Season of the Haunted Recap

It may surprise some of you, judging as how six of the last ten posts on here were tagged in the "hacking" category, that I do things other than writing and coding. I have a life outside of computers. I spend time with my girlfriend and my family, and also play online games with my friends from college. Games that I... said I would write about on this blog? We've come full circle.

That's right! With this post, I'm reaffirming my commitment to making this blog a variety blog, and starting back up by publishing my first gaming post in almost an entire year. Hopefully these will become more frequent, but who knows what the future holds? For now at least, let's talk about the one game that's kept me busy for the past few years: Destiny 2.

To emphasize how much of a stranglehold this game has on me: During quarantine, my friends and I all played Destiny 2 pretty religiously to avoid the reality of the pandemic that was happening outside our homes. This was around the same time that Beyond Light was launching with a new raid, so with my newfound amount of spare time, I found a clan online, spent hundreds to hours preparing for the raid, and surprisingly completed it on day one.

Nowadays, I'm much more relaxed. My entire online friend group has graduated, gotten jobs, and moved away while I'm still only entering my senior year in college. I also still talk with my clanmates from my day-one team as well; I still hang around in their clan Discord server and occasionally run raids or grandmaster nightfalls with them. But I now mainly play Destiny in my off time, rather than making time for it like I used to. No more day-ones raids, no more solo flawlesses, now I'm just a casual endgame player.

That said, I still log on for new content drops, whether its for story progression or minor store refreshes. This has allowed me to accumulate around 85-ish hours playing during this season, and in that time, I did everything I wanted with the new content. I got the seasonal title, crafted an Austringer and Beloved, got a good Stormchaser roll from the new dungeon, finished the Solstice event card, and ran a few GMs to replenish my ascendant shard supply. All-in-all, a productive season I would say, and today I want to talk about my experiences with it a bit.

Seasonal Story

Season of the Haunted's main story starts with the Leviathan suddenly reappearing near the moon, with Calus attempting to commune with the Lunar pyramid in order to become a disciple. In order to halt this, Eris Morn performs a ritual to bind three of our main protagonists (Crow, Zavala, and Caiatl) to nightmares they have of of people they were once close to. In order to prevent Calus from becoming a disciple, we must help our protagonists overcome their nightmares and use their "nightmare energy" to stop him in his tracks.

Season of the Haunted also brought with it the return of a beloved destination that was previously removed from the game: The Leviathan. Now overcome with egregore, the Leviathan is no longer a raid destination but rather a patrol destination, where we now go to complete the Nightmare Containment public event. There are also separate sections of the Leviathan brought back explicitly for the new "Sever" missions, and two other patrol sub-zones that house chests we can get reprised opulent weapons from.

Overall, I thought the seasonal story was good! Each week we would explore the Leviathan and focus on one of the three protagonists and their quarrel with their nightmares. These missions fleshed out each character and showed us sides of them we didn't know they had. Who knew Zavala had a kid at one point? I didn't, at least not until week three of this season. I still believe that the writing team over at Bungie, particularly the team that focuses on lore, continues to do an outstanding job.

Another note: the seasonal story/gameplay loop of "grind this seasonal activity to stockpile energy so we can do one big end-of-season mission" is kind of overdone at this point, in my opinion. I'd like to see some other mechanics make their way to seasonal content. Alas, I have no suggestions to build upon that idea, so you can just call me a critic if you want.

Don't get me wrong though, Haunted's story content was thoroughly enjoyable. I had a fun time playing through the sever missions, and the final mission at the end with Calus was a sight to see. The season's final transmission in the HELM was also a welcome surprise. Good story, good characters, good execution. Good job, Bungie.

Opulent Guns

With the return of the Leviathan came revamped versions of its widely acclaimed Opulent guns, which were originally sunset back at the start of Beyond Light. Players were now able to earn their favorite Beloveds and Austringers back, and on top of that? They were craftable. This allure brought many Destiny veterans like myself back to the game this season, with high hopes and expectations.

However, when we logged in, we were greeted with an extremely disappointing grind to get our guns back. The grind for 5 opulent red frames was real. I spent way too much time grinding opulent keys in patrol, then hoping— praying— that the gun I earned was the red-border form of the one I wanted. Four guns in the pool meant a 25% chance to get the one you wanted, with a stacked 15-20% chance for it to be a red border, bringing the chance you earned a gun that met both criteria down to a tiny 5% probability. Now repeat that five times.

I, for some reason, had enough mental illness to grind out my Austringer within the first two weeks of it being available. Not my proudest moment, but at least the gun still feels as good as it used to!

Mad-dashing around the leviathan wasn't the only way you could get red frames though. Given you had upgraded your Crown of Sorrow vendor enough, there was a perk where you were guaranteed one focused red border of choice each week via the Crown. While this mechanic may seem like a good alternative to the wild goose chase that was opulent keys, focusing had its downsides as well.

A major thorn in the side of many players this past season was obtaining the currency needed for focusing these guns, Opulent Umbral Energy. Unlike previous seasons, the only way you could get Umbral Energy was by running the seasonal actvity, Nightmare Containment. Each run of Nightmare Containment would take around 15-20 minutes to fully complete, rewarding seven to nine Umbral Energy per run.

Focusing a red-border of your choice requires a whopping twenty-seven umbral energy, meaning that each week, players would have to run 4 Nightmare Containments, spending upwards of an hour solely grinding this repetitive seasonal activity, just to get one of the guns they wanted. Once again, multiply this by five, for the five weeks it would take to make the gun craftable.

In my opinion, both of these grinds are way too long, and way too demanding.

I can understand this mechanic being present at the end of raids, like Vow. Vow's guns are extremely good, with Bait and Switch Cataclysmic being one of the best LFRs in the game at the moment, and Chain Reaction Forbearance being really good at clearing entire rooms of ads in mid-to-endgame content. Simply put: The Vow guns are worth the 5 weeks it would take to get each of them via the post-raid kiosk, because their utility and strength justify a grind of that length.

Austringer, on the other hand? I mean it's okay in PvE, but it's nowhere near as valuable as a Forbearance or a Submission. If that's the case, then why are the grinds for each gun the same? I'm not just talking about the number of frames needed to craft them either; the time commitment for a run of Vow is comparable to the time needed to farm enough Umbral Energy for a single gun. If anything, Vow is better when it comes to time investment because you get 7 chances for a red border via every encounter and secret chest.

I feel a good compromise would have been to lower the number of frames needed to craft the gun down from five to three, just like the Wellspring weapons that were introduced last season. On top of this, the game should allow you to earn Umbral Energy from playlist activities, just like you were able to do in past seasons. Why this mechanic was removed in Season of the Haunted royally befuddles me, because it would have made the grind much so easier on players without sacrificing playtime.

Grind aside, the guns themselves still feel great. I am a huge fan of my Snapshot/Rangefinder Austringer in PVP, and my Snapshot/Moving Target Beloved feels just as good as it did before it was sunset. If you were a fan of these guns before they went away in season 12, I would definitely recommend picking up a roll or two.

Duality

Haunted also brought with it a new dungeon, keeping with Bungie's commitment to bring new endgame content to the game every season, alternating between raids and dungeons with each release.

Duality is an awesome addition to the game. It looks good and is extremely fun to play through. I went in on day one with my friends Nick and Noah, and we did our first run in about 4 hours. We now have it down to about a 45 minute fresh run.

The novel mechanic of swapping between the dream and nightmare dimensions to traverse the mind of Calus himself is extremely novel and fun to play around with. Each encounter's mechanics are challenging but also solo-able, and the loot is absolutely worth it as well.

Duality's LFR, Stormchaser, is the most sought after piece of loot from the dungeon. What makes Stormchaser unique is the fact that it's a 3-round burst, unlike the rest of its single-round cousins. It's also able to roll with Clown Cartridge and Firing Line— an extremely powerful combination— which made it the top endgame DPS weapon for many weeks after its debut. Even now, It's still one of the best DPS weapons in the game, and it's really useful to have for grandmaster nightfalls and raids alike.

That's all I'll really say about Duality. You really need to experience it for yourself if you haven't yet. The Raid and Dungeon team at Bungie really knocked it out of the park with this one.

Solar 3.0

Back at the start of Witch Queen, Bungie made a commitment to revamp all of the subclasses in the game to use the new 3.0 system, which was introduced with Stasis back in Beyond Light. They would update one subclass per season, starting with Void in Season 16. As the second season in this timeline, Season 17 introduced the second subclass remake: Solar 3.0.

When Solar 3.0 was in its infancy, most players (admittedly including myself) wanted to focus on what was taken away from them with the release, rather than what they were given. I would argue that Void 3.0 set a bad precedent because its strength over its 2.0 counterpart made it seem like 3.0 was supposed to be all about buffing players, when it was really intended to be more about rebalancing. Naturally, when Solar 3.0 launched and there were more rebalances than buffs, players were upset.

As a warlock at the start of the season, I was disappointed with my new solar damage options. The only useful exotic I knew at the time was Sunbracers, a pretty novel exotic, but also one that wasn't useful in anything beyond patrol. Melee kills in higher-level content are a lot harder to get, therefore you don't trigger Sunbracers as often, and end up asking yourself what the point of wearing them in the first place was. After encountering this dilemma myself, I decided to let my warlock rest for the season and pick up my titan, which was pretty neglected up until that point.

That was easily the best decision I've made all season.

The new titan exotic introduced this season was Loreley Splendor, a helmet which upon being critically damaged would consume your class ability and spawn a sunspot at your feet. This helmet was extremely powerful in combination with the Sol Invictus aspect and Classy Restoration seasonal mod, essentially granting you instant and persistent healing once you took any moderate amount of damage. Resilience was also buffed this season to increase damage resistance the higher you stacked the stat, so a good Loreley build in combination with 100+ resilience armor made every titan near invincible.

That's not to say titans were the only class that benefited from Solar 3.0. As patches were released and exotic synergies were discovered, every class went on to find their own way of pushing Solar 3.0 to its limits. Hunters found out that Blade Barrage and Shards of Galanor had become one of the highest damage supers in the game, leaving Celestial Nighthawk to gather dust in the vault. Warlocks similarly discovered that fusion grenades became their main damage dealers and that Starfire Protocol aided this strategy, so it became the new de-facto exotic armor piece for that class this season.

Overall, I would say that Solar 3.0 had a rough start with lots of player criticism out of the gate, but ended up being pretty solid addition to the game. Experimenting with it has been lots of fun, and I think it has certainly earned its rightful spot next to its older sibling, Void 3.0. Here's hoping Arc 3.0 can keep up!

Solstice 2022

The last notable thing to happen this season was the reintroduction of the Solstice of Heroes event, now just called Solstice, which was redone and totally fresh! A new mechanic called the Event Card was also introduced, which allowed for players to complete a set of event challenges in order to to unlock a new title, "Flamekeeper." The introduction of the event card also brought with it the new "Reveler" title, a reward title for players who complete the new event cards for each of Destiny's four limited-time events.

I'll be as blunt as possible when I say this: I think that Solstice 2022 was a downgrade from what we used to have.

The previous iteration of Solstice gave us a green armor set at the start of the event, and had us completing all sorts of objectives to level it up from green rarity to legendary masterwork rarity. These objectives, attached to each armor piece, would take us to every corner of the game: from playlist activities to the EAZ activity, from old content like blind well to new content like raids. Hell, patrols were even part of the objectives. No stone was left unturned, and experiencing all that the game had to offer while chasing this cool looking armor set was one of the highlights of my year.

Now came Solstice 2022, which announced a total revamp of the event's content. I was hopeful, and even bought the premium event card before even playing the event, in hopes that it would meet expectation. Instead, I was met with the familiar and boring gameplay loop of "do playlist activities to get this useless currency, then run this new special activity a billion times to convert it to a different semi-useful currency." This is the same gameplay loop that I had come to despise over the many seasons and expansions that used it, and seeing it implemented again put a sour taste in my mouth.

As mentioned earlier, the Solstice 2022 Event Card had challenges attached to it, just like the armor used to have in previous iterations. Now instead of having objectives per armor piece, you just had 24 separate challenges that would give you another currency you could use to upgrade the armor. Some of these challenges were pretty simple, like "Run the new Bonfire Bash activity." Others were wildly out of touch, like having to play 25 games of crucible or gambit, per character. Assuming each of these matches takes 8 minutes, that's 10 hours of only crucible and gambit to unlock the challenge on all three characters. Sure, a progress multiplier was added to speed up this process later. Given you finished the event card on one character, your progress on other characters would have a 2x or 3x multiplier. But this mechanic wasn't introduced until the last week of the event!

The new event, Bonfire Bash, was also a disappointment in my opinion. The previous iteration's event had you and your team split up and run around to kill as many mini-bosses as you could for five minutes, before coming together for one big boss at the end. Once the big baddie was dead, you were all rewarded with chests proportionate to the amount of mini-bosses you killed. Each chest would then spawn in a hidden place, and the game would then send you on a wild scavenger hunt. You'd have you a minute and a half to explore the entire map and open as many hidden chests as possible to get your loot.

Here's a video from The Phoenix on YouTube, if you want to see what an old EAZ run would look like:

The new Bonfire Bash mission was streamlined. A lot. You were now required to kill 20 mini-bosses that spawned in the same locations every time. You'd take the balls they dropped and toss them into the fire. Then kill the big boss, and... That's it! No more exploring. No more secret chests. Half of the detail of the EAZ like the teleporters and the interiors of buildings are now no longer used. This mission is also how you convert silver leaves into ash, which you need to upgrade your armor, so I hope you like it because you'll be running it a lot.

I don't know. Maybe I'm being overly critical, but I was disappointed by new Solstice. I understand they needed to revamp the event to introduce the event card, and in turn pave the way for the "reveler" title to even be a thing, but I was still let down. I'm hoping Bungie takes this criticism into consideration and maybe brings back some of Solstice's character next year.

Summary

I think that as a playerbase, we're in an odd stage right now. I've been around this community long enough to know what happens next. Every year, as expansions get closer, hype grows and the game seems good again. As expansion launches fade into the past, the playerbase gets negative again. Right now, I believe we're on the low part. With that in mind, I'll bet that once details of the new expansion are revealed on August 23rd, the widespread negative sentiment will go away, hype will start building again, and the game will seem more enjoyable.

Taking our timing into consideration, I think that Season of the Haunted was pretty good! Bringing back an entire sunset destination for patrol is something Bungie certainly didn't have to do, but was welcome nonetheless. Given you don't mind the grind, Opulent weapons are still exceptionally good in PvP. The new dungeon, Duality, is top-tier and Solar 3.0 shook up the sandbox and brought new interesting metas into the game.

For a while now, my primary measure of season quality is measured by whether or not I was motivated enough to surpass level 100 in the season pass, and as of writing, I'm at level 134. Also as mentioned earlier, I was able to complete each of my major objectives this season, so I feel pretty happy with the season overall. Good job, Bungie!