Hey you! Yeah you, the guy dancing on the spot, draped in a piece of 800-year-old spaceship carpet. I bet you think you’re pretty Hot Stuff, don’t you, Mr and/or Mrs Guardian. I bet you think you’re the bee’s knees, the cat’s pyjamas, the… the… gorilla’s elbows. Well, let’s see if these here observations about Destiny’s Raid missions can’t wipe that smirk off your face.
As fans may recall from our last Destiny info-splosion, Raids are ultra-difficult, optional six-player missions that can only be played by teams of Xbox Live friends - there’s no random drop-in feature. They come in two different shades, Normal and a Hard difficulty that’s unlocked on first completing the raid.
“Normal mode is about learning the mechanics, working together as a team and building strategies to overcome the encounters,” observes design lead Luke Smith in a Bungie site update. Hard mode introduces “deadlier combatants, tighter tuning windows for encounter mechanics and a handful of targeted differences” plus a “harsher” death penalty. “Were we to track things like World Firsts, we’d be verifying Hard-mode kills instead of completing the Raid on Normal,” he adds, rather terrifyingly.
Aside from struggling to complete a Raid, you may also struggle to unlock the route to the objective. During the Vault of Glass mission on Venus, for example, players need to find a way to open a giant door.
“For the majority of Raid encounters, you’re going to need to work as a group,” Smith explains. "That group of six is trying to form a metaphorical key which opens a given encounter’s lock.
“By design, we don’t provide much in the way of information to groups in Raids. There aren’t waypoints to follow, or objectives explaining what to do in a given situation. Realistically, for many players, they’ll be turning to the Internet for help on how to do a bunch of the Raid.”
Bungie “fully expects” people to “either publish strategy guides on the Internet or keep their group’s secrets guarded close to the vest in an effort to keep their rewards even more exclusive”.
The developer has made one concession to players who lack the stamina to persevere - Raid progress is saved for a week - from Tuesday to Tuesday - so you can always return later with your fireteam to complete the activity. “Your group could simply make your way into the Vault and call it an evening, reconvene later in the week and pick up where you left off.”
As for Raid-specific rewards, “each class has an entire set of gear to chase across the two difficulties”. You’ll get hold of Legendary weapons and armour that are “completely unique to the Raid activity”, and “visually and thematically connected to the combatants” you’ll face. As in the rest of Destiny, loot drops are private to your session, so there’s no need to worry about people nicking off with the treasure. Each Destiny character can only acquire unique loot from a Raid mission once.
Destiny hits shelves in a little over a week for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Watch out for OXM’s review soon, too, and do check out our interview with Bungie’s Jonty Barnes about the franchise’s future. There are “elaborate plans” for the DLC.
http://www.totalxbox.com/80804/how-destinys-raid-missions-will-test-your-mettle/