Destiny 2: Lightfall

[Oz]

2 hours ago, Gorf King said:

Anyway, tl;dr - it's not a game I would double dip on, so frame rate notwithstanding there's really no reason to play it on PC as well. Not that it was a serious offer but y'know, just saying.

most of the PC RLL crew play on pads (granted they are doing it wrong). the cruzcible community is also divided on the pad issue given the aim assist. there are top 100 players on PC that actually snipe with a controller. 

 

Main point is: everyone should try it this weekend even if they prefer playing with a pad. it is really something amazing. I didn't think I would want to start over until the first time I grabbed a hand cannon on PC. 

[Mafro]

I honestly can't be arsed playing through the campaign again, as good as it is. A full playthrough the first time then playing up to Io with a new character to get the Sunshot (that and Jade Rabbit were the only non-questline exotic weapons I didn't have and I wasn't going to rely on the shitty RNG to drop it or for Xur to sell it) was more than enough.

[Nate Dogg III]

Yeah the thought of playing the campaign again fills me with dread, even after all these months. 

 

I also worry that if I see the game as Gabe intended I won’t be able to go back to console. It’s hard enough going from a 60fps YouTube vid. 

[Uncle Mike]

I got my first two completions on EP this afternoon. Just happened into a populated instance, and they were clearly waiting to go. Hung around for 5 mins, and off they went. Got a Ghost, Legs and Mark for my trouble. And the EP shotty on my first go.

 

@Gorf King no, I didn't. Just kidding.

 

But it was fun! Need to do it more. It's a shame they haven't figured out ways for people to get together more easily. It's arguably the point of the fucking game.

[Mafro]

1 hour ago, Nate Dogg III said:

Yeah the thought of playing the campaign again fills me with dread, even after all these months. 

 

I also worry that if I see the game as Gabe intended I won’t be able to go back to console. It’s hard enough going from a 60fps YouTube vid. 

 

Hah yeah I watch a lot of Destiny stuff from various content creators on YouTube and the 60fps footage does make me incredibly jealous. I'd like to think D3 on consoles will be 60fps but we all know that's highly unlikely given Bungie's track record.

[Gorf King]

I don't mind the console versions being 30fps, but I do think they've taken their eye off the console ball in spreading the design around platforms. If the game played as well as D1 did on console and no better, I'd be fine with that regardless of how it plays on PC. But it isn't a solid 30 (where D1 was, apart from *that* moment in Oryx), there's lag in PvE where it was never really an issue in D1, the gunplay doesn't feel as crispy, and movement as a whole feels more sluggish. You might say, and you might be right, that this has nothing to do with development on other platforms, but I feel their console shooter vision has been diluted somewhat and they're not hitting the benchmark of excellence they used to. There was a blog a few months back where the designers admitted a performance bug in the game overall was caused by their PC branch development (something to do with the way they had to switch screens when coming in and out of ADS on a sniper, to account for the fact that PC players might have a super-wide monitor resolution), and I got the feeling from how they talked about it that it wasn't the only one.

 

Whatever the reasons, D2 doesn't perform as well on console as D1 did - and that was supposedly hindered by D1 having to work on PS3 and Xbox 360. I'd have hoped D2 would have performed better, but it seems to have gone backwards. That's what stings really. They could ditch a lot of the fancy schmancy stuff for me if they could just do rock-solid lag-free 30 frames again (though obviously 60 would be nice).

 

When it comes to starting again on PC in terms of content alone, not a chance in hell. Quite apart from the fact that vanilla D2 and Osiris are mistakes I'd rather put behind me than relive, like Halo, Destiny will always be a console shooter for me - if not for Bungie - and as I've always maintained, the most important thing about the game is the teams you can put together to tackle the most demanding and highest quality content. There's just a bigger community on PS4 than there is on PC to do that with, and I can't see that changing really. Just stick with the platform your endgame players inhabit.

[Lyrical Donut]

45 minutes ago, Gorf King said:

But it isn't a solid 30 (where D1 was, apart from *that* moment in Oryx)

You've spelt Siege Machine wrong there.

 

Orxy only had a fit if you had a bad instance or were playing with someone piggybacking off McDonald's WiFi.

[Uncle Mike]

Oryx himself didn't run at 30, which I assume is what Gorf meant. That bit in Siege Engine also though.

 

But the performance on even a PS4 Pro is pretty shaky. Enemies glitch and recover health (and even resurrect at times) all over the place, the framerate is very variable when it gets busy (EP is the obvious one, but it's not the only time.) And so on. The interface is slow and sluggish.

 

It's not a great job, considering that they're not really pushing things to the edge.

[Lyrical Donut]

2 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

Oryx himself didn't run at 30

 

He did for me most of the time. Were you raiding with @Thor, by any chance?

[Mr Ben]

Yep its pretty shonky, and I'm not sure whether its the engine or their netcode (though I'd have to assume its the latter) causing the problems.

 

I have to wonder if some of the problems arent caused by Escalation Protocol putting extreme strain on whatever they use (tin cans and string? Hamster wheel?).

[Uncle Mike]

10 minutes ago, Lyrical Donut said:

He did for me most of the time. Were you raiding with @Thor, by any chance?

 

The encounter did, but not Oryx himself, his personal animation. That was pretty clearly running half speed.

[Gorf King]

Yeah, I was thinking of the Oryx fist pound there. There was a bit of friction with the Siege Engine too, when I come to think of it.

 

But both were set piece kind of things that didn't really affect gameplay. D2 has lag and rubber-banding with adds all over the place. EP is an obvious example, but so is the last room (both encounters) in Spire. The game just doesn't do the almost always rock-solid PVE combat that D1 did. That and the loss of some speed and slickness of movement, and the stickiness of the shooting, largely gets drowned out in criticisms of the content, loot, progression, writing and general tone of D2. But I think it's the more important loss, and it's also the one I feel just isn't going to get fixed.

 

And if it isn't, D2 will never live up to the original for me, because that was a fundamental part of the magic, and the slight tarnishing of those qualities detracts a lot from the pleasure you get from just playing the game. D1 for me was the perfection of the console shooter in terms of feel. D2 may be a step above the competition, but it's lost that little slice of magic in the way it made you feel to simply move around and shoot, and pop all the bits of enemies you felt like popping. That was a big part of what kept you coming back even when there was no real reason to, other than for the simple pleasure of the moment-to-moment blinking, swooping, and pulling off these ridiculous headshots. 

 

(And the fact that if you were good enough you could do that in PvP too is probably the main thing that sounds the deathknell for Crucible. Please imagine random Kraftyy video inserted here.)

[Larsen B]

It takes half as long to get to max light when you're seeing double the frames.

[JPL]

@Gorf King Have they really taken their eye off the ball regarding consoles? I’ve recently got back into playing a bit of this on my X and it looks and plays absolutely magnificently. It’s one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen (the lighting and effects are something to behold) and it plays as smooth as butter. Does it play significantly worse on other consoles?

[Lyrical Donut]

5 minutes ago, JPL said:

Does it play significantly worse on other consoles?

 

Framerate is the same across the board for consoles, Pro/X don't give you any advantage, outside of 4K/HDR.

[Gorf King]

Yeah, performance is no different at all. If you think it's smooth as butter I'm not sure what you've been playing. Presumably nothing in the end game (Escalation/Spire etc).

[JPL]

1 hour ago, Lyrical Donut said:

 

Framerate is the same across the board for consoles, Pro/X don't give you any advantage, outside of 4K/HDR.

I’m not really sensitive to frame rate drops and such, but surely the X (and by that token, all the others) runs at a solid 30. It never feels anything less than perfect to me, even when it’s all kicking off. It’s absolutely bonkers if Destiny 1 performed better. I can’t ever remember having any problems with it , but I can’t remember it ever having as much going on as 2.

[JPL]

1 hour ago, Gorf King said:

Yeah, performance is no different at all. If you think it's smooth as butter I'm not sure what you've been playing. Presumably nothing in the end game (Escalation/Spire etc).

Oh yeah, no endgame stuff. I’m not levelled up enough yet. Shame if it really takes a hit there then. You’d think that’d be where they’d try and optimise the most.

[Gorf King]

56 minutes ago, JPL said:

I’m not really sensitive to frame rate drops and such, but surely the X (and by that token, all the others) runs at a solid 30. It never feels anything less than perfect to me, even when it’s all kicking off.

 

Like I said, the feel of the combat isn't just, or even principally, about framerate. D2 doesn't quite have the crispness/stickiness of the crits that D1 had (less AA obviously), or quite the speed or slickness of movement on console. And the radar's not anywhere near as responsive after ADS, nor is the snappiness of weapon swaps or ADS activation (weapon handling just feels more sluggish across the board). It just feels a bit off, less engaging on a moment to moment basis than D1 on a fundamental level. Each of these things take in isolation might be minor, but the cumulative effect is quite noticeable. That's before you add in factors like framerate or lag, or super/ability strength and recharge rates.

 

I don't get it when people say they don't notice any of this, because it's right there across the board. Boot up D1 again and you can feel it right away - the radar is more responsive, (on console) character movement is more fluid, sticky weapons are sticky as hell, and so on. It just feels palpably different. Add in rubberbanding enemies in the more technically challenging content of D2 and framerate drops and you have a game that just doesn't have the same crack-like qualities in its basic combat loops that D1 had. It's that which worries me more than changes to weapon slots and progression systems, and tone and stuff, in Bungie's attempts to fix D2. Because this more core stuff strangely doesn't get that much attention, and Bungie never seem to talk about it.

 

Worst thing is, with rivals like Anthem, as well as they might do with world building, loot and progression, I doubt they'll get anywhere near the combat feel that even D2 gives, so as far as I'm concerned we've lost that state of grace. I'm not sure we'll ever get it back. And I want it back, that perfect console shooter.

[Mafro]

On normal PS4 I've noticed it getting a bit stuttey during a few public events when there's a few other people there, mainly the hive portal one on Titan when it's heroic and there's a ton of enemies and supers going off. Still think it's odd they apparently didn't even try to get 60fps just for crucible, it must be the only major competitive online shooter that runs at 30fps and it sticks out like a sore thumb. It's really jarring going from playing Overwatch, COD, Titanfall 2, Battlefield etc. to this.

[Thor]

I thought the fated engram was supposed to give you an exotic you'd never had before. There are two helmets I know I haven't had yet. But the snivelling twatface gave me Winter's Guile arms, which I've had before.

[Ghost Pirate 101]

Did you grab it on the right class for the missing exotic? 

[Thor]

Aye, I'm missing two helmets for my Warlock.

[ph0rce]

And they aren’t quest rewards?

[Mr Ben]

If you didnt grab the exotic helm from Zavala after the Warmind campaign, then that's one of them, and is likely skewing the fated engram's results.

 

Its Bungie day today, so something might happen at reset. Then again maybe nothing will.

 

I'm betting on the latter, knowing Bungie - Well, I was semi-right, as nothing new was added to the game (no Black Spindle, which some redditors were hoping for).

 

Edit: Moments of Triumph are live. On the app/webpage (not in game yet). lol.

https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/46995

Quote

Moments of Triumph

Starting right now, Moments of Triumph for Destiny 2 are available on Bungie.net! From now through August 28, 2018, players are invited to complete various in-game objectives to earn progress toward Triumph Points, which will unlock unique rewards.

 

What’s available today is just a taste of what’s to come with the Solstice of Heroes event, which will expand the list of Triumphs and rewards that players may earn. The complete list of Triumphs will become available in-game starting on July 31, 2018.

 

Some of the hardcore veterans among you may have already done everything there is to do thus far, but some of you might have some progress to make in the next few weeks.

When Solstice of Heroes begins, Triumphs will become available in-game that track your progress towards Moments of Triumph. As you complete these Triumphs, they will increase your score, which will unlock certain rewards at different point thresholds.

 

Here is the breakdown of rewards for crossing each point threshold:

• Complete any Triumph – Get your tracking emblem for Moments of Triumph
  • This emblem will show total Triumph Points earned
• 125 points – Get the Right Choice, a Legendary Ghost Shell
• 250 points – The Solstice of Heroes Moments of Triumph T-shirt offer becomes available
• 300 points – Get Comrades in Arms, a Legendary Sparrow
• 400 points (all) – Get the Eternally Triumphant emblem upgrade

 

The Solstice of Heroes Moments of Triumph T-shirt redemption page is live now, but you won't be able to secure your code until Solstice of Heroes begins on July 31, 2018. After you complete enough Triumphs in Destiny 2 to reach a score of 250, you can go to the Moments of Triumph page on Bungie.net to retrieve the code you will need to purchase your customizable T-shirt.These are not the only rewards you can earn during the Solstice of Heroes. We’ll have more specifics on that leading up to the event. Stay tuned to the blog on July 17, 2018, for more details.

(I know you all wanted to see the T-shirt lol)

Armour previews:

Not a lot, but they look clean at least.

Full list of things needed to do in game below, spoilered for length:

 

General

Bringer of Light

Finish Destiny 2's Base Campaign

10pts

 

Follower of Osiris

Finish Curse of Osiris Campaign

10pts

 

Awaken the Warmind

Finish Warmind Campaign

10pts

 

Fleeting Memories

Collect all 45 Latent Memories - I think this may mean the "memories of D1" on the log in screen (Flawless Trials of Osiris is not required from D1)

15pts

 

Check Out My Arsenal

Obtain 25 Exotic Weapons or Armor

15pts

 

Show Me the Way

Obtain Sagira's Ghost Shell

20pts

 

The Very Best

Reach Vanguard Rank 50 in Season 3

20pts

 

Activities

???

Will be revealed later this summer! (July 31st)

10pts

 

Treasure Hunter

Collect All Region Chests

10pts

 

I Will Smash You

Defeat 100 Opponents in the Crucible

15pts

 

Adventurous

Complete 20 Adventures

20pts

 

Hive Extermination

Complete Tier 7 in Escalation Protocol

20pts

 

Valor Fabled

Reach Legend in Valor ranking in Season 3

20pts

 

The Emperor

Defeat Calus in the Leviathan Raid

20pts

 

Prove Your Worth

Complete Eater of Worlds and Spire of Stars Raid Lairs

20pts

 

Event

All of these will become active July 31st

I suspect most people have the "General" section completed, if not most of the "Activity" part as well, but if not, then now's the time to get those sorted so they dont interfere with the activities to come. Getting Rank 50 with the Vanguard along with Legend Valor rank in Crucible is probably the longest grind, but the latter is made easy this weekend with the triple Valor modifier, and playing Mayhem makes it go by far far quicker.

 

Another pic of the new armour:

 

[Mafro]

Still wake up in cold sweats remembering trying to beat Skolas as the deadline for the Destiny 1 year 1 Moments of Triumph grew closer and closer.

[Phelan]

Ah great. The old to get it you must have completed the Raid.

 

Well that's a big fuck you to people who don't do raids. This kind of shit really fucking pisses me off.

[Gorf King]

Well, to get every single triumph you must have completed many (not all) of the various types of in-game activities. To get one of them you must have reached maximum Valour rank in the Crucible. That's a big fuck you to people who don't like PvP. To get another you must have opened every region chest. That's a big fuck you to people who don't like spending hours searching each patrol area for a chest with some tokens in it. Vanguard rank 50 takes some doing, especially if you hate doing loads of strikes. Etc.

 

If there's an aspect of the game you don't like doing, don't do it. But expecting to get every single 'achievement' if you don't want to do some core parts of the game surely isn't reasonable. It's only an emblem after all. Far more telling is that you'll have to beat the new prestige raid lairs to get the LL400 armour, or do the other special acivities to get LL400 weapons - that's going to sting a bit more, isn't it? The emblem's nothing really, unless you're a completionist, and even then it's unlikely you'll have every emblem available in the game (e.g. the raid challenges, the 110k variants of the prestige nightfalls, the Trials ones, etc).

 

Source: There was a whole page of triumphs in Age of Triumph of which I didn't even try to get any - the Trials ones. That whole page remained as pristine as newly-fallen snow. Because you had to do them during the AoT period itself, and Trials (and Crucible) was just that horrible sidearm mess by then. Thank God there's not any Trials - or even Competitive - ones at all this time!

 

*eyes yet-to-be-revealed triumphs suspiciously*

 

Feh, I'm not even going for them all myself!

 

(I am going for them all myself.)

[Mafro]

I'm quite proud of the fact I've completely ignored Trials since it came out in D1.

[Mr Ben]

The "???" under the "Activities" section has already been leaked btw - Its simply do 25 heroic public events during the Solstice of Heroes event, so I suspect there are no Prestige Raid completions needed, as the last section is titled "Event", which is likely the bounties and any other SoH specific activities.

 

Doing the Prestige Raid will be the only way to get 400 power weapons though (every raid and raid lair can drop any of the raid weapons at 400 power), with the armour likely coming from either bounties or some other form of activity during SoH (Maybe quests).