Is the best day coming? On the Advantages and Problems of Fate 2: The Phantom of the Concubine

Before everything else:

The main purpose of this article is to describe the advantages and existing problems of the Evil Concubine expansion pack for players who are hesitant to enter or return to Destiny 2 after its release. Most "game specific keywords" will have annotations for explanation, hoping to be helpful to you.

But there is a game concept that must be informed before you read the following content: light, etc. This will give you some concepts about the difficulty of the game content described in the article, and players who already understand it can skip this paragraph.

Unlike the vast majority of MMO games, Destiny 2's equipment level, which is the level of light, can be infused onto another piece of equipment by consuming an item called an "upgrade module". Therefore, players can completely use a piece of equipment that is very suitable for their own attributes until the game is discontinued.

At the same time, unlike the vast majority of other MMOs, there is almost no situation where players rely on high light to crush low light activities, only slightly reducing the difficulty of the game. This mechanism is called the "pressure light mechanism" by players.

After all the light levels of the player's equipment have reached the recommended light level for the activity, the player's damage ability is 100%, and the damage received is also 100%; If the player's average light level is higher than the recommended light level of the activity by 20 light levels, they will receive 90% damage; After the light level of the weapon is higher than the recommended light level, for every 1 point increase in light level, it increases damage by 1% and is capped at 20%.

Here is a picture that can be used to refer to the relationship between damage and light.

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Destiny 2: The Phantom of the Concubine was officially launched on February 23 last month, and this large expansion pack can be said to be the most eagerly awaited major update in the history of Destiny 2 players: on the one hand, it can finally become the dog of Miss Savaturn, which has been planned for a long time in the past few versions. The dark storyline of the upcoming Savaturn has finally come to light, allowing players to get a glimpse of the truth; On the other hand, I am excited about the huge amount of content updates for the games that have been quite declining throughout the past "Year 3" and "Year 4".

After spending nearly 90 hours and experiencing a surge in 90% of the newly updated playable content, I would like to discuss what kind of evaluation I would like to make regarding this update.

Story and Vision: Stepping to the Peak

The biggest optimization of this story mode compared to the past is the increase in normal difficulty and legendary difficulty.

After completing the Legendary Difficulty, players will be rewarded with a complete set of equipment such as 1520 light, one exotic armor, 8 upgrade modules, and a unique business card. However, the same level of difficulty will increase significantly. In addition to the mandatory 10 point light pressure effect, the enemy's melee damage will also double, their health will increase, and powerful enemies will refresh more. After killing small monsters, there will still be residual fire pits on the ground, which players need to avoid.

Players can choose the corresponding battle difficulty based on their current equipment and experience level. Experienced players who have collected a large amount of powerful equipment and weapons from past RAID and events can choose Legendary Difficulty. After completion, they can directly increase from 1520 Light (the current version of players has the highest energy level of 1560 Light), eliminating the process of increasing by 20 Light. This is very tempting for players who are eager to challenge high difficulty and high-yield game content. And defeating the boss during the battle will also earn you an additional reward chest, which contains additional equipment and upgrade modules.

For new players or players with less powerful weapons and equipment, they can choose normal difficulty to complete the strategy. I gave this design a score of 10.

I chose the Legendary difficulty level to complete the entire storyline battle myself, but the difficulty was not particularly high. Compared to Grandmaster Sunset Strike and RAID, it was much simpler. The most crucial thing was that there were no warriors (powerful enemies with special abilities) to cause trouble, nor were there any consecutive checks (attribute shields must be broken with weapons of the same attribute) to limit the player's weapon attributes. For hunters with stealth skills, the difficulty was still acceptable.

Of course, if you really can't beat it, you can also switch to normal difficulty at any time. It's also possible to come back and fight legendary difficulty after equipping or knowing the routine. The main storyline of this time presents each level as a task, and you can choose the corresponding task to retake it at any time, which has never happened in the past of Fate 2.

The quality of the entire plot battle is comparable to the "Scarlet War" campaign content at the time of the release of Fate 2. I don't know how much higher it is compared to "Shadow Fortress" in the third year and "Ling Guangzhi" in the fourth year.

Moreover, in various plot tasks, the design of the boss battle is very outstanding. Many; BOSS  Adding some time limited elements to the battle has the potential to become a RAID replica boss. These designs demonstrate Bungie's consistent excellent combat design abilities.

For example, in this battle against the Baron, the surroundings of the field are pitch black. You need to use weapons to attack the glowing spores on the walls to light up the road for you, and find and kill three powerful enemies in the rooms around the field to break the Baron's invincible shield. And the Baron will constantly track you, attempting to kill you with one close combat blow.

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Then it has to be said that Bungie is truly Bungie. The visual design showcased in the expansion pack of "The Phantom of My Concubine" can definitely take the lead in today's large-scale shooting games.

Unlike in the past, a large number of design elements in this expansion pack are almost brand new, and I personally believe that only the previous year 2, Fate 2: The Lost Clan, can match.

After entering the world of Savaturn's throne for the first time, I was amazed by this visual design. As the plot progressed step by step and more scenes were added, I felt even more impressed by Bungie.

Countless scenes that have been extensively designed even make me feel regretful. Unfortunately, these scenes are likely to have almost no chance of appearing in future games and will become a one-time background for the expansion pack story mode.

This issue has actually existed to some extent in previous versions, but this time may be Bungie's most wasteful one. I hope these contents can be better reused in the upcoming season updates.

In this version update, to address the issue of casual players not being able to experience RAID content in the past, Bungie has added storyline tasks based on RAID dungeons. Although it is not possible to fully experience the battles in RAID dungeons, the addition of 10 collectible items allows these players to understand the stories happening inside even if they do not have to conquer RAID.

By the way, the tower that was destroyed in the early stages of Fate 2 has not been repaired after four years.

Void Light Energy: Restoring Vitality

The newly added Ice Shadow ability in the previous expansion pack "Ling Guang Zhi Ke" brings players an unprecedented "ship new" experience - freely adjustable astrology (which can greatly change the original specifications of skills or add "talents" for small skills) and fragments (which can slightly change the original specifications of skills or provide "talents" for passive abilities), allowing players to shape skill combinations with many variables. Attack, defense, and mobility can all be used to allow the entire attribute talent to change freely through astrology and shards.

In this episode of "The Phantom of the Evil Concubine", Bungie remade the Void Light Energy based on her production experience with Ice Shadow talent, making the entire Void branch more playable. In just a few days, players have developed the gameplay of Unreal Warlock Unlimited Grenade, Unreal Titan Explosive Joy, and Unreal Hunter Team Unlimited Stealth.

These gameplay, whether brand new or strengthened by past routines, all demonstrate the new vitality that this Void Remake brings to Void Branch professions.

With the addition and unlocking of more astrology and fragments in the future, the Void Branch is likely to become the version answer.

So the question arises, is it possible that players actually prefer other branches, but because the void is too strong, they have to consider using void for the team? Just like the Ice Shadow Hunter in the previous version, becoming a ruthless DEBUFF tool man. In the early stages of the version, with weak player intensity, this issue is believed to be more severe.

Weapon casting: mixed reviews

It has to be said that weapon casting is indeed a good idea.

As another important component of this update, the casting system provides players with a stable way to obtain powerful weapons. Can't find a God Roll weapon (meaning that all the skills [PERK] of the weapon are the best choice)? Now the liver weapon level unlocks PERK and you can create it yourself!

As the later materials gradually overflow, it may become possible to freely replace weapons PERK.

However, although the weapon casting system is a good idea, there have been many problems in practical implementation, some of which can be said to be quite serious.

First of all, it should be said that the difficulty of upgrading weapon levels has basically exceeded the level of any updates in Fate 2 in the past. There are two ways to gain weapon experience, one is to kill enemies, and the other is to complete activities. Upgrading a weapon to level 20 to unlock all skills takes a lot of time.

For example, "Mystery" is a newly added weapon in this version. After I killed 2040 enemies with this weapon, its level is only 17. What is the concept of 2040 enemies.

  In a 3-player dungeon lasting about 15 minutes, the player's kill count is generally around 80; In a 6-player RAID instance that is as fast as one hour and as slow as two hours, the player kills approximately 300 kills. This is still the total amount, and even less allocated to individual weapons.

It's hard to imagine how long it will take for ordinary players to level up their weapons to level 20 and unlock all their skills.

Another issue is that the difficulty of obtaining some weapon blueprints (referred to as "modes" in the game) exceeds the range of normal human thinking.

The difficulty referred to here is not the difficulty of the task, but the probability of the weapon dropping.

As part of the weapon casting system, the blueprint for weapon manufacturing needs to be obtained by obtaining the homologous element of this weapon, which is the weapon with a red box.

Some weapons, on the other hand, rely on source attacks for their homologous elements, such as the "Realizing" assault rifle shown in the picture. These weapons themselves have a low drop rate in the Source Offensive, and players must also obtain those unique red boxed homologous elemental elements.

My "Realizing" assault rifle's homologous body was obtained after I completed 4 rounds of 1580 light level and 8 rounds of 1530 light level source attacks, and completing this activity would take me about 15 minutes. This is just one weapon, and completing the weapon blueprint requires two identical homologous elemental weapons to unlock.

There are four weapons produced from the Source Offensive. Such liver power is comparable to the Eternal Challenge Reputation Level 16 reward - a final content that requires you to perform at least 117 Eternal Challenges, each lasting about 15 minutes to unlock.

In addition, the difficulty of obtaining "Shangwei Alloy", one of the materials for unlocking advanced PERK, is also beyond imagination.

After completing about 10 Master Source offensives, my reward was 0. That's right, I haven't even obtained a single "Upper Dimensional Alloy".

It's hard to imagine how Bungie's gameplay designer designed the weapon casting system to be so infuriating. My suggestion is to unlock the second PERK slot on the 3rd and 4th PERK slots of the casting weapon when upgrading to level 10 and 20, respectively, so that players can change it at any time.

So, is there a way for players to solve this problem? The answer is, yes.

The other two issues with the current weapon casting system have actually become the solution to this mystery - firstly, the weapons dropped in the world may still have God Rolls or quasi God Rolls; Secondly, currently the casting system only provides four good weapons - the "Mystery" Yanyue, the "Suspicious Object" fusion rifle, the Lagersiel-D shotgun, and the "Palmyra-B" rocket launcher.

The "Mystery" Yanyue can only use the liver, but since the skills before level 10 are already quite good, the liver doesn't matter. The "Suspicious Object" fusion rifle, as a damage oriented void fusion rifle, complements the "Zero Calm" perfectly; The Lagersiel-D shotgun, as a kinetic energy level attack shotgun, currently has no alternative weapon and is one of the very useful shotguns in PVP content; The Balmira-B rocket launcher relies on excellent explosive light effects, and can be said to be superior to rocket launcher weapons when teammates can provide "wolf pack ammunition" effects and pick up damage bonuses from ice shadow weapons.

The latter of these three weapons can all be obtained through world drops or picking up deep view limited time chests to obtain God Roll, and their liver power is definitely lower than the level of weapon brushing. Although their final attributes may be slightly inferior, at least we have saved our liver, haven't we?

In fact, there is also a very good bow called "Devil's Lie", which can have two PERKs that reduce the charging time at the same time. However, as a PVE bow, considering the positioning of the bow itself in PVE is quite awkward, it doesn't matter if you don't brush it.

New equipment: getting back on track

At the end of 2020, Fate 2 experienced a "retreat environment" (meaning that all equipment and weapons before the 11th season will no longer be able to increase their level of light to the current version's starting point, except for equipment and weapons produced by Redemption Garden and Last Wish RAID). That "retreat environment" turned countless excellent weapons into players' memories, and also made Fate 2's arsenal exceptionally empty.

As the problem of player loss and empty arsenal caused by the retreat environment intensifies, the subsequent "retreat environment" mechanism has been urgently halted. However, despite this, the pain already caused is difficult to heal. Even in order to make up for the problem of empty firearms in the arsenal, some of the content that was originally retired from the environment was re added to the game after adding the PERK library, such as the moon's altar weapons and some former sunset exclusive weapons.

But for players, a "little cutie" is bound to blurt out, "I finally managed to brush GR back then, but you gave up the environment and now you still want me to brush again? You are such a cutie."

Of course, Bungie had a reason to withdraw from the environment. At that time, any player who played for a longer period of time used the standard equipment of "Escape Spider", "Sword Sniper -" Ezanagi's Burden ", and" Wendigo GL3 "grenade launcher. There was no diversity in the entire game sandbox, and these three weapons were the answer to the version.

But in reality, the essence of the problem is that there are too few powerful PERKs, and there are only a few weapons available, so we must catch sheep and fight hard. The acquisition and cultivation costs of equipment with excellent attributes are also extremely high, making it very difficult for players to give up.

In addition, a large number of weapons, even the most powerful PERK, will always eat dust in the warehouse due to the poor usability of the framework itself. Players are always utilitarian, but is it appropriate for Bungie to use this method to make players suffer?

In "The Phantom of the Concubine", Bungie seems to have finally understood how to make players' equipment soft retreat from the environment.

The newly added weapons this time have added gun factory exclusive PERK or original feature PERK, giving the weapons additional skill bonuses beyond regular PERK.

Some gun factories have extremely high compatibility with PERK and types of weapons, giving players who already have old versions of powerful weapons the motivation to switch to new versions.

For example, a funnel net with both "livelihood" and "VEIST spikes". "Livelihood" PERK provides the ability to kill bullets, while VEIST Spike Gun Factory PERK provides the probability of hitting enemies and the ability to recoil bullets, giving "Funnel Net" extremely excellent endurance

In addition, the PERK pool of new weapons is also unmatched by older versions of weapons. Bungie did not stingy with PERK on new weapons, and many new weapons have excellent PERK combinations. As long as the basic framework of the weapon is appropriate, junk weapons are almost non-existent.

I am a comprehensive improvement for everyone. As long as I hit three enemies in a short period of time, the weapon performance will be comprehensively improved, which is amazing

These newly added PERKs are no surprise and will soon replace the traditional PVE environment PERK combination of fast hit/lawless/feeding frenzy+frenzy/killing magazine/multi kill magazine.

Some other fragmented thoughts

The issue of bugs is still a long-standing issue with Bungie, and even fate players sometimes cannot distinguish whether it is a bug or a FEATURE. The simplest example is that the "Mystery" Yanyue, as a weapon that can be obtained in the early stages of the new version, still has the issue of "Tomb Raider" PERK not being effective. At the beginning, it was speculated that this may not be a bug because using "Mystery" for melee attacks cannot be considered a typical character melee, right. A few days later, my friend told me that Bungie tweeted that this was really a bug.

Oh, is there a possibility that the weapon level is too advanced, even Bungie's QA couldn't be upgraded to unlock the level of "Tomb Raider" PERK?

In addition, as an important source of gameplay content in this update, the attack often involves witches getting stuck in the wall.

Even  On March 6th, during the first live broadcast of the new RAID instance "Apostle Oath", DayOne (where players will be forced to enter "competition mode" on the day the RAID is released for gameplay, and in this mode, players will be forced to light up to 1530, but completing the instance will result in an out of print business card), there was a situation where the player, who was normally dead, could not be resurrected, and Bungie's preset anti map HACK mechanism directly sent the entire team back to the track; Alternatively, after killing the boss in the second level, the encounter rewards cannot be resolved and can only be dealt a heavy blow.

Many players spent several hours on opening and closing the door, which should have taken only ten minutes. Not only did players feel upset, but even the host of the first offline live broadcast of Destiny 2 domestic players began to roast about Bungie's traditional artistic ability. In addition, server and network issues are also tormenting these players who are trying to win the first day kill championship, and Bungie has to temporarily extend the end time of this DayOne competition.

It is worth mentioning that the DayOne competition of the Apostle Oath is the most frequently banned competition in the history of Fate 2 due to various bugs, including the use of "mods" and "equipment".

The second issue is the depreciation of "legendary fragments". In previous versions, when players didn't have enough Microcoins, they could go to the "Controversy Coast" and exchange 20 destination materials for 10000 Microcoins. If there were no destination materials, they could exchange 1 Legendary Fragment for 5 destination materials. In total, 4 Legendary Fragments=10000; Microcurrency, generally speaking, has relatively abundant materials.

This update has brought the "Controversy Coast" back to the environment, and the work of exchanging materials has also been handed over to Master Lahore. I was originally happy that I didn't have to change materials and had to fly to the "Controversy Coast", but I found out that the price of Microcurrency has increased. Now I have to; Only 10 fragments can exchange for 10000 dim lights. It seems that Master Lahore is very angry about not having cookies for last year's Dawn Festival.

The third question, how to put it, cannot be forced to be Bungie's problem. It can be said that as a player, I have been treated favorably by the former Bungie, and now I feel uncomfortable without this mechanism.

In the past seasons, especially in the Shadow Pro season (which should be Shadow Pro, I may remember incorrectly), the Benying Memory Crystal can be exchanged for a specified part of the flat light ball (a memory crystal with the same average light level as the current equipment), and in other seasons, it can be exchanged for equipment or weapon flat light balls.

Now that this setting has been cancelled, it can only be exchanged for average light, etc- Equipment of 3. The ability to exchange for flat light balls is very important for players who urgently need to lift light. It can greatly improve the efficiency of lifting light and the function of each highlight ball (referring to memory crystals with a light level higher than the player's average light level). Please add this design back, Bungie. Autumn Pear Cream.

summary

The expansion pack for Fate 2: Phantom of the Concubine has added a lot of vitality to the game that has been in operation for nearly 5 years. The newly added weapon casting system and the remake of Void Light bring new possibilities to this game. As the story unfolds, the worldview of Fate is also steadily advancing on the path of improvement.

The brilliant battle design is constantly applauded, and the addition of ordinary difficulty and storyline tasks undoubtedly allows new players to get started with the game faster.

In the past, "Destiny 2" has experienced an event in which weapons and equipment were withdrawn from the environment, which is still roast and hurt by it. This new weapon is also regarded as a way for the production team of "Destiny 2" to finally find a soft way to withdraw from the environment, which must be encouraged.

In the past, players of Destiny often roast that the game content could not withstand the consumption of players. Now, while providing content, Phantom of the Evil Concubine seems to have taken a wrong way to solve this problem. It is not a good idea to reduce the consumption speed of content by increasing the liver. In my opinion, the practice of recklessly pouring workload and creativity into one-time content such as storylines and battles, while remaining weak in season content, should be changed.

For Fate 2, which has now suffered from the trauma of its outdated content environment, Phantom of the Concubine has indeed made Fate 2 better. But as mentioned earlier, there are still areas for improvement. In the current popular meme, "it's getting better, but not completely better.".

The best day is just the beginning of our journey.