DeathscytheX

Thats the age of piracy sadly. Its just crappy how big devs want to keep new content off steam. People don't want to download mutiple apps to play their games. Activision doesn't give a shit about PC gamers, thats why they're on steam delivering their half assed ports of COD.

I think they did that on purpose to funnel people into the DZ and create a gankfest. People are crying on reddit how going rogue is so disadvantageous, It should really stay that way. It shouldn't be easy to steal people's loot, otherwise you have GTA Online/Day Z where everyone is a dick. The DZ feels high stakes at all times. Once you have loot, you don't want to die until you extract.

Update 2: Apparently the PC version is ruined with cheating.... the servers don't question the client so people have been fiddling with the code to give themselves infinite ammo among other things. I got bored with the beta yesterday and didn't play any of the extended time. The DZ finally turned into a gankfest because most people have max gear and there is simply nothing else to do beside kill each other. The beta has its limits, and some people are taking it too literally. In the Beta DZ the best gear comes from the vendor... literally nothing good drops. Yet some redditors think this is an indication of the full game. Clearly there wont be any purple/orange tier weapons at level 8. Ubi just did this to give us a taste of what these weapons can do. Kinda like how Destiny had a lot of iron banner and raid guns drop left an right with a level 6 cap. (I remember having Efrideet's Spear even though it wasn't called that, the skin was the same) TBH though, the difference between Blue, Purple, and Orange weapons are in side perks called "talents" The DPS is slightly better, but minus talents or even with them, a better player with all blue can crush someone with all orange. I think the Armor is a bit different at least in the beta, the blue armor ratings were a lot larger than green. The way the weapons seem to work is that blue has 1 talent, purple has 2, and orange has 3. These talents range in between more damage at certain health thresholds, faster reloading times, stability when using a skill, and health regen. Like Destiny these are randomly rolled.... you could have 3 purple M1A's drop and the talents could be different on all 3 of them. Another cool aspect is that the attachments tiers don't limit their use... you could theoretically put all orange attachments on a green weapon.... not that you'd do that, but its a nice feature when you don't have any purple gear lets say, but a purple suppressor drops... you can use it on your blue rifle until you get something better. I noticed the situation board I mentioned in my last post tried to refresh on me my last day of playing. When I hit it, it said it loaded new encounters and side missions, but they never appeared on the map. If I had to guess this will probably be a daily thing since the map will be a lot bigger. I forgot to mention that upgrading your base will most likely come from these encounters and scavenging. While main missions unlock upgrades, you need parts as currency to purchase these upgrade. Tools, Weapon Parts, Electronic Parts, and Fabric were some of the things you could find... you could "discover" these on the map when you got close, and these boxes refreshed themselves every so often. So just doing the main story isn't going to cut it which makes me really happy. Like I said, exploring was more fun than it should have been for me. There are some rooms that require lockpicks that you can hold a limited supply of at any time, yet they seem to drop at a decent rate. XP sharing is to the extreme in this game. Any time you get XP, everyone in your party will get it for everything. I gave a beggar a soda across town from where my friend was and he got the 150xp that I got for doing it. This is perfect IMO, everyone can spread out in situations without having to worry about missing out on XP. It takes out any kind of selfishness. Are you pulling unjustified aggro from the sharpshooters in the DZ? Don't worry, you buddy that is killing them all is giving you all the XP. (NPC snipers can seriously one shot you in the DZ). I've ranked up while my friend killed NPCs without myself firing a bullet. So pulling aggro is just as rewarding as getting all the kills. I think the only time XP varies is during mission encounters. You'll get bonus XP after each encounter based on number headshots and not getting downed. So you technically still get rewarded for higher skill without worrying about being a glory hog. I will be spending a lot of time on this game... it will be the first game on PS4 I sink more time into than on my PC for once. I hope the expansions deliverers some raid like content because honestly the PvE is a shit ton of fun to repeat. Me and a friend mastered the one mission we got on hard to the point we started making stipulations like pistols only.

BETA thoughts: This open beta is heavily neutered from anything I've seen in videos. You only get access to 2 skills on the medical tree, and the first skill on the other two trees. You can't even look at perks and other abilities because they hit you with scramble vision on the menu. Open Wold PVE Not much here. You get one main mission for the medical branch and some side missions that are really a quest chain of uneventful investigation leading up to a decent encounter. There are also some random encounters that vary in degree of length. The main mission was relatively short. You moved through 4 different sections fighting off enemies leading up to a boss. Playing it on hard made the end reward better, but the loot drops during the mission seemed marginally better if it was at all. The enemies were a lot tougher and more aggressive however. Walking through the city you can stumble upon random bad guys, but there are actual locations marked called encounters. I think you can frequently get these from a situation board in your base of operation, but I cant refresh these in the beta. Some are as simple as taking down a few guys, others consist of helping a task force secure an area (kind of a horde mode). A few get interesting as they have a timer on them. These start out as unoccupied rooms with scanners you must search for and activate. When that is done you have to make your way across the roof tops to upload the data... of course enemies stand in your way while the timer is running making things a bit intense. These were probably my favorite encounters. Since I'm a completion junkie... I'm probably having more fun with the beta than I should. There are a bunch of collectibles laying around from intel files to survival guides. Now that I've cleaned the map of everything to do gun battle wise, I've been exploring picking these things up, and finding random echos. I even managed to find some blue armor in a subway crate in a dark corner. There is also FASHION! the GW2 in me came out running open world with a friend... we'd be on our way to a side mission only to see an apartment door open. That means looting time! You can go into certain places and loot fridges, kitchen cabinets, closets, dressers, and file cabinets for random items including fashion ware. Hats, Pants, Shirts, Jackets, and Boots are all cosmetic options that have no bearing on stats. There are gun camos too but I haven't found any yet. We spent a few hours just looting for clothes losing sight of our objective. You can also gain items like these from NPCs in need... they come up to you begging for a med pac or random consumable. They'll drop you a cosmetic or a shitty piece of white equipment. Its a gamble. The Dark Zone Its only the beta, but there wasn't as much douchery going on as I thought there would be. Thats because you're making yourself a huge target going around killing other players. The loot in this game works like Destiny. Only you can see what loot dropped for you. Killing enemies drops loot for everyone, but the quality may vary between players, that doesn't change in the dark zone. The only way other players can tell that you have loot is by a yellow satchel that hangs under your normal backpack. There is no indication on what is in it. Once you kill someone you are marked red on everyone's mini map for an allotted time, and players can also see you through walls. You make yourself a massive target. If you're going to go rogue, the best time to do it is when people are extracting, that way you can hook your loot and secure it before you are killed. This is also why you should never extract with players that aren't in your party. Extractions alert everyone in the area, also marking it on the map. The chopper takes a full minute to get to the site, and then lowers a rope to hook your loot bag on. You have to hold square to do this and it takes a good 3-4 seconds to complete the action. Any number of things could go wrong at this point... The place my group extracted was on top of a parking garage. (There are designated extraction areas, you cant extract anywhere you want) We had a clear vantage point over the entrance to the top floor in case someone decided to come up and try to be hostile... but just watching an entrance doesn't always work as one poor solo player found out. After we extracted our loot successfully, a solo player ran up to perform his own. My buddy wanted to kill him, but I decided against it since he was a lower level than us and probably had nothing of value. He gave us the surrender emote to let us know he just wanted to extract and we started to leave... next thing we know he was downed, so we run back up only to see 4-5 elite NPCs have spawned and were tearing him up. I quickly revived him and we took them all out for some more loot. It was an interesting experience clearly to keep you on your toes from corner camping vantage points while you extract. I definitely would not recommend soloing the DZ. Killing NPCs gets you levels, and technically you could just do that and collect the DZ currency they drop... but if good equipment drops it would be hard to pass up, and dangerous to extract. Oh aslo, your DZ bag can only carry 6 items so you're going to have to extract regularly whether you like it or not. Weapons Assault Rifles: Not a fan... mag is way too small and runs out quickly. Long reload times that could possibly be helped by later attachments. Shotguns: Once I got the semi-auto, I was tearing it up. Really good for CQC. There are enemies that have baseball bats and golf clubs that will rush you. They do A LOT of damage if they hit you so its imperative to have a good close range option. In the DZ these rushers were ultra aggressive and fast. SMGs: I picked up a Vector and I am loving it. More so than the shotgun, but that's because its a higher level quality than the shotgun I had. The mags last longer than ARs and you get the same range about. I wouldn't be surprised if they got a range nerf TBH. They still would make a good CQC if this happens. While they melt enemies fast, they don't have the stopping power that shotguns have. A shotgun will make someone do a full second of stun. Sniper Rifles: High damage, very slow rate of fire. You can't run this with a shotgun, they both fire too slow, You'll have to roll with an SMG if you want to snipe.... or just snipe with a marksman rifle. Markman Rifle: Screw ARs, this is where its at. They have close to the damage of sniper rifles, but a faster fire rate and bigger mag. reload times are slow like ARs, but 2 body shot kills, one head shot kill more than makes up for it. It also suffers the same drawbacks as snipers as the 3rd person ADS reticle widens massively while moving. LMGs: Haven't had one drop yet.. but i imagine they do some heavy suppression. I suppressed a few enemies with my SMG and its a good tactic for letting someone else flank. Or to bull rush if you're solo. They wont come out of cover when the suppressed indicator is up. Its like a heavy handed stun. Pistol: Pistols are pure crap so far.. but with reason. They are your backup weapon and they have infinite ammo. Really low damage. The attachments alter the stats of your gun to varying degrees. Optics better your zoom, but also add critical damage % gains. Grips do similar things as well, but extended mags suck and are pointless. They only give you 1 extra round for every weapon type except SMGs which give you 2. You're better off with the heavy spring mag that increases fire rate. If you're gonna use extended mag, it would only be worth it on a shotgun for that extra round. Suppressors only decrease your threat level... not really sure what that is yet. Maybe its aggro. Skills Like I said you only get access to a few skills. Your Base of Operations help you upgrade these skills. Doing missions and collection parts will help you do this in the full game. The first skill on the medic tree is the only one you can upgrade in the beta. Its basically vision pulse from BO3/pulse scan from Battlefront. The upgraded versions add modifiers. The one I went with added critical damage when hitting marked enemies. This was actually a really nice perk tbh. Giving everyone a DPS boost is never a bad thing. The first aid skill is going to be hard not to have for any player. While you can have consumable med packs, you can only carry 3 at a time. First aid lets you heal yourself or drop an AoE on teammates to heal them. I saw that you can upgrade the AoE heal to revive downed teammates without having to be near them which will be very useful for a dedicated healer. The sticky bomb was ok. I really wanted to try the seeker mine, but its locked for the beta which really disappointed me. I didn't bother with the riot shield, it seemed pointless since there is plenty of cover provided during gun fights. Thats all I can say for now. I can't wait for this game to come out... even this small bit of content was very interesting. I also saw a "Dailies" tab in the options/inventory/info panel which has me excited.

a better view of the skill trees.

I've needed 2 evolve material weapons that required a dungeon drop, the rest of them have needed merchant purchases and daily boss drops. Although I did have one breakthrough weapon that was a drop in a daily dungeon. Most of them can be bought, but its not worth losing the silver over being lazy. If I don't have a class specific key, I do the dungeon and recoup the losses on selling the the weapon to a class that needs it. I did a level 36 dungeon today for the most recent evolve weapon drop. If you get lucky enough to get one of those keys that unlock a class specific weapon, save them for these types of chests... purple weapons can't be bought on the market, so you're stuck with getting lucky, overpaying in a bidding war, or constantly farming until you get it if you're not lucky. Fashion is definitely the hot commodity. One came up on a bid, and I almost would have blown half my cash if I wouldn't have backed out... lucky for them it was a head piece... if it was an outfit I would have tried to dropped my whole bank on it. I'm digging the dungeon community on this game... it not like GW2 pre-nerf where it as full of speed run elitists and guilds that kicked you for a guild mate. We had two level 30s with us but they held their own surprisingly, and this dungeon was a lot more difficult than the last. I look forward to the dungeons that are going to come out down the road.... they are on the list, but cant be selected yet. The marketplace is interesting. If you need 1 of a crafting material, you're screwed unless you get really lucky. people sell them in bulk that adds up to insane prices most can't afford. This of course lets me price gouge a little bit on a singular item. I'll generally sell it for 1.5x what the bulk sellers are going "per each". It always sells within seconds. I got the stinger outfit today, which is really nice. It comes from a wheel of fate that takes currency from a giant scorpion boss. The boss has actual mechanics, so it takes a bit longer to defeat it and it only gives 1 token. Lucky for me I rolled it on try 3. I think I got the best soul shield I can get in open world... I won a bid on a purple soul shield piece from the dungeon, so I'm going to keep running it until I get the other 7 pieces. its not even close how much better it is than my blue tier shield. Oh, the one thing I dislike about the game is the UI.... its a damn mess. Here is my further butchering of it to get everything out of the middle of the screen.

I dont know much about Tera so I'm just going off what B&S is, by comparison to GW2 and SWTOR. There is no doubt this game is super casual. I frequently solo Green 2 star daily dungeons, and I assume a lot of people do as well, because I rarely see them pop in LFG. It's not hard for a competent player to achieve this. I've set my build to where I quickly regain health through damage. Unless I get stun comboed with multiple crits my HP never drops below 85%. Even in heroic 6 man dungeons I'm generally the one with the most HP at all times, and the one that doesn't expend a dragonblood. (An insta-revive or extra HP bar how ever you want to describe it). That being said, I still see those, whom I assume are the GW2 ultra casuals that cry in the official GW2 forum about stuff being hard, getting rekted by daily bosses because they stand in an AoE like a jackass and wonder why they got killed. I can guess these are GW2 players, because of how much it comes up in the side chat. Anyways enough about that. I'm about to hit 30, and I have to say I really enjoy the gear stat grind. Leveling bares little to no effect on your HP, and other stats... you're completely reliant on your gear as you evolve it. By the time I hit 25, I was still using my capped lvl11 gear. When I hit the zone I am in now, It became apparent I needed to upgrade fast, as I couldn't take hits very well, and it was taking more strings of combos to kill basic enemies. While your main weapon and trinkets are the ones you stick with... not every drop is for sacrificing to your current gear. The soul shield aspect is where the bulk of your stats come from, and piecing a full set of 8 together gives you 3 tiers of stats. I'm also enjoying this RnG game on the wheel of fate because of that. I sat there for 2 hours endlessly killing the "world boss" (There are no GW2 style world bosses in this game) for tokens to spin the wheel. These wheels are in different areas of the world... they randomly give weapon chests, soul shield 3-5pks, and a low chance at a new outfit. I need to go back to the early level one to get the outfit it can drop. After grinding all that time I managed to get a new complete soul shield, and outfit, and the prereq's for evolving my jewelry... fun stuff. BTW Strider my user account name is BIGHARSHNESS.... if there are suppose to be numbers after that I'll have to get them later because I never have looked to see. My character name is Scarlet Eternity. I haven't even looked how to add friends yet. Let me know how that Assassin is, I watched some gameplay and it looks like a blast to play.

The combat is my favorite thing about this game. I love Blade Master's mix of evades, CC, block breakers, and fast attacks. I soloed a daily boss today that was being left alone for some reason. Normally everyone is tearing them up as they spawn. What I don't like, and that's probably because I'm spoiled by GW2, is the lack resource sharing and kill sharing. It's frustrating to have 6 people around a enemy spawn because it's required for the main quest. Who ever gets first hit gets credit. I know this is common, but they could at least make things that are quest required to be kill shared like daily bosses. THE CODING IS THERE? I can deal with the asshat summoners that spam their AoE attacks to reserve all the kills for themselves in side quests that make you kill x amount of enemy type. But the 1 target main quest item is dumb. I did my first dungeon today and it's probably the best content this game has. It was a blast. The bidding for rare loot was annoying but at least we all got a purple chest at the end. I saved all my money for the end when I knew the sword I needed to evolve my weapon would drop would... then I rolled it from my end chest.

Ah. In 1600 hours of GW2 Ive seen 5-8 gold spammers ever. Its non existent, and when it rarely happens its a whisper because you can't spam map chat with the same or very similar messages or you'll get suppressed for a good 10 min after you stop. So bots that keep spamming wouldn't get more than 3 messages out. I guess I'm use to using map chat a lot, since its useful for coordinating full map meta events. People call for help or say when events are up linking locations and what not.

The gold seller spam is insane. I got through a good stretch with a clean chat the other day and then BAM! They must have all got in from queue at once. Never played an MMO close after launch so I don't know if that's the norm. They said they are working on it on reddit, but they should implement a chat suppression like on GW2 where if you type similar things too many times it shuts you down for 10 min or so. I tend to block them off chat, but the report system seems flawed... you cant report them directly from the chat.

I just realized there are classic controls, but I'll stick with the default. I'm having a blast, even though the quests are cheesy and the voice acting is very meh.

Old Man Cho is the server I joined. The action camera works for the style of combat. It's not 100 percent like it, it's just that you have to use the mouse to control the direction your going and you're always facing foward. You have to hold alt to move activate the mouse cursor to move across the screen or else it will just move the cam. Right mouse is your auto attack and left mouse does a powerful attack that uses the meter of blue bubbles you've seen between your hp and stamina. Tab does another powerful strike, and for blade master 1 blocks while 2-4 does other skills I haven't tried yet since I unlocked them before I forced myself to quit. 5-8 are consumables.

I'm almost done downloading the game but I dont know if I will get to play it. I'm having some indigestion that made me pass on HP rush tonight, and I just read that all the servers are practically overflowing and NCSoft will be creating more in the next 48 hours. Going from 2 overflowing servers to all of them is a good start for this game. I just want to see how it runs on my PC and try some combat. I'm probably going to be a Yin Blademaster. I noticed each profession has a difficulty to master meter on the website. The Destroyer looks fun, and will be my back up in case I don't like blademaster. EDIT: I shouldn't be up this late, but I had to play... quick notes 1. The customization is amazing for character creation 2. I'm going to have to get use to these controls... they are like GW2's action cam... attacking with the mouse buttons is awkward for me. I'm going to have to rebind all the keys when I have time. There is a gamepad option too, I might try that out as well. 3. The game is beautiful and runs well on my PC 4. I paid $5 for 7 days of premium. I waited mere seconds in queue as opposed to being #647 in line when I initially tired to join in game. 5. The combat is smooth and fast. Feels really good. Healing is based on consumables. You heal very slowly out of combat. Blade master has blocks, so I feel right at home with her. 6. Map chat is useless right now. Endless gold selling spam. These bots are taking up server space while people wait. When they put the AFC kick timer in I doubt it will help kick these bots. There probably running against a wall somewhere.

I guess they didn't think it had a big of following as it did. The gold sellers are killing the map chat from what I saw in another post. GW2 getting its props.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogqnbx-u4TE Why can't GW2 have graphics like these NCSOFT!?! ;_; anyways I heard of this game today... it looks really cool but damn I don't have a lot of time for so many games anymore. The movement looks awesome though. http://kotaku.com/movement-in-blade-soul-is-extremely-cool-1753780395?rev=1453224351438&utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Facebook&utm_source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow Oh screw that, pay and still long queues? Guess that comes with a new game (new to NA, I heard it's 4 years old) https://www.reddit.com/r/bladeandsoul/comments/41ris9/na_can_anyone_share_their_server_queue_times/

One of his squadmates was the healer, saving his ass most the time. He would pop a personal heal that would get him to the 2nd tier of his health when he was on his last bar at times (to where he would have to not take damage to regain the full 2nd bar). I think they did mention scaling... funny you say that. Its odd how its not utilized very much. Its definitely not a new concept. I remember scaling as far back as Diablo 2. Thats interesting about the Pre-Sequel, I'll assume I was right in thinking it was just something they tossed together to make some quick cash off those that didn't upgrade right off... I found it odd how fast it came out after it was announced. It didn't have much hype behind it either... much less coverage after it came out. Cel-Shade worked for that game. I'm not a big fan of it either... but for its humorous cartoony nature, it went well. The thing about BL was the insane amount of guns it had... you'd be hard pressed to find someone with the same exact exotics you had. Of course there was away to duplicate them by dropping it and dash board power off real fast so you could share them with friends without losing it yourself.

I personally loved BL1 and 2. I didn't buy Pre-Sequel because it felt like a last minute money grab before the old gen went out. I can't remember much about the ME3 topic... but I know 99.9% of the hatred is becasue the ending and not because the overall game.. the game play itself was amazing along with the missions. I remember I didn't take issue with the ending despite the outcry. Can't please everyone TBH. I haven't played anything from BioWare that has left me feeling ripped off (including the 3 months of SWTOR I paid for).... when it came to ME3 I enjoyed it because of the subtle choices I made in 1&2 affecting the 3rd game... The ending wasn't happy or epic... oh well. If the ending sucks (which I thought was fine) as long as I had fun playing it, that's what matters to me.... which is what Destiny failed at for its endgame. If I looked back at that topic I bet I said something like that. If they are all as long as the last video I posted, I'll be ok with it. Unlike Destiny where you can finish missions in 5-10 minutes skipping a bunch of junk mobs with ease... I'm still burnt up about that. Its really not the number of missions but how long the overall arc takes to complete for me. That's interesting about the Holy Trinity, is it newer games that are breaking it, or current games drifting away from it via updates? GW2 started out with no trinity and promoted itself as such... and so healing and tanking were quickly deemed useless and full glass cannon was accepted as meta because you could dodge and rely on blocks/reflects to sustain. Now that they've introduced raids, they require a tank and a few healers which got some people butthurt, but its only for raids and the rest of the game is still glass cannon. There is definitely a more cautious nature to this game, which I like... even though that guy was trying to go balls to the wall and got downed or close to down state several times being reckless. I'm definitely interested in the sniping, the shotgun didn't impress me, but I'm sure there are better shotguns than that pump with wooden furniture. I'll have to get my hands on the beta to decide if I like SMGs or ARs better. The consumable menu was interesting, there seemed to be a lot, but we only got to see the drinking water adding 20% bonus damage to elites. He slipped up there because he said he had to cut the skills menus out. I'm curious if his personal heals were actual consumables or just a small heal on a cooldown.

Now that I've seen how the healing skill works, I definitely want it. It seems health doesn't regenerate automatically unless thats only becasue its on a harder difficulty. It will def make managing heals a priority. EDIT: Watching the health bars, I see that your HP slowly (very slowly) regens for the health tier only. So once you're critical, you'll only regen the 1 of 3 bars without consumables or a healer.

My only concern is 15 main missions. MGSV had around 40. I hope there is a lot to do outside of side missions thats not PvP involved. If this game gimps on PvE in favor of PvP I'll be disappointed. If the Destiny model becomes a trend, I'll only buy Mass Effect and Borderlands games, because I can trust those series.