TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Tag: MMO

  • I really wasn’t going to buy Destiny 2 for PC…

    I played Destiny and Destiny 2 on PS4, but as we know, the console versions of Destiny 2 have been pretty much abandoned by disgruntled players. Lots of YouTubers have switched to the PC version and sung its praises, particularly with the weapon behavior, but even that it makes you feel more powerful in the Crucible (PVP matches). The fact that console Destiny 2 prices have dropped like a rock, while the PC version’s prices remained steady helped boost the conclusion that the PC version is good, thus high demand still, while the poor console versions were not flying off the shelves.

    I downloaded the trial version of Destiny 2 last night and liked it. It looks quite good on my 3440×1440 wide-screen monitor driven by a GTX 970. The mouse control is precise and accurate, so even hand cannons are worthwhile now. Overall, it was good. But I haven’t played a WASD-control scheme PC shooter in ages. Even when I do play PC shooters, I use a controller. All the damn buttons needed by Destiny 2 are somewhat annoying, but the mouse clicking may be the thing that really drove me nuts. My hand has barely recovered from playing Diablo 3 on PC a few years ago, but now Destiny 2 needs lots of clicking. Even worse, aiming down sights requires holding a right click. After playing for a couple hours, my right-click finger could feel it.

    Sure, I know I could hook up a controller, but then it’d be much like the PS4 version, so I wouldn’t get the benefit of the smooth mouse aiming. I may try that sometime, but it seems a waste.

    So this morning, I decided that I wouldn’t buy Destiny 2 for PC, because I didn’t want to pay so much and have to deal with a control scheme that may induce carpal tunnel or some other repetitive stress injury. And then Amazon put the damn thing on sale for $26… So I bought it.

    See you in Destiny 2 PC, I suppose.

  • Lack of gear diversity in Destiny makes it a chore to play

    How can I possibly say there is lack of gear diversity on Destiny, when there are hundreds of items in each category, more than anyone can possibly know, and all of our vaults and gear slots are completely full? Well, I think the current light level scheme and rewards mechanism are forcing us into using just a few guns and equipment pieces, and this lack of choice is annoying and tedious.

    The problem is twofold:

    1. Rewards drop based on your current light level, not the highest light you can be nor on the highest light item in that category in your inventory.
    2. Therefore, you have to always equip your highest light items at all times, thus neglecting gear that would be good (or at least worth trying), but it is a lower light level.

    So this is a different lack of diversity from when everyone was using Thorn and The Last Word in PvP and Ice Breaker and Fatebringer in PvE. Now the entire community isn’t forced into using the same guns, but each individual is. Sure, if you do the raid enough times, you might be able to infuse some of those lower light guns you’re interested in, but since we haven’t used them, we don’t know if it is worth it.

    So I can be 398 on my Warlock, and 397 on both Hunter and Titan, and I’ve been noticing this during this week’s Iron Banner. I started off around 390 on all 3 characters, but had some reasonable guns at that light level. As I get new drops, I tended to use the higher light drops to infuse my known good guns, thus (a) not being able to try out the dropped guns, and (b) leaving others far behind, thus leading to a lack of diversity in my choices. If I wanted to switch to an auto rifle rather than my Clever Dragon pulse rifle, too bad, I don’t have one anywhere near my light level. In other words, I felt forced to use the same guns over and over, and while that worked, I would have preferred more choice.

    How to fix it? There are many ways:

    • The Division’s gear score is one way, and since they don’t have gear XP, it is easy to swap stuff around to try out different loadouts.
    • Make loot drops take into account the maximum light of the character, not just the currently equipped light level
    • Even better, make loot drops look at the maximum light within the category of the drop. So if I have a 395 light primary gun and a primary drops, it would be higher than 395, even if I was being held back by the ghost and artifact. (And no, my ghost and artifacts are pretty good and not holding me back, plus I know how to get then in the Archon’s Forge.)

    So while I’m disappointed at being almost forced to use the same loadout over and over again and am not able to experiment as freely as I’d like, Destiny is still kinda fun and worth playing occasionally.

  • Done with Destiny, Back to LOTRO and STO

    Between griefers and trouble finishing a Heroic Strike while wearing a Speaker mask, I’m just done with the frustration of Destiny and the Festival of the Lost. I’m tired of doing pointless quests for a random chance at crap. So I’m taking a vacation from Destiny (in fact, I nearly deleted it out of frustration, but held my temper in check).

    Now I’m going back to explore the last 2 years of content that I’ve missed in LOTRO. I’m also going to catch up in STO, too. And, frankly, I’m looking forward to getting back to significant story lines and (hopefully) fun quests. Sure, neither have combat that compares to Destiny, but they have atmosphere and are fun.

    Destiny, screw off!

  • Star Trek Online for PS4 is pretty good!

    Star Trek Online for PS4 is Star Trek Online. Sure, the controls are different from the PC version, and it’s a little dumbed down, but the basics of the game is still there and it is still fun. It also looks pretty good, so they’re taking good advantage of the PS4’s graphics capabilities. There were a few bugs that I ran into, but none game-breaking, and I can’t link my Arc account for some reason (perhaps because I have a lifetime subscription on the PC version), but the game was entirely playable. If I didn’t have so many hours invested (is that the right word for a game?) in the PC version, I’d play it more in a heartbeat.

    The control scheme is the biggest change from the PC version. In space, it uses the gamepad sticks very intuitively for ship control and camera control. Since the gamepad only has a few buttons, we only get a few powers that we can use, but the L1 button (left bumper for you Xbox folks) can be held down to bring up a radial menu of powers, it tends to work out. R2 (right trigger) fires phasers, while R1 fires torpedoes if they’re bearing on your target. Switching energy profiles is easy with the D-Pad, as is speed control. The ground controls are similar, but it uses “shooter” mode rather than RPG mode (options in the PC version). L2 is Aim Down Sight. Overall the control scheme is simple and works well.

    I’ve been using a gamepad with STO on PC from the beginning, and I have lots of powers mapped by using triggers and bumpers as modifiers for the ABXY buttons on my Xbox 360 controller. On the PC version we’d be at a severe disadvantage if we could only access a few powers, so we’ll have to see how the console version compensates for that.

    The early missions are a bit of a mash-up of the original Borg invasion missions from the early days and the more current Star Fleet Academy stuff, but fairly well done and a nice introduction to the controls and to the game. Loot drops are auto-looted if you get close, which is a nice improvement. I’ve never spent much time in shooter mode on ground missions on the PC, but I see that works pretty well on the PS4.

    It looks like the Temporal Agent start isn’t available on the PS4 version, which is a bit of a shame, given the tie in with the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, but perhaps it will come later.

    I did pick up the free (yesterday) 23rd century costume pack as well as a nifty Andorian Escort ship that was also free. That ship rocks – it’s almost unfair how quickly it stomps enemy ships to the curb. I don’t know if it was a mistake or not, but I’m happy I got it.

    My biggest disappointment is that I can’t link my Arc account to the PS4 version. I get to the Link Accounts screen, press the button, then the screen just reloads each time I press it. I’d sure like to be able to link my lifetime account and thousands of Zen to the PS4 version. I don’t actually want to play my PC characters on the PS4, but I’d sure like the unlocks I’ve earned over the years. If I can’t do that, my play time with the PS4 version may be at an end or at least very minimal, since my best experience with STO is going to be on the PC.

    If you’re an existing STO player, there probably isn’t a compelling reason to play on the console version, but the console version is probably much better for people that are new to Star Trek Online.

  • Finished Witcher 3 DLC, back to Dragon Age Inquisition

    My poor non-multitasking brain can’t handle playing too many games at once, mostly because I get the controls mixed up, so I tend to try to finish a game, then move on (MMOs excepted). So I just finished the excellent Witcher 3 Blood and Wine DLC, and had to decide on a new game. Finishing the Witcher 3 missions was both good and bad. I loved the game and hated for it to end, but had played it for many, many, many hours. I was in denial for a while, so I backed up to play another ending (I was only able to produce 2 endings to Blood and Wine, so I may have to look if there are more). I found a couple of extra missions that seem to have been unlocked by the ending, but other than that, no more quests. I cleared all the “unknown” spots on the map in Toussant, then went to Velen and did the same. I had maybe 16 on Velen’s map, and cleared all but one bugged bandit camp that just won’t clear. Then I went to Skellige, and found 80 question marks on the map (the map counts them, so I didn’t have to)! And they’re all out in the ocean, so tedious to get to, kill the sirens, grab the loot, become overburdened, and repeat. So I did 4 of them and gave up. Sure, I may come back when all other games disappoint me, but for the moment, I’m done with Witcher 3.

    I recently bought the Dragon Age: Inquisition (DAI) Game of the Year edition on sale for $20. I already owned DAI and one of the DLCs, but buying the 2 remaining DLCs would have also cost $20, so I just bought the GOTY edition, which had a few more goodies. Origin very nicely dropped the 2 new DLCs into my existing game files, rather than making me delete it and download the whole thing, so kudos to the EA Origin team.

    I’ve now started playing DAI’s 2nd DLC, The Descent, and must admit to being a little disappointed. While the surface DAI areas are open-world-ish, this is strictly linear so far, and involves tediously looking for gears to open doors. The combat and banter is still great, but coming from Witcher 3, this feels constraining. I also miss Witcher-Sense – even though there is Inquisitor-Sense, it isn’t quite as good.

    So I’ll work through DAI’s DLCs, but I’m also busy doing Star Trek Online’s summer event activities on Risa, because I want this year’s ship! Of course, I will still occasionally pop into Destiny and The Division when friends are online.

  • I like The Division’s Matchmaking

    I’ve had good luck with matchmaking in The Division and think it is very good. I can’t quite put my finger on why I think it is superior to Destiny’s matchmaking, but I think it just works better. In Destiny, I’ve always hated playing with randoms for Strikes, but the PUGs I’ve played with in The Division have been good.

    Perhaps the first thing is that The Division doesn’t force you to group up, at least for the normal missions (which are all I’ve tried). If you’re good enough, you can solo them, though that’s quite a challenge most of the time. If you choose to group up, it is very easy. You can choose to matchmake from the map or from the start of the mission. So far, it has worked very well for me, and I haven’t run into any AFKers, which have been so prevalent in Destiny. In fact, the randoms I’ve played with have been as good or better than I am.

    The only downside of The Division’s matchmade groups comes are the end of the mission. In Destiny, the fireteam is dissolved and you go back to orbit. In The Division, you come out of the mission’s building, blinking in the sunlight, standing around in confusion figuring out what to do next. In other words, you’re still in the group. If you travel to your base or a safe house, you’re still in the group. You actually have to leave the group to get back to your own instance of the world. This isn’t a terrible burden or anything, but it is slightly uncomfortable. I don’t have a great suggestion on how to fix it, either, so it’s something that we’ll have to live with, and that’s okay.

     

  • Started the Destiny King’s Fall Raid on Hard Mode

    Last night, thanks to a great bunch of Guardians, I managed to take my roughly 300 light level Titan in the hard mode raid in Destiny. While I was clearly the weakest player, we managed to do quite well up to the Deathsinger sisters. So this is not an article about the raid per se, but rather about the crazy “random” number generator Bungie seems to have employed (much like the one in the old Dilbert cartoon that keeps repeating the same number over and over).

    I started the raid with a 310 chest armor that I’d managed to get my first time in the normal raid (lucky!) and a 303 raid hand cannon. I also had 310 exotic arms on for a while, but had to switch them out so I could don Saint-14’s helmet for the actual combat portions. Since all my other items were in the 290s, the best I could do was either 299 or 300, depending on what gun I needed (my sniper was low 290s, sadly).

    So at the totems, I got nothing interesting, but I don’t think anyone else did either. The Warpriest dropped two machine guns. Yes, two machine guns, one 305 and one 314. I presume that’s because I was getting the normal and hard loot at the same time, but seriously, two machine guns? Then, Golgoroth dropped two chest armor pieces, one 315 and one 305. Well, I was already wearing a 310, so this was the least helpful to my overall light level, but I’ll take it, since now my other characters can infuse stuff up to over 300.

    Because my light was so low, I wasn’t good at keeping Golgoroth’s gaze, as the multitude of death balls he was shooting at me quickly killed me. So I was able to jump down and somewhat help kill him from the puddle of goo. I was almost always the lowest damage dealer to the bosses in the raid, sometimes only by a little, but always about half the damage of the highest players. So light level really does make a big difference. I died more easily too, as my armor was less effective.

    So now, the Deathsingers. I got picked to be the jumper at least 6 times in a row! No randomness there – the damn game was totally out to get me. And while I tended to make the jumps okay, I kept getting turned around once I slammed the first sister, so I was slow getting to the rest of the team to protect them with the aura. So it went badly and was freaking stupid that it kept choosing me rather than a more capable Guardian. I had to leave before we could succeed, which likely greatly increased the chances for the rest of the team.

    So thanks to a very supportive and friendly (and very capable) team, I managed to experience a lot of the hard mode raid, which was great. On the other hand, the crazy duplication in drops and repetition in the selection of the jumper make me think Bungie has it out for me. Oh well, they have it out for you too, so at least I’m not alone.

  • What did I play last night? Destiny, of course…

    This is an example of how far my Destiny mental illness/addiction has progressed:

    Last night when I got home from work, I had a few minutes to kill before dinner. I sat down at the PS4 and thought “I’d like to play Elder Scrolls Online, but I’m concerned I don’t have enough time to clear a dungeon, so I’ll just play Destiny.” And I did play Destiny for 10 or so minutes.

    But then later in the evening, I sat back at the PS4, launched Destiny, played for a couple hours, got the Sleeper Simulant by doing the strike with some friends. Then, as I was going to bed, I realized: I didn’t even consider playing a different game like I did before dinner. Launching Destiny was an automatic action, an impulse even.

    Wow, those guys at Bungie know how to make stuff addictive. When I play LOTRO, the combat is so boring compared to Destiny that I feel the urge to go back to Destiny (yet the lore is so much better that I suppress the urge, at least for a while). I did manage to break free of Destiny for a month before The Taken King came out, so I’ll need to make myself do that again. I’ve got too many good games that are actually rewarding to be stuck in Destiny, which is more like a slot machine for the rewards.

  • Left Behind in Destiny

    I’ve been playing a lot of Destiny. Really, too much Destiny. But I’ve become left out of end-game content, because of (presumably) unintended consequences of choices made by Bungie’s designers. They’ve had to deal with unintended consequences before: they made a couple of neat hand cannons, The Last Word and Thorn. They were so good that they were all that people used in the Crucible. Heck, even I was able to get kills with Thorn sometimes. So they nerfed them in particular and hand cannons in general, and now hand cannons just aren’t much fun.

    The problem now is the light level system and the new hard mode King’s Fall raid. In order to be successful at the raid, we need to have light level 311 or better, but there isn’t a way to get gear higher than Light 310 except in the hard mode raid. So the die hard raiders that struggled through the hard mode raid and are now 315 or more don’t want to deal with us 303 light players. 303 isn’t enough to be effective the hard mode raid, so there’s no point in trying.

    The way to get closer to 310, so we can be effective in the hard mode raid, is to do the normal mode raid. But since the hard raid gives all the loot from the normal raid, the group I hang out with has no need or desire to go through the normal raid with lowbies like me so I can get better gear. So I’m in a Catch-22: I can’t do the hard mode raid because my gear is too lousy, and I can’t get better gear because everyone only does the hard mode raid.

    This problem is different from the last two raids. In the Vault of Glass and Crota’s End, even in normal mode, we still got top-level raid gear, so we could equip ourselves with good stuff that would be capable in the hard mode. Sure, a few special items were only available in hard mode, but at least we could prepare for hard mode. This new way has essentially put up a road block between light 300 and 310 that will be very challenging to overcome. I doubt that’s what the designers intended, so that’s why I think it is an unintended consequence.

    So what would I do to fix it? I’d suggest the following:

    1. Make an incentive for people to run the normal raid in addition to the hard raid. Perhaps make some gear only drop in normal, or add legendary marks or some other reason for people to play normal mode so we lowbies can join them and get better gear.
    2. Speaking of gear, the normal raid should drop light 315 or 320 gear, just as the normal raids in the past dropped full-strength gear. That way we have a hope of being able to participate in the hard raid.
    3. Make PvE loot drops have higher light limits. Now, rare and legendary engrams are limited to 299 (I think), so let them roll to 310 so we can get gear that could be helpful in hard mode even from normal PvE activities.

    I’m disappointed, yet not particularly upset about not being able to participate in the raid. I did the raid in normal mode on my Titan, so he can be 303 light, and I got my Touch of Malice to use in future raids, yet the likelihood that it will get used is low.

    So what will I do? Probably get bored with Destiny soon and get back to Elder Scrolls Online. I also have Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid V ready to be played. And there’s always LOTRO and Star Trek Online. I will keep myself amused even if it isn’t with Destiny.

  • I Played Destiny’s Iron Banner and All I Got Was a Lousy Wolf Cloak

    IMG_0396

    Note: See below for an update!

    I’m not a great Crucible player, but when I saw the promotional pictures Bungie put out of the Hunter Wolf Cloak, I decided to play Iron Banner so I could get it. Well, I got it, and it is pretty awful. I think it looks lousy in game, but in the App, where the picture above came from, it just looks odd, particularly with the second wolf head.

    So, yeah, I regret the time I spent in Iron Banner and the Legendary Marks I spent to get the hideous thing. Oh well…

    In other Destiny news, my Titan finally got through the King’s Fall Raid, but got an underwhelming loot haul from it, including 2 butt-capes from the same drop. Why did I need 2? I didn’t. I got the raid hand cannon, which is kinda nifty, but takes forever to reload. Very odd design, Bungie.

    Update: The cloak is more cool than I first thought. The rendering from the app hints at it with the two heads. When I am in the tower and have chosen to show my Hunter’s head, it uses the back wolf head to show that the cloak is off my had and it can show my face. Of course, that’s the way I kept seeing it, so I assumed it was that way in combat too, which was not what the promo material showed. Well, in combat, it uses the upper wolf head, which now covers my helmet and does look like it should. So Bungie was, in fact, very clever, and a rendering error in the app is the only problem.