1601

I finally got the Vault of Glass raid helmet. ._.

1602

Congrats!

I got Hunger of Crota last night, can’t wait to blast Thralls with its solar damage in Nightfall this week.

1603

This is one of those “fun” weeks where the Nightfall is actually easier than the Weekly Heroic. Solar Burn on the Nightfall is only a real threat in the first half against the Fallen, and that can just be done carefully. In the second half against the Hive and Omnigul, almost nothing is throwing solar at you. Meanwhile there’s no burn on the Heroic, so taking out Omnigul isn’t technically any more dangerous, but it’s definitely slower.

1604

I just got this game (and a ps4 in general), so forgive me if i’m late to the party…

I like it overall, but… It is basically borderlands, right down to being a huge grind.

The console controls are very well done, which is no surprise for bungie. My last experience trying a shooter on a console was resistance 2 and that was a piece of shit and a great example of how shooter controls suck on a gamepad. Destiny actually works quite well, albeit obviously still it can’t break that glass ceiling.

The graphics and sound are of course nice. AAA game on next generation console, check.

The difficulty is annoying more than hard. I’ve been doing hard missions and all this means is that everything is a bullet sponge and everything kills me in 4 hits (or less). Captains and bosses are particularly bad. (Keeping in mind I am early in the game) These are rarely very difficult as their shots have been pretty easy to LOS, but they take forever to kill and generally have many respawning waves of bland trash.

So far Bungie’s idea of difficulty seems to be to give everything TONS of health, make it do TONS of damage and make it have area effect homing attacks. This just seems… lazy.

In one particularly bad battle, I have to defend a point. There is a group of enemies attacking from the other side of the room and one keep hiding behind cover and not coming out, forcing me to go kill him. The problem is that once he dies, enemies teleport spawn to the sides of the room and instantly kill me because I have no cover from them. After dying a few times on this, I eventually got it, but it reminded me of Mass Effect on insanity where if you don’t know where enemies will spawn from and you are at all aggressive, you will instantly die. At least ME didn’t teleport enemies on top of you though.

Also, there are level 20 enemies randomly in the newbie areas on earth. This is beyond stupid. One time I was doing some public event that was about level 5 and the guy I needed to kill ran in to a pack of level 20 enemies. Many times I’ve attacked something without checking the level first only to be instantly killed because it is 20.

There is no story, writing or depth in this universe at all (yet). I don’t expect Torment quality from Bungie, but I expect blizzard quality of story/characters. These are the people who brought us likeable characters like Cortana and Master Chief and this is what they have sunk to? I also remember the hype promising a lot on how this was going to be a new way of telling a story and how rich the universe was. Obviously this was not true.

So far, items are boring with only a few different weapons. Due to the limited nature of special weapon ammo, I can’t use those that often so I end up using my primary weapon 95% of the time. This might change later on, I hope it does, but this game certainly does not hit the ground running.

The classes seem boring and too much the same. In any class based game I play, I look for the classes to be distinct and interesting. I just don’t see that here, at all. From looking ahead at skills, I don’t see that changing very much. This seems like a game for people who thought the classes in Borderlands had too much influence on gameplay. Sadly I thought they didn’t have enough so I can’t help but be disappointed here.

Lastly a minor annoyance is that there is WAY too much Push Button and Wait. I feel like on every screen I need to hold down a button for 5 seconds to go to the next screen. I understand why they have this on some elements, but the time they set for it is too high.

1605

Leak from a Bungie in-house presentation.

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Future expansions/DLC

House of Wolves
Date: March 10th, 2015
Locations: Cosmodrome, Moon, Venus, Reef
Activities: 3 Story, 1 Strike, 1 Raid, 4 PvP Maps

Comet: Plague of Darkness
Date: September 2015
Locations: Moon, Venus, Mars, Hive Ship
Activities: 12 Story, 4 Strike, 1 Raid, 1 Location, 6 PvP Maps
Bonus: New subclasses and 2 new weapon types

Vex [illegible]
Date: TBA
Locations: Venus, Mars
Activities: 3 Story, 2 Strike, 1 Raid, ? PvP Maps

Forge of Gods
Date: TBA
Locations: TBA
Activities: TBA

Note that “Comet” is shown in the chart as a retail disc.

1606

Wellcome to the game!.

Hope you end the 1-20 content quick, is the most boring part of the game. As for repetitive design, … the mobs itself show great AI, they use cover, change cover, avoid sniper fire. They have better AI than most mobs in other videogames. Sadly, Bungie encounter design is not as ideal, they designed all assault mobs around the idea of huge hp bars. But players are crafty, and we find many ways to beat content before it even started (cheeese). You will find, the best of this game is the players.

1607

Heads up, Xur is currently selling some hunter gloves called “Don’t Touch Me”. I highly recommend picking them up. Their main thing is that they make you invisible when you are hit by a melee attack.

For PvP, it’s basically useless… but against enemies in PvE, it enables some crazy shennanigans.

For instance, in the new Raid, in the first section, you can basically just run through it. The infinite thralls will chase you, but as soon as one hits you, you go invisible and then can run away… repeat through the whole section.

1608

On the other hand, Starfire Protocol, the Chest Armor for us Warlocks sounds worthless. It gives you an extra fusion grenade, but it doesn’t stack with the ability which gives you an extra fusion grenade. So I guess in theory, you could wear Starfire Protocol, and get 2 grenades that way, then change your ability from Gift of Sun to something else. I’ll have to get home tonight to see if there is something that would prove useful.

1609

The space ship loading screens are amusing at first, but they got old REAL fast. Not to mention that now i am stuck on a never ending journey as i’ve been flying my space ship for the past 5 minutes. I guess this is Bungie’s way of saying to take a break.

In general, I kind of expected better in a next generation console game as far as loading goes.

1610

Yeah, they should definitely let you steer the ship at the very least, starfox style maybe. Keep the camera fixed.

1611

Never stare at the ship. Go to your inventory and manage your equipment while the game loads.

1612

We all do that, but there isn’t enough to do in the inventory all of the time. This is especially true for low level characters. The ship is a hell of a lot better than what Halo 4 had, or what the Halo 5 beta has: you staring at 7 other names, wondering when you’ll get an 8th gamer tag so you can start playing.

1613

It is pretty cool i can mess with my inventory/stats while loading, but yeah, I am level 8 so as Rock8man mentions, i sadly don’t have a ton of shiny things to mess with.

I just wish there was a progress bar so i could see that it was still going at it, even if it was just an estimate/lie.

1614

Oh, it’s not loading necessarily, so a straight progress bar isn’t really possible. Most of the time you’re seeing the ship, it’s connecting everyone to the game. That’s why sometimes it happens really fast, while other times it takes forever. If it was actually loading a level, the load times would be the same, not vary so wildly. That’s why I mentioned Halo connection screens. This is a way to pleasantly pass the time while it’s connecting you and everyone else in the area to the right server.

1615

Ya, it’s not rally a loading screen, but rather a matchmaking screen. While you are watching the ship fly, the game is finding a server for you to play in.

It’s especially annoying and pointless when you just need to go to the tower, where matchmaking serves no purpose at all.

1616

I sort of disagree with that last part. Whenever there’s been 4 or 5 of us friends wanting to get into the Vault of Glass, the Tower is the best way we’ve found of asking strangers if they want to go to the Raid with us. It’s also a good place for those of us who know each other to check out what we’ve got on us, to talk about our lives, etc., while one of us is storing equipment or leveling stuff up, or turning in bounties, or checking out what’s available, etc. And while we’re doing that, sometimes we check out what the strangers around us are wearing, what equipment and weapons they are using.

The tower isn’t great, but as a matchmade social sphere, it’s better than not having a tower.

1617

Eh, I just started playing the other day, too, and I’m finding that the content is going by a little too quickly. I’m outleveling the areas before I’ve done all the missions there, and now i feel somewhat overpowered. I’m level 14, and just headed to Venus- and the first mission there is rated level 10.

I know that’s not what you’re really saying, but how significantly does the game change after 20?

oh, and while I’m asking questions, what are the crafting materials for? Spinmetal and Helium3 and whatnot. People say you use them to upgrade your gear, but I can’t find anywhere to do that.

1618

What do we think of the Claws of Ahamkara? Got them from an exotic engram, can’t decide if I should keep or dismantle them for the shard.

1619

“Gain an additional charge for Scorch and Energy Drain.” Sounds really useful for both single player and Crucible. Probably not as useful as the ability to resurrect (and be resurrected) faster in Nightfalls and strikes, but in anything other than Strikes, I’d love to have that feature instead.

1620

Your motivations change significantly after 20. At 20, experience earned no longer increases your level; to increase your level you have to equip armor that includes “light”. You’ll need to do that to get to at least level 28 if you want to run the Vault of Glass raid, and higher if you want to do VoG on hard mode or the new Crota’s End raid.

It’s hard to convey in writing that this is actually a lot of fun and not a boring grind—and certainly for some people it still won’t be fun, but for a lot of us, it’s surprising how satisfying it is to keep running slight variations on the same missions with more difficult enemies. Earning some of our gear and getting the rest through luck is remarkably more fun that it looks on paper.

I can’t remember exactly what levels are the thresholds where the systems for the post-20 gameplay open up. You’ll eventually unlock daily heroic missions, strike playlists, and of course, the “light” aspect of upgrading your character. I remember some of that kicking in around level 16, but the light-bearing armor might not have been till level 20. Anyway, around that time you’ll start finding and being able to purchase weapons and armor that are upgradable, and that’s what the spinmetal and other planetary resources are for. You should grab any that you see while you’re playing, but it’s too early to worry about running around doing nothing but looking for more (and they’ve changed things a little bit so theoretically you never need to just farm materials, though I haven’t taken a character through the game from the start to see if that holds up in practice).