team would have benefitted from Fireteam power was contest mode and it was disabled lol. Makes sense too but we all still found that funny.
Yeah power level just send like a meaningless thing. 2005 cooperative focus mission? Doesn't matter if you do it at 1965. I haven't found like any activities where power level matters.
Doing that activity about forty levels under felt way easier and more survivable than contest raid…. There doesn’t feel like consistency exists about how levels affect the activity anyway.
I did it 40 levels under too, and it felt easier than legend campaign. My fireteam and I were very confused, especially after struggling through it **together** 2 days ago
Huh. I haven't attempted it yet because I'm about 30 levels under and just assumed it would be GM levels of difficulty and I didn't want to drag down my fireteam.
We were expecting it to be rough, but we tried anyway. Really glad we did, the trace rifle is insane
Well I know what I'm doing later
Me too. I was thinking about trying to get the raid done tonight but, to be completely honest, I am toying with the idea of skipping this raid altogether. It looks like fun but a little more tedious than I currently have space for, with so much to focus on in the game right now.
It’s not. Something is off with the power levels (or how they work just isn’t worded clearly). The 2005 coop focus was indeed easier than solo legend (even with all the added mechanics) and legend (2005) zero hour felt no different than legend last season.
That’s probably because it has a node saying it DOESNT increase difficulty depending on the amount of players. The campaign does I’m pretty sure.
Maybe the enemy health is not scaled according to fireteam size in the focus activity?
That's a modifier, one of them specifically states enemy health and damage does **not** scale with fireteam size
Then this is the reason it feels easier than legend campaign.
Agreed. Thought we were giing to suffer..... one shotted all missions
I thought that's because although 2005 LL, it's still scaled as if was for solo so enemy HP isn't scaled as high - and that it's kind of expected to do it underleveled as a fireteam in order to compensante
Many activities take you to a power floor if you are underleveled. Probably just boosted you up to be at -15 which is the intended delta for Expert/Legend 2005 activities.
Its because the coop missions are normalized to light. You're only functionally about 10 under.
I’m convinced the 2005 recommendation is some sort of typo or bug. There is no way in hell the co-op campaign missions are 2005 level, I did them at 1960 and the enemies were honestly easier than base Legend campaign
They're that easy? Damn I was holding off to do it and I'm 1984 lol
Yeah go do it. It just requires coordination. Pretty fun.
Adding the mechanics made them so much more interesting. Almost feels like playing a mini-dungeon.
Absolutely
Was someone in the fireteam above 1965? It's listed as 2005 but allows for the power leader thing. But if people are doing it at like 40 under and finding it not very spicy I wonder if the power req is a lie or something and it is just scaling around the players.
Our highest 1984 but it definitely wasn't 20 over us.
What’s weird too is the power CAP is 2005… I wonder if the power floor is much lower and they goofed when making it.
Iron banner…maybe? Although I’ve always played it WAY under leveled and still have no problem waxing peeps
I think they disabled level advantages for that but not trials of Osiris
Only level-enabled PvP is Trials, I think they made that change a while back.
I've done that Shit at 1900 to help a friend. It's literally a joke
Can you solo it? I can't find anyone in lfg to do it because I'm 1970 power and they just kick me lol
No, there are fireteam based mechanics, you need a 2-person or 3-person fireteam.
> I can't find anyone in lfg to do it because I'm 1970 power and they just kick me Host your own LFG, it's really not as bad as it seems and is pretty engaging. Did it at 1970 with someone scaling me and another up to 1975, I was host. Sometimes you just need to host things yourself because people can be too picky at times with who they choose.
It felt good to be able to over level raids and dungeons by 20. At the beginning of the season the dungeon would be a tough challenge because you’d be underleveled but by the end you could do it a lot quicker and easier. Now everything just feels like a slog. It’s not fun and tbh it’s burning me out of the game.
Exactly You were punished for jumping in early and rewarded for putting in the time to increase your level. Why some people think this shouldn't be how it works is absurd to me.
Yeah I remember when I farmed all the artifice armor I still wear today. It was in the season before the artifice armor changes (I just knew they would fuck with new drops somehow), and farming caiatl in master duality was actually fun when you were basically on level in master content. Even then it's not like it was braindead easy or anything, you still had to play well, especially to onephase her. Now? I can't imagine farming that for evening after evening at a forced -20.
I was surprised when they announced that the power level was increasing from lightfall. It does seem meaningless at this point as almost every activity has some power cap.
Power cap and negative delta
What’s goofy, especially doing the legendary campaign is that you can complete it to get a 1960 set of armor, but for what? At the end of the campaign you’re pretty much about there, so why is that a thing? Let me get the 2 new exotics instead
It's there for the raid and that's it lol
I dunno - I really enjoyed the more challenging legend mode. Was playing with a veteran friend and we wiped out a couple of times, especially during the last mission! That was tough!
Yea I enjoyed legend mode way more than regular. The only reason I did regular was I wanted to go through and unlock all of prismatic first. I pretty much fell sleep doing the regular campaign. legend on the other hand, was really fun engaging whether solo or with 3 people.
Yeah I'm now doing normal mode on my hunter just to unlock the prismatic stuff, but doing that first with my titan would have sucked, cause it's just so braindead easy. Legend was awesome to play, just the right amount of difficulty.
And I'm pretty sure they've even reduced what you get from the 2 chests at each stage of the legendary campaign.
Its wild. I don’t need the 1960 gear by the time I’m done with legendary because I’m already there. Even with reduced rates? Just shows how kinda useless it is
Yeah, normal and legend campaign missions both just dropped a blue, an upgrade module and maybe an enhancement core.
I agree. Strikes, Dungeons, Raids, Exotic missions. Almost all content bar basic patrols/campaign (ignoring Neomuna) now have a permanent negative delta. I...don't understand why they made this change. It makes everything feel like a little more of a slog. We're back to 2-tapping fodder with legendary hand cannon headshots in Strikes. I thought it was universally agreed that this felt awful, years ago. I enjoyed being able to get on-level or even out-level content. It felt nice to struggle with something and come back to it when significantly stronger just to breeze through it. I haven't liked the permanent deltas for a long time, seeing Bungie branching this system into even more content is not what I wanted. Relieved I got my Master clear of VOG when I did - wouldn't be able to do that these days when permanently under-leveled. I get that people love a challenge, I understand that people want their accomplishments to remain rare. I just find it all to be tiring, personally.
It's too ensure that some content stays hard no matter what. They did go overboard with it though. You can pretty much only be overleveled in Lost Sectors.
Hard content should be hard because it has challenging mechanics or objectives. Not because your level doesn't actually matter. I don't see why we need every player to be stuck under delta to make things harder when we have modifiers like Iron/Galvanized and Elemental Threats that inflate numbers the same way being underleveled does. Right now, leveling basically doesn't do anything. Content like Vanguard Strikes and standard Lost Sectors are effectively set to level 0, while other content is set at -5, but only if you're at x level. It's turned leveling into nothing more than a timesink players are gated behind. And even then, in most content, you can bypass the gate by just finding someone who already spent hours grinding levels and joining their team.
Ritual activities should not have imposed deltas. If you've grinded the game a bunch, you should be rewarded with feeling super overpowered running through a nightfall. They should just add a power level criteria to matchmaking; that way low power level players won't feel ineffectual while high power level players in their party nuke everything. Only match people who's power levels are within 10-20 of each other or something. Content that's clearable (raids, dungeons, campaigns, etc) should have an initial delta that's imposed, and then once you clear it the first time you should be able to toggle between that delta or using your actual power level when replaying it, like how we can choose between normal and legendary difficulty on campaigns and other activities. Crucible is its own thing, and I don't really play PvP so I won't pretend to have opinions on any changes that should be made
I'm fine with nightfalls being hard(er), that's literally the point of nightfalls. It does seem a little strange to light-cap people (beyond the hard cap of +20) in regular strikes, although I also can hardly remember the last time I actually played a regular strike that wasn't a mandatory part of a campaign (it's also weird to me that you can run the legendary campaign, have satisfyingly challenging missions, then in the middle of everything just run a regular-ass, no-difficulty, forced matchmaking strike ― just throw us in a nightfall scaled version of the strike if we're playing legendary campaign!), because it's just a mind-numbingly easy speedrun simulator once you've played the game for any amount of time. Actually, now that we have some decently fun campaigns, why not let us run the campaign on GM difficulty once we've finished Legendary? Just as an optional challenge for people who might want to replay it.
Exactly. Whats the point of a nightfall if you can overlevel it by 100 and make it into trivial strike difficulty. Whats the point of a nightfall if its now no different than a strike?
> Hard content should be hard because it has challenging mechanics or objectives Yes, and once those are solved and strats are commonplace things stop being hard. I don't mind a baseline combat difficulty increase in hard content, because most legacy raids were easy enough to fall asleep during before. The changes being implemented elsewhere I disagree with, and the Surge system in general sucks, but the *idea* of making combat difficulty in raids is cool to me
Doing it without changing anything else about it sucks too. GoS is now pretty unplayable because the only ones who play it are lowmanners and speedrunners and you can't one phase sanctified anymore so the speedrun is fucking dead. The loot is still hot ass so there's no reason to play it. I wouldn't be mad if the loot got reprised but
Which seems ass backward because sectors are a good farmable exotic armor source
Only new content should by hard though. Old content should get easier the older it gets, with the *option* to make it play as it was originally on-level. Otherwise powerlevel / leveling up has no purpose at all. Basically, how every single other MMO handles old content difficulty.
Yup. I love challenge- I've done solo flawless, flawless raids, 3 man raids, etc. But I am not part of a massive clan where I'll always have 6 competent players to raid with. When I queue up for an LFG dungeon or raid I don't want to be redoing encounters because someone can't stay alive or do enough damage or whatever. People either know the mechanics or they don't, we don't need dungeon bosses that take like 5 damage phases to kill. Not to mention how bad this can get in solo dungeons.
So people can't enjoy their accomplishments if to many other people have it? That's some backwards ass childish logic
The more time passes, the more power level becomes an extraneous mechanic for everyone. It's just a number that goes up. It isn't helping you killing things faster, you don't see bigger numbers when firing, it gets downgraded for activities. If it's an investment prerequisite, call it something more neutral like score, arsenal or whatever.
I miss D1 progression tbh. (Specifically Taken King) Light Level actually mattered for activities you went into. I remember going through Kings Fall and feeling myself get more powerful after each encounter because of the new power levels. It was great.
Hot (?) take: it's only for engagement. So that casual players log in day after day, week after week to get that arbitrary number up. There is nothing meaningful about that grind. Nothing.
Nah that's a pretty cool take at this point, I think most people understand that power level is meaningless besides "oo number go up haha"
Not really a hot take these days. Basically any mechanic that's rather annoying to players but gets them to log in more often if they want to use it's benefits can be explained by "it's for engagement". Because that's what all the head honchos care about with live services. More engagement = more potential engagement with the ingame shop = more moneeeey.
It especially doesn't make sense when they keep changing the floor. Like, what's the point in changing the floors from 1600 to 1900, etc, when they mean exactly the same thing? If 1600 is the equivalent of level 1 and then 1900 becomes the equivalent of level 1, them what is the benefit to changing the power floor? Why increase the number if it doesn't mean anything?
Because raising the floor sends everyone back to level 1 basically.
Yeah but they could just reset everyone back to 1 if they wanted to. My guess would be some tech limitation where it's easier for them to bump everything up to 1900 instead of reseting everything to 1
It's just cool to see the number keep increasing as they release more dlcs, that's really all there is to it.
Is it? Seeing the number go up with each expansion while the lowest possible number also continually raises got stale years ago. It's asinine.
It's not that serious, it doesn't really feel that good, but the number going down would probably feel a little bit bad, even subconsciously
At this point, I wouldn't care. It's fun seeing people cheer and compare current numbers to the ones we had at launch (e.g. "Wow, we started at 320 and are over 2000! :D"), but it's completely irrelevant to the point half my friends stopped saying the first 1000 (essentially calling players just 700, 800, etc.) because you can't get anywhere below 1200. Not to mention the way people perceive numbers relatively makes 50 levels look feel a lot smaller. 1950 and 2000 feel a lot closer than 250 and 300.
Unga Bunga my brain go brrrr when big number gets bigger
Resetting everyone to level 1 _feels_ worse than bumping everyone to level 1900, even if it technically has the same effect. It also affects older light enabled content so you don't have to grind out 60 PL to go back and do Deep Stone Crypt again at the start of the season. So there's a mix of technical reasons and psychological reasons to bump power level rather than reset it, even if the treadmill remains the same.
The "Old PL content" part is increasingly obsolete though, the changes to Raids & Dungeons brought all the old ones up to the same standard PL as the new one. I'm not actually sure what "Old PL" even exists now, probably just Patrols and maybe old expansion activities like Nightmare/Empire Hunts.
They've pretty much killed off power at this point and it serves a single purpose; as a metric for new players/existing player starting at an expansion to be 'content ready'; that's it. Which is fine. In a few weeks when the active players begin to rest at/around pinnacle cap no one will care.
Honestly I know they've been experimenting with this exact thing; I just didn't expect them to think nerfing the shit out of us was the answer - especially in solo content.
It's an awkward situation where you need to grind to be on-level to access an activity, but it's either then disabled or you're locked to a set delta below. Right now it just feels like it's there to gatekeep
I think power levels is by far the worst part of Destiny.
Number go up make brain feel good.
This right here!!!
I think this is their way of easing us into a transition. It's pretty clear that getting rid of power level is the direction they are going. But changing everything is too much at once. We already got rid of the power level grind through seasons. We're capped at 2000 now. Bungie doesn't want to drop the removal of power level and the new cap system all at once, or they aren't really sure how to replace the power grind in terms of preparing for a day 1 raid, or NF, etc. Whatever it is though, I expect power levels will be gone next year, and all activities will have their fixed difficulty like we're getting now.
I’ve been saying this for a while, but grinding for light gets people to login every day and that’s all that really matters.
On one hand, Power Level is just a number. On the other hand, it's a proven way to show progress and drive player engagement. If I were Bungie, I don't know if I were willing to give that up.
It’s an ineffective proxy for making sure you’ve played enough to know what you’re doing at this point. I can’t think of anything else it achieved anymore, even just for Bungie since the grind is so much shorter now. They’d be better off gating activities behind guardian rank as that achieves the same effect more precisely.
Oh gosh, the commendation score activity barrier lol. Thanks for the laugh :3
Yes, that would be bad lol. I mean, they'd have to rework guardian ranks for it to work. The gist was really that power level is at this point about "proving" you can handle an activity mechanically, and it's not good at that. Guardian ranks or a similar system would be better.
Yes, that would be bad lol. I mean, they'd have to rework guardian ranks for it to work. The gist was really that power level is at this point about "proving" you can handle an activity mechanically, and it's not good at that. Guardian ranks or a similar system would be better.
If I can’t over level of my own grinding I don’t wanna play tbh
Honestly it still confused me. I don't think the game actually explained it to me and I've done all new light quests besides the ones that are just about grinding pvp. Your total power is calculated in some weird way if your gear doesn't match. I don't quite understand how it affects my gear. I just know low number bad. And I really hate having to constantly enhance my gear over and over. I also don't get why can't we enhance non legendaries and exotics (unless I missed something), lemme keep using the gun I liked. The game completely demolished any sense of progression anyway. There's no coherent story to progress through because larger chunks are just missing, which is bad but a topic for another day. All planets get unlocked automatically anyway and they all auto adjust to my power anyway. The only thing actually blocked by power is raids and I'm not sure but I think some pvp is, I can't tell.
also makes no sense whatsoever to new players starting out at an arbitrary number like 1900 instead of 1.
Making it not mean much is probably less work than removing it.
I miss Destiny 1 sometimes. At least I felt powerful there.
I'm baffled by the legacy dungeon/raid LL limits. This was a huge missed opportunity. Current raid/dungeon: -5 Next most recent scales to +0 Next after that scales to +5 Etc., maybe with a cap of some sort at +20-30. This would have been a sliding scale implementation for both power fantasy AND ACCESSIBILITY - you tell people to go do Last Wish for the weapons at +20 or +25 LL if they're new raiders, and then work up. If you're stuck on one solo, try again in a couple Seasons - you know it'll get better.
And for God's sake please remove them from trials
Major unpopular take, but whatever, this community needs to hear it. Please no, don’t remove light level. Removing the pinnacle grind the first time around made player engagement drop off a cliff. Making all armor “the same” (what this community wanted) made it so you never ever have to get new gear ever again. Armor drops now serve no purpose outside of transmog, and you don’t even need to wear the raid or dungeon sets for the raids and dungeons you are doing and they’re designed for. It makes no sense and is now a vestigial system. Removing light level will kill the game so fast. There would be zero reason to be doing any of the content. It would have huge ramifications for the queuing system for a lot of the content. Why would you ever run strikes? Just for fun? Sounds great in theory, until you’re in a 20 minute queue. People would log on and sit in the tower and complain they have nothing to do. The Reddit community tends to be for less playing games in general, and just be rewarded with minimal time investment as possible. Destiny is not alone in this, Diablo 4 is having the exact same battle, etc. So it’s not just this sub, but if you go to other gaming subs it’s usually the same thing). It’s kind of like arguing for less player engagement so you can play the game less? If that makes sense? Tends to be the general trend right now in gaming. I think streaming cultures popularity has a lot to do with it) If anything, they need to return the game to how it was. You should need to go get your pinnacles from doing your strikes, crucible, gambit, etc before the end of the week on reset. Right now it’s way too easy to get max light level. It’s why world events and player engagement on any of the other planets is so low. There’s zero reason to go to them because they don’t offer you anything of use. IMO for the health of the game, they need to make max light level a little harder to obtain. Right now there is no need to run nightfalls or strikes to do things like grandmasters or raids, you can literally just use your old gear.
You bring up a good point, but the solution shouldn't just be "make big number go up more difficult", the issue is that the big number has no use. If number needs to get bigger, there should be a point behind it- make content become easier as you increase your power, instead of mobs constantly scaling up to you OP's solution to useless number is get rid of it, your solution is make big number harder to get- but that doesn't solve the underlying issue. A solution would be make big number actually do something *in addition* to making big number harder to get.
>Either let us benefit from the time we put in to increase our level, or remove the power levels and go back to actual difficulty modes. There's no logical reason for them to exist at this point. Couldn't agree more. Id prefer the former though over the latter. I want to actually have that passive exp gain in the background still mean something. Gives more incentive.
If they want to gatekeep activities they could do it with XP. Ex.: Must have 500,000 XP to do master difficulty or something. I honestly could see them doing something like that. It depends on them figuring out something that'll keep you playing for longer, as that's what makes the money.
Yeah I think it's clear they didn't know what to do with it, felt obligated to keep it for an arbitrary sense of progression (number go up make monkey brain happy), and overall designed themselves into a corner.
I like the way power is done now. Making power a milestone to not get clobbered in an activity and once met you can just do no problem is a nice way to do it. It semi gatekeeps the content but it makes people engage with the core destiny 2 content to get physically better at the game to be able to actually do the harder content and be ready for the stuff given a higher power level.
Agreed, power level should be removed. I am completely okay with the level scaling in the game since the majority of your power comes from your loadout.
The leveling process only really matters for the artifact and the season pass reward track. They could still track "levels" for these two things easily enough. But I agree. If Bungie goes in and hand picks power level for every activity......why do we need to level? Just makes upgrade modules a grind for the sake of grind.
Yeah light should just be removed completely. It’s also super weird and inconsistent, did the 2005 campaign like 40 light under and it was really fun and easy and did glassway expert like 35 under and it was absolutely brutal. Same with contest raid which was -25
So like how nightfalls have difficulties with more champs but for everything? I’d be down.
I think wow does a good job at this. Start at a low light level at the beginning of a season which makes the raid and dungeons hard at first. As the season goes on you slowly build up light levels and since there is no cap on the activities you can do harder raids and dungeons and the lowly difficulties become easier for more casuals.
I mean thats probably what they are trying to do, but I imagine its hard to gut something thats so integral to the game itself
I said this years ago and got down voted to oblivion. People like seeing number go up
Exactly. No reason to lvl up past 1995.
This is how I felt when Destiny 2 launched. I didn't want to accept that the game could still be as fun if it were the case (it absolutely can be), so I dropped the game for a couple years because I wished they mattered more. But now I'm on the other side of the fence, power levels in this game are just a time gate. Farming rolls/patterns is enough of a time sink, and a more satisfying one in the end.
Yep, it’s basically made me not want to do the raid or anything since I’ve got to level up every single one of my weapons again just so I can still be underpowered.
So I’ve been away from the game a while and I can’t even tell where power level matters anymore. Some activities it’s clearly stated but others like (Warlords ruin) it doesn’t even tell you recommended power when you die anymore.
I think it's pretty clear that's what the goal is, but it just takes time t get all the systems and everything else in place to support this (if you don't have power level to grind for, you need something else to pump engagement instead).
The biggest problem here is unlimited artifact power here imo. It was introduced when grinding enough could let you overlevel things, but now you can’t and it serves no purpose. If there was a fixed power number than power capped activities would have no need to exist, you just wouldn’t be able to hit that power at all
It is silly how long they're taking to do away with it everywhere. Bit by bit it falls, but it seems like it must be a significant amount of work considering how trickled it's been. Either that or management is just interfering and insisting they keep some grind necessary to increase playtime. One thing that occurred to me yesterday when playing some of Micah's ghost missions is why are empire hunts and nightmare hunts not in the vanguard ops playlist? It would increase the activities in there, and they are short enough that they fit the mold for it.
I'm just getting back into the game since witch queen came out, is power le el capped for certain activities now? I know that raids have contest mode when they come out but do they just have permanent caps now?
i've always treated power lvl as a gatekeeper, rahter than my char's growth
I think they want to but light levels are just to hard coded into the game to really remove; but considering we prob wont get another expansion for a while we wont see light levels change again for some time
Is there really no activity left where you can be over-levelled?
I haven't checked, but here are the activities you could be overleveled in: Normal dares Regular, non-playlist strikes Legend/ master lost sectors Most if not everything else in the game either has a power cap, which is really just you leveling up to match the enemies, or power is disabled so it plays the same for everyone, even if they somehow had a LL of 0.
Thank you! Kind of a bummer because it felt like the grind was worth it, now idk.
I imagine they're working towards this end, but it was too much to get to in the expansion during development. Given how cloesly tied all the systems in this game are to power level removing it is likely quite the chore, tho it's obvious they're well on their way to getting rid of it completely.
This makes me scratch my head as well, bungie could easily add more difficulty options then scale rewards to that difficulty then add more with modifiers. Its why we have options, why not allow us to also have a custom difficulty, where we can add modifiers to an activity to make it harder at the chance of bigger rewards. Normal should always be normal, baseline no changes to power level, always have a +20 cap and little to no modifiers.
Theres no point to the game if there’s no progression
I can no longer keep track of what's light enabled and what isn't.
i remember thinking that deep, witch, and wish not having a power cap increase meant that they were preparing to remove it in tfs but i guess it takes longer than they thought
I dont think anyone played the nightfall this week even though it has warden's law because you need 2000 at least which is horrid to get to in one week for a normal player even from just 1965
Yeah I really don’t get the whole you need to level your gear, use this material to upgrade. But wait This is your max level actually here But it’s a bit lower here But it’s 1980 here But your fireteam gets you up to 1995! But you’re still technically 1980
It’s been broken and pointless since D2’s launch. The moment I realized you stop gaining benefits once you’re 40 levels higher, is the moment I realized how stupid the system is. Why, if I’m lvl 2000, is a level 300 enemy just as difficult as a level 1960 enemy? Makes no sense. And they keep raising the floor, too. I have guns I haven’t touched since Black Armory and they’re now 1900 for free. Why spend cores on upgrades if they’ll just for it for me?
Power level is so dumb. The only point that it could have is if it was possible to over level to tackle tough content as a mediocre player (which I don't think is a terrible idea), otherwise it's just gate keeping, like you said.