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Tag: Playstation 4

  • My luckiest Destiny Crucible match ever

    After I got all my Guardians to Iron Banner rank 5, I continued playing so I could keep getting that phat lewt Destiny was handing out (sometimes). Since I was just messing around, I didn’t have the pressure to win, which may have helped with my luckiest match. I was stealing kills (not on purpose) and having lots of good luck, resulting in my best K/D ever. It probably didn’t hurt that I had a full-auto Hawksaw as my primary gun and the sweet Lord of Wolves as my secondary (I can’t emphasize how much fun Lord of Wolves is). I realize this isn’t great by other players’ standards, but I was happy to have done better than usual.

  • The Division looks great, but they really dropped the ball here

    I like Tom Clancy’s The Division(TM) (and, yes, that’s the last time in this post that I’ll use the whole name), and I think it looks really good. The city is modeled and textured very well, and the guns and gear are lovingly rendered (especially the purple beanie and the stylish slouchie, whatever that means). But sometimes, the devs got a little lazy and used a lot of copy and paste. An example is the “Fashion” store in the video below. All the clothing is the same (and ugly as sin). Sure, it is good to reuse textures and art assets, but it’s like they’re not even trying. You can’t tell me there wouldn’t be a little black dress or a red sparkly dress in a fashion store in NYC. If this were just a random spot I wandered into, it might be okay, but we need to go into these stores to get crafting materials, so it is an integral part of the game. C’mon The Division folks, try harder.

  • Disappointing night in The Division. Going back to Witcher 3

    I had a decidedly un-fun night in The Division, so I rage quit and went back to playing Witcher 3. The first problems were glitches, while the final straw was people.

    After being unable to get to Manhattan on Monday night due to Ubisoft’s servers being melted into puddles of goo, when I started the game last night, I was stuck in Brooklyn without any obvious way out. The missions were all done, so there were no pointers to get me out of the map. Luckily, I found a guide on YouTube that showed the way to go through the streets to activate the final cut scene (and why did that Osprey blow up, anyway?) and get me moved on to Manhattan. So that was the first glitch, but not the most annoying.

    Next, I set up my Base of Operations and started the first mission in Madison Square Garden. Then I got bitten by a bug that also bit me in the beta and has obviously not been fixed: I got glitched into a wall. In this case, as I was evading some enemies, I glitched inside a wall and furniture. No movement I did could get me out, so the baddies walked right up and killed me. In the beta, I glitched into a column in a subway station, and that state persited even after reloading the game (luckily I had grenades so I could kill myself and respawn). So the night started on a negative and got worse.

    Then a friend and someone else joined me in the game, and we quickly proceeded to start the second mission (one that wasn’t in either beta). This was a pretty hard mission, but we were going along pretty well. Then the other guy separated from us to do who knows what, and he was higher level, so he was practically carrying the other two of us through the mission. So my friend and I started dying, then my friend went AFK for quite a while. There was no communications during this time. so I had no idea why everyone abandoned me. So I punched out of the group, decided I wasn’t having fun, quit the game, and went and played Witcher 3 on my PC.

    I presume I’ll try The Division again sometime soon, but I’m pretty sick of it at the moment.

  • Unsure about buying The Division after playing the beta

    I played the beta of Tom Clancy’s The Division on PS4 over the weekend (not sure why they need to keep flogging poor old deceased Tom Clancy to promote the game, but I understand Red Storm Entertainment was involved). I liked it quite a bit. It was atmospheric and tense, and I felt like I had a real sense of purpose in the game. But I’m not sure that’s enough to convince me to spend $60 on the game when it comes out.

    Comparisons to Destiny

    Many folks compare The Division to Destiny, and they’re not wrong. Both are always-online shooters where the player controls one of the few good guys left in an effort to save the world (or New York, whichever). The gunplay in Destiny is a lot more fun than that of The Division, but some of that is because Destiny can have crazy interesting future weapons, while The Division has gun models much like we have now. The Division is a bit finicky when it comes to aiming down sight (ADS) and scopes. As with Destiny, left trigger (L2) brings the gun up so you can sort of see down the sights, but if you have a scope, you need a stick press to actually bring the scope to your eye. This is unwieldy and slow (though perhaps more realistic than Destiny’s rapid scope movement), so scopes may not get as much use as in Destiny. Perhaps this is because of the shift from 3rd person view to the through scope view, while Destiny is already first person, so the shift is less significant.

    Destiny has a player vs player (PvP) mode in which players compete against each other in the Crucible. This is somewhat tacked on and distinct from the normal missions in the game. The Division, however, has the “Dark Zone” area of the city which looks like all the others, but PvP is enabled. In the Dark Zone, you still fight NPCs and get loot, but you can also fight other players and get their stuff too. Loot from the Dark Zone is contaminated, so you need to airlift it out. This involves calling down a chopper, waiting for it, and attaching your stuff. Well, during all that time, you’re a huge target for both bad guy NPCs and griefer players who know exactly where you are and what you’re doing. Once you shoot another player, you’re marked as rogue and other players can shoot you without penalty. But, it is way too easy to accidently hit someone, and sometimes I’m certain I was shooting a rogue player but it thought I was shooting at a non-rogue one, so I was marked rogue even when I didn’t want to be. The Dark Zone play was fun and intense, but a lousy solo experience (because of the griefers that are waiting for you). As a group, it is good.

    The normal missions are ok solo, but are way more fun as a group, but they got very “same-y” quickly. The impression I got from the beta is that it will be big, dynamic, and fun game, but mostly for group activities. Since I tend to like playing solo at least some of the time, I’m not yet convinced that The Division will be ideal for me. I realize it was just a beta, so there is obviously much more content that they didn’t show us, so I’m reserving judgment for a while yet.

  • 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.

  • Yes, Damn It, Destiny: The Taken King is Good!

    Destiny’s The Taken King expansion has revitalized the game and addicted me again, hence the “damn it” in the title. I was doing so well at enjoying other games and going days or even a week without launching Destiny. But now that The Taken King has come out, it’s an obsession just like Destiny was at launch. That isn’t to say that TTK is perfect – far from it. There are annoyances and a few glitches, flaws, and problems, but the smoothness of the game play and the fun missions (mostly) overcome them.

    The first thing about TTK is that it is even more MMO-like than before. As Yahtzee said about World of Warcraft when he reviewed it, “It’s all about the numbers!” In TTK, the level cap was increased, but the level is pretty meaningless. I went from level 35 to 40 in seconds by turning in some bounties with one of the Red Bull XP boosts active. No, the only thing that matters is the light level of your gear, much like in other MMOs. The goal of this was to render obsolete all of our year 1 gear, so Ice Breaker, Thorn, Vex Mythoclast, and Gjallarhorn. There are year 2 variants of some of the old Exotics, but not the favorites I listed above. Bungie’s goal, I think, was to get more diversity in loadouts. Even the Exotics now have different perks and stat rolls when you get them, so if you and I both have Helm of Saint-14, they will be different, either slightly or significantly, though the primary perk will stay the same (and, generally, yours will be better, because RNGesus hates me). So now everyone will be dressed differently and have different gear. Until we get raid gear, that is. Since raid gear is the only way to get the highest light level stuff (310), everyone who has raid gear will wear it. Now, it is possible to sacrifice your raid gear by using it to infuse other stuff, thus raising the other gear’s light level, but it will be a while before many people have enough raid gear to use it like that. I have no raid gear, having not done the raid (because my light level is too low and I’m not that good). Oh yeah, and we can have swords now, and they are awesome!

    There are lots and lots more missions in TTK, and even some of the old ones have been updated. I’ve killed Oryx on all my characters, yet I haven’t finished all the missions available. They weren’t kidding when they said TTK added more content than the original game. So there’s lots more to do and most of it is fun. And there are hidden side-quests and goodies that are a delightful addition to the game.

    There are a few missions that are just crazy hard, and some of the Heroic Strikes are just stupid hard. I’ve had other players bail at the start of some strikes and at the nearly unkillable boss after wiping a few times on others. That isn’t much fun. That’s probably the thing that will break my addiction and get me back to playing other games. On Friday night, for example, I ran into a mission I couldn’t solo (nor could others who are better than I am), then found a strike where the other guys bailed at the end. I was ready to give up at that point and shut down the PS4, but instead I found a couple of friends who helped me with both and it rebounded into a good evening rather than a depressing one.

    So, yes, The Taken King is good, damn it, and I can’t wait to play more.

  • Had fun in Destiny’s Iron Banner

    Despite my attempts to avoid Destiny, I played a bit of Iron Banner over the weekend. My goal was to get to get the Felwinter’s Lie shotgun, which meant I needed to get to Rank 4. I got to Rank 3 easily enough on Sunday, but decided to wait until Monday night to get the next rank, because I needed the bounties to boost my XP. After playing for perhaps an hour and a half on Monday night, I hit rank 4, bought the Hunter cape and shotgun, and immediately stopped playing.

    I was very pleased and surprised that I was the top player in a couple of the matches that we won. I was also the worst player in a match or two. So the rankings are more an indication of whether I had a good game or not rather than my innate ability (or lack thereof).

    I still have a bit of Destiny to play before the new expansion hits (I suppose I ought to order that, too). I need to play some Prison Of Elders so I can activate the Elder Scroll bounty I picked up in the Skolas level 35 success (where I was totally carried, and I admit it). Now my biggest problem is that I have way too many unlevelled guns and not enough weapon parts. Very annoying!

  • Still gaming, just not writing enough

    I’ve been too silent on here for too long. I’ve been playing lots of games, but I haven’t been writing my impressions of them, and oh boy do I have impressions to share. So I’ll try to write more frequently about some of the games I mention here.

    I’ve finally broken Destiny’s hold on me, so I am playing other games. I still check in on Destiny a few times a week, but no longer have the compulsion to play it to the exclusion of all else. I’ve even done some good things, including killing Skolas in the level 35 Prison of Elders (I was helped greatly by two players that were very good and knew what they were doing). I also helped a friend’s husband conquer Hard Mode of both the Crota raid and the Vault of Glass (well, I participated and killed things). So those were good accomplishments.

    My newest addiction is Elder Scrolls Online. I got it on sale for PS4 and I really like it. It isn’t so epic as Lord of the Rings Online, but the combat is great, and the crafting is pretty good, and the story is fine so far. Every chance I get, I pop online and work on one of my three characters.

    Speaking of LOTRO, I still play it a couple hours per week. The story is great, so I want to finish exploring the end game areas. I must admit, however, that I have little hope of getting all 8 of my characters through the end game and level 100. Too much repetition…

    I also bought the Borderlands Handsome Jack collection for PS4. I’d already played Borderlands 2 on PC, so I started with the Pre-Sequel, which I’m enjoying. However, I started a Borderlands 2 character, since some friends are playing that, and I realized that Borderlands 2 is a much better game. The Pre-Sequel seems to be puny in comparison, and I’m near the endgame of it.

    I’ve also been playing a tiny bit of Dragon Age: Inquisition. The problem is, I’m just about to start the end game, and I don’t want the game to end. I’m invested in the story and the characters, and I don’t want to be done with it, just to be able to play a few bolt-on DLCs later. So I’m taking it slower than I probably should.

    Finally, I’ve actually started up Star Trek Online a few times recently, mostly because of the giveaways to build excitement for the new season. I realized that there are game mechanics that are new and I need to learn them. So when I get done with Borderlands or Dragon Age, I’ll take some time and get back into STO. I have a lifetime subscription, so I don’t feel too guilt about stepping away for a year, but it is getting to be time that I should come back.