I have to admit I had completely forgotten about the Dawning Festival being a thing, or how generally satisfying it is. For those who have not experienced it, this is a weird festival where you shoot bad guys to collect materials… to make deeply questionable sounding cookies. You then hand those cookies into people in the tower and other destinations… for reward packages that include in them a bunch of Dawning specific weapons. It ends up forming this really enjoyable loop of “do some stuff”, “get some stuff”, and then ultimately “get big rewards”. For me who is currently grossly under-geared, it also serves as the impetus to actually be doing some grinding which helps to remedy that situation.
Given my present mental and emotional state, this all seems to fit right now. I know I should be fighting through the FFXIV queue and working on collecting some bookrocks, but that right now seems so cumbersome and instead I shoot some dudes for a candy like explosion of materials. It is about all I can really handle engagement wise at this very moment. I am in a very active clan, but I can’t really bring myself to engage much in that either. I know activities are happening on the regular but the emotional toll of losing Kenzie I am afraid has caused me to slip back into turtle mode. I will dig myself out at a later date but for now I am sorta trying to heal.
I am slowly working on a series of dawning quests, and for right now the only weapon that I have unlocked is the Glacioclasm. I am not the biggest fan of fusion rifles, largely because of the very small ammunition pool. At some point Bungie made a massive quality of life change and made all primary weapons have unlimited ammunition reserves. This means I can just run around effectively forever with “white ammo” weapons and just not care about ammunition at all. This means I am way the hell more likely to use double primary instead of a primary/secondary load-out. I did however use this to knock out a few bounties and the weapon is “fine” but probably not better than my Cartesian Coordinate.
The item I think most of us are seeking is a good role of the new Stasis element sword that was introduced with this event. Slowly but surely I am working my way through that quest and once completed I can purchase packages that give me an increased chance of getting more copies of it to drop. For the moment this all seems to be right down my alley and I am going with it. I’ve not abandoned FFXIV or even New World to be honest… though I am mostly in a holding pattern on the later to see if they pull their head out of their ass. With Final Fantasy XIV I am waiting for queues to die down to rational levels to where I can realistically choose to play the game and get in within thirty minutes instead of needing to play my entire day around it.
Hey Friends, I have been struggling to attach to games this week… and honestly last week as well. Having finished Endwalker, I have been purposefully staying away from that game in my small way of trying to help with congestion so that more people can get through it. I get that I am just one person… but if more people took a step away for a bit, more folks would get to experience that great expansion. In the meantime I have been floundering a bit to find new purpose and booted up Destiny 2 on a whim… and it more or less stuck. I think mostly my mental and emotional speed right now is “mindless shootymans game”. It doesn’t hurt that there is a 30th Anniversary event going on in game and with it a bunch of interesting drops.
The best of these for my purposes is the BXR-55 Battler which is essentially a pulse rifle patterned off of the Battle Rifle from Halo. The default load out has it burst firing, but I have slotted in a mod that shifts mine to full auto making it a pretty great primary weapon. What I really dig about this weapon is the accuracy and range and the ability to hip-fire it reliably. Which effectively gives me a single weapon that can be scoped for something akin to a scout rifle for picking off targets at range, or hip-fired to give me something that feels like an auto rifle. I have this sneaking feeling that this is going to eventually get nerfed because it seems to be dominating the meta a the moment.
There are a whole slew of other weapons that are in honor of past Bungie games. If you were more of a Covenant person, you can pick up the Retraced Path which is sort of themed after the Carbine. It also serves as the first legendary quality trace rifle, with the rest of weapons in that category taking up your exotic slot. If the Energy Sword was more your jam, the game has two “half” energy swords that make me wonder if we are eventually going to get an exotic quest to join them into the true Energy Sword equivalent. I never played Marathon because I did not have access to a Mac, but apparently the shotgun that drops is in honor of that game. There is a grenade launcher dropping and I have no clue what it is themed after other than it bears resemblance to the Mountain Top.
The new game mode that drops most of these weapons is called Dares of Eternity and is a weird “game show” hosted by the Starhorse and Xur. Essentially you spin a wheel and this chooses what type of enemy you face during that round. You battle your way through multiple rounds and then face a classic Destiny 1 boss at the very end. There is a scoring system which allows you to complete bounties for the Starhorse, and a more general series of bounties that you can complete for Xur. You win at least one key per round and can also get Strange Coins from doing other activities during the Anniversary Event that you can turn in for more keys or other items. If you unlock enough caches and save up enough keys you can earn things like ships or sparrows as well as I believe a full armor set.
All in all it is some “big dumb fun”, and I think that is what my brain needs right now. There is a new DLC dungeon that I would love to get a group for at some point so I can pick up Gjallarhorn which is tied to completing it. Additionally there is a quest chain that unlocks an exotic sidearm that is based off of the pistol from Halo that I would like to get as well. Mostly I am spending my time doing Dares of Eternity over and over, but I have started knocking out some weekly rewards to try and get my light level up there. It is still not the best system in the world, but after New World I know that it could be so much worse.
Good morning friends. I have to say our Medium beach front home in Shirogane has grown on me in my time back in the game. For the longest time, I was deeply nostalgic about our original FC home, but I think more than anything I was nostalgic about that era in the game when I was so engaged with it. The house simply became shorthand for explaining my feelings, and I put way more importance on that one location than I really should have. Now that I have been back in the game and have actually reached out to begin meeting our neighbors, I have come to realize that we are still in a pretty phenomenal neighborhood. Yesterday morning while I was blogging I taught one of our neighbors the joy of hanging out on the roof of our home and the amazing view it provides. There is a bit of a process to get up there, but I spend enough time that the neighbors are finding their way up there as well.
The highlight of yesterday is represented by another roofline shot, this time of me in my level 70 gathering gear set. I usually glamour this stuff, but I have to say the base appearance is pretty adorable. I’ve been spending a not-insignificant amount of time in the Diadem and been focused on trying to get at least one level per day on all three of the gathering professions. I need to catch Fishing up at this point, but right now I have Botany and Mining both at level 71. Ultimately the reason behind this push is twofold. Firstly I want to be able to contribute more than my single solitary map each week to Maps night, and that requires a high-level gatherer to get those level 80 maps. Secondly, I figure having a max level gatherer will make leveling all of my crafting all that much easier because I can make my way into the Diadem to stockpile the materials I need for the Ishgard Restoration stuff. For now I am putting most of those materials gained on the market which serve as a pretty reasonable way to gain a little cash quickly.
The other big activity that I knocked out last night was starting the process of catching up on the YorHa Alliance raids based on Nier Automata. I had started the precursor quest some time ago, but like so many things in my quest log never quite got around to finishing it. I ran The Copied Factory and The Puppet’s Bunker last night, and at the end of the night unlocked the final of this triad of raids The Tower at Paradigm’s Breach. This area of the game is way more detailed than I expected, allowing players to basically roam around the areas represented by each raid in a sort of exploration mode. I am pretty certain that The Copied Factory is straight from the beginning of Nier Automata, or at least is very similar to what I remember from the beginning of that game. Side note I really need to get back to that and finish it at some point.
My favorite visual from the raids is when the entire alliance queues up at a checkpoint and then takes the pods down to the next area at the same time. It ends up looking like a roller coaster as everyone glides down in unison. I was apparently extremely lucky last night because, on the second raid, I managed to get bot the 2B and 2P minions, and then after the raid Rae ended up mailing me two of the hairstyles that she got from her own run. There was a lot going on, but I like this series far better than I do the Void Ark sequence from Heavensward or the Ivalice sequence from Stormblood. There are a few mechanics that are not messaged like FFXIV normally are, but I adapted. I did however take several deaths to stupid things as I was learning. I really want to farm a set of gear from this series of raids, maybe for my dancer because it seems fitting.
All told I am extremely impressed by the level of the content and am also realizing that I need to dive back into the Eden raids and finish those out. I think I only actually did the first set of them, but they were pretty enjoyable. I need to tabulate the results of my raiding survey and try and zero in on both a group of 8 players and a timeslot to start trying for more focused raiding attempts. The Scholar is still progressing and I managed to get another two levels on it, and finish off a level on the Dark Knight. I have a lot of different balls in the air but so far juggling them is providing me with a good amount of enjoyment. The only thing that could potentially derail this is me getting distracted by another game… and I am afraid that might be happening soon.
Yesterday there was a Bungie Showcase event that I believe tied into the larger Gamescom show happening this week. During it they revealed the trailer for The Witch Queen expansion, and the new seasonal content that started last night. I miss Destiny 2, and I am feeling the subtle tug as some of my friends are engaging with it again. For a long time I managed to play both FFXIV and Destiny 2 at the same time, and given that they are wildly different experiences I might be able to make it work. So at some point over the next few days I expect to dip my toes back into D2 and see how well that concept works. My core focus remains FFXIV, but there are times I could go for something a little more visceral.
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.
