Bungie's Destiny

So this will still be the issue even after they implement the new SBMM until there are enough people that have high enough ELO's that they will only face off with others with similar ELO ratings. But even then, the way that it is worded? I just don't think it's going to work that way. I still think that the skill gap is going to be too large. I say that because they mentioned in the TWAB that they don't want people to have to wait around for a game for longer than a min. So that means they will eventually have to widen the skill rating to put people in the games.

My crafted Piece of Mind has been my go to weapon for the last few months. I've got over 1200 Trials kills on it right now and I've no idea how many regular crucible kills on it. But it's probably close to 10,000 or more. I don't run GM NF's because I HATE them. I got talked into running just the Master Corrupted NF last week just once and I was lucky enough to get a Horrors Least to drop. Not bad rolls but certainly not a god roll either. But holy shit... I decided to play around with it tonight and my Piece of Mind is going in the Vault. Horrors Least is a fucking beast. I didn't think anything could beat the Piece of Mind that I crafted in the Pulse Rifle dept. but I was wrong. Even with worse rolls, it's better.

It's a fucking laser.

I cannot play passively. It's just not my play style. I over extend a few times and pay the price but 90% of the time I come out the winner of the gunfight even if I don't get the first shot off. It's that good.

*EDIT* Omnioculus is so OP right now that it shouldn't even be allowed in the game. I can stay invisible as much as I want, gain a 4x's damage resist, and also make others invis that are close to me and also give them a 1x's damage resist. It's fucking insane. If you watch the videos you'll see just how many instances I'm able to use it in and win the gunfights or at the very least back out and live to fight another day. It's dumb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEKpnf8mC40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhGec6VSmmI

Disjunction is such a hard map to play. You just end up running back and forth to go from one side to the other to get the kills. Then the spawns flip and you go back to the other side and repeat. Not my favorite map.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lWJbCik2nQ

This is the roll on the Horrors Least and it isn't even the Adept version. I can't imagine how much better the Adept version is but I can promise, as much as I HATE GM NF's with a passion, the next time it comes up next season I'll be farming this.

 

So this weekend of Trials was easy just because of the map. Endless Vale is one of the easier maps in the game. Got on and played last night and made it to the 5th round with no losses and my internet went out (Fuck AT&T btw). Called them and got another month for free. No idea what time it came back on during the night. Got on this morning and joined the first LFG group I found. We all got booted to orbit right before the last round and it took their Mercy away from them but not mine for some reason. We lost the final round and used "my" Mercy. Then we won the final round which only let me into the Lighthouse. At least they stuck with me and didn't reset. But goddamn they were annoying to listen to.

Video is only 3 mins long but you can tell I'm not talking and just ready to get out of this group. They were good no doubt. But these kids were annoying as fuck the entire match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za8LTcHD-yw

 

@Slow Internet

I now have someone that can corroborate my issues with PvP and people leaving matches. @TenBeers wanted to go into Quickplay and finish out the clan bounty for the week. I told him I only run in stacked teams but went on and did it anyway. First match we never had more than 5 people on our team. We of course lost that match. Second match we (at times) only had 4 people on our team but never more than 5. Here is what I notice... When we drop in to a match, whoever has the highest K/D will always be pictured first. That was me each match. After those two matches I was done. I'm not playing a game mode where we are always at a disadvantage. Nothing... and I mean nothing pisses me off more than people leaving my team. That is why I have such a deep hatred towards Freelance Trials. Even if EVERYONE left my team in 6's I wouldn't leave. I'd try to take as many with me as I could.

So after me ranting last night for probably 30 fucking mins, I finally have proof that it happens to me "almost" every time I go in solo from someone else. And I think I have the answer of why this might be happening. The very first thing I do while flying into a match is to look at the roster and see if there are any stacks in the group. The last match we played had three 2 stacks. And guess what? They were all on the opposing team. We flew in with 5 on our team. This is what I think is happening. My ELO is so high that even though there isn't SBMM in Quickplay (yet), the game still tries to separate the teams by ELO. For any that don't know what ELO is, ELO is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in a zero sum game. It was originally applied to chess to match people with similar sill levels. As you raise your ELO you face off against harder players but players that are still in your relative skill bracket. But PvP is also a zero sum game so it applies just as directly as it does in chess. Rich wanted to know what his ELO was so I got on Destiny Tracker and told him. The difference between his and mine are drastic but that's not unexpected since all I do is play PvP. Looking back at the two games, I had the highest ELO of anyone in those matches (even on the opposing team). But, the opposing teams had more of a balanced team. Where my ELO is extremely high and Rich's is pretty low (along with the rest of our team after looking it up on Destiny Tracker), it tried to even out the teams by giving our team the lower skilled players just because my ELO is so high. The game should have a way of at least trying to balance out the teams but it doesn't. It just takes the person with the highest ELO and groups them with lower skilled players to balance out the ELO of the two opposing teams. Add to that... We NEVER had a full team each of those matches. And those are the first Control matches I've lost in I don't know how long? I'm just happy I went positive. But I can't carry an entire team when everyone is spread out all over the map.

So when you or anyone asks why I run in stacked teams? That is the reason. I shouldn't be punished just because my ELO is so high that it gives my team low ELO players. So I will always stand by my statement that if someone leaves a Quickplay match in progress 3 times in one week, they should be banned from PvP for a month. If someone leaves a Trials match in progress? They should be banned not only from PvP in general but Trials for 3 months. No FUCKING EXCEPTIONS!!!!

I understand that things happen. It happened to me last week in trials on the 5th round and my internet went out and we were going to win. Bungie knows when there is an actual disconnect and when someone "physically" leaves a match. So it would be easy to implement.

Here is an example (though I don't expect you will watch it). This was from Trials this last weekend. The very first round the opposing team left as soon as they saw who they were playing so it was scored as a tie. Later on in the card, 2 people left this poor guy by himself because we were beating the living shit out of them. In both of those situations, those that left should be banned from Trials for 3 months. No exceptions. So... I will NEVER feel sorry for running in a stacked team. At least I know they won't leave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahrB3jucyjk

 

Don't forget though that pulling the cord on your router/console was a thing... It's just a part of the game, shitty nonetheless.

 

That was more along the lines of cheating. I remember when lag switching was a thing. More so in D1 though. Rarely do I ever see anything suspicious on console. I know cheating is much more rampant on the PC side of things. Much harder on the console side of things. Saying that... I did get a DDoS attack for the very first time a month or so ago. Never had that happen before even in D1. But I was able to get back in and finish up the card with little problem. Cheating is one thing... People will always try to find a way to cheat. That is why I refuse to play PvP against people on PC. Battleye has done a lot against cheating on the PC side of things so it isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. Every once in a while I'll run into someone with a bad connection. That's to be expected and I can accept that. Same thing with "bullet magnetism" and being clearly shot behind cover that I was able to get behind. Those are things that I just work around because I know they are in the game.

What I can't stand is people quitting out of my games. It has happened so often to me that it's finally ruined that portion of PvP for me. Which is why I will only run 6's in a full stack now. And I get that some will say that is unfair to the opposing team and I would agree with that statement. But until Bungie starts banning people for leaving (ESPECIALLY IN TRIALS)??? I'm going to keep on doing it. Thing is... I shouldn't feel like I have to do it. When they took away "true" SBMM this wasn't much of an issue since you would be facing similarly skilled players. And the higher your ELO, the less likely that someone was going to quit out of a match because it would be counted as a loss. This all started once they took away "true" SBMM out of Control (or any quickplay match).
I don't expect that anyone will watch the entire Trials card that I posted above because it is 35 mins long. But during that card we had the very first team leave once we dropped in because they (most likely) looked up our Trials Report and said fuckit. I do the same thing when we are flying in to judge just how hard that match is going to be. But I don't drop out of it. That's the difference. May the best team win. But during that card we had two matches where one person left on the opposing team and then one poor guy had 2 people leave on his team. I've been there numerous times and it sucks. The only way I know to counter or curb this problem is to issue bans to anyone that quits. Lag switching isn't a thing anymore. At least not that I've seen. Most every game I play has a good connection and if I get beat (excluding the games where people quit)? 99% of the time it's because I put myself in a bad position or just got outplayed. I can live with that. That is on me. But Bungie themselves make it so easy to form a premade fireteam on their own website. And I don't have to worry about people quitting out of my matches. Which is why I'll never step foot in Freelance Trials again. I've gone Flawless 5 times in Freelance but it is truly an exercise in frustration.

 

I do have to say that the 2 matches I played with @RearViewMirror were the worst I have seen with people dropping. It was significantly worse than when I go in freelance. Totally different and unenjoyable experience.

I agree that Bungie should do something to discourage this behavior, and banning people temporarily that voluntarily drop seems totally reasonable. They can tell when someone voluntarily leaves opposed to losing their connection. Sure, people could just "pull the cord," but that is a hassle. And, they could just do something like 10 drops in a week and you are banned, regardless. If your internet is that bad, maybe online PvP just shouldn't be your thing.

 

Agreed.

Unfortunately there is no freelance Quickplay. Only freelance IB which I won't play because I hate Rift. So that leaves you with Freelance Comp which is fine but there is no incentive to play Comp other than true SBMM is in effect.

 

Quick reminder for anyone that is hoarding bounties. I'm completely full on bounties on all three characters. If you do this, make sure to turn in at least three bounties as soon as you log in when the new season drops so you can pick up the new quests. If you don't do this, it could potentially stop your progress in the game. Also make sure you have the XP ghost mod on your ghost (preferably) before you log out for the last time this season. One less thing to think about. DO NOT turn in the rest of your bounties until AFTER you pick up the new artifact so you will get credit towards leveling up the new artifact. If you are in a fireteam you will get "Shared Wisdom" which IIRC is another 10% XP on top of what your ghost mod will give you. But even if you aren't in a fireteam make sure you have the +12% on your ghost so you can take advantage of that boost. With all the bounties I have saved up? I figure that will get me to around level 7-8 on the season pass.

None of this is actually "needed" since you will organically level your season pass no matter what just playing the game. But it will help if you plan on playing Kings Fall on day 1. But there is really is no use in busting your ass off trying to bounty hoard. But if you have had the time to do so. Make sure to capitalize on all the work you've done.

 

One other thing to remember for next season. Arc will be king. The entire seasonal artifact will be centered around the Arc Subclass. As the case with Void 3.0, everything that worked so well with Void and Solar in the past won't work as well this coming season with Arc 3.0. Meaning that when Solar 3.0 came out, the Void Subclass didn't work as well since there were no Artifact mods that took advantage of that Subclass anymore. The same will happen to Solar next season. No more "Classy Restoration" for you. No more setting the entire room on fire or in the Void Subclass case, blowing up entire rooms with Void weapons. That will be a thing of the past.

Weapons like Riskrunner will be king next season (mark my words). Trinity Ghoul will also become more of an add clearing machine than it already is (especially if there is a bow mod in the Artifact). But the Artifact will be centered around Arc and it will leave Solar and Void behind. It won't be until the "next" season where things settle down and all classes will become equal again. I built heavily into Void and I've pretty much stayed that way through Solar 3.0. I won't lie and say that Solar hasn't been fun on the WL and Titan. But on the Hunter? I find no fun in it "personally". I only run Void on my Hunter. And although it most definitely has the worst super for PvP, I still feel like it has the best "neutral" game of any class in the game. Unless I see an entire group of people that I can tether? I don't use it until it becomes time to shut down a super. But that really only applies to "roaming supers". Shutting down a Dawnblade in the air or taking out a Titan Bubble? Forget it. It "will" take out a Well of Radiance but it takes two full shots. And good luck with that if there are more than 2 people standing in it. I've only been able to pull that off a few times throughout the hundreds of PvP games that I've played this season.

As much as I don't like Solar on my Hunter, I dislike Arc even more. The nerf to Omni won't change how I play. The damage resist reduction won't do much to curb that as it is only effective if you are invisible. And even now without the nerf. It doesn't do much. But, the ability to go invis anytime I want and close the gap or to make my entire team invis? That is where it comes into play. Add to that, dropping in from the air and landing on or near an opponent will almost always net you that kill due to the debuff, smoke screen, and making them volatile.

It was no surprise to me that with the upcoming Machine Gun Buff that Kings Fall was going to be the reprised raid. Rocket Launcher had no place in that raid. Machine Guns were king. And any Arc weapons that you use will be viable during that raid. Thunderlord might see a resurgence because of this and it's kill chaning potential. So expect to see Machine Gun usage skyrocket along with Arc Linear Fusion Rifles that are in Arc. Stormchaser would be a good choice for that. Add to that... we have no idea what new weapons will be released this next season. I doubt that Touch of Malice will be coming back but I could be wrong. Touch of Malice was a high risk high reward weapon and I never took it off during the raid.

So my prediction for Kings Fall will be Scout Rifles, Sniper Rifles, Machine Guns, and possible Sub Machine Guns for add clear. I know there will be changes to the reprised raid just like VoG. But it will be a rework in proportion of what they did with VoG. VoG was still the same raid with a few different mechanics thrown in. Same will be true for Kings Fall. It will be the same raid but we will have some spots that we have to do things differently.

 

So, I just noticed a funny tweet from Bungie Help.


Stay safe and protect your hearing, Guardians.

 

I never noticed it when playing against Golgoroth. I suppose it could be my sound settings that I have set to balance things out between chat and game volume. As an aside... I always keep the ingame music turned off. I used to just listen to my own Apple Music mix in my headphones. I know I'm missing out on some great soundtracks but Tool is better. The only time I don't use any type of music in the background is when I'm playing PvP. I need to hear the direction of everything going on and adjust accordingly.

 

Speaking of PvP... Finally got around to playing last night. SBMM is back in the game. And it's kind of strange how they implemented it. It's a tiered system and I'm not sure where the tier limits are. Set up a 6 stack and I noticed that since the ELO of all players in our stack are completely different, I've no idea how the game balances out those teams. I will say that we never steamrolled another team but we won most of the matches. Never went negative but also there was a huge reduction in me getting on a 20 kill streak as before. There are so many viable weapons in the game now that it's really hard to judge what is the best. My Horrors Least was a beast last season. Now? It doesn't seem as potent as it used to be. I will say on thing... We ran up against a team with two people using the new Touch of Malice and that gun will have to be nerfed. If you get in a 1v1 against that weapon you will lose 99% of the time. It melts from so far away that there is no other scout rifle that can really compete with it. So I'll just have to work around it until I get one. I did the unthinkable and actually played one match solo and we won and I came out with a 2.8 K/D. What I noticed last night is there are no more people with extremely high K/D's at the end of the game. The highest K/D that I saw on "our" team while loading in was just over a 2.0 overall through all of their past games. Last season it wasn't uncommon for me to get multiple "We ran out of medals" in a play session. I only had one 10 kill streak last night. So I would say that it is more balanced than in the past.

People worried about lag since the game searches for skill over connection at the moment. But I never noticed any lag at all. If I got outplayed it was completely because I got outplayed. No lag involved. If I outplayed someone it was clean. I just need to learn the new system and get comfortable with it. Not as much Arc as you might think but it is there. So I'll probably switch to Arc on my Hunter to take advantage of Blink and see how that plays out in PvP.

 

Bungie is my customer. I helped them to connect to broadcast their last update into APAC.

They do things right-- China plays the hell out of this game. The numbers are insane over there

 

I only ran into 1-2 that were obviously from China or another country just judging by their GT. Not to say that there were actually more that just chose "common" GT names. But it's pretty easy to tell if they have Chinese characters on their GT's. But I never noticed any lag at all even if they were completely around the world from me. So they are doing something right. I think most of the lag (which happens rarely) is due to poor internet connection from the person that I'm going up against. Not to say that lag doesn't happen. It just rare that I actually witness it. Most games are lag free which is great. So if I get outplayed I don't blame it on lag. I blame it on myself for putting myself in a bad position from my teammates or I just got outplayed by that person. Same applies to me. If I outplay someone it just means that I had an advantageous position and took advantage of it.

 

So... "Loose" SBMM is working "somewhat". @TenBeers and I have been playing together each night this week and so far the matches have been relatively close. IIRC... I think there has only been one match where we mercy'd the other team and only one match that we were mercy'd. But "most" of our matches have been pretty close and have gone the distance. I have yet to go negative once this season. According to Destiny Tracker I'm sitting at a 2.10 K/D overall with a 62.5% win rate. That K/D is lower than my normal K/D so that means that at least part of SBMM is working as intended and I'm not matching people that are way less than my skill level. That is just me playing solo or Rich and I playing together. So as far as the matches being close, I think they hit their objective.

With that said... Bungie admitted in today's TWAB that even "more" people are quitting out of matches than ever before. When we got mercy'd, we never had more than 5 on our team. When we mercy'd the other team they were in the same situation. Even Bungie admitted this is concerning. But until they start to actually issue temporary bans on people that quit? There is no incentive for those people to not do so. That is the only fix to this issue. I do not understand people that quit. I just don't get it. If I was the last person standing in a lobby I wouldn't quit. I've never once quit out of a game since D1 and I have been that last person in a lobby during a Comp or Trials match more than I care to remember. I will not back out. If for no other reason than at least I'll gain the respect from the other team. I'll try to take as many with me as I can but I'm not on Grenader Jake's level of playing. But I can't count the number of times I've been in that position. More than half the time after one of those matches I'll get a response from someone in the other team saying "GG" or "sorry your team left". Is what it is. But until they start issuing bans? This will continue.

 

There's a lot of interesting discussion on the Bungie forums on SBMM. A lot of puppy punters seem to be taking issue. But yeah, games where people don't quit have all been really good and competitive lately.

An interesting bit of info would be to look at the stats of the people that are quitting games. It's likely a mix of newbs that are just trying it for the first time and finding out it's not for them, and people that are wanting to pad stats.

 

There are just enough changes to Kings Fall that I think they did an amazing job reprising this raid. Reprised VoG was great IMO. But I'm a bit biased when it comes to Kings Fall. That was my favorite raid that Bungie has ever done. Mostly because the raid is long with many encounters and some great jumping puzzles. But there are just enough changes to this raid that really make it new again. Still the same "basic" concept but just different mechanics to get it done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7D4_UYaKM

 

Yeah -- they have thousands of IPs circulating and being banned around the clock its wild. So many illegal VPNs. The gamers are smart

 

I have a buddy that plays with a VPN. I've never seen the need for it personally. He used to play with a router that would limit the area that he wanted to play in. So he would include Ohio, Maryland, and where I live in a large circle. That was great for connection but not so great for loading times for matches.

 

I finally got it. The rarest "earn-able" ship in Destiny 2. Out of the millions of players that play the game, only 20,215 people have this ship. Took me around 30 trips to the Lighthouse for it to finally drop this weekend.







Last weekend I played Trials from around 11:30 pm until 4:30 am to go Flawless. LFG group on Bungie's site. Could have probably chose another group but they were extremely cool and one guy had never been to the Lighthouse so we got him there.

This weekend I LFG'd it again and screwed up and forgot to put console only so I ended up playing against nothing but PC players. The entire card took around 40 mins. Course it didn't hurt that the other two on my team were gods. I'm just happy I can hang with them. Never went negative and had a 7.0 K/D one match. The rest never fell below 2.0 so I felt really good about that.

Oh... And btw... SBMM at it's finest. No one on my team went positive. How is an entire team this bad in SBMM?