Destiny’s Prison of Elders Aims to Please PvE Players

IGN:
If you’ve ever played Halo’s Firefight mode or Horde in Gears of War, then the Prison of Elders is going to be rather familiar looking. Familiarity isn’t a bad thing though – I still came out of our gameplay session with a smile from ear to ear. Great gameplay, coupled with beautifully destroyed locations and a community of supportive players made the Prison we were thrust into a joy to experience.

[kayoss]

Is it me or this is similar to public events where you have different waves of enemies coming at you? Each wave of enemies stronger than the next. If this is similar to public events than bungie is being lazy.

[GameSpawn]

It's beyond that. The enemies are WAY stronger even just starting out and also much greater in number. Also at higher levels the modifiers (similar to those on the nightfalls and heroic strikes plus a few new ones) get randomly applied at each stage and the objectives are randomized as well between key waves.

28 - Locked modifiers; No Weekly Lockout on rewards
32, 34, 35 - Random modifiers; Weekly Lockout on rewards (just like the Raids)
EDIT: No checkpointing at all! Meaning you cannot leave PoE and come to the same spot tomorrow or share a checkpoint. It checkpoints at each round, BUT these aren't stored or locked in if you leave.

Also I never noticed any confirmation on matchmaking support, but the level 28 may have matchmaking enabled, but the 32-35 (due to being MUCH more difficult and having locked Weekly rewards) will rely purely on pre-made teams like the raids.

[SirBradders]

Level 28 is matchmaking and can be done unlimited times, the 32+ is done via weekly reset with no matchmaking. Their taking feedback and catering for all. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually the low level VOG or CROTA gets the same treatment as gear gets powered.

[Jdoki]

Looks to me like Destiny finally has enough content to match what it should have launched with.

Just a shame that it cost us, the players, two expansions packs to get it there.

Now... If we could just have some story added I'd be much happier.

[mhunterjr]

I wouldn't even have cared for the extra game modes if it had some sort of story...

IMO it's too little too late, because the core gameplay is good, but I no longer have an urge to play it.

[GameSpawn]

The story is there. The problem is that it is buried deep within the grimoire cards that require either the companion app or creating an account on Bungie.net and reading them there.

Without those cards there is not much to go on with the story missions alone. At least the gameplay (to me) is fun enough to get past some of the pitfalls.

[KryptoniteTail]

People like PvE?

[Gazondaily]

Have you played Destiny?

[mhunterjr]

True PvE is the most enjoyable part of the game...

The PvP is chaotic, unbalanced trash IMO

[objdadon]

Actually destiny is some of the most balanced and fun pvp out there.

[Nineball2112]

This looks interesting... Hmmm. I'll probably pick up this DLC since I have TDB already.

[jdiggitty]

I wonder if the level 35 prison pulls from the loot drops of the lower levels like the hard raid does. That would suck

[admiralvic]

"That would suck"

It goes both ways.

Like I never heard of anyone getting the normal weapons from Crota in Crota's End (mind you, I haven't kept up for the past month or so), so they might be exclusive to the normal raid. This means that if I want say, the Black Hammer, I need to beat Crota on normal and then again on hard. I much rather have both in the same pool, maybe with the normal weapons being rarer, which seems to be the case with the hard version of Crota's End, so I can do one version and have a chance at every weapon, instead of having to do both trying to get them all.

[jdiggitty]

I'm not sure what you mean in the first sentence. I have all the weapons except the rocket launcher.

I wasn't too clear. I meant if you beat 35, are the lower level drops gone.

[admiralvic]

"I'm not sure what you mean in the first sentence. I have all the weapons except the rocket launcher. "

What is so hard to understand? If you have the stuff from a lower difficulty, then it sucks having them in the loot pool, but if you don't have the items, then it's great.

"I wasn't too clear. I meant if you beat 35, are the lower level drops gone."

Now I have to ask, why would this "suck?" While the raid, weekly and daily heroic "pull from" or whatever you want to call it lower levels, you essentially lose nothing. You do the weekly or daily on a higher tier and you get that tier and all the previous tiers in one go. In the case of the raid, you get double drops, so you're not losing anything. You can either do normal once and get a run with the normal loot pool and then a run on hard with a some items from the hard loot pool or you can do a hard run with two pulls from the hard loot pool. In the end you still get the same amount of loot, so the only logical reason I could see someone being against this, is if the lower difficulty has unique drops, which was my part of my point at the start of this and my other post. The other part is that I could understand why some people would like unique items. Exclusive/unique items would decrease the size of the loot pool, theoretically making it easier/more likely to get the items you want, than a larger loot pool with every possible item.

TL;DR I don't see what the issue is, since if you do one run on hard or one on normal and then hard, you're still ultimately getting the same amount of loot.

[maybelovehate]

I am pretty excited now that I have seen it. Looks intense. Destiny's strong suit has always been gunplay and this looks like the best mode to showcase that.