Destiny 2

[markopolo]

www.trustedreviews.com/news/ps4-pro-vs-ps4

[TheHawkNY]

I mean, yeah, the reason to buy it is you have a 4k screen and you want to make use of it. Otherwise, you can just wait.

The issues with FPS likely aren't just a limitation of the PS4 Pro hardware being a bit too slow. Destiny 1 seems to really push the limits of the normal PS4 - there are severe frame rate drops in parts of the last DLC. My guess is 4k and 60 FPS isn't possible, and wouldn't be possible even if PS4 Pro had gotten a much bigger boost in terms of power.

[wings]

Are Sony planning on selling a 4K monitor, Destiny 2 and the PS Pro as a bundle or something?

My current gaming monitor is a BenQ GL2450 so that should be good enough. Pity the PS Pro and Scorpio can't do 4K and 60 FPS othewise I'd be wanting a new Crysis game even more than I do.

[markopolo]

My TV is old and is in a room where the difference between 720 and 1080p isn't that noticeable.

As I said before, what they'd showed at launch looks just fine

[iw5000]

reading these recaps and thoughts on the issues of the past game, reminded me of a video I made

[wings]

May 26, 2017 12:13:42 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

reading these recaps and thoughts on the issues of the past game, reminded me of a video I made

That was probably my biggest gripe with Bungie. We have modifiers slapped on existing strikes that didn't suit the game and they usually has synergy with each other, say Arc burn and Lightswitch for Hive based strikes so a Thrall can swipe your face and OHK you. I've played shooters like this and they all use cover based mechanics to justify you being squishy. Yet, Bungie who have been making shooters for goodness knows how long? Nope. All it did was made players find cheese spots and spam sniper rifles with conservative play to get it done. Then I hear DeeJ say we love sniper rifles because we use them in Golgoroth and they claim to have designed the encounter for shotguns. Like, really? Stop nerfing stuff because of salt in PvP if you want to see shotguns being used in PvE. Bad enough with nerfing their damage to Minions of the Darkness because they wanted to promote swords.

[iw5000]

Yeah, seeing some of those old videos reminded me. Reminded me that if there was one thing more annoying than playing a bazillion hours and never getting a Ghorn...it was playing 45 minutes of endless brutal solo sponge shooting on a NightFall...and dying at the end. Getting nothing. Having to restart over.

[mannon]

Yeah the game design with Nightfalls seemed really off. Usually the enemy buffs and modifiers combined to destroy the flow of the game entirely. The only time this was not the case was when you had just the right exotics and modifiers to achieve beneficial synergy, and then you could actually do some massive destruction. Of course, all that really did most of the time is restore the flow back to something like normal... like what the strike would be like with normal equipment on a normal difficulty, only with a few more modifiers. Sadly that meant that Nightfalls were nothing but a massive slog until you already had most of the exotic gear, and even then they were occasionally still massive, horrid slogs that people tried to cheese as much as possible because otherwise they could be a huge time sink that wasn't even fun and gave you nothing at all if you didn't actually finish the entire thing. Anyway...

On that note the weapons in D2 are different. From what I've read you've got primary, elemental, and heavy with most special weapons now being heavy weapons. Seems like that makes sense for PvP, but less so for PvE since you can no longer bring a sniper or shotgun and a launcher... I guess we'll see how that plays out but it sounds potentially dull, although it does mean you can bring a hand cannon and an assault rifle or something... potentially. That could be cool. What concerns me is... are they now playing down the elements? In D1 elements became pretty much of massive importance in PvE. There weren't a huge number of elemental primaries, but they had some uses, and you damn sure wanted elemental specials and heavies. In D2 are the heavies still elemental or is it going to be only the elemental weapon? Also if they're calling that slot "elemental" instead of secondary or something it sounds like there won't be any elemental primaries. So, are we only gonna be able to carry one elemental weapon at a time? I dunno about you, but I recall having to face enemies of varying elements and switching on the fly to the most useful weapon at the time based on that. It sounds like you'll have to swap your inventory loadout to do that in D2.

[markopolo]

I'll never get sick of a drunk ol' mexican's laugh.

Never.

[markopolo]

Alright.... someone on reddit made a nice, clean What We Know about D2 post

www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/6dhdzw/destiny_2_everything_we_know_so_far/

Enjoy

[markopolo]

YEsterday, at TW@B, they talked about dedicated servers

www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/45919/7_This-Week-At-Bungie--05252017


Code Words

As we moved through the crowd of Guardians last week, many of you asked important questions about how Destiny 2's networking model will work. The technology we use to bring players together in the world of the game touches on so many crucial topics. We know that you’re curious about everything from how your shots land to the protective measures we’ll take to keep the community ecosystem safe. These topics deserve careful statements from the people who own the code, and a noisy aircraft hangar isn’t the best place to do them justice.

Now that the dust has settled and the ringing in our ears has started to subside, I sat down with Matt Segur, Engineering Lead on Destiny 2, to get some answers for you.

Matt: We've seen a lot of people asking about how the networking model works for Destiny 2. Many are concerned by our announcement last week that Destiny 2 doesn't have dedicated servers. While that’s useful shorthand, the full answer is more complex because Destiny has a unique networking model. Rest assured that we’re doing a lot of testing right now with players all around the world, and working hard to make sure that your experience is going to be smooth on launch day.

So why no dedicated servers?

Matt: Every activity in Destiny 2 is hosted by one of our servers. That means you will never again suffer a host migration during your Raid attempt or Trials match. This differs from Destiny 1, where these hosting duties were performed by player consoles and only script and mission logic ran in the data center. To understand the foundation on which we’re building, check out this Destiny 1 presentation from GDC. Using the terms from this talk, in Destiny 2, both the Mission Host and Physics Host will run in our data centers.

Wait, so we do have dedicated servers?

Matt: We don't use that term, because in the gaming community, “dedicated servers” refers to pure client-server networking models. Destiny 2 uses a hybrid of client-server and peer-to-peer technology, just like Destiny 1. The server is authoritative over how the game progresses, and each player is authoritative over their own movement and abilities. This allows us to give players the feeling of immediacy in all their moving and shooting – no matter where they live and no matter whom they choose to play with.

Why peer-to-peer? Are we trying to save money?

Matt: Nope! We've invested heavily in new server infrastructure for Destiny 2, including using cloud servers for gameplay for the first time. We really believe this is the best model for all of Destiny 2's varied cooperative and competitive experiences. Engineering will always involve tradeoffs and cost-benefit analysis, but as a team we’ve got no regrets about the unique technology we’ve built for Destiny 2.

With Destiny 2 coming out on PC, does peer-to-peer networking put players at risk of being cheated?

Matt: The PC platform poses unique security challenges for Destiny 2, but our security Ninjas have spent several years building a plan for how to engage with this new and vibrant community. We have a variety of top-secret strategies to ensure that the life of a cheater in Destiny 2 PC will be nasty, brutish, and short. And, regardless of what platform you play on, all changes to your persistent character are communicated directly to our secure data center with no peer-to-peer interference.

Does this mean I’ll never see a player warp around the map or shoot me through a wall again?

Matt: We think those controller-throwing lag-induced moments will be reduced for Destiny 2, but we can't promise they’ll be eliminated. Fundamentally, we are trying to strike a balance between three hard problems: (1) make the game feel responsive, (2) make the game accessible to players all over the world, and (3) make the game fair for all. We’ll continue to refine that balance as players engage with the Crucible in Destiny 2.

[bradman]

I recommend getting a Pro for anyone with a PS4, it is worth trading in or selling your existing unit, even with a 1080p display.
Boost Mode, faster load times, bigger HDD, extra usb port, optical port, etc.

A worthy upgrade @1080p and a game changer @4k

[Pegasus Actual]

The original PS4 has optical. Though maybe that's not in the slim? There is a slim revision right? Gone are the times when I just knew every single hardware revision.

The Pro is a nice bit of hardware. I don't know if I would recommend it for 1080p. Boost mode is nice for certain things, Battlefield 4 for example, but no resolution bump leaves you in the same old 'could be better' 900p situation. Destiny at 1080p already looks great, and it's not like the Pro is gonna get you anymore frames. If you're going 4k it's a perfectly reasonable upgrade. But it doesn't do as much for old content as say a PC upgrade does.

Most companies didn't bother doing a Pro patch for older games, I can only imagine it will be much the same on Xbox. Scorpio is just going to be sad sometimes loading up an Xbox One game at 720p. Sure you might get rock solid performance but damn. Would love for console Siege to get a Pro and Scorpio patch around the time of Scorpio launch. Every last pixel you can see is holy in that game.

[bradman]

Yes, the slim revision eliminated the optical port.


Here is a rundown of what the pro does for a myriad of games;
link

[wings]

May 26, 2017 15:02:21 GMT -5 markopolo said:

Matt: We think those controller-throwing lag-induced moments will be reduced for Destiny 2, but we can't promise they’ll be eliminated. Fundamentally, we are trying to strike a balance between three hard problems: (1) make the game feel responsive, (2) make the game accessible to players all over the world, and (3) make the game fair for all. We’ll continue to refine that balance as players engage with the Crucible in Destiny 2.

I think this particular section will be overlooked by the Reddit community. And this might explain why I have a smoother experience playing the Crucible during the week instead of the weekends. Why? People using shared and/or poor quality connections are more likely to be used during the weekend. I'm fine with them making the game accessible to players all over the world, but the population of lobbies should have a high concentration of people from your own fucking country. How it's fair that I have to face going against teleporting foreigners when the game refuses to boot them is beyond me.

[markopolo]

May 28, 2017 18:30:24 GMT -5 wings said:

I'm fine with them making the game accessible to players all over the world, but the population of lobbies should have a high concentration of people from your own Foxtroting country. How it's fair that I have to face going against teleporting foreigners when the game refuses to boot them is beyond me.

Fithy foreigners stealing our bandwidth and not giving us quality PVP matches. It's the worst trade deal in history. We give them our bandwidth and you know... you just know that the gamers playing in those countries aren't they're best. They're not and we all know it. They're scrubs. They're noobs. They're stagnating the game play by sticking with the meta and that's it. They're glitchers. They're redbar rambos. They're speedrunners. They don't cap B. They don't play the objective. They're afkers. And you know, we give them this bandwidth, and instead of playing, they just go afk. and it's not just PVP, it's PVE... I go all over the country and they tell me, Polo: they just sit aft and while I'm taking Rockets McDickface on solo, they're just sitting there in the spawn afk. It's not right. They're screwing up our challenge modes. They're getting our drops for no effort. And Deej and Luke Smith will tell us all the time how they're banning cheaters, when we know it's not true. They're apart of the problem and in order for Destiny 1.5 to become truely truely great... as great as we know it can be, they need to realize this. That's why, as soon as Destiny 1.5 drops, there needs to be a Special Prosecutor appointed to throw these filthy foreigners out and send them back to their own bandwidth to game against their own ilk and play there. We need some sort of geographic firewall that prevents these foreigners from gaming in our lobbies so that we have perfect connections. The best connections! And we're going to make those foreigners pay for our dedicated servers so that we don't have to deal with this filth!

Traveler Bless you and each and everyone of us. And f$$k you Gary for breaking our Tower

[bradman]

And I approve this message.

[markopolo]

May 29, 2017 9:31:14 GMT -5 bradman said:

And I approve this message.

You and TheHawkNY will be my special prosecutors.... My Ivanka and Jared

[wings]

May 29, 2017 9:24:10 GMT -5 markopolo said:

May 28, 2017 18:30:24 GMT -5 wings said:

I'm fine with them making the game accessible to players all over the world, but the population of lobbies should have a high concentration of people from your own Foxtroting country. How it's fair that I have to face going against teleporting foreigners when the game refuses to boot them is beyond me.

Fithy foreigners stealing our bandwidth and not giving us quality PVP matches. It's the worst trade deal in history. We give them our bandwidth and you know... you just know that the gamers playing in those countries aren't they're best. They're not and we all know it. They're scrubs. They're noobs.

I have no idea if they're noobs or not when lag shows them having the Taken shiver animation like below:

xboxdvr.com/gamer/EnglandsDimebag/video/31786997

xboxdvr.com/gamer/EnglandsDimebag/video/31787013

xboxdvr.com/gamer/EnglandsDimebag/video/31786988

Even got a Postmortem medal with a Pali yesterday with no DoT used on an opponent. I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that lag compensation would be easier to deal with if matchmaking could form lobbies of players who are geographically closer. I've no issue with playing against the French, Germans and Austrians, but some European countries are known for having dog shit Internet, such as Spain and Italy (if only their football clubs were as dog shit as their Internet). Then there are times I match against Guardians based in the Middle East, South Africans, Australians etc. I could go back to some of the older COD games and I am sure lobbies will be sparsely populated across land mass less often. If I knew how to get information on all matched players on their ping, actual distance from me, packet loss information etc of games on the Xbox One I would happily compare between several games. That way you your visual perceptions are not deceived when games use a higher time to kill. Of course, we could have dedicated servers with a server browser but I know Activision won't do it. Same thing they don't kick players for having a too high ping (if they do it's much higher than what is reasonable) like in Rainbow Six: Siege because it won't be fair on players having a high ping if the game puts them with players from across the globe etc.

By the way, there was some controversy with lag from what I've heard at one of the Farcog tournaments when the UK Boys won it (LiL Sonic was on that team). But you know, this is what happens when some people in the Community try to treat it like Counter Strike when it's far too casual to be considered competitive. And yet in LoL or DOTA (forget which), you are frozen when you lag so you never win an engagement you shouldn't, and those two games actually have a genuine competitive scene unlike Destiny pretending to have one.

[qupie]

May 28, 2017 18:30:24 GMT -5 wings said:

make the game accessible to players all over the world, and (3) make the game fair for all. We’ll continue to refine that balance as players engage with the Crucible in Destiny 2.

I think what they mean is that the game will be released in more countries, which will probably be a possitive on connection instead of a negative. No VPN or other shenanigans to still play it, while you are the only one in your country. A broader coverage is a benefit to us all.

On a related note, how is comcast still a thing. US players are among the most laggy in my experience, and you pay big bills for it. For comparison, I pay €50 for 150/15Mb (down/up) which fails about once a year max. Oh yeah, that means free HD tv, and a digital recorder and a big bunch of free movies and TV shows on demand. Oh yeah, and I recently learned data limits are a thing, wtf.

[mannon]

Yeah I pay for 100Mb/s down and get somewhere between 55 and 75... ;-/ But it's better than I got with AT&T. I've also had problems where it tanked down to less than 2 on two occasions. The first time they had to come run a new line to the box and the second time they had to move us off of a splitter at the box. In other words both times they had done something to physically screw up our connection so that we couldn't get a good signal, and we still don't get a good enough signal to get the full rate that we pay for, but they have been unable to improve it and there are no better options available due to lack of competition...

PS. Dallas, TX

[bradman]

The adapter on my desktop is capped at 100mb,I get higher speeds from PSN.

[wings]

May 30, 2017 3:48:10 GMT -5 qupie said:

May 28, 2017 18:30:24 GMT -5 wings said:

make the game accessible to players all over the world, and (3) make the game fair for all. We’ll continue to refine that balance as players engage with the Crucible in Destiny 2.

I think what they mean is that the game will be released in more countries, which will probably be a possitive on connection instead of a negative. No VPN or other shenanigans to still play it, while you are the only one in your country. A broader coverage is a benefit to us all.

I didn't think it would be practical to use a VPN to play computer games. It might explain some of the constant red bars in lobbies. If they always finished bottom of the leaderboards I wouldn't find it aggravating but in Rift it is not uknown for the leader to be red bar. I mean if this means more players will be geographically closer to other pkayers in lobbies then great. Would miss out what salty messages read like in foreign languages though.

[wings]

New additions to my collection of loot from the last two weeks or so:

Matador 64 - Aggressive Ballistics, Cascade, Reinforced Barrel, Rangefinder
Matador 64 - Aggressive Ballistics, Performance Bonus, Reinforced Barrel, Rangefinder
Party Crasher +1 - Aggressive Ballistics, Grenadier, Rifled Barrel, Underdog
Vex Mythoclast
Warlock gauntlets and boots from WotM HM with Intellect, Discipline, and sniper rifle bonuses (unlocked Neopoesis)
Blind Perdition
Twilight Garrison (decently rolled Int/Dis)

Think I've used all my luck up for chasing the Burning Eye.

[markopolo]

www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/6g2hxa/information_regarding_d2_open_beta_to_be/

They're announcing the beta date @ E3... I'm as shocked as you are

[wings]

Still expecting major lag issues in Destiny 2 like below:

xboxdvr.com/gamer/EnglandsDimebag/video/32391534

xboxdvr.com/gamer/EnglandsDimebag/video/32391514

Perhaps I'm too cynical.

[qupie]

Any reasoning behind that statement? Or are you just salty and want a place to show your recent lag bullshit? (that is fine too thought lag can be a bitch...)

When will the destiny/bungie E3 be?

[markopolo]

www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/6gq8av/destiny_2_will_have_competitive_and_casual/

[markopolo]

Arc strider info from Game Informer

www.gameinformer.com/games/destiny_2/b/playstation4/archive/2017/06/11/exploring-the-hunter-arcstrider.aspx

[markopolo]

Story stuff from game informer too

www.gameinformer.com/games/destiny_2/b/playstation4/archive/2017/06/11/destiny-2s-lead-creators-discuss-story-direction.aspx