fps Archives - Page 4 of 22 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Week Three Thoughts

November 15, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday was if I am counting correctly the third reset we have experienced on the PC version of Destiny 2, and as a result that seems like an interesting time to take a sort of postmortem of my experiences so far. In fact I apparently also made a similar post three weeks after the PS4 launch, that could serve as an interesting comparison. At that point I was sitting at 291 light with the rest of my characters sitting in the 285ish range, and now I am knocking on the door of 305 with my Titan sitting at 304 without completing any of his weekly milestones, and the rest of my characters in the 300-302 range. In fact it was not until October 18th if I am looking at my posts correctly that I could hit 304 which I believe was somewhere in week six after release. There are a bunch of variables at work here, namely that I am trying to get a Nightfall every week and I did not do that before. Similarly I am dabbling in the raid and did not do that before… however the raid itself is not providing much in the way of gear yet other than a higher than normal level engram every week. What I am missing however is that after the second or third week I had access to a raid engram every week on the console side and we have yet to finish the raid on PC side but are getting close. I think when you balance everything out I have had access to roughly the same amount of gear so it isn’t simply that I am getting more of it more frequently. According to WastedOnDestiny.com I’ve spent 126 hours playing the PS4 version and 84 hours so far playing PC… so all things considered I have maybe been playing a little bit more on the PC than I was on the PS4 at this point.

Now the piece that is much harder to account for is ancestral knowledge. By playing Destiny 2 on the PS4 I essentially gave myself an extended beta test period with the game and by playing it as hard as I did I gleaned a bunch of knowledge that I then attempted to share on my blog. I know how things work and more than that I know how to best spend my time at least in the early game when I probably wasted some potential power gains on doing certain things too soon. In the console I was in a rush to see and do everything and now I more or less know what I like playing with and what it takes to get those things again. As a result I am now sitting on stockpiles of tokens that I can then use later as leverage when playing the 300 engram game trying for max level loot. I for example am sitting on 131 EDZ tokens largely because I know there isn’t much on that loot table that I don’t already have. On the converse I burn down my stock of Crucible and Vanguard tokens as soon as I get them because I am still looking for weapon drops from those activities. I could also be doing a lot more, like for example I don’t think I have touched Ikora’s memories at all during the PC launch and they are an additional draw at Vanguard loot that I should potentially be tapping. Essentially I progressed so much faster than I was expecting to… and I would chock that up to experience were it not for the fact that a lot of the Aggrochat crew are also progressing at similar levels. Are they simply getting the benefit of my experience as well, or did the PC game loosen the throttle a bit and let everyone’s item levels drift a little higher than was the case on the console?

The Achilles heel of the PC launch seems to be something that was almost completely overlooked. Destiny 2 added this fairly detailed clan system that allows players to benefit from the actions of other clan members… but does absolutely nothing for helping them communicate. What I mean by that is that while we have a weird text chat system on the Bungie website… that does not exist anywhere in game. The only options for chat in game are /fireteam, /team, and /whisper leaving out the very critical /clan. I mean I realize Bungie is still in denial that they made an MMO but this is the most basic functionality that PC MMO gamers expect from a game. Blizzard introduced this whole “social” section of the battle.net client… but that doesn’t work in game either leaving this huge gap for now to glue people together. Prior to launch I shared out the Beyond the Light Discord as a sort of multi-clan hangout and several weeks in I am still thinking that is going to be the best option to help people connect up for groups. I feel like they largely did not consider how vastly different the PC community would be and what sort of cultural norms we would expect going into the game. The end result however seems to be “use voicechat” as the way to connect up with folks… and there are just times where I don’t want to be talking on voice chat. My dream for Blizzard games is to have some sort of guild chat that spans across all of their games and allows me to talk to people playing Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft while I am playing Destiny 2. However that dream is seemingly still a long time coming, but in the mean time… Bungie please put in /clan.

Holy Crap A Sword

November 14, 2017 by Belghast

This wee the Faction Rally event has been going on in Destiny 2 and as I stated earlier in the week I was absolutely expecting Dead Orbit to win. They had the worst weapon during the first Faction Rally and won regardless, and I just assumed that was going to be our fate in life from this point out. However it feels like Bungie attempted really hard to stack the deck in favor of New Monarchy by offering up the only faction based sword weapon as the prize for repping the faction. Basically in my opinion Future War Cult has the best weapons on average and New Monarchy has the coolest looking gear and shaders… then Dead Orbit is the also ran faction of having both gear and weapons that look scavenged. However Dead Orbit has black/grey/white shaders which at least in Destiny 1 tended to make everyone want to faction with them. Hell I did it for awhile until I started on this whole Future War Cult kick. Basically I had resigned myself that I would log into the game this morning and we would have a crappy grenade launcher waiting for us to purchase for far too much glimmer. Instead I have a sword slung across my back and some pep in my step as a result.

Last night we ventured forth into the Leviathan again, and as a bit of a favor to myself and Grace we used a brand new raid seed so that we could get in and at least get some tokens for the week. Sunday night while I was downstairs playing WoW and watching Walking Dead a crew made their way into the Leviathan and made a repeat performance at dogs, and then put in some work on figuring out the Gauntlet event. Last night we once again downed dogs, this time on our second attempt and were able to move on to work on the Gauntlet as well. I like that all of the fights so far feel extremely repeatable, as in once we get the dance down we seem to be able to do it without much effort. The most challenging part seems to be that the dogs themselves are erratic as hell and seem to behave oddly at times making it a little slow. I fully expect that once we have the fights down solid we will be able to clear all of the Leviathan in an hour, which means we can do multiple trips in each week to get folks through it without a lot of effort. I realize we are months behind in doing so… but I am looking forward to being able to beat Calus on our own terms and unlocking raid engrams for the rest of the clan.

The bulk of last night was spent sorting out the mechanics to the Gauntlet and then attempting to refine what we had learned and turn it into something that was effectively repeatable. The last few attempts were really close to winning and the ultimately challenge seems to be during the “everyone runs” phase of the fight, keeping those of us who have not been running the orbs up to that point alive long enough to get enough orbs through the gauntlet to actually win. The last several rounds we were getting both runners through the tunnel each time, meaning in theory we needed fewer people to actually make it to the end of the fight successfully. However the death timer is ultimately what got it as myself or someone else failed to make one of the jumps. Functionally in my case this is going to be one of those “practice makes perfect” situations because I learn largely through doing. The other thing that I need to do a little research on is how best to handle the waves of adds because I was doing the Axe platform and it felt like I was just straight up getting shredded by grenades all the time. I did notice that my adds seems to stop coming out sooner than the other platforms so I am wondering if there is something to that. The last few attempts Tam and Shiana that were doing the runs were floating to help out the other platforms clear adds and it went so much more smoothly. I look forward to finishing this fight so we can get started on the Slug Emperor himself.

Lastly I thought I would share this over on my main blog. For those who are unaware we have another site tied to our AggroChat podcast that effectively rolls up and syndicates all of the content from all of the hosts. What this means in practice is it is generally my daily posts, perforated by the occasional post by Grace and then our Sunday podcast releases. For the past two years our banner has not at all represented the cast of the show and there has been a project to fix this getting the always amazing @Ammosart to do individual character shots. Firstly we have Ashgar as a high tech bear, then myself as a Destiny Year 3 Iron Banner guardian, Grace as the octopus pirate queen, Kodra as Commander Keen, Tamrielo as a Red Mage, and finally Thalen as a sort of futuristic marksman. Basically I had each member work with Ammo directly to do whatever representation they wanted to use going forward, and I think the set turned out great. I finally got off my ass and pulled it together in a new site banner and will start using them on the title cards that I create each week for the podcast.

Xur Week Nine: 11/10/17

November 10, 2017 by Belghast

Destiny 2

It’s that time again folks… time to go traipsing through otherwise dangerous areas in search of Xur. I am very quickly going to run out of original things to say since the limited pool of exotics seems to be generating a bunch of repeat weeks. This was a huge problem with Destiny 1 as well and made worse by the fact that they do not seem to put the exotics on a rotation of any sort. There were several that we never actually saw sold by Xur in Destiny 1 and thusfar there is a whole slew that we have yet to see sold by him in Destiny 2. You can find Xur in the Watcher’s Grave area of Nessus where he is up in a tree. You can either hop up on the ledge and hop across or run a narrow path up the side of the tree. He brought a few gems so lets check out his stock.

There are two exotic grenade launchers… one of which is good and the other is likely the worst weapon in the game. Thankfully the Prospector is the good one and probably well worth picking up. It is a bit of a weird weapon to get used to because of the Excavation exotic perk, which keeps your grenades from detonating while you are holding down the fire trigger. This has a bizarre interaction with the fact that this weapon has auto fire… allowing you to pump out an entire magazine of eight grenades without actually detonating them and then detonating them all at once. The only problem with this is that these are not sticky grenades so there is a bit of bounce when you fire them out without instantly detonating them. The blast radius is rather small as well which again leads this to be a weird option because each grenade is not going to damage a very large area. As a result this is really good when you can fire them down into some sort of enclosed area and then detonate all of them at once for a massive explosion. More often than not I simply use this as a decent single fire grenade launcher which gives me more predictable results. If you are wanting a work horse rather than a gimmick… I highly suggest checking out Berenger’s Memory or Play of the Game legendary grenade launchers instead.

I actually had yet to get an insurmountable skullfort on the PC side yet so I was happy to see this item show up. This is one of those situationally good items that allows for a slightly degenerate build. The primary interaction is between Transfusion Matrix the exotic perk and Code of the Earthshaker path for the striker titan. The perk causes kills with arc melee abilities to trigger health regeneration… which is actually the reversal trait from Code of the Juggernaut. This becomes a great farming build because Seismic Strike and the AOE damage it deals… means you are going to be getting back lots of melee energy from the second part of this perk, allowing you to maintain damned near 100% up time. On the battlefield what this means is that you can zoom around slamming into things rather than actually firing any weapons. There are a few things that you could do to improve the reliability like slotting two arc melee recharge time mods, but when it works… it is insanely fun. This is mostly a PVE build concept and every time I have tried to shoulder charge in the crucible I have paid a hefty price for it.

I’ve talked about this item at length several different times, so I am not sure what else I can really add. The Eye of Another World is one of those items that passively all of your abilities work better. This is the sort of set it and forget it always on item that I tend to favor, because it requires zero attention to detail. Unless you are going for a specific gimmick build… this is probably your best all purpose warlock item. If you don’t already have it I highly suggest picking it up. If you want more dialog from me on this check out one of the many other Xur posts where I have talked about it.

Similarly the Foetracer is a generally good item and I have started running it lately because it tends to help finish off mobs in Nightfalls. Relentless Tracker perk visually marks your enemies after targeting them for a short period of time and causes you to deal extra damage when they reach low health. That last bit helps and it is just enough of a change to make killing things seem faster which is always the name of the game in a Nightfall. I do however miss my constant tracking radar while using this item, but I am trying really hard to learn to live without it. Again I highly suggest picking this up, and also once again I have talked at length about this item in the past in any one of the many other times Xur has offered it.

Destiny 1

This week in Destiny 1 Xur is located in the Tower directly across from Lord Shaxx. He finally restocked his inventory and is no longer bringing the Jade Rabbit, so hopefully you Xbox players picked that up while it was still available. Interestingly Xur in Destiny 1 seems to be taking a queue from his personal in Destiny 2 because they both brought the Insurmountable Skullfort. Let’s check out his items this week.

Legacy Arm Engram – 29 Strange Coins
An Insurmountable Skullfort – Titan Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Radiant Dance Machines – Hunter Boots – 13 Strange Coins
Claws of Ahamkara – Warlock Arms – 13 Strange Coins
The Last Word – Hand Cannon – 23 Strange Coins
Dragon’s Breath and Tigershark Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Zhalo Supercell with Not A Toy Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Package Farming

November 9, 2017 by Belghast

Games like Destiny trigger the collector part of my brain in ways I will never fully understand. Here is an example… in Pokemon or Blizzard Pet Battles for that matter… I don’t actually like the act of battling pets. I do however love the aspect of collecting new critters and not so secretly wish there was a way to skirt all of the other aspects and just let me get shiny new pets. I feel similarly about Destiny when there is a set of armor or weapons to collect, and right now I will be grinding the Faction Rally until I catch them all. As it stands I still need the Shotgun from Dead Orbit, Sidearm from Future War Cult and both Scout Rifles from New Monarchy. At this point I have done my weeklies on the Hunter and Warlock and ground out 20 or so loot packages on each, giving me only 10 more chances to get the items I actually need. I have a similar number of chances for New Monarchy and have just started working on the Titan going through his weeklies. The thirty packages cap thing is likely put there for people like me… that would have potentially ground their fingers to the bone trying to get that last weapon. So at least on some level I am thankful that it exists… but on a totally different level I am frustrated beyond belief that I might not actually get all of the things.

The truth is however that the shotgun from Dead Orbit is horrible at least compared to Hawthorne’s… and there has never been a case post Destiny 1 that I have ever said to myself that I want to use a sidearm. In Destiny 1 I kept an assortment in the vault with various elements just so I could easily complete those kill X targets with X damage type bounties. There are a few burst and full auto sidearms that are interesting… but I have yet to see a reason why I would ever choose them over a more versatile weapon in that slot. So that mostly just leaves me with the two Scout Rifles from New Monarchy that are weapons I would actually use. It’s bizarre how the precision of the PC version of Destiny 2 has completely flipped me around from not liking Scout Rifles at all, to running with them pretty often. I am super interested in Good Counsel IX shown above because of the hip fire perk… given that hip firing weapons is actually a completely reasonable way to play on the PC version. Stat wise it looks very similar to the Frontier Justice scout I got this week and one that I already know that I like… so I am going to ultimately be extremely bummed if I wind up not getting it during this faction rally.

Song of Justice VI is a weapon that I have on the console version of Destiny 2 and like it fairly well but it always felt like it was at least under performing slightly. I am primarily interested in getting this weapon to see how different it feels with the precision of the mouse and keyboard. I cannot mention enough that the weapons feel vastly different between the console and PC platforms, and there are so many that I did not like at all on console that I know really enjoy using on PC. It is ultimately my hope that this is going to be the case with Song of Justice. Hakke weapons in general so far have worked better on PC so I am hoping this continues to that pattern. In other positive news… today is my Friday so I should be able to poke around in the game tomorrow during the day. I might even get so bold as to stream a little. I’m going through a deluge of changes right now and my natural instinct when that happens is to go into super turtle mode. Piddling around Destiny solo mode has been something I have been doing for the last three years so it is definitely comfort gaming. That said I really do need to get the Nightfall done and hopefully make some attempts on the raid. I am going to try really hard to make myself available to shenanigans tonight, but no promises. In other other news… I popped into Diablo 3 last night and cleared my mail box in prep for the season start that begins soon. They have roped me back in with more cosmetic rewards… that of course trigger that collector instinct in me.