Tales of the Aggronaut

Jiangshi Finally

October 18, 2017 by Belghast

One of the issues with Destiny 2 is what I have called the progression problem. I am stuck in a gravity well right now and finding it impossible to get out of it. I’ve been sitting at 304 for two weeks now and once again the Tuesday reset has come and given me no forward momentum to break free. In there were I raiding or doing the nightfall on a regular basis I would be opening up more chances to get unstuck. However if you are not doing raid, trials or nightfall… essentially you have three milestones each week to have a shot of improving your overall power level. Last night I streamed for the first time in a very long time, and on Twitch no less… so you can in theory see the entire journey of what I do on each character every week. Unfortunately I got two sets of arms and a chestpiece, all of which armor slots that I already had and also as a result… I am no closer to 305 than I was at the start of the evening. Right now I am down to needing helm, boots and class item and unfortunately Destiny 2 doesn’t really give me any options to do some activity that targets those specific slots. I need to try to get the Nightfall in this week for no reason other than it offers a few more chances at getting some progress.

To add insult to injury I got nothing really from the Cayde-6 chests including one of them literally dropping nothing at all. Bungie is apparently still tracking down this bug so I fired off a few responses to them stating what I did. I literally landed on the planet Titan and started chasing chests, with the 3rd chest I opened in a row producing no results. I am sure this is some sort of anti-chest farming routine that takes away rewards if you open too many chests in too short of time. The thing is… do we really need this? What are they trying to prevent, given that there is no actual economy in this game to protect? This honestly feels less like protection and more like purposeful throttling of the player base, which is sort of the theme I keep feeling with them tamping down the number of sources we can use to improve our power level. I am wondering if post TwitchCon this weekend things might loosen up a bit. My working theory is that they are trying to keep the console community strung along until the PC release happens… that way they do not have to maintain two vastly different release schedules. As a result I have this feeling that the PC time table will be accelerated in an attempt to get the two platforms back in synchronization.

Yesterday I talked a bit about chasing some of the rarer drops from the Gunsmith and one in particular… the Jiangshi AR4 by Omolon. Other than the fun hanging out while streaming… last night was a bit of a bummer because it meant that I felt like I made no progress. As I was winding down the evening… I opted to spend down my Gunsmith packages a bit and much to my shock finally got the weapon I had been questing for. Granted I am still looking for the Frontier Justice Hakke Scout Rifle… but that is a mission for another day. I played with this weapon quite a bit in the crucible as I started the weekly grind process on my hunter… and other than the fact that it needs some infusion fuel… it is so damned good. I had latched onto Uriel’s Gift and generally use that weapon, but the Jiangshi is also extremely fun and probably going to get some rotation along with The Number. The big thing this weapon has going for it is the stability and the big strike against it… it lacks Uriel’s overpower High-Caliber rounds. I have a feeling that post TwitchCon there is going to be a massive nerf of High-Caliber rounds and as a result the other weapons that are not Uriel’s Gift are going to start to shine a bit more. I would love to stream more often because I had a lot of fun last night, but not even sure when I would make it happen on a regular basis.

Lowering the Banner

October 17, 2017 by Belghast

The first Iron Banner of Destiny 2 is officially over, and in spite of my comments yesterday… I did legitimately enjoy myself for a good part of it. It was only towards the end when things started to really grate on my nerves. Last night for example was a really bad night where a combination of my general fatigue, my left index finger being sliced, and the fact that somehow I had gotten into what Destiny Tracker calls the platinum bracket… served to lead to a series of not so fun matches. I had every intent to grind out the daily milestone on each of the three characters, but in the end only managed to complete it on the hunter. I am a little disappointed that I never got the Hand Cannon, but from what I am seeing my luck was considerably better than most players. Here is my final haul for the 60 matches of Iron Banner I played over the course of last week…

7 or 8 Unique Weapons – lots of dupes dropped
5 piece set of Titan armor – lots of dupes dropped
2 of 5 pieces of the Hunter armor set

All in all that really isn’t too bad of a haul for the very first running of Iron Banner. This ultimately gives me the entire set of Warlock gear and most of a set of Hunter gear to get next go round. Additionally there is still the chase for the Hand Cannon. That is way more useful loot than I tended to get from several months worth of Iron Banner during Destiny 1. Sure it was interesting to get a bunch of different weapon rolls… but ultimately most of those wound up being trash. The likelihood of me getting that god roll weapon was pretty limited, and in truth I think I like having a fixed point to focus on rather than not only hoping to get an item… but hoping it isn’t a garbage fire stat wise. There are still a significant number of legendary drops that I have never seen. For example I am still chasing the Jiangshi AR4 from the Gunsmith, and its not just a collector thing… I really want to play with it because I loved the green version I got while leveling.

As far as the weapons go… I am not sure if I really have it in me to do a review of them all. I spent some time last night while grinding out Io tokens playing with them all… and most of them are completely reasonable. I realize that is not exactly a glowing review, but in many cases I already have a weapon I just like better in that slot. The Time-Worn Spire is a really solid pulse rifle, in an era when that entire class of weapons seems to be outclassed by practically anything else. I’ve become a huge fan of the Forward Path auto rifle as well, but it has some pretty stiff competition for my time with the Origin Story and Ghost Primus. The real breakout weapon for me shockingly is the Wizened Rebuke, if for no reason other than the fact that you can hit 100 impact with it if you so choose. That said I feel like the weapon performs better if you are outfitting it for 95 impact… which still makes it significantly harder hitting than all but the Shock and Awe in my vault. Sure it has insanely slow recharge rate, but if I am going to use a Fusion it is likely going to be in a PVE situation where the charge time isn’t that big of a problem. Essentially this just became my legendary fusion of choice when I cannot for whatever reason use Merciless as my exotic.

The other weapon that I found myself shocked to actually enjoy is Guiding Sight the Scout Rifle. This lives in the same archetype group as Does Not Compute, Song of Justice VI and Haunted Earth… and in truth it felt better to use than any of those. When I use a scout rifle, I want something with really good impact and range because I am effectively using it as a surrogate sniper rifle. This fits that bill nicely because it will one shot a Vandal and has armor-piercing rounds to help with shields a bit… though I feel like that perk needs a buff significantly. Sure it will drop a shield faster than a normal kinetic weapon, but it still feels horrible as compared to even an unmatched elemental type energy weapon. I’ve said this over and over… that I am not really a fan of scout rifles as a whole, however when I do use one I want something along the lines of this weapon. Between Guiding Sight and Manannan SR4… I feel like I am set as far as scout rifles go. Basically at the beginning of the week I had a good deal of time collecting loot in the Iron Banner, but as we wound down… it started to feel like a house guest that overstayed its welcome. I opened around thirty packages in total and in the future I really need to tag out significantly earlier when I am still enjoying myself rather than trying to force a grind I was no longer enjoying.

Iron Banner Issues

October 16, 2017 by Belghast

This past week for me at least has been all about the Iron Banner 2.0 event happening in Destiny 2. If Destiny Tracker is to be believed, I have played fifty Iron Banner matches over the last four days. That was enough to turn in 24 Iron Banner packages so far… aka the equivalent of 480 tokens. At this point I managed to pull a complete set of gear for my Titan and have collected all but one of the weapons available. The Hand Cannon is eluding me but I still have faith that I might manage to get it when I run through my daily milestones for Iron Banner today. To say I have a high tolerance for grinding is an understatement, and the more impressive stat is that every single bit of this has been solo. I will get into more about that later but suffice to say I feel like I experienced everything that is to be seen in the new Iron Banner. This month the game mode of choice was Control… which used to be my favorite mode for Iron Banner but in the 4 player crucible I seem to now favor Supremacy.

What Changed?

Traditionally the Crucible is an event that does some level synchronization to make sure every player is on a level field. Iron Banner however in Destiny 1 was one of the un-synced events that took into consideration what your gear level was. In truth however this didn’t really play a heavy role other than maybe dealing a few extra points of damage to someone significantly under your gear level. The entire event functioned based on the Iron Banner reputation that would reset to zero before the start of a new event. The ultimate goal was to level from 1 to rank 5, which then allowed you to purchase gear that was available from Lord Saladin. This generally consisted of two armor slots and two weapons, and then the same items were available as rewards at the end of matches. In my experience one in five to ten matches rewarded gear at the end.

Now Iron Banner is governed by a token based system much as is the case with all factions in Destiny 2. Additionally it relies on the same level synchronization that occurs in the Crucible so no more gear level advantages. Previously the only way to gain progress was to either complete a bounty or win the match. This meant if you had some really bad luck you could have a long streak of loses where you did not move your reputation forward at all. This time around you get 2 tokens for a loss and 5 tokens for a win, and it takes 20 tokens in total to get a package. The packages themselves contain 1 Iron Banner specific item, and on item from a long list of other miscellaneous weapons and armor. I should have taken much better care in opening my packages and tracked the items I got in each, but I will just say there were a significant number of duplicates.

The Problems

The issue with Iron Banner is a very nuanced one, that requires you to understand some of the base states of the game to understand how we got here. In Destiny 1 there was a constant refrain from players lashing out against skill based match making, and complaining about the number of “red bar” players with poor connections that they kept encountering. With Destiny 2 it feels like they stepped away from a lot of the intelligence that attempted to make decent matches for players. One of these is that the game no longer attempts to match teams of players against other teams, which is where the issue happens. Most of the weekend I spent time matched against partial or complete teams of players, and as a result had to fight a very uphill battle to get my wins.

The games seemed to be really hit or miss, I could go from being steamrolled one moment to being the odd man out on a team of three players that queued and in turn rolling over another team. In the rare instance when I got matched with a bunch of other random players… I did good. Like for example the above screenshot is one I think I will never be able to duplicate where I somehow ended up with a 6.4 efficiency rating…. which is their version of Kda. This is an issue because it ends up giving players a very uneven feeling experience, to go from ruling the world to succumbing to it… within the course of a single matching. The folks that managed to gather up a team, and were on voice chat however seemed to completely decimate all comers.

Problems With The Grind

Iron Banner was one of those events that I looked forward to each month, not necessarily because I loved the PVP but because it was an opportunity to move up in the world. What I mean by that is that in Destiny 1 there were a limited number of events that you could participate that scaled all the way to the level cap, Iron Banner was one of them. As a result I spent my weekends grinding away at Iron Banner incrementally improving my light level so that I could hang with the big dogs… but keep my relatively solitary play style. With Destiny 2 this concept is toast. Gear drops at the same item level that any other Legendary drop does, which means there is no real way to advance your power level through Iron Banner drops. Sure there is the random chance of getting an exotic to drop, but that is a once a night sort of event and even then you need some serious luck to get anything that will move the bar forward.

Now the meaningful grind is about the collection of available loot, but I fear this is going to be a very short lived process. I said earlier in the post that I have collected all but one weapon at this point, and a full set of gear for my titan. Additionally I have a few items for my hunter now, so currently there are ten items that I have not seen. Given that it is highly unlikely that we see an influx of new items before the next Iron Banner, then it means that my drive to keep participating is going to be less each time as I whittle down that list of needed items. Now were I able to keep using Iron Banner as a means to incrementally increase my power level, then more than likely I would continue to participate and even look forward to the event.

The Future

I’ve tried to remain largely positive about Destiny 2 because in a few weeks we will be starting the process all over again with the launch of the PC version. There are however issues here and there that sort of stick out as annoyances. The core problem with Destiny 2 is that more than anything it is a direct sequel to Destiny 1. What I mean by that is in some ways it feels like we took a step backwards to a world where everything that happened in Taken King and Rise of Iron never existed. It makes me wonder if this project was launched before the release of Taken King, and they simply never applied the good parts of years two and three before launch. I was a die-hard Destiny 1 player, and I watched that game improve in so many ways over the three years since release. Similarly I have all the faith in the world that a lot of these rough spots will get ironed out as we move forward. Destiny 2 is a much better starting point than Destiny 1 ever could have been, but much like I feel sometimes with World of Warcraft… I get a little wistful when I think about what could have been had we taken all of the good from TTK and ROI into the new game.

Advertisers Suck

October 14, 2017 by Belghast

Okay this is going to be a bit of a departure from my normal content. However one of the things I get sick of as a blogger is dealing with the constant deluge of people wanting me to link to something, or do some sort of half baked paid content scheme to increase their SEO numbers. I’m feeling a little vindictive today so I am posting the sort of thing that I deal with on a regular basis.

Hey quick question –

I hope everything is going well on your end 🙂

My name is [Dude You Can Google Keywords], and I’m on the content team at [Cloud Storage Company I Have Never Heard Of].

I just finished going through your article here: http://aggronaut.com/category/games/action/. Thanks for the resource!

My colleague [Some Writer At The Company] recently put together a pretty comprehensive piece on cloud storage for photographers. This really is good information for anyone in this realm. There is a ton of information out there; our guide was designed to cut through the noise a bit.

The post is here: [Link to a post about hosting photography]

Would you consider linking to it in the article of yours I mentioned above? I saw you linked to store.playstation.com in there, so I figured I’d see if you’d link to mine as well. Perhaps your visitors find it helpful, but hey, it’s up to you.

Thanks,

– [Dude You Can Google Keywords]

P.S. I respect the relationship you have with your readers, I wouldn’t ask you to link to anything I didn’t think was an excellent resource for you guys.

So firstly… my blog is not a photography blog. Secondly he is linking to one of my categories, this one specifically is for action games so nothing to do with photography. The reason why he suggests I link to it… is because I link to store.playstation.com??? I mean I do this thing because I am talking about how to claim your Playstation Plus titles without logging into your console. Anyways this makes zero sense given what my blog is. As is usually my first line of defense I just ignore the email hoping they will go away. However this doesn’t always work as is the case with the follow up email that I get.

Hey again –

I figured I’d try one more time 🙂

Did you happen to get my last email? If you have a moment, could you let me know what you think about this idea? Or maybe you could put me in touch with the person in charge of content?

I’d love any help you can give!

Thanks!

– [Dude You Can Google Keywords]

Now one of the things I have learned the hard way… is that if they ever do this… email a second time… you are NEVER getting rid of them unless you give them a forceful shove off. I had one person from a website on e-sports betting pester me on and off over the course of an entire month through a string of probably twelve emails where I kept trying to politely say that I am not interested… and that they kept trying to get me to allow them to post promotional content on my site. So as a result I have to end up sending an email like this one…

Hey [Dude You Can Google Keywords],

I had not responded to the first email in part because I just get tired of responding to emails like this one. Tales of the Aggronaut is a personal blog and anything that appears on it means that its there because I personally suggest people checking it out. I don’t do paid ad placement nor do I link to products or services that I did not find organically and I am not actually using myself. Firstly you included a link that makes zero sense given that it is the action games category of my blog and has nothing to do with photography. Secondly… the fact that I link to Store.playstation.com also makes zero sense giving that its a tutorial on how to retrieve your Playstation Plus games of the month through the web interface without having to log into the console. Essentially nothing you wrote me fits in any way to what I actually write about. Clearly you spent exactly as much time reviewing my website as was required to fill in what is essentially a madlibs style form email.

None of this makes me interested in your product. Had you actually found a way to relate this back to my readers in any fashion, and simply approached me with an offer of “we have this awesome product, is this something you maybe want to review? Here is an account to check it out. Let us know what you think and tell your readers if you like it.” then bam that is a reasonable way to approach a content creator. This just feels sleazy.

Anyways hope you have a good day.

Bel

Here is hoping that I never hear from this person again… but deep down in the back of my mind I know that I will. There is a slimy underbelly that exists when you get to a certain point with a blog, where all of these people start crawling out of the woodwork wanting to use an anchor on your site as part of some network to increase their search engine ranking. Some offer to pay… somewhere between $50-100 for placing an article laden with links to their product on your site. Others like this schmuck seem to want you to do it out of the goodness of your heart. One guy claimed that it was unfair to my readers to only show part of the story, because I had linked to Libsyn a hosting provider that I use myself for AggroChat and have zero business relationship with. I could go to the trouble of writing a rule or flagging it as spam, but that doesn’t stop the constant onslaught of people just like them. Writing this post more than anything is for me personally… because sometimes I just want to scream obscenities at my email. Instead I am creating a post which is at least somewhat therapeutic. Monday we will return to our normally scheduled posts.