Destiny

[Stay Gold]

Undying Mind is a great strike, but I've done it a few times and have never returned. There's really no point since it's never a Weekly/Nightfall. I'm not crazy about the Dust Palace.

 

I don't think the exclusive stuff is making a huge difference. Sony players and Microsoft players are pretty much in the same boat as far as hitting a wall goes. 

 

But to me, getting burned out after 4 months of consistent playing isn't so bad. Last time I played a game this much was GTA 5 (and I've played a bunch of games in between GTA and Destiny). Doesn't happen often. I wish it was a bigger game, and I've ripped on all of its flaws since I started playing it, but it's been a blast to play many times.

[glfpunk]

The exclusive content deal between Bungie and Sony is beginning to backfire a little.

 

XBox players are indeed hitting the wall and are either migrating to other games in droves or revisiting older games.  By the time M$ players get the Sony content around the time of House of Wolves release, no one will really care. 

 

After doing VoG or CE once a week, the Dust Palace and Undying Mind strikes will almost seem like slumming for the hardcore 32s.  I'd do 'em once a piece for the grimoire cards and that is about it.

 

Yeah I don't think that's the case at all.  At least not from what I read on reddit all the time.  Most Xbox players don't really care about those strikes at all and the Sony players know the real truth- that those are the worst and most pain in the ass strikes in the game.  For real.  Whenever I'm doing Vanguard ROC strikes and those two strikes come up(Omnigul as well) everyone backs out and goes back to orbit to try and get a different one. 

 

People are backing away because the additional content from the DLC was minimal and the way they implemented the new level cap/upgrade system is just grind for the sense of grinding and very little reward/content.  Just my opinion but I don't think the exclusivity has much if anything to do with it.  I do feel bad that Xbox players miss out on Hawkmoon because it's an awesome gun but other than that, they ain't missing anything.  It's just been a grind man.  And it's not as rewarding as the initial grind to get to 30 before the DLC came out.  I'm hoping they hit a homerun with the House of Wolves because I already bought that shit haha. 

 

Edit:  Because of what Stay Gold posted above about Undying Mind I will clarify my original statement on it.  It was a ton of fun the first time I played it with two other friends.  Lasts a good while and a ton of stuff to kill and lots of different angles to take.  As a strike on the ROC playlist with random people it absolutely sucks.  It's long as shit and you can be sure your random strike mates will disappear if you actually attempt to do it.  And all you want to get from it is the Vanguard marks. 

[odessasteps]

The only reason I play in the evenings is if JT is on.

 

Otherwise I spend about a hour in the morning playing it and that would be it.

 

It is getting harder to find reasons to play other than force of habit and satisfying OCD.   I am pretty sure that if I took time and forced myself to  relearn control scheme of GTA5 and finish the story or revisited Borderlands 2, I would totally stop playing Destiny.

Obviously, i hit the wall a while ago. Giving up the Crucible and them tinkering with the daily stuff and having a schedule not condusive to playing with Team Leeroy Jenkins really killed my intertest.

Until i got the new episodeof GOT, i hadnt even turned on my 360 in maybe 2-3weeks.

[J.T.]

I've talked to a lot of randoms on 360 and it kinda does matter.   Despite being really tired of repetition, they would at least like the chance to experience the new strikes even if they suck just to check the box.

 

I've got my new gear upgrades and have gotten my ass handed to me in Doubles Skirmish (my worthless partner, BigGingerMonk, left after dying one time and it took seven minutes to get help), so the only thing driving me now is getting all of my Factions above Rank 10 and advancing my Crucible rank as far as I can in the meantime.. 

 

Once that is done, I'll be taking an extended break from Destiny.

 

Tomorrow is Xurday and i have got enough Strange Coins for the Exotic Weapon of the Week.   I am prepared to be disappointed by him not having Thunderlord, SUROS, or the Multitool for sale.  

[TheVileOne]

Bungie needed some good publicity this week so Xur has the ice breaker.  That's fine because I finally got one.

[glfpunk]

He just sold that shit a few weeks ago.  This is like a month straight his inventory has been garbage.  And it goes from a damn gauntlet engram to no engram.  Piling up these motes of light in here. 

[RIPPA]

Xur can eat a dick

[glfpunk]

It's funny, Xur used to be the one thing I was guaranteed to get excited about and now he's come to be this steaming pile of shit. 

[EVA]

Hey, I'll take that Icebreaker, you jaded fuckers.

Anyway, it was weird: Yesterday I was thinking to myself about how I'd never gotten an exotic drop in Crucible...and then last night, I got Dragon's Breath in the Crucible. RNGesus could sense that I was wavering.

Granted, it's just Dragon's Breath, but at least it's not another piece of gear I can't use.

[Stay Gold]

Yeah, I got the Ice Breaker several weeks ago, so this is another week of junk for me. It'll come in handy for one of my underpowered friends though, so I'll have to tell him.

 

Is it too much to ask for Xur to start selling Heavy Ammo Synthesis again?

[glfpunk]

People are super pissed about that but to be honest, I'm cool with doing the heavy ammo glitch.  Still would be nice to stock up just to have them for nightfalls etc. 

[J.T.]

I think I will shit if fucking Xur finally sells Thunderlord. 

 

Xur must've made a lot of Hunters happy today. I saw no less than five Hunters sporting IB boots and gaunt and the Crest of Alpha Lupi and sporting either the Legend of Six Coyotes cloak or the Strength of the Pack cloak.

 

I guess I am not the only Hunter out there that has to have some thematic thing going on.

 

I am up to Rank 5 with FWC and NM and am Rank 6 with DO.   Better late than never. 

 

I am stoked about nearly reaching Rank 11 with the Crucible.   The disparity between my Crucible rank and my Vanguard rank (currently 17) is as glaring as it used to be..

[EVA]

Am I wrong in thinking that vanguard rank is pretty useless after a certain point? The reward packages for hitting each new level are nice, obviously, but eventually, you don't really need the stuff your vanguard vendor is selling.

[glfpunk]

Am I wrong in thinking that vanguard rank is pretty useless after a certain point? The reward packages for hitting each new level are nice, obviously, but eventually, you don't really need the stuff your vanguard vendor is selling.

As soon as you hit level 31 you don't need anything any of the factions are selling including vanguard and crucible. It's just a matter of if you want to buy a weapon from one of them over the other or if you're going to get a particular shader from a package.

And JT mine is unbalanced as well. I think in rank 5 with crucible, 3 with new monarchy, 3 with fwc, 0 with dead orbit, and 42 vanguard.

[J.T.]

Am I wrong in thinking that vanguard rank is pretty useless after a certain point? The reward packages for hitting each new level are nice, obviously, but eventually, you don't really need the stuff your vanguard vendor is selling.

 

Yes and no.

 

If the items I get in the reward packages aren't better than the armor or weapons I already have, I shred the stuff and stockpile the ascendant materials.   The item screwjob that went downa after the new DLC hit taught me that you can never tell when you will need shards and / or energy.

 

As far as Banshee and the Cryprtarch go, yeah, unless you are trying to get yourself below the glimmer cap, you won't buy anything from them after you get past Level 10 or so. 

[J.T.]

I am not a regular raider so I need some help understanding something.   Why is it so important to them that Xur have Heavy Weapon Synths available for sale?   Don't Banshee and Eris sell those fucking things? 

 

I am sitting on a stack of 16 on my Hunter and have to buy at least two from Banshee to get myself below the glimmer cap.

[TheVileOne]

Am I wrong in thinking that vanguard rank is pretty useless after a certain point? The reward packages for hitting each new level are nice, obviously, but eventually, you don't really need the stuff your vanguard vendor is selling.

 

Just like the Gunsmith and Rahul.  Everything they have is pretty much useless after like level 8.

[RIPPA]

I believe Xur's heavy weapon synth was like a 5 pack (or something like that)

So it was "cheaper" to get it from Xur then buy it one at a time from the other vendors

 

At least that is what I recall seeing

[Stay Gold]

I am not a regular raider so I need some help understanding something.   Why is it so important to them that Xur have Heavy Weapon Synths available for sale?   Don't Banshee and Eris sell those fucking things? 

 

I am sitting on a stack of 16 on my Hunter and have to buy at least two from Banshee to get myself below the glimmer cap.

 

You get 5 synth packs for 1 strange coin. As opposed to spending about 1000 glimmer for 1 from Banshee, or 5 Black Wax Idols for 1 from Eris. When you're upgrading your new gear/guns AND buying synth for every raid, you run out of glimmer fast. And farming for it is super annoying and time consuming.

 

A lot of people use a synth or two for the witch (mini boss before Crota). Then at the end, 3-4 (sometimes 5) people are usually hitting Crota with rockets. If Crota's End goes well, you might not even use a synth. But if you're dealing with constant glitches, or inexperienced Raiders, it's not uncommon to waste a bunch of synths. There's an "exploit" to counter this ammo problem, but it's kind of annoying so I rather just pop a synth if I need it.

 

It's explained pretty well in that latest Kotaku article that was posted here.

 

Of all the bugs in Destiny—and there are a lot of bugs in Destiny—one stands apart in the minds of players: The heavy ammo bug. In the game, if you die while wearing a piece of armor that increases your heavy ammo capacity, you actually lose some ammo. Maybe one or two rockets, or some heavy machine-gun rounds. Die multiple times, and your stock of seven rockets will be reduced to one or two.21

This wouldn't ordinarily be all that big a deal, but several factors stack on top of one another and make it into a much bigger problem than it first seems.

• Heavy ammo is crucial for Crota's End. Defeating Crota requires everyone to use a lot of heavy ammo with precision timing, and if someone on your team runs out of rockets, it can blow the run for everyone.
• Fighting Crota also requires a lot of trial and error, meaning that teams will frequently need to "wipe," or all die so that they can restart.
• The raid armor that lets you get to level 32 has a perk that raises your heavy ammo, meaning that the raid armor—specifically, the leg armor—triggers the heavy ammo bug. Every time you wipe while wearing raid armor (which almost everyone wears during a hard mode raid), every person on your team will lose some of their heavy ammo.
• Heavy ammo is relatively difficult to find in the field, meaning that the most sure-fire way to get it is to use heavy ammo "synths," or single-use packs you can buy that replenish all of your heavy ammo in the field.
• It's possible to pop a heavy ammo pack, then have your team wipe several times and lose all of the ammo you just got, not because you used it, but because the bug drained it away.
• A heavy ammo pack costs nearly 1,000 glimmer at the gunsmith, so if you run out of heavy ammo packs and want to go raiding, first you'll have to spend a big chunk of timemindlessly grinding glimmer at the exclusion zone.2223
• Xur sells heavy ammo packs for relatively cheap, so when he has them in stock, it's a great way for hardcore raiders to stock up. The problem is that he hasn't sold heavy ammo packs for several weeks now, meaning that anyone who's been farming Crota's End Hard Mode has probably run out of heavy ammo packs and has been forced to farm the Exclusion Zone multiple times when they'd rather be off playing the raid.

In other words, players need heavy ammo to beat Crota, but Crota frequently kills the entire team, and the bug drains them of their heavy ammo as they die. Xur hasn't sold heavy ammo in a while, so players need to go and perform thankless grinding in order to get more heavy ammo so they can go fight Crota again. And on, and on, and on.

 

[J.T.]

I always have a stack of 20 HWS on me over the course of buying my way under the Glimmer cap after my morning Vanguard Bounty runs right before I head off to work and I'd rather spend my SC's on new exotics so that I can improve my Grimoire score.

 

I have played a shitload of MMOs so the prospect of making glimmer runs while working on Vanguard Bounties really doesn't bother me.  There are times when I find the grind to be pretty relaxing.

[glfpunk]

Yeah Xur sells them at 5 heavy synths for 1 strange coin.

Buying them at 950 glimmer for one synth from the gunsmith is easily the worst deal in the game. Your glimmer situation isn't really that common JT. Most people are constantly burning through their glimmer.

Also the reason people use them at the current rate is the final battle in the Crotas End raid pretty much requires everyone to fire rockets. So you make an attempt that's unsuccessful and you fire off five rockets and your team wipes, you're going to have to use a synth to make an honest attempt at the next one.

Considering Xur used to sell them every single week and upon the release of the DLC all of a sudden he quits selling them is why people are pissed.

[TheVileOne]

Regardless, I will take the Ice Breaker.  So thank you Xur.

 

Is the heavy ammo thing actually a bug?  I thought that was just the game limiting how much heavy ammo you can spam.  Like it's part of the difficulty level, "Fuck you!  No rockets for you!"

[Stay Gold]

It's a bug. Bungie has acknowledged it and said they were working on a solution.

 

Someone here mentioned having a great rng Crusader I. Same here. My old one was good, but my post DLC Crusader is my most used primary, even after all the maxed out exotics and raid guns I have. It has firefly and explosive rounds. Great for crowd control.

[J.T.]

I think that Rippa's RNG Crusader has Explosive Rounds, Glass Half Full, and Firefly.  It is fucking sick.

[Stay Gold]

I don't know what my 3rd perk is. I don't think it's Glass Half Full though. What an OP gun. Nice.