Looter Shooter Archives - Page 56 of 111

Fragmented Gameplay

October 22, 2018 by Belghast

This was a busy weekend, largely because I spent most of it not in Oklahoma. We opted to take a fall break trip down to Dallas, and in some ways it was a really awesome trip… but in other ways it was not. When we left town on Friday morning it was raining, and for the most part did not stop raining until some time over night. This made for a very cold and wet trip, combined with lots of moments when it was raining so hard that I could barely see the road ahead of me. This became more stressful when I was crammed between two lines of K-Rails and the two lanes of traffic felt super squeezed together. We made it there safely, but the trip took way longer than it normally would have given the circumstances. Under perfect conditions with zero stops, we can make it to Frisco where we were staying in the hotel in roughly 4 hours… we were not under perfect conditions, and we stopped constantly to roam around. Friday was largely spent meandering around hitting various places along the way.

This made for a very compact Sunday, trying to get everything that we normally have to do on a Sunday done as well as anything triggered by being out of the house for two days. This mean’t that most of my gameplay yesterday was in several fragmented chunks which largely involved running Headless Horseman in World of Warcraft on all of my tanks, and leveling in Destiny 2 as I had yet to hit the level cap nor really make much traction in the story. I am a little weird when it comes to approaching Destiny content in that I prefer to level up independent of the story, and then grind through the story knowing that anything that happens to drop will potentially fuel my later item level grind. I largely took this screenshot because occasionally I forget that I end up getting paired with local people through Bungie’s matching algorithm that factors connection quality above pretty much anything else. Notice the player GerthBrooks… which made me chuckle at first and then was a little disturbed by it. For the uninitiated, Garth Brooks is also an Oklahoman and while his girls were in High School literally lived in the same town as I do.

Another thing I found out this weekend is that Escalation Protocol is really damned good for leveling… as there were groups I managed to get in the same instance with that were farming the level 7 boss. This thing drops some shaders, but also a chest that requires some sort of key that I am going to have to figure out. Upon some quick googling it seems like I simply didn’t do much content in Warmind, and as a result don’t have any keys to open these things with. The truth is that I largely bounced hard after grinding up my second account worth of characters upon the PC release. I managed to stick it through until the Curse of Osiris expansion, but the repetitive nature of that content left me annoyed. I will admit however that so far Forsaken seems really cool, I picked up and did some more of the story last night.

My highest priority however is to sort out how to do the Festival of the Lost content before it disappears. I had enough of the cash shop second chance currency to pick up this sweet corrupted ship. Past that I hear there is a better version of the infinite forest that I need to check out, that has a chance of dropping what appears to be a really sweet auto rifle. I contemplated playing God of War, but with the fragmentation of my play time… I focused on something that I could drop in and out of quickly rather than something that would require my full attention for long periods of time. Depending on how tonight goes… will determine if I return to Destiny for Festival stuff, or play some Dad of War. Regardless I managed to hit 50 the new level cap and am at 500ish light, so now to finish the story and get geared again. The lack of weapon options are driving me insane right now… but it is forcing me to use combinations that I never would have before. I’ve been getting a lot of play out of sidearms since they game keeps dropping them for me.

Reluctantly Fury

August 29, 2018 by Belghast

This morning is a hard morning, because I am struggling to wake up. I apparently had a way more active night than I realized, because in my mind I slept all the way through. However my wife told me a tale this morning that tells otherwise. Apparently I fell asleep with the television on and at some point during the night she woke up and decided that it should be turned off. The television remote was on the end table on my side of the bed so she proceeded to wake me up and tell me to turn it off. Instead of doing this… I apparently proudly proclaimed that “I peed”. At which point she tried to tell me no.. please turn off the television… to which I again proudly replied “but I already peed”.

This apparently happened a couple more times before I finally reluctantly turned off the television. I remember absolutely none of this happening at all. In my mind I went to bed and slept all the night through without incident, but I am guessing my generally groggy state this morning is due to the fact that I didn’t in fact do that thing. I have been taking a dose of nyquil before going to bed because I have been fighting this nameless crud, and I am wondering if the sleep inducing nature of that… lead to my odd behavior. Regardless it is blogfodder as I call it, and like so many things I probably shouldn’t tell you… I am telling you anyways.

Last night I managed to get the Demon Hunter to 114 and finish out the quests in Vol’dun. At this point I have moved him on to Nazmir which is a zone I never quite finished on the Warrior before getting caught up in the madness of world questing. As I was winding down on the Demon Hunter I decided to make one more pass on the Warrior to see if there were any quests up that I absolutely had to do. It was around this point that I decided to try out Fury in proper and get my bars set up. Now at this point I don’t have a great combo of weapons for Fury as I am have a spear from world questing that came in around 320 and an axe that came from a world boss I believe at 289ish. It is good enough to get started, but generally speaking I have had hell getting weapons this entire expansion so far. I was hoping that onehander fury was a thing again and I could just drop some fist weapons crafted by my leatherworker, but that is apparently not a thing.

The shocking truth is… Fury is amazing. It feels good and shockingly feels like I have more moment to moment survival than I do as a protection warrior. Basically this is now my world questing form and will probably run dungeons as such also to help build out the rest of my gear. This is the expansion where apparently I am maining Fury on the Warrior, however that is not enough of a consolation prize to give up my mission to level the Demon Hunter and tank on it. It does at least make me feel like maybe I didn’t completely waste the first two weeks of this expansion leveling a character that would be permanently shelved during this expansion. Maybe just maybe at some point they will apply some tweaks to the way protection feels and I can dust off the sword and shield.

Another thing that I poked my head into last night was Destiny 2, and for starters the lighting model feels totally different as evidenced by the way this ship looks. As far as the changes… I am still wrapping my head around what weapons do what. What I thought was going to happen was that we could put any weapon in any slot. What actually happened was that weapons are still divided by Kinetic, Energy and Power slots and then to confuse things further… the weapons are split by what sort of ammunition they use being primary, special or heavy. Fusion Rifle, Sniper Rifle and Shotgun all now are counted as special weapon types and are divided between the first and second slot. What I had hoped was that I could run around with Uriel’s Gift in the first slot, Merciless in the second slot, and then a Sword in the third slot. That is not a thing since Merciless and Uriel’s Gift both occupy the same slot.

None of this works exactly how I remembered them explaining it in the first live stream about Forsaken, however I have also not been following the changes terribly close. So technically there probably are ways you could have a shotgun in the first two slots, but I am not sure how viable that is actually going to be. The infusion however works much better to where it is slot based and not weapon type based. That said we still can’t do what we were able to do in TTK era of feeding trash drops from one class to become infusion fuel to push up another class which is unfortunate. Supposedly the changes feel really good, but I am on a mission to level the Demon Hunter so I did not give it that much time. I hope to explore it more over the long weekend break.

Upcoming Lapse

June 15, 2018 by Belghast

I don’t really have much of a proper post to make today, but I did want to give my readers a heads up that it is highly unlikely that I make a post before next Tuesday. Nothing bad is happening, it just won’t be reasonable for me to be posting much. This makes it all the more inexcusable that I don’t really have much to say today. I’ve been playing a lot of The Division and have managed to get back into the swing of things after the gear swaps I talked about last night. Unfortunately I am having hell taking screenshots right now because both Fraps and the Nvidia Experience based fall back seem to not be picking up and taking the shots. I am not exactly sure what is up but whatever the case I’ve been going into gaming sessions thinking I was taking a bunch of captures but not ending up with anything in the end.

The one new thing I have been playing around with is Survival mode, which was suggested to me by a lot of people. The premise is you are trying to get to the dark zone in order to extract some cure that was found for the small pox based super bug that started the whole problem in the first place. This in itself would probably be reasonable but there is a massive blizzard hitting New York and upon approach your Helicopter crashes… puncturing your hazmat suit and leaving you stranded with only a pistol. Essentially as you roam around you are fighting two problems… the extreme cold and the fact that you have been infected and are trying to stave it off. Either of those things can straight up kill you.

For the cold you wind up moving from building to building or fire barrel to fire barrel trying to stay warm while wandering out in a whiteout blizzard. For the infection you can pick up medication periodically and use it to pause the timer that is ticking down. On top of this… you lost your filter in the crash and need to gather up enough materials to craft a new one in order to move into the dark zone, get the cure and successfully extract. If you choose to queue into a PVP session you are also up against other players who are trying to compete for the same resources and the same eventual cure. To spice things up… you will also encounter the various factions from the game roaming the streets that will of course start firing on you the moment you come in range.

There are a number of things that you can do to improve your odds, because you drop in with a base set of green gear. Drops occasionally upgrade your weapons or your armor, but everything is limited to this one survival session starting you back at square one. The cosmetic clothing increases your survival against the cold letting you stay out longer before needing to run back and warm up somewhere. The entire process is really interesting because it is basically this intense survival game in the middle of an MMO complete with hunger and thirst meters that you need to keep an eye on. Basically the entire world is dead set against you and you need to keep moving, keep searching and keep looting to gather enough resources to be able to survive for a long periods of time as you attempt to cross New York, get into the Dark Zone and retrieve your cure.

From what I understand there are also a number of other gameplay modes that show up once you reach thirty… and as I am sitting at 28 I am feeling close enough to the finish line to try and push through this. Super thanks to everyone who tipped me off to Survival since there were several of you. I linked a guide video since I didn’t have much in the way of screenshots.

Backyard and Banana

May 23, 2018 by Belghast

Last night was a pretty chill night and was spent either gaming or hanging out on the patio off our bedroom. Here is a photo from my chair as I waited to top off the pool and played Monster Hunter Generations. There was a nice breeze and it was making the wind chimes do all sorts of happy sounds. My wife was hanging beside me doing school work… because unfortunately it is both hobby and job rolled all in one. I love our backyard even though I don’t spend anywhere near as much time as she does out in it. Last night however was a perfect storm of overcast and cool which is about my sweet spot for outdoors. My eyes are super sensitive to light and there are times where while I am sitting in the shade… the world itself is just too bright for my tastes. The flowerbabies of course are doing okay still, and I need to wrap up this post soon so I can go out and give them all a drink.

As far as Monster Hunter Generations… I am largely playing it over 4 Ultimate because of the impending release of Generations Ultimate for the Switch. Monster Hunter is way too complicated a game for me to really enjoy playing it on a tiny screen with a thinkpad trackpoint nub serving as my second thumbstick. That said I do know that whatever effort I make is going to transfer over to the Switch so it feels like it is allowing me to have a bit of a headstart as it were. There are still three months until the release of Generations Ultimate and that gives me some time to casually work on leveling my Palicos and progressing through the quests to a point where I might not be completely on ground one at launch on August 28th. I am super looking forward to having a newish to me Monster Hunter experience to sink my teeth into… that I will be able to play on my 43 inch monitor upstairs.

The tail end of the evening I settled into playing some Iron Banner in Destiny 2 as I had not honestly played much of that since Curse of Osiris. I am nowhere near as good at Crucible as I once was because I am simply out of practice, but then again I never was terribly good in the first place. I did manage to turn in a couple of packages, one of which getting me the Auto Rifle that looks like Scathelocke. I am super pumped about it because firstly I love Auto Rifles and secondly… I had really wanted to try that weapon out and was afraid that I lost my chance when the season changed. There is another auto rifle available as faction rewards so I am wondering if I want to try grinding out 30 packages… and I pretty much figure the answer is no. I do however want the super high rate of fire weapon because it has auto loading holster and high impact rounds and seems like a much better version of Perseverance/Valakadyn… which are both weapons that I hated on the console but have come to enjoy with a mouse and keyboard.

I have significant problems with Destiny 2… but damn does that mechanical loop still feel fun.