crucible – Page 9

When A Beta Isn’t

August 30, 2017 by Belghast

Last night I managed to run the Inverted Spire strike with a few friends… Grace and Ammo. For Grace it was her first time running the strike and while she was not as rabid… was also a veteran of Destiny 1. Ammo on the other hand… the closest she had ever been to Destiny was drawing my Sunbreaker themed avatar. If you know me very well… or are in that core group of people that I hang out regularly with… you have had to listen to countless hours of me retelling things that happened in Destiny. All of that apparently made her curious enough to try it out now that it was coming to the PC and available for download through the already very familiar Battle.net client. Ammo while completely new to Destiny was by no means an FPS rookie because over the last year or so she has played a significant amount of Overwatch and is way the hell better than I am at it. One of the things that I like about Destiny on the PC is how largely ubiquitous basic controls are if you have ever played a modern shooter. Sure there are all manner of extraneous “super power” keys but the core gameplay of shoot shoot reload fall into the standard control scheme we are all used to. The only real adjustment period of me was figuring out which key binds near WASD did which “power moves”. Grace took to the game rather quickly and got to play big kid at several moments as she was able to get over and rez the rookie well before I could. All in all it was a really fun experience and I am super glad that I wound up running the strike in this manner, since during the PS4 beta I largely just random queued for it.

Last nights experience got me thinking that maybe just maybe releasing through the Battle.net client was more than just a way of having to skip the infrastructure development costs of going to a brand new platform. Overwatch is a weird game because while it is at its core a competitive shooter… it is also one wrapped in so much story that it is impossible to not at least know some of it even if you are not actively playing the game. This is a game that I saw be adopted at frightening rates by gamers who were well versed in the Blizzard ecosystem but never really considered themselves fans of the first person shooter genre. As a result many have had their horizons broadened to realize that yes they could do this shooter thing and with practice get rather damned good at it. Now we have this Destiny thing coming along and poking its head into their already familiar gaming environment… so why not take a peek. I’ve already seen a lot of posts on my twitter feed talking about how individuals are enjoying the Destiny experience but only ever downloaded it because it was available for free through the Battle.net client. Cross pollination is really beautiful thing… and I have found myself in this same boat several times in the past. I am not the biggest fan of League of Legends… but I immediately tried Heroes of the Storm because I wanted to see the Blizzard take on it. I am not really a huge fan of RTS games anymore… but I occasionally play Starcraft II because it has amazing storytelling. I think the Battle.net coup for Destiny… will be bringing a whole bunch of new eyes into the franchise.

Here is where we get to the problem. The “Beta” that we are getting to experience isn’t actually Destiny. It is a bit of a hollow shell that should have been clearly labelled as a demo, because it lacks so many of the reasons why I spent so many hours playing the first game. If you look at my time played on the tracker sites… something like 77% of my time was spent doing random stuff on Patrol missions. I liked roaming around, doing events… unlocking secrets on the dreadnaught… all the while enjoying the really amazing gunplay. Where are the events like Archon’s Forge or Court of Oryx… that I could literally spend hours running over and over. Don’t get me wrong… the Inverted Spire strike is a hell of a lot of fun, and even the 4 player Crucible is starting to grow on me. The problem being however is that we really are not putting the best foot forward for a bunch of players that may or may not have ever experienced the franchise. The other problem is that we are not exactly doing a great job of giving players that bounced hard off of Destiny 1 a great reason to feel positive about coming back. Sure the Homecoming mission has more story elements in it than the entire vanilla game… but I am questioning if that is enough. I am bought in for the long haul because I have loved Destiny as a concept and an experience since the moment I got into the original Alpha of the game on the PS4. Taken King proved to me that the game was worth my devotion and I have been back and at least peripherally active ever since. I am a member of their core demographic… but had they maybe given us something other than a demo… it might be enough to gain new followers rather than just galvanize their existing player base. I hope people can see through the cracks and see the game that is ultimately going to be there behind the walled gardens. I feel like I can and since I am also rabidly gobbling up all of the news that is leaking out about the content that is waiting on the console players September 6th… I am so sold that I am planning on playing once again on two different platforms. I am just not sure that we sold Ammo on the experience other than giving her a fun night of running a space shooter dungeon.

Minuet 42

July 25, 2017 by Belghast

A few days ago I said I had more or less “beat” the Destiny 2 beta in part because there is so little to actually do in it. That said for whatever reason I keep returning and playing. Since writing my initial post I have done the strike several times and spend a bit more time in the Crucible. Some of my initial comments about not really liking the 4 vs 4 format and the small map sizes, is in part me likely just getting adjusted to changes and not really having a weapon load-out that I would have preferred. Traditionally my crucible build has been an Auto Rifle in the primary slot… usually my extreme stability Haakon’s Hatchet or if I am feeling squirrely… my Genesis Chain. From there I generally have either a Shotgun in the secondary slot Invective or Party Crasher +1 or I go for one of my Fusion Rifles… traditionally Saladin’s Vigil. The heavy slot varies greatly because in truth… I am not really expecting to get heavy ammo in Crucible matches so I am not super concerned. If I have an exotic slot available I go with Gjallarhorn and if not probably my Silvered Dread machine gun. The problem with the Destiny 2 weapon loadouts is that on my preferred class… the Titan there was nothing that I could really replicate this feel with so I in part had to feel out what worked for me in the new scheme.

What finally ended up feeling good and seeming usable is to run a Submachine Gun in my primary slot, namely The Showrunner seen above. However in truth I was using this weapon much in the same way as I would have used a secondary in Destiny 1 only swapping to it at certain times. For my main weapon I relied heavily on the Minuet Hand Cannon sitting in my energy weapon slot, because it had some significant stopping power and actually allowed me to win non-teamshot firefight engagements. Where the sub machinegun was handy is any time that someone ran up on me, I could hang out just outside of melee range and grind them down with a rapid fire hail of bullets. In theory I think this is more or less what folks who loved the sidearm used to do… but I never could make sidearms work for me in this fashion. As far as the heavy/power weapon slot… once again I didn’t care too terribly much about this given that I was similarly not expecting to ever get ammunition for it… so instead just relied on the grenade launcher in case I ever did. I am by no means “good” at the new Crucible, but I managed to find a setup and style that worked for me and I managed to keep climbing higher in my efficiency number as the night went on.

The thing that I find the most impressive about the Destiny 2 demo experience… is the fact that it is so damned short yet I kept returning day after day to keep experiencing it in any way that I could. In part it has made me want to actually dig in and try and finish some of the book achievements that are sitting there unfinished, and bask in the glory of the Destiny 1 experience before it is gone. All in all I am anxiously awaiting the release of this game and even more so the upcoming PC beta that we are getting at some point in August. I have a lot of concerns relating to the PC version, namely how it is going to feel and how well it plays in my various systems. I am really hoping that I can figure out a set of tweaks to get it to play with passable performance on my i7 Geforce 960m laptop. I am not expecting the world and would be completely fine with running 720p on it… pending that the performance is at a minimum 30 fps. One moment of sadness last night however is that the left thumb stick on beloved Hori FPS Plus controller started tearing. I am seemingly particularly hard on left thumb sticks, and as Squirrel pointed out last night… since it is not our aiming stick we are way less gentle with it. I ordered a set of cheapo aftermarket thumb stick caps, hoping that maybe just maybe it will fit. I tried one of the Kontrol Freaks PS4 caps that I had laying around and it kept popping off because the slightly smaller than normal size. All in all though I am going to be really sad to see Destiny 2 beta ending tonight, but will be looking forward to actually getting to play the game at launch.

Enjoyment and PVP

May 17, 2017 by Belghast

Last week there was a tweet that came across my feed that jarred something loose in my brain. I am wishing I had thought to save it because I honestly don’t know at this point who tweeted or at least on what specific day. It was one of those things that filtered into my subconscious and stuck there as it scrolled past. The general gist was asking what exactly a game would have to do to make PVP palatable for you personally. I was rushing between meetings when I checked Fenix on my phone, and never actually got around to replying. However it is something that I have been mulling over for days now. Why this was so sticky is the fact that I am a walking paradox it seems. I will claim not to like PVP at all, and will actively go out of my way to avoid it if it is happening in the world. If a game has one of those settings that prevents you from being accidentally flagged… I run with that on all of the time. If it is raid time… and one of our PVP centric members runs into the instance flagged and in doing so gets jumped by the Horde. I will sit there and watch them die, because in my mind they made a poor life choice for coming to a raid flagged in the first place.

All of that said… I also look forward to the Iron Banner in Destiny which is a monthly PVP event, and if I am bored I often times pop into the crucible which is their version of a battleground match making system. What I have never been able to reconcile is why player versus player activity in one game feels good and in others not great at all. All I have been able to sort out in my head is that in Destiny there is no negative side effect, and the rewards for participation are balanced in a way that it feels like no matter what there is a chance that I get something really cool in the process. Now Crucible hardcores in Destiny will tell you that the things that I love about it… are the things that frustrate them. Functionally loot is not tied to performance, but instead participation. Sure if you win a match you get more faction with Lord Shax the Crucible reputation vendor… but regardless of success or failure it feels like my time spent is leading towards the goal of something interesting. I am either going to get a faction package that gives me weapons or armor… or I am going to have the chance of getting interesting gear rewarded to me at random at the end of a match.

The other thing that has stuck out in my head is that in Destiny the total time of the match is relatively short ranging from 6 to 8 minutes… to at the maximum 15 minutes. Even more than that the time to engagement is also short, with the lack of long runs back to where the objective fighting is happening. I spent some time this weekend in World of Warcraft doing battlegrounds, since that system as a whole feels like a reasonable counter point to Destiny. I knew I was in for something when about 5 minutes into an Arathi basin map… I saw a pop up through DBM timers informing me that my team would win in 21 minutes. The length of that match just felt prohibitive to my enjoyment, and the risk of that time spent… had no real payoff waiting for me at the end. Sure there is the chance of random loot, but the loot seems to be based on my current PVP rank… and not relative to my gear level which is a huge positive for the way that Destiny handles things. So since I am late to the game, that means I would have to suffer through a lot of bad experiences in order to maybe have a chance of getting something that is going to be useful to me in the long run. The risk versus reward equation is just not good enough for me to keep throwing myself at the gristmill. So instead after a handful of maps I went back to grinding World Quests because they at least felt like they had tangible rewards associated with them.

Basically my take away is that in order for me to find PVP interesting… there has to be one hell of a lot of carrot waiting on me and very little stick. The truth is that PVP in general be it Crucible or Battlegrounds is the sort of thing that I might do if I have literally nothing else to do. I participate in Iron Banner so often because it is a limited time event… and it also is a loot bonanza. While I was working my way to the current 400 light cap in Destiny, a good chunk of that progress was gained through Iron Banner drops… which tend to be one every third or fourth match. In World of Warcraft I played a half dozen battlegrounds this weekend and got a single piece of gear that was 50 item levels lower than the rest of the gear that I was wearing, so another enchanting shard just doesn’t feel that exciting. I think the shortness of the match also helps my enjoyment, because even if we are losing horribly… it is a short term predicament and one that might be remedied in the next match. Additionally battlegrounds that focus on huge scale siege objectives tend to be soul sucking for me, and each time I have to mount up and run to the opposite end of the map it just feels bad. I guess I prefer quick skirmishes rather than protracted battles, especially for randomly queuing with strangers. The other huge negative about PVP in games like World of Warcraft is the fact that I am lumped into chat with a bunch of horrible people. Simply disabling the chat and making the maps clear enough not to need communication to complete objectives would greatly improve my experience. A good chunk of my joy in Destiny is the fact that no one can spout off racist slurs in global chat.

Shaders and Eyasluna

December 20, 2016 by Belghast

We have one week down officially for the Sparrow Racing League… and I have to say I am still having a blast. There is just something about this game mode that makes me happy… and the bounty of rewards available only serves to sweeten the pot. It seems that when SRL goes away officially… it will still be available through the private match list so there is even talk of organizing an unofficial league of sorts to race during the off time. There is just so much to like about this event that it hard to place my finger on what exactly makes it special. You have entire sets of gear up for grabs, with light levels up to 400. I have to admit a lot of my drive to keep on racing is for the glimmer of a chance at finding some light 400 items. So far I have gotten one, that I ultimately infused into my best fusion rifle that I am not pretty partial to. A good amount of my gear is sitting at 399 light with my two severe hold outs being my artifact at 393 and ghost shell at 394. There are technically ghosts available through the SRL but I have not personally seen one. As far as the Artifact I guess my option there is probably doing some Court of Oryx because I have heard they drop there up to light 400.

Probably my personal favorite thing about the event is the availability of all of these interesting shaders. You can check my twitter feed for a shot of one I found last night called “Ghast” which given my name seems a little fitting. The above shader is my current favorite called Krokos which is mostly white with purple accents… that just happens to look really cool with the PS4 exclusive Jovian armor set. There are fourteen shaders up for grabs… and I have managed go get thirteen of them with the last one tied to the record book achievements. According to Destiny Tracker I have raced 68 times and played a total of 7 hours 38 minutes of the Sparrow Racing League… which is pretty much entirely this year given that for whatever reason I only raced last year on my Hunter and Warlock. Generally speaking I do a few runs to clear up the bounties and then retire downstairs to racing through the remote client, because really… me winning or losing doesn’t much matter when I am largely in it for the possibility of maybe just maybe hitting 400 light level. The goofy part is that even with the input lag caused by remote play… I still generally end up finishing in the top three and have even managed to win a few maps in this fashion.

The other huge perk of the SRL is that it levels your crucible rep while at the same time giving you access to some older legacy crucible weapons. Of these the one I have been wanting since initially coming back to Destiny during Taken King is the Eyasluna. This weapon is essentially a legendary version of the Hawkmoon, a personal favorite of mine in the exotic hand cannon category. Over time I strayed away from Hand Cannons due to the ammo issues, but have recently started getting used to them again and even bought the vendor Palindrome last time I was capped on Legendary Marks. When I saw this weapon was on the list of available items… it has been my hope to see it show up on my end of match rewards list and finally last night it did. I am not really sure what a god roll looks like on this weapon, but I can make the one I got work with Triple Tap, Braced Frame and Grenadier. While this is going to drop me down to 9 instead of 10 shots in the magazine… it gives me 5 points from maxed stability which should make it insanely easy to headshot with. The range of 38 is pretty solid for a Hand Cannon as well and the 81 impact is nothing to complain about. I spent some time running around with it last night… and I think I am going to like it.

If you were not around for the Sparrow Racing League last year, I highly suggest you get in on the Dawning event while it is available. We still have two more full weeks of racing… but at some point soon I am going to have to care about the other side of this event… which is the strike list scoring if I hope to complete my record book. Playing SRL really has made me realize how much I miss games like Wipeout, and the fact that we will at least get to play this game type in private matches going forward gives me some solace. The only thing that worries me is that a lot of my enjoyment right now absolutely comes from the fact that I have a shot at interesting rewards at the end of the match. With this carrot removed… will I care about it nearly as much? As a final side note…. I have to thank Playstation support for taking care of my issues yesterday quickly. It took some doing… but I finally managed to find the correct link to get some resolution with. Within a few minutes and a few questions answered… they reset my compromised account back to the original email address and I was able to get in and take control once more. Additionally when I got home I added the two factor authentication… which I did not even know they offered until yesterday. I guess when they introduced it they didn’t make much of an announcement. In any case… after talking to some folks who got compromised there was a pattern to these attacks.

They transferred 50 of whatever the local currency was to the wallet… for me it was Dollars for others it was Pounds Sterling or Euros.
They changed the Sign-In email for the account… which frustratingly invalidates the links being sent out in email that allows you to quickly contest these actions
They created a sub account and set it up with unlimited purchasing rights.

What they were planning on doing from there is unknown because I think I maybe got things stopped in time to be able to find out. I had already put in a Paypal dispute, and Sony asked me to cancel that and they refunded the $50 taken from within their system. They were quick to point out that they had no legal requirement to do this… since all sales are final… and that they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts as a one time exception. Whatever makes me feel better at the end of the night, because in the end I got my money back without having to claw it back through paypal. The gotcha however is that instead of refunding it to the bank… they just placed it in my PSN wallet, which in truth I guess is fine given that I was going to pre-purchase Horizon Zero Dawn at some point anyways. It was a frustrating start to the morning, but in the grand scheme of things everything seems to be restored to normal. The only thing that I am going to do as a follow up is to get them to completely remove the sub account. For now I have changed its password and decimated it through parental controls so it really can’t do anything.