This Week In Destiny News

Destiny_Multiplayer_Gameplay__-_The_Asshole_Move_of_the_Century___Destiny_Funny_Moments___-_YouTubeThis week in Destiny:

  • New patch released today reduces difficulty of a few missions and some raid fixes.
  • Deej posted his latest Weekly Update, covering the latest stats for the game, Primeguards world first raid downing and also the weekend bounty on the Bungie crew
  • Reviews are finally popping up around the net. Take everything with a grain of salt. I actually agree with a lot of the negative criticisms out there, but I’m still having a great time with the game and will be going back in to play more when I get home from work. I think Kotaku and IGN pretty much is the most accurate at the moment, but that’s my opinion.
  • More event news is coming The Queens Emissary should be in the tower now
  • Over the weekend people discovered the loot cave in Old Russia. I don’t know of any others yet but keep your eyes out. Also I’m not sure if this is an exploit or not, or if there is a fix or anything coming, but be warned before using it.
  • People have taken to using the sitting and dancing animations for trolling purposes in the crucible…. Yeh I am doing it too….
  • And this guy may take out the asshole of the year award for this move:

Till next time guardians.

Revan is Back in SWTOR

If this doesn’t get you interested for a new Old Republic expansion I’m not sure what will:

What do you say – will these draw you back to the game?

Destiny First Week Highlights

Destiny launched on Tuesday and is already on track to become another million dollar franchise. As with all online games there is a bit of teething that has to be done but otherwise things are mostly looking positive for the game. So to round out the end of this first week I thought I would pass out a few of my stories of my time with the game and also a few links to help get you started if you’re still on the bench.

Tuesday morning I was the lucky recipient of having two wisdom teeth removed (Huzzah!) so I wasn’t really able to (or in the mood) to post up the day one patch notes. Not much in there that would affect a new player but the cool thing is they increased the damage output and stability of both the pulse rifle and the hand cannon while taking the nerf bat to the assault rifle. Keep that in mind when choosing which weapons you want to be taking in with you to the crucible. A shotgun and hand cannon combo can be very lethal.

I finally had my Limited edition delivered at about 1pm (thanks Mr Postman) and I opened it with glee. Everything in there was great. While waiting for the game to install on my PS4 I entered all the codes for DLC and collectors content and everything went smooth except the 1 month PS Plus code (I should look at that again). Once that final bit of installation and patching was complete I started making my human hunter. Alas I was unable to give him the rightful glorious beard he so deserves but he will live without it, I’m sure. And then I watched as my Ghost resurrected me for the first time outside the cosmodrome.

Progress through the story missions at this point for me was fairly easy and it wasn’t until I was about to start a Level 5 story mission on level 3 that I realised I was progressing too fast. I hit the patrol and started a few missions and collected some bounties to help me grind that little bit of experience a tad faster. I would hedge my bets that anyone else who played the beta would have had the same issue as the first few levels are identical, but Bungie has changed the levelling scale significantly to force you to try these other tasks and take you off the beaten path. No matter your thought, bounties are a must from level 4 onwards. It makes levelling ten times easier. Also if you played the beta you’ll notice that the first strike is now level 8 instead of 6. Be careful going in there at level 6 as everything will be much harder to kill, and you will suffer frequent deaths to match. Kotaku posted up a great little get started guide, which I highly recommend. And yes the hair is something to care about… (You can have an Awoken look like David Bowie!).

destiny-face

After a few Rounds in the crucible and making a start on the moon missions, I was ready for my first strike. Most things played identical to the beta. The Tank boss has a little less health so it’s a bit quicker bringing down those legs, and Sepkis still seems pretty much the same, although I never found him too hard in the beta. I made my progress through the moon missions the following day after getting my feet drenched (in mostly my own blood) in the crucible, and eventually made my way to Venus. But not before trying the moon strike. And let me tell you, it is hard. The mission itself is not so bad, but that final boss fight is a doozy. After doing some reading on the Bungie forums, I found that I’m not the only one experiencing this. I’m expecting to see it re-tuned in a future patch. Venus however is beautiful. After a couple of evenings I finished most of the planet and was already level 16 by this stage (about 4 levels ahead of the campaign), and had decided to go back and begin levelling my second sub class. In doing so I managed to get to level 20 before even finishing the planet. In essence, levelling is easy. So now I have just started Mars and I’m still hunting that elusive first piece of post level cap gear but am enjoying the heck out of this game.

Now Deej has posted up the current event schedule. We already knew the first raid, The Vault of Glass, would be going live today and now we know the rest of the planned events to follow. Hopefully we will see more public events popping up more regularly as currently I have only see the one in my entire time adventuring. Also Bungie’s weekly update went live again this weekend where it mostly discussed the launch and the people at the back end still working tirelessly to get everyone online. Hopefully no more centipede soon enough.

I hope your all enjoying the game as much as me. What’s been your favourite part? Mines been hunting the golden chests, so back to Venus I go to keep up the hunt.

Venus Baby! Destiny is Tomorrow

destiny-22Destiny is tomorrow. Chances are you’ll be in a line at midnight to pick it up. Me, I have real life to deal with unfortunately, so my Limited Edition is destined (queue booing) to arrive by post tomorrow. But are you ready for it?

  1. Get Excited! And to do that watch the Destiny Live Action Trailer. Then make sure you have your “classical” music playlist ready!
  2. If you digitally Pre-ordered it, start your download. PS4, PS3 and Xbox One users can preload the game to their consoles so when midnight roles round you’re ready to go.
  3. Install the Destiny companion app on your phone or tablet for iOS and Android if you haven’t already. This is a great app that was working during the beta if you missed it. Basically it enables you to not only view your guardian and check out his/her gear but you can actually swap out the gear in your inventory and have it ready to go for the next time you login. Also the Grimoire is there for you to check out all the lore and cards you unlock. IGN had a great video up during the beta for it which should give you all the info you need.

Other than that the only other thing you need to know is that yes there is Australian servers. And that’s always good to hear.

ESO Layoffs And Its Future Console Release

esoAs reported this morning at IGN, Elder Scrolls Online studio Zenimax has been hit with layoffs.  As stated in the article, this is pretty much normal practice once a game has been launched into the wild and found its footing. Although strangely I would have thought that Betheseda would have tried to hang on to these staff members for the inevitable console launch, whenever that may be.

Given that the console version has already been delayed and no future release date seems to be on the horizon, it makes me wonder if things aren’t going as smooth as originally planned. And that’s saying a lot when you remember the big E3 presentation the game got in 2013 and the response it received at the time – it looked like this was one of the most anticipated games of the new generation of consoles. I remember watching the CG trailer with my housemate at the time, with both of us going Ooh and Aah at the same time, as we both enjoyed Skyrim in the past. But now after playing the PC version (looks gorgeous on PC too by the way), and not really enjoying the feel of the game, I thought to myself that maybe it will be feel more natural to me on a console? That was back in April. Now 4 months later after hearing about the delay and not much else, I’m wondering is anybody still interested in having this on console?  I had actually forgotten this was going to be on the console –  it had been that quiet.

So I ask you dear reader… are you still interested in ESO on console or like me had you forgotten about it after the lacklustre reception the PC version received and the long delay with no release in sight?

Destiny Planet View

imageBungie have sneakily deployed a Google Maps street view style web page interface in the lead up to next week’s release of Destiny. They even built it using Google’s own street view tech. I have had some troubles loading it up properly on my laptop using Firefox (it keeps displaying my location in Brisbane city for me for some reason and I doubt BirsVegas made it into the game) but it is working fine on my phone.

(Editor’s note: I tried on Safari, Chrome and Firefox for Mac and none worked….)

So far it only shows Mars, Venus and that Moon where the Wizard came from but seems to contain some useful information. I have only really had a chance to look around Mars so far but already I have picked up a few tips for facing the Cabal once I get there.

Oh and when you open it up, make sure your sound is on. The music is great.

Tokyo Game Show Trailers: Destiny

Destiny 「全てを超える」篇 (60秒CM)_-_YouTube With under a week to go until the launch of Destiny, Sony Japan has shown two new launch trailers for the game at their pre-show conference for the Tokyo Game Show.

For those unaware, Destiny is a PlayStation exclusive in Japan and Sony appears to be making the most of it and getting as much marketing out as possible for it. There isn’t much new in the trailers at all really but still very cool, and also enough to make you even more excited if you weren’t already before. Enjoy!

Trailer 1:

Trailer 2:

Raiding On A Console: Destiny

image001A big welcome to latest contributor Ben McJannett. As you’ll read below, Ben’s into console gaming in a big way. Great to have you on board Ben!

Destiny is coming.

Not long now.

In just a little over a week, players on PS4 and Xbox One will be creating their Guardians and taking their first steps. Or maybe you will be recreating your first steps if you participated in the beta like me. Slowly they will meet their ghost for the first time (I called mine the Dinklebot 5000, or Dinks for short), they will take their first steps and say “Is this just Halo MkII?”,  and slowly realise that skills are from skillpoints. Monitoring the reactions of some players I think would be priceless, but that’s getting off topic. Soon they will realise they can create a fire team and join forces against the darkness. Not much longer after that they will get to their first strike mission and join a queue. They will then realise this is an MMO at its core.

For those unaware, Strikes are Destiny’s dungeons/instances. By the time players reach the first one at level 6 they will have seen a little bit of instancing/phasing in the story missions,  but this will be the first time they actually are forced to group with other players and go through the usual dungeon tropes. For most players reading this, they will have already an understanding of the MMO space, but I sense the way Activison is marketing the game towards the FPS crowd we could be attracting a new type of MMO player. Noobs we would normally call them, but chances are these are the same players that will destroy us in the crucible. So Semi-Noobs? Time will tell.

What I am most curious about is the raids Bungie has promised us. If you have read the latest weekly update from Bungie, you probably enjoyed the little Q&A with Design Lead Luke Smith. Luke talked briefly about the difficulty of the Raids and what to expect in terms of loot. All of which, if you’re like me, would get even the most casual raider excited. What really got me wondering though was a comment made by one of the forum members about only being able to get loot from the raid once a week. To the normal raider this is a normal rule, however this game is attracting a completely different subset of gamers to it and they do not understand our strange ways, so to speak. Basically this player had made the comment that it “sucks” they can only get loot once a week from the raid. Many of the other posters were quick to reply and inform our new MMO friend that it is the normal rule in the MMO space. The exchange has piqued my interest in seeing how everything is going to play out.

There really hasn’t been a big name MMO on the console market yet, and I believe this is the first one really on the latest generation of consoles. Elder Scrolls Online was originally supposed to be released in June and has been pushed back with no confirmation of a release yet. Had it come out, this question would be already answered (even if Elder Scrolls hasn’t met such great praise on the PC).  I’m hoping I’m not the only one looking forward to seeing how things go with Destiny and its raid mechanics. Will it be the game that sets the standards for MMO’s on the console? We will know soon enough.

I’ll be there with Dinks, probably dancing on top of a cliff somewhere.