1564

Yeah, it’s not your game if you don’t find the run-and-gun appealing. It’s like the core gameplay loop of Diablo-type ARPGs.

1565

I did the laundry list of things and hunted down “Neptune” as part of “season 1 of Shadow Tide” and don’t think any special loot dropped off him.

The Pentagon and DARPA missions are about the only ones that will be sort of a pain in the butt solo.

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I wonder how much mileage they can get out of running and re-running the same content over and over. It’s annoying how every GAAS wants it to be the only game you play and angles for the FOMO with time-limited events and things.

1566

Yeah, I offed Neptune as well, also solo. Wasn’t too hard, but also wasn’t terribly rewarding, either. I agree about the recycling of stuff. The invasion/Black Tusk mechanic does at least swap things around a bit, and some times the reuse of the same locations includes some variation on routes or which doors are open, etc. But after a while, it does get a bit same-o same-o. Luckily, as I’ve said before, the city is cool and the gunplay is good.

I ran a second character up to 30 and am trying to do as much as I can in DC before redoing WONY. First time I inadvertently boosted myself, not realizing I couldn’t return to DC until after I finished NY. This time I want to play through as much of the DC story/world tiers as I can before heading to the Big Apple.

1567

My brother and I are cooping the game for the missions/to dos on the manhunts, no problem, then we got to Roosevelt Island and laughed. When we were originally leveling up to 30/500, we thought we were hot stuff in coop (even though we didn’t dare play at heroic or even the level below that, because we also know our limits.) We’d heard RI was hard, but we did pretty well through most of it, making the “law of the mouth” mistake by commenting, eh, this isn’t so hard. Then we climbed over the wall.

We got DESTROYED the first time we played that last part of Roosevelt Island. As in, quickly overwhelmed. We started again, talked about it (you go to that place on the left, I’ll go right) and climbed over the wall. And again, got overwhelmed and obliterated.

We did that over and over. We both had basically Red builds, standard AR/LMG type loadouts. I think we both had assault turrets and I had a chem healer. Each time, we’d get slaughtered, maybe taking a little more time, then restart. We felt like Butch Cassidy and the Sundown Kid when they run out of the building at the end of the movie to their deaths. We were about ready to just quit; it seemed impossible. Then, we somehow made it to the end, killed the last guy, saw the mini map clear of any red, and exchanged virtual high fives. We ran up to blow up the tanks… then the next wave. We said SURELY it won’t start us all the way over, but of course it did. It took us hours, but when we finally finished, we were exhausted but happy.

So this time, we laugh, say, OK, we’re a lot better than we used to be, and took it on. Easily got through the mission, no deaths, until we got to the wall. Climbed over, and it was hard, but we cleared everyone out without a death, watching each other’s back, calling out (“you’ve got a yellow with flames trying to flank you!”) using sniper turrets and an assault drone for him, cluster mines for me, having to use an armor kit or two, but we cleared it with a death. Then law of the mouth kicked in again:

“Remember the first time we played this?” “Yeah, we are SO much better now” “Right, that was tough but we handled it, couldn’t have done this back then” etc.

OK, blow up the first tank, next wave comes. My brother decides instead of going back to the positions where we first cleared everything out, he’s going to climb the tower and use the mini-gun. Good idea. OK, not good idea. He starts to get surrounded, no good cover, so he runs back toward the wall and takes his position again, I’m already in mine. But now him not being in that spot has allowed a lot of bad guys to be positioned around there, and he waits too long to use an armor kit and dies. So now I have to leave my defensive position and try to get to him to heal him before he dies. Now I’m getting swarmed as I try to get to him and heal him, the flame guys get to me, game over.

By now it’s midnight, so we quit. We still have to do it from the beginning. I’d like that better if it didn’t seem the loot drops are pretty weak these days.

1568

I freakin’ hate Roosevelt Island. I did manage it pretty easily solo when I went back to it after WONY patch, as I think they toned things down a bit for solo players at that point. I am looking at doing it again on another character though and I’ll see how it is several patches post WONY.

Most of my deaths in this game come from being surrounded or getting hung up on the environment. Third person is not a perspective I am 100% native to, though I’ve gotten a lot better at it, and the cover system still gets me killed. I end up sticking to cover when I don’t want to a lot. Also, I tend to always end up having to reload when a bad buy is in my face, and I don’t play conservatively enough with exposure. From 1-29 you can pretty much face tank everything, but at 30+ I’ve found you really have to be careful about getting burned down fast, especially if you are trading off armor and health for +1 skill tier gear.

I will say that the sniper turret has been a godsend. Far better for me than either the assault or flame turrets. Some encounters I can finish without firing my own weapon, if I can put the turret in the right spot and the enemy AI is accommodating. I also use the Firefly that attacks armor and week spots and environmental hazards, though getting it to hit what I want it to hit is often wonky. When it works, it makes elites melt.

1569

Tell me more about the Firefly? I use cluster mines for crowd control, along with the sniper turret.

1570

Hey, I got a question about that. I just tried out the sniper turret for the first time over the weekend and didn’t much care for it, but maybe I’m doing something wrong. It seemed like my sniper never took a shot until I marked a target for it, should this thing require that much babysitting? Seems like it shouldn’t, just based on my experience with the assault and flame turrets (which can take out bad guys on their own no problem), but my sniper turret just seems to sit and spin if I leave it unattended.

1571

That’s how sniper turret (and mortar turret) works. You tell it who to shoot (by aiming) and when to shoot (by hitting E), it doesn’t shoot by itself.

The advantage is that it can one-shot reds and purples and can kill yellows in 2-3 shots. Depending on your build and level of difficulty, of course. This can really save your bacon and IMO is more effective than the assault turret.

The disadvantage is that it gets bugged sometimes and will start missing more than half of its shots. Sometimes a patch would screw it up, sometimes, I guess, it’s due to lag and server issues. It’s much more capricious - when it works it’s awesome, when it misbehaves, it’s useless and will get you killed.

It’s not that big of a deal on Normal but really sucks at higher difficulties. Eventually, I stopped using it in Challenging because of these reliability issues.

Well, I also stopped using a skill build and switched to dps just like everyone else. :) IMO skill is much more fun but much less effective, especially with pick up groups.

1572

I tried the sniper turret early on and rejected it. It does require you to hit the fire button for it to fire but it will acquire it’s own targets. You can also aim at something if you want it to hit a specific target. But I’ve been in major battles (e.g. Roosevelt Island, the Keener mission) where I was shooting at what I was shooting and just hitting the fire button for the sniper turret and I let it take people/drones out on it’s own. I’ve got a pretty heavy skill build, so it fires forever before running out of ammo (something like 17 shots?) and cooldown is only 15 seconds. There have been times I’ve felt guilty because I could sit behind cover and just let it do all the work. It’s like adding a really good sniper to your team. When my brother and I both toss up our sniper turrets at the same time, it can be pretty devastating (and he runs a Red build.)

1573

I have the gunner specialization unlocked already but did all the field research anyways. I’m stuck on the last step where I can’t blow off the miniboss Basilisk’s armor before he’s killed.

1574

I haven’t played this game since the month of release, right up until the expansion dropped. I really like the changes to recalibration and ditching gear score. I also really like how they changed Skill Power into something that makes sense. Whoever came up with the idea for a Skill Power stat that didn’t actually do anything to improve the power of your skills needs to lifetime ban on ever being involved in game design again. It remains one of the dumbest design decisions I’ve encountered in a game, so I’m glad to see that’s rectified.

While tons of things are improved, I still feel like the designers are overly scared about making decisions impactful. Look at the specializations and the paragon/watch system. Specializations are almost entirely devoid of impactful choices. I’m playing the Technician right now and while the +1 Skill tier is good, it’s also limited. It still won’t allow you to exceed the 6 skill tier max. It doesn’t make it any easier to get Overdrive or whatever that bonus tier is. His unique skill is also pretty pathetic and there’s a good reason I’ve literally never seen a single person use it. It is a Hive that will recharge the duration of existing deployables. The problem I have with it as a Technician is that the one skill I would actually find this useful for is something like the stinger or healing hive, but you can only equip one hive at once. So that doesn’t work. You can try to coordinate this with a group I suppose, but taking up one of your skill slots so you can refresh the duration of deployed skills just seems… not a great call. Especially when you’re playing a Skill-based build like me, you really need the second slot to actually perform a function (damage or healing).

Other than that? I have a choice between 10% to healing or 10% skill damage, that’s it. Both are about as impactful (or less, in the case of healing) as a single attribute on a piece of gear. The other choices in the tree are just the bog standard 5/10/15% damage to insert_weapon_here stats and other stuff like that. And the Watch upgrades? Ugh, are you kidding me? Every 5 levels I can get a point to put into Skills and raise the skill damage by 0.2%? Gee, that’s exciting!

I really like the gameplay so I’m having a good enough time with it, but man I wish they would be a little more daring in the design of their skills, specializations, etc. It’s better than it was by a long shot but it still falls far short for me. Nothing bores me more than things like figuring out whether to assign 0.2% into one stat or the other.

1575

OK, that lines up with my experience at least, but it seems like it would severely limit its utility for me. I can see how that might work in situations where you want to hang back and let the turret do the work but I prefer to use skills in supplementary fashion rather than just, you know, do all the work for me.

1576

For when I am soloing, I find the sniper turret to be a more effective “partner” that the assault turret I used to use. I actually was using the stinger hive and cluster seeker mines, my “crowd control” for my solo play, and replaced the stinger hive with the sniper turret. It’s good crowd control, e.g. if I have someone firing at me with a minigun every time I raise my head, two suicide guys rushing me, and a big yellow heavy heading my way with a flame thrower, I can decide who do I prioritize and who do I have the sniper turret help me with. It’s also good with hounds.

1577

I’m not sure who decided it would be worth it to have watch upgrades for which you get the exciting “whoosh” of a level up, then be rewarded with a decision to put another 0.2% into weapon damage or 0.2% into skill haste (for example.)

I get it, they heard everyone saying the play was stale because you get to level 30 and you optimize your build and there’s no more “reward” as every piece of gear or weapon is no better than what you already have, the carrot is no longer dangling to keep you playing. So the watch, so you can keep getting “promotions.” Then they realized, man, if we give people big upgrades when they level up, people are going to end up with 50% extra weapon damage (or choose you category.) So they pull it way back. But surely they understand NO ONE is going to care about these 0.2% improvements.

1578

To clarify, I play solo most of the time, and the sniper turret works well with my style. I toss it, take cover, and sort of peek out/aim out to aim the turret, hitting Q as it charges up and the line of fire from the turret is clear (no X in the line between turret and target). Takes some experience to figure out the best places to set up the turret for maximum effect, but it’s very useful as a solo player to take out things like Outcast suicide bombers. It’s also very nice at blowing armor off of elites. It does require babysitting, and it is more passive, but I find it complements an AR or regular rifle build pretty well.

I have also used the fire turret pretty heavily. It’s a great way to block an avenue and if you can hit people with it it burns off armor fast. I found it easy for them to bypass however.

1579

Yeah, that’s my favorite turret. It’s definitely shorter range than the other turrets but I love the damage and staggering it does to enemies. That and the seeker mines are my go-to skills.

1580

I like the seekers, though they have trouble climbing stairs (like Claptrap units I guess). The fire turret is wicked good when it works. Too often I find that I’ve tossed it exactly where it can’t hit anything, but that’s on me.

1581

I think they could do better by having milestones that provide much bigger jumps. Like a Perk you can choose every 5 Offensive points. Either that or greatly reduce the number of levels you can achieve so each step may actually feel noticeable.

Something like 0.2% weapon damage is completely meaningless. It still takes the same number of bullets to kill every mob in the game.

1582

Roosevelt Island was a pain with the old system due to the enemy spawn locations, which mean you tend to get flanked. I mean, consider that you start out flanked as soon as you jump over the wall, and 2 of the 4 enemy spawns points are behind you.

It became nigh-impossible with the first WONY due to enemy sponginess, but it’s doable again now. Stay away from the mounted guns unless you know what you’re doing. (The right-side gun doesn’t even face the enemy approach-direction.)

My suggestion for stripping away Basilisk’s armor for the unlock requirement is to use a pistol so you’re less likely to do post-armor damage after breaking a piece. Not that pistols do less damage specifically, but they’re more controllable. You can also retreat into the entryway until he stops chasing you, if you need a breather to heal/cooldown.

Mostly though, I find that Roosevelt Island isn’t worth the time investment.

1583

But you have to do it at least once.