God Rolls - Destiny Un-Sunsetting, Outriders Endgame, Falcon's Cameo
Guardian Games next week pledge Warlock or else
Alright it has been a long week of Outriders grinding and a bit of Trials of Osiris struggling to get the damn Hunter cape for transmog. Have been getting a lot of game time in before I head out on a trip next week (my first in a year), but I’ll still be writing. And maybe filming.
What I’m Playing: Mostly have been rotating through all four Outriders classes now that they’re in the endgame, getting up in Challenge Tiers. I also went back to Genshin Impact for what might have been its best story quest since launch.
What I’m Watching: Falcon and the Winter Soldier had a great episode this week. I started Snowpiercer on HBO Max which is ehh, okay. I watched Nobody, an incredible action movie I wrote about further down.
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Alright, here’s the list:
Destiny
The Case For Un-Sunsetting ‘Destiny 2’ Pinnacle Weapons (With Exceptions) - Why I think Bungie should un-sunset most of the old pinnacle weapons outside of a few highly problematic ones.
‘Destiny 2’ PvP Is Still Crippled By Stasis, Five Months And Many Nerfs Later - No matter what Bungie does to Stasis, it does not feel like they’re ever going to make it work in PvP.
‘Destiny 2’ Wants You To Pick From 12 Exotics To Get New Ornaments, Time To Rig The Vote - Bungie is having us vote on which overlooked exotic we want to get an ornament uh, next year.
Outriders
Here Are The Problems With ‘Outriders’ Endgame Expeditions - Outriders needs to do some clean up in its endgame so people don’t end up bouncing off of it.
Here’s The ‘Outriders’ Pyromancer Anomaly Build You’re Looking For - The Pyromancer build I finally landed on for my campaign clear, and into the endgame.
Why ‘Outriders’ Doesn’t Have Solo Self-Revives - People Can Fly has addressed this question directly, and I don’t love their answer.
TV and Movies
The Pandemic Messed Up That ‘Falcon And The Winter Soldier’ Episode 5 Cameo - Falcon got its promised episode 5 cameo, but it was supposed to go differently because of Black Widow’s release date.
Netflix's 'The Circle' Season 2 Hurts Its Core Appeal With Guest Stars - Lol I really do not know if anyone here watches this show but it is my secret reality pleasure and I wrote about it.
‘Nobody’ Is The Rare Film Worth Its Premium SVOD Price - Quite possibly the best action movie you’ll watch this year, Bob Odenkirk is the action star you never saw coming.
YouTube
I made an entire “live service scale” where I can put games on it from Outriders to Destiny to Cyberpunk
Here’s the scale, for reference:
I talk about my hopes for Season of Glass which DMG tells me, is not, in fact, called that:
DMG killing my dreams:
Talking about what are the cheapest enemies to fight in Outriders right now:
Alright, and I will leave you with the answer to the question “why do you play console over PC?”
See you next time. Leave a comment if you like:
What if we got a choice on the Crucible screen with the rest of the game types where you choose between playing with/against guardians as light-only subclasses, dark-only subclasses, or mixed? Especially once we get more dark subclasses, they could just limit the PVP sandboxes to balancing within each, light or dark, (and the mixed I guess is just kind of a free-for-all where it's okay that things are broken). I know this adds complications with matchmaking and it splits the player base, and I'm not sure what that would mean for gambit which is already losing popularity, but I think it's an interesting thought overall.
I also really liked the un-sunsetting article. I find myself asking all the time: since I paid for D2 Vanilla, Curse, Warmind, Forsaken, Shadowkeep and Beoyond Light, why can't I use the weapons and armor from those?
Is it really game-breaking to let me roam around with a Breakneck, Loaded Question and 21% Delirirum? Yes, they're great weapons, yes, they're powerful weapons. How many of those are the raid meta? How many are Trials meta? I can't say any of those were (though I don't profess to be an expert).
Sidebar: Mountaintop in particular seems like a dumb sunset because Salvagers Salvo is in the game. I don't need another breach-loading grenade launcher pinnacle weapon when I can just keep my old one.
I hadn't even realized how much stuff was gone when I checked on my favorite weapon type: auto rifles.
how many legendary primary (kinetic) auto rifles were in the game now (without counting exotics like Sweet Business, Cerbereus +1, and Monte Carlo) ... Drum roll... 3.
Excluding exotics, there are only 3 non-sunset primary auto rifles: False Promises, The Forward Path and Seventh Seraph Carbine.
Excluding exotics, there are only 4 non-sunset energy auto rifles: Gnawing Hunger (which is great), Arctic Haze (which is terrible), Summoner (which is in Trials) and Shadow Price (which is RNG in Nightfalls).
I miss my overflow/rampage Arc Logic. I miss my masterworked Origin Story. I miss Ringing Nail, Tigerspite, Origin Story, Halfan-D, Loquitor IV, Bray Tech Winter Wolf, Arc Logic, Breakneck, Galliard 42, Uriel's Gift .... you get the idea.
None of these were game-breaking and yet none of them are available anymore. But more importantly, the losses far outweigh the gains in this category (I'm sure it's the same for all weapon types).
I've been playing Destiny since House of Wolves in 2015 and frankly, I don't want my stuff taken away again and again just so I can go "re-grind" for more guns and armors. Coming to D2 from D1 was bad enough, but sunsetting was a mistake. Especially since targeting "problem" weapons was an option.
Frankly, sometimes I wonder if the answer is that Destiny 2 is getting "lazier" on the development side. Maybe Bungie is burnt out on their own franchise.
To end on a positive note: I think no longer sunsetting is a step in the right direction. But I don't think "play the way you want" is true as long as I have a list of weapons I want to use (but cannot) that is 3-4 times the length of the weapons I can use.