Vault of Glass

Did anyone read the weekly update from 29-08 ?! The Vault is said to be "the most challenging experience'' that Bungie has ever created. [b]What about the rumor that some “clan” spent 16+ hours playing the Raid and didn't beat it, what's the deal with that? [/b] [u]Luke[/u]: There's a whole bunch of missing information in that sentence. So let's just talk about that particular weekend. In March 2014, we brought an organized clan of folks in to playtest the Raid. This would be one of the only times the Vault of Glass would be played by external participants. These folks are shooter players, not -- for the most part -- Raiders from other games. They are a group of people used to working together primarily in competitive multiplayer games, and hadn't been exposed to an experience like this before. We arranged the 24 visitors into four teams. We put them through a pretty lengthy UR study, filmed them, datamined their adventures, and watched them play it live. Later, the Raid team spent a bunch of time watching player perspective films we captured during the day. We did not offer them help, tips or tricks during their time here. We didn't clarify mechanics for them. We watched, listened and learned. In two days of playing - where they broke for meals and had some ramp up time with the game on day 1, here's what happened: Two groups made it to the final encounter. Neither group defeated it. One group made it to the final encounter, but had to be skipped through an earlier encounter. One group washed out and elected to go back to playing Strikes, Missions and Patrols. With the goal of as many players beating the Normal Raid as were willing to organize, cooperate and communicate, we made a bunch of tuning changes through the rest of the Spring. [I hope the Faceless Guardians are ready for such a challenging experience... ;p ]