Destiny: Iron Banner 2.0

[psychlon]

Nov 21, 2014 15:04:34 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Nov 21, 2014 15:02:17 GMT -5 psychlon said:

given a week, this is a joke. 1 week events with faction grind per character is about the lamest idea they could have come up with.

You mean Iron Banner?

The general feedback from community and bros here are positive. It is fun if you are 29+ with kick ass weapons that need non-AI targets . Good times even without the 30-light gear rewards...

I've been playing nothing but IB this week on one character and I'm close to lvl 2.5. I do have shader and emblem equipped.

[psychlon]

Nov 21, 2014 15:43:51 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

Nov 21, 2014 15:02:17 GMT -5 psychlon said:

given a week, this is a joke. 1 week events with faction grind per character is about the lamest idea they could have come up with.

What part of it is a joke, exactly?  A week is more than enough time to rank up a character even if all you have is a couple hours a day.  Trying to get 3 characters all the way to level 5 could be tough, but the best gear available is unlocked at rank 3 and rank 4.  With all the rep bonuses available, that's actually fairly easy to achieve. 

I have a couple of hours on certain days... and with couple I mean between 1-5. I also have three characters for which it would have been nice to get some additional gear and such. I've used rep bonus as soon as they were available.

[psychlon]

Nov 21, 2014 15:56:08 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

Nov 21, 2014 15:02:17 GMT -5 psychlon said:

given a week, this is a joke. 1 week events with faction grind per character is about the lamest idea they could have come up with.

Hold your jets. I'm the Den Kirson resident IBanner hater, so butt out. This is my job to hate, not yours.

And being the guy who gripes on here, let me say this. IB has it's issues (which I have addressed), but even I have to eat a bit of crow on that one (time demands), as at the time, I hadn't fully understood the the bonus-stacking devices being handed out. Banners, emblems, shaders equipped, etc... Especially now, with the buff device at 25% (or 40%?) percent. You can REALLY level up fast now.

I didn't even have the benefit of some of the above, and I made to to level 3 in just a few days, about five or six sessions. And I am grinding 100% solo, by myself.

The only reason I haven't been ranting was because I dropped PvP at low lvl or so in normal Crucible. I have to grind only one more session to get lvl 3 myself but that's for one character. Bungie should be aware of the fact that their game allows to make three and with no cross character reputation sharing means triple the already tight time to get at least to lvl 4. I also don't earn any glimmer in that time which would prove additionally difficult to buy said items.

One week events are generally too short.... an additional 1-2 weeks, who cares? Shouldn't this event already be part of the game anyway for all those which have their maxed exotics/ legendaries? 

In addition... the guy designing the bounties for this event.... 5 available bounties and you throw 10kills in a row w/o being killed and such crap into the mix? Sure.

[wings]

Nov 22, 2014 0:55:03 GMT -5 psychlon said:

Nov 21, 2014 15:56:08 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

Hold your jets. I'm the Den Kirson resident IBanner hater, so butt out. This is my job to hate, not yours.

And being the guy who gripes on here, let me say this. IB has it's issues (which I have addressed), but even I have to eat a bit of crow on that one (time demands), as at the time, I hadn't fully understood the the bonus-stacking devices being handed out. Banners, emblems, shaders equipped, etc... Especially now, with the buff device at 25% (or 40%?) percent. You can REALLY level up fast now.

I didn't even have the benefit of some of the above, and I made to to level 3 in just a few days, about five or six sessions. And I am grinding 100% solo, by myself.

The only reason I haven't been ranting was because I dropped PvP at low lvl or so in normal Crucible. I have to grind only one more session to get lvl 3 myself but that's for one character. Bungie should be aware of the fact that their game allows to make three and with no cross character reputation sharing means triple the already tight time to get at least to lvl 4. I also don't earn any glimmer in that time which would prove additionally difficult to buy said items.

One week events are generally too short.... an additional 1-2 weeks, who cares? Shouldn't this event already be part of the game anyway for all those which have their maxed exotics/ legendaries? 

In addition... the guy designing the bounties for this event.... 5 available bounties and you throw 10kills in a row w/o being killed and such crap into the mix? Sure.

Assists count as a kill it seems because I have done that bounty for two characters now.

[dm]

Kills and assists carry on from one game to the next, so if you finished with three kills/assists without a death then you start the next round with three. I still haven't managed to get it yet, got close but now I know assists count it may be a little easier.

[iw5000]

Got to play more with friends today, makes all the difference in the world. You win the close games, and you get some blowouts. Also got the 10-kill in a row bounty done again!!!

Made Level 4. Halfway to level 5. I think the final push for that is going to wait until tomorrow. Like someone said above, one runs out of Glimmer if you go to fast.

Here's today's highlights. Check out the last sequence in the short video (it's the 3rd of three sequences) Playing with the Hebbs....we were losing in the last thirty seconds, we all attacked B, got a number of kills (4 or 5) and that catapulted us right past them, to a last ten second win of 20,170 to 19,400. Good times and fun clutch win!!!!

[psychlon]

I love these OSK fuckfest games....

[iw5000]

For what it's worth. Anyone doing the IB is going to tons of Glimmer as all the prizes require it.


The heb's told me a spot. Option 1 - The Story mission on the Mars called 'The Exclusion Zone'. Go into the first stage. Open some door. You'll come to your first fight scene. You can round up about 230 to 280 glimmer over the next two minutes plus, wiping out all the Cabal. The key to this one? Don't kill the last guy. Let him kill you. You can save time and then respawn right at the first part of this fight scene (don't have to repeat the opening 90 seconds of running around). So then repeat. If you use Resupply Codes, drawing more Glimmer out of dead Cabal....i would estimate you can average about 150 glimmer a minute rinse & repeating here. As long as you like.

Another option. Option 2. Go to the Patrol mode on Earth. Run down into the Three Musketeer's spot. Kill them. Run up and kill the three Fallen up top. Run back downstairs and repeat. If you glimmer boost here too, you can average about 125 glimmer per cycle. And do the cycle in under a minute if you hustle. The only problem here is after five to six cycles, sometimes the top enemies won't respawn after a while.

Do either one of these techniques.....in halfan hour, you can make about 4,500 to 5,000 glimmer.

[tooros]

Thanks IW.

[hebbnh]

FYI, the Iron Banner buff is 100% today, even higher than the expected 80%. Tomorrow was expected to be 115% -- I think it's safe to expect closer to 150% now. That's great news for anyone like me who still needs to grind a lot of rep in the next couple of days!

[iw5000]

Got my Iron Banner 2.0 done this morning. Level 5. Got my Gold cloak shader, bracelet and other leveling gadgets. Also got some lv 30 boots and gloves.

For my last IB 2.0 game, i played it with Witty and Hebb. Got a great game in. A 24-kill game in which we came back to win. Here's my double fusion kill-shot from it!!!

[mannon]

Dammot what time does this thing end? I don't need a lot more to get rank 3, but I gotta go to work tomorrow... ;/

[hebbnh]

Nov 24, 2014 2:17:33 GMT -5 mannon said:

Dammot what time does this thing end? I don't need a lot more to get rank 3, but I gotta go to work tomorrow... ;/

Ends early Tuesday morning, same time as the weekly reset.

[dm]

I have hit level 5 as well by grinding it out. Haven't got enough glimmer so will have to farm stuff to buy all the goodies.

[wings]

Also, you may be able to do the bounties again since reaching levek 4 as they reappeared for my Titan and Warlock having since turned them in a few days ago. Now if there was no limit on Crucible Marks I could be tempted to play beyond level 4 for my Hunter as the Crucible bounties can be easy XP for my gear to level up. Might go ahead with it depending on when I get my Hunter to level 4 and get the Titan to level 5 and Hulk smash everything in sight.

[iw5000]

Bounties reset every day. The "Get 10,000 XP" bounty has been there every morning. That's why it's best to do a little every day, you can get easy bounties like that over and over.

But then again, the 'buffer' keeps giving more and more multiplier pct points. So I suppose a case could be made for getting it done during the last day. It's at 150% today? Something like that? So a 50pt win now because 75 pts. And if you have the emblem, shader and other stuff, that win could be worth close to 100 pts. And 100 pt bounties become worth 200pts

Thinking it over, the problem with the one or two day push is the lack of bounties. Any 150% bonus you get, is offset by the fact that you aren't getting nothing after using them initially. You are just relying on winning games to get it done. You get the nice initial 800 to 1,000 bounty bonus, plus 800 for some games......so I suppose you get the quick leveling. But then the grind begins.

[mannon]

I've been playing the last couple of days. I think I can push up to rank 3 tonight. Hope I have the glimmer I need for boots. I had to spend a wad getting my exotic shotgun due to purchasing special ammo packs, but I already had quite a few as well so it was offset.

[tooros]

I hit level 4+ last night. Goal achieved. I need to employ iw5000 's glimmer farm to raise about 4k later on. Then I'll have my gloves.

I'm STILL short a raid piece to hit 30 but I'm a lot closer than before. Helmet or Chest piece will do.

[mannon]

BTW, what's the best Fallen glimmer farm spot? I have a metric ton of Ether Seeds stored up and will prolly need glimmer once I hit rank 3. I could do Devil's Lair laser mesh and let the boss kill me to do it over and over, mebbe? But that's also Fallen and Hive so maybe not totally efficient for the Ether Seed, and probably not the best farm spot in the whole game as well, but I don't know what would be better. Possibly one of the story mission checkpoints would be better, though, such as the end of the one in Forgotten Shore where you fight waves with Captains and Some Servitors. It's all Fallen and I could blow through to the end quickly enough if grinding that last mission is worth it then let the servitors kill me so I don't finish it. I dunno...

Does difficulty add more glimmer per kill or is it better to just do low level's you can one shot and kill quickly?

[iw5000]

Nov 24, 2014 9:33:58 GMT -5 mannon said:

BTW, what's the best Fallen glimmer farm spot? I have a metric ton of Ether Seeds stored up and will prolly need glimmer once I hit rank 3. I could do Devil's Lair laser mesh and let the boss kill me to do it over and over, mebbe? But that's also Fallen and Hive so maybe not totally efficient for the Ether Seed, and probably not the best farm spot in the whole game as well, but I don't know what would be better. Possibly one of the story mission checkpoints would be better, though, such as the end of the one in Forgotten Shore where you fight waves with Captains and Some Servitors. It's all Fallen and I could blow through to the end quickly enough if grinding that last mission is worth it then let the servitors kill me so I don't finish it. I dunno...

Does difficulty add more glimmer per kill or is it better to just do low level's you can one shot and kill quickly?

I think added difficult brings more higher level bosses, even yellow-bar bosses. And killing them gives more glimmer. Pretty sure on that. I know when I do the above Mars 'Exclusion Run' story mode, I am setting it on Level 28. This is getting me around 150 glimmer per minute of effort.

I think the three musketeers spot is Hive? Or is that Fallen? I can never remember.

[hebbnh]

Nov 24, 2014 8:56:38 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

Bounties reset every day. The "Get 10,000 XP" bounty has been there every morning. That's why it's best to do a little every day, you can get easy bounties like that over and over.

But then again, the 'buffer' keeps giving more and more multiplier pct points. So I suppose a case could be made for getting it done during the last day. It's at 150% today? Something like that? So a 50pt win now because 75 pts. And if you have the emblem, shader and other stuff, that win could be worth close to 100 pts. And 100 pt bounties become worth 200pts

Thinking it over, the problem with the one or two day push is the lack of bounties. Any 150% bonus you get, is offset by the fact that you aren't getting nothing after using them initially. You are just relying on winning games to get it done. You get the nice initial 800 to 1,000 bounty bonus, plus 800 for some games......so I suppose you get the quick leveling. But then the grind begins.

150% buff today means 125 points for a win and 250 points for each bounty completed, before taking the emblem, shader, and class item buffs into account.  With all three of those, you're looking at 166 rep per win and 332 rep per bounty.  2000+ points in and hour or so is very achievable today if you have a run of good matchups and don't get stuck going up against a partied up group.

You're right about the quick leveling and then having to grind.  While I really appreciate the huge rep bonuses over the weekend and for today, it's pretty ridiculous that putting in the same effort today that I put in last Thursday is going to get me twice as much rep now as it did then.  Might as well just make it a weekend-only event at that point, because there's not much reason to play early in the week when you can make up so much ground later on anyway.  I think a better way to go would be to have the same moderately sized buff available every day.  Taking an average of the buffs we've seen this week, you'd get 57%.  So make it somewhere in the 50% - 60% range every day, and stop punishing people who aren't able to play on the weekend while also better rewarding people who jump into the event early in the week.  Hopefully that's something they'll look at for next time. 

[wings]

Oh I usually claim bounties in batch. Looks like I could have been rank 5 on each character by now but then I have been claiming Crucible bounties in conjunction to level up weapons so I guess it is not time lost.

[iw5000]

I don't feel to bad about being shortchanged last week (playing early) I just did a little bit every day, as I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time Monday. I didn't want to put myself into a position where I felt like I was grinding to much. So I mostly just did a few games, collected all my bounties, ended for the day. Did that the prior days. I was done Sunday morning.

I was initially annoyed when playing IB. But I figured out a few tricks. The biggest? The best thing I did was simply re-orientate my thinking. While I usually detest games-in-progress, getting dumped in them, I quickly realized this is a blessing in disguise in IB. I sought them out over the weekend. I reshuffled the lobby deck after every game I played. I would bet 1 in 3, maybe 1 in 4 games I got dumped into a GiP. This is pure bonus pts. Jump in, play a few minutes, and even if you lose, you collect 80% of the benefit in 1/4 the playing time. I used this tactic A LOT while solo.

The other? I said 'fvck it' to the trying to keep up with all the Weekly, Nightfall, Daily and other scheduling stuff. This sh1t can get overwhelming and ruin things I think. Life is not going to end if you miss the Nightfall on one of your three characters. I didn't do a single nightfall this past week. And you know what? My destiny world is still fine. I didn't need the coins or another Legendary/exotic weapon. No need. More and more weapons, just means more and more endless farming grinding. Just say 'no'. I think that's better that way. I just shut that stuff down.

[mannon]

The whole point of the escalating buff is to keep people interested despite the ever shorter time available to actually participate in the event. Without it there's no reason for anyone to play on the last day of the event unless they're close to the next rank. And if you haven't played all week then forget about it. It gives people who don't have a lot of time to play a chance to still enjoy it on the last couple of days.

I'm not sure it's the best solution, considering how heavily it disfavors playing early on in the event, but then I'm not sure I see a way around it. The whole point of the event is to grind out rep, which is faster if you get wins, but happens either way. So it's more about time played than skill to an extent. Since it is a limited time event making the rep gains get better and better seems like the only fair way to do it. Otherwise you either wind up with an event that lasts a week but you can easily max it out on the first day and ignore it, or you wind up with an event that lasts a week, but unless you start early and play nearly every day there's no point in even trying to participate.

I'm not a big fan of the main rewards for IB being tied to rep ranks that have to be ground out like that. But I don't know what would be a good alternative. I do know I would like to see at least some kind of reward be more skill based, like maybe tossing an exotic engram at the top X % of ranked players or something when the event is done. In fact I rather like the idea of there being some sort of rewards only given out at the end. Maybe your rank determines how good a reward you get and you earn bonus rewards for skill based things. I dunno. It still seems like a decent improvement and I've greatly enjoyed IB so far despite losing far more games than I've won. I kinda wish they would implement a similar token system for regular Crucible. For some reason it makes the lost games seem like I still got something out of it and it doesn't piss me off as much, then when I win after a loosing streak it's that much greater a reward! ;3 There's probably also a lot more people playing. I'm surprised my rare auto rifles are holding up, but I do okay except against a couple of the toughest opponents. Hopefully I'll get better ones soon. I tried my luck at my legendary hand cannon some, but it's not fully upgraded anyway, and HC in PvP isn't like PvE.

[mannon]

PS. I REALLY will need to farm glitter. I don't know if I'm going to get anything from this IB after all even if I make rank 3 easy. Like I said, I have a metric ton of Ether Seeds. But I'm not sure where I would use them.

Also is glitter farming better solo or group?

[wings]

I did not get a medallion in one GiP presumably because I didn't register a kill or an assist but I took a death. I mean why put me in a game that late then?

[hebbnh]

iw5000:  I wouldn't say I personally feel bad about it either, because I'm going to end up at rank 4 with two characters and rank 5 with the third anyway, which is all I wanted to do. I was more thinking that making a 50% buff available everyday instead of the current system would make it easier for people who can't play everyday, or just so happened to not be able to play on the days that were the most beneficial for rep grinding. That and I just think it makes more sense for X effort to give Y reward consistently, instead of X effort gives Y reward one day, then 1.25Y another, then 2Y, and so on. Of course, even if they do change this for next time I may not play it anyway depending on what gear is available. Not a big deal either way really -- this event was so much better than the first Iron Banner that whatever gripes I have are pretty minor.

Good thinking on the join in progress strategy. I'll have to try that if/when I don't have a group to play with.

[iw5000]

While the setup for Iron Banner was grinding in nature. I will say this in regards to the rewards. I feel that IF a player grinded his way to Lv 5 for the lv30 gear.....he earned that gear much more than if he had gotten it in Raiding. You play IB games all weekend grinding this out, many of them solo, you do become better at the game. NO DOUBT there. My IB 'game' is 5x better than where it was last week. I become a better player. So I feel justified in getting the Lv 30 gear. This is how it should be. I see someone with that IB armor on, I know they learned a trick or two.

The raiding process in the VoG now? It's dumb. There is no relation to reward v skill like above. It's basically a 'who you know' game. Where one person (or more) does the work on the VoG hard mode, and then like twenty other people poach a ride on the Oracle checkpoint train, just cheesing their way to four opportunities to Raid Gear with really no effort. That is stupid. If this were my game, I would be annoyed at the shortcutting going on. People aren't getting better. Becoming better skilled in the game, or skilled at Raiding. They are just cheesing.

But then again, Bungie got what they deserved, for putting in such an antiquated dumb random loot reward system. You put dumb sh1t like that in, people will get annoyed and find work-a-arounds on it.

Raid gear should not be random based. It should have been done by accomplishment. Make a person do 'x' number of FULL raids. Also make them complete tasks within the raid, to show they are actually a better player. Kill 'x' number of oracles. Put down 'x' amount of damage on Atheon. Get 'x' number of relic kills. Do enough of these tasks, you most likely have become a better player, and therefore, deserve the raid gear.

[mannon]

Yeah I'm not a huge fan of some days being really good and others not so much. If you could play near the beginning but not at the end that sucks. Theoretically you still have the opportunity to play more, but RL is what it is, and schedules certainly conflict.

I think the biggest problem with this is how short Bungie has made the events. One week... That kinda sucks. Maybe if they did it the same week, every month so we knew it was coming up, that might make up for it some. But really there are some weeks when I only get maybe an hour or two of Destiny that whole week if any. Bungie really isn't supporting casuals very well. They're trying here and there, but it seems a bit half assed. They are really focused on the middle ground, I think. On supporting the moderate try-hards. Die hard 40 hours a week grognards will run out of things to do, but 10 to 20 hour per week players have plenty and aren't totally out classed by the 40+ players. The expansion should bring lots of new content too, thankfully.

We'll see how it goes. They obviously played it too conservatively with the first official IB and learned a LOT. Who knows what they'll learn from this one. I think that is the most impressive thing about Destiny. Just how reactive Bungie has been. We've seen a number and quantity of patches in the short time since release that would take other games a year or more. Okay so the game isn't perfect, but at the rate Bungie is going the next one fucking will be... and I'll probably still be playing this one until it comes out.

[hebbnh]

Nov 24, 2014 10:39:01 GMT -5 mannon said:

The whole point of the escalating buff is to keep people interested despite the ever shorter time available to actually participate in the event. Without it there's no reason for anyone to play on the last day of the event unless they're close to the next rank. And if you haven't played all week then forget about it. It gives people who don't have a lot of time to play a chance to still enjoy it on the last couple of days.

I'm not sure it's the best solution, considering how heavily it disfavors playing early on in the event, but then I'm not sure I see a way around it. The whole point of the event is to grind out rep, which is faster if you get wins, but happens either way. So it's more about time played than skill to an extent. Since it is a limited time event making the rep gains get better and better seems like the only fair way to do it. Otherwise you either wind up with an event that lasts a week but you can easily max it out on the first day and ignore it, or you wind up with an event that lasts a week, but unless you start early and play nearly every day there's no point in even trying to participate.

My issue with it is if you only had two days available to play, and they happened to be Tuesday and Wednesday when the buffs were 10% and 15%, you were pretty much screwed unless you wanted to grind for 12 hours each day. And good luck trying to get anywhere with alternate characters, because there's not anywhere close to enough time for that. Meanwhile you could sit down today and get the same amount of rep in 3 hours or so, meaning you could rank up 3 characters in the same amount of time with 3 hours to spare to rank one of them up even more. I'm sorry, but that's just stupid. There has to be some way to even that out. Here's another idea: have the IB vendor sell 7 different buffs at varying percentages that could only be bought once, so you got to choose what day(s) you wanted to have the big rep bonus(es).  Sure, a lot of people would knock stuff out the first day, but I'm sure plenty of other people wouldn't be able to and would save the big buffs for the weekend or whatever day they have the most time to play. Not everyone is going to be on the same schedule, and it's not like there aren't enough people playing the game. The event wouldn't just die by Sunday or Monday -- there will always be people trying to finish stuff up at the last minute.