Molten Zoomy Lad

So yesterday my good friend Ammo decided to take up residence on Gamepad.Club with so many of us that have moved there. This is particularly relevant to me because I have so many different profiles spread throughout so many different platforms that I have given her credit for the Avatar that I use most often. The thing is over the course of the last decade, Ammo has crafted for me a plethora of hand-drawn versions of “Belghast” from different games. There are so many of these that we have finally come to the point where I am retiring one. Above is the “Destiny Bel” that she crafted in 2017, prior to the launch of the game officially. It was assembled out of a set of armor that was at my time the favorite from what was available in the alpha and beta tests. Given that I mostly played a Bubble Titan in Destiny 1… I assumed that I would spend all of my time playing the sexy new Captain-America-style shield-throwing Void Titan. So I had her create a version of that with a simulacrum of my head… charging in motion.

Issue number one… I never spent any significant amount of time playing Void Titan. Mostly I never really liked the way the grenade options felt and the super was really bad for burn phases. Given that I never really did much in the way of proper group play in Destiny 2 apart from being carried through exactly one raid… I didn’t have much reason to run Void for Weapons of Light. Sunbreaker had both my favorite grenade and favorite super… so I largely spent most of my time playing that subclass. Then there was also the problem that after they started sunsetting content… and removing some of my favorite places from the game… I stopped playing Destiny altogether. It has felt weird to me that the character occupied such a prominent place in my blog banner, while I had zero plans to return to Destiny at any point in the future. Now watch that actually TALKING about it… will manifest a desire to start playing it again.

The thing is… I really still liked the motion of that character and how it rounded out the end of my string of characters. So it got me thinking about what I could use to replace it. For anyone who has not been around for all of the commissions, what you see in my masthead is my Lalafell from Final Fantasy XIV, my Hunter from Monster Hunter, and more importantly my Palico that is based on Kenzie… a cat that is sadly no longer with us but will always remain close to my heart. Then you have a version of my character from New World wearing the level 40-ish set of faction armor followed by my Necromancer in Reaper form from Guild Wars 2. Next up you have the only commission that I did not make… a version of my World of Warcraft warrior meets Twitter persona that my friend Tam Commissioned, with my PSO2 RaCAST looming behind. Lastly, before you get to Destiny, you have my Elder Scroll Online Imperial character wearing the armor set I almost always have on transmog. Then there are moogles sprinkled in throughout who stole my stuff.

It was around this time that I realized two things. Firstly… none of the characters that Ammo has drawn represent my constant addition to the ARPG genre. That part of my love for games is completely missing from my banner. Part of this is due to the fact that MOST ARPGs don’t exactly have a robust character creation system. A Diablo III Barbarian for example… looks like an old man with a diaper or a young woman with a diaper, and not much past that. Path of Exile while not giving you any control over your character model, does offer a bunch of cosmetic options that allow you to decorate them how you like. In that game, I also have a “zoomy” character in the form of my Righteous Fire Juggernaut I have now played for the last two leagues as my main. I spend most of my time ignited and shield charging through packs of mobs, and quite honestly… I feel like I love that design so much that I will probably create a version of it in every league from this point forward.

So I did what I always do and gathered up a bunch of screenshots and thrust them in Ammo’s direction and said “Here make this!”. This was a weird case because so much of this appearance is tied to one specific microtransaction pack in Path of Exile. Thankfully there is still a video showing off this pack in detail that I was able to supply to her as well. As she always does… she takes my inane ramblings and turns them into something functional. Over the last few weeks, she has been supplying me with sketches and updates… but honestly, she was on the right track with this one from the start. The only regret I have is that the scaled-down version that now resides as part of the masthead of the website does not necessarily do justice to all of the detail she put into this one.

So last night officially, I replaced “Destiny Bel” with “RF Bel” in the masthead. I think the placement works nicely. The only thing I wish I had now were some more small characters like the Moogles to patch over the transition of the left foot. At some point, I know for certain that I want her to draw me a Choya Pinata on a similar scale to the Moogles and maybe a Quaggan… but more specifically the one with a Turtle Shell for a hat. Huge thanks to Ammo for continuing to translate my madness into picture form. I think what I dig so much is that while there are stylistic differences throughout the years, they all feel like they belong together because they were all crafted by the same person. While I absolutely love my new Molten Lad, I do sorta think that the best of these will always be Necro Bel from GW2. It is the feathers that really go above and beyond with that one. I absolutely have the best-looking blog on the internet that very few people actually care about.

Bungie Fails at Transmog

So this mornings post is not going to be an enjoyable one for most people. Yesterday Bungie released a TWAB (This Week at Bungie) about the new transmogrification system aka Armor Synthesis in their language. For those who are unaware “Transmog” or “Transmogrification” has become the universal name for systems that allow you to change the appearance of your gear in a game. This term was popularized by World of Warcraft when it was released during the Hour of Twilight patch at the end of Cataclysm. It is not the best example of this system, and in fact when it first went in it was fairly horrible… however over the years it has improved to contain most of the same features as better systems. Given the critical mass of players that play World of Warcraft, their specific naming convention stuck to identify ALL wardrobe appearance systems.

Some other details that you should probably know going into this post, and why it took every fiber of my being not to call it “Fuck You Bungie”. Destiny is a pretty important game to me. When it first was announced I used it as the reason to buy a PlayStation 4 just so I could play the Alpha. Granted there were other games I wanted to play, but it was absolutely the catalyst for me wanting to buy into that console generation. I loved the first game and by the time we got Destiny 2 it was in a really amazing place. Even from that first outing however the one system I wanted more than any others was the ability to change my armor appearance. Nothing makes a game feel bad like running around looking like an Fury Warrior from Burning Crusade. Wearing matched gear makes me feel better about playing a character and in relation makes the entire game feel better as a result.

How Transmog in Destiny Should Work

Shortly after the release of Forsaken, a new system went into the game called Collections. If you picked up an item it ended up recording that fact in your collections tab and for a small cost you could retrieve a version of that old item at any time. This gave us some long term goals of completing collections because it was around this time that they began talking about possibly putting in a transmogrification system. In my mind it made sense that we were getting out accounts flagged for having owned a specific item, because the best Transmog systems in general work off item flagging. When you pick up an item you earn the ability to use its appearance. Some systems put additional rules that make this process worse, for example World of Warcraft and not being able to collect appearances of armor types other than the one your class uses but the basics of account flagging have been around for awhile.

In my mental picture of how this system would work, it would rely on everything that you have bound to your account. In a perfect world we would have an additional paper doll that allowed us to place any appearance we had collected on any armor slot. There would of course need to be a carve out for Exotics, given that those give functional information to the players about what sort of abilities they can expect from you as a result. So in theory equipping an exotic would ignore whatever appearance was assigned in the transmog system. This is clean and would build upon a system they already have had in place since 2018. If they really felt them needed to, changing an appearance template could cost a nominal amount of glimmer and/or legendary shards.

A Slightly Worse Way to Implement It

At the tail end of “Year One” they implemented a system called Armor Ornaments, that allowed you to change the appearance of a single piece of armor. It isn’t a great system but until now it has been the only cosmetic system we had in Destiny. In “Year Two” they modified this system to open it up to all cash shop armors leading me to actively start collecting these because it gave me some access to modify my appearance. It was not a great system but again it was better than nothing, and Bungie also began talking about creating some sort of more holistic transmog system. I was willing to accept it because it would tide me over until they had time to build the better system.

Again a reasonable way to implement a cosmetic system would have been to combine the collections tab with the armor ornaments system. This would in theory allow us to swap the appearance of any single piece of gear with any other piece of gear that we have already collected. Again you would have a carve out to Exotics because they have their own appearance system but it would be manageable. Again there would be a nominal glimmer and/or legendary shard fee for swapping an appearance out but it would just be adding in the missing items from the existing ornament system. When they started talking about turning armor sets into ornaments, I honestly thought there would be some sort of nominal conversion fee to make an armor set show up in your ornament menu. I was fine with this and this is ultimately what I had resigned myself that we were going to get instead of the better option.

How Bungie Completely Fucked It Up

At face value this screen looks awesome. It allows you to swap out the appearance and shader for a complete set of gear at a time. This is precisely that additional paper doll that I was hoping they would give us. However they found a way to completely ruin this system. Instead of making it a simple process to turn those items you have collected into transmog appearances they added a needless grind into the system. Here are the basics:

  • ADA-1 is coming back into the tower and will offer you access to the Armor Synthesis System
  • Killing Enemies in the world has a chance of dropping a currency called Synthstrand which I am sure will take up another damned inventory slot
  • You can spend Synthstrand to get bounties from ADA-1 which reward another currency that will also likely take up inventory space called Synthcord
  • When you collect enough of bullshit currency number two, you can turn these in to convert them into Synthweave
  • You can spend Synthweave in your collections tab in order to unlock something as an armor appearance
  • You can earn 10 of these per season for each of your characters

The thing is… they took the system and made it arguably worse than the system I was envisioning but I was largely on board with the whole nonsense until that final bullet point. You can only earn 10 of these tokens per season, or in real world terms you can earn 10 of them every three months. The first season they are being “generous” and allowing players to earn 20 of them per character, which again Bungie fuck you for deciding that was generosity. It sounds like the tokens won’t transfer between characters so you can unlock two full armor sets every three months for each of your characters… when there is a mountain of gear that has been accumulating in our collection since the day we started playing this game.

The Blatant Money Grab

So why did they put the stupid limitations on the system? The short answer is they want to milk silver out of us for a system we have been waiting on years to be implemented. Like I have given Bungie a lot of credit in the past for the way the Eververse store has worked, and I have been more than happy to spend additional funds because I felt like I was more or less supporting a fair game. The items that they were selling me felt like they were worth the money I was spending for them. However this crosses the line. Instead of being limited to 10 pieces of armor per season, you are going to be able to purchase universal synthweave items from the Eververse store and “priced to own” prices to borrow a bullshit phase from the Disney Vault era. The prices they announced are as follows:

  • 1 Synthweave Token – 300 Silver aka roughly $3
  • 5 Synthweave Tokens – 1000 Silver aka oughly $10

So we can “earn” as many appearance sets as we like, pending we are willing to break out the credit card and pay $10 a pop for the right to look cool in Destiny wearing gear we collected years ago. This is a really bad look Bungie and I am feeling like it might be time you and I officially parted ways.

Making things even worse… and me even more salty is that I am not even certain that I am going to be able to transmog to my favorite set of armor in the first place. I loved the year one Iron Banner armor set and I still have it sitting in my vault for the day that we FINALLY got a proper transmog system. However there is also a bit of a note about certain year one armor sets not being supported due to technical difficulties. One of those listed is the Iron Banner set and I am uncertain if they are talking about the entire set as a whole or only if you converted them to Armor Ornaments back in the day… which honestly I didn’t love the look of the ornamented set.

I am frustrated and all of my goodwill for Bungie as a company is gone. I thought we lost too damned much in the move between Destiny 1 and Destiny 2. I hated the fact that they decided to blow up half of the world with the Beyond Light expansion and took a number of my favorite places in game away from me. I kept a wait and see attitude but the Weapon Sunset was a horrible idea and served to only put another nail in this coffin for me. That solution was the equivalent of bringing down the hammer or entire group of people because one or two them were fucking up, and it was the chickenshit move because they didn’t want to nerf the few weapons that were out of line for fear of the backlash. When they reversed the sunset they did so on a half assed manner that still locked away some of my favorite items.

Finally delivering on Transmogrification and then making it a complete fucking dumpster fire… I think it is the final straw for me. Fuck You Bungie.

Steelfeather Replacements

Hey Friends! So yesterday I was talking about the “inbetweensies” and one of my working theories as to why I bounced off Destiny Monday night was the impending reset. This more or less seemed to be correct because last night I pretty much played nothing but Destiny and had a grand ole time. I wish I could shape my mindset because in theory anything that was able to accomplish on Monday would have been a bonus, but instead I only saw the looming deadline that came with the weekly reset and resigned myself to not even try. This is what my brain does when you tell me something is a limited time event or something that is eventually going away. In theory it SHOULD get me to fly into action and do the things before the deadline, but it ends up having the opposite reaction.

This has been the case anytime something comes into game for a limited time. I think that I will buckle down and farm before the deadline comes up, but instead I end up bouncing under the anxiety of maybe just maybe not being able to get everything I wanted out of the event. The same is true with timed content in games. If you tell me that I am on a timer I will fuck up endlessly, but if you just sorta hide the existence of the timer then I will breeze through whatever it is. Anxiety is a thing and the older I get and the more removed from constant group interaction…. the more I find myself struggling with it. Like maybe it is just that my real world daily life is full of more high pressure interactions than it used to be, that I just do not want them at all in my gaming life.

This is the beloved Steelfeather Repeater that I have talked so much about in other posts. The roll that I ended up with that I considered a God Roll has Feeding Frenzy and Multikill Clip and I have loved this weapon so damned much. So one of my goals moving forward with this season has been to find a viable replacement for a Kinetic Auto Rifle. Pretty much I always have an Auto Rifle slotted and then alternate the other weapons around this, so as such I need something in that first slot to go along with my Gnawing Hunger which is my Energy Rifle of choice. I did a bit of research into some of the options and then last night I happened to get a few of them to drop.

I did not play at all during the season when Seventh Seraph weapons were actually dropping. As a result this Auto Rifle is completely new to me. For starters this appears to be based on the Khvostov which is one of my all time favorite weapons in Destiny. I got what I would consider a reasonable roll with Fourth Time’s the Charm and Vorpal Weapon. Looking however at what is actually available to roll on the weapon… it seems that I got one of the better rolls that I could have. The only thing that I guess I would have really changed were the barrel and magazine options. I guess this weapon can roll with Rampage so maybe I also want to see a copy of that weapon drop as well.

I did play when False Promises was a weapon that was dropping during Season 11, but for whatever reason I never really liked it that much. This is in a very slow archetype and it just doesn’t feel like it shreds in quite the same way that other Auto Rifles do. However last night I pulled a pretty solid roll that I am going with for now as I keep trying this weapon out. Feeding Frenzy and Rampage are solid, but I would have rather had High Caliber rounds in the magazine perks slot. It is a fine enough weapon and sorta reminds me of a Suros Regime on the slowest fire mode, which again was not really a thing I enjoyed that much.

Another thing that I managed to pull last night was the new Gambit exclusive Hand Cannon, or at least new to me. I remember once upon a time being desperate for a void Hand Cannon when I was grinding some past achievement, but I don’t know if that is still a gap in the itemization. It seems to hit really hard but could use a slightly larger number of rounds and faster reload speed. I have a feeling that Rangefinder and Multikill Clip are far from optimal for this weapon. Rapid Hit seems like a better choice all around since you are probably going to be firing off the full nine rounds anytime you are using it. Wellspring apparently can roll on this weapon so that might be interesting as well.

Finally I got a Seventh Seraph hand cannon, which again is new to me since I did not play during that season. I love the look of this thing but don’t so much love the way it plays. I wish it was a little harder hitting. The even rounds makes me think of the Hawkmoon, but this thing does not really hit terribly hard which is unfortunate. It was fun playing around with it last night but ultimately I would probably use the Gambit option to this one. The God roll appears to be Corkscrew Rifling, Appended Mag, Threat Detector and Feeding Frenzy. Maybe I will see something a little closer to that as I continue opening engrams.

This week is apparently Shadow Price in Nightfall Ordeal so I am probably going to spend some time in the coming evenings attempting to farm one of those up. Even if I don’t get an optimal roll it should at least tell me if it is going to be a weapon I like or not. I tend to have a pretty visceral reaction to weapons in Destiny, where I either like the thing they are doing or don’t at all and it comes down to a mixture of weapon look, animations and weapon sound. You could hand me the most optimal weapon and tell me it is the perfect roll but if it doesn’t “feel good” to use it… then I simply won’t and it will rot in my vault. So far of everything I have gotten I find myself using the Carbine the most, because it “feels” right.

Overwhelmed by Possibility

Well friends, I find myself in the odd position of having way more things right now that I want to play than I can possibly find hours in the day to play them. To be fair I am notorious for trying to juggle two or three games at a time, but I find myself in truly anxiety ridden territory right now. With the blog in theory behaving properly and me getting back in the swing of daily posting, lets delve into what happens when everything gets pushed off to the end of the year.

Destiny 2

This is the game that has been getting the majority of my attention since the launch of Beyond Light. I wrote the other day about the frustrations that came with the weapon sunset and the removal of content, and those frustrations still exist but have lessened a bit. Firstly with the beginning of the Season of the Hunt we have a new method to target specific drops, which helps to fill out that weapon vault once again. Additionally the content seems to have a longer tail than a traditional D2 expansion and I am still seemingly unlocking content long after finishing the story. Lastly I have found out that I can just kill roaming rares on Europa to get a shot at the entire weapon pool from that destination and as such have picked up several options including a new functional legendary Machinegun.

Now the thing that makes ZERO sense to me… and I wish someone could explain is that each time I have run a strike and a legendary has dropped… it has been this legendary. I have looted so many copies of this weapon, but the original roll that I have been holding onto seems to still be the best. Not saying this isn’t a solid weapon, but I would love to see more of the loot pool than just this one shotgun.

Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact is the game that is suffering the most right now due to my many distractions. There are a few events happening and I am failing to participate in them. The challenge with Genshin Impact is that it feels like this game really wants it to be your ONLY game right now. We went from the challenge of not having enough to do in a day to having WAY MORE to do than you can possibly get done. This is awesome for those who are still mainlining this experience, but for me who has pushed it to the back burner I feel like I am getting further and further behind. Grace and I are now no longer on the same world level which limits what we can do together… which is frustrating.

Diablo 3

Diablo 3 Season 22 starts on Friday, and originally I had contemplated just giving this one a skip. The conquests are not super enjoyable looking, but the book pet is sorta adorable. Grace was planning on doing this one solo even if I decided to skip, and as a result I have decided I am going to do the thing as well. More than anything I think I could just use the chill hang time that a Diablo seasonal grind always represents. In truth it doesn’t really take all that much time, and I plan on going easymode demon hunter in order to complete things quickly. May the luck be in my favor that I get a primal ancient yangs or something like that to help push this along faster. The 4th cube slot is going to provide some really odd builds.

Godfall

I feel like in another world and another time this game and me might have had something. However given its relatively lifeless state and the fact that I have so many other things on my plate right now… I am mostly okay watching it whiz by. To be honest I think the only reason why this game is getting any notice is the fact that it is one of the next gen experiences available for the PlayStation 5 right now. I have it on the PC and it has some significant performance issues on my 1080 ti, which admittedly is part of the reason why I am fine not playing it. I hope it gets some tuning passes, but the bigger problem is that the game as a whole feels like it doesn’t really have a soul to bind you to it. It reminds me of all of the story problems that Destiny 1 had of making you feel like you are dropped in the middle of something that was already happening and giving you zero explanation of what the hell is going on. The problem there however is that Destiny 1 had compelling enough gameplay to make me overlook that but Godfall does not.

World of Warcraft Shadowlands

I was more than happy to largely ignore that World of Warcraft existed for the last few weeks. I spent some time doing the Icecrown rares with my guild and managed to gear up my Paladin and even got the much coveted 34 slot bag. However without realizing it… we are now on the cusp of a new expansion launch. Monday night at 5pm my time I will be venturing forth into the Shadowlands and as a result I am preparing for this to suddenly take all of my focus. I’m even contemplating cooking up something in the crock pot during the day so we have a hot and ready meal waiting on us that I can just fix a plate of whenever I get hungry. That way I can focus all of my attention on being frustrated as the servers burn down around me. Given the state of this year I am expecting anything but a smooth launch, but have a glimmer of hope that I will be pleasantly surprised. Regardless it is leveling in a new expansion time and that is a rare and precious thing that I am going to cherish.

Demon’s Souls

I have no idea why I suddenly find this game so damned compelling. It might be that I Just bought a $500 console and I feel like I need to justify that purchase and this is the only truly next generation game available for it. It might also be that I have always been intrigued by the Souls game genre but never really allow myself to get into it, and there is something oddly compelling about the gameplay. I rerolled last night as a Temple Knight, so that I could start out with a decent twohanded option or at least one that can switch hit between one and two. The two handed no block style is definitely more of my jam, and as a result I made it quite a bit further last night before dinner arrived and I got distracted by the comfy sofa. I realize I live in opposite land where my consoles are all hooked up in my office and my sofa is where I do chill laptop gaming. I still have no clue what I am doing but I am enjoying myself so I guess that is the first step?

Ghost of Tsushima

I finally have my PS5 and you are so damned gorgeous and play so incredibly smoothly. Now I just need to figure out a way to duplicate myself so I can enjoy all of these experiences at once without feeling like I am leaving anything on the table. Hold tight my sweet… we will have our time eventually once I stop being so damned distracted.

Bugsnax

In another time and another place we could have been friends weird muppet pokemon skyrim. You just aren’t compelling enough when compared against all of the other things on my plate. I am glad you were given to me freely by the good folks that set up the PlayStation Now games, because I would have felt awkward ignoring you. I know Tam is your friend, and I am sure I am going to feel pangs of regret this weekend as he tells me how wonderful you are. Seriously though… just can’t right now.

Watch Dogs Legion

Legion is a really interesting game, but there is just something about it that never really grabbed me. I love how rich the world is… but it also feels like there isn’t a lot to do in it other than walk around. I feel like this is a game that Grand Theft Auto players would really be into, given that it is mostly a cycle of steal a car, drive to the mission, do the mission and then try and escape and lay low until the heat has dissipated. That has never really been a super enjoyable format for me, because firstly I don’t love driving cars in these sort of games. Secondly I found myself wanting something to do in the points in between the missions. At least in a game like Division where society has fallen… there are random combat encounters as I wind my way across a painfully detailed landscape. Here you just have a bunch of civilians and occasionally one of them might be interesting enough to want to recruit, but mostly you are traversing large spaces to get to small bits of micro content. I want to return to it someday but I am very glad that I chose to go the Ubisoft subscription route rather than plunk down a large wad of cash on this given how distracted I am right now.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

This one I feel real sad about because I have it installed… but have not even booted it up. Too many other things pulling my attention in too many other directions. I also know that since the way I play this game is in a purely single player fashion, that I will get just as much enjoyment from playing it in 2022 as I will in 2020. Someday I will visit it and roam around in its Norse goodness. This is also another situation where I am real glad I opted for the monthly sub rather than buying it outright.

There we have it friends… my very first world problem that I am lucky to have. On the other side of the coin I am still regularly playing caretaker for my parents, and more of my family has contracted covid so there are stressors there as well. I am thankful that I am so lucky as to be constantly distracted by my hobbies, because this is a year where I am clung to them like a safety blanket. They have been what has allowed me to stay sane through all of this, and while I am in sort of overload mode right now it will give me plenty to focus on as we go into 2021 and realize that things are not going to be magically better. I fully expect that 2021 will feel an awful lot like 2020, minus one major factor… that we will have a change in the oval office. The plague will still be out there and even though vaccines are on the cusp of release it is going to take a significant amount of time to distribute them far and wide enough to make a dent in the numbers. I am very thankful to have many other worlds that I can escape into when this one is just too much to handle.