TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Tag: Destiny 2

  • Scattered Gaming: Monster Hunter World, LOTRO, Destiny 2

    I picked up Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) again after nearly a year of just logging in to pay my housing maintenance. I bought the Mordor expansion and figured I’d better get through it. Plus the buzz on the new Mirkwood/Laketown areas is that they look great (hopefully they’re fun, too). When I took my break, I had done most of the pre-battle Minas Tirith quests and was heading into the hills to help the Riders from Rohan and the Druedain. I picked back up in the middle of the Druedain camp doing fetch quests for them. Go kill 10 things, come all the way back to camp, then go kill 10 more and figure out why they’re there. This kind of tedious fetch quest needs to die. LOTRO is the only game I still play that pulls crap like that. Star Trek Online and Elder Scrolls Online are much more enlightened. Even LOTRO has become a little enlightened, since some quests can be turned in from anywhere, but most of them require tedious travel back to the quest giver.

    Since I’m in the mode of bitching about LOTRO, let’s talk lag, stutters, and warsteeds. I have a pretty decent machine (i7 and GTX 970), am running LOTRO from an SSD, and yet it still stutters quite a lot when I’m riding the warsteed. Even worse is the lag and rubber-banding. The responsiveness of even my light warsteed is terrible when travelling (it isn’t as bad in battle, and I mostly enjoy mounted combat). I’ve had cases where I’ve been riding along the clear road, then suddenly the combat music starts playing, even though there are no enemies around me, then a short while later, my warsteed will backtrack to some earlier point then race forward, missing a curve and barreling into a bunch of enemies. So the servers projected where I was going, but the game engine was lagging behind, so I was steering to what I saw, not what the server saw. Pretty frustrating. And all the while, the link meter on the screen shows no packet loss and less than 100ms delay.

    Complaints over: I do love the world LOTRO has created from Tolkien’s vision and it is mostly fun, so I’m enjoying playing it.

    I’m also enjoying Monster Hunter World quite a lot. While I complained earlier about the lightweight plot, it was pretty good in the end, and the combat is good fun, as is the diversity in monsters and the unique challenge with each. I’ve been grinding away to get great armor and weapons and have fairly good stuff (4 of 5 armor items are rarity 8, plus 2 rarity 8 weapons) now, but need more! I’ve been using the light bowgun, as it seems to me the best way to avoid trouble is to not get too close to it. On the other hand, I’m thinking of trying a sword and shield or other melee weapon just for fun. Or even an insect glaive, just for the challenge.

    Finally, I felt obligated to participate the final Destiny 2 Faction Rally of this season. The gunplay and many other aspects of D2 are so great that I enjoyed it, but I still feel like I’m banging my head against a wall. Maybe the new “go fast” patch will make it fun again, but we’ll see.

    So my gaming has been all over the place, but I’m having fun, so that’s OK…

  • 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.

  • Destiny 2 Beta Observation: We’re Weak!

    I played the Destiny 2 Beta a bit more last night and my observation is that we Guardians are weaker than we were in Destiny. Our guns are weaker, our abilities are less powerful, and our grenades are downright paltry.

    I created a Hunter last night and played with both the Arcstrider and Gunslinger abilities. Both are good, and the Hunter was indeed more agile and able to avoid (or get into) trouble than the Warlock and Titan I created the night before. It was when I used the Golden Gun super ability that I realized that we’ve been nerfed. It used to be that Golden Gun would kill any red bar enemy. Well, I shot and hit a Cabal Gladiator (which are admittedly pretty tough) and needed a second shot to finish him off. Then I started playing with grenades. It used to be, if you lobbed a grenade into a mob of red-bar enemies, some would die. Now, they all get hurt some, but fewer or none die outright. Sure, it varies by grenade type, but they sure seem weaker.

    I think this is a strategy by Bungie – they’ve said they want to make the game harder, and by weakening us, that’s one way to do it.

    I enjoyed playing the Destiny 2 beta, but it doesn’t seem to be holding as much interest as I thought it would. After dinner last night, I created my Hunter, then did the first mission and the strike. When I started, almost my entire PSN friends list was playing Destiny 2 beta. When I was done, I was the only one. Most of the others were still logged into PSN, but were playing other games, including the original Destiny. I will likely play some more Destiny 2 beta Crucible before the beta ends, but the limited content makes it not overly compelling to play for too long.

  • Destiny 2 Beta guns and abilities – different, but good

    Having only played the Destiny 2 beta for a couple of hours last night, I found that I like the changes that I saw to guns and abilities, and for the few that I didn’t like, I can live with them.

    Guns

    There are still 3 gun slots, and 3 ammo types, just as before. The top gun slot is for kinetic damage primaries, essentially as before, but some new types are added, including SMGs (which are terrible, at least the ones I have). The second slot is also for primary-type weapons, but these have burn damage (solar, arc, void). So auto-rifles and hand cannons with burns are common now, and green ammo is plentiful and you can carry a lot. The third slot is for your big guns, which now includes shotguns, grenade launchers, fusion rifles, and rocket launchers, all of which use purple ammo. Since purple ammo is hard to come by in the Crucible, we won’t be having lots of shotgunners, as we did in the early days of Destiny (well, until recently when they nerfed the green ammo). I have yet to see a sniper rifle, so don’t know where or if they fit in.

    They’ve gotten rid of Sunsinger Warlocks, which is somewhat OK. Sure they were handy for Nightfalls and for cheesing the bridge to Crota (until they patched that), but the ability to revive was held in reserve until needed, thus Sunsingers didn’t contribute orbs to others, because we didn’t use our super ability unless we had to.

    The new ability each class has is interesting. I’ve only experienced it with Titan and Warlock, but Titans can make a little shield quite often, which can be handy, while Warlocks make a healing zone, also nice. This is activated by holding the circle button on PS4, and so far, seems more useful in PVE rather than PVP. As we all get used to it, I’m sure we’ll get good at these abilities.

    Overall, the changes aren’t so significant that the game feels unnatural, but they do take a little getting used to.