thatdudeguy

I played DkS -> DkSII -> DeS (never finished) -> Bloodborne (never finished). While DeS may be a great game, I had a hard time dealing with the crazy framerate issues I encountered in my first few hours with the game, expecially after hundreds of hours of 60FPS DkS and DkSII on PC.

My favorites are, in order, DkSII -> Bloodborne -> DkS -> DeS. I really liked the expansive areas in DkS II and really enjoyed its combat. Bloodborne would top my list due to its gameplay improvements and fantastic eldritch theme, but ultimately I found the game world too oppressive to want to spend any more time in. The Dark Souls mainline games tend to balance very dark and claustrophobic areas with light, open areas.

Thanks for the great, civil discussion in this thread. I feel the need to call that out because the GiantBomb community is unusually great about deciding not to jump the shark on discussions that touch on things this sensitive.

My take on the BLM reference in the boss fight is that it wasn't particularly well thought out. I doubt that the writers and developers intended any grand protest nor intended to undermine that particular cause. But I am glad it's being talked about, in the hopes that those same writers or others will take note that it is possible to embed political views that will be noticed as easily as this random enemy bark was, and that taking the time to understand the varied reactions to this one is worth spending time on.

That said, the most important thing that emerged from the discussion about this game's political leanings for me was that loot games need to very carefully balance the inherent mechanics of the genre, "I want to kill something to acquire better gear", against the story motives of the player character. While I've had a blast with The Division (ding! just hit the single-player ending after 49 hours of mostly-solo play), I've never once felt like my desire for loot was explained by my role.

Destiny, for as little story as it has, can escape that central question of motivation because its writers invented alien races that by the writers' own definition are relentless murder machines. Humans versus humans, in almost any capacity, are going to take an order of magnitude more care to overcome totally reasonable, if unintended, ethical red flags.

I'm now 45-ish hours into the game going borough-by-borough, doing side-missions until I get bored then matchmaking into the main missions. And still not done. I'm at level 28. I've occasionally dabbled in the DZ for fun, but have yet to sink my teeth into it. Compared to my feelings working through vanilla Destiny, I'm extremely happy with my purchase just as a single-player/co-op experience. I think the Ubisoft open world layout and borough hub design works surprisingly well to contextualize the content available at release.

Regarding the endgame, which I'm beginning to approach, I understand the frustration with nerfing the most efficient method of grinding for better loot. But I wonder what possible benefits that grinding can in the best case yield in a PvP game. I assume that the highest of high-end equipment will be only infinitesimally better than the rest, as the power curve has to level out somewhere. Do players grinding for hours and hours past the point of enjoying the shooty-time fun hope to get something way more damaging/protective than their current gear/weapons, or hope to get something that perfectly synergizes with their build?

Because on the same date as the nerf, the devs are also dropping a much better path to both increased damage and build synergy. That seems like a really fair trade, and one that removes some of the incentive to grind bland content. I suppose that in a Time Clickers kinda way, seeing the numbers go up might be a certain type of player's main incentive for continuing to play, and that's totally valid.

I'm a lapsed Destiny player, and while I enjoyed my time with that game, I always felt bound by the developer's desire to gate my experience. Even after experiencing Destiny burnout, post-The-Taken-King, I have absolutely loved my time with The Division.

More than anything else, it reminds me of a game I played in school on Gamecube, Freedom Fighters. I dig the aesthetic of a guerilla force retaking a city borough by borough. The story, though often requiring suspension of disbelief, is somewhat coherent, as opposed to Destiny's "Deliver the Chalice to the Expungers via the Yellow Dawn" mashup of weirdly absurd proper names. There are tons of problems. This game, in design terms, is a hot mess. But give me an environment that I enjoy, workable gameplay mechanics, and some fun loot grinding, and I'm in. In my first 35 hours, I'm still not that far in (level 21/30 in a game that's big on endgame mechanics.) But I'm freaking loving it. The Gears-meets-Freedom-Fighters mashup is hitting all of my dopamine triggers and I love jumping in for either a short Dark Zone NPC-killing session, or grinding out the side missions in the next borough I'd like to conquer.

The one particular area where the game didn't communicate itself particularly well is in the natural progression path. It's really hard to find yourself in a bad situation if you pay particular attention to your listed "Side Missions". As long as you clear every "Side Mission" on the map, the game will give you a good next step that will earn you a buttload of XP. Complete main missions as your level allows, but as long as you follow the side mission progression path (which will lead you by-the-hand into new boroughs) you'll find yourself with more than enough XP to handle the next challenge.

So I'm a vanilla WoW dabbler (never got past level 34 :) ), lapsed Destiny player, and enthusiastic The Division agent. So Destiny was my first dive into what endgame MMO mechanics kinda look like. Without a good MMO reference point, I'me left wondering how clans built into the game would give people larger chat groups while doing assignments. As far as I knew, WoW and Destiny didn't have any integrated clan mechanics. Destiny offered clans a web UI for discussion and inspecting each other's equipment, but it wasn't integrated into the game in a meaningful way, right?

I was under the naive impression that clans generally existed on websites with forums and served to organize play sessions and voice chat channels outside of the given game's interface. Is that totally wrong? I'm genuinely curious.

It would be awesome to join a clan and upon logging into The Division or Destiny, see a list of clanmates and be able to organize groups/fireteams or alternately jump into a clan-wide voice chat while farming or doing assignments/bounties.

I've eased up on my anti-always-on DRM stance, specifically for games with integrated PvP using acquired loot. The Souls games are a good example of modified client-side inventories making PvP a very occasional bummer. But I also agree that this game could have implemented an offline mode removing all online components and it would have satisfied a bunch of customers who couldn't care less about online interactions. Was that the game they wanted to make, though? Would that have ballooned or staggered bugfix times or the budget? I can understand the frustrations and dilemmas on both sides.

Just to report my own anecdotal experiences on PS4:

I almost always get placed in a queue at position 250-350 and start actually loading in within a minute of seeing that message. I'm in Denver, CO, if that makes a difference for queueing.

I also very frequently experience hit confirm lag against all opponents, AI and human. When using auto weapons, I've begun forcing myself to let up on the trigger a split second before I would finish off an enemy, knowing that in a half-second the kill shot will register and I'll see the XP popup. It really hasn't dampened my enjoyment of the gameplay, but isn't nearly as seamless as, for example, Destiny's shooting.

@lentfilms: I'm on a weeklong road-trip-with-a-baby this week, so my atmosphere while playing a horror game has been more than slightly compromised, but I'm still having fun with the game. Regarding voice acting, it's not noticeably bad in English. At least par for the eastern horror game course. But I've softened a bit on the controls. If this were an Outlast-style run away simulator they would be awful, but playing on Easy mode, I haven't encountered many action scenarios. It has been a fine way to pass the time riding through Kansas.

Thanks for the great writeup. I'm only dabbling in the DZ at this point, but I like the uncomfortable nature of the PvP there. It gives me a DayZ-lite experience of hoping for the best in players, sometimes ending up rewarding and sometimes ending tragically. It's a really neat thing and I'm glad it exists. It's very much like a grownup's version of gradeschool recess. With guns, I suppose.

I'm taking a less conservative approach with this game, as someone who normally hoards items in long RPGs. I'm not generally buying weapons because I've found a pair that I like (burst fire AR and burst fire SMG) at my current level, though I've spent a few thousand credits buying specific mods that shore up their weaknesses. I'm trying to err on the side of enjoying the game so that I don't feel like it's an extended grind. If the game still holds my attention up to level 30, then I'll gladly switch into grind mode for the promise of more content.

@shivermetimbers said:

I'd second all of the advice in this thread, and add that if you eventually determine that the hard drive is busted, I can wholeheartedly recommend a program with a goofy name and website called SpinRite to give you a shot at recovering really important stuff from it. Boot into it from a USB drive, kick it off, and several days later it'll give you a detailed report about what was broken on the drive, what it could fix, and what it couldn't. I've only had to use it twice, but it was well worth the money to salvage some photos and SSL certificate keys.