Alright, so this has been out for a while now and others have given their own thoughts on it. I've given my feedback on the previous two Twitch streams already. I decided to avoid posting my thoughts on it this time around to avoid another rage filled response, though I still stand by what I said in "Part 2" despite letting my anger freely flow.
I'm just going to be real short here this time. Truth be told, these streams aren't really interesting me all that much anymore, but I've had people asking me to keep up with these reviews on them because they want to see what I have to say on them.
For starters, my opinion hasn't really changed with regards to the Community Guest aspect. For the record, I don't really have anything against Mr. Fruit or Lauren. The point I was making before and that I'm still making now is that I just simply don't know these people. And I'm not the only one, either.
It gives me this impression that them being on the show is less for our benefit and more like they're winners in some kind of sweepstakes. Like Bungie just did this random drawing from a hat with little pieces of paper that had names on them and these two were the "LUCKY WINNERS" who won a free, all expenses paid trip to Bungie Studios to guest star on their Live Twitch Stream. This notion is only further cemented by the fact that at the end of this particular stream, DeeJ turns total Talk Show Host and announces that they're receiving these Destiny: The Taken King bundles that supposedly for them to give to their youtube fans or whatever.
Point is, I just see no purpose to it.
These Twitch Streams in general just come off as being very ineffective in all regards. I would have cared a lot more if they were doing a Live Q&A session instead where you had members of the community on as guests in a panel asking questions of Bungie with the TTK content right there for the developers to use to try and answer those questions.
I mean, Cozmo instructed me in one of my posts a while back where I asked very important questions concerning those who are NOT buying TTK, and I was told two things. 1) that my questions would be answered for the Weekly Update when Patch 2.0 is put out, (Which that defeats the purpose of me having asked said questions, since the point was to get the answers SOONER rather than LATER when it would already prove too late for anyone to actually act upon said information...) and 2) to watch the live stream. Which I took to mean that many of said questions would be getting addressed in these Twitch reveals.
Sadly, that was not the case. Thus far, the first Twitch stream remains to be the most informational of them all. And yet, even that video lacked tremendous details and gave us ambiguous answers that flared up these forums even more so.
All in all, I'm not impressed. I think really the only thing I saw that I could file under as being "GOOD" is the fact you're finally adding more new weapon types to the game. The Swords is an idea I proposed like, at the start and have been off and on bringing back up. Expanding the weapon variety to more than just guns allows for the potential to have an infinite source of design material for new weapons by continuing to expand into the Melee Weapon Archtype.
Now, what I DON'T like about them, however, is that they're listed as Heavy Weapons and actually require ammo for some unknown reason. I mean, I can already tell ya now that people will be disregarding them in terms of PvP and in most PvE situations, for Heavy Weapon choices most will stick with the Rocket Launchers or Machine Guns for artillery fire. The Swords themselves would be far better served as actual Primary or Special Weapons, removing the ammo requirement for them to be used.
Ammo could be used to "activate" a sword's perks/features like the shield or a Power Attack move by hitting R2. However, when equipped the sword should be used in place of your regular melee attack and deal more damage than a regular melee. (Because lets face it, if someone is actually able to get that close to you in the first place? You pretty much deserve to die. And in terms of PvE close range in general is risky. The higher the risk should always mean the higher the reward in terms of damage output)
Anyways.
Now, the Court of Oryx itself...
[b]"Meh."[/b]
That pretty much sums it up for me. I mean lets face it, this is basically Prison of Elders 2.0 if we're really being serious.
You know, when you said "Player Triggered Public Events" I allowed myself to foolishly get my hopes up and think you were taking it to the next level. Like, players would begin seeing legitimate NPCs appearing out in the open world areas that they could interact with and get involved in a series of events that they would have to figure out for themselves. Like finding random items in totally odd places, areas where people don't normally go so as to encourage us to really get out and explore the world.
Example. On Patrol in the Cosmodrome, that starting area. If you head down into that underground area, there's a room where you encounter three Hive yellow bars. But when you kill them, there is literally nothing else down there. Its just a totally random ass enemy encounter. Now, what if instead, you went down there and found a data disc on the ground or a damaged android from the Tower? Interacting with either would give you a clue about something. No quest marker, mind you. Just a random tidbit of information like "10-22-8877" and then afterwards its gone. No one else can get that now, only you.
Yes, you've probably guess what I'm talking about. This is akin to a Scavenger Hunt quest, only it doesn't give the player(s) a clear cut objective. These kinds of things are totally random and put into the game by the developer. Unique experiences.
Now THAT would have been praise worthy. However, the Court of Oryx is nothing like this. I mean it just looks to be another grind riddled activity where players are meant to devote hours upon hours of their lives and then come Year 3 all that time will be rendered moot because everything done in Year 2 will likewise be "frozen in time" given how Year 1 is being handled.
-
The streams Bungie does lost all their interest for me quite a while back. At the point that they have teaser streams for the -blam!-ing [i]trailers[/i] for a DLC, it became very apparent that Bungie has completely fallen into their own hype machine and can't find their way out again. Mix in the fact that their "special guests" are always twitch streamers and YouTubers who all-but make their living (almost) exclusively off od Destiny, and the whole "objective opinion from the outside" becomes a sad joke.