Destiny 2

[Cliff Hanger]

Snagged the PC version last night from Humble but I was falling asleep before it finished downloading. Will let y'all know when I know my ID...is there a DVDVR clan there or are you all on Xbox?

[RIPPA]

There is a DVDVR clan - you sign up through Bungie

At this is exact moment - the active players lean XBOX but when the DLC drops    who knows. (We have folks in all three - XBOX, PS and PC)

[Basara]

My 2 month long Bloodborne binge is over so we jumped back on today to prepare for the coming DLC. 

6v6 Iron Banner is a lot of fun. Despite not really playing for a few months i was consistently getting 20+ kills and finished top of the board quite a few times. I think i'll find i hard to go back to regular 4v4 crucible. All in all it feels like a much faster paced game. Multiple super uses in each match. More enemies so more engagements. The new heavy ammo economy works quite well, not as much ammo from the pick ups but enemies now drop their heavy if you kill them. Saladin is very trigger happy with the mercy rule now. We played maybe 7 or 8 games and 3 ended in a mercy. Before you could be quadrupling their score and Shaxx would let you keep on beating on people. Either way, i got the last 2 pieces of Hunter IB gear so if new armour drops in season 3 i'm not missing anything.

We also knocked out a Nightfall. Not much to report on that side of things. I don't know if they've buffed Knights shields but they seemed to be popping them up and healing faster than i could kill them. Maybe i'm just out of practice.

I've not really watched anything from the new DLC. This will be the first time since the original Destiny where i am going in nearly blind. Aside from the initial teaser trailer i don't know anything about it. Actually looking forward to playing on Tuesday for the first time in a long time!

[J.T.]

I'm going to keep my eye on the Bungie forums to see when this thing goes live.  Hopefully it will be close to my normal quitting time so that I can go the 'rents to start the download, attend my daughter's last soccer game of the season, take her out for celebration cheeseburgers, and then see what the fuck is up with Warmind.

[RIPPA]

Again - I am most excited about the expanded vault space.

I have weird priorities 

[J.T.]

Surprisingly enough, I have used over half of the vault space we got with a previous update, so I am also excited about the new slots so I can store some of the new DLC items that I am not sure if I want to keep.

[RIPPA]

Ironically the big reason is because I have felt bad shredding ghost shells, sparrows and ships since they didn't include a archive like they did in the first game (or like they do with emblems and exotics)

So I fully expect them to introduce that and suddenly I won't need the extra space.

[J.T.]

15 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Ironically the big reason is because I have felt bad shredding ghost shells, sparrows and ships since they didn't include a archive like they did in the first game (or like they do with emblems and exotics)

So I fully expect them to introduce that and suddenly I won't need the extra space.

I regretted shredding my Hunter Shell until I unlocked my Sugira Shell, and then I didn't care since it trivializes the find it challenges on Mercury and my Hunter Shell only had Crucible perks on it.. 

I'm not even sure if you can get the class shells back through Bright Engrams.  If you can, they are rare and I have yet to have another one drop for me..

My Warlock and Titan still have their respective class Ghost shells, though.

I don't feel bad about shredding most Legendary ships or shells or sparrows.  Those things just give me the Bright Dust I need to get what I really want from Tess when it finally shows up, like when she had the Titanium ornament for MIDA.

Guess what I got last night from Banshee while spamming Weapon parts and trying to coax a Manannan SR4 out of RNG?  A fucking Quickfang...

Oh, that only took six weeks from the day I decided to re-roll my Hunter and eight weeks from the day I stupidly shredded the sword in the first place.

[RIPPA]

 

[RIPPA]

 

[J.T.]

I wonder what the PvP darlings from the new DLC weapons will be?

I'm guessing that the Huckleberry will be up there since the TTK for most SMGs is obscene.

[RIPPA]

 

[RIPPA]

Played for about 30 minutes but didn't touch any Warmind stuff. Basically I just did the Flashpoint on Nessus to knock the rust off.

Vault space was bumped from 200 to 300. A little disappointing but it is more room. Still no collections for the ships, ghosts, etc... And the shader problem remains. 

Quickly gained two levels and realized that meant I had to start leveling up my equipment. My armor is such a mishmash of shit right now but I am up to Light 338 already.

I will say that taking about a month off did gain me some perspective in now I notice the Most Fast upgrades. I actually feel like my lard ass Titan can go.

Comcast/Xfinity of course is dicking me over since they sent me a new modem which is clearly throttling my speed. So that is going to be a pain

[EVA]

I knocked out the campaign in about 3 hours this afternoon.  That includes doing all the optional Adventures that popped up along the way.  So it's short (as expected), but signficantly better than the Curse of Osiris campaign.

But the big star of the expansion so far is the return of COLLECTIBLES~!!!  The little holograms that you have to shoot with different types of weapons were fun to figure out.  And I still have no idea what to do with the floating obelisks that are everywhere.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

lol i cant believe it's a worse campaign

EDIT: Okay, fuck it. I'm not going to put this in the General thread but in spoiler tags you will find my review.

DESTINY 2 EXPANSION II WARMIND [1]

--The campaign is weightless and rushed. The character that the game centers around is an extreme side character from the days of the Grimoire, who they shove into the forefront without even trying to make you care. When they introduce the main threat, they don’t bother to explain it through anything but the flights to the missions, so by the time they start talking about How To Kill The Big Bad, it’s totally possible to have no idea what they’re talking about. They tell, and don’t show. They skip all the time it would take to establish this new character as important and extant in order to skip to the ending bossfight, which is extremely underwhelming.

--The side quests and missions are vicious rehashes. There’s four adventures. There’s two crown quests. We ended up in the same two or three areas for each of them. Areas which also ended missions in the campaign. The one being a mission that brought you back to where the campaign started. The punchout point for everything you do is somehow more restrictive than Osiris.

--There are only two “new” strikes on PC, and they are rehashes of the campaign missions. One of the strikes is literally just the last boss of the campaign, but now it’s called a strike. The trailer said there were three strikes. One strike has brand new stuff. The strike that has brand new stuff is PS4 exclusive. If this seems small, let me remind you: NO strikes in Destiny 1 were rehashes. We’re up to four or five now in Destiny 2.

--The Post-campaign content is ludicrous. I will quote my older brother’s explanation:

“you have to do patrols or lost sectors or public events to get key fragments. 4 fragments make one key. that key has a riddle (for the) location to unlock one [doodad] before it is consumed.

THE FIRST ONE YOU DO
YOU GO BACK TO (main character)
YOU SHOW IT TO HER
YOU PUT IT IN A SERVER TOWER
AND THAT'S
IT."

There are 40 of these nodes. There are also 45 Data Fragments, which are glowing spots in the world that only count if you hit them with specific damage (kinetic, energy, power, the Unique Campaign Weapon, etc). And, the exotic weapon quest is solely a grind to 100 Hive and Cabal kills each, with a specific handcannon, and half of them have to be headshots. It’s not so bad, but, it’s also no fun.
--
If it was just one or two of these things, it would be on the same level as Curse of Osiris. It is, instead, all four of these things, the point of all of it seemingly to get you to grind to light level 370 for the new raid. They make no attempt to disguise the hamster wheel they are requesting you run on. It’s perverse. The only possibly acceptable explanation is that this is not Bungie making it, but Traveller’s Tales. Even then, that’s not enough to excuse it.

I think I’m out on Destiny 2, period. I doubt they could offer me anything to make me change my mind. They'd better hope to god their Year 2 stuff is amazing or I'm not gonna be the only one.

[J.T.]

I knocked out the Flashpoint on Nessus last night after my kid's soccer game and tackled the first two Warmind missions this morning. 

• It was good to see Ana Bray back in action and wearing the Strength of the Pack pattern on her cloak. I guess she didn't die during the Battle of Twilight Gap after all. 
• It also felt good to be back on Mars for some reason.
• Hopefully Ana will give up some more in-game lore as the missions go on. It'd be nice to hear more about her family; especially notable ones like her sister, Elsie Bray aka the designer of the Eon Trespass jumpship from D1.
• I chose the Kibou AR3 auto rifle as my reward weapon and so far I haven't regretted my decision.  The AP Rounds and the Dragonfly perk combine to melt entire groups of Ice Thralls when they idiotically come zerg rushing at you in a single file line.
• The new ornament for the Vigilance Wing is so PRETTY~!
• The ornament for the Foetracer is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.  I won't be putting that shit on my beloved helmet.
• I need to remember to NOT shred all of my Blues.  I need infusion fodder to help upgrade all of the crap in my Vault.

[RIPPA]

Thank Goodness I had so many legendary shards saves up since I was infusing shit left and right.

I also lucked out because I had never finished the Cayde treasure maps from the last time I played so I doubled up on chests and got extra random shit.

Will start Warmind tonight.

I also need to remember that I am back to playing on an XBOX and not a Nintendo product. Fucking switched button layout.

[J.T.]

42 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Thank Goodness I had so many legendary shards saves up since I was infusing shit left and right.

I also lucked out because I had never finished the Cayde treasure maps from the last time I played so I doubled up on chests and got extra random shit.

Will start Warmind tonight.

I also need to remember that I am back to playing on an XBOX and not a Nintendo product. Fucking switched button layout.

I ran Cayde's new treasure maps for the week while I was chipping away at the Flashpoint.  I got enough extra stuff to get me to 338 LL. 

I think I am up to 340 or so now.

[RIPPA]

The patch notes for the patch that came with the DLC

Spoiler

Player Character

General
Players who own Warmind may now reach level 30 and Power level 385

Emotes
Multi-emote is now available, and players can now configure all four emote options with player-selected emotes
Emotes are now stored on the Multi-Emote page of the character inventory
The emote collection has been removed from the Vault, as emotes are now stored on the character

Sandbox

Abilities
Additional grenade charges granted by some Subclass trees or Exotic Perks now charge at the same rate as the primary grenade (was considerably slower)
Exotic Weapons – General
Implemented Exotic Masterwork weapons

Exotic Kinetic Weapons
Sweet Business
Increased the ammo gained when players pick up Kinetic ammo
Increased ammo inventory

Vigilance Wing
Recovery is set to maximum while the Last Stand perk is active

The Jade Rabbit
+20 stability

Rat King
Enhanced the total stat benefits of running with a pack
Benefits are front-loaded; there are now larger damage benefits when two people equip the Exotic, with slight damage increases for each additional player 
The Rat Pack perk can now activate and stack while Rat King is stowed
Added HUD notification text for when the Rat Pack perk is active
Increased ammo inventory
Added full auto

Crimson
Refined damage, rate of fire, and recovery time between bursts 
Increased ammo inventory

Sturm and Drang
Sturm
Increased base stability stat
Overcharged rounds from Drang now deal 80% bonus damage
Added HUD status notification and visual feedback for when the magazine is overcharged
Drang
Kills with Drang reload Sturm and add one overcharged round even if Sturm's mag is not full
Increased magazine size
Now has the Rampage perk

Exotic Energy Weapons
Hard Light
Can now be manually reloaded to change the damage type
Hits after its rounds bounce now deal double damage

Graviton Lance
Now fires two-round bursts
Increased stability
Reduced recoil on its final round in a burst
Cosmology explosion deals more damage
Cosmology explosion now spawns secondary Void projectiles
Enemies eliminated float up and back, detonating closer to their death location
Improved aim assist

Skyburner’s Oath
+10 aim assist
+30 increased handling
Now has the Explosive Payload perk
Hip fire now lobs slower-moving projectiles with tracking

Riskrunner
Now deals more damage while Arc Conductor is active
Enhanced Arc damage resistance to 50% while Arc Conductor is active and Riskrunner is in the player’s hands
Arc damage resistance is now enabled against Guardians in the Crucible
Arc Conductor can be activated while the weapon is stowed
Added Arc FX to the player while Arc Conductor is active

Sunshot
Increased damage and radius of kill explosion

Coldheart
Damage now ramps up faster
Reduced incoming flinch
Increased precision modifier to 1.4x (was 1.05x)

Prometheus Lens
Increased magazine size to 100 rounds
Deals more area damage and less beam damage
Increased precision modifier to 1.4x (was 1.05x)

Fighting Lion
Deals more blast damage and less direct hit damage
Increased ammo inventory
Increased spawn ammo
Kills with this weapon guarantee Energy ammo drops

Exotic Power Weapons
Tractor Cannon
Weapon damage now suppresses targets
Weapon damage now makes targets more susceptible to Void damage (+50%) for 10 seconds

D.A.R.C.I.
Reduced flinch
Reduced zoom on scope
Increased precision damage to locked-on targets (up to 4x)
Increased aim assist

Borealis
Reduced flinch
After breaking the shield of an enemy (a combatant or a Guardian using a Super) with the matching elemental damage type, it deals double damage for the remainder of the magazine

The Prospector
Grenades now stick to surfaces
Grenades now cause burn damage over time

Wardcliff Coil
Fixed an issue where players would receive unintended amounts of power ammo when changing from Wardcliff Coil to alternate power weapons

Weapon Perks
Pulse Monitor
Now reloads 35% of the magazine (up from 17.5%)
Now can activate while the weapon is not equipped

Precision Frame
Fixed an issue that was causing inconsistent recoil reduction on precision-category weapons
The pattern is now more consistent as the weapon kicks

Legendary Weapons
Precision Hand Cannons
Adjusted the ADS firing animation

Linear Fusion Rifles
Increased precision damage modifier to 2.0x (was 1.5x)

Lightweight Grenade Launchers
Adjusted breach-load Grenade Launchers so that they can fire sooner out of a reload, and fire sooner out of a sprint cancel

Sniper Rifles
Reduced overall flinch value for all sniper rifles
Tuned sniper scope cameras and reticles to behave consistently for flinch, recoil and sway across all sniper rifles
Developer note: We can now update individual sniper rifles as needed, which was prevented before due to this issue

Activities

PvE
Changes to outgoing player damage scaling vs. higher-level combatants
Higher-level combatants take longer to kill if you’re below their level
Increased the outgoing and incoming damage scaling, from capping at a 40 Power level delta to a 50 Power level delta
Over-level combatants continue to increase in difficulty up to 50 Power levels above the player
When enemies are 50 Power levels or higher above a player, they will be immune to damage
Over-level, immune combatants will display a “??” icon in their nameplate
Updated the damage dealt to combatant Energy shields from the following weapon damage types:
3x damage dealt from Energy weapons of a matching damage type
2x damage dealt from Energy weapons of a nonmatching damage type
No bonus damage from Kinetic weapons

Strikes
Heroic strikes now feature rotating modifiers:
At any given time, the following will be active on the Heroic strikes playlist:
1x Elemental Burn (weekly rotation)
1x Advantage (daily rotation)
1x Disadvantage (daily rotation)
In addition to the above, the baseline difficulty of Heroic strikes is boosted to be closer to Nightfall difficulty

Legendary Nightfall Strike Challenge Card
Can be obtained from Xûr (at no cost) by replacing your Rare Challenge Card
The Legendary tier adds additional slots for new Advantages and Disadvantages

Fixed an issue in which scoring did not add points for killing the bosses in the Nightfall strikes “A Garden World” and “Savathûn’s Song”
Fixed an issue where the Nightfall score summary was only displaying kills since last death
Now displays the score for entire activity completion
Fixed an issue in which the Unbroken Challenge completed for all fireteam members even if the clear criteria had not been met
Fixed an issue where strike scoring granted points for players in public bubbles, Lost Sectors, or other unintended areas
Raid
Weekly lockouts for raid rewards are now class-based
Players running multiple instances of the same class will receive rewards only the first time they run the raid in a week
Tower
Seasonal Ranks are now available for the Vanguard, Crucible, Trials of the Nine, and Iron Banner
Increased Vault size from 200 items to 300 items
Fixed an issue with collections where event emblems would not show up unless players owned Curse of Osiris
Fixed an issue where Cayde-6 refused to offer all three Treasure Maps for Mercury

Items and Economy

General
Milestones now award a more balanced distribution of Exotics between weapons and armor, but overall they award Exotics less often than before
Fixed an issue where powerful engrams could not draw from Exotics released at Destiny 2 launch
Fixed an issue where the first powerful engram opened after each sign-in was guaranteed to produce an Exotic
Fixed an issue with slow load times for Uncommon gear
Mods and shaders can now be dismantled from the Item Details screen
Items can now be dismantled from the Postmaster and the Vault
Season 2 Exotic Ghost Shells that use destination perks now have a chance to have Hellas Basin destination perks when initially awarded

Character Inventory
Created a  “Pursuits” category in the character inventory to contain pursuit tracking items, such as those associated with Exotic quests
Items in the Pursuits category are specific to each character and not shared across the account

Eververse
Players now may receive one Bright Engram per character (account limit of three) from Tess for the seasonal milestone
Increased the number of items available for purchase via Bright Dust from 14 to 18
Additional slots will feature shaders and transmat effects
Fixed an issue where players could purchase bundles or engrams when their inventory and Postmaster were full
Fixed an issue where items rewarded from Eververse Gleaming Boons would not display the correct icon within the Postmaster screen

Added the Prismatic Matrix to Eververse
At launch, 10 Eververse items from Season 3 are featured each week that the Prismatic Matrix is available
An account's first well-rested level-up each week grants one Prismatic Facet, allowing one free use of the Prismatic Matrix
Players may hold up to three Prismatic Facets at a time
Additional activations may be purchased for 200 Silver each
This item inventory is based on a knockout list and will not drop duplicates
Items earned via Bright Engrams, Bright Dust, or previous Matrix activations will contribute to the knockout list

Clans

Progression
A new set of clan perks is available for you to earn in Season 3
A new Clan Banner Staff has been rewarded to those who hit clan rank 6 in Season 2
Clan Engrams 
Trials of the Nine and raid clan engrams no longer grant Trials of the Nine or raid weapons
These now grant Crucible and Vanguard rewards
Clan Engrams no longer grant rewards above the player’s level when reaching 340 Power
The Nightfall and Crucible clan engrams will grant rewards up to 340 Power
Guided Games
A new set of Guided Games tickets has been granted to all players
Players can earn a Leviathan Guide emblem that tracks the number of raid encounters and raids they complete as a Guide
The emblem rewards an aura for 14 days when completing a raid as a Guide
Once a week while the aura is active, guiding a raid to completion grants a Bright Engram

Crucible

General
Private Matches are now available to all players
Players must own Curse of Osiris or Warmind to play maps from those respective releases in Private Matches
Added a Crucible ranking system (see details here)
Added a fireteam matchmaking system (see details here)
Maps
Curse of Osiris and Warmind maps are now available to all players in matchmade Crucible playlists
New Warmind maps: Meltdown and Solitude
Added spawn points to Altar of Flame, the Dead Cliffs, and Endless Vale 
Added kill volumes to the Burnout to prevent players from escaping the intended playable space
Fixed a cinematic camera point on the Dead Cliffs for 6v6

Game Modes
Added “Doubles” to the Weekly Rotating playlist

Audio

Settings
Added and revised in-game audio options that can be accessed through the Settings menu in Destiny 2: (Help Article)
SFX Volume
Dialogue/Cinematics Volume
Music Volume
Chat Volume
PC

Key Mapping
Secondary key mappings can be assigned through the Settings menu in Destiny 2.
Key Mappings are now stored per-account by default.  There is a setting in the Settings menu to store Key Mappings per-machine instead.

Text Chat
Incoming Text Chat messages are now visible by default.  There is a mappable key (defaults to 'L') to toggle Text Chat to a minimized state.
Incoming Text Chat messages now play an audio cue while text chat is in the minimized state.  This can be disabled in the Settings menu.

UI

General
Fixed an issue where the cursor sometimes failed to appear on destination maps
 

 

[J.T.]

TL:DR

Spoiler

Most of our Exotics aren't shit anymore.

And yeah, the difficulty for Heroic Strikes has been ramped up so you need to be at least 350 LL before going in.

I tried my luck at 338 LL with a 340 Titan and a 342 Warlock.   We drew the Tree of Probabilities and it didn't end well. 

The randos did dumb things and refused to use hard cover and we wiped twice during the Root Mind fight. 

I thought I was experiencing network lag during a checkpoint reload, but that happened because my cowardly teammates were quitting out.

DR for Red Bar enemies above my LL didn't seem that bad, but you're not going to be able to wade through trash units if you are underpowered, so Yellow Bars or enemies that have Elemental Shielding are obviously going to be tougher to put down.

You're also have Damage Output to worry about if you go in at a lower LL. 

A Vex Line Rifle blast from a 350 Hobgoblin nearly one shot me at 338 LL, and the 340 Titan on my team got disintegrated by a group of Vex Goblins while trying to complete the Hat Trick challenge (kill 3 enemies rapidly with a Power Weapon) by trying to get hit a Slam attack with his Crown Splitter.

[J.T.]

PvE and PvP Review vid for the Huckleberry

Spoiler

As you'd expect.  Beast up close / Crap outside of SMG range.

One of my DARPA buddies told me his experience with the new SUROS Regime was .... disappointing.

That made me sad.

[RIPPA]

 

[RIPPA]

I so don't trust this game when it says you may safely discard something

[J.T.]

Finished the last Mars story mission this morning:

Spoiler

• Xol is the best boss battle in the game.  So much fun and so much real tension.
• Root Mind from the Tree of Probabilities strike is the second best Destiny 2 boss fight and Ghaul is third. 
• From a game mechanics and difficulty perspective, I totally understand why the Valkryie javelins spawn away from your position. (Be Brave!)
• From a practical perspective, I was like, "The FLAMING SPEAR OF NUCLEAR DEATH~! that I am required to wield in order to destroy this fucking Godzilla Worm spawns right there below it and it (along with its Frozen Hive henchmen) will get to attack me freely as I make my move towards the doomsday weapon.  Is Ana deliberately trying to get me killed?"
• Sweet, sweet Kibou AR3 with your AP Rounds and Dragonfly perk.  You are the best Hive Thrall killer ever made.
• I, like Zavala, have NEVER trusted Rasputin.  The ending cutscene reinforces that sentiment.

Now I have to go back to Mars to see about this Data Collection thing.

[RIPPA]

I did the first two story missions on Mars and then did a little roaming around the planet (basically did one public event and then went back to the tower to cash in all my shit)

It's more likely that I wait till this weekend to just knock out the entire thing in one sitting.

I might start chipping away at the Crucible instead