Category: Destiny Glimmer

Stats Remind Us Just How Casual Playerbase From Destiny

Just how tiny? Now we have some idea, thanks to a clever fan who decided to show us just how top-tier many of our problems with the game really are.

Redditor btg7471 decided to hunt through his PS4 Destiny trophies and looked at the overall stats on a few of them. The result shows us a rough estimate of how many players have done what in Destiny, and more specifically, what they haven’t done. Here’s the list:

  • Only 31.1% of Guardians have equipped a piece of Exotic gear.
  • Only 23.8% of Guardians have worn Legendary/Exotic armor in every slot.
  • Only 24.2% of Guardians have earned max Vanguard marks in a week, while just 16% have maxed their Crucible marks in a week.
  • Only 23.1% of Guardians have reached rank 3 with the Vanguard.
  • Only 19.2% of Guardians have completed a Raid.
  • Only 16.9% of Guardians have maxed out a Warlock or Hunter subclass, and just 15.2% have maxed out a Titan subclass.

Granted, we see this in many games, where top-tier content is crafted for only a select handful of players, but I think Destiny’s exclusivity problem is exacerbated by the structure of the core game itself, and it’s something that could be improved upon in future installments.

What I’m talking about is what I’ll call “The Gulf.”

“The Gulf” exists as a space of time between beating the game’s story mode/reaching level 20, which are usually roughly the same time, give or take a few hours, and the promised land “endgame” where players are able to take on pretty much all the content the game has to offer.

In the levels between 20-26 or so, Destiny puts players in a weird sort of purgatory. They’ve beaten the main story so there’s no real way to progress there, other than doing the daily “special” story missions, and they’re trapped in the bottom-to-mid-tiers of the Strike playlist, where rewards are relatively sparse.

Eventually, you get to the promised land. After bridging the Gulf, even if you’re not max level, you still exist in a space where you can reliably save up for Legendary vendor gear, earn enough coins to occasionally buy something from Xur, or see a lot of Engram drops from the Strike playlist. This is a pretty fun place to be, but many players will find themselves swallowed by the Gulf, quitting out of frustration or boredom.

Destiny’s item system is disproportionately skewed toward the late game to the point where the rest of the game is largely pointless before level 20. There are simply no Legendary or Exotics before then. There is no “lower tier” of high end weapons to get players excited.

This is contrary to say, a game like Diablo, where the game has a max level of 70. Destiny power leveling make you upgrade easy, yet players can find Legendary drops at level 5 if they’re lucky, which will be better than whatever they currently have, and make the game more fun. Obviously drop rates increase as time goes on, and Legendary gear gets way more powerful, but at least until then there’s something to look forward to during gameplay.

Finally, the 20% Raid stat makes perfect sense, assuming it’s due to a combination of what we’re talking about above, and a lack of in-game matchmaking for the mode.

It’s probably too late for the game to change many of the things discussed here, but it’s definitely something to think about for the longer term health of the game, and particularly how Destiny 2 is structured. The game needs to put its best foot forward from the start, and being yet another game where “the real game doesn’t start until you beat it” means there will be many, many dropouts along the way.

Destiny Share Spent 1200 Hours In The Game

Destiny has only been on the market since September, but one hyper-dedicated player has managed to sink more than 1200 hours into the game.

A Reddit user named comphermc posted a screenshot of his inventory, and, surprisingly, 1200 hours isn’t enough time to collect every item that Destiny has to offer. Though, the faction ships/shaders are the only things left on his list.

Here are a few highlights, as told by comphermc:

  • I have all the Iron Banner gear for all classes, except for the helmets and the pulse rifle, since they’ve not been sold.
  •  I have gotten all the raid gear from both raids, but for one reason or another, I broke down my titan’s VoG gauntlets. I regret that now.
  •  I have gotten all exotic weapons and armor, and all but the titan’s No Backup Plans are post-DLC versions. I just never use No Backup Plans, so haven’t bothered to upgrade.
  •  I was using my mailbox to hold duplicates of Hard Light and Plan C, and deleted those I actually had in my inventory, so my vault had room to breath. During Iron Banner, I collected too many things on my titan, and Plan C was deleted from the mailbox. Moral: keep a few open slots in your mailbox. 
  •  Each character has their own Vision of Confluence, Icebreaker, and Gjallarhorn. I would probably have done this for other weapons, but using bungie.net to move items around makes it less necessary to have character-specific items.

My wife hates Destiny

You’re probably wondering how it’s possible, to spend that much time in a game while still maintaining a healthy lifestyle. But, that depends on your definition of “healthy.”

I did the math. Here’s the breakdown:

  • About 4700 hours have passed since the game was released, so comphermc has spent roughly 25 percent of his life playing Destiny.
  • This means that he averages about six hours of gameplay per day, without taking a day off. So, if he took weekends off, this would be the equivalent of a full-time job.
  • According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the average American gets about 507 minutes of sleep per day and spends about two hours preparing and consuming meals. After sleep, eating, and Destiny comphermc has just under eight hours left in the day for work, family, friends, and other interests.

Most wives probably wouldn’t stand for this, but it sounds like she’s got her own obsession.  Here’s comphermc:

  • My wife is a teacher who binge-watches Netflix. I won’t say I haven’t gotten in trouble a few times, but she is usually pretty busy with school stuff and/or whatever show she’s currently obsessed with.

Surprisingly enough, several hardcore Destiny players commented on comphermc’s post, revealing that they too have logged around 1200 hours. In fact, a user named BeefaloCL has about 1500 in-game hours.

Crazy

Whenever I see reports like this, the comments are filled with people who liberally use phrases like “what a loser” and “get a job,” but I hope we can avoid that stuff with comphermc (and anyone else, actually).Comphermc loves Destiny, so he’s playing Destiny. We don’t know anything about his personal life or his work situation, so lets not judge.

Comphermc seems like a dude who has some extra time and wants to spend it playing a game. I’m cool with that.

Bungie fights back against data miner from Destiny

Destiny’s success is based on a simple premise: keep people playing. The gameplay is good, the story is…not so much, but where Bungie Inc’s sci-fi shooter really excels is dangling the carrot of better gear in front of players’ noses in a manner similar to what MMO fans have called “the gear treadmill.”

While some players could grind for weeks or even months to gain certain items, the game has a built-in shortcut that a players can take advantage of to jump a few feet ahead on the gear treadmill. Every Friday, a vendor named Xûr appears somewhere in the game’s hub zone, the Tower. Xûr sells an assortment of rare items for incredibly cheap prices, Destiny power leveling to make upgrades easier and cheaper price, but he may not offer everything players want since his stock is random. Or at least, it is supposed to be.

Over the past month, Japanese-speaking Reddit user Megamanexe4 has accurately predicted not only the location where Xûr will show up each week, but also the specific items the vendor will have in stock. This undermines Bungie’s previous insistence that Xûr’s inventory and location are completely random.

The knowledge of what items will be sold by Xûr does not significantly affect  the game itself, but it does mean fewer players log in on Fridays when they already know that the vendor will not be selling any of the items they need. On the other hand, it also means some players will play more in the week leading up to the new items so that they can afford to by them when Xûr shows up. Apparently, that is enough to spur Bungie into changing the system so that Megamanexe4’s predictions no longer work.

According to his most recent Xûr prediction post on Reddit (with a rough translation by Reddit user balderm), Megamanexe4 is no longer able to query individual items from Xûr’s inventory, meaning that he cannot see what items will be in stock. He believes that Bungie may be stocking Xûr’s inventory manually to prevent the data from being mined and predicted.

Again, this seems to undermine Bungie’s previous stance that it could not affect Xûr’s items, which has some fans criticizing the studio for previously allowing the vendor to sell only items available to people who own the game’s DLC.

Megamanexe4 has hinted at Xur’s items from FIFA 15

Renowned “Destiny” player, Megamanexe4 has correctly predicted “Xur: Agent of the Nine” exotic items well ahead of its official announcement for past so many weeks. Megamanexe4 exposed Bungie, who claimed that development team has no control over “Xur: Agent of the Nine” items, and it is spawned at random.

Gamepur noted that last week was a bit different as the developer took some measures to put the leak of Xur’s stocks prior to its official announcement, to a screeching halt. That said, Megamanexe4 has shared some more interesting update on what new measure Bungie has took as well as whatever or not he will be able to leak future Xur’s inventory and items alongside many more things. According to iDigitalTimes, this week, Xur can be found standing in Tower North, across from the Speaker’s observatory.

Megamanexe4 claims there are two different types of Xur: Agent of the Nine. While one has a standard list of goods for sale that can solely be changed by patches, the other is managed by “Destiny” developer, Bungie, who can upload his data straight to the game without patches. Gamerpur notes that the Xur that appeared on March 15 was the latter type i.e. it was directly controlled by Bungie.

Accessing items/stocks of Xur that is controlled by the developer isn’t quite a piece of cake as this Xur has his data directly uploaded on the day of his appearance, making it impossible to obtain data about this Xur on any other day, Megamanexe4 explained. SegmentNext listed Xur’s inventory noting that his recent visits have been a disappointment for players as his inventory has been repetitive.

  • MK. 44 Stand Asides
  • Type: Leg Armour
  • Class: All
  • Cost: 13 Strange Coins
  • Mask of the Third Man
  • Type: Helmet
  • Class: Hunter
  • Cost: 13 Strange Coins
  • Apotheosis Veil
  • Type: Helmet
  • Class: Warlock
  • Cost: 13 Strange Coins
  • Hard Light
  • Type: Auto Rifle
  • Class: All
  • Cost: 23 Strange Coins

Players have been crying out for Hard Light since Megamanexe4 revealed that the weapon would make an appearance at some point over the next week. GamesPresso noted that each week Xur offers upgrade for 300 cap weapons.

This week Xur has:

Truth & on PlayStation platforms Hawkmoon, Gjallarhorn, Patiance & Time, Universal Remote, Heart of the Praxic Fire, Hard Light, Red Death, Crest of Alpha Lupi, Skull of Dire Ahamkara, A Insurmountable Skullfort, Mask of the Third Man.

Consumables

Emerald Coil & heavy ammo synthesis, Machine Gun Telemetry, Plasma Drive, Scoot Rile Telemetry, Pulse Rifle Telemetry. What do you think about this entire Bungie vs Megamanexe4 battle on Xur Agent of the Nine? Let us know in the comment section below!

Next Week’s Weekly Heroic And Nightfall Strike Ahead Of Time From Destiny

As leaked by Reddit’s fabled Megamanexe4, next week’s Strike is ‘The Summoning Pits’, starring Phogoth, everyone’s favorite Ogre. Next week’s Destiny Nightfall will feature:

  • Epic
  • Nightfall
  • Arc Burn
  • Lightswitch
  • Angry

Having the Arc Burn in The Summoning Pits won’t be quite as bad as bad in the final fight with Phogoth, considering that the Ogre himself does Void damage, but considering that the Strike takes place in the Hellmouth, most Hive enemies deal Arc Damage.

Finding yourself in close quarters with blade-swinging Knights or Thrall will also land you in hot water, considering that they deal immense damage when Lightswitch is active. The fight with Phogoth is particularly intense, given the number of Thrall, Wizards, Knights, and Acolytes; most of which either hit you or shoot some sort of Arc-based weapon. Plus, Phogoth is shooting his death-ray your way.

The Weekly Heroic takes things back a step by just having Arc Burn and Heroic modifiers active, making for a more forgiving raid; albeit challenging.

Guardians can go about beating the Strike a number of ways, but the most popular seems to be staying in the first room before entering Phogoth’s chamber. In there, each player can shoot at Phogoth with their weapon of choice, all while avoiding the majority of enemies outside.

There are a couple of occasions on which you will need to retreat – when enemies, such as Wizards and Knights, enter the room to murder you, or when a Shrieker spawns behind you; both of which will happen. When they do, retreat to the second room back, and simply wait for the enemies to despawn, then head back in to rinse and repeat.

In his post, Megaman also announced that he is no longer able to successfully predict Xur’s stock, meaning that his stock will well and truly be a surprise from now on.

1.1.2 update coming prior to House of Wolves From Destiny

Bungie has further detailed the next update for Destiny, revealing some new features that should be extremely useful for select players.

On the audio front, Destiny’s 1.1.2 patch will add new options to help boost the volume of voice chat relative to in-game sound. Players will be able to tweak a Chat Volume setting that affects player voices coming through your speakers (but not your chat headset) and a Game Volume option that controls all game dialogue, sound effects, and music.

The game’s music, wonderful as it is, can be disabled in the new patch, allowing players to listen to their own music. To incentivize players to keep it turned on, Bungie teases a secret in its latest blog post. “To prove again that Destiny music can also enhance the time you spend with your friends, we’ve added a fun little audio Easter egg to the game,” writes audio boss Jay Weinland. “It’ll be in there, somewhere. Once the update is live, see if you can find it…”

Colorblind support is also being introduced in 1.1.2. While you might not realize it if you aren’t colorblind, the condition can have a real effect on a player’s ability to perceive certain things in the game. The images above demonstrates this; by using the slider to compare the two screenshots, you can see how a colorblind player might be unable to differentiate between loot drop qualities or enemy shield types. The image below shows how higher contrast levels will allow for these players to be able to identify things more easily.

Other changes in the update, which is coming sometime before the House of Wolves DLC, include raid fixes and additional storage space.

Destiny Players said Destiny’s Xur relevant?

I, as many other Guardians, picked up Destiny on day one, and have sunk 500+ hours into the game since September. I used to count down the hours until Xur would arrive in the tower with shiny new Exotics for Guardians to buy, but since November Xur has become less relevant to most Guardians. Which leads me to the question, is Xur relevant?

 

When Destiny first launched on September 9th I, like many other Guardians across the world, stayed up late to start my adventure. As I plunged myself into the game’s story, I was driven by the hunger to hit level 20 as quickly as possible. As I grinded away at the story and eventually hit level 20, I discovered to reach the level cap of 30 I had to grind for new armor with Light. Destiny power leveling make upgrade easy. Around came Friday, and a strange looking person called Xur: Agent of the Nine appeared with a variant of sought-after Exotic items for Guardians to purchase. These incredible looking armor pieces and weapons had Light levels and perks I had never seen before – I had to get them. And so started the struggle to get enough Strange Coins to purchase those beautiful Exotics before Xur disappeared on Sunday morning.

Many others like myself couldn’t wait for Xur to bring new stock each Friday. We would grind away at Strikes, trying to save up those prestigious strange coins to buy an incredible piece. This was the norm for players at the beginning of Destiny’s launch. Nightfalls offered one chance a week at a beautiful Exotic, but with the level being set at 28 and most players struggling to get to level 24, the never-ending circle was born. Grind for gear to get to 28 for Nightfalls, get nothing; so wait for Xur and try again next week.

As Destiny evolved from its origins at launch, however, Xur has changed, and so have players’ mentality towards him. Xur was seen as the key holder for that final piece of armor to get you into the Vault of Glass (VOG) Raid. Then when VOG wouldn’t drop that Titian arm piece, Xur was your only option. Week after week he would come, and week after week he didn’t have the Exotic that you needed to finally reach level 30. With patches and updates though, Xur became less relevant until Iron Banner, for me, broke Xur and VOG all together.

When Bungie announced that Iron Banner would be improved and would bring those ever sought after amour pieces to get to 30, it broke the game and the games main focal point. For me and many others, the main focal point – and the only reason I was still playing Destiny – was to grind out that last piece and to finally get to 30. As someone who loved playing RPGs with mass-grinding whilst growing up, Destiny called out to me and made this grind the main point of the game. Week after week I would complete VOG and not get the Titan gloves or the Warlock helm, but this didn’t deteriorate me as I knew one day I would get these and when I did I would feel like I deserve them.

Destiny: Vault space and Raid fixes

In its weekly blog update about Destiny Patch 1.1.2, Bungie has said that it will be addressing a number of player concerns in the future update, including more Vault space and Raid fixes, to further improve the game.

Earlier this week, Bungie had released a 1.1.1.1 hotfix patch to Destiny that was meant only for back end improvements to help the game’s developers monitor the game. Bungie will be releasing the next patch, Destiny Patch 1.1.2 sometime in the next several weeks, ahead of the launch of The House of Wolves expansion pack.

In the latest blog update, design lead M.E. Chung has discussed how the team identifies the improvements and features that need to be added in their updates. After listening to their community feedback and brainstorming with the research team, Bungee follows a process for selecting and developing new features for its updates. Apparently, time constraints allow the developer to limit the number of features and fixes they can work on for the update.

Bungee has not provided any clear details on what can be expected in the Destiny 1.1.2 update, though it has listed these five features as a priority on its blog:

Vault Space – We know you need more space to collect all the treasures you gain from your missions, and more gear is on the way.

Raid Fixes – There are times when Atheon and Crota can be uncooperative, so we’re tackling their worst bugs.

Destiny: Iron Banner offers multiple buffs an Armour Shader

This week in Destiny marks the return of the fabled Iron Banner PvP playlist, which in turn brings with it a series of armour pieces and weapons that have Raid-level stats – a must-have for any player looking to expand their current inventory. What follows is a guide in order to avoid grinding your hours away, and tips on how to quickly reach Rank 5 to get the best gear.

Personal Destiny power leveling, plus some helpful tables from Reddit, suggest that the best way to complete the Iron Banner is to spread your hours of playtime evenly across the week in which it’s available. This piece of information is, of course, a no-brainer; but it’s the math behind it that’s interesting.

Destiny‘s Iron Banner offers multiple buffs – an Armour Shader, an Emblem, a Class-item, a purchasable ‘Tempered Buff’, and a multiplier for every day it’s available. Basically, if you equip all these and play later in the week, you’ll rack up experience faster than you will earlier. The trick is knowing when to play, and for how long.

Just as a start: The best method to achieve Rank 5 is to either play 1 hour per day for the whole week; or 2 hours per day over the last 4 days.

The following table, as provided by Reddit user GenericDeadHead, offers stats based on the following variables:

  • You play 6 matches per day
  • You have the Shader, Emblem, and Class-item equipped
  • You have the Tempered Buff
  • You win 50% of your matches
  • You turn in 3 Bounties per day

Although it may look confusing at first glance, the data shows that if you play roughly 6 games of Iron Banner per day, with all the buffs active while winning at least half of your games, you will achieve Rank 5 by the end of the week. The chart shows how much Rep you gain from handing in your Bounties and winning your games for each day, and shows how far along that gets you towards each rank.

If you aren’t available earlier in the week, or you need to catch up on lost time, there’s another chart to calculate how long you need for the last 4 days of the week.

The following table offers stats based on the following variables:

  • You play 10 matches per day
  • You have the Shader, Emblem Class-item equipped
  • You have the Tempered buff each day
  • You win 50% of your matches
  • You turn in 4 Bounties per day

 

This chart shows that, by starting on Friday, you only need to put in an extra 4 games per day on average, and you should be able to hit Rank 5 by the day before reset.

All of this information is based on the variables presented, and is certainly up for change depending on how many of the buffs you have, or how many games you win/lose. Ultimately, it provides a guide to how many games you should be playing per day, so as to avoid mindless grinding.

Bungie Has Been Doing What It Can To Prevent This Player’s Predictions From Destiny

The vendor’s name is Xûr, and if not for his paltry asking price-per-piece, many players wouldn’t have gotten their favorite guns yet — even now, half a year after the game released.

 Every week, the anticipation of Xûr’s stock creates high hopes, and — due simply to the limited shelf space available — dashes them to the ground. For the past month, one intrepid player has been data mining Destiny to reveal Xûr’s stock before it goes on sale.

The player, the Japanese-speaking Redditor Megamanexe4, has not revealed his specific system for data mining Destiny, but his results have been dead-on since he began revealing them around one month ago. Every week, he has been able to exactly predict not only what Xûr would sell, but the modifiers on the weekly events, as well as uncovered loads of info about the upcoming expansion House of Wolves. Aside from satiating the players’ curiosity, revealing Xûr’s stock has had huge implications on Bungie’s relationship with their game’s community.

By nature, a randomized list would mean Xûr’s stock often wouldn’t meet your desires, but the patterns the vendor has exhibited since release have frequently looked more like trolling than a random selection. He sold the worst exotic weapon in the game on Christmas, he has sold the exact same stock (three armor pieces, one weapon, and other assorted goodies) a handful of weeks apart, has sold a stock solely composed of items from the first DLC expansion more than once, and has had streaks of selling the same exact piece of gear over and over for weeks on end. These data points could all be coincidences, but that’s the point on which Destiny’s community sticks; Bungie has explicitly and repeatedly claimed that Xûr’s stock is both random and out of their control. Megamanexe4 seems to have proven otherwise.

The Redditor has not only predicted Xûr’s exact stock, the weekly event modifiers, and gear and maps from the upcoming expansion, but has also documented when Xûr’s stock has been manually changed, which again, is something Bungie vehemently claimed they could not do. Last week, Destiny received a tiny patch that installed tools to help Bungie better inspect and manage databases. Astute — or paranoid — members of the community immediately assumed it was to prevent gamers from being able to suss out upcoming content. Earlier today, Megamanexe4 posted an explainer on Reddit that seems to confirm those guesses of the astute and fears of the paranoid.

Since that tiny patch, the Redditor explains that there are now two versions of Xûr — an original copy that is still predictable, and a new, unpredictable copy that Bungie manually controls. If Megamanexe4’s observations are to be taken as true, then Bungie managed to fix their Xûr leak — though the weekly event and upcoming DLC data still seems to be running from a faucet. If Bungie does continually use what Megamenexe4 describes as a manually operated Xûr, then the developer figured out a way to beat dataminers. If Megamanexe4 is right and Bungie has been able to alter Xûr’s stock all along, then they’ve either been lying to Destiny’s community or at least intentionally misleading them.