Endgame Content is Artificially Difficult

[Fervent_Griffin]

I've been working on completing Grandmaster Nightfalls for a while now. I enjoy a good challenge, and these appear to be the hardest part of Destiny 2 as a whole considering that only 6% of players have actually completed a single Grandmaster nightfall. Despite this, I find them to be the most infuriating experiences to players all throughout the community due to their insanely unforgiving nature in all of the wrong aspects of the game.

More often than not, glitches, unintentional affects of design, and CHAMPIONS inevitably result in a fireteam wiping more often than the enemies that are firing countless grenades at them. I have been wiped more times by a champion refusing to die to a finisher than a creature killing me by firing rounds at me from near or far. In the last nightfall I tried to complete, a teammate of mine randomly dies in his bubble due to a grenade being stuck on the surface, which, subsequently destroyed his bubble and resulted in our wipe.

Every aspect of a Grandmaster's difficulty feels as though it breaks the game rather than improving it. Champions are given so much health that they glitch out and refuse to stun sometimes, especially overloads. In addition, enemies don't change their tactics or gain new mechanics that change the way you approach them. They, at most, have shields, and occasionally, have a strange outlandish modifier than also breaks the game and ruins the experience for players.

Essentially, the difficulty seems to come from a poorly thought out design philosophy that follows the lines of "if it has a bigger health pool and hits harder, then it's gonna be more challenging." While this is true, it doesn't take into consideration the health of the sandbox and the lack of fun the players will have while facing these "challenging" enemies. Just take a look at Dark Souls.

In every souls game, the difficulty is set, but there are enemies that are still challenging even for pros that new players can beat. This of course is due to Dark Souls allowance for time so players can choose when to approach a boss. However, the bosses move-sets are usually what increase their difficulty in addiction to their increased health-pool and damage output. In essence, the challenge is less about health because players can increase their damage and health significantly before facing any challenge, but he boss remains challenging due to the intentional design of its move-sets and fighting style

Destiny 2 is a great game, and I have spent more than enough hours in game to show how much I've supported Bungie and their endeavors. Despite this, I can't say their Grandmasters are enjoyable because they simply don't become more challenging in an engaging and healthy manner for the game. I hop Bungie considers completely revamping the mechanics involved in these engagements, because I really like challenges, but these are challenges, their annoying, drawn-out, unforgiving, and most importantly, an un-fun experience for players. If games that came out years ago can introduce unique mechanics to increase difficulty whilst maintaining and enjoyable experience, than Bungie should learn from it's predecessors a bit.

[jimmy]

Publicado originalmente por Emurinus:

My only beef with endgame content is that champions are a terrible system in execution and Bungie refuses to actually make them fun or engaging.

they're just lazy in other words

[jimmy]

Publicado originalmente por Electroshock:

Sometimes you get overload champs instantly recovering from being stunned

other times they literally dont stun

[>//The_FALCON]

gms is supposed to be the ultimate challenge for those who think master nightfalls are easy

too hard for you? dont play it, bc you're not the target audience.

[76561198930162184]

"fair endgame" and "unique enemy mechanics" aren't about destiny, or any MMO for that matter.

[fwwm]

"artificial difficulty" is one of the reddit buzz words/phrases that means absolutely nothing and completely falls apart the moment you look at it

[Oku]

Did you just copy/paste this from one of the D2 subreddit's armchair dev temper tantrums where people complain that they have to actually play the game to get the best possible gear?

[CTRL+ALT+DEFEAT]

I've cleared many GMs and I don't entirely disagree with the OP. I don't think Bungie is spending a substantial amount of time balancing Nightfalls for GM difficulty. The recommended power cap is simply set to a point where it ensures the majority of people doing them will be substantially under-leveled for it and throw in additional champions and other modifiers, but I don't get the impression they are at all balanced around this higher tier of difficulty. I also agree there are numerous bugs that result in wipes and nothing is more irritating than getting to the final damage phase of the final boss and having it teleport due to netcode and insta kill you or some Champ refusing to be stunned, etc, etc. Its one thing to fail because you just didn't play well, but a whole other thing when it was essentially out of your control and this game has countless bugs. I've literally died from some random piece of collision on a platform just insta-killing me for walking across it or landing on it.

Some GMs are fun to do, while others are a chore and a good portion of the community looks for ways cheese the harder ones to get a clear on it and that has zero to do with player skill nor how Bungie intended them to be completed.

Many of the GMs suffer in the boss arena design for the most part as many don't give you an adequate means to get cover so Wells and Bubbles become the only way to get any amount of security.

The gear obtained, while technically better, isn't substantially better over a non-adept version of something.

I don't think GMs are bad, but they could use some better balancing and tuning. Imagine in Witch Queen if there is a strike that gets a GM difficulty that will include Hive Guardians and Champions? *shutter*

[Emurinus]

Publicado originalmente por Тӫмь Q:

Publicado originalmente por Emurinus:

My only beef with endgame content is that champions are a terrible system in execution and Bungie refuses to actually make them fun or engaging.

they're just lazy in other words

Either that or they're too busy patching Telesto every other week to bother.

[jimmy]

Publicado originalmente por Emurinus:

Publicado originalmente por Тӫмь Q:

they're just lazy in other words

Either that or they're too busy patching Telesto every other week to bother.

or disabling trials for no reason

[LMIB]

I've only done a couple of GMs, but mainly farming the crap out of Arms Dealer GM a long time back cus it's one of the "easier" ones and had 2x NF drops for the Adept Pali/Shadow Price. GMs are just too much stress, and hard finding a group on LFG that doesn't quit in 1 wipe. Personally never encountered any of the bugs you mentioned, but it is meant to be the hardest form of PvE content where builds/loadouts really matter. Also I'm not sure how else you would design GMs. I think it's at the right difficulty that only dedicated teams would be able to clear. For most players who don't care about Adept weapons, just farm Master when 2x drops are on. Way less stressful, still fun and lots of drops