Category: Thoughts

20171004 Housekeeping and Next Steps

Posted on by yetieater in Thoughts

It’s been a long time since I wrote, but I’m in a writing mood today, and I happened to be logged into the backend of yetieater.com

I updated the site a bit. It’s been just shy of one month since the launch of Destiny 2, and you will now find it has its own page and navbar entry.

I’ve updated my donation page to include a section on goals. Additionally, I’ve made some minor adjustments to the homepage.

I’ve had a couple of folks show up during my Destiny 2 livestreams to inquire about my XIM4 settings for that game: I tore myself away from the screen long enough to create a new page detailing my Destiny 2 XIM4 setup.

A lot of folks are still finding their way here through my Destiny XIM4 setup, so I included an intro block to direct them towards my Destiny 2 XIM4 setup in case that’s what they were really needing.

I’ve yet to experiment with XIM4 ballistics curves beyond the ones that I was using in Destiny. I must take some time to play around. This will happen.

Finally, I will be joining the PC master race crowd by obtaining a PC license for Destiny 2, even though my machine is a potato (see below for proof):

Notes from Week One of Destiny 2

Posted on by yetieater in Opinions, Thoughts

The Destiny 2 experience is at once familiar to Destiny veterans. The rough edges have been polished through myriad quality of life improvements: gone are the frequent pitstops to the Tower.

I am very fond of the generously-sized vault! I tend to hoard items that I collect in-game, and the new vault means that I can go longer between purges of my inventory.

Developers within the community took advantage of the Destiny API to create a suite of tools that served as a bandage for some of Bungie’s oversights in their original design of Destiny. One tool stands out in particular: Destiny Item Manager (destinyitemmanager.com). DIM’s developers beat out Bungie’s Destiny 2 Companion App to openly allowing players to move their gear, resulting in some curious observations. Take, for instance, the ability to preserve the power level 100 armor that you are equipped with at the start of the game’s first mission, Homecoming (reddit). While it was buggy at first, forcing me to resort to Bungie’s Destiny 2 Companion App for the first few days, the DIM team is adept at quashing bugs, and Destiny Item Manager will continue to be a staple in my toolkit.

The addition of a world map, complete with public event timers, renders sites like DestinyPublicEvents.com to a bygone era. This, coupled with fast travel, means that players will find themselves in good company as they engage in public events. No more idling in Skywatch as you wait to catch Urzok, the Hated.

One of the chief complaints that stuck with me through Destiny was Bungie’s lack of respect for player’s time. Until update 1.0.2, vanilla Destiny’s Cryptarch would sometimes decrypt legendary engrams into lower-quality rares, much to the chagrin of players. This is still evident in the mechanics causing luminous engrams to decrypt at lower than expected power levels for players who have created multiple characters of the same class.

Questions

Is it worth spending glimmer on power level upgrades before reaching the level cap?

I noticed I was having a hard time dismantling items – something was stopping the action from completing. It may be linked to NPCs talking. Is anyone else experiencing this?

20170509 Trials of Osiris on Twilight Gap in Hindsight

Posted on by yetieater in Thoughts

Destiny‘s Trials of Osiris took place on Twilight Gap from May 5th to May 8th, 2017.

This is the fifth time that the Trials of Osiris has taken place on Twilight Gap.

I was a little perplexed by my weekly performance at the close of day one (1.50), especially when reviewing it against my overall record (6113/3154=1.9382). By the end of day one, I’d succeeded in adding 289 kills and 193 deaths to my record (289/193=1.4974).

It didn’t occur to me until I expressed my disappointment over these numbers in stream… One of my viewers pointed out that the meta had changed since the last time (January 20th to January 23rd, 2017) that Twilight Gap was played.

As a former Last Word + sniper main, the natural choice would have been for me to switch to Palindrome + Ice Breaker.

On Sunday, I ran a marathon session with NDS TaLoN. I put in some deliberate practice with my Striker Titan’s movement on Saturday night, knowing that its lightning grenades would do work on this map. I should have spent more time practicing my nade throws on Twilight Gap, as they ended up being the death of me on more occasions than I would have liked. I didn’t know how long I was expected to be on, but I do know that opportunities like this don’t present themselves every day. We ran lighthouse virgin carries from his stream for almost eight hours. By the end of it, I was worn out. I lay down and fell asleep for a few hours.

I’ve run carries with NDS TaLoN once before, on Asylum. Like last time, he stayed mostly quiet across party chat. As one of the Destiny community’s most-viewed Twitch streamers, he spends a significant portion of his time on-stream interacting with chat, and team comms suffer as a consequence. Some of the best moments were found when the whole team moved to play up close and personal with the opposing team: the full court press, if you will.

In spite of the fact that I was running carries with another strong player, my record remained virtually unchanged from the close of day one. New weekly totals: 581 kills to 391 deaths for a 1.486 K/D.

I wrapped up Trials of Osiris on Twilight gap with a Win/Loss record of 88/31, giving me a 73.95% win percentage, and 712 kills to 459 deaths for a 1.55 K/D.

I had the opportunity to play with the following individuals:

  • Phantaci
  • Flame oT
  • uck bungie
  • THE W0RMW00D
  • NDS TaLoN
  • a box 0f juice
  • The Devil Prada
  • TombstoneTV
  • shenjen

My thanks go out to you all for being a part of my weekend 🙂

20170502 Trials of Osiris on The Anomaly in Hindsight

Posted on by yetieater in Thoughts

Destiny‘s Trials of Osiris took place on Earth from April 28th to May 1st, 2017.

This is the fourth time that the Trials of Osiris has taken place on The Anomaly. I grew quite fond of this map when it was featured during “spooky Trials of Osiris.”

I was pleased to run all three of my characters to the Lighthouse. Additionally, Toxiic xBear and I made a successful lighthouse virgin run for LemonFawn303313.

I had the opportunity to play with the following individuals:

  • Phantaci
  • XGamingSociety
  • the FracTal
  • Skifurd
  • YUN6 Y4WH33
  • Toxiic xBear
  • LemonFawn303313
  • qaveman
  • dylrodidyadirty
  • a box 0f juice
  • Paylog
  • l Crxzy l
  • Foogba
  • RatatouilIe
  • MaDeKiLLeR56
  • lilleal408


Thank you all for being a part of my weekend! Though some runs were cleaner than others, it was a pleasure, and I look forward to the next time.

My thanks go out additionally to RavynHD, who blessed me with a host one evening. RavynHD can be found streaming on Beam at https://beam.pro/RavynHD 🙂