Category: Thoughts

20170425 Trials of Osiris on Earth in Hindsight

Posted on by yetieater in Thoughts

Destiny‘s Trials of Osiris took place on Earth from April 21st to 24th, 2017.

This is the fifth time that the Trials of Osiris has featured rotating maps. I enjoyed playing the map rotations – nothing like a little variety!

I had the opportunity to play with the following individuals:

  • a box 0f juice
  • AssBats
  • Cupid Returns
  • DankLandBeyond
  • Phantaci
  • Skifurd
  • Templar Kismet
  • the FracTal
  • The L3gend 1

Good times all around – thank you for joining in, and thank you to all of the folks who made this happen.

The making of:

20170412 Trials of Osiris on The Dungeons in Hindsight

Posted on by yetieater in Thoughts

I spent a bit of time playing with Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 today:

The resulting video captures some highlights from Trials of Osiris on The Dungeons, which ran from April 7 to April 10, 2017:

I could probably have afforded to go through my footage more deeply to extend the runtime, but I didn’t want to delay any further on releasing content. I was able to bring in a couple of moments from the K1NGD1LLY episode, but I neglected to include any footage from April 9 (the session I ran with TombstoneTV + BullsTrader, and Toxiic xBear + ktmkeno), and my local recording from April 10 (with the real Taitors) was incomplete.

I’m pretty pleased with the processes that I have developed so far, and I know that my Adobe Premiere Pro skills will pick up with continued immersion. I’m curious to see what returns these new content experiments might yield 😉

Destiny 2.5.0.2

Posted on by yetieater in Thoughts

The following are my casual observations – I’m open to hearing what my fellow guardians have experienced since update 2.5.0.2 went live.

Sidearm usage has skyrocketed – many players sound surprised when they talk about how deadly sidearms are. The Last Word vs. Sidearm is a 50/50 trade, with sidearms edging out The Last Word in a startling number of situations. It’s tough times for my go-to hand cannon, and I’ve begun running meta loadouts to increase my individual lethality in firefights.

Had Bungie been more conservative with their experimentation, they could have collected clearer data on how the shotgun nerf affected special weapon selection. We probably would not have seen such an expedient rise in the proportion of sidearm kills relative to other weapons had Bungie opted against introducing such drastic changes to special ammo behavior (removing all special ammo from players between rounds, with the glaring exception of sidearms) between rounds of Elimination.

I suspect that Bungie will eat their liver on this recent change to special ammo behavior. The present state of special ammo allows players to use sidearms as they would primary weapons. In essence, everyone and their grandmother is running around with a pocket The Last Word, only with more rounds and greater potency.

I would be pleased to see a reduction to sidearm base range – we’ll see, in time.

I Started Playing Hearthstone

Posted on by yetieater in Thoughts

I began playing Hearthstone on my iPhone 7 Plus the other day.

Some initial observations:

  • The game offers a very consistent UX across tested platforms (Windows 10 + iOS)
  • High engagement – one gets the sense that there is immense depth to the game
  • Simple concept combined with solid execution give it lasting value

I thought to ping my cousin, and learned from her that Battle.net has regional game servers. This detail was one that I’d probably picked up in the past, but it has been a while since I last played a Blizzard game. Her account is tied to Battle.net’s China server: I was surprised to find that China is an exclusive region, and isn’t included in Battle.net’s Asia region. Probably political reasons behind this move.

So far I’ve played a fair amount of Quick Play, and dabbled in Ranked. I started the game by leveling the Mage class, experimenting with new cards that I received through free booster packs. I also played with a couple of basic netdecks, using one to secure my first win in Tavern Brawl (February 15, 2017).

The game has been around for years, and there is a massive body of knowledge. Now that I’ve gotten a taste, I’d like to work on getting my gameplay airtight, with hopes of joining the infinite Arena players.