The big highlight of the original Destiny’s second year, was without any doubt the raid “King’s Fall”, an activity for six players with several bosses and special mechanics, which required perfect teamwork and a lot of practice. One evening, we had spent hours of hard work to get to the two witches Ir Anûk and Ir Halak, the final test before Oryx, the Taken King.
Oryx’s doorwomen beat us several times, it was always very close, but it was also late in the evening and patience was becoming an increasingly rare commodity within our troop. Every single mistake brought down the whole team. And with every failed attempt it became harder to hide one’s own frustration. Then things got really dramatic. We were well on track, had already defeated the first witch, unloaded our entire arsenal on her comrade and already heard her death cry.
At the same time, however, she had launched her final offensive and killed the entire team in one action. A sure sign that the fight was already taking too long and a typical raid mechanic developers use to force players to get into a hurry. The much-hated respawn countdown started, our screens went black and the weary moans of my teammates murmured through the party chat. That was it. We had to start the whole fight all over again. For what felt like the 57th time that night. Frustration might have boiled over at any moment.
But as the counter relentlessly counted down, I remembered the filled yellow bar above my ability display. Intuitively I pressed LB and RB on my controller at the same time, triggered a familiar hissing sound and the screen became bright again. My warlock activated “Radiance”, the special ability of this character class, revived itself and caused ecstatic screaming on my headphones. As the only survivor of this epic battle, it still meant that the stage was cleared for everyone.
The evening was saved, the pack gathered their loot and we decided to end our guardians working days. We spared Oryx for another evening. With Destiny 2, “Radiance” was finally removed from the game two years later without further explanation. The warlocks had apparently forgotten this ability as easily as US citizens forget about their president’s countless misbehaviours. In the end, of course, this experience was not an isolated incident, but a major blunder in terms of game balancing.
Destiny was developed by Bungie and published by Activision. The MMO Shooter received updates from 2014 till 2017 and is still being supported by Bungie. Destiny is available for Xbox One and PS4, as well as Xbox 360 and PS3.
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