Failure to Connect

Man, I'm a bit frustrated with myself. I'm working on this Google course, which is cool, but it keeps feeling like I'm having a bit of a problem getting my brain to connect. Sometimes I wish I could just do a little percussive maintenance on my brain and get it to reboot. I'm listening to the videos, reading the material, and it's like there's a sheet of "duhhhhhhh" over my brain. Stopping everything from soaking in. Is it because I'm a bit of a procrastinator, I don't know, maybe. Is it because my learning habits haven't changed since I was in high school? I mean, probably. I'm thinking that you can't cram all the learning you want to do into a blinking weekend. Every single week I tell myself that "This is gonna be the week I get myself on a schedule, this is gonna be the week I start to take everything somewhat seriously." And by Monday, I'm already looking at myself in the mirror going, "you dumb bitch". I lack uh, what's it called? Um...Focus? No..wait, maybe? I know that I can do better. I know I should do better. Not because I want to impress anyone else, but because I want to make my life better. I want to improve myself for me. I hope some form of work ethic can be learned, because if not, if there's no hope for determination to seep its way into my heart and mind, then the universe may as well take me now. Here's hoping that this Monday is different. That this Monday, I actually stick with my plans and get through not only my Google courses but also other things that I'm trying to learn. 

Thanks for reading this mini-rant, and stay sunny. Big E

Destiny 2 Thoughts on the Future

Welcome ladies and gentlefolk, to the View from the Sun, I'm your host Eros Helios, the Filthy Casual. Today I'm going to be talking a little bit about Destiny 2, and some light criticisms that I have going forward. I hope you enjoy it. 

I’ve been a fan of Destiny the game since its announcement. I was in absolute awe that the developer that brought us Halo was finally bringing something to other consoles (I know, at the time it was just the Playstation). I never owned an Xbox or an Xbox 360, so I missed out on the excitement that others felt when they played Halo for the first time. I missed the hype that was Halo 2 and then inevitably Halo 3. So, when Bungie announced Destiny, I was over the moon. I couldn’t wait to tear into the content. When they released the alpha, I spent the entire time it was active playing, leveling all three characters to the alpha max, and getting my friends hyped for the game. Now, I don’t know how much changed between the Alpha and Beta, but I know I still enjoyed the beta. I got my friends into it as well. We had a great time running the strike, and the opening mission. Boy, those were the days. There’s something to be said about the launch, and it wasn’t as good as expected. It felt like the game had been stripped somehow. Considering the story was quite convoluted at times. There was an in-game story, but the story was only half-told if you wanted the rest you had to go online to Bungie.net and follow the grimoire cards, dead ghosts, and any other lore that ended up there. When an in-game action would happen and there was no explanation for it, you could probably find it online. That in my opinion was a problem. Not everyone wanted to do extra steps to go online to follow the story. I know I didn’t. Nowadays, I rely on folks like My Name Is Byf to dispense the lore that I miss, or fail to earn due to not playing, or not completing particular lore books(that are thankfully in-game now) and he does a wonderful job at doing it. Just look him up on YouTube if you’re interested in learning the complete story of Destiny.

As much as a fan as I was, I was also a critic, and I got a little too addicted to playing and I burned myself out. I played diligently from launch all the way through October of 2014, and I had a blast, but the repetition got to be too much, so I’d take a break until Crota’s End launched. Hell, I never even completed the Vault of Glass until the game had been out for six or eight months. I still, to this day, have content in Destiny 1 that I never got to complete for one reason or another. I think the lack of friends interested in Destiny after a while contributed to my lack of completing raids and weekly nightfall strikes after a while. I’m shy in person, and even more so back then than I am now, so it was tough to meet new people that were into Destiny, and that extends to online connections too. Now, all that being said, I’ve never given up on Destiny/Destiny 2, I’ve loved and loathed it at times. For a company that says they want us to play how we want, they seem to break anything that makes a “god killer” you know, too effective. But I still love the game. It’s a fun jaunt into a world that we’ll never know. It’s nice to get lost in an ever-expanding world, well, until September that is, because in September Bungie will be removing content that “doesn’t get played as much” anymore. I don’t like that. I don’t like losing content that I’ve paid for, in an effort to shrink a file size. It serves, in my opinion, as a stark reminder that I don’t own anything that I buy when it comes to video games.

I don’t know if I’m in the minority here, but I don’t think that they need to remove anything. I for one like the freedom to go anywhere in the system whether it’s from vanilla Destiny 2, or from the most recent content. I don’t like that a game like Call of Duty is over 170GB on the PlayStation, and Destiny is currently just over 101GB and it offers so much in terms of gameplay. Call of Duty has plenty of modes/maps, but 170GB? Come on. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy these games. Not all games are this large, but in a game where there are strikes, dungeons, whole worlds, PVP maps, Gambit mode, raids, and seasonal content I think that it’s fine. I don’t want to lose my content, and to me, losing content even if there’s a chance that it might come back in the future, seems unfair, especially considering that it may end up being in a paid way. If they were to take say the Tangled Shore away, content that I’ve already paid for once, and in the future offered it as a season content update but only if you pay for it, I think then I’d be done with Destiny. I don’t want that to happen, and neither should anyone else. If anything, the game should continue to be expanded upon. From now, until the day that Destiny has overstayed its welcome.

I’ve not even touched on the “sunsetting” of weapons and gear. I know you want us to use new gear, but if we choose to use old gear and weapons, that is how we want to play. Not everyone will continue to keep using older weapons, and forcing people off of them seems annoying and unnecessary to me. While I’m speaking of weapons here, Bungie, you gotta let us pull a curated roll out of our collection. My vault is full because there are weapons and armor that I am not guaranteed to get dropped due to them being from past seasons/expansions, and I don’t want to lose access to them. I know my voice is small, but I can’t be the only one who feels this way.

 

Destiny’s developer Bungie has assured us that they are listening to feedback that we in the community are giving them. My problem with this is as some folks have pointed out, is that they say this. There is a history here, where they are “listening to what we are saying” and then continue as they see fit, only to end up needing to walk back the implementation either during the season or at the next fall expansion. Armor 2.0 is a huge example. Weapons with random rolls are another. How many times must Bungie make a mistake that their audience explicitly tells them that they are making, only to finally admit to their mistake, and change things back? Armor 2.0 and random rolls were a huge improvement that should have never been needed.

I love the universe of Destiny. I wish that they would take a World of Warcraft approach to content updates and world-building. They call themselves an “Action RPG” but I don’t think they realize that removing content that your consumer base has paid for is the opposite of a living world. In my opinion, Bungie should not be splitting up their focus on this new IP that they announced a while back, but focus on Destiny, where they honestly could make a butt-ton of money if only they would work on making the world worth grinding and an actual coherent story that doesn’t need to be searched out to learn or experience.

I’m overall optimistic that the fall expansion will be good. There’s plenty of content to get us through between now and then. We have the season of arrivals, and the annual Solstice of Heroes in August, and I’m fairly certain that there are some other mystery quests that will be revealed in due time. Destiny is a great game, but I think sometimes Bungie wants us to play their way when it’s been shown that people will play when they have good things to chase. I hope that Bungie works through this funk of a mistake and we get the game we paid for, and they achieve the success that they so deserve. They brought us Halo, and Destiny was their next big thing, let’s hope it finally becomes properly big.

Thanks for reading and as always, eyes up, guardians. This is the Filthy Casual signing off.