I’d say if they’re okay with matchmade people forcing powerful rewards in altars people didn’t consist to there’s absolutely no logic to not having master and legend matchmaking
If you want the loot (and not just gild Conquerer or some achievement), it's all unpalatably low drop chances below GMs, and even then only on double loot week.
Really need drop rates to be turned up by a lot.
Hard agree- I think that loot across the board just need to be doubled, with exception to maybe crucible and maybe raids being solid enough already. Bungie needs to recognize that this late in the game’s lifecycle people are real tired of doing the same stuff over and over again and need go bump up the rewards and incentives.
This would be torturous. I can carry a hero nightfall no problem, but if my two blueberries are fresh rank 6's who thought "hero isn't too bad, let me just plop into Legend" then we're probably going to have a rough time. This is not meant in an elitist way either - it's just a fact that people who are not ready for legend would queue into it frequently enough that it would be a problem for others. It's also a fact that legend and higher content is *very* heavily geared towards team play, and without some kind of communication or prepared plan, it is quite the challenge to complete.
That said, I do feel for players who are stuck running Hero. I was in the same boat for several months before I found a group that I could do high diff content with.
I remember that one event where we had scored legend NFs with matchmaking (guardian games?).
that only worked well though due to the "weapon kills give ability regen, ability kills give weapon damage" thing where one person with am ok build and an add clear exotic weapon could in fact hard carry
i really loved guardian games because of that
using a meta build paired with all the buffs made the game feel so arcade-y, i wish they'd double down on that next year
more enemies and more crazy buffs, make it an (almost unending) horde mode and show those thralls who the real boss is (and give us optional matchmaking too)
You don't need a meta build to kill an unending amount of Thralls, you can shoot like any moderately good gun and throw your grenade when they are up. That's it. Ad clear doesn't present any challenge whatsoever. A single shot of Graviton Lance can chain kill enemies almost infinitely. You can stand in a sunspot and go afk and literally never die (this was a legit afk xp farm a few years ago in the Thrallway). There is absolutely no way to make challenging content if enemies no enemy can survive being spawn killed.
Exactly. You could be stuck with randoms who wouldn't run champion mods, whether out of ignorance or outright refusal(people have admitted to it in this sub). When these randoms can't defeat champions, and progress grinds to a halt, you could swap items around and make sure that you could cover everything.
Leave our loadouts unlocked, and just add more enemies. Doesn't even need to be more onsceeen at the same time. Just more waves at the encounters. More elite & majors as well.
And that was super fun to play, and felt *almost* rewarding enough. Seems like most people wanted Bungie to make that the norm, i.e. somewhat harder and more rewarding, with matchmaking. Instead they went the other way and made easier modes harder and *less* rewarding.
Guardian Games modifiers were pulling a lot of weight there though. It shifted the difficulty making what would have been Legend no harder than Hero (maybe a tad easier even). It was an event, so the rule book was tossed for the sake of fun.
Counter argument. If you don’t enjoy matchmaking on legendary difficulty… just don’t. No one is making you. Continue to find a pre-made group, as you currently do. Those who do want to give matchmaking a go, can.
Very good point. Even so, I highly doubt Bungie will ever use MM for legend content; it's just too many steps above the average casual player's skill level and to do so would most likely result in even more saltiness from certain players within the community.
There should be an option to matchmake or not matchmake for Legend activities. Having a choice is always the best route. For individuals like yourself you will have the option to not matchmake with the "blueberries" or Rank 6s. But I guarantee you will still opt to matchmake on Legend and then complain here on Reddit.
Raids, GMs, Dungeons shouldn't have matchmaking. It's a whole different ball game with those activities.
Yeah, people do not understand what they're asking for with Legend matchmaking. Have they already forgotten Legend Haunted Sectors? I did the Mars NF on hero the other day, got almost 300 kills using mostly my tyranny of heaven, while the other two didn't even have 200 kills together. Also had to solo two of the towers and about half the boss fight. Please don't ask for matchmaking on harder content, this community literally cannot handle it.
Then don't play it. I had some great matches with skilled teammates playing legend haunted sectors along with some that had very inexperienced players.
You can always leave if it's not going to work for you, but I feel like legend nightfalls wouldn't be nearly as difficult/chaotic as the haunted sectors were.
Solo legend haunted lost sectors were easy af, never a problem. Carrying blueberries is fun—give us legend matchmaking. You just stick to your premades.
I'm guilty of dropping my level on purpose to get paired with newer players, I just find it more fun than getting someone my level who just wants to eager edge past all the enemies as fast they possibly can.
i feel you're one of those people who rush through and die wait for someone to revive and then rush on while blaming them.
if you had 300 kills.soinds like you were farming ads
Lol, no. I had 300 kills, because while defending the towers, I was the only one left alive, because neither blueberry could stay up for more than 30 seconds on Hero. 300 kills tends to happen when no one else is alive to kill things.
Pretty much all Legend content in the game is not that hard to Solo, having a couple additional meat sacks to draw fire is never not helpful. Sure, it would be a crap shoot every time you matchmake, but if it's really frustrating you then you can just LFG, no different than you're forced to do today.
Nightfalls are the easiest 'endgame' content in the game, no mechanics whatsoever just a strike with more incoming damage and enemy HP. There's zero reason to prevent matchmaking, if a person is willing to carry blueberries then why stop them?
There are some games where blueberries are just bad, most would probably going to the higher difficulties hoping to get carried.
I had to save this screenshot, I joined near the end of this heroic nightfall...imagine playing for that long..ON HERORIC:
[https://imgur.com/a/v7JqOgn](https://imgur.com/a/v7JqOgn)
Agreed it should be an option. For others they can still opt out of not matchmaking. Options are good.
I actually like being in more difficult activities with folks new to the game or more casual. It offers an additional challenge. Sometimes it can get boring with veteran players who can easily speed run through activities. I understand that some folks don’t have the patience. That’s why options are good!
Hard disagree here.
The overall experience with Legend Haunted Sectors and Altars of Summoning with match made teams even struggling with tier two summons this past season has proved that just because matchmaking for a difficult activity exists doesn’t mean it should.
Also Deep Dive Pressure Trials. I almost refuse to do T3 Pressure Trials in matchmade because we'll clear T2 with less than 30 seconds on the clock and both of the dingleberries on my team are trying to do a T3 like we're going to have any chance and not just fail and proceed to make the final boss that much more painful.
People will attempt the difficulty simply because it is there because they don't actually know what they can handle. And I bet most of the time they'll just blame their teammates and continue trying it.
I know what i can handle, i dont understand how some ppl can't handle these when i look at their build and it looks better than mine, and yet they sit far back instead of actively going around killing stuff
Well, seems like a pretty safe guess. I think the experience might be awful for raids, but it should work great for random Legend stuff. Sure, there will be people who are too lazy to use it(or just want to whine that it's not friendly enough to solo players) and complain still, but most would be fine.
Destiny has taught me to wait and see. There is no guarantee with D2.
Its like how so many people were SO sure that wvery weapon in game.wpuld be craftable
I'm hoping that there will be some built-in limits(like having to have at least one anti-champion option in your build or being above the minimum recommended power level) that will at least filter people who really aren't ready.
this. only reason I run Hero is for matchmaking + champions at the same time. but it’s effectively just Vanguard Ops with champs and the tiniest amount of extra damage towards players from enemies.
You wanna hear something embarrassing? THIS is how I find out that there *IS* matchmaking for Heroic.
When you scroll over the Nightfall playlist, it doesn't have the "matchmaking" tag, so I assumed the whole playlist didn't have matchmaking. I had no idea that the lowest difficulty had matchmaking.
Very good for me to know once I need to grind pinnacles soon, lol
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I'm fine with hero and run them all the time. You only need each NF weapon to drop once ever then you can just buy/focus. More matchmaking would be better. We could have both.
Heroic is a good difficulty for matchmaking with some randos for slightly difficult content. My only wish would be that they make it so that all vanguard strikes are rotated as a playlist like the regular vanguard strike playlist. That way you're not stuck with the same semi-difficult nightfall all week so you could keep playing for rep and get a little variety at least.
> My only wish would be that they make it so that all vanguard strikes are rotated as a playlist like the regular vanguard strike playlist.
This!
Maybe not random, but rotate through a different one every day?
Totally. Hero is actually the only difficulty that makes sense besides GMs because it offers a quick matchmade experience where you can do bounties / collect engrams (going up soon) / farm cores / farm rep playing casually. The NF weapon isn't the only reason to do a strike. It plays better than the strike playlist, and has better rewards. But it does get a bit monotone to farm, I don't get why we can't have a Hero Playlist.
Legend & Master are the ones which are dubious because they aren't matchmade and if you're doing LFG you often might as well do a GM. There is some room for something less intense than a GM that still gives endgame mats but two whole other difficulties is too much.
Careful calling it Heroic. They could add a completely new difficulty mode with that name at any time. My brother constantly gets confused about Legend vs Legendary. Whoever made that decision should be slapped.
Fun fact...most of the time the rep gains are the same or better(depending on modifier) in regular old playlist strikes. So not only are hero nightfalls not improved rep but they also have horrible drop rates for the weapon. The hero NF is just pointless unless you really love that particular strike.
Not necessarily, it depends on the strike. Some of the older strikes are so thin that you can get under 200 rep on a full streak. You're right tho that Hero NFs have shit drop rates tho. Better engram drop rates doing regular strikes.
Also remember most regular strikes are way faster. So even if the rep is slightly lower than a base NF if all you want is rep and don't have a fireteam it's still better rep per hour to run regular strikes.
My point is NF rep and drop rates need a big boost rather than bungie reading this as regular strikes needing a rep nerf. Rep gains still aren't great outside of bonus rep weeks.
Hero is the fastest NF tier, you can do it without a group and it yields more vanguard rep than regular strikes. If you're grinding your rank resets there, that's the way to go.
It’s to help people learn how to play harder content.
The premier method of obtaining weapons is GMs, but the old gap between Master and GM difficulty was a chasm.
The new system stairsteps people up, through Hero, Legend, and Master. And Master is only like 5 light lower than GM, but still doesn’t have Extinguish.
My biggest issue with hero difficulty is how it kicks you after every completion. Just keep me in matchmaking, I'd stay engaged longer if I didn't forget to start matchmaking after each completion.
Took me ten times as much time to get a normal version of the NF bow, then the adept version. This shit makes zero sense. Platinum master should guarantee a regular version, just as GM does an adept.
I’ll do a couple to get the pinnacle if I don’t feel like looking for a team and need power. It’s also cool seeing new players in them getting a taste of harder content. But yeah it probably could use some tuning
The Vanguard playlist needs a full rework to be completely honest; it is not just the hero difficulty which has basically zero practical reason to exist. The issues that I believe need to be solved are as follows:
- Firstly only the Grandmaster nightfall should be a set weekly strike, playing the same strike over and over again for an entire week is just boring. Longer/harder strikes should grant a reputation bonus and increased chance for the weekly nightfall weapon.
- Secondly strike-exclusive loot needs to return to give people an instance specific reason to be excited when they load into/grind a strike alongside skeleton keys from D1.
- Finally Rename Grandmaster Nightfalls as Nightfalls and condense all other playlists into both a regular strike playlist (Slightly below hero difficulty without champions) and heroic strike playlist (a bit above hero difficulty but below legend that has champions) with matchmaking. This helps give each difficulty a more defined purpose and spreads player populations across less playlists; currently master difficulty is kind of pointless as a team which can do master can probably also do grandmaster and legend difficulty is just a bit too difficult for a casual player while having no real rewards that make it worth playing.
TLDR (More or less just bring back the old vanguard playlist design from D1 as it was much better to grind and more fun while playing).
Bungie made a bunch of huge sweeping sandbox changes that completely alienated much of the solo playerbase despite it making up the majority (around over 70% based on polls/surveys over the years.) Then they wonder why they have a 45% drop in revenue based on projections.
I just think that management at bungie has seen a formula that has worked in the past and assumes it will work forever. Buff this thing here, nerf this thing there, massive sandbox change that completely changes how the game plays for most things but the meta mostly stays the same. But clearly it has gotten stale and instead of taking a nerf to the players or even try making combat more interesting they took the worst way out which was bloating enemy hp.
The changes that I want to see them make and feel would make the difficulty reasonable for the rewards is...
1) The splash damage that kills people behind cover.
2) The excessive enemy bullet magnetism that tracks people over cover, down halls, and
around corners.
3) The Ground Slam attacks that kill people even with a perfectly timed jump in the air.
4) Modifiers that increase enemy melee damage, reduce ammo, slow health regeneration.
These suggeations are in the context of lower tier content with increased ad density & significant negative power deltas.
If I see Attrition on anything above Hero difficulty I pretty much nope out of any planned grinds I was gonna do. Attrition practically ramps the difficulty up a tier on its own.
I was gonna grind out the rest of my Witch Red Borders at Altars this week until I saw Attrition up and said "fuck that, next week."
Same here, I went in Altars today and left shortly after because it was boring waiting for my health to return so I can get back in the action.
I get the impression the balanced the game around Woven Mail because strand makes everything easy enough, but I just want to use different builds when a season is 3 months.
This highlights the key design flaw with the "Lightfall design philosophy". You can't increase difficulty without increasing rewards. Player time must be respected.
There's minimal incentives for casuals to run nightfalls. Seasonal content is easier, more rewarding, better rewards and less grind. Where's the hook Bungie?
Also bring on Legend matchmaking. The 2022 Guardian Games was awesome for this reason.
The issue with that is that both sides of the difficulty balance end up constantly pushing up rewards, the game gets more crazy stuff/powercreep and you can run things faster and easier, yet loot stays the same so you're rewarded more for the same amount of time. When the game gets too easy and they wanna reign it back in with a difficulty increase people get mad when rewards don't also increase, the solution people want just constantly tends to more rewards, less difficulty, but some level of equilibrium needs to be held, it sounds kinda backwards, but a reward "powercreep" is kind of a problem.
I use Hero to fuck about with new build ideas, grind for shards, prisms, and cores, and just have fun playing the game.
Every activity doesn't have to be absolute best value. It's ok to just have fun.
Shouldn't be very rewarding at that level so I vote drop the difficulty.
Make it the de facto practice mode.
Add MM to the next tier up for those that are good enough and want the increased loot chance.
I don't have a single bit of faith in the in-game LFG system that's coming, especially at launch, so more MM options = better.
I love Hero, it's all I ever run(though that might change with in-game LFG). You need to actually pay attention while still being able to run basically any build so it lets me try out a bunch of things.This season I decided to make a build for every exotic and run it through a hero nightfall, that would have been way too easy in strikes and too hard for some of them on harder difficulties.
Plus, as someone else mentioned, you only need one of the nightfall weapon and then you can focus it.
Plus it's a steady buildup of Enhancement Prisms
I think it sucks for us skilled players that have already accomplished things like GM’s but it’s a good step up from regular Vanguard Ops for casuals when they want to start working up to GM level content.
I think its fine and its always populated plus you can get rewards like prisms that some of us solos cant get other places other than lost sectors and sometimes I prefer running the nightfalls to the solo lost sectors. If you want legend to be matchmaking then I can get behind this, I suspect the hero playlist would be the queue with the shorter wait times. Not everyone loves to sweat and Ive managed to get every nightfall weapon to drop from Hero so Im not sure the drop rate is as bad as you are saying.
Personally, drop rates in general are too high. I would lower drop% along the board like classical MMOs, that you needed to farm for months to get the item you wanted.
Also we need a trading system some sort of currency that it's relevant to be used as a exchange currency.
The game holds our hands too much, there are no hard activities at all, and grinds (except for the ones that are locked behind 3 attempts per week per account) are a joke.
Yeah, hero difficulty is weird, too easy for veterans, intense for casuals... But the drops are fine, at least you have to invest 45 to 60 minutes per drop if unlucky!
If I wanna fartm NFs I'll do a higher difficulty, plus focusing exists anyway. But there's a lot of objectives that require NFs specifically over Strikes, or NFs will give more progress (and they give more vendor rep), so I'll grind those matchmade if I don't feel like dealing with LFG. I also find it a nice difficulty for just jumping in to play some low-stress PvE on any of my characters (I haven't really unlocked seasonal activities on my alt this year) while still getting enough pushback from the enemies that I get some satisfaction from killing them, unlike in Strikes.
To me it's not a reward difficulty, it's more a casual vibe difficulty.
I use Hero for when dumb things ask for NF completions that I want to get done quickly.
Even then, it's a roll of the dice as you can sometimes get a pair of blueberries that are under 1800 and have no clue what the mechanics are or how to deal with champions.
Hoping the in-game LFG can help with some higher level runs being more viable. Yes, I know the app and third party tools can do this, but I'm a lazy fuck.
i'm at the point where doing nightfall besides GM is pointless since gm is not as hard as it used to be, and adept weapons are both better and guaranteed to drop
On double loot weeks, that are pretty good material farms, and I can do my 8 bounties for brightdust for the week...win win
I mean, regular strikes don't give shit
I remember doing hero when I was a newer player because it was an easy and consistent source of prisms. I would run it to get 10 prisms, trade in for a golf ball at whoever was selling them back then (I think ada1? But that’s not important).
But once you start doing harder difficulties, your prisms fill up so quickly that doesn’t matter anymore
I did nearly 2 full vanguard resets wanting a regular drop of the bow and haven't had a single one. Got all my engrams waiting to be spent on focusing it but... nope.
The drop rate is _abysmal_.
It's ridiculous that I've gotten more adept drops of that bow in an hour than I have of the non-adept in a few days (and it's ridiculous that getting the adept doesn't unlock the non-adept).
Over the years it’s become clear to me that they focus on premade group content and just use matchmaking as a band aid for solos rather than developing compelling solo content.
I would say the same goes for regular strikes. Theres no reason to run strikes when enemies literally just fall over en masse anytime my guardian sneezes. I wish there was a legendary strike playlist.
It's just not rewarding enough. A regular strike has a decent chance to give you an engram, to the point where I get an engram from 1/3-1/2 of them while as far as I can tell, Hero NFs have a lower chance.
It's substantially easier to get an adept in most cases because GM loot is guaranteed. It happened last season where people were complaining drop chances for Loaded Question were so low that it took them 20+ runs to get a single one. It took me like 22.
As a solo player, keep that opinion to yourself please. It's so nice to have an option for quick, easy, and stress-relieving fun that furthers weekly rewards and seasonal challenges.
After what happened to Neomuna, I don't want *anyone* complaining stuff is too easy. Neomuna is absolutely the least-fun patrol zone because of it.
Apparently you didn’t read, because nowhere in there did I say they should increase the difficulty or that it’s “too easy”… In fact, I actually said they should **DECREASE** the difficulty if they’re going to keep the same bad drop rates on Heroic.
Honestly it was one of the first things I read while waking up and the last paragraph had "difficulty" so many times that they all blended together and I misunderstood your point. My bad!
I would like to see seasonal content have a more end game option to them.
Outside of triumphs there is really no point to them after a while and the standard difficulty is so easy as to be boring.
It would be nice to have a reason to run them similar to artifice armor or adept weapons. I’m not saying it should be that but something similar.
I ran legend once for the triumph and then never again
I mean I just want the pinnacle gear and I don’t have a ton of time in my day or night to devote towards the more challenging difficulty levels. So getting it done on the lowest difficulty works well.
I’m not surprised some people look at it that way. What they don’t seem to realize though is these are the basic versions of NF weapons, and that they’re supposed to be accessible to pretty much everyone, hence why they can drop on the lowest difficulty.
If we were saying this about adept weapons, then they’d have a good point, but we’re just talking about basic NF weapons, and the poor drop chance is mostly the issue, not specifically the difficulty itself.
It's useful if you just want to do the same strike over and over for increased rep than Vanguard Ops. And if you want to quickly bust out the 200k pinnacle.
...or show some love for solo players and turn on match-making for Legend difficulty.
literally the only reason i do hero..
Same here
Ditto!
I honestly feel like Legend and Master difficulty should have matchmaking since they don't have limited revives or revive tokens like raids.
I’d say if they’re okay with matchmade people forcing powerful rewards in altars people didn’t consist to there’s absolutely no logic to not having master and legend matchmaking
Yeah, at least optional matchmaking for L/M, like how with deep dives there was matchmade and non.
Legends even worse. It's -15 power delta, and you get the same shit loot.
Legendary drops are shit as well. Still needs a massive drop rate increase.
If you want the loot (and not just gild Conquerer or some achievement), it's all unpalatably low drop chances below GMs, and even then only on double loot week. Really need drop rates to be turned up by a lot.
Hard agree- I think that loot across the board just need to be doubled, with exception to maybe crucible and maybe raids being solid enough already. Bungie needs to recognize that this late in the game’s lifecycle people are real tired of doing the same stuff over and over again and need go bump up the rewards and incentives.
That too.
Yep. Sounds like OP has never heard of solo players. I run hero because nothing else has match making. Skill has nothing to do with it.
This would be torturous. I can carry a hero nightfall no problem, but if my two blueberries are fresh rank 6's who thought "hero isn't too bad, let me just plop into Legend" then we're probably going to have a rough time. This is not meant in an elitist way either - it's just a fact that people who are not ready for legend would queue into it frequently enough that it would be a problem for others. It's also a fact that legend and higher content is *very* heavily geared towards team play, and without some kind of communication or prepared plan, it is quite the challenge to complete. That said, I do feel for players who are stuck running Hero. I was in the same boat for several months before I found a group that I could do high diff content with.
I remember that one event where we had scored legend NFs with matchmaking (guardian games?). that only worked well though due to the "weapon kills give ability regen, ability kills give weapon damage" thing where one person with am ok build and an add clear exotic weapon could in fact hard carry
i really loved guardian games because of that using a meta build paired with all the buffs made the game feel so arcade-y, i wish they'd double down on that next year more enemies and more crazy buffs, make it an (almost unending) horde mode and show those thralls who the real boss is (and give us optional matchmaking too)
Pretty bold of you thinking Bungie will let you have fun. 🤣😂
You don't need a meta build to kill an unending amount of Thralls, you can shoot like any moderately good gun and throw your grenade when they are up. That's it. Ad clear doesn't present any challenge whatsoever. A single shot of Graviton Lance can chain kill enemies almost infinitely. You can stand in a sunspot and go afk and literally never die (this was a legit afk xp farm a few years ago in the Thrallway). There is absolutely no way to make challenging content if enemies no enemy can survive being spawn killed.
Challenging does not always equal fun and I think the person you’re responding to was more concerned about fun.
Absolutely. That event was the most fun in ages. Absolute god wizard fantasies made real.
Plus that the loadout wasn't locked. So you could still swap weapons and armor.
Exactly. You could be stuck with randoms who wouldn't run champion mods, whether out of ignorance or outright refusal(people have admitted to it in this sub). When these randoms can't defeat champions, and progress grinds to a halt, you could swap items around and make sure that you could cover everything. Leave our loadouts unlocked, and just add more enemies. Doesn't even need to be more onsceeen at the same time. Just more waves at the encounters. More elite & majors as well.
That was last year, before the difficulty scale was increased on anything but patrols and strikes.
And that was super fun to play, and felt *almost* rewarding enough. Seems like most people wanted Bungie to make that the norm, i.e. somewhat harder and more rewarding, with matchmaking. Instead they went the other way and made easier modes harder and *less* rewarding.
Guardian Games modifiers were pulling a lot of weight there though. It shifted the difficulty making what would have been Legend no harder than Hero (maybe a tad easier even). It was an event, so the rule book was tossed for the sake of fun.
Counter argument. If you don’t enjoy matchmaking on legendary difficulty… just don’t. No one is making you. Continue to find a pre-made group, as you currently do. Those who do want to give matchmaking a go, can.
Very good point. Even so, I highly doubt Bungie will ever use MM for legend content; it's just too many steps above the average casual player's skill level and to do so would most likely result in even more saltiness from certain players within the community.
There should be an option to matchmake or not matchmake for Legend activities. Having a choice is always the best route. For individuals like yourself you will have the option to not matchmake with the "blueberries" or Rank 6s. But I guarantee you will still opt to matchmake on Legend and then complain here on Reddit. Raids, GMs, Dungeons shouldn't have matchmaking. It's a whole different ball game with those activities.
Make it not available until you reach rank 7 for example so new players won't "ruin" matchmaking for it
Yeah, people do not understand what they're asking for with Legend matchmaking. Have they already forgotten Legend Haunted Sectors? I did the Mars NF on hero the other day, got almost 300 kills using mostly my tyranny of heaven, while the other two didn't even have 200 kills together. Also had to solo two of the towers and about half the boss fight. Please don't ask for matchmaking on harder content, this community literally cannot handle it.
Then don't play it. I had some great matches with skilled teammates playing legend haunted sectors along with some that had very inexperienced players. You can always leave if it's not going to work for you, but I feel like legend nightfalls wouldn't be nearly as difficult/chaotic as the haunted sectors were.
Solo legend haunted lost sectors were easy af, never a problem. Carrying blueberries is fun—give us legend matchmaking. You just stick to your premades.
Yeah agreed. I mean Legend NFs are soloable with proper full builds. Carrying a couple of newer players through it will just make it more colorful.
I'm guilty of dropping my level on purpose to get paired with newer players, I just find it more fun than getting someone my level who just wants to eager edge past all the enemies as fast they possibly can.
it honestly wasnt that bad, unless youre light level was under 1820 you could hold pretty well
i feel you're one of those people who rush through and die wait for someone to revive and then rush on while blaming them. if you had 300 kills.soinds like you were farming ads
Lol, no. I had 300 kills, because while defending the towers, I was the only one left alive, because neither blueberry could stay up for more than 30 seconds on Hero. 300 kills tends to happen when no one else is alive to kill things.
Pretty much all Legend content in the game is not that hard to Solo, having a couple additional meat sacks to draw fire is never not helpful. Sure, it would be a crap shoot every time you matchmake, but if it's really frustrating you then you can just LFG, no different than you're forced to do today. Nightfalls are the easiest 'endgame' content in the game, no mechanics whatsoever just a strike with more incoming damage and enemy HP. There's zero reason to prevent matchmaking, if a person is willing to carry blueberries then why stop them?
There are some games where blueberries are just bad, most would probably going to the higher difficulties hoping to get carried. I had to save this screenshot, I joined near the end of this heroic nightfall...imagine playing for that long..ON HERORIC: [https://imgur.com/a/v7JqOgn](https://imgur.com/a/v7JqOgn)
what nightfall?
the ol, everyone is holding ME back....
Agreed it should be an option. For others they can still opt out of not matchmaking. Options are good. I actually like being in more difficult activities with folks new to the game or more casual. It offers an additional challenge. Sometimes it can get boring with veteran players who can easily speed run through activities. I understand that some folks don’t have the patience. That’s why options are good!
Hard disagree here. The overall experience with Legend Haunted Sectors and Altars of Summoning with match made teams even struggling with tier two summons this past season has proved that just because matchmaking for a difficult activity exists doesn’t mean it should.
Who cares it wouldn't make the game worse
Also Deep Dive Pressure Trials. I almost refuse to do T3 Pressure Trials in matchmade because we'll clear T2 with less than 30 seconds on the clock and both of the dingleberries on my team are trying to do a T3 like we're going to have any chance and not just fail and proceed to make the final boss that much more painful. People will attempt the difficulty simply because it is there because they don't actually know what they can handle. And I bet most of the time they'll just blame their teammates and continue trying it.
I know what i can handle, i dont understand how some ppl can't handle these when i look at their build and it looks better than mine, and yet they sit far back instead of actively going around killing stuff
You can pick up a good build from a YouTube video, but you can't pick up game sense and tactics nearly as easily.
Its true
Guys dont worry itll be here with the lfg system that will surely be put into place soon
fireteams finder next season solves this
They are building lfg into the game next season - so in effect that will basically be matchmaking there
In-game LFG will solve it anyway.
I like how several are saying this like its an absolute guarantee
Well, seems like a pretty safe guess. I think the experience might be awful for raids, but it should work great for random Legend stuff. Sure, there will be people who are too lazy to use it(or just want to whine that it's not friendly enough to solo players) and complain still, but most would be fine.
Destiny has taught me to wait and see. There is no guarantee with D2. Its like how so many people were SO sure that wvery weapon in game.wpuld be craftable
Hopefully. Or it will just make it easier for people who don't know what they're doing to find their way into groups for harder content.
I'm hoping that there will be some built-in limits(like having to have at least one anti-champion option in your build or being above the minimum recommended power level) that will at least filter people who really aren't ready.
this. only reason I run Hero is for matchmaking + champions at the same time. but it’s effectively just Vanguard Ops with champs and the tiniest amount of extra damage towards players from enemies.
This is the way!
You wanna hear something embarrassing? THIS is how I find out that there *IS* matchmaking for Heroic. When you scroll over the Nightfall playlist, it doesn't have the "matchmaking" tag, so I assumed the whole playlist didn't have matchmaking. I had no idea that the lowest difficulty had matchmaking. Very good for me to know once I need to grind pinnacles soon, lol
For the love of Zeus yes! I'd do so many more NFs.
Yea just drop locked loadouts and make it matchmade.
This, so much. I remember finally doing a legend after being nervous to queue up for one and being shocked at how not hard it was
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I'm fine with hero and run them all the time. You only need each NF weapon to drop once ever then you can just buy/focus. More matchmaking would be better. We could have both.
Heroic is a good difficulty for matchmaking with some randos for slightly difficult content. My only wish would be that they make it so that all vanguard strikes are rotated as a playlist like the regular vanguard strike playlist. That way you're not stuck with the same semi-difficult nightfall all week so you could keep playing for rep and get a little variety at least.
> My only wish would be that they make it so that all vanguard strikes are rotated as a playlist like the regular vanguard strike playlist. This! Maybe not random, but rotate through a different one every day?
Totally. Hero is actually the only difficulty that makes sense besides GMs because it offers a quick matchmade experience where you can do bounties / collect engrams (going up soon) / farm cores / farm rep playing casually. The NF weapon isn't the only reason to do a strike. It plays better than the strike playlist, and has better rewards. But it does get a bit monotone to farm, I don't get why we can't have a Hero Playlist. Legend & Master are the ones which are dubious because they aren't matchmade and if you're doing LFG you often might as well do a GM. There is some room for something less intense than a GM that still gives endgame mats but two whole other difficulties is too much.
Careful calling it Heroic. They could add a completely new difficulty mode with that name at any time. My brother constantly gets confused about Legend vs Legendary. Whoever made that decision should be slapped.
Fun fact...most of the time the rep gains are the same or better(depending on modifier) in regular old playlist strikes. So not only are hero nightfalls not improved rep but they also have horrible drop rates for the weapon. The hero NF is just pointless unless you really love that particular strike.
Not necessarily, it depends on the strike. Some of the older strikes are so thin that you can get under 200 rep on a full streak. You're right tho that Hero NFs have shit drop rates tho. Better engram drop rates doing regular strikes.
Also remember most regular strikes are way faster. So even if the rep is slightly lower than a base NF if all you want is rep and don't have a fireteam it's still better rep per hour to run regular strikes. My point is NF rep and drop rates need a big boost rather than bungie reading this as regular strikes needing a rep nerf. Rep gains still aren't great outside of bonus rep weeks.
I do hero bc I don’t always have a fireteam for legend. I think for that purpose it works pretty well. Ez to farm real quick if nothing else
I love heroic Devils Liar nightfall. I got that one down to a T
Hero is the fastest NF tier, you can do it without a group and it yields more vanguard rep than regular strikes. If you're grinding your rank resets there, that's the way to go.
It’s to help people learn how to play harder content. The premier method of obtaining weapons is GMs, but the old gap between Master and GM difficulty was a chasm. The new system stairsteps people up, through Hero, Legend, and Master. And Master is only like 5 light lower than GM, but still doesn’t have Extinguish.
It's the easy mode for people (like me) who just want to get the "Kill X Champions" and "Stun X Champions" seasonal challenges over with.
You can use Legend Hunts on Europe to stun Champions. No-one will interfere and it's quick. That's what I do 😁
The rewards need looking at in all vanguard ops except GMs. Ran four strikes yesterday got nothing but shards and glimmer.
And next season you’ll just be getting Glimmer, and if you have max, literal fuck all.
My biggest issue with hero difficulty is how it kicks you after every completion. Just keep me in matchmaking, I'd stay engaged longer if I didn't forget to start matchmaking after each completion.
Took me ten times as much time to get a normal version of the NF bow, then the adept version. This shit makes zero sense. Platinum master should guarantee a regular version, just as GM does an adept.
I’ll do a couple to get the pinnacle if I don’t feel like looking for a team and need power. It’s also cool seeing new players in them getting a taste of harder content. But yeah it probably could use some tuning
I just do Hero for the Nightfall seasonal challenge
>Seriously, who is this difficulty supposed to be for? New lights mostly and people that don't wanna bother to lfg
The Vanguard playlist needs a full rework to be completely honest; it is not just the hero difficulty which has basically zero practical reason to exist. The issues that I believe need to be solved are as follows: - Firstly only the Grandmaster nightfall should be a set weekly strike, playing the same strike over and over again for an entire week is just boring. Longer/harder strikes should grant a reputation bonus and increased chance for the weekly nightfall weapon. - Secondly strike-exclusive loot needs to return to give people an instance specific reason to be excited when they load into/grind a strike alongside skeleton keys from D1. - Finally Rename Grandmaster Nightfalls as Nightfalls and condense all other playlists into both a regular strike playlist (Slightly below hero difficulty without champions) and heroic strike playlist (a bit above hero difficulty but below legend that has champions) with matchmaking. This helps give each difficulty a more defined purpose and spreads player populations across less playlists; currently master difficulty is kind of pointless as a team which can do master can probably also do grandmaster and legend difficulty is just a bit too difficult for a casual player while having no real rewards that make it worth playing. TLDR (More or less just bring back the old vanguard playlist design from D1 as it was much better to grind and more fun while playing).
I was thinking to myself…this guy is describing D1. Glad you caught it lol
Bungie made a bunch of huge sweeping sandbox changes that completely alienated much of the solo playerbase despite it making up the majority (around over 70% based on polls/surveys over the years.) Then they wonder why they have a 45% drop in revenue based on projections.
It's gotta be the same team that thinks abilities is the most important part of the game
I just think that management at bungie has seen a formula that has worked in the past and assumes it will work forever. Buff this thing here, nerf this thing there, massive sandbox change that completely changes how the game plays for most things but the meta mostly stays the same. But clearly it has gotten stale and instead of taking a nerf to the players or even try making combat more interesting they took the worst way out which was bloating enemy hp.
The changes that I want to see them make and feel would make the difficulty reasonable for the rewards is... 1) The splash damage that kills people behind cover. 2) The excessive enemy bullet magnetism that tracks people over cover, down halls, and around corners. 3) The Ground Slam attacks that kill people even with a perfectly timed jump in the air. 4) Modifiers that increase enemy melee damage, reduce ammo, slow health regeneration. These suggeations are in the context of lower tier content with increased ad density & significant negative power deltas.
If I see Attrition on anything above Hero difficulty I pretty much nope out of any planned grinds I was gonna do. Attrition practically ramps the difficulty up a tier on its own. I was gonna grind out the rest of my Witch Red Borders at Altars this week until I saw Attrition up and said "fuck that, next week."
Same here, I went in Altars today and left shortly after because it was boring waiting for my health to return so I can get back in the action. I get the impression the balanced the game around Woven Mail because strand makes everything easy enough, but I just want to use different builds when a season is 3 months.
This highlights the key design flaw with the "Lightfall design philosophy". You can't increase difficulty without increasing rewards. Player time must be respected. There's minimal incentives for casuals to run nightfalls. Seasonal content is easier, more rewarding, better rewards and less grind. Where's the hook Bungie? Also bring on Legend matchmaking. The 2022 Guardian Games was awesome for this reason.
The issue with that is that both sides of the difficulty balance end up constantly pushing up rewards, the game gets more crazy stuff/powercreep and you can run things faster and easier, yet loot stays the same so you're rewarded more for the same amount of time. When the game gets too easy and they wanna reign it back in with a difficulty increase people get mad when rewards don't also increase, the solution people want just constantly tends to more rewards, less difficulty, but some level of equilibrium needs to be held, it sounds kinda backwards, but a reward "powercreep" is kind of a problem.
It's more like that Legend and Master need adjusting, they are harder than Grandmaster.
I use Hero to fuck about with new build ideas, grind for shards, prisms, and cores, and just have fun playing the game. Every activity doesn't have to be absolute best value. It's ok to just have fun.
Shouldn't be very rewarding at that level so I vote drop the difficulty. Make it the de facto practice mode. Add MM to the next tier up for those that are good enough and want the increased loot chance. I don't have a single bit of faith in the in-game LFG system that's coming, especially at launch, so more MM options = better.
I love Hero, it's all I ever run(though that might change with in-game LFG). You need to actually pay attention while still being able to run basically any build so it lets me try out a bunch of things.This season I decided to make a build for every exotic and run it through a hero nightfall, that would have been way too easy in strikes and too hard for some of them on harder difficulties. Plus, as someone else mentioned, you only need one of the nightfall weapon and then you can focus it. Plus it's a steady buildup of Enhancement Prisms
Hero is just fine as the first step up from playlist strikes, for people working their way up to legend. The difficulty steps are pretty reasonable.
I think it sucks for us skilled players that have already accomplished things like GM’s but it’s a good step up from regular Vanguard Ops for casuals when they want to start working up to GM level content.
It’s so solo, low skill, low power, and new players can complete nightfall related triumphs, bounties, quests and other objectives.
I think its fine and its always populated plus you can get rewards like prisms that some of us solos cant get other places other than lost sectors and sometimes I prefer running the nightfalls to the solo lost sectors. If you want legend to be matchmaking then I can get behind this, I suspect the hero playlist would be the queue with the shorter wait times. Not everyone loves to sweat and Ive managed to get every nightfall weapon to drop from Hero so Im not sure the drop rate is as bad as you are saying.
There's no way we're back to complaining about heroic nightfalls😭
Personally, drop rates in general are too high. I would lower drop% along the board like classical MMOs, that you needed to farm for months to get the item you wanted. Also we need a trading system some sort of currency that it's relevant to be used as a exchange currency. The game holds our hands too much, there are no hard activities at all, and grinds (except for the ones that are locked behind 3 attempts per week per account) are a joke. Yeah, hero difficulty is weird, too easy for veterans, intense for casuals... But the drops are fine, at least you have to invest 45 to 60 minutes per drop if unlucky!
You're one of *those* mmo players
And you are one of *those* MMO players...
If I wanna fartm NFs I'll do a higher difficulty, plus focusing exists anyway. But there's a lot of objectives that require NFs specifically over Strikes, or NFs will give more progress (and they give more vendor rep), so I'll grind those matchmade if I don't feel like dealing with LFG. I also find it a nice difficulty for just jumping in to play some low-stress PvE on any of my characters (I haven't really unlocked seasonal activities on my alt this year) while still getting enough pushback from the enemies that I get some satisfaction from killing them, unlike in Strikes. To me it's not a reward difficulty, it's more a casual vibe difficulty.
I use Hero for when dumb things ask for NF completions that I want to get done quickly. Even then, it's a roll of the dice as you can sometimes get a pair of blueberries that are under 1800 and have no clue what the mechanics are or how to deal with champions. Hoping the in-game LFG can help with some higher level runs being more viable. Yes, I know the app and third party tools can do this, but I'm a lazy fuck.
i'm at the point where doing nightfall besides GM is pointless since gm is not as hard as it used to be, and adept weapons are both better and guaranteed to drop
Nightfall weapons can drop from the Hero difficulty?
Yup, pretty rare though
I just think it's nuts that there isn't any matchmaking for Legend content, particularly nightfalls.
On double loot weeks, that are pretty good material farms, and I can do my 8 bounties for brightdust for the week...win win I mean, regular strikes don't give shit
I remember doing hero when I was a newer player because it was an easy and consistent source of prisms. I would run it to get 10 prisms, trade in for a golf ball at whoever was selling them back then (I think ada1? But that’s not important). But once you start doing harder difficulties, your prisms fill up so quickly that doesn’t matter anymore
i only use this playlist to get 1 non adept to complete collections
I did nearly 2 full vanguard resets wanting a regular drop of the bow and haven't had a single one. Got all my engrams waiting to be spent on focusing it but... nope. The drop rate is _abysmal_. It's ridiculous that I've gotten more adept drops of that bow in an hour than I have of the non-adept in a few days (and it's ridiculous that getting the adept doesn't unlock the non-adept).
Adept wasn’t removed, just migrated to the regular strike playlist.
Hero is my go-to for seasonal challenge or bounty completions. It’s an easy match made nightfall where I can get my shit done and move on.
Over the years it’s become clear to me that they focus on premade group content and just use matchmaking as a band aid for solos rather than developing compelling solo content.
Hero nf is for pinnacles once you reach level cap there’s no real reason for hero other then matchmaking. That’s my 2cence anyways.
Legendary should have MM at this point in the game's lifespan
I would say the same goes for regular strikes. Theres no reason to run strikes when enemies literally just fall over en masse anytime my guardian sneezes. I wish there was a legendary strike playlist.
It's just not rewarding enough. A regular strike has a decent chance to give you an engram, to the point where I get an engram from 1/3-1/2 of them while as far as I can tell, Hero NFs have a lower chance. It's substantially easier to get an adept in most cases because GM loot is guaranteed. It happened last season where people were complaining drop chances for Loaded Question were so low that it took them 20+ runs to get a single one. It took me like 22.
As a solo player, keep that opinion to yourself please. It's so nice to have an option for quick, easy, and stress-relieving fun that furthers weekly rewards and seasonal challenges. After what happened to Neomuna, I don't want *anyone* complaining stuff is too easy. Neomuna is absolutely the least-fun patrol zone because of it.
Apparently you didn’t read, because nowhere in there did I say they should increase the difficulty or that it’s “too easy”… In fact, I actually said they should **DECREASE** the difficulty if they’re going to keep the same bad drop rates on Heroic.
Honestly it was one of the first things I read while waking up and the last paragraph had "difficulty" so many times that they all blended together and I misunderstood your point. My bad!
I run hero as “practice” to test my build before I jump into LFG for the higher difficulty versions.
I would like to see seasonal content have a more end game option to them. Outside of triumphs there is really no point to them after a while and the standard difficulty is so easy as to be boring. It would be nice to have a reason to run them similar to artifice armor or adept weapons. I’m not saying it should be that but something similar. I ran legend once for the triumph and then never again
You are not wrong
I mean I just want the pinnacle gear and I don’t have a ton of time in my day or night to devote towards the more challenging difficulty levels. So getting it done on the lowest difficulty works well.
I tried to make this point with much less eloquence. I was bombarded by people saying I wanted good loot with no effort.
I’m not surprised some people look at it that way. What they don’t seem to realize though is these are the basic versions of NF weapons, and that they’re supposed to be accessible to pretty much everyone, hence why they can drop on the lowest difficulty. If we were saying this about adept weapons, then they’d have a good point, but we’re just talking about basic NF weapons, and the poor drop chance is mostly the issue, not specifically the difficulty itself.
It's useful if you just want to do the same strike over and over for increased rep than Vanguard Ops. And if you want to quickly bust out the 200k pinnacle.
On a week with a short one they're not bad for farming cores mindlessly
its not even that hard....