The least played raid in the history of the franchise needs fixing!

[johnrr6]

I am just going to hit that elephant in the room square in trunk.

I hate the new Guardian Takedown. And from what I can gather…I am not alone…at all.

I get that they wanted to do “something different.”

I get that this is somehow…some offbeat “homage” to the way Bungie does their raids in Destiny:
Wait hours to get partners
Hope the partners won’t rage quit in mid raid
Puzzle jump and platform all over the place, again…and again…and again
Dance around the fire 3 times
Hurl magic balls between each other
Wonder who’s turn it is to do just what…always
Make sure it’s the first Tuesday of the month
and you were nice to your wife that day
Then…ultimately…always and without fail…everyone gather within a Warlock’s damage circle and cut loose with everything you have and live…or die…likely die. After about an hour and a half effort. And even if you won…many times the rewards were frankly lousy for the effort spent…and frustration.

But I digress…

OK…I get all this, but in the spirit of nothing can’t be fixed…

I would propose that at the very least, several save points are inserted and a final save point before the last boss with ammo dump.

And for the love of the good Lord GB …please …PLEASE either add new weapons and gear to that loot pool or tweak and buff the crap out of what is being offered now. Or BOTH!! It’s plain shameful.

Sigh…why on earth does this game think it needs to be “different?” They have one of the most successful franchises in history with a known, successful way of doing things…

How about some “Classic Raids” GB??

Like a ton of them!

Final tongue in cheek remark. “Hey GB…if I wanted to play Destiny, I’d play Destiny!..I don’t.”

[Aaron0000]

Change the amount of time needed to charge the crystals based on player count. It is already a struggle to juggle three crystals individually without getting popped.

[EldeeFifty (PSN Gaming: EldeeFifty | PSN Trade: Muletastic | Twitch: Eldee50 | YT Eldee Fifty)]

Tbf, it is supposed to be a struggle…

[The_Cyberbaron (Cybernetic Ghost of Pandora's Past from the Future)]

Before you get too mad, remember Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage was a nightmare to get through. It doesn’t matter what character or why; it was just really ■■■■■■■ hard. And you wanted a Slow Hand . Really bad. For four of the six characters.

[vCarpeDiemv]

I agree here, however Maliwan Takedown seems so trivial now. I wish there was health balancing between similar enemies. Even trash mobs in Guardian Takedown seem to have similar health to badasses in Maliwan Takedown.

This doesn’t even take into consideration the lack of legendary drops. Or the awful usefulness of Guardian Takedown drops. Nothing from that 45 minute long raid replaces anything currently in use. The ASS annoint interaction with the Stinger is the beat thing to come from that raid and it only requires farming the mid boss. Yet this farm still takes as long as farming Wotan, effort<<<reward.

The map is beautiful, I like the fact that it seems to actually tie into the story, yet I can’t seem to find the desire to enjoy it the same way I can Maliwan Takedown 8 months later.

[johnrr6]

Depends on why it is hard.

quite a difference between fun mechanics…

And mechanics just designed to “make it hard”

I don’t think I have ever bitched about something being…hard…

What I am bitching about here is a raid that has:
questionable mechanics with no saves
takes way to long for the reward
the rewards are terrible.

A gameing event should respect a players time and strike a balance with difficulty vs absurdity and then reward properly…

This one doesn’t…at least at this point…but it is fixable I think.

Glad you like it. But I think you are in a very small crowd…based on conversations around the community. But what do I know.

Just my opinion…doesn’t make me right or you wrong.

[Minus_SHiFT]

I’ve completed this takedown exactly three times.

The first was right when it came out, with Mayhem turned off because the smallest of the local fauna had something like eight hundred trillion hit points.

The second was right after DLC3 came out so I could see if Mayhem10 was doable with Iron Bear Mk-III and my ridiculously overpowered Flipper SMGs. It was. Eventually.

The third was a couple days ago, because my brain convinced itself very briefly that my memory of every aspect of this takedown being terrible was an exaggeration.

It wasn’t an exaggeration. I do not enjoy the Guardian Breach experience on any level whatsoever. The only redeeming feature is that it’s maybe kind of pretty to look at some of it? It would have been okay as the last part of a campaign, so you’d play it once for the story and the spectacle, and then never again. Speaking of… what exactly was the story, again? The planet was cracked open because (reasons), and here’s this dude inside? Did Scourge break the planet open? And we’re… avenging it? I honestly don’t remember.

The soundtrack isn’t that great (Maliwan Takedown’s is amazing). The enemy attack patterns aren’t remotely interesting or complex. The level design is slow and tedious and frustrating. The rewards absolutely do not align with the player’s effort.

The whole thing is just… ugh.

[sean9900]

I personally really enjoyed Maliwan Takedown right before Mayhem 2.0. It really felt like busting an army base to show them who’s the badass, and the sight of endless waves of soldiers, hounds and death balls pouring on you was truly a challenge indeed. Not to mention that the Valkyries and Wotan was such a great boss. Now, it’s a bit too easy for my liking(the TRUE takedown takes literally about 10 minutes while I take my time being thorough) but it’s still WAY more enjoyable than Guardian Takedown.

The Guardian Takedown is just boring and irritating. The whole jump puzzle gimmick is terribly frustrating since you have only one save point, the infamous crystal phase is a bad joke, the bosses have no trait or charm except for wasting your time and kicking you out, and the loot drop is disappointing. And yet it’s pretty much the only real end-content so I really don’t have much options to do other than it.

I just hope that more takedowns and raids are on the horizon, but we definitely need more ‘Maliwan’, not ‘Guardian’.

[Tramonto]

When I first played Maliwan Takedown I was blown away. I thought “they are in the right direction!”. Between that and the shaft it was my most played content. Beautiful scenery, the feeling of being in an actual military base, the enemies… I imagined more takedowns in places like a COV stronghold similar to Shiv’s, with a mix of interior and exterior.
Then Guardian Takedown came… I’m not a fan of alien ruins so I’m already biased, but in comparison to the first one, this raid is really uninspired, location wise…
Crystals are annoying, jumping is annoying, jump pads are annoying, the pace is slow…
I find the guardian populated trial more appealing.
Too bad because the devs have the potential to create fun scenery and situations. Think Atlas HQ. You have the courtyard, the labs, the tower, the back of the tower with dropships and turrets… With a little more complex objectives the pace could be perfect for a raid.

[Feculator]

I haven’t even felt compelled to try it yet, from what I hear it’s not really meant for solo, and platforming fails combined with stingy checkpoints are a turn-off for me as well.

[j_r_hicks87]

I think the biggest problems are how bad the rewards are and how punishing it is when a member of a group dies.

Checkpoints after both crystal puzzles and right before Scourge would adequately address the second point.

More rare drops from both Scourge and Anathema would address the first. Should average something like 3-4 items from unique pool per kill, 4+ on True Takedown. GTD bosses should produce more loot than MTD because GTD is harder and more time-consuming.

Buffs to Smog and Globetrottr would be a good idea too.

And maybe add the M6+ guns to the boss pools in GTD as well.

[Gibbsy9000]

Torgues campaign was tongue in cheek and fun to play though…

[whatevercb]

The next raid should be to take back the company for Mr.Torgue. assault the headquarters and kill your way up the building eliminating board members of increasing difficulty!!

[MerguezMan]

Completed it with a friend … sort of, as we both alternatively died at different points.
That was before the action skill and grenade scaling update.

Honestly, we died 10% because of enemies, 90% because of platforming.

• missed jump, our bad timing
• got hit during a jump, which would make us fall to oblivion
• game for some reason refusing you grab platform with hand
• game for some reason not making the platform appear (not at all)

That is awful design. And the rewards are not worth the trouble.

I won’t return until there’s a big change here.

[damien_hine (EpicDamo)]

I shared my thoughts elsewhere but thought they’d do well here. All of my points still stand and would be easy adjustments that would, in my mind, make the Takedown far better than it currently is.

@damien_hine

I want to be able to enjoy the Guardian Takedown more. It’s a beautiful setting with fantastic ideas but there’s a few things which hold it back.

• With the length of the Takedown, only having two checkpoints is really painful. Overall, the content is a great length but if I die once, miss a jump or any number of other things I can be set back an annoyingly long way. With the Maliwan Takedown you’ll never lose half an hour of work. If it was up to me, I’d put checkpoints in after the both crystal puzzles, each with vendors situated by them.
• I like how one jump puzzle was done in Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon’s Keep - if you fell, you’d simply be set back to the beginning of the puzzle. To me, the jump puzzles shouldn’t have such huge consequences but just be a fun mechanic within the Takedown.
• Collectively, Wotan and the Valkyrie Squad can drop the M4 exclusives, the Tiggs Boom, Redistributor, Kyb’s Worth and a load of legendary mods that were brand new at the time. An average player probably takes 20 to 30 minutes playing the raid. By contrast, the Guardian Takedown takes the average player anywhere between 1 and 2 hours. The loot doesn’t feel adequately rewarding. I would make each boss have a guaranteed chance to give up at least one of their dedicated drops and then also make it possible for them to drop the M6 weapons.
• The Webslinger is a weapon people have mixed opinions about. It’s pretty cool that you can use it to climb walls but I wonder if it should also have some actual use in combat. If we simply changed it so that the splash damage from that weapon cannot damage the player then we could make it both good for climbing walls and webbing up our foes.
• A lot of people complain about the crystal puzzles but I myself have never especially struggled with them, I’ve always been able to beat them first time. However, I wonder if people would be happier if there was a checkpoint immediately before the puzzle? Open to different opinions. It might be that the potential checkpoints I introduced earlier would be enough.
• I’m a bit surprised this needs saying, but there should be individual matchmaking for the individual Takedowns. If I want to play the Guardian Takedown with others, I shouldn’t have to wait 20 minutes and then be thrown into the other raid. Matchmaking needs to be looked in general really. Apparently BL3 has a lot of players but it always takes forever to find anyone to play with, and that’s before mentioning finding Mayhem modifiers which work across a team.
• The final thing I’d say is that we should move the platforms for Anathema slightly closer to where the slide drops you out. Through no fault of their own, some players have been thrown into oblivion and had to restart the entire raid. Not the most fun thing.

[olivier_shady]

Ha ha , I feel it tedious in solo but I can imagine the utter pain to do this with randos on multi

[sportster]

It’s free. You got what you paid for. I don’t want limited resources fixing something that isn’t broken. That’s right it isn’t broken. It’s working the way it was designed. Like it, or don’t like it, that’s everyone’s prerogative.

I think GBX has more important things to attend to, than redesigning free content that works.

[drugfreepizza]

Honestly, the raid needs to be played alone or with people you always play with. Matchmaking is just not going to work with the raids on mayhem 10.

[GUNZERKUS (since CTT)]

It makes me miss legendary BL thrills such as Terra or The Ancient Dragons Of Destruction …

[johnrr6]

You certainly have a right to that opinion…

And yes…it is free…

Buuuuut, imho…something as important to this game as additional end game content should not be in this state…

Free or not…

And if it’s working as intended as you say…

Working to do just what?

Frustrate and drive players AWAY from the game??

I will agree that at this point…GB may have bigger fish to fry when it comes to “fixing”…

But at some point in this cycle. End Game will have paramount importance for longevity. And fixing one of the ONLY TWO raids in this game will be VERY important.

My opinion…doesn’t make you wrong or me right…