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Destiny 2 PC Beta Thoughts

August 29, 2017 by Belghast

Last night was the beginning of the Destiny 2 PC beta for those of us who have already preordered the game. I am one of those weirdos that loves Destiny so much that I plan on playing it on multiple platforms. With Destiny year 2 and beyond I played it actively on both the PS4 and Xbox One… and going forward I am planning on doing the same and splitting time between PC and PS4. One of the things you need to realize is that I have some strange habits when it comes to gaming. I split my time between my gaming desktop upstairs and my gaming laptop in the living room. I’ve found the secret to marital happiness as a gamer is to be able to be flexible in my gaming habits and there are nights when I just need to be more available than cloistered in my office with my ear cans on. As a result I have two systems to worry about being able to play Destiny on. The positive is however as someone who potentially might be interested in Destiny 2, you are going to get functionally two different sets of reviews for the game… one on a system that is heftier than the recommended specifications and one that is closer to the minimums.

Gaming Desktop

Machine Specifications

Intel Core i7 5820k 3.3ghz 6 Core Processor
Asus X99-A/USB 3.1 ATX Motherboard
32 gb G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4-2400 Memory
MSI Geforce GTX 980 4GB Twin Frozr Video Card
System SSD but Game Running on Mechanical Hard Drive

For starters I spent absolutely zero time fiddling with the sliders and I just went with the defaults that it handed to me. The end result was a gorgeous 1080p 60 fps experience. I don’t have fancy monitors or anything even vaguely close to outputting a 4k or even 1440p signal so I went with it. With time I plan on ratcheting up the detail level to see what I can do, but I am hearing from folks with 1080s that they are having issues sustaining frame rate on Ultra so more or less I am pretty damned happy with the results. In truth the hardest thing I had to figure out was some third party screenshot tool that would actually record the screen. Bungie has done a bunch of stuff to disable overlays and I had to fall back on the Nvidia Experience tools to be able to capture anything. I am presently running the game in Windowed Fullscreen which is my preferred method and it just works great. The difference in quality between the PS4 and PC is noticeable even just running the game in 1080p. All of the textures just look crisper and less muddled, but that said the console experience with Destiny 2 on even a stock PS4 like mine…. looks noticeably better than the original Destiny. Last night I tried out everything but the strike, and saw zero frame drop at any point during my experiences. I have been keeping an eye on the lower left corner of the screen where I have the Nvidia framerate tools running… and the only time I saw drop was upon going into a pre-rendered cutscene. All of those are still at 30 fps, which I would assume is to be able to support all of the different configurations of the game.

Gaming Laptop

Machine Specifications

Asus ROG GL551JW
Intel Core i7 4720HQ 2.6 ghz
16 gb DDR3 Memory
Geforce GTX 960M 2GB GDDR5
Mechanical Hard Drive
3rd Quarter 2014 Release Date

While the Desktop was a picture of simplicity… literally everything about the Laptop experience was a hassle. I included the street date of the laptop just for reference and to show that I am attempting to get this running in functionally a three year old machine. I knew that 1080p was largely out of the question so I started trying to dial in specs for a 720p setup. Since my laptop has a 15 inch screen that seemed completely reasonable and generally the only reason why I run MMOs in 1080p is because of the UI element resolution. The biggest issue that I kept running into is that for some reason it felt like my mouse was dying on me. I would have these issues where I could not swing my viewpoint to the right of my model, and then other times I couldn’t scope in my weapon at all. After trying a bunch of configuration options I noticed that it was ultimately happening at the same place each time in the mission, which made me start doubting it was just the mouse. After a bunch of searching I found a thread on Bungie PC Support forum talking about this same issue. What I ultimately had to do was go find the executable for Destiny 2 and choose properties off the right click menu… then change the compatibility settings to disable Scaling on High DPI settings. Note this is called something different depending on the version of windows you are running, but in all cases it will be some Option referencing DPI.

Once this change was made my mouse suddenly started working as it should. One more round of tweaks saw me setting the display mode to Windowed Fullscreen and I was finally playing the game in pretty good shape. While its not amazing… it is playable at a generally 30 fps… however as you can see in the upper right hand corner of the above screenshot… I am dipping down into the high 20s occasionally. The biggest challenge is that Destiny requires a ton of VRAM. When I was playing on the Medium preset I was consuming every last bit of VRAM available and borrowing from the system memory. I really appreciate Bungie including a gauge under the video settings to show just how much you are consuming and how much is left available. The high preset functionally takes a little bit over 2 gb, and I would assume each time you ratchet it up those requirements go up again. The other thing you can take away from the fact I was running it on a laptop… is that effectively everything on a laptop performs like it is a generation older than the equivalent Desktop component. So my 4th gen i7 in truth performs about like a 3rd gen i5… and my gtx 960m… effectively performs the same as a gtx 760 in a desktop card. Between the two setups you should be able to extrapolate how this game should be able to run on whatever your current gaming PC setup seems to be.

Gameplay Discussion

For a complete write up about my feelings of the Destiny 2 beta… I highly suggest you check out my PS4 impressions post from July. I am not going to spend a lot of time this morning talking about general topics. Instead I am going to focus in on the tweaks that were made between the two betas. The first noticeable thing is that the recharge rate that I complain so much about on the PS4 seems to be greatly improved. During the tower courtyard fight on PS4 it felt like I was lucky getting a single super charge and a single grenade charge while fighting the three waves of red legion cabal. During the PC beta… I could easily get 3 super charges and 2 grenade charges during the same time. Grenade still lags a bit from what I would have liked it to be… but part of that might simply be that I am used to running around with the Armamentarium and as a result always have two grenade charges available, so even when I use one… there is almost always one sitting there waiting in reserve. Things just feel “better” as a result of the recharge rates being cranked up, and it feels more like the Destiny experience I am used to. My guess is that they have increased the rate of recharge you get from killing things, because the effect was a bit less noticeable in the Crucible. Previously in the PS4 beta everyone got their supers at exactly the same time… which was just a few minutes from the end of the match. During the PC beta I managed to get off two supers and was getting close to a third by the time the match ended, so in theory had I been playing better I probably would have easily gotten three supers.

The other big takeaway is that everything just feels more polished. This one isn’t easy to quantify, but everything about this build felt production ready. The other big takeaway is that once I got used to the hotkeys… the PC experience is just flawless and before long I reached a point where it was just as instinctive for me to hit F to activate my super as it is to mash my two shoulder buttons. So far I have only modified one hotkey, and that was to change ~ from toggling between weapons since I use that as my push to talk key. Instead I use the alternate key which is mouse wheel to shift between weapons. For those going into the game I thought it might be useful really quick to run down the basic hotkeys.

Movement – WASD + Mouselook
Primary Fire/Light Attack – Left Mouse
Scope/Heavy Attack – Right Mouse
Melee/Block – C
Reload – R
Jump – Space
Toggle Sprint – Shift
Toggle Crouch – Ctl
Class Ability – V
Super Move – F
Air Super Move – X
Interact With Objects – E
Kinetic Weapon – 1
Secondary Weapon – 2
Heavy Weapon – 3
Rotation Through Weapons – Mouse Wheel
Toggle Chat – T
Deploy Ghost – Tab
Return to Orbit – O
Character Loadout Screen – F1

It is a lot of hotkeys to remember, but in truth it largely matches the pattern I was used to with PC shooters already. All in all I thought the PC Beta played amazingly well and it is going to be a really hard call as to which game gets the majority of my attention. I think ultimately it is going to be determined by how many people that I know are chosing which platforms. The only other thing that really concerns me are the general limitations of Battle.net already. I feel like I am already bumping up against the maximum friend number there because of the various other Blizzard games that I play… and for the most part everyone in my Destiny clan is not already in that list. So it is going to be a bit frustrating to try and find space to add everyone new in. I am also really curious to find out how each of you felt that the PC Beta was when it goes “open beta” today.

Convenience Items

August 28, 2017 by Belghast

Generally speaking I am pretty neutral towards “cash shops” in MMORPGs. I’ve come to look at them as a sort of necessary evil in a world where the subscription model is largely broken. When monthly subscription revenue stopped being able to support MMO titles… they were forced to branch out and look in other directions to figure out a way to pay for the development of new stuff. There are times where this feels largely okay… and there are other times when it feels exploitative when more limited time cash shop only content is coming out then patch content. All in all the model gets a lot of crap from the gaming community, but there are times when the benefit gained more than makes up for the generally icky feeling inside you get by having to deal with it. In the case of a game like Guild Wars 2 where there is no “player plus plus” sort of system to entice you to go back on the monthly subscription plan to get additional access to shiny baubles… it probably feels better than a lot of options. There is a lot of stuff on the gem store… most of it of no interest to me. Generally speaking the Guild Wars 2 shop is full of a bunch of convenience items and cosmetic items. The value of both is extremely personal, but this morning I thought I would talk about a handful of items that I have picked up over the years that have made my life in game more enjoyable. Something of note… in all cases I caught the items when they were on sale and did not pay the full market value.

Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic

This is hands down the single best purchase I have ever made in Guild Wars 2. One of the biggest problems I have with the game is that it has a constant upkeep cost… namely that you have to keep running to a vendor to buy more salvage kits and as I will talk about later… harvesting tools. Now there are times when I care about what I am getting from salvaging an item… in those times I either dip into my stock of Black Lion Salvage kits that I have accumulated… or my Mystic Salvage Kits that are extremely reasonable to make. However most of the time if the item is green or lower I just want to grind it into bits to get it out of my inventory. In those situations you are largely just going to use basic salvage kits that you can pick up off the vendor cheaply. What the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic does is save you that trip and simply charge you 3 copper per item salvaged. This is ultimately a savings over the 3.52 copper per salvage from Basic Salvage Kits… but you would ultimately need to grind down something like 3 million items before saving enough money to have it “pay for itself”. The convenience however makes it well worth the normally 800 gem price… and when it goes on sale it is significantly cheaper.

Unbreakable Gathering Tools

In a similar vein to the Salvage-o-Matic… my next favorite purchase is something lumped in the general category of unbreakable tools. I harvest everything in this game, because you never know when you might need all of those Strawberries. As a result I used to have to constantly run to vendors and buy new tools… or in my case I used to carry around a stack of them taking up inventory space just in case one broke… and I was standing beside a rich mithril node. There are lots of different individual tools that have various effects on them… and I managed to pick up my first set of unbreakable tools by slowly snagging them one by one as they went on sale. As a result I have a mismatched set of a Clockwork pick, Molten Axe and Mad Scientists Foraging tool, but the functionality of never having to worry about running out of resources makes me extremely happy. They also have a way less frilly set of tools simply titled Unbreakable Gathering Tools that gives you normal looking versions of each of the tools that simply never break. This basic set normally goes for 2400 gems but over the weekend due to the Anniversary sales was going for 1680.

Mistlock Sanctuary Passkey

One of the things that Guild Wars 2 added in is a number of cloistered areas that require some sort of access pass. All told there is the Captain’s Airship Pass, Lava Lounge, Mistlock Sanctuary, Noble’s Folly, and Royal Terrace… and with Path of Fire they are giving us another one called the Lily of the Elon. Functionally they all serve the same role of giving you instant access to a condensed area that contains every possible NPC that you would need to interact with. What makes Mistlock interesting is that it doesn’t exist in the normal world map… so instead they give you a portal merchant that will take you to any capitol city in the world… or return you to the zone you were just in. I find this functionality to be amazingly useful especially when I need to just step AFK for a bit, and the ability to return me to almost exactly where I standing before is insanely useful. Where this really comes in amazingly well is on alts that maybe don’t have access to the rest of the world yet. There is one weird glitch however… if you take an alt to Lion’s Arch before the story actually takes them there… it will play the intro video as though you had just zoned in every single time you go there. The weird bit of Mistlock Sanctuary… is that it is rarely actually for sale. When it is you can pick it up for 1000 gems… but you have to watch the store like a hawk for when it is listed next. There are limited time passes available on a regular basis… but I personally only care about something like this if it is unlimited use. This may or may not be why I have a bank full of short term convenience items that I will likely never actually use…. and wish I could put up on the market board.

Shared Inventory Slots

I don’t really have a relevant image to this one… but one of the super handy things you can pick up in the game that is super cost prohibitive is shared inventory slots. Sure your bank is shared by your entire account but starting with Heart of Thorns they started giving us the ability to add a special bag at the top of our inventory with items that are shared between all of my characters. This becomes extremely handy when you say… put your Copper-Fed Salvage-O-Matic up there… or your Mistlock Sanctuary Pass. Then every single character you log into can easily benefit from access to these items. I wish the unbreakable gathering tools could work similarly… but unfortunately for those you either need to hot swap them between characters or own multiple sets. When I say these are cost prohibitive… you get one for purchasing heart of thorns and another for purchasing path of fire… then from there they cost 700 gems per slot with price breaks if you buy 3 and 5 at a time. You can in theory have 18 total per account… but I imagine most players have significantly fewer given the cost. Right now I largely use them as a way to give my Salvage-O-Matic, Mistlock pass, and my growing stack of Teleport to Friend items to all characters. In theory if I ever managed to pull one of the unlimited use bank or market passes… they would go there as well. Combined however all of these items have lowered the amount of day to day upkeep I have to deal with when playing Guild Wars 2… and as a result have greatly increased my overall happiness with my gaming experience.

AggroChat #170 – Full Throttle Show

May 21, 2019August 27, 2017 by AggroChat

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Tonight we record the August AggroChat Game Club title… Full Throttle. This was picked by Thalen for a bunch of reasons but at least in part because we had yet to play a classic point and click adventure game. With Full Throttle being relatively recently remastered, it made it an excellent candidate since it was more or less going to run well on any system. Unfortunately one of our show members opted to try playing it on a mobile platform where the experience was less than desireable. We talk about our thoughts on Full Throttle and adventure games in general as the show goes way off the rails towards the end with many wild trips into nostalgia land.

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Traditions End

August 25, 2017 by Belghast

For the last several years there has been a tradition I have observed… and that is going upstairs and checking to see what is available on Xur for the week. For the unindoctrinated… Xur is an Agent of the Nine… a group that we know next to nothing about in Destiny. He also is somewhat of a garbage collector and brings trinkets for us to purchase each week either in the Tower or Reef social space. Various activities in the game reward a currency called Strange Coins… and these are then exchanged for various items that always include an exotic weapon and a piece of exotic armor for each class. The armor rolls are notoriously bad but it is still a reasonable way to get a jump start in light levels, and I absolutely abused this fact on my Xbox One account when I was leveling it. One of my favorite sources of Xur info is from Patrick Casey, and at the head of this mornings video he made a comment about how he is just about to never have to see this squid faced guy again. Not sure why… but it just sort of finally hit me… our time with Destiny is almost over. Within the next few days the PC Beta for Destiny 2 will begin… and then shortly after that the official launch of Destiny 2 on PS4 and Xbox One. This really is the last weekend when Xur really matters at least for me in particular because starting on Monday I will be playing Destiny 2 on my PC systems… and starting the following Wednesday I will be playing it on my PS4.

Destiny 1 as a whole has been an amazing experience, and I am looking forward to seeing Destiny Item Manager (the first screenshot) updating to start showing me all of my baubles that I begin collecting in Destiny 2. A huge chunk of my experience has been my clan, and it is awesome to see the clan page updated to fly a brand new banner in preparation for what things are ultimately going to look like in Destiny 2. I’ve worn the tag even when it didn’t really matter… like on my Xbox One account… and was proud to see it rise out of the ashes of Axioma. Right now my future in the Destiny universe seems a little up in the air. I am not entirely certain if I will be playing as a PS4 primary or PC primary… and even then I have no clue what my clan situation is going to look like. This is where my various gaming worlds begin to collide. Destiny 2 existing on the PC is going to bring a lot of long time friends out of the woodwork that are interested in playing the game. At that point I am not sure if it is better to flood TQMB… or just start something on my own. I am not even sure if you can have split clans based on platform… or if your Bungie account can only join one period. I would like to remain in Tequila Mockingbird on what seems like the platform that they will be most active on… aka the PlayStation 4.

It seems really weird to be thinking that I might be standing in the Tower for the last time. Sure Destiny 1 will remain in existence for a period of time… and I can always go back and experience things. The problem is… will I actually want to? Destiny 2 looks to be the first game with a ton more things to be doing… and it feels like something worth sacrificing an entire world for. Sure I have gotten used to seeing The Traveler floating just off in the distance… but I will get used to the new visuals of the European Dead Zone. I will miss my vault full of weapons that I have accumulated through hours of grinding… and bending the arm of Squirrel and Jex into helping me do random stuff. Destiny has been a magical time for me… and it feels like I have been away far too long. I am ready to dust off my controller skills and venture forth into the new world when it opens on September 6th. While I feel a little misty about the thought of abandoning the current one… I know bigger and better things are just on the horizon. The challenge I always struggle with in gaming is that I have more friends than I can ever possibly play with at the same time… but I always try and juggle this as best I can. I am certain that as we enter the new game I will figure out a way to balance playing with my awesome friends in Tequila Mockingbird… and all of the new people who will be giving the Destiny franchise a fresh chance.