Destiny 2

[Malaphax]

I claimed Destiny 2 for free and have been playing it for the last couple nights.  I think I'm level 11 right now. 

The graphics are solid, and the game has a unique graphical look that I appreciate, it's a sort of high gloss and bright colored sci-fi that I can appreciate - even when you're trudging through darker and dystopian areas.  I have to give major credit to the art team and level designers because they've really nailed the sense of scale, things look properly big and it hasn't felt like the world is scaled down to condense gameplay.

The shooting mechanics are solid and the limited abilities are interesting enough, I just wish they had shorter cooldowns, but I assume higher levels and better gear will solve some of this.  The jumping is floaty and downright ugly, I understand they want jumping to have drawbacks (especially for pvp) but it still feels like one of the ugly remnants from the Halo series. 
Also why are shotguns so garbage in this game.  You need to be melee range to do anything with them, and it's frustrating. 

For the bad - I've watched bits and pieces of cutscenes and normally end up skipping everything.  The comedy/voiceover is absolute crap (the destiny fanbase even complained about this) and I just don't give a shit about the storyline of this game enough to sit through silly cutscenes with Nathan Fillion spouting off quirky one liners. 
I'm sure the eventual loot grind or RNG will become a major issue at late game, but I haven't got there so I don't have anything to base it off yet.  I generally dislike heavy RNG looter style games and I'm not sure if the shooting mechanics and PvE content will be enough to make me willingly grind through it. 
I have no idea about the state of DLC, but I've heard forsaken (most recent DLC) was genuinely good, so we'll see if I find myself interested enough to buy it. 

On a more general note
Battlefield 5 launched (and is continuing to launch until the 20th) and has been met with mixed criticism.  Most people seem to like the maps, hate the lack of guns (lots of reskins from BF1) and thinks the single player is straight garbage.  Their roadmap for DLC looks pretty skinny, with only 2 maps being schedule to launch in the next 8 months or so.  This is a far cry from the huge number of map packs that got pushed out for battlefield 3 and 4.  In general, I'm going to wait on BF5 and see if they can get their act together - from my limited perspective it looks like they were given 2 years to make this game and it's been rushed out incomplete.

[kuhla]

Also playing Destiny 2.

I am level 16 (I think) right now.

I am watching the cutscenes and taking my time. The story is not good but I want to know where they are going with it.

Some of the side-missions ("adventures") take you to really unique looking areas of the map and I definitely appreciating the level design from an aesthetic point of view even though I have some issues with the playability of some of it (why so many jumping sections why).

One aspect of the game that I have mentioned a few times is that it's easy. Solo or in a group I have only died a few times and that was usually doing something silly. For the last few levels I have had guns that can very quickly 1-2 shot most enemies. Big bad boss showed up? Time to hit Fuckyoubigboy key.

I keep reminding myself it was free so I'm not taking it too seriously and right now it's just a fresh new experience.

[T1no]

i bought it all

it kinda brought me back to diablo 2 loot grind days. dint pay full price for the base game got it from a friend @blizzard  at a massive discount and it was terrible at launch.

bought every single expansion tho.

personal experience the loot-grind is soo much better now. it used to be hardcore duplicates but now im starting to see random drops from strikes and missions. they added a system where if you have it in your collections that item should have less chance of dropping. but they at the end of the day its still RNG.

honestly the 30 bucks for forsaken is soo good and the content you get in them is a LOT. i recommend getting if you enjoy the free game.

now includes everything. curse of osiris, warmind, and forsaken

i did asked my friend @ blizzard unfortunately there is no discount available. just the one on battlenet

 

[kuhla]

I was trying to figure that out the other day, is there 1 thing you can buy that has everything or is it like 2-3 different things?

[T1no]

there is a few but to catch up to current release you only need one

the forsaken expansion. on sale for 30bux right now

you get the first 2 DLC and the forsaken itself.

[Malaphax]

Yea with the forsaken and the base game being free (it's part of PS+ for free as well) they're clearly trying to relaunch the game and get people who bought it to drop another $30 on the DLC and possibly get new players to do that as well. 

I keep hearing Destiny 2's sales have been poor and this is their last real attempt before they inevitably shitcan it, cut future DLC and launch Destiny 3 in another 2 years...

If I enjoy the base game, I'd consider buying the DLC since I've heard forsaken is absolutely worth it.  I'm more willing to play something mindless for now, especially since there are no major releases until February 2019.  Then we all get to switch to Anthem right? /s

[Malaphax]

At some point we'll need to split some of this off into it's own Destiny 2 thread. 

I've been crushing through some of the storyline and adventures on various planets.  I'm still happy with how the game plays, but I can tell I'm still overwhelmed on what I'm doing.
Got a golden pistol that makes enemies I kill explode - seems really busted.  I want to try and keep that and maybe upgrade it later. 

Also take note that BF5 has now enabled ray tracing - this is the first game to enable this feature.  It is tied to dx12 (which already results in slightly lower performance) right now looking at the performance figures... it's basically unusable.  It drops 1440p down below 60fps on a 2080ti. Gigarays aren't worth it. 
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/battlefield-v-raytracing-features-are-now-enabled.html

[kuhla]

8 minutes ago, Malaphax said:

Got a golden pistol that makes enemies I kill explode - seems really busted.  I want to try and keep that and maybe upgrade it later.

I have that too. I think Tino has it too. It's strong.

I unlocked my alternate super last night but I don't like it so I'm sticking with my main one.

[T1no]

yeaaaa sunshot is da best hard on pvp tho.

at first i thought you were talking about the gunslinger super but then you said golden.

[Malaphax]

Yea I was talking about the sunshot

I unlocked the golden gun super and have been dumping points into that.  I prefer it to the arcstaff because you can dump a bunch of damage on a big bad fairly quick instead of pretending to be darth maul and killing all the little guys.  The downside is arcstaff seems to have some nicer passive abilities that boost your sprint speed, melee and regen.  It seems like a more up close style which I generally prefer in games.  It's too bad shotguns are utter trash in this game. 
I'm mildly curious about the nightstalker subclass because it gives you access to the bow, but the super is basically a trap that holds enemies and boosts damage against them, which sounds really underwhelming.  I guess not everything can be "press F to win"

Hunter seems decent but the supers seem weak.  Warlock seems the opposite with big supers but mediocre other stuff, and Titan is a decent balance with a big health pool. 

I briefly tried a PvP match last night and felt like I was utter shit.  Every single hit was doing 3/4 of my health and I felt like I needed to land 4-5 shots to do any damage to people.  I'm not sure if that's due to the crazy difference in gear score or what - this is probably the one thing I dislike about looter shooters and games that use gear scores in PvP it makes it totally unfair and ugly for people that aren't maxed out. 
I'm more interested in the PvE of this game for now, so I think I'll focus on that instead. 

[T1no]

they added another tree modifier for each class subclasses super in forsaken.

yea pvp is pretty much a gear game. the blue items is not gonna cut it. if you look at your kill feed people use almost the same weapons.

 

 

[Malaphax]

I beat the original campaign and hit level 20 last night.  So now I get to figure out if I'd like to drop any money on this game. 
Forsaken DLC currently includes everything and costs $40 on bnet.  Right now I'm leaning towards buying the DLC.  I mentioned previously that there's very little currently out (or planned to release) that I'd be excited for, so I might just make this my mmo replacement for a few months and enjoy it. 

[T1no]

bah sux that it was a little bit cheaper few days ago for 30. maybe bf will be on sale again?

[T1no]

 

[Malaphax]

I crushed through all the DLC and leveled to 50 this weekend.  Here are my very condensed thoughts on the game, especially the DLC. 

The original storyline was so generic and awful I skipped through most of the cutscenes and had almost zero engagement with it.  We're the generic chosen one that can resurrect and then shit goes down, please stop the badguy from blowing up the sun. 
The first two DLCs do absolutely nothing special when it comes to storylines.  We have a generic alternate reality "fix the past to save the future" type of scenario, and a ultra powerful AI/construct that is so powerful we need to kill all the bad guys to help him out. 
To be fair, most of the community mentioned that the first 2 DLCs were very disappointing and when you buy forsaken they give you a free level boost to 30, allowing you to skip them, that speaks to how much they care about promoting them. 
Regardless of the boring storylines, the first 2 DLC had more solid map designs and slightly less forced comedy than the base game. 

The big DLC that they're basically branding as a relaunch "Forsaken" is tremendously bigger and better.  The zone they added is large and action packed, not to mention the storyline is on the more serious side, although very obviously heavily tied into the first game which I didn't understand the full context of.  There are some low points, but overall it was worth playing through and interesting enough to keep my attention.  The map designs in Forsaken are really good, and some of the boss arenas are genuinely cool looking.  The grind begins in earnest once you hit level 50 and 500 power level.

I've only run through 2 strikes which both seems interesting and had slight increase in difficulty compared to open world content.  I'm sure the raids step that up even further, especially with some of the more complicated mechanics that I've seen streams/videos of. 

I tried a couple PvP matched now that I'm 500 power level and I wasn't immediately curb stomped by everyone, so that's a positive.  The pvp feels clean and the netcode seems reasonable, I haven't noticed weird teleporting or bullshit kills around walls.  Time to kill is on the fast side but not unfair.  I also appreciated that there's a mercy mechanic, if the match is totally one sided they end it early, which I can appreciate. 
I want to try out gambit and see how that plays out, since there's a PvE component to it as well. 

I mentioned to Tino, that even though bungie hasn't made a halo game since 2010, you can still see so much of the same dna and design elements from those games.  Everything from spaceship designs and enemy spawns down to the floaty jumps weapon types. 
I still think this game is visually impressive with a solid gameplay loop.  That being said, I enjoyed the division until I hit max level and the grind really started so I"ll see if Destiny 2 does a better job making endgame more interesting - so far I'd say there is dramatically more end game content in destiny 2 and it seems like they reward you for everything. 

[T1no]

thats a fair review. u blast that shit soo fast

 

[T1no]

https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/sale/blizzard-black-friday-deals

back @ 30

[Malaphax]

EDIT:
I wanted to bring up a couple points. 
I've enjoyed destiny 2, even though I'm only ~524 power.  I understand that they use the traditional gear grind approach and this video announces they'll raise power by 50 with every new season (roughly every 3 months) and they've also announced a fair bit of "free" content to anyone that owns forsaken.  This game still seems like a really solid value, and I'd like to try some of the harder content with an organized group in the future. 
Here's a good image breaking down the upcoming season pass and what's included as well as what will be free:

I've never been a huge fan of looter/shooters or heavily loot focused games - but destiny seems to be a decent mix of RNG, questlines for items and slow power gain.  I'm almost impressed enough to shell out for the season pass, even after buying forsaken, but for now I'll wait until some of the content lands to determine if it's worth it. 

Sidenote: I do find it amusing that both Destiny 1 and 2 launched in a poor state, but both were universally praised after some of their DLC was released.  The lesson I get from this, is I made the right choice to give this game a hard pass until recently. 
It also gives me a strong opinion on some of the other looter-shooter games releasing in Q1'19 (Anthem in February, Division 2 in March), that it would be pointless to go into those games at launch, and far better to wait until a few people hit max level and start complaining about the lack of content or other issues that will inevitably show up. 
I guess my purchasing patterns are moving much more towards a wait and see approach with larger games, including stuff like BF5.  This trend towards live services is going to continue and I'm seeing far better value in letting these games mature and drop in price before picking them up. 

[T1no]

interesting, power increase w.o the annual pass. these releases is soo unbungie. which is good.

i also got to 600 on my ace of spades last night. still working to 600 overal; i think im at 590 rn.

and thank god for new weapon perks and mod

 

https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/47462

[Malaphax]

 

[T1no]

they need to make more armor for warlock that is ridiculous but cool.

[Malaphax]

Destiny 2 has plenty of really "simple" issues that need to be addressed. 
They need an outfit/transmog system.  I should unlock the visual look of gear every time I get a new unique piece and I should be able to change my gear's visual appearance independent from it's stats.

They also need to fix the random components for weapon/gear stats.  There should be an ability to re-roll individual stats on weapons/gear.  I understand they want you to grind for "perfect rolls" but there should be a consolation if you get something close and spend a bunch of time/materials to adjust the rolls on the weapon you have. 

Blues either shouldn't drop, or there should be an option to automatically salvage all blue equipment in your inventory (that isn't equipped). 

I'd also like to see more exotics and cool weapons/armor tied to long quests like Ace of Spades or the pinnacle weapons. 

I found this handy post about increasing power level.  It's going to get thrown out the goddamn window tomorrow when the new DLC hits but it does give you an idea of how to get powerful engrams. 
https://imgur.com/Q0UyhvT
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/9hefky/leveling_guide_updated_version/

I've been having enough fun with Destiny 2 recently that I might go for the season pass, I was going to take a wait and see approach but since Bungie preloads much of the data for big patches 1 week early, I've seen quite a bit data mined already which gives me a good idea of what's contained in this season.  I'll check tomorrow when the patch hits and probably make my decision then.  Like I mentioned previously, I don't have many other games to look forward to in Q1'19 - and although anthem releases at the end of February, I don't know if that's something I'll end up purchasing. 

[kuhla]

39 minutes ago, Malaphax said:

I found this handy post about increasing power level.  It's going to get thrown out the goddamn window tomorrow when the new DLC hits but it does give you an idea of how to get powerful engrams. 
https://imgur.com/Q0UyhvT

I am at 505 currently. I will reference this.

39 minutes ago, Malaphax said:

.....and although anthem releases at the end of February, I don't know if that's something I'll end up purchasing. 

We all signed up for the alpha to play this weekend yes?

[T1no]

couldnt finish the registrations the page keep erroring for anthem.

 

[T1no]