Destiny releases 9/9/2014

I think I'm gong to pass on making a new hunter for the beta. I don't want to get burned out on the beginning of the game especially if they don't carry over characters from the beta to the final release. I'll work on my warlock to see it's full beta potential for now.

Meh, I rerolled my Hunter right off the bat but I haven't had much time to play nor will I until next week (damn Vacation doesn't start till Tuesday). I'll have more thoughts on it then but so far outside of the first two story missions I feel like I'm playing Alpha again (which isn't a bad thing but is the main reason I'm not pushing myself to play it more before Wednesday when the servers come back up from Maintenance, I honestly do not want to burn myself out completely before it hits retail).

I'll start up my Titan when I actually get to do some actual playing to see if I like it because I already know I don't like the Warlock.

http://www.twitch.tv/sledgstone/b/548782645

Check out my video at 2:14.. It was 4 minutes of intense fighting. I should have played this mission with some teammates, because I almost died a couple of different times. But playing it solo made it feel much more extreme.

I'm thinking the warlock is weaker with defense, because if I was playing as a titan I feel like I should have had less of an issue. If I was playing as a hunter, I might have died because the warlock super saved me in a horde of thralls. But if I was a hunter, that golden gun would have destroyed a couple of the higher level enemies much faster and I'd have saved more shotgun ammo for those thralls.

I believe we got spoiled by the alpha. Since I've now done the beginning of the game 3 different times now, I feel like it might get me burned out. I'll continue my warlock to see some more of the story line, but I won't be playing this endlessly like I was with the alpha. All those level ups and inventory gone.. I don't want to get another awesome sniper rifle again until to loose everything. It looks like the level cap for the beta is 8 again. Unless they up the level cap in the last couple days for a stress test, I doubt we'll see any of the higher skills until the game goes retail.

They're really just giving us a small taste. And for those that played the alpha we want MOOOAAARR!!

Strider, have you checked out that vanguard quatermaster near the shipwright? We can't afford any of that stuff, but looking at the upgrades of each of those weapons has me salivating over customizations. Its really going to be hard to part with a weapon when you find something stronger. I can see why that have the vault now. I'll def be saving fully upgraded hand-me-downs to other character classes I create.

I haven't checked it since I started playing but if the weapons and armor are anything like they were in the Alpha I'm stoked for the sheer amount of customization we'll get to play around with. The only problem with hand me downs will be what you plan on playing your other classes as. My Hunter won't be able to hand down because I don't plan on running a Titan as a sniper oriented class and all my Hunter will use is sniper rifles and scout rifles. Something about scout rifles and sniper rifles just makes this game so much more fun for me (even more so as a Hunter).

I honestly hope they raise the cap but they really can't. Everything in the beta is oriented for low level characters. Hell at level 8 in the Alpha I felt incredibly overpowered for The Devil's Lair when we did it (mostly because it's a level 6 strike and mostly due to the gear I was wearing at the time). It'd getting exceptionally harder to level past 8 as xp rewards shrink progressively between each level (the only real way to level would be through PVP and that's just a tedious grind).

http://www.bungie.net/7_Bungie-Weekly-Update---07182014/en/News/News?aid=11938

Its a good article about the beta. Apparently there was an event in the crucible today that we missed.

Also... We have to make sure we login at 2 pm Pacific time on the 26th. "Rewards will be handsome and permanent."

Sledge and I taking down the Devil Walker.

Here's Sledge and I taking down Sepiks Prime. I see around 3:30 where Sledge decided the Warlock was not for him. I didn't see that when it actually happened.

That missed shot pissed me off so much.

Here is the first strike we did with the Sepkis Prime boss:

Heres the clip I took of the same fight from your video so you can see my perspective as I died multiple times from that Devil Walker. I missed that shot at 11:17. That bastard moved just the smallest amount and my guardian shot far left.

I'll be sticking with Hunter after this. That Warlock goes down too easy.

It looked so epic when you took flight and then it was a big ole fail. I now remember trying to do that same thing in the Alpha and he would teleport every time. He must be programmed to avoid it completely since it does gradual area damage. The Hunter's golden gun probably is the most useful in this situation.

Those weak little flying things sure have become a pain in the ass during boss fights. It seems like more of them spawn and less drop ammo. The ammo drops need to be tweaked similar to how they were in the alpha. I'm finding that I run out of primary ammo sometimes and no one is dropping it until all of the sudden one enemy drops a enough to fill it to max. Meanwhile, all the special ammo you could possibly need litters the ground, but the capacity for special weapons are so small it doesn't really matter. Heavy Weapon ammo is more of a rarity, which is cool if you have a rocket launcher... not so much if you have a LMG.

Thats why I waited for him to teleport before I attempted the attack.. but once I started the attack, it was impossible to adjust the aim. It starts that 3rd person perspective animation and its all done. I had the same issue with the titan when I tried doing jumping specials. The animation took to long and the enemies would dodge just enough to be out of the way.

The ammo drop seems completely sporadic now. Just like you said.. nothing for the longest time then 3 enemies in a group drops everything.

I noticed a good topic on Bungie's forum. Someone complained that the world itself seem barren. There is no life forms, no little creatures scurrying around on the ground, no birds in the sky, etc.. and the areas the enemies spawn at seem to have no real value. Its like they are there for the sake of being there as opposed to defending a potential mining location or a strategic base or outpost. Even Borderlands had small villages of enemies where they would spawn out of small huts, but in Destiny, the enemies drop down from ships to a random field or rock outpost and start patrolling. There was also a complain about there being no destructible environment aspects. No barrels that can be shot to cause an explosion, no hanging structures that could be shot down to crush enemies, etc..  I never thought about these things until I read the topics about it, but these people do have a point. Destiny could be even better if some of these things were implemented.

The Beta is back up! I'll be getting on tomorrow. Does anyone know if they added anything new since the downtime on PS4?

Also, turns out my one friend said he wouldn't have time to try the Destiny Beta.. so I have an extra code. This will only work for PS4 North America only! First come, first serve:

6CRR-NQNA-R33H

As far as I could tell last night when I got on nothing changed. Unless they added something for max level players I think the downtime was for server tests and probably getting everything ready for the Microsoft side of the test since it also went live yesterday due to there early finish.

edit: There doesn't seem to be anything new added to the beta. Hit 8 this morning and there was no new stuff to do unless they're adding stuff to the Crucible (which I haven't been doing anything with). I'll be on tonight myself. I'll watch my PSN app to see when you get on if I'm not on at that time. Might be leveling my Titan.

I also have 3 PS4 codes and a PS3 code for the beta so if anyone is interested let me know. None of my friends own a PS4 beside you crazy people so I've got an abundance.

Glad I'm not missing out on too much. These damn overnights have become 11-13 hour shifts so I basically go home, go to sleep, and then wake up to go back into work. I'll make sure I log in on the 26th to get my emblem... but I would like some time to farm for my vault JUST in case they do decide to transfer stuff to the final retail.

I should be getting on tonight soon, but only for about an hour, I'll try to see if the moon mission is available yet. If not I might try the crucible in case it is a requirement to get that moon mission seeing as one of the crucible maps is on the moon.

Strider, if you still have that ps3 beta code could I have it for my older brother? He didn't get a ps4 yet but he is definitively interested in getting destiny for ps4 later this year. If he logs in with his ps3 be should be able to get that emblem because it'll be the same bungie account for him.

I'll pm the PS3 code to you shortly.

I don't think the Moon mission will become available. I clicked on it earlier today only to get a message saying something about waiting for 9/9 for the full release. Unless they plan on opening it up last minute for people to play I don't think we'll get to see it.

It is a tease... but they could have just not put it there... so Its possible maybe they open it up on the 26th and you have to complete the mission to get your emblem.

Thanks strider!

If bungie wanted to do a full stress test then on the last day they could announce the level cap will be raised to 20 and all items in the vault will be saved for the full release. Everybody would jump on there.

They could, but then when everyone crashes the game, they'll bitch how they couldn't play and fill their vaults, and how its not fair and they are going to go get a refund and how bungie sucks and XB1 for life, and PS4 sucks.... etc

Honestly thought I've only experienced one crash when we were both on that one night. I still expect a few hiccups on launch day.... but nothing too bad. Activision tends to be better than EA on opening day.

No prob Sledge. As I said hopefully it works for him so he can give it a try. Also the pictures of your new rifle are up in the gallery, take a look at that beautiful piece of hardware you got.

Heh, that would most likely kill the poor servers if they did that. I wouldn't be surprised if they let us play it on Saturday but that would kind of suck seeing as how it'd be a last minute thing and you'd have to run the hell out of it to get to know it. When I logged on this afternoon there was a message about the 26th posted up but considering I barely paid attention to it I can't really be sure what it said but it said something about stable so I'm pretty sure it's going to be a stability test. Should be interesting.

Wow that sniper rifle is huge! Thanks for getting those pics of it. I couldn't tell it was that big while holding it. Only 3 ammo for it at a time sucks, but damn that gun is a beast.

I got some good video clips saved of our adventure tonight. I'll have to post the last 3 tomorrow because I can't stay awake long enough to see the upload finish. But heres the clip of us team killing each other and me setting my sparrow for self destruct.

According to their facebook they are opening the beta for everyone today. It kinda makes the emblem less special now on the 26th, but better for the overall game for stress test.

No codes even required now? Damn. I guess they really want to stress test the system then. Kind of makes pre-ordering for beta access a bit pointless now too. hmm.

I got my last couple videos up!

Here is the purple ball Strider found in the tower:

We played the Devil's Lair strike on the highest difficulty and this is how the fight with the Devil Walker went down.

We found a crazy difficult horde of enemies yesterday and after looking at this video again, I see that beneath the names of the enemies that killed me it says "Hidden Swarm". The waves of enemies in this horde was intense:

Today at 2PM PDT!!!

That would be 5pm for me.

That moon mission was a bit of a letdown. Lol. Strider and I beat it in about 8 minutes. There were match making issues during the big stress test that got resolved. I think bungie knows what they're doing. They put a lot of time and work into this game and it shows. I look forward to September.

http://www.vg247.com/2014/07/28/destiny-beta-how-many-missions-strikes-datamined/

I'd say GW2 has around the same amount of missions for 80 levels. Destiny seems to be using a similar model where once you complete a mission, the next appears, but it's a few levels higher than what you're at so you have to go do other activities to rank up.

I like that there are that many strike missions. That's my favorite part of the beta, and it's good to see there will be more than one per planet.