Bungie, I have suffered too long in the Mars Heist GM. I can scarcely believe this is the nerfed version. Even with all the unintended cheese in the world, the LFGs just cannot do it. The final boss encounter, 30 minutes into the strike, is way too good at denying clears. Why does a Barrier and Unstoppable have to camp the arc ball dunk point? Why do adds have to continuously spawn in to eternity? Why in the Traveler's good name is the aggressive, invulnerable melee boss a one-hit killer? You may keep [b]one[/b], Bungie.
If you want Grandmasters to be this punishing, make it short and sweet so you can quickly iterate upon the challenge if you fail. If you want a long time commitment, let Master Raids and Dungeons do their thing! If you want parity with Trials of Osiris... no, no you don't. Dear God, I pray that you are not using Trials of Osiris Flawless as the benchmark for Grandmasters. Trials is not in an acceptable state, and beyond that, Trials is [i]quickly[/i] iterated upon if you fail to protect your Flawless status. Each match is around ten minutes or less. In a Grandmaster, a single failure sets you back 30-40 minutes and cuts your streak reputation reward.
Scaling down enemy health does nothing to the enemy density, enemy area control, lack of cover, and oppressive punishment for failure that is the Mars Heist GM. Grandmasters were in an acceptable (if iffy on a per-strike basis) state. I understand catering to the hardcore crowd, but they are a tiny portion of the community and giving "difficulty" to them oppresses the rest of the community. Let them whine and complain that Destiny is too easy, there are other games they can play with the challenge they are looking for. Or better yet, they can pull an Esoterick and give themselves special challenges to complete! GMs like the Mars Heist and the updated Lake of Shadows are smothering the fun of strikes.
This is not difficulty. This isn't fun. This isn't a challenge to rise up and meet. It is an obstacle: to avoid, to dread, to disparage. This is punishment. You want the community to farm this, rinsing and repeating the activity again and again, when stepping a toe out of place wipes the entire team and wastes a sizable amount of time. As a development team, do you understand why that is a problem? That pulling teeth is not healthy difficulty? You are not fostering dedication, you are breeding exhaustion in your players.
So congratulations Bungie. You made your challenging strikes, and proved you learned nothing from Glassway and Proving Grounds. You've sanctified the Grandmaster loot as you desired, consecrated with tears. You have made half the Grandmaster strikes something to avoid, putrid with the same stench as Trials of Osiris. I expect better from you Bungie, because you have shown me what better is. I know you can do better. And I hope it doesn't take an entire year for you to address this.
You made some cool loot, Bungie. Shame the community can't achieve obtaining it. But that's what you wanted, isn't it?
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It’s not even hard and GMs are fun.