Too many of my friends trying Destiny 2 haven’t a clue on how to start the campaigns

[Gowans]

I'm lucky where I have a bunch of friends a play with online regularly, we're in a group chat to recommend and arrange play nights.

I've told them all to get Destiny 2 downloaded and several who have have just ended up randomly walking around the open world doing quests.

To be fair they have changes the way you get started to having to speak to the space ship woman on the tower and then find a start quest marker.

Anyone else had this issue? A few of them were saying it's a strange game for a while.

 

[KiDdYoNe]

Yup, everybody's talking about it.

 

[Van Bur3n]

You can just post this in the OT you know.

And yeah, number of new folk aren't aware Amanda offers all of the old content.

 

[Hamchan]

As a returning player that started a new character with the F2P version, it is indeed very confusing. You pretty much get dumped right into the game. The NPC who gives access to the campaign is one of three or four starting markers they tell a new player to go to on the tower. Hence, it is indeed very likely that a new player could follow the quest tree of one of the other markers and completely miss where the campaign is until they are hours in.

 

[Xater]

Yes I was also confused about what this garbage disjointed quest line is they give you at the start.

 

[Hucast]

As a returning player that started a new character with the F2P version, it is indeed very confusing. You pretty much get dumped right into the game. The NPC who gives access to the campaign is one of three or four starting markers they tell a new player to go to on the tower. Hence, it is indeed very likely that a new player could follow the quest tree of one of the other markers and completely miss where the campaign is until they are hours in.

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The one who gives campaign has a requirement of 770 right?

 

[Hella]

It's incredibly confusing as a new or returning player. If I didn't know it had a campaign already I'd assume it just didn't have one.

 

[Hucast]

Me playing for the first time

 

[Castia]

It's a mess.

Im a new player and finally getting used to it but when you log in there are 20 things spamming your map with no explanation of what they are.

 

[Green]

There will be growing pains with going F2P. There's so much good here, but they need to take a bit of time and ackowledge that Digital Extremes have done a lot of the work already (but they still need to figure it out). The New Player Experience in these kinds of games is jarring - hasn't been solved.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

Yea I am a new player too and not really sure what I am doing. Started the Last Call thing, no idea how long the campaigns are. No idea what I should be doing with gear, what I should be spending things on.

It's like they built the MMO but kept the experience of a player like a SP campaign.

 

[GlitchyDegree]

Yeah it's very confusing. I only figured out Amanda had the expansions when I went to go buy a ship.

 

[swnny]

That are my impressions as well, as a veteran D1 player up to D2 vanila. I know how the game works, I know what to expect, but Amanda giving you the old campaigns made the most sense of all. Resetting the campaign progress and no marker/waypoints or anything made everything worse.

 

[Nostremitus]

Yeah it's very confusing. I only figured out Amanda had the expansions when I went to go buy a ship.

Click to shrink...

I'm pretty sure that's the intent.

 

[Alvis]

It's stupid, I thought the "main quest" (whatever it's called in English) was the campaign and then I played with a friend and he told me "yeah no to start the campaign you have to talk with this lady which nobody ever tells you in-game to do" and I was like wtf

 

[Klyka]

They also totally changed how the campaign structures work.
You just click story missions on the map and it loads you in. No more "run to marker on map and start mission".
They also removed all the campaign rewards, like exotics and such.

Bungie is basically moving away from any of the "legacy" stuff which is: D2 Vanilla, Curse of Osiris, Warmind and Forsaken
The story moved past them and they are now just old things they apparently don't really care about whether you do them or not and which you will never experience the same way that people who were there on launch did.

New Light is like a "soft reboot" basically.
Honestly, I feel this whole F2P thing is less about "growing the community" and more about them having a "reason" to put in more and more microtransactions to make money with and to legitimate the "buy a new season for 10$ every 2 months" thing.

 

[Truant]

It's awful. They play it like you are a newly created guardian that just woke up at whenever D2 is in its overall story and that all the other campaign happened already, without your involvement. The problem is that every character acts like you were there.

It's very confusing and ruins any form
of immersion or continuity.

 

[IIFloodyII]

I was surprised at how bad of a job they did with directing the new F2P players. Completely skipping all the story content they have access to and then putting them on a vendor who was last relevant in, err? Destiny 1 during the Sparrow League races for a week, is so random I have no clue what their thought process was (well besides trying to get them to buy Shadowkeep).

 

[Spaltazar]

They also totally changed how the campaign structures work.
You just click story missions on the map and it loads you in. No more "run to marker on map and start mission".
They also removed all the campaign rewards, like exotics and such.

Bungie is basically moving away from any of the "legacy" stuff which is: D2 Vanilla, Curse of Osiris, Warmind and Forsaken
The story moved past them and they are now just old things they apparently don't really care about whether you do them or not and which you will never experience the same way that people who were there on launch did.

New Light is like a "soft reboot" basically.

Click to shrink...

this leads to some funny moments. dunno how it felt in vanilla, but it pretty much took me all of 2 minutes to get my light back after confronting gaul, making the entire dramatic plot point void in my eyes :p. and then 5 minutes later you leave earth and the npc that you met for 3 minutes get mad at you leaving. same with that dude in the tower on edz, you don't really get to know him at all yet he is apparently part of the story. its a goods thing he is Balthiers charming VA, otherwise he would be totally unremarkable

 

[Klyka]

this leads to some funny moments. dunno how it felt in vanilla, but it pretty much took me all of 2 minutes to get my light back after confronting gaul, making the entire dramatic plot point void in my eyes :p. and then 5 minutes later you leave earth and the npc that you met for 3 minutes get mad at you leaving

Click to shrink...

There was a slightly larger time between things. You were never without your light for longer than like, 30 minutes I'd say though.

 

[Nostremitus]

It's stupid, I thought the "main quest" (whatever it's called in English) was the campaign and then I played with a friend and he told me "yeah no to start the campaign you have to talk with this lady which nobody ever tells you in-game to do" and I was like wtf

Click to shrink...

It's because the legacy content isn't the main campaign anymore. They've moved the story along. You can start playing the current main story, or go back and see old ones.

 

[Spaltazar]

It's because the legacy content isn't the main campaign anymore. They've moved the story along. You can start playing the current main story, or go back and see old ones.

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but what exactly is the new main story? when you start you get quests to visit the different planets and do some activities on them to unlock some larger questlines that don't seem to be connected to the other planets. is that the new main quest?

 

[copelandmaster]

When D2 came out, you started during the seige of the Tower. A nice set piece for the intro of D2. You lose your power for a bit. Then you get to mess around in the secondary forest hub - that's as far as I got during a free weekend on the Blizzard launcher.

Now, on a fresh character I started on a remake level from original Destiny. Then, you're told to go on a quest to help a sniper dude in the middle of nowhere... who starts blabbing about a major D2 expansion spoiler! Or at least it would be, if the marketing didn't blare it from the rooftops over a year ago.

Shit makes no sense. Why?

 

[Klyka]

but what exactly is the new main story? when you start you get quests to visit the different planets and do some activities on them to unlock some larger questlines that don't seem to be connected to the other planets. is that the new main quest?

Click to shrink...

F2P players don't get a "main story". Gotta buy expansions for proper campaign stories.

When D2 came out, you started during the seige of the Tower. A nice set piece for the intro of D2. You lose your power for a bit. Then you get to mess around in the secondary forest hub - that's as far as I got during a free weekend on the Blizzard launcher.

Now, on a fresh character I started on a remake level from original Destiny. Then, you're told to go on a quest to help a sniper dude in the middle of nowhere... who starts blabbing about a major D2 expansion spoiler!

Shit makes no sense. Why?

Click to shrink...

Because when you played D2 at launch, that was the timeline and where the game started.
Now with New Light the timeline has moved on and every content before October 1st has canonically happened before your Guardian was reborn.
It's not "spoilers" in universe because it's already the past.

 

[Nostremitus]

but what exactly is the new main story? when you start you get quests to visit the different planets and do some activities on them to unlock some larger questlines that don't seem to be connected to the other planets. is that the new main quest?

Click to shrink...

Can't tell you to be honest. I never said Bungie was doing a good job, just that the world that exists doesn't make sense through the lens for the Red War anymore. You hang out with dead people and deal with issues that no longer make sense in the overworld.

 

[WillyGubbins]

I'm a returning player (stopped after finishing Forsaken) and it's been a really bad experience so far. I've had to google how to progress a couple of quests as they're so poorly explained, and I'm now at a point where the next quest requires kills with a machine gun. I don't have a machine gun. I asked in the D2 thread and someone suggested getting one from the forge. Just looked that up and this is what's involved :

Visit Spider in the Tangled Shore
Enter the Annex area of the Tower and talk to Ada-1
Get a Weapon Core from a Black Armory Crate, and collect 25 Compound Ether from Fallen enemies
Get multikills and Hive kills using a Power Weapon
Defeat 25 Powerful Enemies
Collect Radiant Seeds from Powerful Enemies
Return to Ada-1 and visit the Volundr Forge

I'm not sure I can be bothered to be honest.

 

[Nostremitus]

I'm a returning player (stopped after finishing Forsaken) and it's been a really bad experience so far. I've had to google how to progress a couple of quests as they're so poorly explained, and I'm now at a point where the next quest requires kills with a machine gun. I don't have a machine gun. I asked in the D2 thread and someone suggested getting one from the forge. Just looked that up and this is what's involved :

Visit Spider in the Tangled Shore
Enter the Annex area of the Tower and talk to Ada-1
Get a Weapon Core from a Black Armory Crate, and collect 25 Compound Ether from Fallen enemies
Get multikills and Hive kills using a Power Weapon
Defeat 25 Powerful Enemies
Collect Radiant Seeds from Powerful Enemies
Return to Ada-1 and visit the Volundr Forge

I'm not sure I can be bothered to be honest.

Click to shrink...

Yep that's how you forge weapons. You don't need a machine gun, though, they are just a nice thing to have that you need to work for if you want it.

 

[Alexandros]

Yeah, it's super confusing. I thought the "New Light" questline would lead me to the campaign eventually and I had to google to find out that campaigns are accessed through a vendor. As a new player the beginning was overwhelming and I had no idea what was happening.

 

[Faenix1]

Bought the Forsaken Complete, which was a horrible decision because of the price drop a month or so later, but I have yet to start it (Due to Warframe, Gears 5, and Borderlands 3 - this was up after) but this all sounds.. really bad. :/

 

[Error 52]

It's stupid, I thought the "main quest" (whatever it's called in English) was the campaign and then I played with a friend and he told me "yeah no to start the campaign you have to talk with this lady which nobody ever tells you in-game to do" and I was like wtf

Click to shrink...

Not gonna lie when I read the title of the thread my first thought was "They tell you what the Main Quest is!"

 

[Hella]

Because when you played D2 at launch, that was the timeline and where the game started.
Now with New Light the timeline has moved on and every content before October 1st has canonically happened before your Guardian was reborn.
It's not "spoilers" in universe because it's already the past.

Click to shrink...

Have they ever spoken as to why they do it that way vs. letting players start at the beginning and catch up? Using phases or instances could quarantine folks behind the curve and let them experience the story, and get as invested as everyone else as they catch up.

Kinda find that mentality baffling for a live game. It's like if Final Fantasy XIV, Warframe, or anything else started you at the penultimate update/xpac and said, "ok, enjoy the story."

 

[Spaltazar]

Have they ever spoken as to why they do it that way vs. letting players start at the beginning and catch up? Using phases or instances could quarantine folks behind the curve and let them experience the story, and get as invested as everyone else as they catch up.

Kinda find that mentality baffling for a live game. It's like if Final Fantasy XIV, Warframe, or anything else started you at the penultimate update/xpac and said, "ok, enjoy the story."

Click to shrink...

it is especially baffling, because catching up story wise in d2 does not take anywhere close as long as it does in your average mmo.

 

[Talos]

It's worse than that. The 'legacy' story that new light players do go through is a truncated version of the campaign. They don't even get access the free class exotics that you earn or the exotic engram from Zavala at the end.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyThe...just_finished_legacy_red_war_on_my_new_light/

I get that a certain subset of players want to have to the option to skip the story (and it should simply be that:an option) and immediately start playing with their higher light friends but what you get is this and most people are just gonna get confused and overwhelmed when dropped right in.

Forsaken was an incredible expansion and I hope new light players can experience that in full.

 

[Klyka]

Have they ever spoken as to why they do it that way vs. letting players start at the beginning and catch up? Using phases or instances could quarantine folks behind the curve and let them experience the story, and get as invested as everyone else as they catch up.

Kinda find that mentality baffling for a live game. It's like if Final Fantasy XIV, Warframe, or anything else started you at the penultimate update/xpac and said, "ok, enjoy the story."

Click to shrink...

Their mantra for New Light is "everyone starts at 750 and you don't need to play X hours of content before you can play with your friends in the new content".
They also said in one of their videos that they deliberately want to create a world that "moves forward" with events that "players who join later will have missed so you hear about it from the veterans who were there".
It's basically them trying to create a "living story" where you literally can miss out on things.

Forsaken was an incredible expansion and I hope new light players can experience that in full.

Click to shrink...

I played through Forsaken with my friend who only bought it now and the campaign has been changed. No more adventures for the barons, instead you kill them one by one in story missions you click on on the map and get loaded into. They didn't even change the dialogue from Ghost so you will hear "6 barons dead!" after killing the first baron and so on.
He still loved it, but it was a very different experience compared to what I got.

 

[Deleted member 14663]

all i care about is the fireworks so i don't mind much but i do agree it is very confusing. So many things popping up.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

It's worse than that. The 'legacy' story that new light players do go through is a truncated version of the campaign. They don't even get access the free class exotics that you earn or the exotic engram from Zavala at the end.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyThe...just_finished_legacy_red_war_on_my_new_light/

I get that a certain subset of players want to have to the option to skip the story (and it should simply be that:an option) and immediately start playing with their higher light friends but what you get is this and most people are just gonna get confused and overwhelmed when dropped right in.

Forsaken was an incredible expansion and I hope new light players can experience that in full.

Click to shrink...

So, should I bother with campaigns or not at this point?

 

[Spaltazar]

So, should I bother with campaigns or not at this point?

Click to shrink...

imo you should. i am going through them right now and it brings some semblance of order to the chaos that is starting out new in d2 new light lol.

every day i am getting a better grasp at this game. good thing it plays exceptionally well - a lesser game would have probably been dropped by me already :p

 

[Faenix1]

Are the trophies/achievements handled as baffling as the story seems to be?

Their mantra for New Light is "everyone starts at 750 and you don't need to play X hours of content before you can play with your friends in the new content".
They also said in one of their videos that they deliberately want to create a world that "moves forward" with events that "players who join later will have missed so you hear about it from the veterans who were there".
It's basically them trying to create a "living story" where you literally can miss out on things.

Click to shrink...

How long ago was THAT, and why isnt this more out there?

I wouldn't of wasted my money on this if I knew that was the plan. (I bought the Forsaken complete a month or so before the price drop)

 

[Deleted member 49611]

could be made easier to find but it's not that difficult. worst case you google it to find out and then you're on your way.

 

[johancruijff]

i don't really know the D2 story, but you start in

Spoiler

the Cosmodrome or something, with with the big ball called traveller blown up, and that is the tutorial. If you acquire the Legacy quests/campaigns it shows the first invasion, with the traveller still in shape etc. I don't know i treated it as some kind of flashback

maybe use a binary decision when you start a new character where you can choose to start from the beginning or from the current D2 state
i'm sure they thought about it tho, it was probably too cumbersome
all in all it's all free stuff so eeeeh it's alright

 

[Klyka]

Are the trophies/achievements handled as baffling as the story seems to be?



How long ago was THAT, and why isnt this more out there?

I wouldn't of wasted my money on this if I knew that was the plan. (I bought the Forsaken complete a month or so before the price drop)

Click to shrink...

Forsaken is still very much worth it. The campaign is not as freeform as it was on launch but the missions are still fun, the story properly told and the exotics and such you get from it are still great to play with. Don't feel bad about picking it up, it is (still even after Shadowkeep) the best Destiny content they have ever made.

 

[Hella]

Their mantra for New Light is "everyone starts at 750 and you don't need to play X hours of content before you can play with your friends in the new content".
They also said in one of their videos that they deliberately want to create a world that "moves forward" with events that "players who join later will have missed so you hear about it from the veterans who were there".
It's basically them trying to create a "living story" where you literally can miss out on things.

Click to shrink...

Thanks, I had no idea.

I can't think of another live game that does that, outside of very isolated seasonal stuff. Kinda don't like the idea myself but I imagine dedicated players would get a lot out of it. I think a theoretical Destiny 3 designed from the ground up around that kind of storytelling could be really cool, though.

 

[copelandmaster]

Because when you played D2 at launch, that was the timeline and where the game started.
Now with New Light the timeline has moved on and every content before October 1st has canonically happened before your Guardian was reborn.
It's not "spoilers" in universe because it's already the past.

Click to shrink...

This isn't explained when you start the game, I had no idea.

Still, why have a D1 campaign level (even the voice lines are the same) that happened in the past be the first thing you experience? That's really weird. Then they just have you follow the waypoint until you complete the first church mission.

After that, I walked past a sword inside that church, turned around and accepted that mission. After playing linebacker with an orb fetch quest (and hearing a bunch of out of place dialogue about war and conflict, but which one????), I was dropped halfway across the map in the middle of a firefight. I jacked a vehicle, and then helped a bunch of dudes kill like 3 spider crab things. This was like 2 hours in!!!

I supposed the lack of handholding is nice, but you're also just as likely to spend hours killing re-spawning mobs in the open world with no real direction. I feel like that's a big missfire on Bungie's part.

 

[WillyGubbins]

Yep that's how you forge weapons. You don't need a machine gun, though, they are just a nice thing to have that you need to work for if you want it.

Click to shrink...

But I do need one, my current quest requires x number of kills with a machine gun.

 

[Zoidn]

As a new player this game just feels pretty badly designed in that regard. It also seems like you start overleved for the stuff you are doing. At least the gunplay is entertaining though.

 

[Klyka]

This isn't explained when you start the game, I had no idea.

Still, why have a D1 campaign level (even the voice lines are the same) that happened in the past be the first thing you experience? That's really weird. Then they just have you follow the waypoint until you complete the first church mission.

Click to shrink...

The D1 campaign level is basically a throwback to D1, a little "tutorial" for a new player and also is used in a mission for veterans where you actually go back there (and can see and interact with newly started guardians!) to get an exotic gun and a "blast from the past".

They basically needed to come up with something to show off the world to new players (something D2 never had) and decided to just re-jig the D1 mission that started it all. The mission is changed btw, like the Cosmodrome is now in summer when the D1 mission was in winter.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

Yeah, it's pretty bad. I was lucky to have era to help me out

 

[Strafer]

It's worse than that. The 'legacy' story that new light players do go through is a truncated version of the campaign. They don't even get access the free class exotics that you earn or the exotic engram from Zavala at the end.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyThe...just_finished_legacy_red_war_on_my_new_light/

I get that a certain subset of players want to have to the option to skip the story (and it should simply be that:an option) and immediately start playing with their higher light friends but what you get is this and most people are just gonna get confused and overwhelmed when dropped right in.

Forsaken was an incredible expansion and I hope new light players can experience that in full.

Click to shrink...

Wow, that kinda sucks.

Still, I wanna enjoy the story but if stuff is cut then I dont know.

 

[Aztechnology]

Just tell them it doesn't matter because destiny is like select chapters of numerous books shoved together trying to make sense and none of it ever goes anywhere so just ignore it all.

I like Destiny, but it's so dumb and non cohesive that I'm genuinely angered. Their bullshit excuse is that they want it to be a living, breathing world. In which things are just happening and you're a guardian present in it. But it absolutely falls flat in terms of execution and cohesion.

 

[Deleted member 15476]

I'm just running around like an idiot, doing public events and every little quest/bounty I stumble upon lol. Don't mind it too much to be honest, the first 2 hours of the campaign I played from the free version on battle.net were extremely dull.