Destiny 2 Archives - Page 44 of 44 - Tales of the Aggronaut

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August 17, 2017 by Belghast

I honestly don’t have a whole hell of a lot to talk about this morning. The world has been crazy between me and my work and juggling managing four different initiatives… and my wife and her normal back to school frantic rush. In theory at least in my world I am hoping that in the near future one of those initiatives wraps up and I can at least drop one team from my radar temporarily. On the school front tomorrow is the first day back with kids, but my wife has been in “back to normal” mode since Monday. The new normal however is extra stressful this year because there were some fairly severe last minute changes. I know I have talked in the deep past on this blog about the forensics class she tag team teaches with a science teacher. On Monday, the first day teachers reported back… that other teacher that she relies on… decided to quit. This of course throws everything into a state of immediate turmoil because moment now is about preparing to have a completely different teacher doing the co-teach thing with her. Thankfully someone she is pretty close with ended up getting the position, but yesterday abruptly turned into a full day of helping this other teacher move classrooms and set up. Today in theory is going to be about trying to discuss what the hell they are going to do… when the kids arrive tomorrow.

The only thing I really have to talk about is the fact that yesterday I fired up the Battle.net launcher… and got super excited when I noticed that they have added a new Activision section to the side bar of games. This is starting to feel super real at this point and I now have a greyed out install button that should in theory become available at some point before the August 29th beta date. It has been a really long time since I longed for access to a beta… but holy shit do I wish I could play Destiny 2 right now. I mean don’t get me wrong I am loving my rediscovery of Guild Wars 2… but I need some Destiny in my life. The problem that I keep running into each time I boot up Destiny 1 is the fact that it feels like I am playing a game that is ultimately going away. I mean I fully expect that the game will remain active for a period of time after the launch of Destiny 2… but it feels like I am not really devoting time to anything meaningful. I have a hard time getting excited about the concept of completing the achievement books. The fact that they tied gear and rewards to them this time made it a little bit better, but it still feels like I am spending my limited time playing what is ultimately a disposable experience. I admit this is a little ironic considering that I wish I could be playing Destiny 2 beta which is in itself a completely 100% disposable experience.

I am really excited about the prospects of playing the game on the PC and having access to my battle.net friends list. I am really hoping that cross chat with other blizzard games is a thing that exists and that I can keep tabs on my WoW playing friends while I am off shooting Cabal for shiny loots. I do however need to have a bit of a “come to jesus” with my friends list and prune it in preparation of the launch. Not saying that there are people from my past that I really am happy that are in my past… but also not saying that. I am sure there are a handful of those people still hanging out somewhere in the bowels of my battle.net friends list. I am also really hoping that with the launch of Destiny they introduce some sort of appear offline mode that they have been talking about. There are nights when I just cannot deal with other human beings. Counter intuitively the feature that I want the most from BNet is cross server chat channels. My social connections have evolved to this state where I sort of have a guild without actually having a game. What I mean by that is I have this stable group of people that I interact with on a daily basis… and slacks and discords that have become the new “guild chat” as it were… but that it isn’t necessarily completely encompassed by a single game. Having a social channel that spanned World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, Starcraft Remake and now Destiny 2… would be pretty great. Sure one on one conversation is a thing that exists across game but it would be cool to have that extended guild chat feel to it.

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.

Destiny 2 Beta Impressions

July 19, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday around noon was the official launch of Destiny 2 Beta on the PS4. I personally got my hands on it around 6 pm after doing various things that needed to be done and taking my wife out to eat. To call this a Beta however feels like a little bit of a misnomer because in truth we are getting out hands on essentially the same demo that was available to press at e3. With that comes a greatly limited subset of options that you can take part in. Functionally right now there are three things available to players: The first story mission, the Inverted Spire strike, and one play mode of the crucible. I didn’t get a ton of screenshots because I was actively playing, but I did decide to stream and ultimately record me in game from the moment I started up Destiny 2 to the moment I logged out feeling like I had “beat” the demo. If you are really curious you can check out my Mixer VOD that runs for a little over an hour. I opted to go for a silent stream because I was largely just recording this for my own benefit.

This game is going to catch so much flak for being “Destiny 1.5” and I can see that. In every meaningful way this is Destiny. The characters perform as smoothly as the original, and the gunplay feels just as good. Those who played a significant amount of time with the first game… might have a little bit of an adjustment period because there are subtle differences everywhere. This is not simply a “HD Remaster” of the original game… but you can feel that it is in fact a brand new game that has tried extremely hard to capture everything that was great about the first one. The titan jump feels slightly different, and everything from the pulse rifle to the hand canon are recognizable… but feel different enough to know at a base level that you are playing something different. The first story mission is excellent and does an amazing job of providing you a feel for the game and its play… as well as giving you a rich narrative ride through parts of the tower you have never seen before. It takes everything that was learned through the Taken King and Rise of Iron and distills it down into the purest form. You are killing Cabal but you are doing it with a constant purpose of trying to save those you can… with enough nostalgic elements to make it feel like your home is falling apart… not just some random structure being blown to pieces. The mission also does a great job of weaving in single player and multi player elements… with the central section being a sort of defend the tower mode as you and lots of other players fight back against the Cabal along side Zavala. That is another huge part of this experience… you are interacting with characters that you already know like Zavala, Cayde-6 and Ikora Rey. They have personality and treat you in a manner befitting someone who has been leading all of these strike missions for all of these years. Hell you even get some interesting interactions with Lord Shax and Amanda Holliday.

The Strike is similarly awesome, and I can see myself running it over and over as part of the strike list. There were a few annoying jumping puzzle style elements… namely that giant grinder that we have seen multiple times in trailers and such. You find yourself trying to navigate through an area while avoiding the spinning wheels of doom. There is a similar mechanic in the first story mission where you have to avoid certain death while destroying objectives, and made me question my choice of the control jump instead of the height jump. The only weirdness about all of this is… it felt like grenade and super both charged super slow. Maybe I am just used to running around with my Armamentarium and rocking two grenade charges… but it always felt like when I needed a grenade the most it was still on cooldown. The super when available however was glorious. Last night I focused on the Sentinel Titan… and I got to run around bashing things with my shield. I never figured out how to throw it… but doing the equivalent of the old striker titan shoulder charge with a void shield was amazingly fun. While sunbreaker is supposedly back for Destiny 2… I can absolutely see me maining Sentinel. The thing that surprised me the most is the fact that I didn’t really seem to use the portable shield capability that often. It was useful for setting up essentially a gun nest, but for the most part I just ducked in and out of cover like I always did.

The only negative of the night was the crucible. I am just not a fan of the changes they made. For starters they have reduced the number of people in standard crucible matches from 6 vs 6 to 4 vs 4. As a result they have created a series of much smaller maps with much tighter choke points. What this does is make it feel much more frenetic in a style of game-play that I equate with Call of Duty. Crucible always felt like a thinking mans game… where it was as much about how you moved and when you chose to fire or not fire… rather than just charging forward into the fray every few seconds. It could be my experiences were deeply colored by the fact that in both occasions I ended up on a team of randoms fighting against a team of people sharing the same clan tag. Functionally all I know is that the changes did not feel as good as the original crucible does, and as a very casual player of the crucible it is not really something I look forward to participating in. Which leads us to the other problem of the night… I am more or less a Patrol player. If you believe Destiny Tracker I spend something like 70% of my time playing Patrol missions where I wander around aimlessly and kill things in the open world. As such with this demo “my Destiny” was not open for business yet and after doing the story mission, the strike, and a few round of crucible I considered myself largely done for the night. That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy myself… it just felt like a very shallow experience without the open world content and without character progression. I am sure I will boot it up a few more times… but this did nothing to really satiate my desire for the actual game.