It has been a very gaming light week for me, and I wound up heading to bed something like 8:30 or 9 ish which is very much not normal for me. Functionally I am coming off of a few really rough weeks at work where I have been in firestomper mode 24/7. As a result I get home and I am just too drained to deal with human beings… or in truth the possibility of human beings. This is where my “I” streak comes out with a vengence, and it has lead me to play a lot of games in a very low key and solo manner. Last night however I decided to go ahead and play some Destiny. Right now the very last Iron Banner before the release of Destiny 2 is going on… and with it the chance to get the sniper rifle and hand canon… neither of which I have a decent roll for. Additionally with the thought about going into Destiny 2… I am finding myself more than a little nostalgic for Destiny 1 at the moment. I’ve never been one to really work on the book achievements, but I am finding myself doing so at least in a limited fashion. September 6th begins a new adventure into the Destiny universe… and with it we are leaving behind all of the trappings of the last. As flawed at times as the original might be… it still very much feels like home.
The match type for this last Iron Banner is Control, which is also in part what is pushing me back to play some. Control is my favorite game mode because it gives me a reason beyond killing other players to be engaged. Deathmatching was something that I was a fan of when I was in High School… but once I have gotten older I find myself craving some larger objective to be working towards. While I would love to have role based gameplay along the lines of Enemy Territory… holding points on a map at least gives me some measure of that core focus. What ends up happening in truth is that players form what I call a “muderball” and then ping ping back and forth across the map capturing points. In Destiny 1 this game play is actually to some extent rewarded because the more people you have standing on a point… the faster it shifts to neutral and then to captured. In Destiny 2 however… points capture at a fixed rate so it is going to be interesting to see if players actually spend some effort focusing on defense rather than just constantly retaking points. I saved the above screenshot largely because this was as good as it got last night as far as kill to death ratio.
As far as a load out… it just feels like the special weapon slot doesn’t mean much of anything anymore. The limited amounts of ammunition you get, and the fact that it seems like Invective no longer recharges at a reasonable rate meant that for the most part I was using nothing but primary. I tried a few things as the evening went on. At first I had some early success with Oversoul Edict, but as the night went on I wound up breaking out my friend the Genesis Chain. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Suros aesthetic but I absolutely love this weapon… especially if you get head shots and trigger the firefly explosion effect. I love the way that sounds… its like a tiny “fuck yes” as you are running away to find the next engagement. What cracks me up about me and Destiny… is that I tend to bond with whatever weapon everyone else says that you should just shard. This lives in an archetype that no one seems to like and is functionally just a better version of “An Answering Chord” that is a available on the Vanguard Quartermaster. However it just feels better and seems to work better for me than that weapon ever did. I mean I also love the Fabian Strategy… which is a weapon everyone else seems to hate so my particular tastes seem to consistently go against the meta. Last night I managed to finish all of my quests from Lady Efrideet, but I have yet to get any weapon drops so I am thinking I might want to go ahead and try and make rank 5 during this final Iron Banner in the hopes of maybe seeing some decent versions of the Hand Cannon along the way.
