December 2018 - Page 3 of 5 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Prison Break Problems

December 17, 2018December 17, 2018 by Belghast

First off I need to start this mornings blog post with a spoiler warning. If you have not played through the first mission in the Destiny 2 Forsaken expansion, then there are going to be spoilers included. Granted probably nothing more than was already spoiled with the Forsaken trailer, but I just felt like I needed to throw that out there. This weekend I spent some time playing Destiny 2 and while working on the Heroic Story mission queue I noticed one of the missions was “Prison Break” the first mission in the Forsaken storyline, and something I had not played through in awhile. I remembered really liking it a lot and opted to go replay it for powerful gear credit.

It was around this point that I realized the core problem with Destiny 2 and its story. It functionally operates in two modes… pretending that you never played Destiny 1 and re-educating you in all of the basics of the universe, or assuming completely that you were a Destiny 1 lore hound and giving you a big ole deep dive with little room between the two. The “Prison Break” episode plays out completely differently for players who were new to Destiny with the PC release and players who were veterans of the original game on the consoles. This disconnect begins from the very moment that you are treated to a cinematic between Uldren Sov and Cayde-6. This really hit me at the moment of the above screenshot… the “How’s your sister?” line either is extremely powerful or makes no fucking sense depending on your perspective.

“Prison Break” is a mission that almost exclusively references things that happened in Destiny 1… and worse things that were never introduced up to this point in Destiny 2. Sure if you went around scanning everything your ghost indicates you can scan you might have gotten snippets of information here or there but if you base things entirely upon what you see in the normal flow of Destiny 2 there are a bunch of problems.

The player has no clue who Uldren Sov is – we last saw him in the introduction to Taken King expansion for Destiny 1
The player has no clue who Mara Sov is… because again we last saw her in the introduction video to Taken King in the big Oryx space battle
The player really has no clue what the Reef is
The player has no clue that the Awoken were working with the Fallen and have no clue who Variks was/is
The player has no clue what exactly the Prison of Elders is
The player has no clue who Petra Venj is and why we already seemingly know her

These are all things that make this mission extremely confusing if you view it through the lens of a “brand new to Destiny 2” player. For veterans however this mission is a big romp as you roam through this place that you only managed to see a piece of before when doing trials for Variks. This is a destination I think that we all wanted to see more of and I was completely staggered by the sheer scope of the place when I first played the mission. For those who are not already familiar with it… it is just another busted ass location that is being blown up for some reason and that is largely hand waved away. There is no time spent on explaining what it is other than a Prison, and no time spent explaining who Petra Venj is other than someone who can apparently levitate her knife.

This is the core challenge of this expansion and why I think it had such split reactions. For me it was an amazing romp through places I had been and quite honestly miss greatly from Destiny 1, and for others… it is just another string of locations that were never really explained. The game does a really bad job of telling a cohesive narrative that does not require you to have watched every single Byf or Myelin lore video to understand. I was one of those players that gobbled up every little bit of lore about the first game… and as a result I sounded like a madman half of the time when I talked about it trying to defend it to the rest of the AggroChat crew as being this deep masterpiece. The game doesn’t just let players know these things, but instead requires them to jump through a whole bunch of hoops to be able to interact with the content. The Book of Sorrows is really interesting science fiction horror reading… that thankfully has been collected into an easy to read PDF or EPUB format… but to get it initially you had to roam around the Dreadnaught in Destiny 1 collecting over 40 Calcified Fragments.

The problem with this style of storytelling is it sets up a dichotomy of players. You have players like me who are willing to track down the story and chase it across various in game assets and other websites that help to summarize and condense the content into easily understandable chunks. You also have what I feel is the majority of players who just straight up bounce off of the story when it never quite pays off on the deep secrets they have heard people talking about through its storyline. If you were a lore hound, you immediately understood who the frozen hive were and why it was super exciting to see them. You also understood a lot of things about Rasputin and at the very least knew who Ana Bray was enough to be interested in meeting her. You also knew all sorts of things about Cayde-6 and his background and how someone becomes an Exo, and why Clovis Bray is the home of some really dangerous technologies.

As a new player… which is especially true for the PC crowd given that there was no option of playing Destiny 1 on that platform, you are simply treated to a list of names that have no real meaning. These are proper names which is at least an upgrade from Destiny 1 which treated you to “the traveler”, “the speaker”, “the exo stranger”, and “the darkness” among others. The names themselves however don’t have meaning attached to them if you didn’t dig for said meaning. Sure for the right kind of player this sets up a delectable puzzle that they are going to go digging for to find the answers, but you can’t expect EVERY player to want to do the leg work required to make any sense of it all. In the end I will defend the story that is being told as ground breaking, because the sum of all parts is amazing… but the game does no favors in actually helping players find it. It took me a long time to really see this point of view, but replaying through “Prison Break” was a bit of a wake up call to them simply not explaining why we should be caring about anything in this game.

Digital Fragmentation

December 14, 2018 by Belghast

epicgamesstorefront

There has been a significant amount of consternation surrounding the recent activities of Epic Games… which I still feel like I need to cram the Mega in there. There are those that herald this as a new era in which Steam actually has proper competition. There are others that signal this as the end times for PC Gaming because players will be fragmented across many platforms. There are others still that are complaining largely because they don’t want to have to install the “Fortnite Client” to play their games. For me however I am somewhat amused as I sit back and watch the events unfold because it all has a sense of deja vu.

Epic is a company that had a game that was a big enough success… that they decided they were able to askew all of the traditional norms and funnel everyone through their own infrastructure. If you removed the word “Epic” and replaced it with Valve the above statement would still be completely true. Steam started out more or less as the digital distribution mechanism for Half-life 2, and a good number of us only got our steam accounts largely because of this. Prior to Steam I had dabbled with a few services like Direct 2 Drive which was at the time a side project by IGN, in fact my original Mass Effect 2 copy was through it. However round about 2008 I standardized on Steam as my platform of choice since it was clearing winning the early digital distribution battles.

Since around 2010 I made the decision to go entirely digital if possible, and that carried forward onto not only PC purchases but also with consoles as well… which has lead me to swap out a few hard drives to upgrade them in the process. The funny thing is… you accumulate a lot of digital games scattered across different platforms. When I purchased a video card a few years back I got a copy of Witcher 3 for example… but it was only redeemable on the GOG Galaxy client. Each month as part of my Amazon Prime subscription, Twitch Prime gives me a slew of games… that are only available through the Twitch client.

I just did some looking this morning and not counting single game clients… I have the following Multi-Game Launchers installed on my system…

Battle.net
Bethesda.net
Epic Games Launcher
Glyph
GOG Galaxy
My.Com Game Center
Origin
Perfect World ARC
Steam
Twitch Client
Ubisoft UPlay
Wargaming.net Game Center
Windows Store

That is thirteen clients, not counting Discord who also seemingly wants to get in on the action but that I don’t have any games through. So to the point of those being concerned about fragmentation… what difference does one more store make giving that eleven of those clients I had installed prior to the launch of the Epic Games store. This isn’t taking into account the three online stores that I also interact with on Microsoft Consoles, Sony Consoles and Nintendo Consoles. The funny thing is… I can think of a couple other clients that I no longer have installed that would have bumped that number up even higher.

sonystorefront

What makes it even more disturbing is the number of games that I am accumulating that I will probably never actually play. Originally this was just the realm of Humble Bundle… when I purchased a bundle deal because of one title that I wanted… and got fifteen more that I didn’t. However since then there are Xbox Live Gold and Playstation Plus which I largely just consider to be the upkeep costs of owning a Microsoft or Sony console… but that also give away games each month that I feel obligated to log into their respective store fronts and claim just in the off chance that I might want to play them at some point. On top of that Origin gives away games on the regular… which I am admittedly less connected to regularly grabbing because Origin is hands down the worst client. But now Epic Games is determined to start giving us new games every few weeks, and Twitch Prime offers up a deluge of new titles each month. Ultimately I need some way of keeping track what I have on what platforms and the only real options I have found are completely manual.

Basically what I am saying is… we have been fragmented for a very long time and while I respect the notion that folks don’t want to sully their systems with yet another launcher I am also not that sort of a purist. Disk space is cheap and I like the concept of having a lot of games “on tap” and ready to play when the mood hits me, and as a result I have all of these damned launchers scattered throughout my system doing whatever launchers do. It is an unfortunate reality, but it is a reality I long ago accepted as something that I am going to have to deal with. The only two clients that I really take issue with are Origin and the Windows Store, but one of those I can’t uninstall because it came with the operating system… and the other I am resigned to use because I still care about Bioware games.

When it comes to making game purchases however that is a completely different situation, and as it stands now… I am not opposed to the concept of buying games on the Epic Games store. The interface currently is way better for finding games than that of Steam… but that is only because it has a handful of games on it at the moment. Steam is a victim of its own success and its generally hands off approach that they have had in attempting to manage their platform. As such potential gems are embedded in among of shovelware asset flips, making it extremely hard to find those things that you maybe have not heard of yet… but probably should give a shot. I guess time will tell how Epic decides to combat that with their own store front. For the moment however I don’t think some sort of a PC Gaming Apocalypse is upon us… nor do I really care about having to install another client. I think things are going to move forward much the way they always have … and by the end of next year I will probably be forced to install a few more vestigial clients in order to keep playing the things I want to play.

One Crazy Sled

December 13, 2018 by Belghast

Yesterday I talked about the initial quest of delivering cookies to Zavala to cheer him up, but the rabbit hole goes way deeper than that. When you turn that quest in you pick up a second one from Eva Levante to get a secret blueprint from Amanda Holiday for a new sort of sparrow. I also covered all of the recipes yesterday but the quest asks you to deliver Vanilla Blades to Shaxx, Chocolate Ship Cookies to Amanda Holiday and Eliksni Birdseed to Hawthorne as well as bake a grand total of 12 gifts. Now I am not sure if these need to be unique gifts or if you just need to bake twelve in total. Regardless I set about making one of everything yesterday and delivering them, and currently the only gift that has not been delivered is the one for Xur who of course will not be available until Friday.

Your reward for baking one of every possible recipe is that you can “Masterwork” Eva’s Holiday Oven. This essentially lowers the dawning essence cost from 15 per item to 10 per item… which is nice… but still it seems like this holiday is way more about grinding dawning essence than any of the other individual components. It does make it way easier to craft individual items once you have learned all of the patterns which show up in a drop down as I am showing off in the above screenshot. Something interesting of note… the counts seems to be tied to your account and not individual characters because as soon as I collected the quest on my Hunter this morning for the purpose of getting screenshots… I was able to Masterwork the Holiday Oven and showed that I already knew all of the patterns.

Once you have baked all of the cookies and delivered them to everyone needed in Eva’s quest you can go to Holliday and get your Dawning Cheer sparrow. It does in fact look as silly in game as it does in this screenshot and it has a bunch of seemingly unique animations that make it seem way more cumbersome to drive than various other options. Now the thing with this sled is it is not quite complete when you get it… there are three talents that you have yet to unlock and those are started by completing a few quests for Amanda Holliday.

I’ve photoshopped them all together so you can see the requirements. Essentially in order to get all of the talents you are going to need to start making a TON of gifts… 120 in total but thankfully they seem to be cumulative and not separate achievements. This is one of those situations where I am not sure if this is also account based, but I plan on getting the hunter through the first part and getting her sparrow tonight as a test to see if you can effectively bake them on all of your characters and count towards one total. Essentially you are going to need to at a minimum give another round of Gifts to Ikora, Sloane, Devrim, Asher, Banshee and Failsafe… and then a bunch more gifts on top of that to whoever you want until you reach the magic 120 in total.

Now the positive is each time you turn in a gift you get a chance at getting interesting gear… as I picked up a new roll of the Avalanche HMG that I talked about yesterday by turning in a package to Sloan last night. All in all I like this version of the Dawning quite a bit, but I miss the sparrow races greatly. They really need to bring that concept back to Destiny 2. I am however enjoying doing stuff… and then getting random bonuses from doing said stuff… which in truth is going to keep me engaged in this event way longer than it probably should. I want the nonsense tricked out sparrow that causes glitter to spawn when you do stuff… so I guess I will be baking 120 gifts? So far Crucible and Gambit seem to be the best use of my time for the purpose of farming Dawning Essence… and I have objectives that I need from both of those so I might be farming those tonight.

The Dawning Arrives

December 12, 2018 by Belghast

As I assumed yesterday, the Dawning was in fact waiting on me when I got home from work and logged into Destiny 2. For the uninitiated The Dawning is effectively the Destiny universe Christmas event, covering the tail end of December and the beginning of the new year. It has meant a lot of different things, including really awesome sparrow racing in the past. Unfortunately that event did not make a return, but instead we get a fun mini game that asks us to go out into the world and do various things. It also signals getting bonus seasonal bright engrams each time you level up, so doubling the opportunity for bright dust and related rewards. Unlike past years however this feels way more rooted in game activities and not just another attempt to pry money from us in the cash shop.

The event signals the return of Eva Levante to the Tower, who for those of us that date back to Destiny 1 will remember was the shader and emblem vendor. Weirdly in Destiny 1 she was associated with the Festival of the Lost more than The Dawning… but I vaguely remember her also being the starting place of this event back in the day as well. What Eva asks of us this year is to collect various ingredients and make baked goods for the denizens of the tower and all of the various NPCs scattered throughout the solar system. She also offers a series of daily bounties that reward ingredients and at least one of them rewarded Powerful Gear, but I assume that is a weekly or one time reward only.

Eva has given us a portable oven that fits in our inventory and asked us to go out into the world and start collecting ingredients. She starts us off by giving us the ingredients and a recipe to make Gjallardoodles for Zavala, to sort of show us the ropes of how the system works. After finishing that we are asked to collect the ingredients for Vanilla Blades for Lord Shaxx and Eliksni Birdseed for Hawthorne, and both of the quests tell us specifically what ingredients to go collect. Effectively every recipe has three parts, a common material that drops from a specific enemy type, a rare material that drops based on the sort of damage you are dealing to the mob, and then dawning essence which drops from various activities from Public Events on the planets to match made activities like Gambit or Crucible. Here is a quick rundown of the drops for various mobs and damage types.

Common Items (Green – Mob Based)

Cabal Oil – Kill any Cabal Enemies
Chitin Powder – Kill any Hive Enemies
Dark Ether Cane – Kill any Scorn Enemies
Ether Cane – Kill any Fallen Enemies
Taken Butter – Kill any Taken Enemies
Vex Milk – Kill any Vex Enemies

Rare Items (Blue – Kill Damage Based)

Bullet Spray – Kills made with “Machine Gun” type weapons – Auto Rifle/SMG/HMG
Delicious Explosions – Explosive kills aka Class Grenades/Rocket Launcher/Grenade Launcher
Electric Flavor – Arc Damage based Kills
Flash of Inspiration – A kill that generates an Orb of Light – Supers or Masterworks
Impossible Heat – Solar Damage based Kills
Null Taste – Void Damage based Kills
Perfect Taste – Precision Damage Kills – aka Headshots
Personal Touch – Melee Based Kills or Melee Abilities like Thrown Weapons
Sharp Flavor – Sword Kills… not sure if Hunter Knives can proc or not

These are then combined with Dawning Essence which drops from pretty much anything, and crafts an item that begins a quest chain. Now a lot of these won’t show up on the map as a quest but it will cause the icon for a given vendor to start blinking. You turn in the baked goods and get a package that usually includes some Dawning Essence and a Blue or Purple. There are Triumphs associated with finding each of the recipes and delivering it to the respective NPC. As I said before you are only given three recipes from the start, but as you experiment with putting different items together you start unlocking the specific vendor items. If you put together two items that don’t make a tasty treat… you end up with Burnt Edge Transits which Master Rahool will take off of your hands.

Recipe List

Collecting materials can be time consuming… since they do not by any means drop every single kill. So as a result here is a list of all of the recipes, since if you are like me you are going to ultimately want to craft one of each to get the triumph for the holiday event. All of the recipes will take 15 Dawning Essence to craft so not listing that, just know it is a requirement for everything.

Alkane Dragee Cookies (Sloane – Titan) – Chitin Powder and Bullet Spray
Burnt Edge Transits (Master Rahool – Tower) – Any two ingredients other than those of the recipes below aka the failure state item
Candy Dead Ghosts (The Spider – Tangled Shore ) – Dark Ether Cane and Flash of Inspiration
Chocolate Ship Cookies (Amanda Holliday – Tower) – Cabal Oil and Null Taste
Dark Chocolate Motes (The Drifter – Tower) – Taken Butter and Null Taste
Eliksni Birdseed (Hawthorne – Tower) – Ether Cane and Personal Touch
Gentleman’s Shortbread (Devrim Kay – EDZ) – Ether Cane and Perfect Taste
Gjallardoodles (Zavala – Tower) – Ether Cane and Delicious Explosion – This was a freebie though and the mats Eva gives you
Ill-Fortune Cookies (Petra Venj – Dreaming City) – Dark Ether Cane and Impossible Heat
Infinite Forest Cake (Failsafe – Nessus) – Vex Milk and Impossible Heat
Javelin Mooncake (Ana Bray – Mars) – Chitin Powder and Sharp Flavor
Radiolarian Pudding (Asher Mir – Io) – Vex Milk and Electric Flavor
Strange Cookies (Xur – Varies Weekly) – Taken Butter and Electric Flavor
Telemetry Tapioca (Banshee-44 – Tower) – Vex Milk and Bullet Spray
Traveler Donut Holes (Ikora Rey – Tower) – Cabal Oil and Flash of Inspiration
Vanilla Blades (Lord Shaxx – Tower) – Cabal Oil and Sharp Flavor

Now yesterday I was musing exactly how we would be getting the Legendary Heavy Machinegun associated with this event, and if it would be some sort of a grind like the Haunted Forest was during Festival of the Lost. It apparently is super easy to get because it becomes your reward for essentially doing the very first quest which is to craft Gjallardoodles for Zavala. Aka you can get this weapon on pretty much all of your characters “just for participating”. As I thought however it drops at 600 light the same as the Festival of the Lost Auto Rifle, but it appears to not be equitable by lowbies the way that weapon was. I am going to try doing the intro quest tonight on some of my alts and seeing how this weapon varies.

One minor thing that I have noticed however is that it is impossible to deliver every recipe if you do not have the DLC content since Ana Bray is associated with Warmind, Spider with Forsaken… and Petra Venj with having beaten Forsaken unless you can turn in to one of her earlier incarnations that hangs out in Spiders Lair. The season of giving challenge however asks you to deliver 12 baked goods… and with Master Rahool not counting towards this because it is a failed state of the quest… that leaves 15 possibilities… so they have effectively made this available to folks without the expanded content. You just cannot get all of the triumphs/achievements associated without expansion access. Largely good on them for allowing vanilla players to be able to get all of the rewards. Ultimately you are going to spend the majority of your time farming Dawning Essence since you need so much to craft any given item.