Dinklageforce: Interdinklage Dinklage
 

Is anyone else playing this? I've been playing the PS3 beta, and even though graphically this version looks like shit this beta is straight up the best game I've played all year, it's absolutely fucking phenomenal. The description of "it's like they made PSO into a FPS game with all of the best parts of Halo and Borderlands" is pretty much dead on. I was pretty down on the game (but had faith in Bungie) prior to this, but holy shit.

What did get me to actually play this though is everything is saved server-side (it requires online) and while you can't move between MS and Sony systems, you have full access to your character and stuff between PS3 and PS4, or 360 and Xbox One. In my case I'm still hoping to swing a PS4 for this game's launch, but if I can't now I can just scrub it out on the PS3 version until I can get a PS4, then everything full carries over with no time wasted.

Highly recommend folks check this out if you can. Apparently if you pre-ordered either Xbox version when you put in the pre-order code on bungie.net to get your console code they give you two extras.

The extra codes were a thing they gave out for everyone. I have some extra PS4 codes still.

I'm not sure I'm as enthusiastic. I want to like it. Really, really do. But there are some pretty critical issues in this beta, and I can't tell if it's because it's not content complete and if it was held back for the beta, or if it's an honest to goodness pacing issue.

The strike bosses as presented are dumb as hell. The AI is awful for them, and they are bullet sponges of the highest order. It recommends level 6, but level 6 specced gear and abilities and such take way too long to accomplish anything. The spider boss is a slog. The sphere boss slightly less so.

The loot as presented has little variety and doesn't come often enough. I still pop too many identical guns. Chest rarity is annoying and the gear pacing is unfortunate.

I like the standard mission structure. I like the gunplay a lot. I like the standard story bits and the emergent community content is super neat. World exploration is nice. The zone they give you us is interesting and has a few neat out of the way places to look at, and I hope that all the planets and zones are a good size and have enough variety.

PVP is kind of a crapshoot.

It feels like, to me, that it should be amazing or fantastic, but all it's constituent parts are under-baked or under-deliver. It's on the cusp of something wonderful but, at the very least, the first bites of this game are bland and dull. I want to like it REALLY BAD but it's sure as fuck trying it's hardest to not let me.

That said, I think the final, with the multiple subclasses, the gun upgrade trees that are more interesting and the high end loot sound more fun, and with a co-op full sized fireteam it should be at the very least worth a play through. I'm not floored, though.

Did you play the Alpha or the Beta? I know they significantly toned down the Spider Tank health from the Alpha. In the Beta if you're hitting it's weak points properly it should take a group of 3 players less than 5 minutes to kill it, no idea what to tell you there. For a tank that can't move out of the limited area it's in the AI is pretty good, at least on Hard. On Hard that thing one one shot you if you give it the slightest chance.

Gear pacing is kind of all over the place, and I'm almost positive they've said they're actively looking at beta feedback for tweaking it. For what it's worth I tend to get a lot of drops and usually not duplicates (although sometimes), but the gear and pacing either way is super hard to judge from such a limited beta so it's hard to say how that will pan out long term. On 360 me and two friends just hit the level cap in like 2 hours so yeah.

PvP is the only thing I'm not super hot on, but I also haven't given it much of a fair shake, largely because I goddamn hate the DS3 for FPS games. I noticed a huge immediate improvement with the 360 controller, so now that I'm at the cap I'll check that out tomorrow. In general people seem to be really hot or really cold on PvP. It's not really what I care about that much, but they seem to be tying useful gear behind it.

Even between the beta last week and what went up tonight we did notice some changes, and the framerate jankiness/jutter seems to be gone as well (which urk seemingly confirmed on GAF tonight) so that's an improvement as well, I know that was really bugging some people.

Skills handed me an extra code. Muchos gracias, señor.

The UI interface reminds me of Brink a whole lot. While graphically average, it seems like you can level up doing pretty much anything. It is enjoyable, so far. And I like the public events.

Have not had a chance to get in on the beta but from what I've seen of people playing it and the reports various people have had I'm down. I know Skills has some reservations but as he said I kind of trust Bungie to deliver a solid experience. It's certainly interesting reading your take on the beta Daravon.

So yeah, I've plonked down for the PS4 version, which I think Skills is also doing. So there'll be a couple of us playing this come launch time.

I played both Alpha and Beta, and you're right, it is better in Beta than Alpha, but it's still a ridiculously long fight for something that's otherwise so limited. I wouldn't call it's AI any good, the tank just has nothing to do. It can drop you in one cannon shell if you're level 6 during the normal run anyway. In my experience, each go at the thing is taking 10 minutes, even if you know the leg-->neck routine. It's just ridiculously boring and way longer than it needs to be considering it's limited nature.

I agree on the pacing issues. It's impossible to tell how it'll be, moving forward. I legit can't tell if it's because of conscious choices during the beta, if it'll improve in the final, or if this is a design concept they'll run with to the end. It's not really that clear.

And yeah, leveling itself is really, really quick. Getting any sort of gear to go with of any value really, really isn't. It's a strange dichotomy.

PVP is hit or miss, yeah. I'm not particularly keen on it. It's not...bad, or anything. It just is there. It's kind of pedestrian. I don't really care, though. The PVE co-op is why I care about the game.

And all these little, niggling complaints aside, I'm still enjoying myself, I'm just not super pumped about it. The co-op will scratch an itch we haven't had a chance to scratch for a while, and I do trust Bungie to fill in the content gaps. If anyone does anything to make a package feel 'complete', it's these guys.

I will be getting the quadruple version, and it'll provide a solid and fun distraction. I'm just not sure it'll be much beyond that.

The spider tank still shouldn't be taking you 10 minutes if you're doing it right. That aside, I think it's at least partially intentional as it's treating things more like an MMO. I think the orb/sphere boss thing after the tank does a much better job of it since it's still a bullet sponge but it's moving around a lot and spawning other mobs and whanot the whole time. Urk said on GAF that they had some sort of hardcore FPS clan come in during internal testing, and the final in-game Raid (which is apparently called that and is a different mission-type altogether) is super nuts, and the clan gave up on trying to clear it after 16 hours or something crazy.

I think some sort deep appreciation of Borderlands, Halo, or PSO is helpful here as well. It's been a long time since I have seen the internet go this collectively apeshit over a game, but it seems like most folks that due really love at least one of those three things. I have co-workers who barely play games who are pulling all-nighters playing this, it's crazy. Like, I get why I love the game since it's well made for grinding (see me and Diablo 3, Borderlands, etc) but I'm shocked at how well received it has been generally.

PvP I think will potentially be way more interesting once we unlock other subclasses and stuff. I've seen footage from IGN and other places of later subclass abilities and it starts getting bonkers (Warlocks can freeze themselves in mid-air and aim, Hunters get crazy fast AOE blade attacks, etc).

Keep in mind every fire group I've had at spider tank has been me, one person I know, and one random knob goblin idiot instead of a full team of three people on comms. That said, the knob goblins have always been halfway competent and know to aim at the legs/neck.

Generally the plan between two of us is to each take a set of legs and focus on those ourselves from opposite sides of the engagement area to minimize splash damage catches and to alternate between safe zone stuff. Even still, this takes forever.

And yes, the Orb boss is much improved. The orb boss also has fucking music so it's less boring. The mob dynamic for it is much better too.

The final raid thing I heard has checkpoints and you can basically go into and out of it as required, and you have something like a week to complete it before it resets? I don't know if that info is entirely accurate or what, but it sounds like a neat mechanic.

Don't get me wrong, I'm keen on Borderlands a lot, and I adore this game's Halo gunplay, it's just a few weird design decisions that hold it back from my sporting a 40 foot boner.

PVP I think needs a bit of tuning re: how it works with weapons you carry into it. Impact and fire rate are ridiculously important, and some specials are kind of ridiculous in their one-shotty-ness. I think it will even out with more content and more gun variety though.

I don't know that we know much about how the Raid structure works, so no idea about any of the checkpoint stuff. Also on the spider tank there's actually an angle where you can hit it's weak point at any time, and Warlocks also can fuck it up with their gravity grenade things. I did two runs of that Strike today with two friends and I think we can do it in like 3-4 minutes tops now on Hard. It's still not a great encounter though no.

I will say though I just played PvP for the first time using a 360 controller AND with 2 friends and it is a significantly better experience. The DS3 is a piece of shit for FPS games, I immediately had a way better time aiming, and playing with friends hugely mitigates the random shitty asshole factor. Literally went from a .5 K/D on PS3 to rocking 2.5-3.0 K/D and dominating every match. The PvP is kinda weird, it reminds me of Mass Effect multiplayer in a way. It's hard to say how it works out balance-wise though; like right now the Hunter Super we have access to kinda sucks for PvP (takes too long to activate, etc) but the subclass Super that you don't have access to in the Beta seems baller as hell. Once you can the hang of things I'm having an alright time of it though.

How's performance between circle and triple? I'm hearing a surprising amount of variance there.

Also, would you be going triple --> quadruple, thinking you'd be focusing on that ecosystem and upgrade or would you nab on circle and not revisit on quad? I don't know what your plans are.

The 360 version looks way better than the PS3 version graphically. I can't personally speak on X1 to PS4, apparently PS4 looks better but it's not a significant amount. The X1 beta also isn't running at 1080p which they're saying the final release will, so who knows.

I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing system wise. I have one friend who is going all in on PS4, then pretty much everyone else is is going 360. Which is fine, the problem there is long-term; somewhere down the line we're going to have a split because some people are going PS4, but we have a couple that will go X1. Right now I'm going to wait to see if I can swing a PS4 by the game's launch (I should know beforehand either way). If I can I'm going PS4 and that's pretty much that. If I can't then at that point I'll have to decide if I want to deal with the shitty PS3 version for a while then when I can get a PS4 I'll move over to that and keep all my progress, or if I want to go 360 to play with more people but will then have to start completely over on PS4. There's no scenario where I get an Xbox One over a PS4 so starting on 360 wouldn't be a long-term plan.

The live fixes they are making as this thing is going on are really, really impressive.

It's an infinitely better game than it was 6 weeks ago in Alpha and it's even miles better than it was 3 days ago.

Strike boss health has been mega nerfed, but their attack seems higher. A fair and appreciable trade off. Spongyness in general is down, and I found more loot today than I have pretty much in the last week combined.

And I found a blue I can't use because level 10. It's a pulse rifle.

MP is stillllllllllll really flaky and I'm not that much of a fan, but the PVE balance concerns have been improved greatly.

Yeah, I've played a lot more of PvP and I like it, but it's nearly impossible to say how it will wind up in the final product because we'll need access to all of the subclasses and new weapons and whatnot. It's potentially interesting at least and isn't outright busted if nothing else. But yeah, still really enjoying it a ton.

Also if you play tomorrow between 5-7pm Pacific they're unlocking the Moon story mission for those 2 hours only. They also finally showed the emblem you'll get in the final release if you play during those 2 hours as a beta exclusive emblem, details on all that here: Bungie : News

I'll definitely give the Moon a shot, and the beta emblem is nice.

And yes, while we can't be sure what MP will be like on the whole, I hope it's a bit less...exploitable than it is right now. I hope that there isn't much interesting content locked behind Crucible progress.

I had a feeling that Saturday unlockable would be an emblem of the sorts. Still level 7 on my end. Just having a blast on either the Crucible or Old Earth.

I tried out the beta tonight with Nutty and played up to level 4. It's pretty fun so far, but I wouldn't be heartbroken about skipping it if everyone else decides to go PS4 instead of XBOne. The whole thing feels like Borderlands without very frequent drops or enemy encounters. It also takes itself super seriously, which just makes some of Dinklage's weirdly written lines even more hilarious. They can't seem to make up their mind whether they want him to be an emotionless narrator or your jovial chum.

On the plus side, I really like faceblasting enemies as a Warlock. The skill unlocking is pretty good too. It isn't showing anything unique yet, but at least it's fun in multiplayer.

Yeah I can't say I enjoyed that PvP stuff as the Titan at all. The Hunter and Warlock powers are much better, particularly the Hunter's from how it played out. Also seemed like my guns just weren't good enough to do much damage. I imagine with a crew of us it could be decent-enough, and I suspect I'll have multiple characters in the final thing so if one class is better suited to things I can switch to that. But yeah, it's the rest of it that I really enjoyed and the PvP stuff is the least interesting right now.

Yeah I'm down, but the only thing is that means no Mario Kart today. That's not a massive issue, but just saying the times clash.

Went to the moon.

Moon was neat.

There was bad guys on the moon.

I got a pair of pants out of it.

Hunter has by far the worst Super currently in PvP; the startup to activate it takes too long unless you can pre-emptively do it, and it's easy as hell to avoid other players who have it. I win encounters versus Hunters trying to Golden Gun me 9 times out of 10. The Titan totally has the best Super right now, you crazy. You're close to invulnerable when you're doing it, and it's virtually a guaranteed one-shot kill on anything within it's generous radius when you do it.

Also with the gun damage thing were you playing regular PvP or Iron Banner? In Iron Banner your full weapon/damage/armor stats come in. In regular PvP all damage and armor stats are normalized across the board; individual stats on guns like rate of fire, sights, etc carry over but the damage stat doesn't, so guns can make a slight difference there but not hugely.

I'm very excited for this game. Usually I hardly jump on the hype train, but I have to admit that opening the beta to the public for the weekend was a clever thing to do. In fact, never cared to watch the trailers or read about the game until the beta was open.

I tried it and had a blast, I didn't go to the Moon but the maps I played were nice, It was fun teaming up to fight bosses and the capture the flag mode was cool when you were in a competitive team. I'm on PS3 so I also feel the graphics are weak, but in the long run, it's something I can live with.

When I downloaded it I didn't expect to have so much fun but it really got me. Can't wait for September.

I jumped on the beta as soon as it went public, and I gotta say that this past weekend was probably the most fun I've had in a game in a good while. Hell, even though I reach the level 8 cap quickly, I still had fun playing the game even if there wasn't really any progress left to be made.
I was discouraged from exploring pretty quickly, though. Running into enemies with levels marked as ?? will do that. I was really not expecting that from Bungie, but I've adjusted my play-style accordingly to be more MMORPG-esque. That said, I'm looking forward to leveling up in the full game and then doing an exploration run.
As far as that Devil Walker boss goes, it really did feel like a sponge, at least until I figured out the whole legs-neck thing. Then it felt much more appropriate.

As a side note, it looks like Commander Shepard has been giving the human males in Destiny dance lessons. :P

Pre-ordered my copy today, September 09th can't arrive fast enough. The only problem will be dividing my gaming time up between Destiny and The Sims 4, which I pre-ordered last week.

Speaking of dance lessons.

YouTube Video

The preload has already begun for Playstation users. Also, it was annonced that the digital versions of the last generation (PS3, Xbox 360) can be upgraded for free until January 15th.

This is some great news:
Destiny Digital-Upgrade | Official Site of Destiny the Game

I am anxiously awaiting my pre-order from Amazon. Anxious because I purchased the fastest shipping option that guaranteed delivery on launch day, yet the order status doesn't have it listed as shipped yet.
Heh, I haven't been this excited for a game in a long time.

Or as it was known in the old days, "Releasing a demo". Calling a demo a beta and limiting access to a select few people that is actually anyone in the world who is interested is one of the greatest marketing inventions of the last five years or so.

OK, it's PlayStation based, but there's now a group/PS clan for Destiny for our lot:

Bungie : Clans : Belkan Airforce : Forum | Bungie.net

Go ahead and join. I'll need to give approval but I'll do that swiftly (and will make Skills and admin so he can do it too).

I'll join but I won't be on PS4 for a while, still on last gen. Right now I've got a 360 copy coming from Gamefly because most of my regular console gaming crew is still on there. As soon as we're all able though we're moving to PS4, hopefully within the next few months (which is also why I don't want to spend $60 on an Xbox copy).

It would be great if you can record your matches the way you've been doing with MK8. I'm on PS3 and I'll stick there for a while.

It's a fun game and I'm having a great time, but I need to invest more time on it to give a definite opinion.

If anyone hasn't bought it yet and wants to, it's $50 on eBay today. The Xbone version's on sale for $50, but lol Xbone.

Once you join the group and Omagnus approves you, you also need to click the "Set as Playstation Clan" button to actually join the clan.

This is a great single player game

So it's been a week, what are your impressions on the game?

http://i.imgur.com/LsKgHvW.png
My Level 21 Hunter with Bloodpact shader

Mine:

Game is hollow, empty and unfinished. Crucible is an unbalanced mess. Loot mechanics are broken. The story falls flat on it's ass and the grind is hilariously bad. Weapon variety took a dump somewhere along the line too.

It deserves the 6.5/10s it's been getting.

It's still fun, but a lot of that stems from the co-op experience and the quality gunplay. The act of shooting people in the head is great. Excellent, even. The levels are gorgeous, if not completely devoid of any reason to explore them. Love looking at the skyboxes, love looking at the mobs, love popping them. Wish I had a reason to find alternate routes, because the level 20 enemies guard...nothing. No reason to go down alternate paths.

Say what you will about loot 'em ups, but gearing up is still a quality itch to scratch. The method OF gearing up is complete horseshit, but you put up with it because the movement is wonderful, the act of interacting with these environments and enemies is pretty rad. I just wish you got to do more of it than just "go over here, insert dinklage bot, fight three waves of dudes".

I've enjoyed the strikes, although the bosses themselves are spongy. They are a good length, and a good challenge. The rewards for doing so are generally shit, though.

There is a good game here, and there's even a great one buried under all the flaws, but god damn.

More than practically any other game I've played in a LONG time, this is made by it's co-op. If I didn't have Omagnus to play with, I'd probably be done with it already.

Yeah, the game is WILDLY inconsistent quality-wise. I'll probably write up something at some point, but I agree with the general sentiment that it's a "beautiful mess" of a game. At it's super fundamental center it's a blast to play, but what the game is actually filled with to do is not super great. I'm still playing it because it scratches a great OCD itch I have, and it's fun with friends. I'm not sure what kind of long-term prospects I have with it.

100% agree with all of the comparisons to Assassins Creed 1 where they have the backbone and framework for an amazing game, then AC2 knocked it out of the park. In this case I think there's a lot of things they can patch in short-term for improvements. I'm curious to see what the first paid DLC that hits in December is like.

Still not sure how I feel about Crucible, partially because I haven't really gotten to play with friends in it. It seems general bullshit all around though; WAYYYYYYY too much shit one-shots you. I feel like most of my deaths AND kills are kinda bullshit; a lot of "man if I was that guy I just killed I'd be pissed". I think my main issue with it is that I sometimes lose encounters where I can't tell if it was a skill issue or a gear issue. Even with level advantages disabled stats on weapons like Impact very much matter, and I don't get any feedback on to if I lost that encounter because all things being equal I would have won but his shit was slightly better than mine, or what. Makes it hard to improve.

Level 10, mostly solo. Skills pretty much laid out some of my concerns on the game.

At this point, I may as well probably return this game after playing it for a month.

Outside of maybe grinding a bit when your friends aren't on, I would not recommend this game to anyone playing solo or mostly solo. It's equivalent to Borderlands (or worse) in that regard.

It's shithouse in solo. Borderlands was better.

Your Crucible concerns are spot on, the game has painted itself into a corner with it's reliance on supers and associated horseshit. And I definitely feel that the more I give it a go, the less I'm liking the PVP.

I want to try the Raid, since I hear there was actual effort put into the design of that thing and people actually need to do something other than survive 3 waves of AI that throw themselves at you, but I'm not sure.

Being entirely locked in terms of progress based on loot drops and hilarity grinding of rep in the SLOWEST PROCESS EVER really isn't that cool.

Hard to believe this is what half a billion dollars buys.

I've not hated playing it solo, but the game is much more fun with people and so yeah would agree that you shouldn't bother unless you have someone you can get on with. It's amazing because a game so built on social play features no tools to actually engage in social aspects and create groups on the go. I've tried sending invites to people I've ended up fighting alongside and never get anywhere.

Skills has already touched on many of my thoughts as we've been discussing it. Basically that it's a good game that falls down in way too many places to be great. It's a shame because it's almost there, but I'll be damned if I fund a DLC campaign in the hope that they flesh out some of the hollow content that is in the base game.

And since I've now gotten there: I will say my biggest issue with end game progress is, as Skills points out, that it is entirely based on luck with drops. Until you grind to fuck to get to level 3 reputation with factions you have no chance to influence the quality of light gear you get so you're just waiting on the RNG to roll in your favour (which it does not seem inclined to do).

None of this is going to stop me playing the game, but it's not going to hold me attention too long once other games start dropping this month.

This is a pretty good summation of Crucible:

http://i.imgur.com/yPWoosw.jpg

Sorry for the shit quality. All of those drops are blues except the top 2. Also this was on Control, and I had more captures than anyone else.

Saw an exotic drop for a dude with a 0.2 KD/R earlier.

"SmokeWeedErryDay found SOME CRAZY BULLSHIT"

I hope he dies IRL

I just got my first exotic from the vendor who shows once a week. It was worth 13 Strange Coins. I don't feel particularly lucky or tired of grinding during the past week. Also, you can only use one exotic armor or weapon at a time so, I think I'm set for the time being.

"I don't even have time to tell you why I don't have time to tell you"

Oh god

Sure, the shootin and knifin Covenant, Flood, and those dudes from the Fifth Element is fun, but the design decisions they made in a lot of other areas are puzzling. I understand why they just have the Monitor exposition at you while you shoot things (because shooting things is the well done part of the game), so that you aren't slowed down by story scenes constantly when you're running with buddies. Understanding a design decision doesn't make it a good design decision though. Then there is loot/vendors. Having 50 different currencies that take forever to accumulate is not a good idea when at the end of the day, there simply isn't much content to the game. How many people are going to go back and play any of the 18-20 story missions a second time or do patrols when they don't have active bounties? So that just leaves you with running the same handful of strike missions or PVP while waiting for DLC?

And who came up with the various names of places and things in this game? Possibly the worst bunch of lore naming ever. Let's call this firewall thingy Rasputin, because it is located in Russia. Get it? I'm super clever right? Hey, we have to go to the World's Grave to destroy the Sword of Deathblood, but in order to get in there, we need to pour the Jar of Tears onto the Padlock of Hate to unlock it. Maybe that is what they spent their budget on, thesauri and history books.

I don't know, it just feels like a launch title. It feels like they worked on making sure everything looked really pretty and played smooth and then realized that their deadline was coming up soon and hadn't really much about content or giving the player a purpose, so they just hurriedly threw the rest together. "My house guests are going to be here in fifteen minutes and I'm not done straightening up...let's just push everything else under the bed and hope they don't notice!"

holy shit russ is alive

Yeah, this game can only be described as "a shame", I'm basically done with it now.

Too bad. If someone asked me a few months ago if "two weeks" was as long as this was gonna last for me, I'd go "that seems unlikely", but here we are.

Exceptionally frustrating, I was hoping for a long term co-op experience. Guess I'm going to have to keep looking for that.

YouTube Video

Admittedly this is vs footage but the terrorist hunt in this can only be awesome.

Yeah, these staged MP examples aren't going to be anything like what the final game will play like.

And after the last few Tom Clancy's whatevers, I'd be hard pressed to be that psyched about anything further. We'll see.

Haha, clearly any game involving internet randoms would never play out anything like that but I always had a blast playing co-op in previous Tom Clancy games, Rainbow Six moreso than Ghost Recon and the Terrorist Hunt in Vegas 2 was especially good.

Needs more hiding in the corner with the riot shield and pistol shenanigans.

Actually press at E3 got to play the game and they all said it actually shockingly did play out exactly like the stage demo. I agree with the sentiment though that all of the TC games have been going down the shitter for a while now, so we'll see.

It's just a demo. Destiny pulled a big bait-and-switch with theirs.

Remember the first level? Dinklebot awakens you, guides you through the first building with plenty of interaction and a Portal-esque light-up sequence, you get outside to the next section and a ship warps in and towers collapse in the background and a shockwave rushes through the area. It's rather cinematic.

The rest of the campaign has absolutely nothing like that. Well, other than a couple of gates opening.

Just wait until Left 4 Dead 3. Except then you'll have an amazing vs experience to go with it. :cool:

"Amazing" depends entirely on if Face is playing or not.

Oh hey so.

In their infinite wisdom, Bungie has decided it'd be rad to nerf progression EVEN MORE by patching out a popular farm method, reducing loot drop if you die, and removing a reason to do the current event.

This game is literally the largest disappointment I've had in vidya in...I don't know. Years.

So my agony can be your gain!

Do you want this garbage? Do you hate yourself AS MUCH AS I DO?

Yes?

Well, it's yours. Free of charge. Let me know. If I don't have any takers for this crap by the end of the day I'm just trading it in for credit towards Toad's Amazing Indiana Jones Adventure Wii U Edition.

Edit: No takers before the time limit, trading it in then.

Patching out the loot cave is pretty much whatever. Reducing drops upon death (just to combat a small minority of gamers who farm restricted respawn areas) is seriously overboard. Patching out the only reason to do the current even more than twice just makes no sense.

I just find it absurd that without a heavy dose of luck, the average adult gamer (the ones with jobs and families, many of whom have at this point been supporting Bungie for 10+ years) won't even be able to get their light level up high enough to even qualify for the raid content that Bungie seems to be the most proud of. By the time a lot of people are able to get their vanguard rep high enough, and farm enough vanguard marks to outfit their guy with enough bought purple stuff to hit 26, they will have moved on to another game. Similarly, by the time Bungie gets around to fixing loot in general, we will all have moved on to the next game.

Just because I go over a year between posts doesn't mean I'm dead :(

So how is trading the game in working out skills

I chumped out on it, you should have texted me to remind me.

one of these things is not like the other

At this point you seem to be playing it more than even I was, so what the fuck is going on bro. You seemed pretty mad there.

When no one took me up on it, I put it on the shelf. The trade in price wasn't worth the gas it took to get down to Gamestop. (25 dollars my ass)

It turns out a friend I haven't played games with in two years bought it, and asked me to play with him. Since I don't get the see the guy very often, I took him up on it and have dicked around a bit in the interim.

You of all people shouldn't be giving me shit about playing games you get consistently angry at.

That's fine, I just like how I randomly saw you mention on GAF that you had cleared the Raid which I didn't even do and was like what the fuck. $25 is pretty shit. So are you actually liking the game anymore or what? It's a weird fucking beast, frequently I wondered why I was playing it but then I kept playing it. Returned the 360 Gamefly copy I had, I may wind up renting the PS3 version just to have at least a character near endgame for whenever I get a PS4 in the hopefully near future. The DS3 is fucking garbage for shooters, but I figure I could get a character up and just not touch the Crucible or something. Also seeing that you can now use a DS4 on PS3 without having to have it plugged in, but did see some people say that Destiny has some weird issues in that regard.

Also out of curiosity what games have I played recently that I get consistently angry at? Legitimate question, I feel like I've made a point of stopping doing that years ago once I stopped caring about achievements and I'm wondering if i'm just drawing a blank on something more recent.

Also TOTALLY UNRELATED, but Bad Company 2 is the free XBL Gold game right now, I got a bunch of people to download it but I don't think you have Gold anymore :(

That's a hard question to answer.

The literal only reason I even still have it around is because my friend asked me to carry him around. I made it farther with Omagnus than he made it with some of his friends and asked if I wanted to see the end game content. We filled in a few blank spots with GAFfers, actually.

There's a lot to be said (and has been said in this very thread) about how the core game is solid but everything surrounding it is absolute, unadulterated dogshit. That hasn't changed. My opinion on that remains the same. I still hate the PVP with a burning, fiery passion. The PVE is samey, recycled shit that isn't rewarding.

The Raid is...sorta ok, and weird. It has many mechanics in it that are unique to the rest of the game. It involves teamwork! That's awesome. No other parts of the game really do. It requires communication, and a battle plan! Look at these things, where is this in the rest of it? NOWHERE.

That said, all that Raid shit is IDENTICAL to vanilla WoW shit. Like, literally stolen ideas. Timed buffs, teleporting based on position, item couriering, enrage timers, DPSing and tanking. It's not got anything unique in it at all from a gameplay standpoint, a raid standpoint, an MMO standpoint. It's just...in first person. And it's not difficult. It's a gear check and a mic check, and that's it. Our group of six was completely fresh and had zero issues outside of ironing out timing and roles. It's also short (two two-phase boss battles, a small maze and a mega man jumping puzzle.) It's not exciting content on it's own merits. The only reason it stands out is because it's completely unique to the rest of the game, not because it's actually that interesting.

And the rewards are still hilariously crap. It's almost funny. Almost.

So, I guess...no? I'm not liking the game anymore than I was. Not as an experience, but it facilitates interaction with people I like, so that's one thing it has going for it.

Much like I said earlier, how I wouldn't be playing if I didn't have Omagnus, I wouldn't be playing now if I didn't have this guy. That's literally it. I got nothin' else riding on this. :shrug:

Legit talk, I probably won't play it again now that we've gone through the Vault and laughed at how awful IB is. He is winding down on it too.

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Also we haven't played games recently so that was just a snark based on things in the past. You're probably better now than I am now, clearly. Furious bloodpressure noises and all that.

And yeah, my Gold ran out when I moved last year and haven't refreshed it. There has been actual zero MP titles on the circle that I give any fucks about anymore. I'm not sure I'd be bothered to resub based on replaying a game as old as BC2, even though in retrospect it's probably the best Battlejerks game of the last decade.

Yeah, the last week and a half or so I played it was mostly just our social party chat game, and I was helping people clear Nightfall and the Daily at the highest levels etc. PvP is still shit, although I'm good at it so I'd do the easy Crucible bounties, but never touched IB. And although I'm honestly not super excited about it or anything, with the new Borderlands coming out next week I'd rather play that instead so returned my Gamefly copy of Destiny to snag that.

Also yeah I played BC2 a bit this morning, actually had a really good time with it. I'd only put in about 6 hours on the multiplayer when it first came out since it just didn't really click with me and I found it frustrating if we weren't the majority of a team, but I had a good time with it this morning messing around. It's aged a bit graphically but otherwise actually holds up surprisingly well. Probably not enough to resub to Gold just for that or anything though.

IB is a shitshow. Take everything wrong with PVP as is and multiply it by a factor of 1.3 and you've got it to a T.

As for the rest of the game, yeah, that's basically it. Which is extremely sad. Maybe the second game will be better in a couple of years. Who knows? I certainly won't get hyped about it though, not after this showing. And if they think I'm buying the Comet releases they can go fuck themselves with a rake.

BC2 rules on PC, have you looked at it on Steam? It would probably run on your laptop. If not, yeah. I'm not interested in resubbing to Gold for a revisit for that game. I'll snag gold again when I finally get a One, which...keeps getting put off, actually. The only thing I play on the circle these days are a series of shmups. I don't even have the circle hooked up online for that shit anymore.

Oh man, BC2 multiplayer is pretty awesome.

Raid is fantastic, there was something cool and cozy about running through the tunnels in a six man team instead of three.


But yeah bungie screwed up majorly.