omniscientcajun

My Destiny friends and I have been talking about it a lot. My feelings on Destiny PvP shifted so much over my tumultuous relationship over its lifespan. The first two months of Vanilla Destiny, I played exclusively Clash. Now, it's my least favorite mode. When Rift was introduced, I thought it was a fun, joke mode, then a stupid joke mode, now I love it for its teamwork and map control. I hated my first experience with Trials, now I'm a fan, but as I only really play casually with my friends, the best I've ever done is 6 or 7 wins.

I'm going to really miss 6v6. I think all the 3v3 modes transition well to 4v4, but a lot of 6v6 doesn't transition down to 4v4. Control will have to be reworked or brought down to 2 control points. Rift cannot exist in its current state. I understand when good Destiny players say they dislike 6s due to the chaos. I'm confident enough in my skill and awareness to believe that if it's me and one other player at primary range, I'm going to win those engagements most of the time. Having someone come in from the side or behind and blindside me is frustrating.

But I worry that there won't be much game type variety with just 4v4. If Control is two points, how will it differ much from Countdown? With smaller maps, outside of Clash/Rumble, engagements will happen at the same points. I haven't studied a bunch of footage of PvP from the reveal, and its only one map, but it felt as small as any map in Destiny 1, a typical left-middle-right/top-middle-bottom trilane map.

My friends have told me to cool it; there hasn't been enough revealed yet for me to panic over. I've seen one strike, one mission, one PvP map & mode, and a few subclasses. I'm trying to not worry - plus, that reveal, overall, got me pretty excited. Basically, I need to start appreciating that D2 will be its own game and may not have every little bit of what I love from D1. But as someone kind of in between a casual Destiny PvPer and a hardcore one, losing 6s makes me a little sad. That and the diamond-shaped subclass blocks (the need to use one or the other, as opposed to mixing-and-matching); I understand the reasons why Bungie would do it the way they have, but I don't fully agree with them. But again, it's months away and there is more to learn.

My top 10 games last year included The Witness, Inside, Firewatch, Enter the Gungeon, Hyper Light Drifter, and Salt & Sanctuary. And though I didn't play some of those on PS4, all are available there and were released for the platform in 2016.

I love that GB Destiny players are assembling and are reinvigorated by the coming release of RoI. I just was accepted to the BBB group and already was a group member (and former clan member) of Cerberus Wolves - and before that Lincoln Force NA Central (and before that Lincoln Force NA East 1).

I won't be joining the clan as I am in a small clan with friends and friends of friends, but will be playing a lot of Destiny over the coming weeks. You can call on me if you need someone to round out a fireteam (PS4 PSN ID same as here, NA Eastern Time Zone), and I may be on the group wall asking the same. I'm drunk off the collective excitement and anticipation for tomorrow and Year 3 going forward.

I fired up Furi for the first time yesterday, and 90 minutes later deleted it from my PS4 hard drive. I really wanted to like that game. And I may have done myself a disservice in playing it immediately after finishing Hyper Light Drifter, another game with split-second dodge-dashing.

But the dodge felt terrible to me. It felt like there were no invincibility frames at the very beginning of the dash, so last-second attempts to dodge through an attack were denied. I played Salt & Sanctuary earlier this year and the iFrames were so front loaded, it taught me that I needed to wait as long as possible to roll through/away from attacks, so some of that mindset may still be ingrained in me. The very end of dodges felt vulnerable to attack too, so by the time I rolled up on the third boss (EDM Dhalsim as I had seen him referred to here), I couldn't tell whether the game was punishing early attempts at dodging, late attempts, or both.

Without knowing what I'm doing wrong so that I may better myself, nor any substantive feedback from the game other than "you're failing, succeed better," I didn't feel inclined to continue. Rather the opposite, I felt pushed away. I realize Furi is a hard game. But the best hard games teach you how to grow, persevere, and overcome.

I brought up Hyper Light Drifter at the top, not because it is so similar to Furi, nor does it fall in the category of hard games that teach you to succeed. No, I brought it up to talk about margins for success. HLD and Furi both don't communicate much outright to the player. In fact, Furi communicates substantially more by means of visual and audio cues, color changes, etc. But Furi has a much tighter margin required to succeed. If the dash favored late-dashing or if it favored early-dashing, that'd be fine. I'd learn that as the player, albeit inelegantly, to dodge accordingly. But to punish a player for being both a fraction early and a fraction late would require the dashing to feel "great." I put great in quotations not to be facetious, but instead because game feel is something that I can't communicate particularly well at this point and to me, Furi just didn't feel tight enough or responsive enough to justify such a small margin for error.

Hyper Light Drifter, likewise, felt not "great." But because the combat scenarios were often open enough, varied enough, and offering multiple avenues of approach, I never felt as though I was bashing my head against it, hoping for success. If something didn't work, or if I felt like the game couldn't accommodate what I wanted to do (rightfully or foolishly), I was able to try something else. HLD is punishing at times, but due to its options, its margins never constricted me to the point of strong frustration. Furi did, repeatedly on both the second and third bosses. Not feeling obligated to push through, nor wanting to throw a controller, I put it down, likely for good.

I liked the counter system, the way the game handled health bars and refilling upon depleting a boss's pip, the artstyle (could have benefited perhaps from embracing depth of field a bit more, though likely, some of the vibrancy would have suffered), and damn, that music is great. I just couldn't get over myself and my play habits to play exactly how the game wanted me to play.

I ran through all 10 of my PS4 placement matches yesterday with a few friends I regularly play with. Went 5-5, ranked at 49 which seemed accurate. I fancy myself an above-average player, but admittedly I played pretty poorly in some of those matches. One of my friends also ranked at 49, calling into question how much our individual effort impacted our rating. The other didn't play for a few matches at the beginning and left after our first non-ranking Competitive mode match (not that there's any difference).

Speaking of said match, it really soured me on Competitive. We just finished our placement and then got matched against a team with a 48, a 49, two 53s and a couple not-yet-ranked. However both of the 53s were around level 240 or so, and two others on that team were over 100 as well. I'm closing in on 50 and my friends are around 65. And the other team was absolutely savage. Like, it was the most stomped I've ever been in Overwatch. To say nothing of the humiliation of getting the shit kicked out of us for three straight rounds on Ilios, my friend and I then proceeded to lose a full rank, presumably because one person on our team was ranked 59.

I'm still willing to and want to keep trying competitive, but man that stunk. The third round, as opposed to the 2-out-of-3 in quick play, was particularly demoralizing, knowing at that point there was little we could do. Oh well, win some, lose some others really, really badly, as the saying goes.

As far as existing exclusives that you can't find on PC, other than those that you've mentioned and The Last of Us (as you have a PS3) I'd recommend considering the following three:

• Ratchet & Clank
• Until Dawn
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

But if none of those are of interest and the only games you want are the two you mentioned, then I'd definitely tell you to wait on more details for the Neo to emerge. You have a PC, so recommending indie games for the PS4 is next-to pointless, even though the system is solid showcase for non-AAA games.

Some of what I've gleaned:

1) Right now, until we know more about The Taken King, I shouldn't bother upgrading my current Legendary Weapons.

2) Furthermore, with the economy changes, I'd be better off converting my Ascendant Energy into Ascendant Shards and then convert all my Ascendant Shards into Motes of Light. Is there a reason why I shouldn't do this at this point?

3) It seems as though the smartest thing to do until we know more, is just to hang on to my mats (potentially converted to the more general upgrade mat with the economy changes) and my vanguard marks.

And sadly, no Gjallarhorn for more. Upon jumping back in, I only had 7 Strange Coins and I've only been able to add 2 more in two days of fairly heavy play. AND, as the Weekly Strike is part of the Dark Below DLC and I don't have it, it's unlikely I'll stumble upon 8 more Strange Coins in the next day and a half. It's OK, I'll just gather my dozen or more other exotics around me to keep me warm while I sob by myself (like I said, I played a lot of this game in the first 2 months).

So I played a lot of Destiny. Like days and days of in-game time over the 2-and-a-half months following it's release. There wasn't a lot to do back in the early days and the pursuit of Lvl 30 Light burned through me, unrequited to this day, as I ran Vault of Glass on a weekly basis with randoms from DestinyLFG on all three of my characters.

Then I stopped. Cold. A few weeks before The Dark Below came out. And I haven't played since. But now... Now I want back in.

I picked it up again yesterday and my goodness, it still feels so solid to play. One of my absolute favorite FPS "game-feels." But I'm without the two expansions and the Fallen King is a month away. Important side-detail - I'm cheap. I found the disc "legendary" version of the Fallen King on Amazon for $50 and saving the $30 bucks over buying each piecemeal won out over dropping $40 now and potentially another $40 in a month's time.

So I come to the GB forums with this question in mind: What have I missed in Destiny? Are my small stockpiles of Ascendant Materials and Shards worth jack anymore? Is Etheric Light the end-all now? Is it even worth upgrading my non-expansion guns without Etheric Light?

And just as importantly, what should I be doing now in Destiny? Trading Vanguard marks for materials seems like a tremendously convenient change, but with the forthcoming end-of-Year-1 sweeping economy changes should I be investing my materials in upgrades now, or hoarding them for when the conversion to generic upgrade materials happens? What will become of my formerly-precious Ascendant mats?

Thanks for reading, duders! Any and all advice and knowledge will go quite appreciated.

I am so 100% on board! I'm a PS4 free agent looking to bring my lvl 15 Semi-Pro skill to a team in need and in search of GB Cup immortality.

PSN ID is the same as my user name here, OmniscientCajun

Just picked up my copy. Happy to play with my vinnco Blood-brethren!

PSN tag is the same as it is here - OmnsicientCajun.