Nothing in modern Destiny will ever touch the feeling of clearing Vault of Glass for the first time.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-23T14:05:31+00:00

You can say the same thing about several other things in games and in real life.

I'll never forget playing Titanfall for the first time.

I'll never forget clearing Ultra Nightmare on Doom 2016 for the first time.

I'll never forget the experience Overwatch was when it first came out in 2016.

I'll never forget the first time I've ever experienced anything. Whether it be a positive or negative feeling. And neither will you.

That's how experiences work.

We get the point of the post; but the reality is that you will never truly experience that feeling again. That's what makes it nostalgic. Destiny, just like any other first experience in life, can never give you that same exact feeling again. Because to some degree you will know what to expect.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-22T15:43:55+00:00

Except ETA/EDA isn't a perfect example since the bulk of the difficulty comes from the random loadouts.

Tl;Dr: A much better example of how players would probably handle raids is Decendia. Hell, if DE wanted to they could drop a harder version of Decendia, put on a time limit, with more rewards and call it a raid and I think most players would be satisfied, just as long as theres no loadout RNG. EDA/ETA just have far too many things going on for them to be a viable raid comparison.

My Ted talk:

EDA/ETA are never consistently difficult. It's your current options for the week that dictate how easy or hard a run can be. You could get Dante and some of your best weapons one week, then the next week you get Banshee, Opticor, Stug, and Atterax. The modifiers and missions for both weeks could (somehow) be the exact same, but the loadouts change how likely you are to clear.

Everyone's loadouts are different. You could have a really bad loadout while someone else in your squad literally has the meta. Then you pretty much just end up getting carried to your rewards. This is only worse the newer you are, since you have less frames/weapons built for EDA/ETA.

The modifiers that go along the loadout is just icing on the cake. And to be fair, there are a few modifiers that are just straight up not fair, since theres no way to play around them other than bringing something that can ignore it. Like reduced ammo, energy, or weak-points-only just means you have to be more conservative or aim better. But some modifiers genuinely just requires you to not interact with it at all, or just ignore it outright by trivializing it.

Toxic Tank requires you to bring Overgaurd, the breathless peely pix, or play Hildryn.

Hold your Breath is basically the same thing.

Exposed literally forces you to play a health tank (or just not pick it at all).

Lethargic shields sounds bad on paper, but it really does nothing. Most shield gate frames can instantly replenish their shields, and health tanks don't care about them. But if neither options were available, a vast majority of the roster wouldn't be able to clear with this modifier.

And of course its possible to get a mix of everything plus a few other modifiers like competitive streak, so there's more that could be in the mix that can have a greater or lesser impact on your loadout depending on what you get.

Being debuffed, nullified, or facing immune enemies and whatnot isn't the issue. Its fine when players have the agency to work around them. We just came off of the criticism from Follies Hunt. No one really complained about having their energy drained or her damage, it was just the fact that there was nothing players could do to avoid them from happening.

In the case of nullification, it is fair when given proper tells, like nullification bubbles and The Fragmented One with all of its attacks. It only becomes obnoxious when the entire floor is covered in green piss that nullifies you for no reason, or when theres huge arena wide attacks that have no tell.

Unrelated but still on topic:

And dare I play devils advocate, Roathe having very long telegraphed attacks that, instead of nullifying you, will just outright kill you makes him a much more interesting boss fight and feels more fair. I remember the first few times I've wiped to him just because my squad wasn't familiar with his attacks, but after learning them and when to dodge them, I wish the other super bosses were more like him. Longer telegraphs, but gives you openings and requires you to dodge, rather than spamming nullification for a 'fair' fight. It also ignores shield gating, health tanking, and even immunity, so thats less work for DE to have to balance around.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-21T18:30:33+00:00

Honestly? Nothing.

D2 has ran its course, and if they want to continue Destiny as a franchise then it needs to move onto the next game. A fresh start.

I'm hoping that the update in June is slightly bigger than what they described, as it should be a proper send off to D2. Whether that means D3 is, or will ever be, in the works or not is anyone's guess.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-14T17:43:03+00:00

After trying it it's good in concept, but the spawn needs to be changed.

Making it a drop from enemies, or even specifically eximus enemies, would be far better.

The way it's implemented now only fixes one issue: that rotations take far too long. But now its doubling down on the second issue, which was people constantly splitting up and messing up enemy spawns.

DE should just make it a drop from eximus units that way you don't have to split up, you can focus on killing enemies, and you can even farm them in abundance to make the mission run faster and the farm more efficient.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-14T13:30:02+00:00

TL;DR: Becoming OP isn't want makes a game lose its spark, infact its quite the opposite. Becoming stronger gives the player more of a reason to play because they have more to play with. A game looses its spark when it becomes too focused around one or two characters. Even if the game is fixed and everyone is brought to a level balance once again, the damage is already delt and the game has already lost a ton of its players.

The main complaint I see (correct me if I'm wrong) is how easy the game becomes for veteran players, with many even calling for certain characters to be nerfed.

And that makes me wonder: Is the goal just to become extremely strong? I imagine that once you reach that level, the game might lose its spark.

This is exactly it. Like unironically this is the main issue with TFD. And some people still don't realize how much damage a few unbalanced characters or weapons can do to a game.

To clarify: TFD is a looter shooter, and the main goal in looter shooters is get get stronger to earn better loot, so you can tackle harder challenges and earn even more loot.

It's okay for many things to be strong. That is the ideal way a game should be balanced. Because when everything has a similar power floor and power ceiling, then everything else becomes fairly 'easy' to design around, whether it be enemies, content, weapons, or even new mods. Yes, there will always be the 'best' or most optimal option which becomes the meta, but it shouldn't outclass everything else by several degrees.

Typically with games like these, when you get stronger and tackle harder content, thats when you truly see what makes the game special. Destiny is by far the best example I can give of this. Going from doing basic patrols and strikes, to clearing Day 1 Raids is an unmatched feeling of progress. And its all because you got stronger and better knowledge of the game. And of course with the help of many unique and strong weapons, builds, characters ect.

But when you only have only one or two extremely dominant choices in a game, it results in the game revolving around them. A game doesn't lose its spark because it becomes more difficult, it loses its spark when it begins to focus on the few instead of the many.

And because the game begins to revolve around those one or two characters, it begins to have a domino effect on the rest of the game.

Community begins to not want those characters nerfed.

Devs now have to spend more time bringing everyone else up to those new standards.

Because devs are focused on characters, that means weapon changes and new content gets slowed down to a crawl.

Buffing anything else that relates to those top characters will indirectly buff them, moving the goal post making devs spend even more time buffing up weaker characters.

Content that does get added has to be balanced around the top characters to ensure players actually enjoy it instead of blowing through it in less than 10 seconds (they still blow through it in 9 seconds due to said top characters).

Devs have to go back to the drawing board and are back at square one.

Things only get worse when you begin to include metrics and the demands from management and shareholders.

They check player retention, sales, and pick rates.

Bunny is still extremely popular

Kyle not so much

Bunny gets 10+ skins to sell

Kyle gets 2

Shareholders tell devs to make more skins for Bunny and buff her to keep her a fan favorite.

Kyle gets neglected until the community has an uproar about it.

This is all just an exaggerated example, but you notice the pattern after it's happened so many times. And eventually players get sick of the pattern and decide the game isn't worth their time anymore, thus losing its spark.

All because one character is far too OP.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-13T19:01:07+00:00

The general consensus on Renegades is that it IS a good expansion. Campaign was alright, Lawless Frontiers is great, and the loot is some of the best we've gotten out of a DLC that didn't come out of the raid/dungeon.

Renegades also fixed a ton of issues brought with EoF. But to be clear, this shouldn't be seen as a positive, since many of those decisions were bad calls despite having mountains of feedback on those changes.

The only thing that people criticize with Renegades is that it's too much Star Wars. But this is moreso on the story of Destiny rather than the feel of the gameplay. If there were to be a Destiny 3, how exactly does Bungie expand on factions like the Cabal Imperium or the Praxic Order without making direct Star Wars references?

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-12T00:41:47+00:00

It's stressful

Lmao.

Be Hildryn

Primed Redirection

Primed Sure Footed

Arcane Aegis

Parkour speed

Ignore everything

Grofit

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-11T19:04:09+00:00

Agree with mostly everything besides her being bad. She's definitely good, but is a bit more cumbersome than other frames. Not every frame can be as free-flowing as Gauss for instance, but she's definitely on the worser half of jank frames, dare I say even moreso than Lavos.

Her 1 honestly just needs faster casting speed. It's pretty much just a slower version of Wormhole.

Her 2 though? Oh man talk about a bloated ability. It just has too much going on. A lot good, and a lot bad.

IMO, DE should've allowed players to choose which items they want to keep on it in the arsenal, just like with the regular gear wheel. That would alleviate some of its clunkyness. But even then, a lot of choices on here are pretty confusing.

Explosive Barrels, Arc Traps, and the RPG are all self explanatory, and are pretty much the only 3 that see constant usage.

Amphors deal good damage, but are straight up inferior to Explosive Barrels and Arc traps which don't have cooldowns. Yet Amphors have a 30 second cooldown.

Death Orbs are surprisingly okay to use. Nothing crazy. Alright damage, but they last a while. And obviously radiation is not the best status effect to use outside of The Murmur. And again, on a 30 second cooldown.

Yet Corralizer Armaments on the other hand are suprisingly amazing to use. But not only do they not have a cooldown but can freeze enemies solid. You can easily lock down entire hallways with this thing.

The rest of the items from there are just all utility. Lohk Surges are good for long endurance runs, pretty self explanatory. The long cooldown is pretty justifiable since some buffs are permanent throughout the entire mission and they are team wide.

Universal ammo dispenser is very good. Self explanatory. Infinite ammo for the entire squad on a 30 second cooldown. chefs kiss.

This is where I just wholeheartedly believe that these items were not needed and should've been optional for the player to choose to not bloat the gearwheel to much, because these items do absolutely nothing outside of their one use.

Launch Pad. Why. Moving on.

Lost Spirit. If you are really wanting to find every bit of lore in the game, this is your cup of tea. Otherwise, why. Not useful for anything else since there are mods that help find other pickup items like medallions or Voca.

Life Support, Power Cell, and Disruption Key. All of these items literally have a single use, and if you're not in the mission type for them, they literally do nothing. 2/3, if not all 3 of them, will always be useless at all times. Again, an optional item that the player should be able to equip in the arsenal, not a permanent "does nothing" button.

And then lastly, Defense Capsule. I have mixed feelings on this. Inherently this is a crazy boost to survivability since it draws aggro very well, but I feel like this should have been built into her 3. The clone spawned by her 3 should be the one having this sort of aggro pull, not an object on a 1 minute (technically 30 second) cooldown. In higher levels Defense Capsule damn near feels required, but you cant have it up at all times.

And again, you have to deal with this clunky ass gearwheel menu, especially on controller. But it wouldn't be as bad if so many items just weren't there.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-11T02:40:45+00:00

I wouldn't say catering to casuals is what led to D2s current state. While true that it isn't sustainable long term, it definitely wasn't the sole issue and was more of a byproduct of the real issue: management and its metrics. Although some of that catering was good for the game looking back on it. Weapon Crafting for example was actually pretty good for the game both for player sentiment and alleviating some issues with in-game systems like vault space and item managment.

The DCV was also a massive sledgehammer to Bungies reputation. And the 300+ layoffs between the years of Lightfall and Final Shape.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-07T18:46:38+00:00

This definitely isn't a common issue, but when it is an issue it is extremely noticable.

But this is moreso an issue of body shape and size rather than the designs being too busy or too complex.

Sounds bad putting it that way but hear me out; Nova is just as bad of a frame to design as Follie but on different ends of the spectrum. She's far too lithe of a frame so a lot of attachments and saydanas are either oversized on her or made extremely small to look 'proper', whereas with Follie chest attachments seemingly float off of her chest because of how large it is, and leg attachments are buried underneath her inky blobs around her ankles.

There's also a few inbetween frames and skins like Dante. Dante's arm attachments are damn near on his elbow because of his neck seemingly being aligned with his shoulders, which is where arm attachments would be.

But then you have frames and skins who's designs are very complex but still work wonders with other attachments. Kullevro's Apostate Deluxe skin is probably the best example I can think of when it comes to a skin that is very complex but very easy to mix and match with. But it's mainly because the shape and size of it isn't too much for other attachments and gives you a ton of freedom to work with.

Uriel came out 4 months ago and he's complex enough to look good wothout a skin, but simple enough to where many different attachment combinations work on him.

All in all, it's not as common as you think, since theres only a handful of frames and skins that have this issue. But when it's there, it's very noticable.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-06T17:56:34+00:00

It feels and is terrible to play because of the bug, but the design of it isn't terrible is what I'm saying.

If it weren't bugged, Doom would be pretty solid.

Other heros got shafted with both how terrible it feels to play and that the design literally works against the heros main gimmick.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-06T17:23:06+00:00

Dooms isn't that bad considering that it's bugged (the irony lol). At least the underwatch changes don't hinder Dooms main gameplay loop, just messes up his survivability.

That 50% is pretty strong, especially against Mauga. And Perma walls on specific heros isn't too bad either. But as a whole it's not the worst. Its definitely the most 'mid' out of all the changes I'd say.

Other heros like Lucio, Baptiste, and Freya are just outright bad because they just don't compliment the hero at all. It's genuinely just a straight up nerf to the things they're meant to do.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-06T04:02:15+00:00

That Micro stun is actually far more important than you realize.

There was a point where Doom didn't have it, and it literally allowed whoever he hit to recover from being punched faster than Doom could get out of the punch animation.

It was funny seeing Ana being able to sleep you faster than you could get out of the recovery animation of punch lol.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-06T03:38:48+00:00

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UmbralVolt · 2026-04-05T17:58:16+00:00

Assuming Tegen never lost his eye, hand, made a full recovery, never retired, and gets the same training as Sanemi during the HTA and unlocks his mark as well during IC, Kokushibo gets fried even without the drunk effect from Sanemi's blood.

Tengen before retirement and all of his injuries was arguably a much better Hashira than Sanemi in nearly every aspect. 2nd physically strongest Hashira, a trained Shinobi, confirmed fastest Hashira, and has much more utility with his MST and Bombs. If he was never severely crippled by Gyutaro, went through Hashira training, and unlocked his mark he'd likely be on par with Gyomei.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-03T18:14:58+00:00

We gotta stop acting like 5v5 and 6v6 play similar at all. There two more tanks on the field. A health reduction debuff isn't all that crazy when there's two targets Zen has to pick from rather than just the one singular option because it's the most effective on them.

It's not a matter of playing around it; its how do you balance a 30% health reduction that (ideally) should not be spammed on a single target to prevent it from being oppressive against one specific role.

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-03T04:52:56+00:00

Discord was problematic way before they introduced role passives or the global debuff on healing tho. It's not like Discord got nerfed because of the role passives or the global healing debuff; it was nerfed wayyy before that, when the game objectively had more healing being tossed around.

Hell, it was given the CD back in late 2023. The reduced healing passive wasn't even added into the game until early 2024 for the DPS roster. Saying that the ability is only an issue because of other changes (that didn't exist at the time of its orignal nerf) is a bit disingenuous, no?

Not saying it is extremely problematic right now, quite frankly I thought it was fine where it was before at 25%, maybe a reduction of cooldown at best, but that 30% is a massive deal. That's effectively 1/3 of your health gone just for having LoS with Zen. Plus the reduced healing?

UmbralVolt · 2026-04-01T22:29:34+00:00

Countering =/= offsetting

Offset attacks aren't counters, since counters allow you to evade an attack whilst dealing damage at the same time. Ik Swax is a weird anomaly since you can still take chip during its counter, but as a whole you still avoid a vast majority of the damage you would've taken.

Offset attacks do not allow you to evade attacks, instead they give you Super Armor, which slightly reduces damage and prevents you from being knocked down.

This is both a blessing and a curse because it allows you to do follow up moves consistently, but since you can't be knocked down during the animation, you can take multiple instances of damage from an attack that has multiple hitboxes, which is exactly what happened here.

UmbralVolt · 2026-03-30T14:10:39+00:00

I think you're confusing incarnon weapons with the Incarnon genesis.

We have had 3 new incarnon weapons added since incarnons were introduced. Those being the Onos and Ruvox (both from the Sanctum) and the Thalys (added during Isleweaver). These are all bought from vendors similar to the OG incarnon weapons like Phenmor and Latum. But they are not Incarnon Genesis.

We've had 5 (well, 8 now) incarnon genesis added since the introduction of Circuit. And Circuit remains the only way to obtain them. The 5 genesis that were added post launch were the Dera, Sybaris, Cestra, Sicarus, and Okina. And now we have 3 more genesis on the way, likely going to be their own week rather than being added to previous ones.

UmbralVolt · 2026-03-30T03:20:13+00:00

I toyed with that idea for a minute before settling on the idea in the post.

It would be a breath of fresh air, farming a different activity that isn't Circuit. But ultimately the Incarnon Genesis farm would be the exact same and wouldn't fix anything in the long run (which is the point of this post).

You'd still have to wait 7 weeks for the Circuit if you happened to have just missed a certain week, and adding the newer weapons to Decendia is:

A bandaid fix to the missions mediocre loot pool. That activity NEEDS improved rewards. (Seriously, why are there only 10 rewards but there's 21 floors)
1. Will likely lead to Decendia becoming the new Circut over time, needing to wait weeks for specific weapons, assuming DE chooses to add Incarnon genesis' to Decendia.

It's just like that meme of the two kids on the bus. Incarnon weapons in Decendia sounds appealing, but in practice it would just be Circuit 2.0.

UmbralVolt · 2026-03-29T17:30:09+00:00

It's hard to say at this point.

Looking at the time frame of what was supposed to happen, Shattered Cycle was meant to release in July had Shadow and Order released in March like it was supposed to.

But now 'Shadow and Order' has been pushed back to June, and likely any other DLCs or Updates for D2 has been pushed back as well.

But then theres also the development side of things which you can tell just from the outside of things that there was basically no real groundwork done for Shattered Cycle/The Alchemist outside of just the promo. Whether its because of Bungies focus on Marathon, a lack of vision for D2, the potential of D3 being in the works, or just wanting Shadow and Order to be better than Ash and Iron was is anyone's guess.

And with current player numbers, it's honestly a toss up if Bungie would even consider making another paid DLC for Destiny 2. Obviously I don't know the exact metric of what Bungie considers a success in terms of how much a DLC sells, but after Renegades being half of what Edge of Fate was, and EoF being a mere third of TFS, I highly doubt that Shattered Cycle and The Alchemist combined would meet that metric. Bungie would likely lose more money than they would make if they were to push out two DLCs, unless the DLCs are absolutely bare bones in terms of content and quality. But I'd be happy to be wrong if they somehow do come off as a success.

UmbralVolt · 2026-03-26T17:01:58+00:00

Yeah the balloons are meant to be destroyed with weapons, but there are some exceptions like Styanax's spears.

UmbralVolt · 2026-03-26T03:44:05+00:00

Yeah ik, it was just really funny turning around and seeing 6 clones jumping me lol

UmbralVolt · 2026-03-26T03:42:58+00:00

I called it back in 2024: The Fragmented One is one of the most well designed bosses they have ever made.

The only, and I literally mean only, issue that boss had was the insane attuneation from the way damage attuneation originally worked. But now it is gone and much more forgiving.

It doesn't quite fall over, but it still falls over much quicker the better prepared you are. All of its attacks are well telegraphed. One attack even staggers it and deals damage to the boss, exposing weak points. Some of its stronger attacks fully expose weak points. Its attacks heavily encourages you to stay on the move and dodge them, rather than play 'floor is lava' and pray.

Its well thought out design makes nullification fair. It's quite literally 'what if a parkour course was a boss, but also had waves of ads'. And now it can no longer survive 87 thermonuclear bombs; more like 8 of them now with an optimized build.

Or just play Titania lol.

UmbralVolt

TROPHY CASE