@Death: The problem is, ascendant shards aren't used to buy other things while strange coins are. They're piling the most important purchases on one coinage system without increasing how much coin you get. That means you'll have to be a lot more thrifty in how you spend them and will likely end up having more ascendant material and the like than you know what to do with (I already have at least 30+ of each).

Well you just said it. You don't play often. For those of us on all the time, it takes a lot of gameplay hours just looking for the stupid things, only to have to find more foevthe next piece of equipment. I have 150 strange coins because Our never has anything worthwhile for me. I'll gladly drop 7 on him for shards.

*** For those of us on all the time,***

That's just as bad as making decisions based on those who play fewer hours.

*** it takes a lot of gameplay hours just looking for the stupid things, only to have to find more foevthe next piece of equipment.***

I currently play only ~8 hours a week, but I have a ton of time in Destiny. Mostly to just do weeklies and do some bounties when I'm not otherwise playing. During that time I earn a minimum of 9 strange coins. But, during that time I also find a minimum of 3 legendaries (vanguard ranks, crucible ranks, nightfall/heroic rewards, cryptarch level ups, etc.). In addition, I can earn at least 2 astral material each day from the daily heroic. At the end of the day, it is just as easy to get enough astrals to level up a weapon or piece of armor as needed as it is to get enough strange coins to buy a single exotic shard.

With the new method, though, astral materials are legendary only and exotic shards are exotic only. Now what you do is solely based on what type of item you need to level up.

Furthermore, strange coins are still needed for buying any exotic gear or items that most people aren't lucky enough to have drop during raids/weeklies. No increase in how often you get strange coins, though.

So, while it's great that you have 150 strange coins and have more trouble with finding ascendant material, the average player will find it much harder to now use strange coin since they do not just collect it in droves nor do they have the time to do content over and over as much as you do, increasing the chances of finding exotic gear like you do. And, honestly, if you're having trouble finding ascendant material, but have 150 strange coins, I kind of wonder what you're doing with all the legendary gear you find.

It's, IMHO, a flawed decision unless they decide to increase the rate that strange coins are found in the game. It also puts even more focus on doing grouped activities without, still, providing people with a way to do any matchmaking on the content that gives them.

Sure, I solo them, you solo them, but for the average gamer? They aren't soloing the weekly content.

I'm going to take a wait and see approach to the new system. It's very easy to level a second or third character to level 20. It's even easier to get to level 25 with these characters if you use the legendary gear you find instead of crushing it. I can do the weekly with each character to get 27 coins. Asendant shards for what ever reason are not my friend. I get the dam energy like there is no tomorrow though. Of course I upgraded all of my exotic gear first since it had the best stats. :(

Finally a use for my 181 strange coins!

@cgoodno

Your second comment that is really long the BIGGEST part (and main one I agree with) is them not supplying us with matchmaking for the weekly and nightfall. Destiny is supposed to be a multiplayer experience. They boast about playing with tons of other players but the majority of the time (Without going to the reddit lfg subform) you are pretty much on your own.

IMHO that is the biggest flaw in destiny right now. I don't even have the chance to be social because EVERY story mission and the hardest content does not have matchmaking. How bungie can miss something like that is beyond me.

I've spent Strange Coins on weapons from Xur for the past 3 weeks and right now I'm still sitting on 18 of them.

Its not exactly hard to earn strange coincs.

I have 30 strange coins right now. You dont need to buy every piece of crap xur sells, and you can very easily get more than 10 every week. How many exotics are you really tring to max out? You can only use 2 at once. Its one shard, but only for the very last upgrade, which you could just not do, compared to the last 3 taking way more energies.

Most of my strange coins on all 3 of my characters have actually come from rare engrams. I've also gotten tons of Motes of Light the same way. I was actually kind of bummed every time this happened because I was trying to hoard up rare weapons to dismantle for Weapon Parts for upgrading (Rares yield 2+ parts per dismantle depending on Primary, Secondary, Heavy and how far up they've been leveled [XP earned] or upgraded [glimmer or material actually spent]).

I've also received Strange Coins as rewards for my first public event per day. Ascendant material is the more common reward, but I've still gotten a decent share of Motes and Coins.

"At the end of the day, it is just as easy to get enough astrals to level up a weapon or piece of armor as needed as it is to get enough strange coins to buy a single exotic shard."

Not really, strange coins are much easier. Just create two more characters. Sounds like a daunting task, but if you don't want to find gear for a whole new character or try a new character, then you can just make two duplicates of the one you already have, so you can give your current extra gear to them once they hit level 20, which doesn't take much time to get to at all, and do the weekly and nightfall (even the raid if you're ready) 3 times a week. If not all of those, then at least the weekly, which you don't have to do solo, just ask some people in the tower if they want to do the weekly, there's no reason you should do it on your own, that is unless you completely refuse to socialize in this game at all (at which point I'd have to wonder why someone would keep playing a game Destiny if they weren't willing to be at least social enough to invite someone to their game, it's a huge part of the game after all.

And if you don't have the time to grind or farm then perhaps Destiny isn't meant for you. The timesink is a staple of the genre Destiny is in (mmos), and the new system is miles better than the old. Also just to throw this out there, you only need ONE exotic shard to upgrade an exotic, just one, and if you're getting exotics so fast that you don't have enough strange coins for the shards to upgrade them, then it's time you started actually progressing in your game. Look at it this way, you can now spend that time you spent doing bounties and dailies on the weekly instead, get your 9 coins and get your favourite exotic of the week fully upgraded. And sorry, but if you rely solely on xur to get your exotics and your whining about not being able to fully upgrade them without putting in the extra work, then boo hoo. There is a certain amount of playing that must be done, you can't simply have everything handed to you (which xur pretty much already does) and have the game do all the work for you in upgrading it.

@kneon

The problem is no one wants to run around looting chest for an hour just to get enough materials to upgrade, and after upgrading all your items you're back a 0, and have to start all over again.

Destiny was meant to be a MMO FPS, but for their fanbase it needs to be a FPS first and an MMO second. Console gamers are FPS fans first, which means having to spend hours doing something as simple as upgrading armor, is an instant turnoff for many players, even if they do like the game.

This was an all around good update, and needed to keep people playing the game into 2015. The more accessible it is, the more people will be willing to stay with the game through each expansion. If they keep it a grindfest then people are going to move on to other games they're getting for the holidays.

Removing the "exploits" is the only real problem I have with most of the updates, and it's not because of the benefits. What upsets me is they're quick to patch the exploits, but take forever to implement worthwhile features and updates, such as the party chat issue, the lagging out constantly from all these error codes.

I see huge potential in Destiny 2, but Destiny 1 has been a up and down ride.

But you loot the chests/gather materials while you are doing missions/bounties/public events so it really doesn't take too much extra time. It's not like you are just looting chests.

Besides I don't loot chest for the normal materials, I always have far too many of those. I loot chests for the engrams, ascendant materials, strange coins and motes of light that show up about 2 or 3 times an hour.

@ kneon

There is nothing to do with the currency anyway. You may as we'll be able to purchase materials. I've been maxed on marks for weeks.

I also am not happy they nurfed the suros regime again, and I don't play PvP that much for people fussing it's too powerful

@StanLee

Increasing the currency limit would have been a much more useful change.

Every day I need to buy a bunch of ammo packs as I'm always hitting the glimmer cap. I've got hundreds of them now. And I keep buying weapons with my marks just to dismantle them because I keep hitting the 200 mark limit with nothing interesting available to buy.

You guys are missing the point.

Running in circles for hours just to get enough upgrade materials to upgrade a weapon is very tedious, and get's old very quickly.

It doesn't matter if it is easy, or is doable, it needs to be enjoyable, and right now, it isn't.

It's as simple as that.

Besides, buying materials isn't 100%. You can still run out of Marks and need to farm anyway.

that half hour of pointless farming just to get 5 marks? do a tiger strike in 20 and youd get the same thing and, be able to actually PLAY the game. an hour of looting chests for acendant materials? Just do the daily story, a pubic event, or the raid. If you werent wasting all that time farming you would be getting more legendary equipment to scrap and get acendents. Marks and strange coins are easy to come by, farming for materials is just boring.

@wsoutlaw87

It wasn't a half hour of pointless farming, it was 30 minutes of doing bounties, missions and public events where I ended up with more XP, marks, engrams and ascendant materials than I would have doing a strike.

You pick up chests WHILE you're playing, not instead of.

you know, i actually don't mind the fresh challenge. it's annoying and will be super challenging on hard, but the raid was starting to lack in the challenge factor. the first few times we raided when we didn't know about the exploit were actually kind of fun back when. definitely sucks from a time-efficiency standpoint, but it's one of the more fun and frenetic bosses in the game

I had these issues for the first week but don't get them at all now. My friend playing on the X1 though gets them every time he tries to play so he basically quit the game.

"Clearly your parents didn't teach you"

You know you lost, when you have to resort to this tactic.

Microsoft's money has nothing to do with Xbox.
Xbox is a money pit to them they would love to ditch but are after some ROI first.

Let's face it, Xbox is like a red headed stepchild that steals from you to buy drugs.

MIicrosoft is NOT XBOX. The current situation illustrates this. And Microsoft wants its ROI.

@Bathyj and daddy Satya has just force admitted Phil to rehab.

you know why MS has so much money, and it aint cause of the gaming xbox branch.

so lets not kid ourselves.

Xbox was shown to be more profitable than ps

@PhillyDownJawn not more profitable. More revenue with ABK acquisition but them going multiplat shows they are not making much profit

That's great for Xbox gamers ain't it that Microsoft are more wealthy than Sony. Is that really a argument use are using now lol?

Imagine me in my job. Arguing with a fellow security guard at another company. Hahah well the company I work for is worth £800m the one you work for is only work £600m!

Microsoft may have more money but Sony has the talented studios and the games to back up those studios.