Destiny 2

I see all the streamers just running around and hip firing "Etana".

I already was using Etana so just saying, I was ahead of the curve.

Apparently it's as good or better than last hope since it has hip fire perk to be abused.

Also comment in Twitch "who would've have thought we'd still be using Mida and sidearms in Destiny 2"

Kinda true. Although to be fair Pali/Luna were more dominant than Mida, it was 2nd.

Oh, Bungie.

And dunno if I'm crazy but, has D2 allowed streamers/good players to be more dominant? Seems like they always got tough trials games before, now I was just watching Lumi steamroll.

Maybe it's just the much larger player base. But, fact is carries will be a lot easier now since the caryee will be only 25% of the team instead of 33.
 
Yeah it's mostly player base size. Trials in D1 was easier in the first few years compared to the later years.

It also depends on when you play, too. I find that playing late nights, we match a lot of people overseas and we get some lag. The player base also shrinks the later you play Trials, so there's a higher chance that you'll match good teams.

Last weekend I left my 3rd character until the last day because he wasn't ready. Every single match on the card was a struggle, and I just gave up trying after a few cards because it just wasn't fun anymore. This weekend I finished all 3 characters early without much trouble. Even helped a friend go flawless for the first time, so technically went flawless 4 times.

I also don't remember the top PVP players/streamers having much trouble carrying in D1 though either. Guys like Luminosity, Wishyouluck, Murdaro etc., are some of the best Trials/PVP players in the game. In year 3 D1 it became a little harder and people started doing single carries instead of double.
 
Couple interesting, critical youtubes from destiny community guys claiming D2 has no endgame



I'm tending to agree. There's really shockingly little to do in this game. The only real way to increase power is doing the milestones. Those can be done quickly each week. Then the rest of the week you have no options really (leaving aside the raid for a moment). Grinding PE's for exotics is both exceedingly slow as exotics rarely drop, and not very effective as the exotics drop 5 BELOW your power level (or equal with +5 mods, which still means you have limited chance for gains). Well forgetting all that, I'm 301-302 now, so the power "grind" is nearly tapped out regardless. I also dont love how predetermined it all seems. It seems like everyone is around the same level, because it's the same low hanging fruit that cause big level jumps that everyone gets, then nothing. Basically everybody is on the same plateau. Although those who have good raid teams are at somewhat of an advantage. There's nothing to say "I play a lot, I have higher power than you!".

The raid...in a way I'm glad there's plenty of time to focus on the raid now, but that said there's still issues. It's still highly mechanical and frustrating, maybe worse now. I read somewhere 7% have completed the raid so far, that seems low, I think the difficulty of this raid, and raid's in general, is too high. And there's really little loot worth getting or true reason to raid anymore. I'd say I mostly continue to hack away at the raid for completionism's sake, not any real rewards.

Next lets talk about two systems I feel like are just highlights of awful design. Shaders and Mods. Both are just stupid, annoying, and impenetrable. Like I literally dont even want to go look at my ten million random shaders, who cares? Mods aren't much better, I still dont worry about mods much, other than those +5 I gotta have for power level.

Both these systems are IMO objectively massively inferior to their D1 counterparts, which were already far from perfect. At least in D1 I'd mess with shaders to an extent. In D2 literally my character is just always default cause I'm not gonna go apply a shader to every slot. I just dont care so I dont even bother.

Mods are "kinda like" old perks, but again, much worse. And again, those same jumbled squares that are shaders now, are just awful. And there's way way too many, because Bungie artificially made one apply to every armor, etc etc.

Now lets get to a few key issues, one of the key "endgames" in D1 was weapon rolls. For PVE even or mostly PVP for me. Gone. A huge huge loss of effective content there. Now all you pursue is guns, and it's fairly easy to get all the ones you need.

Grimoire another big endgame, gone.

Most disturbing is Datto's conclusion that Bungie doesn't WANT there to be any endgame. They want you to feel "done" with and satisfied with Destiny.

I just sort of vaguely thought the lack of endgame on Bungie's part wasn't really intentional, probably more incompetence that they'd slowly fix. But Datto's idea that it's completely intentional is likely right, and very frightening for me.

And then we come to the PVP, it's still fairly fun but for me it's still undeniably nowhere near as compelling as D1's, for many reasons. Including the new setup of 4v4 only, you cant choose your mode (the actual crucible gameplay in D2 is a more foundational problem). This is another huge foundational blow to the game IMO.

There's much more of course, such as simplified subclasses setups.

The music, everyone talks about how great it is but IMO it's kind of annoying really. There's one track I absolutely love (the one on EDZ after public events), the rest, meh, to kind of dislike. Again it's worse than D1.

How about PE's? The D2 bedrock of PVE? These suffer poor design IMO. "Get insta-killed by falling rocks 4 times". They feel artificially drawn out, that timer drags on forever.

Oh and let me hit one more big D2 negative: Timed nightfalls. Nightfall is the base PVE in the game IMO. It's the one PVE you do every week. IMO it's now kind of ruined as well, the timed aspect ruins the fun. So yeah, hurting the base PVE in the game in a big way is, kinda big.

Lets talk about sales, what little data we (such as UK physical data) have suggests Destiny 2 sales are way down from D1. That and Bungie's lack of any statement crowing about D2 sales.

It's tempting for me to blame D2's sales on it's problems in my view, but I dont know if that's how it really works since most game sales happen on day 1 and decline massively from there. In fact it's probably more logical to say people where turned off by D1, so they didn't flock to the sequel. Which doesn't fit my agenda that D1 was good and D2 is bad. Maybe the answer is somewhere in the middle.

At the end of the day I'm increasingly gaining a picture that Destiny 2 is a big, big fail by Bungie on many fronts, some like shaders and mods, are almost disastrous. It's still new, and fun, and I'll likely keep playing it for at least a while longer. But I can forsee a short end and a rapidly decreasing player base. Of course I could be completely wrong and maybe everybody will love it, but yeah.
 
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What is the best for killing dogs? Full auto shotgun? Raid Sword? Merciless? Wardcliffe Coil?


WRONG. Cluster bomb rocket (Curtain Call) completely dominates all those in DPS and with a 60 stack nearly kills a dog in TWO SHOTS. LOL. Due to the clusters bombs really going to town.

This knowledge will likely insta spread. Hope Bungie doesn't nerf it.

I've noticed, well once anyway, voidwall grenades really shred the dogs too, because they sit and bake in it. Chunk one of those and Curtain Call? Yikes.

I'm just glad it wasn't the shitty sword. I sharded my raid sword. I really hate swords, for some reason. Not that they cant be effective, I just dont like them.

Edit: Titan pulse grenades kill the dog in two nades also.

I predict people will be getting 60 stacks and one phasing the dogs regularly soon, perhaps trivializing the encounter. Of course 3-4 attempts will still go wrong by bugs and error most times anyway.

I think personally I'd much rather shoot for a 60 stack (wipe if 60 isn't attained) and one phase them than multiple runs, just seems much simpler conceptually.

Also more respect for hunters, nightstalker invisi dodge is really handy overall and especially in this weeks nightfall, allows to survive much better than other classes. It's pretty fun to dodge around like a ninja badass with this weeks modifier meaning near 0 cooldown.

Since I saw a stat that the top 100 PVP are 40% hunter/40 Lock/20 Titan, that opened my eyes that maybe hunters arent crap. I kinda like em. The dodge feels like it could be really strong over time. They arguable (AFAIK) have the best movement now in crucible.
 
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Etana hipfire is just filthy. At times anyway. Filthy. OP, even. Seems inconsistent though and sometimes it's better to aim back down sites. Other times it gets kills stupid easy. Like a win button. I guess short range is still the drawback. Still, cant beat Mida/Etana IMO.

Also I tried guided games for nightfall. I've really lost LFG mojo lately as the two sites I used (DestinyLFG.com and .net) both seem buggy and annoying to use anymore, and I hated signing up for ftw.in. I even tried reddit/fireteams, Destinytracker LFG, etc. Really scraping the barrell. Plus, for some stupid reason that absolutely evades me, I cant message over Xbox.com on those sites anymore from my chromebook. It always gives me a nonsense error code. So I have to go a room over and get on my PC to use LFG, which kinda sucks. Anyways, guided games gave me a 13 minute wait time. while there waiting I started looking at Xbox built in LFG, which when I've messed with before got paired with some pretty bad players. This time I more had the hang of it though, got invited before long, and it worked out really well (before guided games had matchmade me).

Basically if i can use Xbox's LFG even for nightfall now, and it seems so, it'll just make the experience of playing Destiny a lot better. It's basically the equivalent of if LFG was built into Destiny, really, as far as ease of use from within Destiny. It's just a button press or two away.
 
Really not a lot to do once you do your weekly milestones, is there? All of which I pretty much do in one day. My Warlock is up to 303 and I can see maxing it soon. Guess I could go back to the Titan and max that out too...
 
Basically if i can use Xbox's LFG even for nightfall now, and it seems so, it'll just make the experience of playing Destiny a lot better. It's basically the equivalent of if LFG was built into Destiny, really, as far as ease of use from within Destiny. It's just a button press or two away.

Why don't you use the100? Just look for Public Games and find an open slot for a Nightfall.

XBox LFG was hit and miss for D1. Ok for generic NFs back then but any more difficult ones like in D2 I would avoid that for now.
 
Raided on reset and...

I think I'm the only one who thinks the raid is atmospherically underwhelming.

And where is the challenge except on the ridiculous need of super solid team work?

Where's the mystery?

Etc...

VoG still the best raid.

---

Anyway, back to doing milestones and really liking the public events. Sure it's just a repeat but it's a really fun repeat.

Have only explored one lost sector and it didn't give enough "mystery vibe" to me.

Really enjoyed that some main story mission have multiple endings! At least I think it is multiple endings...

For example when a fallen captain boss salute me and forfeit the battle and ghost comment on it.
 
I'll give the raid props in a lot of areas. It's colorful and bright, which is a first. It's not all dark and hive-demonery and super serious. as they were saying on Destiny podcast, it's almost lighthearted like the baths section. And you're doing it all for (whoever the boss is) amusement I guess until the end, again . I think it's a nice thematic change, big props for all those things. The sense of scale in the beginning is immense. It's opulent. The repeating the middle section to go to the next one is cool, different. The no jumping puzzle thing is cool, there's no rule that says a raid must do x y and z. The underground labyrinth is an interesting idea even if i dont actually like it.

Not having completed it I'd probably place it as my 2nd favorite raid behind VOG. Just because nothing will top VOG since it was everybody's first.

I'd rank WOTM 3rd then, and the hive raids last.

I dunno, a big part of my rankings is how much of a pain in the ass they are, I feel like as time goes on this one will be low in the PITA scale so that's in it's favor IMO.

It might be interesting to really stretch the definition of raids in the future, like I wonder if you could somehow sort of do some PVP based raid. Horde mode based raid. Or i dont know, sparrow racing, just anything wild and totally out there that plays with what a raid is. the issue is like with POE, people might go apeshit if they dont like it.

POE's problem though was Skolas was just too difficult, yech.
 
The only way I can describe the feel of the raid is that now it's a lot more game-y. And a lot less doom and gloom let's kill the masters of the universe.
 
It's too mechanic heavy and punishing for failing even one mechanic.

I guess it's because people loooves the rigid mechanics on taken king so bungie doubled on making rigid mechanic heavy raid.

I much prefer the loose mechanics like in vog before all the patches

* push boss
* choose team to be teleported
* oracle in future / past can be skipped if you are not fast enough
 
As atmospheric VoG was AoT challenge mode shows how broken VoG is in ammo and super management. If you didn't pass the Templar or Atheon stage quick there was no sensible way besides synth to get the ammo you needed to pass it, especially at Atheon. All the ammo and super runs at Templar were just sucking out any motivation if you were on a team with a bad runner/bad character mixup/not the right weapons.

I prefer KF over that any day because it was predictable. If you execute the mechanics you usually get it done. VoG AoT challenge was not.

P.S. The VoG AoT challenge runs I passed quickly, especially the few 1 pass runs at Templar were always surprising to the whole team so it wasn't usual.
 
Okay I hate to admit it but, D2 PVP is starting to grow on me...

It's a different vibe, maybe it takes 50 hours to get used to.

Mida+Uriels, well I just raked with it (weak lobby I imagine, but hey. I guess this will be/is the ultimate meta piece of doo doo loadout? And i thought scout/AR loadouts were trash....

The End/Origin story in reveresed slots is also fun, pretty good, not as good but I'm always looking for non-Mida variety.

Funny how there's quite a few meta PVP guns I'm missing and cant seem to get, which it's always rare for me to be missing gear since I play so much.

I don't have Nameless Midnight. Hell I dont even have any 200 ROF legendary scout to use instead of Mida when I want exotic loadout flexibility and a 200 ROF scout. I had the seven-six-five, but sharded it to do the Mida quest. I dont have Last Hope although I have Etana so I dont care about that. I pledged to Dead Orbit since they seemed the sure winners, then find out evidently FWC has the mida-beater scout :( Seems like I'm forgetting a lot I dont have...

The funny thing is I've been rocking the KD/A banner for a while, my KA/D is 1.41. I'm bad. That's pretty much exactly what it was for all D1 too. Right around 1.4 that I recall. I haven't moved an inch.

I definitely hit a plateau around 1 k/d that I dont think I'm ever gonna escape...although I can be decent at times.

Edit: Just checked Destinytracker for my D1 KA/D and it was 1.37. Not sure if that counts deleted chars though, which I have a lot of playtime on deleted chars. Still, dont see why it wouldn't be a decently accurate measure either way.

So I guess by that I've improved slightly, but think the D1 playerbase is so much bigger and full of noobs, I should have improved a lot more than that!
 
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Don't be so hard on yourself, 1.41 is respectable.

I'm only hovering around a 2.0 (D1 I was 1.76) but I feel like I have a lot of room for improvement. Destiny 2 PVP is almost the opposite of my play-style in D1. D2 is far more passive play with a lot of team shooting. In D1 I was sort of the front man for my team and I would often times push forward aggressively for an early pick or to go for multi-kills. In D2, forget about pushing groups by yourself... even a weak team will melt you quickly.

I still find myself going back to old habits and pushing in aggressively without my team backing me up.
 
Nameless Midnight dropped from a quest per character where you could chose from 3 weapons. I haven't seen it dropping again from a strike yet but then I didn't run that many of them yet.
 
I'm only hovering around a 2.0

2.0 when you play a lot of trials is a lot different than when you dont though!

Although to be fair to myself, being in a fireteam is advantageous over solo-queuing.

Nameless Midnight dropped from a quest per character where you could chose from 3 weapons.

Hmm, I dont remember that, so you cant get it any other way? Maybe I'll have to get it with an alt, off to google it.

Edit: I guess you can get it from strikes/Zavala engram too. I never run strikes though, who does? Other than NF if that counts.
 
2.0 when you play a lot of trials is a lot different than when you dont though!
Oddly enough, my Trials K/DA is slightly higher. Maybe it's because Trials pretty much forces me to play more passive, while in Quickplay I play more like I did in D1 (aka not good for D2).
Although to be fair to myself, being in a fireteam is advantageous over solo-queuing.
AFAIK skill-based matchmaking is active on both playlists, so I actually find myself playing better (stats-wise) queuing in solo rather than with a team. When I do play with a team, I find myself winning more often, but we play tougher teams and my stats are a bit worse.

FWIW, I don't play with full fireteams very often. At most I play with 1-2 other people, and I play solo a little more often than I did in D1.
 
Mida+Uriels Gift is pretty much so clearly the best loadout why use anything else? Yikes.

Uriels is super strong, obviously hi cal is currently kinda unbalanced, they can barely fight back. and the range on Uriels is really really strong too. You can dominate people out to really long ranges, hence why it's so strong!
 
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