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On Being the “Pretty Girl”

Posted on by yetieater in Gamer Reviews, Reviews, Stories

A story about gratitude and entitlement

Amazon’s Twitch Prime offered me and other Amazon Prime members a free subscription to any Twitch streamer, and I used mine to subscribe to DrLupo’s stream. After learning that there was a Discord server for subscribers, I got into it by linking my Twitch account with Discord, and made my introduction. I posted in the LFG channel for Xbox One, and stepped away.

By morning, I received a couple of responses from people who were also interested in playing Trials of Osiris. I looked them up, and added them to my friends list.

On Sunday, I fired up Destiny, intending to run Trials until I grew bored of it. I hit up IcarusUndead, one of the guys from DrLupo’s Discord server. IcarusUndead had never gone to the Lighthouse, and I made it my personal mission to see to it that we’d get there.

Shortly after we got into a party, a guy that I’ve played with in the past, Leonaeu Reeves, invited me to chat. Leonaeu Reeves established a reputation for trash-talking other players and talking himself up, even though he’s an overwhelmingly average player.

The last time that I played Destiny with Leonaeu Reeves, he wanted to get carried through the King’s Fall raid on Heroic, and he hadn’t boned up on any of the raid mechanics. I should have bailed when even his clanmates ghosted on him, but I really wanted to knock out the Oryx challenge, and I stuck with it through an overwhelming number of wipes. Details of these many failed attempts can be found in the following two pages:

20160730 9:23PM bungie.net/en/Legend/PGCR?instanceId=5296673006&characterId=2305843009259344551
20160731 12:53AM bungie.net/en/Legend/PGCR?instanceId=5296769458&characterId=2305843009259344551

This, combined with his attitude in our post-raid discussion, left a sour taste in my mouth.

I took us to the Classic Free-for-All playlist for warmup, and to gauge the competence and attitude of IcarusUndead against Leonaeu Reeves. The first game that we instanced into (bungie.net/en/Legend/PGCR?instanceId=5704046696&characterId=2305843009259344551) was already in progress – we joined in just as the heavy ammo spawn was announced.

I lucked out, spawning in near C heavy. I killed a player near C spawn, and secured heavy, clawing my way up the scoreboard. My two fireteam members were not as fortunate, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

When the scoreboard came up, Leonaeu Reeves lamented how I’d gotten control of heavy ammo. I acknowledged that it provided me with a leg up, but also told him that I had to defeat two players in order to secure it in the first place.

We queued up again, looking for a fresh game.

“I don’t like Rumble,” he griped.

Fool, how else do you expect to increase your personal competence? There’s nothing better than subjecting yourself to the chaos of free-for-all and learning from your every encounter.

The second match (bungie.net/en/Legend/PGCR?instanceId=5704136409&characterId=2305843009259344551) was played out on Vertigo. IcarusUndead ended the match with 23 kills, outperforming me.

I told Leonaeu Reeves that I’d get back in touch with him after the run, and he left the party.

I searched DestinyLFG.net for a suitable Trials partner. IcarusUndead and I went through two failed runs before picking up a third player who stuck with us until we hit a flawless passage. I asked my fireteam whether they’d be down to keep playing for a chance to get the Vigilant Disciple, Destiny’s year three “Scarab” emblem, and they were game.

While we forged on in hopes of obtaining the emblem, I received messages from Leonaeu Reeves, which I responded to bluntly:

Leonaeu Reeves XBL
Messages received from “Leonaeu Reeves” on Xbox Live

I blocked him and moved on, but the incident warranted reflection. I could have done more to avoid hurting Leonaeu Reeves’s feelings.

The run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArHZdL_X1tg

IcarusUndead later went on to write me a favorable review.

I want to close with this: no one owes you anything. You want something? Go earn it, or play the lottery and hope that it’s your lucky day, but don’t cry when you don’t end up with the golden ticket.

Knownleek10

Posted on by yetieater in Gamer Reviews

I received a couple of messages from Knownleek10 partway through a series of three Trials of Osiris matches played back-to-back while helping my Trials partner farm for the Vigilant Disciple emblem.

@4:22 received first message

ur trash af for hitting body

@6:20 received second, and last, message

ur actually trash, u hit nothing but body ur blocked

Knownleek10 sent messages to my fireteam members as well.

Match 1: http://guardian.gg/en/pgcr/5917991691
Match 2: http://guardian.gg/en/pgcr/5918011462
Match 3: http://guardian.gg/en/pgcr/5918022495

We won two out of the three matches, and backed out to let fellow Crucible Sherpa Skifurd sleep.

Not much to say about Knownleek10. On paper he’s a good player, but I avoid toxic players, so I thank Knownleek10 for taking the time to block me.

Check out the three matches below:

A Personal Epiphany During Day of the New Iron Banner / Long Live the Sweaty

Posted on by yetieater in Thoughts

A brief background of my Destiny career:

One of 2,109 DTR50 Trials of Osiris players (globally, both systems, as of October 15, 2015). Control is my most-played playlist, with 1,124 games. My Hunter is my present main, and was my first class. I’ve been a semi-competitive FPS gamer, starting with Command & Conquer Renegade and Counter-Strike 1.5. I started playing Destiny on Cyber Monday 2014. My stats, by playlist.

By the time that The Trials of Osiris started on May 22, 2015, I’d logged between 210 and 250 hours in the Crucible. The introduction of ToO and Elimination was exciting, because it provided possibilities for intensely competitive gameplay. PullRequest and I decided that we’d shoot for a DestinyTracker True Skill rating of 50 in Trials of Osiris.

During that grind to ToO DTR50, I had the privilege of playing with other serious PvP players, but we also ran into every cheap mechanic out there. Quick revive, Blink / Slide-shotgun, double Firebolt, head-glitch, Swarm grenade Super glitch, Final Round Efrideet’s Spear … You name it, we’d seen it. Chances are that you have, too. I’m proud to say that we’ve overcome most of the cheap tactics through strategic gameplay, earning the right to teabag back those who teabagged us.

As I grew prouder of my rising stats, I did things to protect them. I switched predominately to running a high-armor Warlock Voidwalker build, and clung to The Ram for protection against the Thorn’s deadly 2-shot KO. To maximize my personal killing potential, I ran The Last Word and Her Benevolence (Shortgaze, Hidden Hand, Unflinching, and Snapshot).

At the drop of 2.0, we felt the Crucible out anew. The maps were fresh and more detailed. The nerf to Final Round and various weapon balance modifications put a smile on my face, after I’d accepted that The Last Word was nothing like the gun it once was.

Things began to take a turn last week with the introduction of the Eirene RR4 with Luck in the Chamber. I encountered it in a few Skirmish matches. When the dust settled, I was left with a sour taste in my mouth. I couldn’t quite pin it until tonight.

I started the day having just reached Rank 2 with the Iron Banner. I played a couple of Iron Banner matches earlier in the evening, with NDS_TaLoN and some of his friends. Upon completing my 19th King’s Fall raid with PullRequest, zachvice, and some of willmanning’s crew, I decided to wrap up the night with a bit more Iron Banner. I entered matchmaking with a fireteam of six, invited by duckyisbeast who I’d met a few months into Y1.

Word broke earlier in the day of a game-breaking Hunter Nightstalker Quiver glitch. This, coupled with the arguably OP Titan Sunbreaker Super, made for some real asshattery. I started as a Hunter Gunslinger, and wound up raining arrows on a couple of particularly testy teams. We ended up with a W-L record of 4-3. By the end of those seven matches, I felt burnt out. It didn’t feel right to retaliate against exploiters with exploits of my own.

My frustration with Destiny today lies in a couple of places. On the one hand, you have the small proportion of the population that relies on the cheap trick to get the job done. Thing is, most non-casual players are advantage players. We’re going to do what it takes to get the win, even if someone else thinks it’s unfair. Queue the trite expression: all is fair in love and in war.

On the other hand, you’ve got Bungie. They’ve built a terrific game, but one gets the feeling that they’re not entirely sure what to do with it. Blunders like the universal Black Spindle downgrade hint at this, though the Crucible Radio talk with Jon Weisnewski suggest that the architects remain hard at work. I am cautiously optimistic that the introduction of micro transactions through Eververse Trading could translate into Bungie-backed real-money tournaments, further enriching the game at its highest level. We have the technology, and the hype machine stands at the ready.

Given that I can’t tell other people how to play the game, and don’t have any pull over at Bungie, the best that I can do is to change my own approach to the Crucible. I know that we can expect a relatively quick hotfix to address the Hunter Nightstalker Quiver glitch, and countless rounds of game balances to come. By the tail end of Year 2, the game’s nine subclasses will reach closer to parity.

Until then, Crucible aficionados have their place at /r/CruciblePlaybook and /r/DestinySweatyLFG. Because in a sweaty, you’ll at least get a fair fight, even if it’s one-sided.